Click here to view the full photogallery. Photos: Heather LEGOGirl/Flickr All hail Seattle-based Flickr user Heather LEGOGirl, who has taken a dual fascination with Legos and dollhouses to unprecedented heights. The photos above represent her “Lee Jones Memorial Dollhouse,” the second and largest dollhouse she’s completed, and the details are insane: refrigerator drawer pulls, bedspreads, roll-top desks, a dryer (complete with a vent hose!), a four-poster bed, and lots more. (Is “Blocky Americana Classic” a style of interior design? It should be.) From the looks of things, the photos were uploaded between May and September 2010. Take a look above and then head over to Flickr for the full set. · The Lee Jones Memorial Dollhouse [Flickr via MinilandBricks ]

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Toys ‘n’ Games: Behold This Genius and Truly Spectacular Lego Dollhouse

An army of Christians have been sounding off about the End of Days lately (according to them, it’s this Saturday May 21st… however, according to Buffy The Vampire Slayer , there’s an apocalypse at least once a television season). Anyway, you’ve seen the subway posters and billboards… but have you made plans yet? Because Judgment Day is nearly upon us, and you don’t want to be stuck at home eating leftovers. Here are our top five picks on where to watch in New York, and don’t forget to send us your photos of true Christians floating to heaven (or tag them “Gothamist” on Flickr!). [ more › ]            

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No Plans For Judgment Day? Five Places To Watch The World End In NYC

With both Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee having backed out of the 2012 presidential race in the last week, we’ve started to get worried about the snore-inducing field of Republican candidates left, such as Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney. Who will entertain us with pull-quote gaffes? Where will SNL find material to fill up a whole season? And for the love of God, who will play bass at the RNC? Thankfully, one Tea Party darling wants to make sure we can all still find something to laugh about next election season: Michele Bachmann. [ more › ]

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Michele Bachmann Gears Up For Hilarious Presidential Campaign

Last week’s warm weather is but a hazy memory with tonight’s thunderhail! Or maybe it was thundersleet! Some sort of frozen precipitation pelted us in the early evening, and then the thunder came rolling in… prompting Tweets of the thunderhail and thundersleet varieties. The thunderhail-sleet-snow action is supposed to end by tomorrow morning . If you have photos, you can share them with us by tagging them “gothamist” on Flickr or email them to us at photos@gothamist.com . [ more › ]

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NYC Got Thunderhail—Or Thundersleet—Visit!

              Last night the moon’s elliptical orbit lined up such that it appeared larger to us than it has in about 18 years—a situation known as the ” supermoon .” And aside from being a pretty cool astronomical phenomenon, it makes an excellent subject for artistic photography! If you have photos of the supermoon, send them our way at photos[at]gothamist[dot]com, or tag them “gothamist” on Flickr. [ more › ]

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New Yorkers Document SUPERMOON

              While you won’t find any cherry blossoms blooming in these photos, they do show evidence that things are happening . Big things. Nature things. Pretty, growing things. Check out the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Flickr for more photos of what’s happening over there. We checked in with them to get a status update on when the cherry blossoms are expected to bloom this year, and will update when we hear back. Currently the map shows no action, but their annual Hanami celebration (typically showcasing the cherry blossoms) begins on April 2nd (and runs through May 1st). [ more › ]

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Spring Has Sprung At Brooklyn Botanic Garden

                  We’ve been obsessed with clicking through these candid images The Smithsonian has delivered. The institute set up dozens of motion-capture “photo-traps” at locations all over the world, and now us humans can see what life is really like in the animal kingdom. Click through for some of New York State’s stars, but check out what’s going on outside of our borders as well (for instance, we highly recommend the giant panda series—which can also be seen on Flickr ). [ more › ]

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Smile: You’re On Wild Animal Candid Camera

A week after beginning his alleged murderous rampage across Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, Maksim Gelman was indicted in Brooklyn today on four counts of murder. He was indicted on accounts of assault and robbery. This comes a few hours after LTV Squad posted Gelman’s apparent Flickr accounts documenting his own graffiti. [ more › ]

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The Graffiti Art Of Quadruple Murder Suspect Maksim Gelman

Brainware3000′s Flickr About six months ago, the Department of Consumer Affairs conducted a sweep of 700 supermarkets and found that one of out of every two stores failed inspection, for a compliance rate of 48%. Because of that abysmal performance, the DCA is doubling its number of inspections this year, and the percentage of shady supermarkets has already increased—more than $310,000 in fines have been issued in the past four months. The DCA has issued almost 750 charges so far this fiscal year, and found that the most common violation was for a lack of item pricing, which is, according to a DCA press release , “particularly troubling given that nearly one in three times supermarkets got it wrong at the cash register.” In New York, all “market commodities” must have a stamp, tag or label giving the item’s cost, with some exceptions, including: tobacco (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it), baby food in jars (money’s no object when it comes to feeding junior), food sold for on-premise consumption (which we usually eat before getting to the register anyway), eggs (a dime a dozen), and “display items at the end of the aisle,” which are apparently just too special to be degraded by such vulgarities as pricing. Other violations include inaccurate check-out scanners, taxation of items that are not taxable, failure to mark proper quantities and provide required information on food packaged in the store, a lack of proper labeling and unavailability of scales for customers. “Compliance rates have plummeted even further and New York City’s supermarkets are clearly not getting the message that New Yorkers demand that they get it right at the check out counter,” says DCA Commissioner Jonathan Mintz. But John Rogers, president of the pro-business Food Industry Alliance , counters , “We have no reason to believe—and we believe it’s an overstatement—to say one out of three customers are being overcharged. We believe that’s not the case at all.” The good news, though, is that NYC’s five poorest community districts, which are all located in the Bronx, the compliance rate was slightly improved.

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Supermarkets Are Ripping You Off

BunBun the Terrible’s Flickr There were some long faces in September when the Rum House, an affordable, old school Theater District piano bar located in The Edison Hotel, closed. After 37 years in businesses, the original owner’s grandson was still working the bar, and Vanishing New York visited before it closed, describing it as “dark and dingy… brown all over, in that way that bars used to be brown, as if the air itself had turned the color of tea.” One bartender told Fork in the Road the hotel was not willing to renew the Rum House’s lease, predicting they wanted to turn it into “a fancier wine bar or something. There are rumors that they’re going to gut the place and make it shiny, and update it and brighten it up.” Now it turns out the rumors are true, but the new Rum Room might not be a travesty Diner’s Journal reports that the new proprietors, who operate the cocktail lounge Ward III, will offer an “extensive collection” of whiskey and rum, plus classic and specialty cocktails. And the interior design will preserve some of the original nautical theme, “including the immense circular lighting fixture over the bar itself.” Even better, there will still be live performance at least five nights a week at the new Rum House, which doubled as a piano bar until last May, when the owners were forced to dismiss longtime house pianist Karen Brown.

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Rum House Reopening in Edison Hotel Under New Ownership