Tag: Brooklyn

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.

Maker Faire

I’ve found that I’m fairly terrible at event coverage so here’s a simple list of the cool things I caught at the New York Maker Faire hosted this past weekend at the New York Hall of Science.

FRC: First Robotics Competition
High school students participating in the FRC (“A varsity sport for the mind”) showed off robots from the recent 2010 challenge, which was to build a soccer-playing robot. These students were among the most excited and outgoing presenters at the fair and managed to pull off the–inconceivable in my generation–coup of being in high school, a science geek and cool simultaneously. There will be a scrimmage this Saturday (October 2nd) at the Francis Lewis High School in Queens. Check it out if you’re in the NYC area.

Frank DeFreitas of Holoworld demonstrated his approx $100 DIY garage kit for creating holograms; using a laser pointer, metal pipe, some bulldog clips, and a lens. Frank has been creating holograms and teaching the process since 1983. His website has details on his workshops and updates on new developments in the art.

Mustafa Bagdatli explained his high tech, interactive mood ring project called “Poker Face” which uses “a heart rate monitor and galvanic skin response” to provide real time and highly visible readings of a user’s emotional state (mood changes are displayed via a color changing medallion). The coolest feature of this project to me was the ability to sync this data with something like Google calender so you can track exactly who/what makes you happy and edit your life accordingly. It also made me imagine the potentially amusing conversations with spouses when they ask something like “Why were you so happy between 1:30 and 1:35 last Tuesday afternoon?”

Well above my understanding level, but incredibly cool is the Orbotix hardware/software platform for turning your mobile phone into a remote control unit to command killer robots.

Proteus Gowanus (543 Union Street in Brooklyn) hosts a “Fixers’ Collective” every Thursday night. A “social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending”, participants bring in broken objects and the accumulated expertise and brain power of the room tries to diagnose and fix them. Looking forward to attending a few of these this winter. Unfortunately most of my broken electronics were sent off to the “Deconstruction Lab” organized by my lovely wife for one of NYHOS’s own Maker Faire workshops. Guess I will have to break more things.

Lastly a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture by Brad Litwin:

The piece shown at the fair was even more complex than this as the entire sculpture spun and the balls were catapulted through small holes in two spinning sheets of plexiglass. I could have stared at this thing for days.

Also noteworthy the 3D printer pavilion, life-size Mousetrap, the Rubiks solving robot, and lots more.

All-in-all a great time. Check it out if it comes to your town.

Weekend Stoop Haul

Had 14 promising sales mapped out for this past Saturday, but I overloaded twice; misread my map (mistaking one sale for another that started later); and had to leave the bike locked-up while I lugged a huge armload of items 2 miles home (then myself back to the bike). Ended up with bruised arms, a red neck and only four sales crossed off my list by the time it was too late to bother. Frustrating but did well on the ground I covered.

Picked up an original George Romero Season of the Witch poster, a lobby card for Eegah, the press kit for Radley Metzger’s “Dirty Girls” and 50-60 higher grade vintage paperbacks. The above items (and more) were great but bittersweet finds as they came from a local eBay seller I’ve bought from before who seems like he’s closing up shop. Most of my sunburn can be blamed on this sale as I went through every item he had.

Also picked up a “Young Architects” kit which allows you to create a 3D floorplan and a set of 100s of colored pencils. Think I’m going to use the floorplan to strategize bookshelf space. $1 each for these sets.

A cool “Rokenbok” construction toy that gives you an SNES style remote control and 8 receivers which you can place in a series of construction vehicles. Then you can switch–on the fly–between any of the vehicles and run a whole construction site by yourself! I’m afraid the Playmobile union is gonna shut us down though.

Lastly I picked up a great oldschool change dispenser that requires the double-safe belt and suspenders to hold up.

As always click on the images above to view in Flickr (w/ thrift-o-vision annotations). These are part of the “Junk in Your Trunk” pool devoted to documenting yard sale and thrift hauls.

Stoop Sale Haul, 2 Weeks Worth

Saved up a couple of weeks of stoop sale treasures to mix up the posts a bit. These hauls were the result of two beautiful weekends of warm, clear weather. Perfect for stoop sales because the sellers want to quickly get rid of their crap and hit the beach or go to BBQs.

Some highlights:

  • My second Da Vinci Code 1st after looking at 1000s of CR pages. Sadly the price has tanked and I need to bury them for a few decades
  • A beautiful Enzo Mari Animal puzzle (images here, here, and here) that I bought from a consistently triple fair-priced estate sale. The sale runners were supposed “pros” and priced at the highest realized final values on eBay (regardless of condition, or the fact that this was a Wednesday morning in Bushwick). I paid $5 for this since they had no idea what they had. Realized $275 at auction. Nyaaah. NOTE: This was the resin edition from ’72. The original wooden version from the 1950s must fetch thousands
  • Crumb’s Book of Genesis
  • Get Tough! 1st Edition of hand-to-hand fighting manual, “as Taught to the British Commandos, and U. S. Armed Forces”. Wartime issue paperback in original HTF dust wrapper
  • A selection of Hot Rod and Big Daddy Roth titles

  • Handmade big rig toy chest! 52″ x 18″. Working wheels, removable trailer, detailed open cab. I f***ing love this thing!
  • Large pile of 100% wool and marino wool yarn, some handspun. According to the wife–for whom these were a bribe–yarn like this fetches $8-10 a skein. I paid $.50 each (don’t tell her)
  • Tubful of Warhammer 40k Space Marines and LOTR miniatures. These can go for decent coin but it will require extensive undercover 21 Jump Street-style geek research.

If the summer keeps up like this, I’ll be one happy camper.

As always click on the images above to view in Flickr (w/ thrift-o-vision annotations). These are part of the “Junk in Your Trunk” pool devoted to documenting yard sale and thrift hauls.

Last Weekend’s Haul


Two glorious sunny days full of bike-riding, stoop sales and a street fair. Good times.

Here’s my haul from the weekend. (click on the image to view in Flickr w/ thrift-o-vision annotations). These are part of the “Junk in Your Trunk” pool devoted to documenting yard sale and thrift hauls.

Best find was the 1941 yearbook from the “Dutch Treat” social club filled with fantastic girly art and even a pop-up. I’m going to break this out into a separate blog post, it’s so nice.

The cupcake tin and shawl are for the Missus.You have to bring a few of those home if you want to get away with the smut and video games. It’s a yin-yang thing.

Stoop Sale Report


My haul from the last two weeks of stoop-saling (click on the image to view in Flickr w/ thrift-o-vision annotations). These are part of the “Junk in Your Trunk” pool devoted to documenting yard sale and thrift hauls.

Not one but TWO Bang & O turntables, a great selection of LPs and DVDs, a book on cock-fighting, Aleister Crowley’s Thoth tarot and more.

Not too shabby considering I’ve been coughing my lungs out for two weeks straight from some disgusting lung affliction.

Favorite sale moments: The guy selling the first B+O table said he was clearing stuff out due to anxiety induced by cable hoarding shows (I heart A+E). We discussed the finer points of collect-o-mania and I gave him my informed opinion that you are only a hoarder when you stop inviting people into your home and “stuff” starts to displace your sleeping/eating/showering space. Until then you’re a connoisseur.

Other favorite moment was trying out a compound bow outfit and talking jazz at a sale held by a chatty ex-cop, private investigator.

Very excited that the season has begun.

WWII Ephemera

I stumbled on an interesting WWII-era collection at a local thrift shop and found a few interesting items worth sharing:

First this pamphlet of “Recommended War Books…Planned and Selected by The Council on Books in War Time” (Their motto was “Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas”), distributed by the Brooklyn Public Library.

Page 1, Page 2

This is “List 14” of recommended war books. I’d be curious to see the other lists.

Next, “Honorable Spy” by John L. Spivak, a 1939 digest-size PB original “Exposing Japanese Military in the United States” with a great sinister, xenophobic cover.


This will go well with my recently acquired copy of Punch Below the Belt, The: Japanese Ruses, Deception Tactics, and Antipersonnel Measures.

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.

Best Coney Island Souvenir Ever FREE


A major source of anxiety for real New Yorkers (more so even than economic downturn and dirty bombs) is the impending gutting/condoization of Coney Island.

Current plans for the park include the retention of a few iconic landmarks and rides but for many of them the future is hazy.

Astroland’s Rocketship and Tower have no new home lined up, and if owner Carol Albert doesn’t find a taker before the end of January, they may end up on the scrap pile. Albert is even willing
to pay some moving expenses for the rocket.

So if you need a rocket to launch your offspring to a friendlier star, or you just want to get a SCUD missile trailer and drive it around to freak people out, now is the time to act.

Story and image via The Brooklyn Paper.