Mark Machado thinks some men should step up and be honest for once. “Guys just get tattoos to get laid,” he says. “There’s not always a story behind it.They’re just trying to get some.” Portraits, names of moms and dads, song lyrics that tell a life story, insane back pieces or his own street art-inspired work, Machado (better known as Mister Cartoon in the tattoo world) doesn’t care if there’s a story or not. Just man up to it! He’s seen it all and done it all. Now Cartoon, based in downtown Los Angeles, is temporarily moving his studio to New York as the first tattoo artist in residence at Gramercy’s Marcel Hotel on East 24th Street.

The Music Hall of Williamsburg was packed last fall with maturing music fans who had just cheered their way through the performance of They Might Be Giants, a group many in attendance remembered as an up-and-coming indie band in late-’80s Williamsburg. Nada Surf, another band that grew out of Brooklyn more than 10 years ago, was up next and took its place on the stage. As so many in Brooklyn seem to be these days, the show was a benefit concert. Dubbed “Raise the Roof,” it aimed to support efforts to create Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center. A joint project between Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG) and The People’s Firehouse, the community space in Williamsburg will be the new home for both organizations, which advocate for their neighbors in areas of community planning, tenant rights and other grassroots education efforts.

Ashley and Tyler Rodriguez, 20-something siblings who live in Spanish Harlem, enrolled at Bikram Yoga Harlem last Monday evening. Waltzing in on the second week of the New Year, they looked a bit like fair-weather yogis. Ashley was determined to turn her life around. “I’m 23… I’m too young to be out of shape,” she said. “I’ve gotta do this.”

Amid the DJ spinning reggae and soul tunes and the occasional game on their big screen TV, the staff at Red Bamboo in Brooklyn busy themselves dishing out steaming plates of buffalo wings, soul chicken and beef kebabs. But at the four-year-old restaurant in Fort Greene, none of these plates had real meat on them—until now. Jason Wong, owner of this restaurant and the Red Bamboo located in the West Village (which will remain as it is), didn’t want to switch up the menu to include meat, but after he had to give up revenue from numerous meat-hungry holiday parties, he knew something had to change.

Mr. Fox was weary with the weight of the world, and no wide wale corduroy suit nor sweet-sounding Beach Boys riff could lift his woes from his vulpine shoulders. Winter had arrived and with it snow, cold, famine and frost. Mrs. Fox petted down her husband’s impetuous cowlick, noticing—but not out loud—how thin his hair had become of late. Mr. Fox sighed and pushed open the knot of his sycamore tree. A gust of arctic wind, a foreboding unbidden guest, blew in behind him as he left.

Si Newhouse (The Media Titanic) Yes, print media is ailing. But worse than falling advertising revenue and mass layoffs of tightsweatered receptionists is the notion that anybody should live the way that the creeps who work for Condé Nast do. No shit, that after years of car services, platinum-plated expense accounts and clothing allowances, things are going down the tubes. Hey Si, you shouldn’t need McKinsey analysts to tell you that buying houses for editors and giving assistants $15 for lunch each day isn’t the way to run a company—the firings and mag shutterings you’ve seen this year are proof. Even worse than all that, old man, you’ve created a large pool of talented, hungry men and women scouring the terrain for the next place where they can hang their hat and make a name for themselves in print. Thanks for that.

This fall, the 76-year-old artist released Between My Head and the Sky, her first album since 1973, with the Plastic Ono Band, and a release that marked her first time sharing the studio with her son, Sean Lennon. Additionally, 2009 saw Ono drag a pile of awards back to The Dakota, including a Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale, and the release of the Don’t Stop Me EP. If that wasn’t enough, in recent years, Ono has racked up five number-one dance singles. What were you doing all decade?

IN THE WRESTLING business, it’s called “getting heat.” It’s what the bad guys do. It’s what puts asses in seats. “Cheap heat” is the easy stuff. Insult — Jim Dickinson the crowd and the city they live in. Tell them they are morons, their city is a dump and remind them that their baseball team hasn’t won a World Series since Moses came down from the mountain, and you’ll get them hating on you right quick. The problem is, where do you go from there? Andy Kaufman took it to new heights.

It is a strange time in post-punk-rock culture, one in which the infrastructures developed over the last couple of decades to support, develop and propagate wholly independent and sometimes truly strange and challenging work are, in nearly all traditional mediums, rapidly disintegrating. Independent record labels, radio stations, film ventures and print media of almost every stripe are in severe and rapid decline, casting a new and disconcerting vacuum for those raised in the flowering of DIY and indie culture.

IT WAS A crisp Sunday morning in September when people began to file into the Javits Center for a dose of hope. The “You Can Heal Your Life” seminar is just the sort of optimistic approach these 2,000 women and men—mostly women—needed. And it almost seemed possible since personal finance superstar Suze Orman was there to shore up the more dubious self-help nostrums. Black women and white, Latin and Asian greeted each other like old friends. Many were middle-aged, and had been here before for the same lessons in bootstrap survivalism. A few twentysomethings and geriatrics filled out the sea of Talbots-style sweaters and relentlessly sensible shoes crowding the convention center.

The word negro— which ungraciously left the American linguistic stage sometime in the 1970s—has recently rejoined the mainstream discourse. And it looks like it’s not poised for an exit anytime soon.The blogosphere has embraced the word, with the criticallyacclaimed site Pam’s House Blend announcing Negro to be “back in vogue.” In an emailed response, Stew, part of the team who created the Tony-Award winning musical Passing Strange and frontman of the band The Negro Problem, declared his “love” for the way Negro “looks and sounds.” Even the United States Census has gotten in on the act, since it includes the word as part of the racial category black folk can choose to be legally labeled in 2010.

What’s left of Canal Street’s hawkers and small merchants—Hispanic stereo salesmen, Chinese dry-goods merchants, Lebanese gold sellers and Jewish landlords—all agree on one thing: “The fix is in.” Everyone knows the clock is ticking. Two new hotels, including a 361-room Sheraton, are due to open on Canal in the next six months. Very soon, locals say, Canal Street will join Times Square, Astor Place, the Lower East Side, the Garment District and all the other former centers of down-and-dirty capitalist grit that have been safely gentrified. As Greg “Heavy” Duval, an African-American watch-peddler explains before the Christmas holiday, “Canal is on its last legs. They want to make this a franchise block.”

Psychoanalyst Dr. Robert Schwalbe knows that when the Christmas carols start playing, the phone starts ringing. The doctor, who specializes in treating men at his Upper East Side practice, said that much like a retailer, the holidays have become his busiest season. “My practice booms at this time of year,” he said, estimating that he typically sees a 25 percent spike peaking in January. And that’s on top of the 50 percent increase he’s already noticed since the economic crisis began.

Everyone is at risk for over-consumption at the holidays simply because it is expected as a part of any celebration, said Jeffrey Wilbert, a nationally recognized diet psychologist who is director of the Counseling Center for Emotional Eating in Ohio.

At 71, Fredericka Nelson should be the one being taken care of. After 40 years of cleaning offices to support a family on her own, the Brooklyn mother of six and grandmother of 21 thought she’d enjoy growing old in peace.

Michael Gruson, a successful attorney, got the worst possible news from his doctor in March 2005: His persistent headache was more serious than anything an aspirin could cure. It was the symptom of a malignant brain tumor. A partner at Shearman & Sterling and the head of an eight-member household, Gruson, 69, was accustomed to success and responsibility. Now, with stage-four brain cancer, he was at life’s mercy.

We spend more money on healthcare in the last months of life than at any other time. It’s when we’re sickest and most in need of medicine, doctors and intensive care. According to estimates, nearly 30 percent of Medicare’s annual $327 billion budget goes to caring for patients in their final year of life.

HE WEARS A black hoodie to protect himself from the cold rain. The baby-faced guy is Dominican, probably in his early twenties. He rushes by me at the Graham Avenue L train entrance, pauses and asks, “Matt?” I nod. He leads me down the stairs, examines me silently. Once he’s satisfied that I’m not a threat, he takes $30 from my left hand and pushes a sealed bag of Cheez Doodles into my right jacket pocket. Without another word, he splits for the opposite staircase and races back above ground. I check my watch. It’s 6:30 on a Saturday night under a busy Williamsburg intersection, and I’ve just scored three bags of “Nike” heroin, all hidden inside a re-sealed bag of chips.

"IF SOMETHING HAPPENS, you have nowhere to complain,” says Anna, a 38-year-old West-African nanny. “It makes me worried.” For most of her seven-year career as a nanny, Anna has been fortunate to work for two families that have paid her a decent wage for roughly nine hours of work a day. Her duties usually include taking the children for a stroll or to play dates, cooking dinner in the evening and cleaning.

Unemployed restaurant deliveryman Jianhua Wang says there’s no help left for him in New York’s Chinatown. Not in this economic climate. “Chinatown is full of compatriots,” he says, “but there are many cheaters.”