One of the more bizarre but inevitable side effects of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the blossoming of celebrity in otherwise barren Zuccotti Park, and, ironically, no greater personality has risen out of the movement than Community Affairs Detective Rick Lee, the “Hipster Cop.” Lee has been profiled in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and today graces the digital pages of GQ in an exclusive interview. But having ruffled the feathers from the more suspicious members of the movement, how does Lee come out, politically, from the fruits of his newfound fame?

From the Probably Way Too Good to Be True, But Still Cool Department (yes, of course we have one) comes this: a video we saw on Gothamist that was shot in the awesomely scenic Brooklyn Bridge Park by a videographer who claims to have accidentally captured a guy proposing to his girlfriend. And it’s all there framed up so well you just naturally think this is fake. And yet, if there’s even a chance it’s real, it’s awesome (said in a high-pitched voice). So it’s submitted for your review.

A map that declares what each state in the country is worst at has made its rounds this week, leaving many people across America wondering about their fellow citizens. Some states got off easy; after all, it’s not so bad to be highlighted for having the highest cost of living, as Hawaii does. But other those who call Louisiana (the gonorrhea leader), Maine (the dumbest state), or Utah (porn capital of America) home seem to have some explaining to do. Here, a roundup of the opinion from writers around the nation defending their states:

Do unto others. In response to Carl Paladino’s “brainwashing” gay-bashing remarks this weekend, and his jab at Andrew Cuomo for exposing his daughters to the “disgusting” “extremists in the Gay Pride Parade” the NYC Gay Pride Parade has invited Paladino to participate in the parade next year. Yes.

The multi-million dollar deal for Rainbow media to buy Gothamist and its family of local city blogs has fallen apart and, yesterday, the Village Voice wrote a post theorizing that most of the blame fell on an article and a tweet that Gothamist founder Jake Dobkin wrote criticizing Gothamist advertiser The New York Times. However, a source very close to the deal has told us that “90%” of the blame actually falls on a joke by Foster Kamer that was printed in the Voice. As we know, that joke already cost the Village Voice $1M, but now it seems it cost Gothamist more than $6M. This has to go down in history as the most expensive dick joke ever written.

Foster Kamer is a pretty great writer, and the Village Voice was likely thrilled to hire him from Gawker a couple of months ago. But in hindsight it appears that his first few weeks at his new job were pretty rough. How rough? Well…he may have cost them $1,000,000 by writing a post that made a nasty comment about James Dolan, the prickly owner of Cablevision, MSG Entertainment, and Rainbow Media. It sort of puts any new-job growing pains we’ve all had in perspective, doesn’t it?

Earlier this month, Gothamist founder Jake Dobkin went nuclear on the New York Times for its lack of innovation and abominable failure in the Metro space, calling Cityroom “a fairly lazy and sleep-inducing ripoff of Gothamist.”

How ironic, then, that just yesterday, the Times announced that it has partnered with NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to create The Local: East Village, a hyperlocal blog that will be produced by NYU and published on the Times’ site. It’s like they could tell the future!

Jake Dobkin, the publisher and co-founder of New York City local news blog Gothamist, will appear on a New York Times panel for executives on Thursday, moderated by Times media critic David Carr. But the mention of the Times as “a credible editorial resource” sent Dobkin off on a rampage of a response, berating the paper in an email that he also posted on his public Facebook.

There is something disturbing about this, and it’s not just the public nose picking! Some industrious folks appear to have taken the frequently heard New York City Subway admonishment “if you see something, say something” to its 2.0 conclusion. Either that or they are the TMZ of the MTA.

A web developer and former Columbia student undertook a unique project: sketching the evolution of a New York City block, from 1795 to today. The resulting animation, dubbed “The Block” (specifically, Eldridge Street between Rivington and Stanton), is rough in its details but gives a good sense of the highs and lows of the street’s [...]