Transit union leader Roger Toussaint reports to the Tombs this afternoon to being serving his 10-day sentence for leading the three-day strike against the MTA in December in violation of the state's Taylor Law. The News prints an exclusive! interview with Toussaint today, conducted on the eve of his incarceration,…

Yeah, the strike was messy and inconvenient and unpleasant, but it least it finally made a deal happen on all those employment issues. What? Oh, right.

Oct. 14: Negotiations start on new contract.
Dec. 16: Old contract expires.
Dec. 20: Systemwide strike begins.
Dec. 22: Strike ends.
Dec. 23: Full MTA service resumes.
Jan. 20: Union membership votes down negotiated deal.
Feb. 10: MTA, TWU announce that no substantive new talks have taken place.

This piece of original photojournalism conveys the intensity of the situation, no?

How much did that transit strike suck? More than I would know but let's pop open any remaining sores you may have on your feet and sand them over with some Morton's saltpaper. Turns out the Transport Workers Union Local 100 fared very well in the final settlement and no amount of bitchin' or fist-shakin' or…

The strike is long done, of course. And now there's even a contract, too. The transit union's executive board approved it last night by a huge margin; the membership is expected to do likewise.

So Bloomberg's been getting crap for saying during the transit strike that union leaders were behaving "thuggishly." But perhaps no more. Reports today's Newsday:

• We're glad the strike is over for myriad reasons, not the least of which is sparing us from thoughtless, insipid articles about how poorly we dressed just to stay warm. We're sure it was easy to pen crap like that from the comfort of your town car — did Daddy get you that job at the Styles desk? [NYT]
• Nothing a…

Five things we now know:

• The strike's overlooked victims: Those freebie papers you don't really want to read but grab anyway when the dude shoves them at on your way into the subway station. [NYP]
• CBS Evening News will — finally — be No. 2 within a few months, and Katie Couric will eventually be its next anchor, outgoing EP Jim Murphy…

Yesterday we pointed out a bizarrely stupid request from some lunatic proposing that people meet him on the corner of 42nd and 7th today at 12:30 for some good, clean sumo wrestling. We should've known that in a town where there's more fuckwits that there are cockroaches, someone would take this guy up on his offer.

Can't understand how the transit workers and the MTA could finally break through their impasse and come to a deal on a new contract? Someone on Craigslist has the answer, naturally:

It's the most beautiful NYTimes.com headline we've ever seen.

• While you were limping up and down Broadway and losing digits to hypothermia, rest assured union leader Roger Toussaint was enjoying a leisurely two-hour meal with six cronies at a nice restaurant. Would you be any less livid if we noted the restaurant was in Harlem? Yeah, didn't think so. [Page Six]
• Last year,…

Never before had a Times headline made us quite so happy.

With no fewer than 10 reporters on just one strike story today, the mind can't even fathom how many will be necessary for tomorrow's coverage. If only for the sake of the Metro desk, please, Roger Toussaint, end this madness now.

• Those News Corp kids sure do know how to throw an incredibly odd Christmas party. Weirdness aside, things were moments of normalcy: after the picture at right was taken, she ended up in the broom closet with dude dressed like a giant beaver-like thing.
• It was inevitable, really, that LIRR tickets ended up on…

That's what you get for fucking with Grand Central's traffic flow.

On Craigslist, the transit strike has done wonders to showcase the tolerant, progressive side of both TWU supporters...