New York Panorama

Those of you who listen to New York Public Radio or read the Times probably heard about the cool fund-raising effort by the Queens Museum of Art for the updating and maintenance of the New York Panorama.

If you haven’t, in short you can “purchase” buildings in the massive scale model of New York City that was Built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, a “9,335 square foot architectural model includ[ing] every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs; a total of 895,000 individual structures.”


As soon as I heard this I printed the form (pdf) and bought our apartment (private house/apartments are mostly $50) and last week I went out to survey my property; probably the safest real estate purchase one could make right now.

The model is fairly overwhelming with a cool pseudo helicopter tour, city sound effects and tiny planes taking off from JFK.

I found my neighborhood after a bit.

Ditmas Park, Brooklyn

And with the help of Photoshop picked out my building.

Approx 3/4″ tall, 1 1/4″ wide.

And here’s the Flatiron building where I worked for a few years at Tor Books.

14th floor. My window was on the opposite side of the building.

I wanted to find all my apartments, places of employment and the shitty dive bars I’ve frequented since moving to New York, but I was getting serious eye-strain.

Wishing for street level views on Googlemaps.

Watchmen Embroidery

Crafter Kittyzilla posted these fantastic Watchmen embroidery patterns on the Handmade Stuffs Blog. My two favorites are below with her explanation of the design process. I might have to learn how to embroider just to make a Rorschach.

I think Nite Owl II is my favorite of the bunch. I love the way the frame and background came out and he’s making that “I’m a paunchy nerd who fights crime” face. Plus his quote is stupid and makes me giggle.

I wanted these to sort of look like a cross between a portrait and a religious icon. The religious icon I like not only for the look, but also because there’s a certain mythological aspect to super heroes. Working with that, almost all of them have sort of the suggestion of a halo behind them. Also, I am one of those people who finds Rorschach absolutely adorable. I am properly ashamed of myself, don’t worry.

Link via Kimmchi

Junk in My Trunk: April 4, 2009

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(click on the photo to go to the flickr page with annotations)

My haul from last weekend. This was the second trip with my estate sale cohort found on Craigslist. The arrangement is still working great and I picked up many things that I would have had no access to otherwise.

My goal is usually to buy some non-book items that I can eBay immediately, make back my investment and then the books (and any items I keep for myself) are gravy. So far this strategy has been working but I am occasionally stuck with an albatross.

Lazy Linkage

Running with a pretty low energy bar lately (If I were playing Gauntlet it would be saying “Warrior needs food…badly”) so here are a few lazy links.

Craig Yoe (author of Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings, and Modern Arf) has collected rare fetish art from Superman’s co-creator Joe Shuster in a book called Secret Identity. This is the first I’ve heard of this period in his career so this is high up on my wish list. (link via Drawn!)


Parka Blog posted a fascinating photo set of artists’/graphic designers’ work spaces. I always love these peeks into the creative process.


Lastly John Waggoner Jr.–a retired archaeologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers–searches for lost cemeteries and “grave houses”, miniature wooden structures built over graves (early 1800s into the 1900s) that sometimes contained furniture, books, pictures etc. They’re disappearing fast and he’s on a quest to find and document them.

http://media.scrippsnewspapers.com/corp_assets/trinity_inline.swf
(from knoxnews.com, link via bldbblog on twitter)

Oddball Item of the Week

A bathroom cigarette caddy /ash tray in the shape of a toilet.

Because there’s no reason to lose any smoking time ever.

Ceramic in attractive brown with hand-painted gold hi-lights.

Cigarettes are stored in the tank, and you ash in the bowl, with a notch in the back for wall mounting.

This “Cigarette Set” brought to you by Thames “to complete your bathroom and add to your comfort”. Circa 1960.


This came from the estate of a plumber so I’m guessing it was a trade promotional item.

On ebay now (ends Sunday night at around 6PM EST).

Junk in My Trunk and Craigslist Experiment

My first “Junk in My Trunk” yard sale haul photo in a while. It’s been a long winter.

(click on the photo to go to the flickr page with annotations)

Favorite item is the toilet-shaped bathroom cigarette caddy and ashtray. No reason to waste ANY smoking time.

I also recently tried a Craigslist experiment that’s been working out well. Let me tell you about it.

I haven’t driven in years. My highschool driver’s ed teacher–an ex drill sergeant who went pasty white and jittery whenever it was my go–assured me I was going to kill someone. Between that, myopia and a driving attitude that veers between obsessive fear and carelessness, it seemed like a good idea to settle in NYC and never get behind the wheel again.

But it turns out books are heavy and since Alice is too selfish to quit her job and drive me around to estate sales full time, I placed this ad on Craigslist:

Estate Sale Ride Share

Brooklyn bookseller is looking for a ride share to hit estate sales in the NY/NJ area. Prefer dealers/shoppers (with a dependable car) who DON’T specialize in books and ephemera (no reason to bring along your own competition). You get: half gas costs, an extra set of eyes to hunt for treasure, a strong back, and someone to bitch about eBay with.

Contact me if this sounds interesting.

And I found a dealer who lives right around the corner, buys completely different items from me, and has a really efficient and tech savvy way of mapping out routes!

We hit the streets last Friday (on a fairly quiet day) and the results are pictured above. The other dealer made out comparably well and we each pointed out items that we recognized as good but weren’t interested in ourselves.

I recommend giving this a go if you’re looking for a way to expand your hunting ground, save some scratch (as well as carbon emmissions), and find someone to share intelligence with. You will be getting in a car for several (potentially stressful) hours with a stranger though, so I recommend making a list of conditions to vet your respondees.

Sale season is approaching! Good luck out there.

For the Kiddies

Two new additions to my blogrolls that seemed to belong together.

Kindertrauma: A tip-generated blog of toys, images, films etc that terrorized you as a child.

Including useful features like “Name That Trauma” where you can describe a horrible but mysterious memory and readers will try to pin down the source of your persistent anxiety.

And fiction author Carol Lanham (whose story “The Good Part” was published in Trunk Stories #3 and was a highlight of the run) has renovated her homepage: The Horror Homemaker.

Pay her a visit, mix up a cocktail and try on a saucy vintage apron.

Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s


How great is it to discover that two of your favorite mystery writers had a love affair, worked each other into various books, and eventually (after breaking up) killed each other off in fictional guises? Pretty freakin’ great.

In the late 1950s, Gold Medal paperback writer Marijane Meaker (aka: Vin Packer; M. E. Kerr) met Patricia Highsmith in a lesbian bar. Highsmith was already well-established as a mystery writer–her work having been adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train–but in the lesbian community she was a legend for having written the first/then only lesbian novel with a happy ending (The Price of Salt as by Claire Morgan).

The writers hit it off and left their respective comfort zones/current lovers to attempt an idealic life in the country. This ended pretty much as you would expect from a relationship between:

a) two writers
b) specialists in borderline personalities
c) out lesbians in a time when women could be turned away from restaurants for wearing pants.

But along the way you learn some great details about Highsmith’s habit of gardening with a switchblade, having “dinner drinks”, “walking drinks”, “picnic drinks” and “breakfast drinks” as well as Meaker’s insecurity about being a “lurid paperback writer” (even though she made twice what Highsmith made per book) .

The book is short (about the length of a classic Gold Medal paperback), intimate and paints a vivid portrait of upper-class lesbian life in the 1950s. The epilogue–when the writers reunite after 27 years and Highsmith has become obsessively bigoted and bitter–feels like it could have been drawn from either of their classic books.

Highly recommended.

I Know Why the Phone is Crying Clarice


Because even after links on BoingBoing, Gizmodo and Thrift Horrors, 21,000 Youtube views and my 15 minutes of internet fame as straight-man to a telephone, no one bid on him/her/it.

I guess we were meant to be together. Maybe I’ll get a VOIP line and make this the official HF business line. That way I’ll yelp with terror and break out in a cold sweat every time someone calls me to buy a book and the phone’s destiny will be fulfilled.