Patel Brothers supermarket, Jackson Heights, Queens.

I don't know why this Pari Rice bag doesn't mention PariRice.com. Rice for ravers?

A reader says that yesterday's mystery vegetable is bitter gourd, also known as bitter melon or karela. It's bitter. "Has to be cooked with a lot of masala. Tasty though."

An artist is going around the city and smashing his truck into fire alarm boxes. Found at Cardhouse. More coverage here.

Today's exotic destination: Jackson Heights, Queens.

Mystery vegetable.

Calling cards are a huge business in this neighborhood. I wish I had some friends in Bangladesh. Such a deal.

I still have a pile of photos from Greece to post, but I have been neglecting New York. If you missed earlier photos from the big spring trip, you can head for the archives and check out everything between 5.1 and 7.3.

The occasional Flash experiments over at acute.org make me wish I knew something about Flash.

These are from Italy.

Beware of dog, Santa Fiora.

Lost dog, Rome.

Beware of ancient dog, Pompeii.

All of the cool kids in Singapore have weblogs. Random entry: "My mother and brother are stinking up the apartment with durians! Save me!!!"

More from Turkey.

Mosques in Istanbul.

Mineral deposits at the hot springs of Pamukale.

From a doctor friend: Nontoxic (Harmless) Material Commonly Ingested, a.k.a. things you thought you couldn't eat, but can.

Istanbul again.

This kid threw his arm around me and started singing during a boat trip around the Bosphorus. I don't think he was drunk.

An airport worker wanted to check out my camera.

The nice people at Erkayalar Photography & Trading Co. Ltd. fixed a problem with my camera in five minutes and charged me nothing. This is a test picture taken by someone there. I have no idea who this is.

Q. How is the movie different from the comic?

A. For one thing, the comic is made up of bound pieces of parchment on which reproductions of hand-drawn pictographs have been imprinted, while the movie is actually made up of thousands and thousands of tiny transparent photographs.

-- GhostWorld-themovie.com (It's no Rushmore, but go see it anyway.)

Art by Beth has been updated and expanded.

More trip photos. ("Keep 'em coming," says Jami.) These are from Istanbul.

Turkish art deco.

Street market.

Ancient snack bar.

Sircam worm update: Some people got more of other people's stuff than I did. (And more and more: "A disciplinary letter from a pet crematory in England chiding an employee for inappropriate ash weighing as well as cremating a precious blanket along with a dog.") I'm up to a whopping six.

Theft in progress. Sheryll, you should really get your code from someone who knows what he's doing. Mine is so 1996.

Trip flashback week continues.

Izmir, Turkey.

Gypsies at the edge of the harbor, which smelled funny.

A kid was selling CD-ROMs with MP3s of the entire recorded output of Madonna, Nirvana, Pink Floyd etc. for $3 each. I threatened to tell the RIAA and he fled in terror.

I saw these icons used in several places in Turkey to indicate women's and men's restrooms. Most Turks don't look like this.

I've received three -- oops, now it's four -- e-mail messages and attached personal files from victims of the Sircam worm. One was from a woman in the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. None of the files were particularly intriguing, but the basic concept is. There should be grants for this sort of creative work.

I reserve the right to throw in photos from my big spring trip without warning. Today: people in Izmir, Turkey.

Amateur street gang. They asked me for money. I asked them for money. They gave me 100,000 lire. This is about 10 cents. I gave it back.

This is Besir at 2001 Kuafor Salonu. He gave me the most meticulous haircut I have ever experienced. At the end he used a huge flaming Q-Tip to burn the little hairs off my ears.

Making out at the bus station.

Saturday was hot and sunny, a perfect day for... an Internet conference: Webzine NYC. I encountered Cameron of CamWorld, a fellow Park Sloper, Swerdloff of Swerdloff (dot com), who hasn't stopped updating after all, and Douglas Rushkoff, who wrote a nice cover story for Yahoo Internet Life recently. And Andy, who is everywhere.

Flâneur has a new edition with some good photos and such.

Park Slope.

By the front door.

What century is this again?

Some of my photos of Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK are in the latest issue of The Artistic Traveler, a newsletter for architecture geeks who like to travel. The famous terminal has been in the news (and has inspired a lot of Google searches) because the Port Authority wants to mess it up.

Subways.

Cutbacks in the sign budget?

Camera war.

Apparently riders of the G train are not numerous enough or demographically desirable enough to deserve platform ads. Thus the creepy black voids.

Some people are mad at Adobe.

No-man's-land, part II.

In the no-man's-land between Park Slope and Fort Greene.

Broken glass and street stenciling. What does it mean?

Font size equals minus one.

"So he said 'laugh out loud,' 'be right back' -- and then he never came back! I was sooo annoyed." -- overheard on the Upper West Side.

Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Wiffle^® ball action.

Found in the referrer logs, not sure why: camdiscover.com. Its results are appealingly random. [Update: Unfortunately the site seems to be developing in a more 'adult' direction. You have been warned.]

Park Slope.
Merchandise (?) at the Store.

Farrell's, est. 1933. Budweiser in huge styrofoam "containers." (Top photo by F.D.S.)

Tiny wireless chocolate eclair.

Park Slope.

The profit-making potential of the Internet had been overrated, and so the social effects of the Internet were presumed to be overrated. But they weren't... The technology and money-making potential of the Internet were far less interesting than the effects people were allowing it to have on their lives and what these, in turn, said about those lives.

Expedition to the Bronx on the 1-9 train.

The numbers really do go this high.

Spuyten Duyvil.

For the record.

Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn, February.
The new owner of the Plaza has changed its name and its sign. This old one was vastly superior. See also 2.14.

Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, September 1999.
And a Zipern.com correspondent reports that this ancient crane, which defined the skyline of the mighty Gowanus, was recently junked.

The city as we know it is vanishing. Photograph everything now.

Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, from a taxi.

Signbuilding.

Strange Diet Coke ad, featuring a lingerie model, Mazzy Star, Ben Affleck and something about his mother's underwear.

On the ferry to Shelter Island, N.Y.

Hither Hills State Park, Montauk, L.I., N.Y.
Walking on the Walking Dunes.

Art barge.

See also Nuke the Hamptons.

Time Magazine and Greil Marcus say Sleater-Kinney is America's Best Rock Band. Which is odd because Time America Warner Online doesn't own the band's record label.

In Estonia (and Finland) you can send text messages from your phone straight to television. Seen on Photographica.

Duryea's, Montauk, L.I., N.Y.

This article says Marlon Brando occasionally corrects mistakes he finds on Brando-related Web sites.

Yesterday's search queries.

reqs: search term

----:

	
	
	

East Hampton, L.I., N.Y.

Lobster pots.

Lobsters.

I wrote an article for the business section of today's Times: Some Prefer Online 'A.I.' Tie-In to the Movie. It was fun to write, but it messed up my holiday weekend.

East Hampton, L.I., N.Y., Wednesday.
Odd celebrity sighting: Mr. P. Diddy, playing hip-hop softball with several dozen friends on the 4th. Bad boy, indeed. See also 5.18.

Someone stole the Virgin Mary and put her here.

Rome.
I think it's pronounced SPUK-whir.

Randy Kennedy's Tunnel Vision, a column on subway culture, is one of the most consistently good things in the NYT.

Siena, Italy.
From the top of the Torre di Mangia.

At the base of the tower steps there are signs with information, warnings and rules concerning the climb in a ridiculous array of languages. Probably the project of a bored ticket-taker, with help from visitors.

Rome.
In the area known as EUR, built by Mussolini for an exhibition that never happened and the home of some fine fascist architecture.

Poggioferro, Tuscany.