I know the fellow who started these
Well kinda know him. Max Gillingham-Ryan. I met him a a conference once. He's a pretty interesting guy. The sites are very useful and have a wonderful, holistic view of life, design, environmentalism and consumerism.

apt therapy
although i am in the middle of Oklahoma, I think it is a cool site,
I get lots of business from the SanFrancisco area and one day i asked someone how they heard of my company and they said they saw a story they did on us on Apt Therapy. and that was 2 years ago,
What this forum does they troll the Internet for sites that would be helpful to folks living in apts, flats in the 4 cities that they represent and reproduce the story so the readers can read them and understand what the site does, and feed it back to the reader, Judging from the feedback and the business they throw my way , they must have one hell of a following.
and they do have good stories!!!!
They also did a great story this past week on
http://blueantstudio.blogspot.com/ joel pirela

They have their contests...
They have their contests too, which are fun to follow. The current one is the "Fall Colors Contest." A select few are really nice to look at. A good half of them offers some honest entertainment laughing at some really hilarious design decisions. I always have my favorite design too look at and my favorite to laugh at.
Here's an example of a funny one: