Race through Penn Station today, and you're likely to find an assortment of insanely expensive wilted roses -- and thousands of desperate men willing to pay $45 for a bouquet that normally costs $18.

For Fredo, a flower vendor who has set up shop next to an Auntie Anne's in the cavernous halls of Penn Station, rush hour on Valentine's Day is the Black Friday of the flower-selling season.

"People run by to catch their trains. They're grabbing bouquets, yelling about the prices, throwing me the cash and running," he said. "These guys gotta get home, and if they don't bring flowers, they know they're in trouble."

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So, maybe Valentine's Day has you a little bit down about relationships. (Or not! We won't judge.) But either way, there should still be a little room left to celebrate what you love (and hate) about that city. To that end, the interactive mapping website MyBlockNYC compiled two separate videos, made up of crowdsourced video clips, doing just that.

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Valentine's Day might have lost the allure of romance (or, rather, sex) for some people, but there is still some hope in the city. We checked in with site HowAboutWe -- which encourages the lovelorn to post ideas for dates -- and were told that New York postings have been steadily rising since January 13. That's when, as HowAboutWe.com media director Erin Scottberg said, holiday malaise has run its course, those "why are you still single?" questions are still on the brain, and Valentine's Day hype starts getting going. Last year, according to Scottberg, there was an increase in the number of dates posted through Feb. 14 (the big day). That then leveled out until the beginning of March when people started to embark on finding springtime beaus. But what have New Yorkers been wanting to do on their posted dates recently? Go tour a sewage plant? Not exactly, but let's just say that New Yorkers have been looking for something more than just a pleasant time with another person.

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Because love is at least nominally in the air (Valentine's Day is Tuesday), the Internet has brought you a new tool to discover your digital crushes. Twit Amore is an app that allows you find out who you or someone you like to stalk loves on Twitter by simply entering a user's handle. According to the site's "about" page it can reveal these "romantic" (note my use of scare quotes) interests by "using the Twitter API, it looks up who you follow, your timeline and your favourite tweets." We decided look up the loves of a few notable New Yorkers, and didn't find anything too incriminating. [h/t]

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Valentine's Day can elicit strong emotions. For a holiday purporting to celebrate the sweetest of emotions, vitriol seems just as common as saccharine. MyBlockNYC, an interactive mapping website" that encourages users to post videos corresponding to certain NYC blocks, is hosting a Valentine's Day contest that hopes New Yorkers share both their objects of adoration and revulsion with a camera. To enter the contest, competitors are supposed to ask New Yorkers what they love and hate and record and upload videos of the answers.

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Everybody knows that today is Valentine's Day. But did you know that it's also Mayor Bloomberg's birthday? Today he is 69 (Hey you, in the back of the class, what's so funny?). We contacted his press office to find out what 'ol Mikey will be doing, but they never got back to us. Don't worry, we've taken it upon ourselves to guess how he might be celebrating:

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She's tried everything. Playing hard to get, dressing up a little more, being more available, then less available, rubbing her butt on his face. And he's just not that into her.

Happy Valentine's Day! Ew, gross. See you next weekend when it's all blown over.

[rgray] [@_rosiegray]

Tomorrow, millions of unoriginal people will give and receive chocolates, flowers and diamonds for the elaborate courting ritual of Valentine's Day. Women will wear red or black lace lingerie and men will take them out to dinner at expensive restaurants with prix fixe specials for V-Day, and if he went to Jared, which he did because of those abominable commercials, the women will receive diamonds. Then these people will go home and have boring, conventional sex.

Meanwhile, hip couples will have smug "anti-Valentine's Day" things in which they ironically wear red and make their own artisanal chocolates at home. While all this is going on, single people will feel kind of down all day and either stay at home and get drunk by themselves or get together with their other single friends while everyone assumes a false mien of cheerfulness about being single.

Valentine's Day is the absolute fucking worst.

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Zagat has come out with this "Essential Dating and Dumping Guide" thingie. They surveyed people about their dating habits and came out with a little guide to the best places in New York to go on dates (and to break up with people). Some of the advice or whatever is kind of sound. And most of it is patently ridiculous and I hope real people never follow it.

Here's a good pickup line: "I thought I'd stare at you close up."

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