New York City's Off-Track Betting parlors, the seediest places left in Manhattan (next to those secret Chinese gambling dens, anyway), are all set to close following an order from noted fun-hater Michael Bloomberg, who's surely done more than any previous mayor to rid the city of its amoral, filthy character, but everyone still loves him anyway because he's not Giuliani and the newsmedia is controlled by and made up of the well-off bastards he's delivered New York to on a silver platter. The Times investigates the wacky, Damon Runyan-esque characters who throw their lives away at the OTB, including the dapper old "retired actor" who says that should the parlors actually close, he'll "probably just stop betting and go to the theater more." We can't let that happen. [NYT]

New York has found five people who wear only one color exclusively. Freaks! ("I feel messy and unclean if I wear other colors," says a gray-colored designer). Welp, guess she found the all-green-wearing person she was looking for... [NY Mag]

A 32-year-old "aspiring novelist" finally has a room of his own. He won some weird housing lottery he had applied for years earlier, for people whose income was below $49,625. "I'm persisting in this weird feeling that this will all be taken away from me by some Kafkaesque bureaucratic oversight," he tells the NYT. Yeah, but what's his monthly maintenance?

Much-beloved neighborhood-y French bistro (and after-hours tranny hangout) Florent is on the market, after months of rumors. The rent on the last relic of the old Meatpacking District has been raised from $6,000 to 'bout $58,000. Per month. "No steak frites joint in the city could afford that kind of rent in today's Meatpacking District. Come May, if a buyer is found at all, it's going to be retail, and it's going to be high end," Eater predicts.

The gorgeous new New York Times building is not just a rat-infested danger to pedestrians—it's also freezing cold! Exec editor Bill Keller emailed the troops earlier on this freezing, snowy Tuesday: "We raised this with the building services people Sunday when the temperature dropped, and they are on the case. Basically, cold air is leaking into the podium side of the building through the open loading dock and elevator shafts." UPDATE: We hear... that Page Six and the New York Post library were also freezing cold yesterday, with the temperature eventually measured at 39 degrees. Which is a real problem, considering how many staffers there are cold-blooded reptiles (zing!). Please send in any and all additional tales of newsroom frostbite. [Radar]

Since time immemorial, or since maybe 2004, we have received missives from a person called The Earl Grey, the greatest social documentarian of our time. As frequently as possible, we print these letters as a service to society. Today, he takes us on a journey through the past, recreating the intimate details of New York life in the halcyon days of the fin de siècle 1990s.

Thanks to New York's secretive and shadowy Canadian Cabal for their fast and servicy response to our story on how they control the media! Canadian media critic Rachel Sklar jumped into action, quickly posting her exhaustive list of all the Canadians she could think of. More than 70! Some of them are dead (Peter Jennings?), others of them not quite bigwigs (Rachel Marsden?), but we did forget some important ones. Like Dahlia Lithwick and Laurie Hibberd! Canadians are better even then Jews at knowing each and every member of their relentlessly polite tribe, but even Ms. Sklar leaves some unmentioned. Much thanks, then, to tipsters who supplied the following names:

A story in Canada's National Post about how Canadian journo Clive Thompson is secretly jealous of more famous Canadian author Malcom Gladwell made brief mention of "a Canadian mafia of print journos that exists in the Manhattan magazine world." There are more Canucks in the New York media world than you might imagine, and nearly all of them hold positions of terrifying power. Do you know your Canadian Mafia members? Join us on a trip through Manhattan's dirty underbelly with the Molson-guzzling old time hockey aficionados who secretly run the media.

Amid a drunken, 5:30 am street fight across from the Middletown Hotel, an SUV horrifically ran over a pedestrian on the sidewalk. The whole thing was caught on tape, shot from the hotel. On the video after the jump, you can hear people around the camera speaking in what sounds like French. Welcome to New York.

A Lubavitch Hasid with ROTC training—principal of a nearly all-black and Hispanic Bronx junior High? It's so crazy it just might work. And, according to the New York Times, it has! Shimon Waronker has been the principal of JHS 22 in the South Bronx since 2004, and the formerly dangerous and failing school has seen something of a revival, with students suddenly attending class and injuring each other with slightly less frequency. And all Waronker had to do was fire half the staff and run his school with occasionally illegal efficiency (the fact that public schools do not have the authority to send children home for not wearing uniforms has not deterred him). He won over his critics, including one mother, who, upon learning of the hire, asked herself: "Wow, we're going to have a Jewish person, what's going to happen? Are the kids going to have to pay for lunch?" New York's racial tensions are always good for a laugh! Of course, the school is still "one of 32 in the city that the state lists as failing and at risk of closing," but if it worked for Gabe Kotter, it'll work here. [NYT]

According to "recent polls" mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, Barack Obama trails Hillary Clinton in New York City "by as few as four points." Andrew Sullivan—who, to be fair, hates Hillary—quotes a reader who argues, convincingly, that if New York's primary is going to be a close one, it will be because of the borough divide. The Clintons are still beloved by the mainstream black leaders of Harlem and the rich people everywhere else in Manhattan. In Brooklyn, though, home of well-off white youths and a couple million minorities, Obama's support seems strong. We live in Bed-Stuy. Brownstones, bodegas, and the neighborhood's only veterinarian all sport Obama signs; Hillary's presence is non-existent. The rest of the state, though, will pose bit of a problem for the senator from Illinois. Because it's basically the deep fucking South up there, have you been? [Andrew Sullivan]
Photo Credit: threecee

As you might have noticed (it's practically impossible not to), New York City is always getting reduced to rubble in the movies. Cloverfield, I Am Legend and what's that one about all the freezing rain that had Jake Gyllenhaal in it? Oh yeah, The Day After Tomorrow. You might think that in a post-9/11 world, Americans might not find the idea of NYC being blown to bits very enjoyable to watch. Oh, well! "That is what will sell it overseas," a Paramount senior executive tells the NYT.

"Saw Bill Clinton at 2:30 this afternoon leaving Nobu 57. He shook hands, posed for pictures and kissed babies. He was in good spirits and even listened to this woman droll on and on about being from Arkansas."

The obituary of the old Meatpacking District has been written before. Now it's really time! The last vestige of the neighborhood, no-nonsense French bistro Florent, may be going the way of defunct club Mother and the transsexual prostitutes that used to ply their trade on its cobblestone sidestreets. A neighborhood fixture long before it was, you know, the Meatpacking District—Eater reports that Florent's days are numbered. The restaurant's vibe is best remembered in the words of Past, Over: "writers and actors and artists and drag-queens and whomever the hell else [they] see fit enough to serve up the right food with the right 'tude." Owner Florent Morellet says he's optimistic, however, because "I believe the world economy will collapse and so might the real estate prices in the neighborhood." Uh-oh. What's going on?

This poor lady from Devon got pneumonia whilst visiting New York with her kids. She had to go to a hospital in Harlem for treatment. Her daughters, Katie, 13 and Gemma, 15, were taken to an orphanage. According to the This Is London, Gemma was asked "Have you any homicidal tendencies? What street gangs are you in?" She replied, "I'm a member of Appledore library," Then they were photographed and sent to a room full of 12 other 15 year old girls. They weren't allowed to leave. The Dickensian conclusion after the jump:

Hilarity ensues over at the New York Times' City Room blog, where you can learn all about a slapfest going on at the Junior League, the women's charity-cum-country-club. It seems the Junyeah League is all a-twitter over some missing cash and dreary financials, which the Times wrote about yesterday. Their big priority now? Making sure the paper doesn't get a whole bunch of pageviews off it. Catty! Muffy too! The board is issuing email reprimands like this one: "Please DO NOT under any circumstances e-mail the article to your committee volunteers, friends, etc. The Times tracks the "most popular" hits and we don't need any more exposure than we already have." Ah, yes, the city Junior League, driver of national traffic, bold supporter of boardroom disclosure. This probably means we'll never get in, doesn't it. Damn.

"There's a great quote in the latest Philip Roth book (Exit Ghost)," Mayor Bloomberg announced during his State of the City Address. "'I came to New York,' the character says, 'and in only hours, New York did what it does to people — awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.'" But actually, as City Room points out, the book is pretty much not hopeful at all after that point, with the character leaving the city "more or less defeated." When asked if Mayor Bloomberg had actually read the book, his press secretary said he had not, but luckily, "he's read enough books to recognize a metaphor when he hears one... The Old Man and the Sea is not just about an old man and the sea." Looks like we've been schooled! [NYT City Room]

Everyone is always destroying New York all the time. Now the damn National Geographic Channel has decided to borrow a page from Animal Planet and direct their focus away from mating gazelles and toward death and doom for us all. The video below popped up on the front page of Dailymotion today. It's a promo for the upcoming NatGeo special "Six Degress Could Change the World," which is about global warming and not how we're all connected to '80s leading men (or Sidney Poitier). Remember: in the event of 25 feet of water drowning New York, stay inland or with Dennis Quaid. [National Geographic]

The 79th most searched item on Google Trends today? Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's power crowd restaurant, the no-reservation "Waverly Inn." Either New York is taking over the Internet or the rest of the world is taking the day off.