And you are here why?

 Todd Schneider analyzed a crapload (ok, 1.1 B illion ) taxi rides in NYC, and the results are here .  There is a lot (!!!) to digest, but one of the parts I particularly liked were these Notice how the pickups are concentrated in Manhattan (and the airports), while the dropoffs extend out, way  out.  Nice asymmetry :-) There is more, a lot more, including The rise of Uber Don't go to an airport at 5pm (well, d'uh) Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson would have made their trip 39% of the time

What happens when you correct for the actual landscape.  ( SPUI version above , Ben Schmidt version below )

These posters are showing up all over the Subway system, and were created by PuckWorks . They look remarkably like the real thing :-)

It turns out that the US Census does something called the American Community Survey , which provides statistics on all sorts of stuff for pretty much every community in the US (yes. Including Tuscaloosa) One of these is the " Out of State and Long Commutes " survey, which has such delightful factoids as 23.0 percent of workers with long commutes (60 minutes or more) use public transit, compared with 5.3 percent for all workers. Only 61.1 percent of workers with long commutes drove to work alone, compared with 79.9 percent for all workers who worked outside the home. Anyhow, WNYC took this data and mapped it for NYC (well, d-uh), and the results are below.  The bottom line? Manhattan is - not surprisingly - extraordinarily commuter friendly.  I suspect mass-transit :-) c

Ed Manley and James Chesire analyze tweets from NYC , and the results pretty much point out the polyglot nature of New York. From their description English (in grey above) is by far the most popular with Spanish (in blue above) taking the top spot amongst the other language groups.  Portuguese and Japanese take third and fourth respectively. Midtown Manhattan and JFK International Airport have, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most linguistically diverse tweets whilst specific languages shine through in places such as Brighton Beach (Russian), the Bronx (Spanish) and towards Newark (Portuguese). You can also spot international clusters on Liberty Island and Ellis Island and if you look carefully the tracks of ferry boats between them. Ed has written up some more in depth analysis of the   data here . Mind you, nobody seems to be tweeting in Kannada :-) (The below is an image - go here to see the interactive version )

Every wondered what the distribution of coffee shops in NYC looks like? Well, StatsBee does the heavy lifting so that you don't have to, and the results should surprise absolutely no-one that lives in NYC.  From the column In order to figure out where StatsBee readers could warm up, we used the latest Restaurant Inspection Results   from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. When our exhaustive search for caffeine was complete, StatsBee had compiled a list of 1,700 cafés, coffee shops, and tea shops in the five boroughs of New York City.  Manhattan neighborhoods have the highest density of cafés per ZIP code. The East Village ZIP code of 10003 has the highest number of shops with 49, closely followed by Midtown/Hell’s Kitchen (10019) with 47. Midtown East (10017) and SoHo (10012) each have 41, and Tribeca/Chinatown (10013) has 40. The non-Manhattan neighborhoods with the highest concentration of caffeine are Williamsburg (11211) with 31 shops,...

The power of Visualization - used for Good (and never for #Evil) Foursquare Tweets (via Eric Fischer) and  New York Magazine (Picture Telling a Thousand Words Edition) and @puzza007 (view From Williamsburg directly across from 14th street. On the left you can see the W'burg bridge w/ no lights precisely half-way across. Everthing south of (to the left of) the power-plant at 14th street is dark)

project WNYC has put together a nifty visualization of NYC "Stop & Frisk"s by block. Go there to get the live info (the image below is just that, an image...)

Today's NY Post has an awesome (-ly made up) article about how NYC is planning on banning Happy Hour, because, well, it'll reduce alcohol consumption or something.  Happy hour in the city could end if Department of Health policy party-poopers go ahead with a proposal to outlaw beer and booze specials at bars and restaurants, sources told The Post. “It’s absolutely been discussed,” confirmed a department source. “It goes to show you the spirit with which they operate. Everyone is a child.” High-level conversations have gone beyond merely “throwing pencils on the ceiling and seeing what sticks,” another Health source revealed. When said Department of Health was asked directly about this, they tried to throw the NY Post off the scent Agency spokesman Sam Miller denied existing “plans to pursue any policy around discount-alcohol sale.” But fear not dear reader, since those fearless news-hounds were on the case - they went right back and asked their "sources...