This article is about much more than rare sloops, and a lot of fun to read. You're going to want to learn about that goat on the wall.

Quoted: “There were only 27 Crescents ever built,” Hume says, noting that 24 are here at the club. He is clearly a dedicated admirer. “The Crescent is the most valuable object in the universe!” he says with glee.

Looking forward to reading this Alex Kotlowitz story.

Quoted: The next stage of the national foreclosure crisis is how to deal with abandoned neighborhoods and trolling pillagers. Cleveland got there first, and that’s Tony Brancatelli’s problem.

Quoted: The greatest part of the appeal for these Michigan graduates is this sense of community, and the potential to help change (and be changed by) a city that has lost so much — particularly in population and business — to its sprawling suburbs.

Wow; high praise. I think I'll check this one out.

Quoted: “Netherland” is a bit like the wily and ebullient Chuck Ramkissoon. It has more life inside it than 10 very good novels.

Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, who explains The Wire from square one. It's great. Lots of McNulty-style righteous anger.

Quoted: We hang out in the Baltimores of the world, writing what we want to write about and never keeping one eye on whether or not it could sell as much as a drama that had, say, more white faces, more women with big tits, and more stuff that blows up or squirts blood real good.

Quoted: So we are misfits, and while we hope the show is entertaining enough, none of us think of ourselves as providing entertainment. The impulse is, again, either journalistic or literary. Hope this helps and doesn’t sound as wrought and pompous as I think it does.

A little of both, but we forgive you.

An interview with Bubbs on the eve of the Season 5 premier.

Quoted: As long as there’s a character I can find some meaning in, I’ll do it. But being on The Wire has made looking at other shows and other scripts a little bit more difficult.

I researched this problem for the better part of a summer. Kudos to Buffalo for just going after the lien-holders in spite of the legal uncertainty of the city's position.

Quoted: The mortgage crisis has blighted the landscape with boarded-up houses. Now a few cities are holding giant lenders accountable for what foreclosure leaves behind.

Quoted: On the edge of downtown Detroit, just east of the Chrysler Freeway and not far from Detroit's still-troubled neighborhoods, lies Lafayette Park, one of the nation's most beautiful -- and most obscure -- residential developments.