Brendan O'Connor · 07/26/15 11:10AM

This New York Times story about how nobody on the Hamptons can decide at whom to direct this summer’s outrage—Uber, taxis, or each other—is fine, as these things go, but the opening paragraph contains the phrase “barely legal women in crop tops,” which, frankly, is a bit jarring!

Brendan O'Connor · 07/25/15 03:45PM

An article published last year in the journal Current Microbiology “found that every single handhold tested, in multiple East Coast climbing gyms, carried bacteria that, as the study’s title claims rather poetically, ‘suggest the presence of a fecal veneer.’” It’s important to have hobbies.

Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti

Roberto C. Garcia · 07/25/15 12:05PM

The first friend I made in Elizabeth, New Jersey was a white kid named Billy. As a New York transplant my Dominicano look wasn’t too popular with Jersey folk. I had an afro, wore dress pants, a collared shirt, and black leather shoes with little gold buckles. Most of the kids just wanted to know what my thing was. Billy and I couldn’t have been more different, but we got close pretty quickly. Despite the fact that Billy’s parents wouldn’t allow him over my house, my grandmother allowed me over his. She took one look at Billy’s blonde hair and blue eyes, and at his mother’s middle class American manners, and pronounced their household safe. “Where are you from?” Billy’s mother asked, referring to my grandmother’s heavy accent. “I thought you were black.” On that day I couldn’t have imagined how many times I’d have to answer that question in my lifetime. “We’re Dominican.”

Alligator Caught Crossing Manhattan Street Has Died

Brendan O'Connor · 07/25/15 08:35AM

During the evening rush hour on Thursday, an alligator crawled out of...somewhere, and crossed a street in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood. Officers from the NYPD’s 34th Precinct captured the ‘gator and brought it to a shelter where it died Friday morning, the New York Times reports.

Cops: Bobby Shmurda Tried to Have Girlfriend Smuggle Knife Into Prison

Gabrielle Bluestone · 07/24/15 01:07PM

Prosecutors say rapper Bobby Shmurda is facing an additional seven years in prison after his girlfriend allegedly tried to smuggle a knife to him at Riker’s Island, where he’s been in jail for around seven months in lieu of a $2 million bail.

The Collected Quotes of Donald Trump on "the Blacks"

Jason Parham · 07/24/15 10:37AM

Donald Trump wants to be the next president of the United States. As with matters of such magnitude, it is important to understand where a candidate stands on critical issues, such as immigration, healthcare, domestic surveillance, marriage equality, abortion, and black people, who account for 13 percent of America’s population.