There is a lot of stuff going on the City, and we can't write about it all. Here are some interesting things some of our friends have written up lately.

• 6sqft ⇒ MTA Begins Testing of New Subway Fare System, First Step to Phasing Out MetroCards
• Bowery Boogie ⇒ About Those Ai Weiwei Lamp Post Banners All Over
• Brooklyn Heights Blog ⇒ Joe Coffee Perks Up in Brooklyn Heights
• DNAinfo New York ⇒ MAP: Harlem's Black Churches Cash in on Gentrification
• Daytonian in Manhattan ⇒ Isaac Duckworth's 1868 46-48 Lispenard Street
• Ephemeral New York ⇒ A View of New York’s Oldest and Loveliest Bridge
• Gothamist ⇒ Photos: All the Coolest Cosplay at Saturday's NY Comic Con
• Thrillist ⇒ The Definitive Upper West Side Dining Guide
• Untapped Cities ⇒ Tour the Brooklyn Strand Community Vision That Seeks to Reimagine NYC’s Downtown Brooklyn

The New York City Parks Department has an interesting new series of videos titled Meet NYC's Trees in which they introduce one of the many species of street trees which can be found throughout the City. In this short video from the series, learn how to recognize the "Silver Linden".

The silver linden is an ornamental tree, so suffice to say: it's GORGEOUS.

Check this map to see if you have any in your neighborhood.

Glass and crystal artist Dale Chihuly is perhaps the most famous artist of his kind in the world. After teaming up with the NYC Parks Department, Union Square Partnership and the Marlborough Gallery, Chihuly and his team recently installed a massive 31-foot-tall sculpture titled Rose Crystal Tower in the Union Square eastern triangle.

The Rose Crystal Tower stands 31-feet tall and is composed of Polyvitro crystals and steel. Polyvitro—an invention of Chihuly Studio—is the artist’s term for a plastic material which he casts into individual chunks which resemble glass, but are lighter and more resilient. Chihuly first used Polyvitro crystals in the composition “Crystal Mountain,” a 40-foot sculpture featured in the artist’s landmark exhibition, Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000.

The sculpture will be on display for a full year, until October 5th, 2018.