Beijing might have us beat in regards to population and the Olympics opening ceremony but there's no place like New York. And the blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng will soon discover that.More >>

Eugene de Salignac, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures

From October 7, 1914. Brooklyn Bridge showing painters on suspenders.

Hundreds of thousands of photos that offer snapshots of more than a century of New York City history are now publicly available online for the first time ever.

Together, they offer a close-up, gritty picture of the city's history and development, from detective photos of gruesome crime scenes to Depression-era shots of everyday life to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

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If you have just gotten hitched, congrats and STAY OUT of New York!

In a recent study, Rent.com looked at 25 American cities to figure out which were best for newlyweds. New York didn't even make the top ten.

The cities that did? Austin, Texas; Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; Houston, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Phoenix, Arizona; Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.

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Love in the Buff, directed by Pang Ho-cheung, opens in the US on March 30

Back in the 80s and early 90s, when Hong Kong cinema,--running on the kinetic energy of action and slapstick comedy films by the likes of John Woo, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Stephen Chow--was the second largest film industry in the world (behind Hollywood, obviously), fans of these quirky alternative films in the US--whether they be Asian immigrants or aspiring filmmakers like Quentin Taratino--had two options for getting their fix: They could go to Chinatown in various parts of the country and catch the films--undubbed in its original format and released months after Hong Kong--in Chinese cinemas, or they could rent bad VHS copies at certain video stores--at an even later date.

With the decline of Hong Kong's film industry (film output has dropped from 300 plus per year in the 90s to less than 50 in recent years) by the late 90s and the emergence of internet piracy, these Chinese theaters were forced out of business one by one.

And when The Music Palace , the last remaining Chinese theater in New York, shut down in 2000, that left New York fans of the genre no big screen to enjoy Hong Kong films.

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Suck it, New Jersey!

More Americans like New York, your neighbor to the north, according to a new study.

Public Policy Polling has determined that 40 percent of Americans think of New York favorably -- compared to a mere 25 percent who viewed NJ favorably (via Politicker's Colin Campbell).

If 40 percent doesn't sound too impressive, consider: It's still among the top 15 states!

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via @NYCMayorsOffice

Though much of the real-life news in the city this past week was worth of a couple Law & Order episodes, the mayor's office brought our attention to on-screen drama. Not only was there the Thursday Gossip Girl hoopla (xoxo, Mayor Mike), but on Tuesday the film Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close got a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Picture. In a press release the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting announced that Extremely Loud was a "Made in NY" film. To learn more about that label, we talked to Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Friday. Read some excerpts of our conversation after the jump:

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Governor Andrew Cuomo, his girlfriend Sandra Lee, and his two daughters are on vacation this week in the Adirondacks. On Monday night, Cuomo was seen buying groceries in Lake Placid at the Price Chopper supermarket. A shopper described Cuomo as "really friendly and seemed thrilled to be in the area."

Less thrilled: Jon Hochschartner, the man who bagged the governor's groceries. Hochschartner is a former Zuccotti occupier who works at the Price Chopper. He used Cuomo's visit as an opportunity to almost tell him that he disagrees with his stances on the state budget and taxes.

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Not sure who "wins" or "loses" in this competition, but Boston has a similarly narrow house to New York's narrowest house, except NYC's is narrower! Take that, Boston. Or...take that, New York?

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According to a damning new report from the Democracy Program at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, thousands of New York votes were voided in the 2010 elections because people were confused by the optical scan voting machine's instructions. The study says that across New York State, 20,000 votes for governor were uncounted and the same thing happened to between 30,000 and 40,000 votes for other candidates.

The problem was that if you picked too many candidates ("overvoting"), you would see this screen:

NYU Brennan Center for Justice

The authors of the report explained the issue to WNYC:

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via @bkatzoom

Photo of Jose Pimentel allegedly in the act of making a bomb.

At a Sunday evening press conference, Mayor Bloomberg announced that a would-be terrorist bomber was thwarted from a plot to detonate devices in New York City. Jose Pimentel allegedly bought bomb-making materials at Home Depot and had begun building the explosives with the intention of targeting government workers and returning military personnel.

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