Sam Levin

Mayor Bloomberg and the Muppets.

We didn't think it was possible, but this morning Mayor Mike Bloomberg held a news conference that was even cooler than his public appearance with the cast of Gossip Girl earlier this year.

The secret weapon? Muppets. Four talking Muppets. You can't make this stuff up, folks!

In perhaps the silliest Bloomberg press conference this reporter has ever been to, the mayor, standing in front of a huge screen displaying the words "NYC Family Fun With the Muppets," announced that the city's tourism agency is partnering with the Muppets in a new marketing campaign. That's right, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Pepe the King Prawn are going to be the new spokes-puppets for the Big Apple.

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New York is lookin' for youngins!

And not just any run-of-the-mill youth: New York wants ones with money! (Well, ones with at least a little green to spend...)

Anyway, NYC and Company, the city's tourism agency, is trying to get more members of the under-30 age group to visit the city and spend cash, according to the office.

New York's tourism and marketing co-op is upping its efforts to attract 18 to 29-year-olds. Ultimately, the bureau wants to bring 55 million visitors to NYC annually by 2015, the cohort announced today at a tourism trade show in Berlin.

This demographic makes up almost 30 percent of NYC tourists.

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Lower Manhattan saw nearly 9.8 million tourists visit last year, a record number for an area revitalized by development and the World Trade Center site.

Many of those were drawn here by the newly-opened September 11 Memorial, which has already attracted more than 1 million visitors in the four months it has been open.

Downtown Alliance President Liz Berger said in a statement: "Tourism is thriving in Lower Manhattan like never before. The secret is out -- Lower Manhattan is a destination of choice in the region, nationally and around the world."

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Tourists are now mad at Wall Street too. Or at least they are mad around Wall Street. Why? According to the New York Post, the famous Wall Street bull is still behind police barricades in the wake of Occupy Wall Street's stay in Zuccotti Park, "enraging" (enraging!) tourists. Now, this is something to get riled up about!

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Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference today to announce that the city hosted 50 million tourists this year. As guests of honor for the conference, the city invited British couple Craig Johnson and Lucy Foulger. The pair had been married only an hour earlier.

Johnson and Foulger, those gentle souls, were merely cogs in Bloomberg's idea to have the symbolic 50 millionth tourists attend the presser. Tourism officials apparently wanted to bring in British people for this role since the U.K. is the number one source of tourism for NYC. And thus Johnson and Foulger's wedding day was "hijacked" -- though not without its perks:

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Recently the Village Voice received a (long) fax from French-Canadian tourist Daniel Dõ detailing an unpleasant experience he had on the High Line. He and his friends brought a nice picnic, including some wine that was discreetly sipped from white porcelain cups. A High Line official told them to put away the wine, and Dõ wrote a letter to the High Line staff detailing his objection to the way he was treated. An excerpt follows (we've kept Dõ's French-style quotation marks):

At one point, around 1:00 pm, a young lady (a not very tall black woman) who was obviously working for the High Line Park (she was wearing the polo with [the High Line] logo... but she never introduced herself) came to see us. Actually, she suddenly «appeared» next to our table and without any introduction, just said with a very unpleasant tone of voice: «No alcohol in the High Line Park. Or you pour it and drink it now, or you leave the park.» And she immediately quit. We were so shocked by the way she talked to us, not only because she was very rude, but most of all, because her attitude was totally at the opposite of the spirit of your wonderful place... friendly and peaceful.

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Oh, come on, people! We know you're fun-filled and carefree, ready on a moment's notice to turn hurricane lemons into a brotastic opportunity for a rollicking good time, but this is one of those things that just...ew. Why would you do this? Please, we really want to know. Couldn't you have just gotten in your bathtub and flopped around a few times?

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via Times Square Alliance

The subways, buses, cramped apartments, and crowded bars of New York City are being joined by a new way to sit in a small space with other people. Please welcome the Meeting Bowls (or "tourist cages," as Animal NY calls them), a new public art installation in Times Square. They're exactly what you see in the picture: three huge basket things full of people.

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Esther Zuckerman

Andrew Silverstein

Andrew Silverstein, one of the co-founders of Streetwise New York, coaxed us to step inside Economy Candy on Rivington, a mecca of sweet treats. We had just chatted over frothy coffees at El Castillo de Jagua. Both are stops on Streetwise's "Immigrant NY, Old and New" tour, so we asked how he knew about these places.

"This is me letting people into my life a little bit," he said. "Before I'd be, 'oh I Iike this person maybe we should go have a cafe con leche at El Castillo de Jagua and go to Economy Candy,' and now it's basically whoever comes on the tour."

Silverstein's company, which got up and running in May, features three tours: The aforementioned immigrant tour, a basic tour of Manhattan, which also sometimes stops on Rivington, and a tour of Queens. We talked with economics PhD student Silverstein about the side of New York he aims to show.

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Tourists, take note. Put down the map and pick up a slice of pizza and a loaded gun. Some gold chains, a gratuitous "Fuhgeddaboutit!" and you're 90% there.

[BuzzFeed]

[@_rosiegray]