Amy Thomas, wearing a bright yellow midriff-baring shirt and frilly gray booty shorts, pulls herself up the shiny pole, climbing almost to the ceiling. Arms trembling from the strain, Thomas manages to maintain her grip, intently focusing on the middle of the dimly lit exercise studio filed with poles and women. A victorious grin spreads across her face as she relaxes and slides back down.

“Again! Caress, rub, flick it and spin it, that’s it, ladies, keep it sexy!” shouts the Le Femme Suite instructor, clad in pink-leopard print shorts and a black tank top.

Le Femme Suite is a pole-dancing studio on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. in West Harlem. It attracts a growing number of enthusiasts of a popular new dance form that’s spurred a movement to gain approval as an Olympic sport.

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On Sunday afternoons, Gabriel Swain jogs from the intersection of Eagle and Franklin streets to the Williamsburg Bridge and back. His run — about 3.5 miles — takes place almost entirely on the streets of Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

“It would be great to have a waterfront park,” said Swain, 32, a writer for a technology company.

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In 2007, Traci Johnson, 41, founded Culture Skateboards with her husband Jay to support and promote young skateboarders from New York City. While teaching her nephew to skate, Johnson was astonished to hear young skaters talk about achieving fame and fortune as if that were the purpose of the sport. A lifelong skater, she decided to start an organization that would not only teach kids how to skate, but educate them about the history and culture of skateboarding.

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Click below for an audio report about the skateboard park opened by Culture Skateboards at Brower Park in Crown Heights:

Michael Kamber has been taking pictures of war for more than 25 years. Between 2003 and 2010, the award-winning journalist worked for The New York Times in Iraq, amassing a vast body of work covering the conflict there. Later this year, Kamber will release a book of oral histories from fellow photojournalists who worked in Iraq during the war. “Journalists on War: Untold Stories from Iraq” will feature accounts of the conflict from nearly 40 journalists.

Kamber recently sat down with the NYCity News Service to talk about the book, and his experiences in Iraq.

His credit score isn’t very good, he’s trying to refinance his home and he’s looking for a full-time job. But thanks to a microloan, Freddy Blanco just built a new website for his firm, JusDesign.

About six years ago, the Bronx graphic artist found out about Project Enterprise – a nonprofit that provides modest loans and business training to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Many Bronx residents and neighborhood groups are fed up with what they say is a lack of pooper-scooper law enforcement by the city Sanitation Department. Now, some Bronx politicians are ready to take action.

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Residents of four City Council districts will soon vote on how to spend municipal funds that will pay for expenditures in their communities, like planting trees and installing security lights. City councilmembers in these districts pledged at least $1 million each to the projects their constituents select during a pilot program called participatory budgeting. Our reporters, in stories published by City Limits, offered an overview of the process and looked at how it’s progressing in the four districts. Here’s what they found:

•In Kensington, Brooklyn, citizen budget delegates learned quickly how expensive seemingly simple projects – like building a dog park or refurbishing a handball court – can be.

•In East Harlem, volunteers have whittled down 500 suggested projects to a more modest number – all while expanding the scope of the surviving proposals.

•In the Rockaways, delegates are debating proposals ranging from neighborhood beautification efforts to creating free parking at Rockaway Park.

•In Flatbush, Brooklyn, some of the district’s youngest constituents – cheerleaders, football players and track runners at Tilden High School – are pushing for lights on their football field.

Clients at a Clinton Hill city food stamp office and job center charge they are waiting hours to get help.

On most mornings, a line stretches outside the Northern Brooklyn Food Stamp and DeKalb Job Centers on Dekalb between Skillman and Franklin Aves.

Clients and advocates charge overcrowding plague the Human Resource Administration’s food stamp and job centers in Brooklyn and throughout the city.