Joel and Isaac Barkay, proprietors of Barkay Bros. Funeral Home on East Folkim St., announced last week that they had accepted an undisclosed offer from the giant mortuary services conglomerate ServLimited International to purchase their business. The local funeral home…
Author: Editor
A Bridge Too Far: Stimulus funds to destroy city landmark
The current economic downturn and an infusion of $14 million from the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus bill) passed by congress earlier this spring have brought back to life a controversial city project many believe should never…
The Blotter: Shots, Sheep, Sno-Cones
As a public service, The City Desk periodically offers up selected items culled from recent City police reports. (Note: More violent, standard items do not frequently show up here, as they are covered in the local papers with regularity.) 9:45…
Food Truck Congestion Pricing
Hundreds of food trucks slowed traffic during afternoon rush hour last Thursday in a mass protest of the city’s new congestion-pricing scheme. The act of civil disobedience, coordinated by the Mobile Food Providers Alliance, delayed commuters on their way home…
Opinion: Gritty Glamour is Bunk
Occasionally, The City Desk will present to you a real opinion piece concerning the cities in which we live. Maybe it’s because I was a failure as a bohemian (one has to be a true bourgeois to become a true…
Friday Facts: Charlie’s Angels Lunchboxes, Roadside Cabbage, Fake Squid
:: A City Council ordinance passed on this date in 1975 expressly prohibited the “display of images of a licentious, erotic, salient or pornographic nature, or which otherwise arouse the prurient interest for the sole purpose of titillation†on children’s…
The Brothel Five Levels Below the Street
The old Central Depot, which sat across across Ludlow Plaza from Old City Hall from 1896 until its demolition in 1968, was a wonderful, massive gothic structure, covered in ornament and decoration which one doesn’t find much in today’s construction.…
Nice Work If You Can Get It: Fighting Faux Mormon Corn
An occasional survey of jobs both unusual and extraordinary, and the people who make them happen. The company which employs Torbjorn Bruhn keeps this bookish, blond-haired, forty-two year old lawyer hopping -Â even though it hasn’t produced a single product…
Mysterious Giant-Food Thefts Continue
An eight-foot-tall fiberglass doughnut was stolen from a billboard in the 2200 block of Baleson Avenue sometime Thursday night, the fifth such large representation of a foodstuff stolen over the past month. The doughnut, decorated with foot-long multi-colored fiberglass sprinkles,…
Update: Gov Nixes Mayor’s Guantanamo Deal
Mayor Maribeth Cosgove’s offer to the Obama administration to accept Guantanamo detainees [Our City to Become the Next Guantanamo?, 2.23] has been rescinded by an angry state governor’s office. In a press release, Governor Allen (D) chastized Cosgrove for her…