Times Square, Manhattan.
My parents recently went to check out the new W Hotel...

...but they got confused by the signs and ended up at the WWF restaurant instead.

Photos from an ice hotel in Sweden. I like this one but I hope that's not the only bathroom. More info at icehotel.com. There's also one in Quebec.

A well-known anti-Scientology site now ranks higher than Scientology's official site in a Google search for "Scientology." This is most likely the result of a widespread anti-church Google bombing campaign. (Google's index update may still be settling down, so results may vary.)

See also this analysis and my related article.

Tribeca, Manhattan.

Yesterday I received a bogus "domain name expiration notice" from Verisign, formerly Network Solutions. The company is trying to steal customers away from other registrars by sending out forms that look like a bill but are actually domain transfer requests. If you get one of these, you might want to file a complaint with Icann and/or the FTC.

Some people are mad at Verisign for other reasons. See also Network Solutions Horror Stories.

BBC innovation: Reporting-free news!

Lower East Side, Manhattan.

Eric Alba: Movie theater. So that's where those marquee letters come from.

Meatpacking District, Manhattan.

Green Park (900K Flash), a photo-movie by Uda Atsuko. More good things elsewhere on her site.

Park Slope.

I wrote the "New Economy" column in the business section of today's NYT: Google Runs Into Copyright Dispute. It's about Google's creative problem solving in its recent run-in with the Church of Scientology. You can see the problem solving at work in the notice at the bottom of this page. (Update: Related discussion at Slashdot.)

The story talks a lot about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which I last wrote about a year ago in a story about David Touretzky's nutty DeCSS gallery. (Update: I almost forgot that Dr. Touretzky has had his own interesting encounters with Scientology. And in the interest of balanced linking, here's a frequently asked question about Scientology: What has been the Church’s role in protecting free speech and intellectual property rights on the Internet?)

The last odds and ends from Greece, May 2001.

Naxos.

Chios.

Horseless carriage, Chios.

The metro, Athens.

More from Greece, May 2001.

Roadside snack bar, Santorini.
"We're working on something tastier, but for now this will have to do."

Supermarket, Samos.
Nothing gets me going in the morning like a quick blast of coffee gas.

Chios.
I see no reason why "severiously" shouldn't be an actual word.

The guy behind the Nike "sweatshop" e-mail incident is also the guy behind the Rejection Line. He talks about what they have in common in this interview. Via Microcontent News.

Lesvos, Greece, May 2001.
See also 5.3.2001.

The Pirelli Building in Milan, seen here on 11.7, was hit by a plane today. The "Skyscraper" restaurant that I wrote about on 12.11 is just down the street. The restaurant's name was originally an homage to the Pirelli Building, Italy's first skyscraper, but it later adopted an image of the World Trade Center as its logo.

Greek Week continues. Photos taken in May 2001.

Graveyard, Santorini.

Internet cafe, Naxos.

Auto body shop (I think), Chios.

The Parthenon, Athens.

"Do read Jed Perl's comments on the Richter show on The New Republic's website (I still haven't figured out how to incorporate links in my blog.)" -- Michael Thomas, former New York Observer columnist, embracing new media. (This would have been the link.)

Ikaria and Lesvos, Greece, May 2001.

Some people have more complicated name-confusion problems than I do. For example, Peter Maass is not Peter Maas. (But he does have a new weblog, which he is updating from Pakistan.)

Anil recently documented his sighting of a man cycling to nowhere.

This week: Never-before-seen photos from travels in Greece last spring.

Chios, Greece, May 2001.
The biggest town on the island of Chios is called Chios. Its main park is littered with noisy kiddie rides. About 30 of them are bunched together in one corner of the park, forming a kind of mini-Disneyland. Its Walt is a grumpy old man in a Yankees cap.

This kid is probably unaware that his dinosaur is playing the theme song from "The Banana Splits" (which I always assumed was a ripoff of "Buffalo Soldier" [RealAudio, skip to the middle], but the Internet tells me it had to be the other way around).

Many thanks to everyone who helped out with my successful quest. (Here's a screen shot for the historical record.) I learned a lot of interesting stuff along the way, some of which I'm writing about right now. Meanwhile I'm getting too much traffic from confused teens, so cut it out with the David Gallagher links already. The name of this site is lightningfield.com. Thanks.

In other David Gallagher news:

(7:11 PM): are you the david from 7th heaven
(7:11 PM): where did you get my IM address
(7:13 PM): are you from 7th HEAVEN! I am in love with you and the show. so are you from 7th heaven?
(7:16 PM): read this
(7:17 PM): I have read that before, thats where I got this address. ARE YOU THE DAVID GALLAGHER FROM 7th HEAVEN!!

Finally.

See also 2.14.

Greenwich Village, Manhattan.

Are bloggers journalists? Articles like this one make me think I should become a pundit. Then I remember that this would bore me and probably you.

If she wasn't Courtney Love, I don't think anyone would want Courtney Love posting on their bulletin board. Via Catherine.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.

It's hard to determine what this store is all about. I think it has something to do with achieving financial freedom by painting small ceramic cherubs.

It was great to meet crazed genius Rob of Cockeyed.com the other day. He recently completed a cross-country drive.

In Nebraska, we tuned to a radio show called "The party line". It was a simple call-in show that allowed people to announce stuff that they had for sale on the air. For instance, one person had a baby changing table for sale for $40. You can reach her at 463-4294 (Nebraska area code). Another person had a humidifier for $10, and queen size bedding for $40. She can be reached at 463-7423.

(Note: Nebraska actually has two area codes, 308 and 402.)

Lower Broadway, Manhattan.

Jami writes in reference to yesterday's photos:

goddammit i almost went there once! it was my second week living in manhattan. the first weekend i had met this weird artist boy and he had called me and asked me out for the second weekend. he had a car, so i said sure. we were supposed to go to landmark, he had heard about it, so we wandered around looking for it. tried calling 411 but they had no record. we somehow stumbled upon it, knocked on the door, and someone actually answered and said that "it was closed for the winter." they said we should try back in the spring. but that was 98 - would it still have been open then?

later on he and i went to some snotty pants party in chelsea and people were mean to us so we stole some designer sunglasses and left.

This is a lifetime opportunity to Own a Piece of History.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I was in the Landmark Pub just once, in 1996. It looked like the house of an old woman with serious pack-rat tendencies, which I believe it actually was. The front room was almost entirely full of old bed frames, lamps, ugly paintings, broken toys, etc. There were small pathways between the stacks of junk. In one corner a guy was playing guitar and singing, while bar patrons accompanied him on plastic toy instruments. The old lady puttered around serving bottles of Bud. I don't think any of this was entirely legal, which may be why the place has been closed for several years. Also the old woman was very old. Also the whole thing was much too weird for 7th Avenue.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.

New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Bait machine, Lambertville, New Jersey.

If a phrase appears on 264 Web pages, does that make it a cliché?

Fonthill and the Tile Works, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
See also 4.18.2001.

At Jet City Orange: Don't climb on the pipeline.

Woodside, Queens.

Art by Dan Flavin, Soho, Manhattan.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Over 600K of comments from the citizenry on the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. You may wish to add your own.

Journal Infime is a photo journal thing from France with quirky Flash bits.