Raid Sends Park Vendors Scrambling

Union Square continues its downward spiral into cookie-cut suburbia with today's announcement that a TGI Friday's restaurant will be joining the fray, shacking up with a Tim Horton's. [Eater]

But as suburbia slowly encroaches on New York City, the American Dream of home ownership has faded away with the blink of a recessionista eye, as the renting masses slowly become the majority.  [WSJ]

A flash-pan raid on a large number of unlicensed vendors in Sunset Park on Sunday catapulted the sleepy neighborhood into a nightmare, as the vendors' children "witnessed their parents being chased like animals" as they ran to avoid arrest. These kinds of scare tactics help no one, writes the local park community group. [Friends of Sunset Park]

Test your Swine Flu preparedness with "The Great Flu," a video game created by researchers that helps players fight back a varied blend of epidemics. [Runnin' Scared]

And while some vendors are busy dodging the raids, others are preparing to compete in the Vendy Awards, where masters of street food aim to be named the best in New York. Vote for your favorite early at the Huffington Post. [HuffPo]

Michael Bloomberg. Do you know him? He's our mayor, and he's one wealthy, powerful dude. Here's more than 10,000 words to reinforce that belief.  [The New Yorker]

Evicted tenants of a DOB-shuttered building at 889 Broadway in Brooklyn are enraged after being given just a 3-hour notice of eviction for their building's numerous code violations, meaning some tenants who had already left for work returned to find the doors locked with their pets trapped inside. [BushwickBK]

Bing, Microsoft's search engine to rival Google, continues to rise in usage and market share. The New York Times reports Bing "accounted for 8.9 percent of search queries" last month, up .5% over the month before. [New York Times]