Photo Catch-up

In my state of blogging lethargy, I’ve accumulated a number of miscellaneous photos that haven’t found a post of their own. Here’s a big photo-dump to bring myself up to date.

One for my Book CSI series analysing book abuse, neglect…and here just ineffectual good intentions:

This message was jotted–with the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old girl–on the outside of a package that was folded in half in my mail box. You can’t rile a postman like that. In the time it took to write this cutesy and pathetic plea, the seller could have cut a piece of cardboard and reinforced the book so that it would actually be inconvenient to pound it into taco shape.

Here’s one of my favorite grafitti tags (after “Neckface” and “Backfat”) that appeared near my subway stop on the Q train:


An edifying message, diluted a bit by the appearance of the classic “upsk*rt”, but still I’d like to see this one go city-wide. Really curious what kind of crap this building is stuffed with. Didn’t notice the mountain of clutter until I processed the photo.

My folk art, big rig toy chest in its new home:

That’s Mego Spock riding shotgun, with Scotty at the wheel. I found this at a stoop sale back in June and I couldn’t part with it. I think I’ll use the trailer as my time capsule for stashing hi-grade books that’ll be rare in 10 years.

Jug City:

We pass this establishment every year on the way to camp. I love a “Postal Outlet” with signage like an off-brand Hooters. Last time I saw Jug City, some other–relatively jugless–business had taken over the space but thankfully they kept the name. One day I hope to retire to Canada and open “Jug City Books” and the window display at least will be up to snuff.

…keeping to the theme. My favorite bad break (one of the quiet joys of proofreading) in recent memory:

Amazon suggested this “pay phrase” to my demure wife (“…embly” was after the break). She passed on that one for some reason. Previous to this my favorite BB I discovered in a book catalog I was proofing was:

The most feared weapon in Hitler’s arse-
nal

And lastly a haul from a month or so back that I forgot to post:

All from the GOB sale of an estate/storage liquidator. My best one-time cartridge score until the World’s Largest Garage Sale earlier this month. This photo is part of the “Junk in Your Trunk” photoset on Flickr documenting garage sale and thrift finds.

All right, caught up. And until I replace my scanner the Hang Fire Blog will likely be a bit image light. So does anyone have any particular aspect of bookselling, pulp fiction (or whatever) they’d like to see me write on? The brain is a bit scattered lately and I wouldn’t mind some outside imposed direction.