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  1. Photograph: Anna: Erik Pendzich/REX USA Bushwick: Courtesy Creative Commons/Flickr/Niklem
    Photograph: Anna: Erik Pendzich/REX USA Bushwick: Courtesy Creative Commons/Flickr/Niklem

    Bushwick named one of Vogue’s most stylish neighborhoods

    According to a ranking in Vogue, Bushwick in 2014 is officially the world’s seventh most stylish neighborhood. Woohoo! The only question is: Which parts of Bushwick do Vogue’s fashionistas consider the most stylish? Perhaps the seedy back alleys? Or maybe the graffiti-covered liquor stores? Talk about trendsetting! Check out our imagined vision of Anna Wintour touring the 'Wick here, and roll out the red carpet! But then roll it back up again, because if you leave it out too long, it will start to smell like pee.

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  2. Photograph: Shutterstock
    Photograph: Shutterstock

    The year in dead animal news

    To New Yorkers, a chance encounter with dead vermin—be it pigeon, rat or cockroach—is about as weird and shocking as the sun coming up in the morning. But when more exotic animal carcasses pop up, it can cause a bit of a stir. This year, a 44-pound black-bear cub was found dead in Central Park in October, and a pair of bloody goat heads was spotted dangling from a traffic light in Park Slope. To whomever is turning NYC into a playground for freaky rituals: not cool, man.

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  3. Photograph: Courtesy Zoe Lake
    Photograph: Courtesy Zoe Lake

    The Brooklyn Bridge gets trashed—literally

    Over the last few years, couples on romantic sojourns to Paris have been attaching padlocks on bridges crossing the Seine to symbolize their everlasting love (or something). This year, New Yorkers proved they are way classier than the dumb, smelly French by igniting a trend of tying bits of trash to the Brooklyn Bridge, up to, and including, grossly unhygienic items like condoms and bras. This is meant to symbolize…the squalid state of America’s landfills maybe? 

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  4. Photograph: Shutterstock
    Photograph: Shutterstock

    Car-eating rats on the Upper West Side

    Yes, this happened. New York's rodent community responded to the most brutal winter in forever by quitting their regular sewer digs to make their nests inside car engines. This was bad news in that the rats had a good old chew at the wires under the hood—but also gross news given that the nests were made out of what the mechanic interviewed by the NY Post described as garbage and chicken bones. Excuse us while we retch.

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  5. Photograph: Courtesy Creative Commons/Flickr/Victoria Pickering
    Photograph: Courtesy Creative Commons/Flickr/Victoria Pickering

    Elmo arrested, Batman visits City Hall

    Cops have started getting tough on those costumed people in Times Square, because inexplicably, not everyone considers getting harassed by a guy a dressed like Spider-Man to be an essential part of their New York tourist experience. But after one too many sting operations—at least one of which, in September, ended with poor Elmo in handcuffs at a midtown police precinct after he got a little too testy with some patrons about a tip—enough was enough. An assortment of costumed characters (including both Batman and the Joker) recently appeared in front of the City Council to lobby against a bill that would require them to pay registration fees to do their thing. Pikachu and Minnie Mouse declined to comment for this story.

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  6. Photograph: Shutterstock
    Photograph: Shutterstock

    A naked drunk guy rides the subway

    In what could be described as a fairly typical Thursday night on the E train, a flabby man clad in socks, running shoes and nothing else was spotted and photographed sitting on the train, nodding off in between swigs from a bottle of whiskey (view the evidence here, if you dare). God’s speed, sir. We hope you got off at the right stop. And eventually found some pants.

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  7. Photograph: Shutterstock
    Photograph: Shutterstock

    Guy steals bread truck, makes deliveries

    Attempting to become forever known as Robin Hood, But With Bread (it has a nice ring to it, no?), a man named David Bastar hijacked a parked Grimaldi’s Home of Bread truck on the Upper East Side while its driver was inside a business making a delivery. Instead of keeping the wheaty bounty for himself, however, he proceeded to drop off thousands of dollars worth of cargo at completely random locations around the city until he was finally arrested in Queens, sporting only his underwear.

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  8. Photograph: Shutterstock
    Photograph: Shutterstock

    Piranha smuggling goes big time

    The black market brings a lot of insidious things into our city—no, not drugs or machine guns but piranhas. Ownership of the toothy aquatic beasts is illegal in NYC, so tropical fish importer Joel Rakower decided to smuggle his supply into Queens by mislabeling them; he pled guilty to the crime in January. But get this: Only 850 of the 39,000 piranhas Rakower brought into the city were ultimately recovered. So think again before sticking your finger in your friend's cute aquarium.

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  9. Photograph: Shutterstock
    Photograph: Shutterstock

    Mayor late to memorial due to “fog”

    We get it, Mayor Bill de Blasio, you have a demanding job, and sometimes you’re late to things. But when your tardiness catches up to you and you end up missing part of a memorial for the victims of the 2001 Flight 587 crash in Queens, don’t blame it on fog delaying your boat—and then backtrack and say it was because you had a “rough night” the night before. Own up to it! Still, we’re awfully curious exactly what the “rough night” entailed. Explosive diarrhea? An all-night, drug-fueled rager? We may never know.

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  10. Photograph: Bridget Burns
    Photograph: Bridget Burns

    Brooklyn smallest penis contest delivers on its promise

    A biggest penis contest would be pure hubris, so Brooklyn, ever humble, launched the inverse. Brooklyn’s second annual Smallest Penis Contest, held at Kings County Bar in Bushwick in June, crowned as its champion Upper East Sider Raj Kumar, who proved to possess the most diminutive package of all the near-microscopic genitalia parading proudly around on stage. Kumar is a Fulbright Scholar, but you have to believe this is his proudest accomplishment.

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NYC's 10 weirdest news stories of 2014

Relive the strangest news stories of the year, from the stomach-churning (dead goats, live rats) to the just plain baffling (Elmo in handcuffs)

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Let’s be real: At times, 2014 has felt like a nonstop parade of horrible, depressing news. But let’s take a breath and come skidding to the end of the year on a happy, albeit weird, note. Join us in reviewing New York’s quirkiest news stories of 2014. While these bizarre headlines don’t necessarily disprove the idea that NYC is a hive of scum and villainy—just ask the guy who smuggled tens of thousands of piranhas into the city—we're willing to bet you'll get a chuckle out of them. So let us embark on this surreal journey, from the Times Square costumed characters who went to court to the smallest penis in Brooklyn contest via all manner of nonsense. Oh, and you can file this roundup directly next to the most overused words and phrases of 2014. (Sorry not sorry.)

RECOMMENDED: Best of 2014

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