I Walked With A Zombie

This 4th of July weekend I had the good fortune to leave my increasingly noisy block for the vast, rolling green of Iowa. The normal sounds were grating enough but with the 4th nearing something loud exploded outside my window every 5 minutes and every car, boombox and bodega was blasting Michael Jackson in tribute, on top of everything else.

Normally terrified of planes, I told myself if I didn't freak out completely I could take a hurling metal tube to Europe next time around. Hoping to ameliorate the sheer terror that comes with realizing nothing's between you and the ground but 30,000 feet of air, I asked the woman in my two-seat row if she, currently in the aisle seat, would prefer the window. "Oh, no," she said, "I am definitely going to puke at some point on this flight. The view will only make it worse." Seeing my expression she followed with "...I'm pregnant". Ah, that would explain the nausea, though only partly explain the 3 yoga/pregnancy magazines she read throughout. Three separate publications dedicated to pregnancy yoga? Really?

I have determined that what makes planes fly is not 'lift' or 'air flow' but 'wizards', and the real reason you have to turn off all electronic devices is so as not to anger the mighty who doth lift your flying machine skyward and fling them towards your destination. If you could see inside the control tower it would look sort of like this:



...but with planes.

So upon safely landing, we drove out to a small college town called Grinnell, where a Jazz Fest was in the process of being drizzled upon. This didn't stop the band from playing 'Big Daddy Blues', which if you recently listened to 'Best Show Gems' (June 15th, Bret Haskins and The Clash) as I had, would make you giggle uncontrollably.



Just in case you forgot where you were.





This National Bank was built by Louis Sullivan, famed architect and teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright. You can learn more about its history here.


Grinnell is well covered for esoteric fraternal organizations; not only do they have a lovely Masonic Temple,




They also have an Oddfellows building, which I've never seen in person! It has the IOOF logo and everything! Their female counterparts, the Daughters of Rebeka, meet here as well.




The town looks like Main Street, USA, partly due to the preservation or restoration of so many older buildings, including the recently refurbished movie theater. Being a small town in middle America seems a blessing and a curse for architecture- on the one hand there's probably not too much going up, so the likelihood of an older building being razed is slimmer. On the other hand, there's no impetus to preserve or keep up historical structures, particularly if a town's population diminishes with time, or if they lack funding. Fortunately Grinnell has the college nearby for perpetual turnover, but it's a common site to see spots along the former Lincoln Highway (Rt. 66) or along former Main Streets in severe disrepair.


The radio station's AM and still operational!


Inside the theater they had a small section showing items found when they restored the building, including a ladies' compact from the 30's and an old 'advertisement clock', actually a projector that shone a different round advertisement every hour of the day.







I love the typography on these signs. More Iowa to come.

Well, lookit that, one of my videos was posted to the Mishka blog! You can check it out here or watch the video below:



I want to see the Dragon Warz taken to the STREETS this summer!

Also from the Mishka blog and badass shooting stuff on your arm comes Major Lazer,, either an excellent dancehall tune or an awesome toy commercial, though in modesty it refers to itself as Mad Decent.

Wow, two of my childhood dreams fulfilled:

Admittedly it's more of a step forward than complete fulfillment, but anything that moves us towards hoverboards and/or hoverbikes is cool by me. I kept thinking of 'Look Around You' while watching the video, half-expecting....actually I don't know what I was expecting, a detailed video of a superconducting toy train spouting steam going sideways around a futuristic model is weird enough.

Kill The Dog From Duck Hunt.


FINALLY. Years of playing this at my cousin's house had me waiting for the day I could get this fucker. He just pops up, laughing, laughing at nothing.



My cousin used to play this game holding the gun 'Resevoir Dogs' style right up against the TV. Several years younger, I asked what the fun of playing was if not proving your accuracy at shooting 8-bit ducks from a distance. He said 'it's not about accuracy. It's about shooting'. I'm still not sure what that meant, but as his parents were going through a messy divorce at the time perhaps it was just about channeling rage.

On a completely unrelated note: the guy blasting the radio through his shitty tinny car stereo system RIGHT outside my window, full volume, ONLY gets a pass because the station's playing 'Don't Stop Til' You Get Enough', which I will never get enough of. If you skip to 2:43, you'll see the high point of technology at the time, tied with the computer scenes in TRON.

In recently organizing the vast piles of vintage patterns I acquired (a taste of the scale- I purchased one of those 100-packs of plastic sleeves to hold the books and already ran out with a stack left unorganized), I came across some more photocopies from the depths of the New York Public Library. Unfortunately I did not copy the book cover or any sort of identifying information, but I recall it was one of the books bound together with many others from the 1930's, some sort of Home Knitting book with general advice and basic patterns to modify. Based on the mention of Knit-Cro-Sheen I'm suspecting it may be a J&P Coats publication.

The patterns below all encourage modification- the basic lace patterns are given first, followed by references to 'charts' for resizing the patterns to different sizes. Please read through carefully as these aren't the clearest of patterns I've come across; on the plus side the needles are given in millimeters, making it much easier to decipher the scale and whatnot.






















(I believe that covered number is a 24.)

Having accidentally taken the Greenpoint bus past it several times and been intrigued, I decided to purposely walk over to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Apparently it's one of the largest cemeteries out there, something I only began to grasp on hour two of walking and not reaching an edge of any sort amidst the gravestones. While the many tall columns are beautiful from a distance, up close and personal after slogging through smaller mausoleums forming their own suburb it's a bit much. Still, it's a lovely spot worth visiting, especially if you want to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of deceased one place can hold. Even judiciously choosing the picturesque and odd, there's still too many images, so I've placed most behind a cut.






Behold the creeeepy meeeellllted faaaaace of the Aaaangel of Deeeaaattth.

( Check out more of Calvary. )

Firstly I am quite happy someone compiled a page of my favorite tagger-about-town: You Go Girl!. This wonderful person's inspiring message has caught my eye on buildings in downtown Manhattan and all over my neighborhood in Brooklyn, and has several prominent tags visible riding the J over the bridge.



There's my favorite. I think they're either the same person as the equally inspiring 'ReadUp!' and 'ReadMore!' (also en Espanol, LibroMas!), or are at least pals with them. I'm sure they want to remain anonymous, but I'd like to let them know every time I see their tag it cheers me so.






Hee hee hee.

Um....what? Seriously, was this made on a dare? Val Kilmer and Nicholas Cage running around New Orleans, the latter having public sex with underaged hookers and doing piles and piles of drugs (mostly snorted)...exchanges like 'get those fucking iguanas OFF my table!" "Ain't no iguanas."...from the director of "Grizzly Man" and "Stroszek"...did I mention it stars Nicholas Cage?

Some more random thoughts:
-Is anyone in this movie attempting a southern accent of any kind? I ask because I genuinely can't tell from the trailer. It sounded maybeeee like Kilmer and Cage were...but not really.

-"Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing." Breakdancing!

-the visual effects for the titles look cheesy, cheap, even. Is this because it's a promo trailer or did they just not have a budget?

-I still haven't seen the original 'Bad Lieutenant', so it's not like there's anything beloved in my memory to be tarnished. That aside, this almost seems like an R-rated episode of any given cop show on TV now.

I'm hoping this is a film of extremes- either it will be so bad it's amazing (a la "Showgirls" or Nic Cage's last howler, "Crazy She-Bitches of Honeybee Island" aka "The Wicker Man" remake), or perhaps good in some way I'm not seeing from the trailer. More likely it will be terribly terribly terrible.

I learned crochet before I really got the hang of knitting, and find it's far easier to teach people to use a hook rather than two sticks with pointy ends. And yet, I do not consider myself a crocheter. The painful truth is I find the fabric created by most crochet patterns to be ugly, blocky, stiff and square where knitted fabric with its army of tiny chevrons drapes much more nicely and lends itself to a large variety of patterns.

Truly, this is unfair, as the fault lies not with the medium (for certainly there are many lovely free-form crochet pieces and knitting cannot match the three-dimensional shaping that crochet so nicely lends itself to). I believe the fault lies with the patterns. Indeed, many crocheted patterns seem to revel in crochet's blockier, square aspects, seeking to whip up a garment from geometric shapes with no sense of the human form underneath. I find a happy medium in the daintier femininity of 30's patterns, which utilize crochet to, yes, form the geometric shapes popular with the Deco style, but also have a flair of girliness so often neglected in crochet patterns until very recently.

And with that, I share...The Enfield!



Note how the linear quality of the basic crochet stitch has been harnessed to enhance the military effect of the epaulets and center decoration. Further instructions are below the cut.

( Enjoy! )

I went home to Jersey this week for a family dinner, nothing more. And yet, not only did I spend two full days there instead of the expected one evening, I am now also the owner of a wee black as-yet-unnamed kitten. Go figure. One of my mom's friends found 4 kittens in her backyard, my mom went to get one for herself, and rather than let another go to the shelter, I picked out the one who scratched me up the least. She is very tiny, wary of me, and has small, needle-sharp claws (experienced due to the wariness, I suppose).

Returning to the city, I found (heard, rather) my block transformed. Probably due to the extended weekend, or maybe just an indicator of the rest of the summer, the surrounding streets have tripled in volume. Common sounds include- loud exclamations in Spanish pertaining to the end of a joke or a good move in dominoes, car alarms, birds imitating car alarms, little kids shrieking, ambulances, moms screaming for their children to get back here RIGHT NOW, moms screaming to their children what to pick up at the bodega, thumping bass emanating from slow-rolling Expeditions, a guy yelling up to the 2nd/3rd floor of a building across the street for someone named Mari, the high-pitched whine of small motorbikes ripping down the street, loud rap or R&B music from the 2nd floor across the street, and occasionally shouted threats from large groups at opposite sides of the street. Summer's finally here.

Man, every time I think 'oh, I don't see movies enough to justify a Film Forum membership', something like this and this pop up. Oh, it's just a Tod Browning retrospective and a great double feature series of 30's gangster and prison movies featuring TWO double features of 'women in prison' flicks. Just that. Oh, and down the road in the summer they're showing 'You The Living', the latest from the fellow who brought us 'Songs From The Second Floor', and are screening 'In A Lonely Place', the most heartbreaking movie I have seen, second only perhaps to 'The Misfits'.



Crap. I may as well fill out that form card now.

If you live around Paterson, NJ, you probably know about the Egg Shack already. If not, and you're in the area around 2AM, drop in and check it out. Part of a triangle of late-night food options (the other two being a pizza spot run out of a tiny metal trailer from the 50's and a burger/bar across the street), the Egg Shack (actually the Platter, but no one calls it that) serves up variations on one theme- Taylor Ham and Eggs. Taylor Ham and Eggs with Toast, Taylor Ham and Cheese with Eggs, Taylor Ham and Bacon with Eggs and Cheese, etc etc etc. Fortunately for me, they also serve Jersey standard diner fare, with an emphasis on breakfast.



The shack's interior decor has not changed since approximately 1971, when my parents and their friends frequented it after wild disco outings. The walls are done up in wood paneling decorated with wildlife scenes, making the place feel less like a tiny diner and more like a midwestern grandpa's basement trophy room.





Last time I went there at about 2:30AM, two younger, scantily clad ladies came in, ordered, and proceeded to count out stack after stack of singles. My dad suggested they were teachers counting book orders. Nearby was a rowdy table of teenagers, next to a table full of older men gathered for what seemed like a weekly bull session. The rest of the town is dead at this hour, but within the golden triangle of these food establishments every participant in the evening comes for refueling.



On a slight tangent, I saw this sign at the Paterson train station's small snack stand. It speaks volumes about the problems the guys who run the place have had with booziness.



I guess they expect you chug it there? Or maybe it'll be the train's problem.

As part of our commitment to enjoy the city we live in while broke, my sister suggested we visit the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on their free day. Most museums and important spaces have some sort of 'free day', or at least reduced admission, where those who can't foot the normal ticket can still enjoy the sites. The Met in particular, with their 'suggested donation' is a good spot to visit, if you can get over the attendants' dirty looks when you suggest they get more wealthy patrons. Do not let their stares guilt you! Some family is paying for the flower arrangements at the front door, so I think they're doing alright.

I attempted the MoMA's free day exactly once, and was not only disappointed by their poor layout and exhibits, but the crowd was so great you could only see the top halves of the larger paintings for the most part. A similarly poor experience was had at the New Museum; love their gift shop (which is totally free to wander around in and has plenty of overpriced arty books and trinkets to flip through to your heart's content), but hated their collection. 'Younger Than Jesus' was up, a collection of artists from the last 10 years or so, and if the two galleries I saw before being unceremoniously booted out for early closing were any indication, pointless bullshit shoveled into large piles is de monde. Also- large lettering over said piles. But to focus on the positive- despite a grey and windy day, the Botanical Garden offered much natural beauty and even shelter in the form of their extensive greenhouses, three of which are representative of three different ecosystems. Some sites en route:


Wolfy at the bottom looks so chuffed with himself.


You don't see 'Warning: Sexually Exquisite' around many construction sites.


I recently discovered there is a Lifetime Movie Channel. Glad Ganesh is a part of it.





( Plants ahoy! )

I am becoming notoriously lax in updating here; without a daily drudgy milieu it seems I lack the wherewithal to regularly post more than once a week. This is no indication as to the quantity of events or the overall quality of the week; many pleasant things happened this week, LiveJournal friends, many indeed, with equally many accompanying pictures. I saw Joe Jack Talcum perform at Goodbye Blue Monday, visited Cavalry Cemetary in Queens, and saw the 'Younger Than Jesus' exhibit at the New Museum (short review- I went FOR FREE and still feel like I was ripped off, more emotionally than pocket-wise. Also they closed the place earlier than expected and gave us the bum's rush out, like we annoyed them for wanting to see gallery after gallery of concepts with physical remnants), just to name a few things. Of course, due to said laxity I don't have any pictures of any of those things at hand, so instead here's a few images from a trip to Jersey:


I had this photo taken surreptitiously over my shoulder, as I want to knit up this Mary Maxim-style pattern myself.


My sister was feeling down, and I considered getting her these to cheer her. Instead I went with an airhorn, which I immediately regretted but worked like a charm.


Total Tools for total tools. Of course they're on clearance (did no one in marketing double-check this?)


My entire family are Simpsons fanatics and Fudgy fans.

I'd read about turn-of-the-century autograph book "The Ghosts of My Friends" quite some time ago, and after patiently scouring ebay managed to score the ideal- one older, more decrepit book filled with signatures and one empty book in excellent condition. I've finally photographed the former, and will begin to fill the latter with signatures of my friends.

Here's how it works: the book's pages are pre-creased; your friends sign their name in ink on the semi-glossy pages and fold it over to create a personalized Rorschach blot, to which they can then add little legs, arms and features, should they so wish (only one or two examples in my book had this). The same company created a book for 'Hand-O-Grams', something most of us have done in Kindergarten- leaving one or more thumbprints on a page, you doodle a little picture on them. Birds seemed rather popular.

This book features signatures from three periods- 1909-1912, when the owner of the book had her friends and family sign the majority of the pages in a heavier brown-black ink, 1922 & 1930, when another relative picked up the book and had some repeat signatures along with new ones in a thinner black ink, and on the back of some pages, 1943 from a younger generation of the family done in a blue ink. The images are presented in the order they appear in the book.



( Click onward for additional ghosts )

I was innocently searching for an image of lil' Drew Barrymore in 'Firestarter':


(there she is; if her biography serves me correctly she was already doing lines during this production)

...when I came across this:



Never one to let an odd image go by without delving, I clicked and lo, found myself at Character Translations. The name was vague enough to make me think ah, they must have a colorful mascot, perhaps they work with firefighters or it's some sort of pun on kerning I don't understand. No. Oh no. They MAKE mascots, to order. Any order.

They can't be completely blamed for some of the terrifying creatures they make. From the looks of it it's high-quality stuff- I imagine making a 3-dimensional rendering of a design is difficult enough; this is compounded with mobility, flexibility, and sweat issues. However, did no one stop to think how absolutely creepy 20X larger than normal sexy floppy discs might be?



Or this fellow, shown next to the design picture (which I guarantee was the winner of a school contest)? It's too close to the erotic 'centaur' and horse fantasy stuff out there, even if it's TOTALLY unintentional. Man, furries have ruined anthropomorphic EVERYTHING for me. Oh, and as Jim pointed out, they messed up the hands shown in the illustration, giving the guy hooves instead. Is that messing it up? It's a horse-man; I have no idea. He figured the conversation would go thusly:

"DID I ASK FOR HOOF-HANDS?!? How the hell am I supposed to hold a football with these?!"



...I don't even know what the hell this is. And why do space things ALWAYS have three eyes?! From an evolutionary standpoint one eye sites predators, two gives depth perception, and anything more is just another infection portal straight to your brain.



It's Victorian Wall. E. Weasel!



They even did the NYU Bobcat mascot, which I'm not posting here so as not to have traumatic flashbacks to the few mass-NYU events I attended.

If you choose to, you can find the negative in almost anything. A far better habit to inculcate is seeking the positive wherever practically possible ('practically' meaning to not make up stuff to be happy about or pretend something terrible is really great).

I could complain about my current neighborhood- sketchy dudes on every corner sitting around doing nothing but staring at you, blaring R&B karaoke sessions upstairs, that my nickname with local creeps is 'Snowflake'- but after moving out of the hell that was my prior space, even the off-key warbling of the latest slow-jam sounds like the dulcet tones of sweet angels. Similarly, I could go on about how there's no restaurants in the area that aren't fried chicken/Chinese food spots (the slash actually indicates not either/or, but both at the same time; I'm unsure how that particular combination became so popular), or that the nearest coffee place is over by Pratt, but that does no one any good. What I DO have nearby is a swell grocery store with an excellent produce section.

Always judge your grocery store by how ample and variegated its produce section is- in the city this is your lifeline to vitamins and health and a good one will get you through cold and flu season with nary a sniffle. This particular spot is chock full of the fruits and tube roots familiar to Jamaican and hispanic cooking, with a nice selection of North American goods as well. Half the store is shelves, the other half is actually a giant walk-in freezer that also encompasses the non-frozen produce section. It's sort of strange to see milk, eggs, meats and beer laid out like you'd see bread and such, but it's cold enough in there to get away with.


It's Prem! None of these actually say which meats they contain, but Prem is the only one with 'Virginia Ham Seasoning'.


From left to right- 'Chicken Feet', 'Pig Tails', 'Sausage Case Pig Feet'. Not seen- 'Lights' (aka lung bits)



These meats are all salted and pickled, hence their being kept at room temperature with the produce. Eewwwwwwwwww.



...and a close up on that last one:


Mmmm, Porks Nouts. Just like mom made.

I enjoy perusing vintage patterns, but it became quickly apparent I'm fortunate enough to fit the tinier sizes of yesteryear with minimal, if any, alterations. Many people I've met with a similar interest in recreating vintage duds are often frustrated by the lack of larger sizes, giving them the choice of attempting to reshape a garment, potentially losing its vintage appeal, or doing the math and resizing, itself a time-consuming effort.

Ladies and gents in past years were generally shorter and trimmer overall, with bodies shaped by a variety of different undergarments to fit the popular forms of the time. Even during the free and easy 'flapper' era of the 20's, garments were intended for the idealized 'boy' body- small chest, narrow hips, and slender overall. In my digging at the NYPL, I came across several volumes dedicated to larger sizes, sizes which translate to a modern size 8-14.



I must apologize in advance for the grainy photos and occasional thumb appearance- scans would have been far too costly for the volume of works I was rustling through, so I opted to take photos with my digital camera. This had its pros and cons, but at least all the text is legible. I hope. Also, does anyone know how to PDF this stuff? As much as I'm sure people enjoy clicking and waiting for a million photos to load, the ease of a PDF would be preferable.

( In the words of Mo'Nique, skinny bitches to the back before we start this. )

If there is one thing the internet is awesome at, it's sharing media, mostly ill-gotten. Also viewing hilarious and adorable kitten pictures, but that's another post. Several things have been of cheer this week, and goodness me, they are all available on the internet!

First up is 'You've Got To Do It', by Mister Rogers, off of the delightful Mister Rogers Music Mix from Way Out Junk, a very comprehensive collection of early and later Rogers songs. It's not saccharine or condescending, just a simple song telling you if you want to get something done you must get out there and do it! Simple, and yet so very effective, particularly if you're anything like me and it's coming from a man whose soothing voice was a permanent fixture of your childhood. A sampling of the lyrics:

If you want to ride a bicycle and ride it straight and tall, it's you who have to try it...it's you who has to fall....sometimes....
If you want to ride a bicycle and ride it straight and tall...you have to do it! Every little bit! you have to to do it, do it, do it, then when you're through, you'll know who did it, because you did it, you did it, you did it.

It's more low-key than Andrew W.K. but no less positive. Also included in the Mix are songs demonstrating Mister Rogers' uncanny ability to read his audience's fears, including one about how your limbs won't fall off like your doll's can, and another called 'Everybody's Fancy' that reassures your body is fancy inside and out, and if you're born a girl/boy, you stay a girl/boy and won't suddenly switch.

Next we have Mystery Science Theater 3000, gotten on the cheap volume by volume from my local library (yes, that's a plug. Your local library is chock full of resources, including free movies and bizarre collections donated by eccentric benefactors!) I just finished enjoying "The Atomic Brain", with such gem lines as "Knit one, purl DIE!!!" before a knitting needle stabbing, and featuring the worst English accent ever, INCLUDING both Keeanu Reeves AND Wynona Rider in "Bram Stoker's Dracula". Full episodes are totally all over YouTube: I highly recommend "Progress Island" (last I checked it was still called Puerto Rico), and the full movies "Hobgoblins"("It's the '80's! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Regan!"), "Puma Man" ("PUMAS CAN'T FLY!") and "Space Mutiny" ("RAILING KILL!"). Below is one of my favorites, though that's partially due to repeated high school viewings. Some friends of mine liked it so much they actually had a band called 'Rowsdower':

The Final Sacrifice


This one you can actually watch in its entirety. Hooray!

The Home Economics Story


The Internet Archive has recently added a bunch of intriguingly-named movies to its Sci-Fi/Horror Archive- with just an internet connection you too can watch "Werewolf Woman", "Carnival of Souls"(if you're too cheap to spring for the Criterion version), "The Vampire's Night Orgy", "Breakout From Oppression" (sounds like a Lifetime movie), and "Cathy's Curse" (yes, the curse involves blood; no, it's not an educational film).

Surprise Asteroid Makes Near-Miss of Earth

Wait! Did you hear that whooshing sound?

A small asteroid buzzed by Earth Monday, though only real astronomy geeks in the Pacific would have noticed.

The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time — or 8:44 EST.

Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers.

Forty thousand miles may sound like a lot, but it's only about one-seventh of the way to the moon, and less than twice as far out as many telecommunications satellites.

Had 2009 DD45 hit the Earth, it would have exploded on or near the surface with the force of a large nuclear blast — not very reassuring when you consider humanity had only about three days' notice.

The link is to a more scientific article, but the text above is from Fox News, whence also came this gem:

According to the Australian news Web site Crikey, the asteroid is likely to be drawn in by Earth's gravity, meaning it may return for many more near misses in the future.

First of all, Fox News gets ITS news from a WEB SITE called 'Crikey' (which you have to shout in an Australian accent). Secondly, A HUGE FUCKING ROCK ALMOST HIT EARTH YESTERDAY AND NO ONE THOUGHT TO TELL ANYONE?!?!?! Perhaps it was for the best, given my all-caps reaction after the rock passed by safely. Still though, we now know should anything terrible really be going down we will not be told until after it happens, alive or dead. The space chunk is estimated to come back about 2029, so in your face, 2012-ers. That's assuming, of course, that we survive the near-collision predicted in 2014, 2016, and 2021. Waaaaah.

I'm finally uploading all the photos I amassed during the pleasant parts of the year. Please to enjoy.



Quite some time ago I promised photos of the most Bauhaus children's playground ever. Behold! I give you:



St. George's Play-Yard! Can't you just feel the joy? Here's a crappily cobbled wider view:


Can you hear the grey uniforms the kids here must wear? It looks like any minute Cesar will somnambulistically walk along the Spider's Web down to the imposing angled dodecahedron with his master's hapless victim.



I passed this poster on the way to work every morning and it made me giggle, partly because it always triggered the song 'My Boo' in my head, partly because 'Boo' was a childhood nickname, and mostly because the first 20 times I passed it I thought the guy in the hat was a 10-year-old kid and the other guy was his dad, making the bottom proclamation rather startling upon my first closer examination.



The Doughboy's getting all sorts of outside game:







This went up suddenly along Houston St., and was slowly taken down as the building it covered was renovated. Close-up it was equally amazing- each slat on the iron gate was covered with an individual strip so it wouldn't tear when the gate was lifted.


The guy has every reason to be nervous but the bear's expression looks like he has some awesome gossip to share.


It's been confirmed that Aqua Boricua was the Victorian term for Bacardi Dark.


This store's time has long passed, but we can still enjoy their pluralization of Nintendo. Why bother posing him so carefully if you didn't even put sais in his hands?

Anthropomorphic Flea Market

Yaaaay!


Nooooooooooo!


Whyyyyyyy, God?


L.E.S. Mystery Theater
Though lately Manhattan has little to draw me to it, Cakeshop, a pleasant coffee shop/bar/music venue, remains one of the few places I feel comfortable. It too has its share of overly loud, fashionable patrons, more so on Fridays and Saturdays, but their cheap and interesting lineups and parties are worth some crowding. It's also run by the people behind the now-defunct Alt.Coffee, my college hangout. Across the street from Cakeshop are a wall of boutiques selling fancy clothes for fancy people. I'd never really walked along there though it's only about 12 feet away, the only thing on that side worth the effort being Le Creperie when one has a late-night hankering for some ungodly combination of Nutella, chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers all tucked up in a crepe.

However, en route to the Tenement Museum (possibly the most depression for your dollar, second only to the Holocaust Museum in DC), a tiny shrine caught my eye, tucked into the niche between two of the stores:




I tried looking up the woman's name and date of death in the public record, but with no luck. Does anyone have a better idea what happened here? The wording on the urn's plaque is so strange; it could mean 'they denied her children..." as in they denied children she had as legitimate, or 'they denied her children, as in they wouldn't let her have children. Both the photo and the plaque also imply some sort of suicide in response to whatever the incident left unsaid might be.