The end of the beginning
07/31/03
SL is a hundred entries old and 359 photographs old. It's time to make a few changes around here. In the next few days, expect faster-downloading photos, the long-delayed About page, and (perhaps most exciting) a 26 Things entry.
The crappy web design may be here to stay, though. That's not my strength. (Does anyone have a Moveable Type template that lets text wrap properly in IE for Windows? I don't use IE for Windows, but I hear a few people do.)
Along Broadway
Sheepshead Bay
7:41 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
China(town)
07/29/03
Chinatown
Times Square (below and above)
10:08 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
ACP
07/27/03
The other sides of this sign say "CHOW MEIN."
Harlem
10:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
All Brooklyn, all the time
07/26/03
SL wasn't always this Brooklyn-centric. Apologies to those interested in other boroughs; I'll try to be better. (Any requests? Email me.)
Adelphi
Sheepshead Bay
Midwood
The end of Brooklyn
6:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
MOB #5
07/24/03
Mob #5, tonight, was particularly unphotogenic, perhaps by design as a reaction to the last one. Hundreds of people perched on a stone ledge in Central Park, facing Central Park West, and made bird noises. I would have liked to get a picture from Central Park West, though -- let me know if you see any.
Mob participants approaching the park on 81st Street:
Most of the Mob:
A couple of spectators on Central Park West:
Why did the mob cross the road?
There are some nice crowd shots at Moist and Tasty. Ginger, as usual, has a nice writeup of her mob experience. I agree with Fancy Robot: I want an audience, preferably one composed of tourists; we've had enough inexplicable mobs with no one to see them besides reporters and salespeople. When's the Times Square mob?
( MOB #2 at Macy's | MOB #3 at the Grand Hyatt | MOB #4 at Otto Tootsi Plohound | MOB #6 at Toys R Us )
8:13 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack (5)
In the neighborhood
07/23/03
As everyone knows by now, Councilman James Davis was killed today in City Hall by former political rival Othniel Askew.
Not only was Davis my councilman -- I knew this because of the innumerable bus-shelter ads featuring his enormous face -- but Askew lived on my street, one block away. (I'd noticed his house several times because it utterly failed to fit in with the other buildings on the block.)
The scene at Davis's office on DeKalb:
7:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Fish and urban decay
07/22/03
I can't get enough of this Inspector Fish logo...it reminds me of a children's book I once had, which came with a red tinted window the size and shape of a magnifying glass, and you'd move the window over the pages to reveal various critical clues. One of them was in a fish shop, and it was -- you guessed it -- a red herring.
Flatbush, Brooklyn
Sunset Park waterfront, Brooklyn
9:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Signage special
07/20/03
Fort Greene/Navy Yard, Brooklyn (see also)
Flatbush, Brooklyn
Coney Island
12:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Nostrand II: For God and Commerce
07/18/03
Along Nostrand Avenue, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Flatbush, Brooklyn
(I thought there were a lot of storefront churches in Brooklyn, but this is something else.)
9:29 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
The High Line
07/18/03
Not to be missed: the current exhibition, in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal, of hundreds of design proposals for reuse of the High Line, an abandoned elevated freight railroad on the West Side of Manhattan. The exhibition runs through July 26th. Excerpts from my favorites:
12:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
B-list
07/17/03
For the map geek in all (well, some) of us, there's nothing quite like a tactile, three-dimensional map:
Astoria
Astoria
Brooklyn Heights
7:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
MOB #4
07/16/03
Mob #4, tonight, was at Otto Tootsi Plohound, a very expensive shoe store on Lafayette Street. According to the instructions, we were "on a bus tour from Maryland. You are excited but also bewildered. It is as if the shoes were made in outer space."
Mob participant Jane peruses the instructions at Bleecker Street Bar.
Mobbers on the way into the shoe store.
Inside, the large shoe store is completely full; there were probably 200 people there.
This clerk went for the phone soon after we got to the store.
On the way out:
These actual customers didn't seem to be having much fun. Perhaps they were from Maryland.
After five minutes, we dispersed. Alas, "dispersed" mostly meant milling around on the sidewalk.
Can I just rant about how useless it is to pretend we're all on a bus tour from Maryland when there are multiple radio reporters there with fancy recording equipment and professional-seeming photographers with fancy cameras?
More photos at Moist and Tasty. Strange Radiation has a nice writeup of the event, as does Fancy Robot. Fred Hoysted has some great photos, including one of me. Mob(b)log has some thoughts and links to other coverage.
And speaking of inexplicable mobs, what's with the hundreds of people waiting to get in to the Toys R Us in Times Square on Thursday morning? And the hundreds of others gawking at the ugly black SUV parked on the median between Broadway and 7th Avenue a block south? These were definitely not mobs of New Yorkers; that much is certain.
( MOB #2 at Macy's | MOB #3 at the Grand Hyatt | MOB #5 in Central Park | MOB #6 at Toys R Us )
8:10 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack (2)
Nostrand
07/15/03
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Crown Heights, Brooklyn
10:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Keeping it real
07/13/03
Midtown
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Courthouse Square, Queens
Astoria, Queens
(Why are all the amusingly named realtors in Queens?)
Midtown
6:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Navy Yard
07/11/03
If any readers have access to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or know someone who does, I'd love to get a look inside someday. Email me.
What do you do when your customers move away?
Any guesses what this is? I'm dying to know.
Navy Yard, Brooklyn
12:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Important developments
07/10/03
1. The Fat Kreme (photo essay) has just been supersized. Now this terrifying gastronomic concoction has an entirely new topping.
2. At Lightningfield, photos of Atlantic Avenue mosaics. See also here (fourth photo), and for more Atlantic Avenue goodness, here.
3. Meccapixel. With photos this good, I'll happily continue to be confused by the site navigation.
5. 26 Things. I can't help but associate it with six and a half lunches at the local falafel joint, affectionately known to my co-workers as "Four Things." I guess I have the "food" category nailed down.
6. Most important of all, I'm pleased to report that Penguin's new caffeinated chocolate mints are actually pretty good. The caffeinated gum, though a brilliant idea, needs a bit of work on the flavor side.
4:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Hot hot hot.
07/08/03
The District sleeps alone tonight.
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
10:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Precise
07/07/03
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Good luck!
Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn
10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Fireworks
07/06/03
10:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Baseball and (somebody's) mom
07/04/03
No apple pie, though. How treasonous of me.
Yankee Stadium
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
1:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Cheesy weekly
07/03/03
Flushing
Times Square
I really, really hope this is a new theme park.
Times Plaza, Brooklyn
11:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
MOB #3
07/02/03
Well, I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed that MOB #3 wasn't in Grand Central. Instead, we met up there, went up to the balcony above the lobby of the Grand Hyatt, and applauded for fifteen seconds.
We got our instructions in the lower-level food court at Grand Central. Cops and National Guard members looked on.
Grand Central and the Grand Hyatt.
In the hotel lobby, before we went upstairs to the mob site:
Mobbers filled the balcony; I estimated about 200.
Mob participants on the way out, and a somewhat bewildered security guard.
A bored-looking cop outside the Grand Hyatt.
UPDATE: Fred Hoysted has a nice photo of the actual applause; I was too busy clapping to take one. Moist and Tasty has more photos.
( MOB #2 at Macy's | MOB #4 at Otto Tootsi Plohound | MOB #5 in Central Park | MOB #6 at Toys R Us )