The Atlantic’s John Metcalfe asks, “Why aren’t cities littered with dead pigeons?”

The favorite rumpus room of the pigeon, New York City, is thought to contain anywhere between 1 and 7 million of the flapping rats of the sky.

So where are all the dead ones?

The dog I had when I was young would chase after pigeons for her first year. Never did catch one. That was probably a good thing after seeing some of the videos accompanying this article.

Manhattan will soon have its first $1 million parking spot.

The private garage at 66 E. 11th St. costs six times more than the national-average price of a single-family home.

Buying it would be the same as paying a $115 ticket for illegal parking every day — for 24 years.

For moguls or celebrities, however, the rare commodity of a Manhattan parking space inside their building, with a curb cut at the street, is a huge status symbol and selling point.

It’ll sell. No problem.

A disaster analysis firm has put the damage caused in “The Avengers” at $160 billion.

Watson said he was surprised by a lower-than-expected total. “Compared to the aliens in Independence Day, for example, these guys were amateurs,” he told THR. “Of course, the Chitauri/Loki alliance were more interested in conquest and ruling, whereas the ID aliens were just looking for lunch or something.”

While that’s what it would cost in normal universe money, they failed to take into account that in the Marvel Universe (in which “The Avengers” takes place), there are many extremely wealthy philanthropists, amazing technology, and a construction company dedicated to cleaning up the messes caused by super villains and superheroes, so I doubt the costs would actually be that high. You know, a movie about Damage Control has some potential.

The NYC Department of Records has recently introduced the municipal archive gallery online, with access to over 800,000 photos, maps, audio recordings, and more. It’s so popular that the site is offline as they work on it.

Both The Daily Mail and The Atlantic’s ‘In Focus’ have republished highlights from the archive. It’s amazing to see how much has changed and how some things don’t. The Daily took three photos and posted then-and-now versions.

Note, there are some photos of dead or dying people in the group above. They’re not very graphic, but if you’re very squeamish, you might want to avoid.

The Times gives us a profile of Mr. Lin (not that one), a chinese food bicycle deliveryman:

He removed a wad of cash from his pocket and counted the day’s haul from nearly 25 miles of travel for more than two dozen deliveries. His helmet still on, he fingered through the folded $20s and wrinkled singles to count about $50 for the day. That would become less than $40 after the tips were pooled and split, he said.

“So-so,” he said matter-of-factly.

Apparently, I tip pretty well.

The Times looks at how many people Manhattan could hold:

The night’s calculations revealed that packing Manhattan as tightly as Kowloon Walled City, river to river, would mean jamming in 65 million people. That’s if every surface was built on. If the current streets and parks were left intact? About half that many, or nearly the population of California.

While that may not be ideal, expanding Manhattan by a mile might be.

How long does a bike last when left locked to a post in NYC? Yup, there’s a YouTube video to show us.

On January 1, 2011 we chained a fully loaded bike – bells, basket, lights and more – to a post along a busy Soho street. We took a picture of the bike everyday for 365 days, watching it slowly vanish before our eyes.

The Wall Street Journal brings us the quest of one Colin Hagendorf — to taste every slice pizza in Manhattan.

Mr. Hagendorf began in August 2009 at Grandpa’s Place near 211th Street and Broadway—in Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood—and worked his way down to the island’s southern tip. He excluded from consideration national chains and cafeterias that don’t make their own pizzas.

I’m really not sure why anyone would actually do this, other than to have it as a backup epitaph in case they did nothing else with their lives. Slice pizza is horrible and is only eaten because it’s quick and easy. It’s like comparing canned tuna to an ahi steak, or a Casio watch to a Patek Philippe.

The New York Times has a story about a hot dog war, of sorts, in front of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Since 2007, Mr. Rossi has been battling city authorities and clinging to a spot directly in front of the museum steps at Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. It is regarded as perhaps the most lucrative location for selling hot dogs in Manhattan. It is so coveted that the city once charged more than half a million dollars a year for vending rights there.

OK, math time:

Assuming, as the article states, $2 per dog and $1 per water, and the average customer buys 1 dog and 1 water which would total $3 per “meal”.

To cover the $500,000 fee at $3 per “meal”, the vendor would need to sell 166,667 “meals” per year.

166,667 “meals” divided by 365 days in the year, means 457 “meals” need to be sold per day, every day of the year. However, the museum is closed Mondays, so we need to take 52 days off that number, which leaves 313 selling days. The museum is also closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day, so that leaves only 310 selling days per year.

So, 166,667 “meals” divided by 310 selling days per years means that the vendor needs to sell 538 “meals” per day.

Most days the Museum is open 9:30am-5:30pm, and I’m assuming no one is getting lunch before 11:00am, so that leaves about 6.5 hours to sell 538 “meals”, which would be 83 “meals” per hour, or 1.4 “meals” per minute.

And that’s JUST to break even on the cost of the license.

The City Hall station of the NYC Subway, the showpiece station of the 1904 subway system, has been closed since 1945, but is being restored and is now open for tours by the Transit Museum. Daniel J. Grinkevich took a tour and posted his photos to Flickr.

It’s almost like stepping back in time.

Photographer Stephen Wilkes blended photographs together to depict one day in NYC.

Photographer Stephen Wilkes took pictures of the same spot in Manhattan for 10 hours.

He then blended the thirty to fifty individual images together to make seamless collages showing some of the city’s most famous landmarks from day to night.

I think the Flatiron Building is my favorite.

There’s a replica of a WWI biplane on a roof in Manhattan.

Though Kaufman delights in onlookers wondering if a plane did indeed fly in and land on 77 Water Street, the aircraft is actually just an artistic re-imagining of a 1916 British Sopwith Camel, designed by Rudolph de Harak and constructed by sculptor William Tarr. It was hoisted into place by crane in 1969 and hasn’t moved since.

I love how it now looks almost like a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean.

Slate explains why NYC’s bagels are so good. While water chemistry might play a bit part in it, it’s more about making them correctly than where they’re made:

If the bottom is significantly darker and harder than the rest of the surface, you’re eating a roll with a hole, not a bagel.

I’ve had good bagels outside of New York; and I’ve had bad bagels in New York; but nothing^* comes close to a really good bagel, fresh out of the oven on a Sunday morning in New York while listening to tables around you debate on whether the Yankees need an additional pitcher (they do) or whether the Mets should just trade everyone away and start over from scratch (they should).

^*Nothing, except maybe a nice MLT (mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich) where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.

N SKY C is a web site that shows the average color of the sky over NYC. Updated every five minutes, with pictures, it’s rather interesting (or not) to see that it’s been either black or grey except for sunrise/sunset. It has been overcast and rainy the last few days.