Urban Studies

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Featured Video: Alan Gillett’s “All Shook Up”

July 14, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Thank you to the comedy writer and crap video enthusiast Robert Popper for posting this incredible clip of one man’s battle with gravity. Remember: It’s not so easy to dance while the Earth is constantly moving. There is, however, no excuse for the singing. Science has no answers. None at all. Enjoy.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

July 13, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Lentils. (Image by Zyance.)

MY BIG KEHUNA FOR LENTILS (Upper West Side)

Hi… I’m sick of being a KOHEN. Just too much responsibility.

I’m not selling my rites, but will trade it for LENTILS or a PRIUS.

But before you commit, you should learn more.

Even though the following goes into detail… all you have to do is get up three times a year in your dirty socks (and on high holidays) and hless the congregation. Not too hard. I recommend this for SINGLE MEN 18-32. After that stuff gets really complicated.

WHAT IS A KOHEN?

A Kohen (or Kohen, Hebrew ëÉÌäÅï, ‘priest’, pl. ëåäðéí, Kohanim) is a Jew who is in direct patrilineal descent from the Biblical Ahron. The Kohanim comprise a family dynasty within the larger Jewish Levitical tribe. Kohanim enjoy an honored status in Judaism, with certain designated rights and responsibilities[1].

Today, Kohanim have a distinct, honored status and remain bound by Torah and Rabbinic laws in Orthodox and, to a lesser extent, in Conservative Jewish communities.

Although Kohanim may assume their duties once they reached physical maturity, the fraternity of Kohanim generally would not allow young Kohanim to begin service until they reached the age of 20.[10] There was no mandatory retirement age. Only when a Kohen became physically infirm could he no longer serve.[11]

Certain imperfections could disqualify a Kohen from serving in the Temple. Since the Temple was a place of beauty and the services that were held in it were designed to inspire visitors to thoughts of repentance and closeness to God, a less than physically perfect Kohen would mar the atmosphere.

These blemishes include:

  1. blindness
  2. lameness
  3. an excessively low nasal bridge (such that a straight brush could apply ointment to both eyes simultaneously)
  4. disproportionate limbs
  5. a crippled foot or hand
  6. cataracts
  7. a white streak that transverses the junction between sclera (white part of the eyeball) and iris
  8. certain types of boils
  9. crushed testicles- That’s got to hurt!

A Kohen who was afflicted with one of these imperfections was held unfit for service. However, should it be a correctable imperfection, he would become eligible for service should the defect be corrected. At any time, he was permitted to eat of the holy food (same source as above, including adjacent verses and commentaries). Kohanim with these blemishes would be assigned to secondary roles in the Temple outside of performing the service itself.

BUT WAIT THERE IS SOME GOOD STUFF!

The twenty-four Kohanic gifts

The Kohanim were compensated for their service role in the Temple through 24 special “priestly gifts.” These were:[13]

Gifts given in the Temple area were portions of:

  1. an animal brought as a sin-offering
  2. a bird brought as a sin-offering
  3. a burnt-offering
  4. an offering for uncertain guilt
  5. a peace offering
  6. the olive oil offering of a metzora
  7. the two loaves of bread brought on Shavuot
  8. the Showbread
  9. the Mincha offerings
  10. the Omer offering

Gifts given within the walls of Jerusalem were:

  1. the firstborn of any domestic kosher animal
  2. the Bikkurim (first fruits)
  3. the inner organs of certain offerings
  4. the skins of certain offerings

Gifts which could be given inside or outside Jerusalem were:

  1. Terumah (a portion of the harvest)
  2. Terumat Ma’aser (a tithe of the Levite’s tithe)
  3. Challah (a portion of dough)
  4. the first shearing of the sheep
  5. the Forleg, Cheeks and Abomasum of all non-sanctified, ritually slaughtered domestic animals
  6. Pidyon haben (five silver shekels for the redemption of a firstborn Israelite son)
  7. a sheep or goat redeemed for a firstborn donkey
  8. a property or possession dedicated to the Temple without specifying to which use it is to be given
  9. inherited fields that were dedicated to the Temple and not reclaimed
  10. the theft repayment to a convert who has died, leaving no heirs.

Toyota Prius. (Image by Gnsin.)

Females, who did not serve in the Tabernacle or the Temple, were permitted to consume and/or derive benefit from some of the 24 priestly gifts. But if a Kohen’s daughter married a man from outside the Kohanic line, she was no longer permitted to benefit from the priestly gifts. Conversely, the daughter of a non-priest who married a Kohen took on the same rights as an unmarried daughter of a Kohen.

In every generation when the Temple was standing, one Kohen would be singled out to perform the functions of Kohen Gadol (High Priest). His primary task was the Yom Kippur service. Other Kohen Gadol unique acts included the offering of a daily meal sacrifice, and the prerogative to supersede any Kohen and offer any offering he chose.

Although the Torah retains a procedure to select a Kohen Gadol when needed, in the absence of the Temple in Jerusalem, there is no Kohen Gadol today.

NOW HERE IS WHERE THINGS GETS TRICKY!!!

Ritual defilement

The Kohanim formed a holy order. For the purpose of protecting them against ritual defilement, the Torah imposed on them the following rules for ritual purity, which are still maintained to a certain degree in Orthodox Judaism.

Kohanim are forbidden to come in contact with dead bodies. They are permitted, however, to become defiled for their closest relatives: father, mother, brother, unmarried sister, and child. Defilement of a Kohen to his wife -although not biblically explicit- is permitted by Rabbinical order.

• A Kohen is forbidden to enter any house or enclosure, in which a dead body (or part therof), may be found.[14 Practical examples of these prohibitions include: not entering a cemetery or attending a funeral; not being under the same roof (i.e. in a home or hospital) as a dismembered organ. The exact rules and regulations of defilement are quite complex, but a cursory rule of thumb is that they may not enter a room with a dead person or come within a few feet of the body. Proximity to the corpse of a non-Jew is less serious and may only be an issue if actual contact is established.

•A male Kohen may not marry a divorcee, a prostitute, a convert, or a dishonored woman (Hebrew “çììä”).[18] A Kohen who enters into such a marriage loses the entitlements of his priestly status while in that marriage. The kohen is not allowed to voluntarily forego his status and marry a woman prohibited to him.[19]

Talmudically, were a Kohen to marry in disregard of the above prohibitions, his marriage would be effective. Children born of the union do not have mamzer status. However, these children are termed Chalal (“disqualified”) and do not possess Kohen status.

The Kohen Gadol may marry a virgin only.

During the period of the Holy Temple, Kohanim were required to abstain from wine and all strong drink before and while performing their priestly duties.

LOOK IF THE MESSIAH COMES IN YOUR TIME…you are in great shape. If PETA isn’t up your butt, you could make a nice living.

Excerpted: “Cary In The Sky With Diamonds,” Vanity Fair (2010)

July 13, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Esther Williams: "I reached up with my boy's large, clumsy hand to touch my right breast and felt my penis stirring."

As universities begin studying the effects and uses of LSD again, Vanity Fair takes a look back at the drug’s origins and its popularity as part of psychotherapy in Hollywood in the late 50s, before Timothy Leary had taken even a single trip. “Cary in the Sky with Diamonds” is an article by Cari Beauchamp and Judy Balaban. The latter is the daughter of Paramount Pictures president Barney Balaban; she not only experimented with the drug herself but has first-hand knowledge of all of the principals involved.

In one passage, swimming great and movie star Esther Williams, who experimented with LSD when she was in her late thirties, recalls the profound and strange effect the drug had on her. Williams believes the experience helped her confront the deep pain and unhappiness she carried with her since her beloved older brother died when she was eight years old. An excerpt:

“Under LSD, Esther saw ‘my father’s face as a ceramic plate. Almost instantly, it splintered into a million tiny pieces, like a windshield when a rock goes through it.’ Then she saw her mother’s face on that terrible day, and ‘all the emotion had drained out of her, and her soft, kindly features had hardened.’

During the session Esther realized—’observing it from a distance as if I were acting in or watching a movie’—that ever since the day her brother had died her life had been consumed by the necessity to replace him in every sense of the word, and “suddenly this little girl was in a race against time to be an adult.”

Does Esther Williams think she has a penis or am I just really high? (Image by Philip H. Bailey.)

Exhausted but calm, Esther left the doctor’s office and returned to her Mandeville Canyon home, where her parents, still emotionally broken by Stanton’s death, were waiting to have dinner with her. She “understood them that night in a profound way, and while I sympathized, I was also sickened by their weakness and their resignation. I saw that they both simply had given up, which, no matter what life had in store for me, was something I could never and would never do.”

But the evening wasn’t over for Esther. After she had said good night to her parents, she went to her bedroom, undressed, and washed. When she looked in the mirror, ‘I was startled by a split image: One half of my face, the right half, was me; the other half was the face of a sixteen-year-old boy. The left side of my upper body was flat and muscular.… I reached up with my boy’s large, clumsy hand to touch my right breast and felt my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm.’ Esther has no recollection of how long she stood there, but there was no question that now ‘I understood perfectly: when Stanton had died, I had taken him into my life so completely that he became a part of me.’”

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Featured Video: “Girl Water Diviner” (1954)

July 13, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A boy water diviner from the early 18th-century.

Water divining or dowsing or water witching is the process by which a human being allegedly uses some divine gift to find where water is located below the earth’s surface. This magical thinking helped folks decide where to dig for wells. It’s hokum, of course, but hokum with a long history. In 1954, a brief newsreel profiled Catherine Bent, a Brit who supposedly was an expert in the field. She believed fully in her “powers,” her body going into wild spasms as she received information about where the H2O was hidden. Watch it here.

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Harvey Pekar, American Original (1939-2010)

July 12, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Harvey Pekar: "I've always been a fiend for one thing or another, either sports or comix or, you know... jazz, different kinds of literature." (Image by Davidkphoto.)

A fond farewell to the dyspeptic and brilliant graphic comics writer and Letterman foil, Harvey Pekar, who passed away in his Cleveland home yesterday at 70. If you’re not familiar with his work, Pekar’s autobiographical writing brought a realism to comics, focusing on his sad-sack life as an Ohio file clerk rather than superheroes. He collaborated with the artist R. Crumb, among others.

If you’ve never seen the excellent movie based on his life, American Splendor, you should definitely check it out. I interviewed the directors, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, right before the film was released, and they are really talented and generous people.

I present you with an excerpt from an interview Pekar did with Walrus Comix (the images on the page are broken, but the Q&A is really good). An excerpt from the section in which Pekar recalls his first meeting with R. Crumb and how he developed his aesthetic:

“So in ’62, Robert Crumb moved to Cleveland from Philadelphia, and he lived about a block and a half from me and he’s the guy that sort of — he and his roommate — hipped me to the underground scene, you know… and he stayed in Cleveland… he worked for the American Greeting Card company for about four years and then I guess he figured he went as far as he could go here and then moved out to San Francisco in the Winter of ‘66 or ’67… But by that time — see I was really into underground comix and I was mainly doing jazz criticism then — I started thinking that comix were generally… you know especially in those days, people looked down on comix, if you said something was like a comic book you know, you were putting it down…. But I saw there was no reason to think that they were intrinsically a limited form… ‘Cause you could choose ANY word that was in the dictionary… You got the same choice of words as SHAKESPEARE… and you got a huge variety of art styles that you could use. Comix are WORDS and PICTURES… WORDS AND PICTURES… you can do ANYTHING with WORDS and PICTURES…

So I just realized that comix at that point had never got beyond the superhero stuff mainly because of the publishers. They were just in it to make a buck and this is what sold and they didn’t want to get away from that formula. Which, I guess, if you’re a businessman and you don’t care about art too much then that’s what you can expect.

So anyway, I started thinking about ways that comix could expand and one thing I thought about was more REALISM… ‘Cause comix never had a realist movement like just about all other art forms had. So I figured if I could do some realistic comix, even if people don’t like ‘em , then maybe I would’ve gained a footnote in history… and so then I thought about doing stuff about the QUOTIDIAN LIFE… you know, ‘every day’ life… because, for one thing, that’s all I knew… I always had a flunky job and lived in these little cramped apartments and was UNRELIEVED at that life.”

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Old Print Article: “A Monkey Wheelman,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1897)

July 12, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Here the monkey sits, dressed in a pair of little red bloomers." (Image by Rob.)

Monkeys had free run of metropolitan areas in the late 19th-century. How else can you explain a newspaper report about a Philadelphia monkey who drank out of fire hydrants and took bicycle rides? This story from the Philadelphia Record was so vital to the continued freedom of our democracy that it was picked up by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and run in the January 24, 1897 issue. An excerpt:

“Not content with having a dog, cat, white rats, rabbits, turtles and other pets, Aleck Munchweiler, a downtown boy, purchased a monkey about two weeks ago. Because of the little animal’s penchant for drinking water from a hydrant, he has been named Spigots. Spigots has developed a mania for cycling. His master has arranged a little seat on the front of the wheel and here the monkey sits, dressed in a pair of little red bloomers.

The queer pair were out on their wheel the other day and attracted much attention. Spigots enjoyed himself hugely, and looked with disdain on the dogs that barked as he rode by. All went well until the wheelmen got as far as Broad and Wharton streets, and there Spigots attempted to stand up in his seat, getting frightened at two vicious looking canines, which were springing up at him. The result was that he fell and had his right foot run over. Aleck took him to a nearby drug store and had the wounded part bandaged with care. Spigots now presents a queer sight, sitting on the front step, with his arm in a sling, and at the sight of a wheel runs into the house crying piteously.”

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    Thank You, HerbalMo@groupexperiment.ru, For The Spam Email You Sent To The Afflictor Inbox

    July 12, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

    Fake boobs. Stay classy, New Orleans. (Image by Howie Luvzus.)

    Natural Breast Enhance !!!

    • Increment of bust size from 30A to 32B
    • Firmer and more toned breasts from 34B to 34C
    • Pinkish nipples and fairer breast skin
    • Menopausal customers experience more vaginal secretion
    • Lesser hot flushes and relief of menstrual symptoms
    • Achieve breast fullness
    • Smoother and tighter breast skin

    VISIT SAIT!

    Featured Video: “Let’s Say That Your Opponent…Walks…Kind Of Funny”

    July 11, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

    I already posted a video by that tool Ryan who created instructional videos about the art of trash talking. But I can’t leave well enough alone. The dipshit made a bunch of clips on different aspects of talking smack, including one where he teaches you how to use physical imitations to humiliate your “opponent.” Watch closely, aspiring actors: This is how young Olivier did it.

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    Listeria: Aliases Of Infamous Con Artists Working In The United States Right Around 1940

    July 10, 2010 in Books, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Three Card Monte. (Image by ZioDave.)

    According to David W. Mauer’s The Big Con.

    • The Big Alabama Kid
    • The Clinic Kid
    • Devil’s Island Eddie
    • Fifth Avenue Fred
    • The High Ass Kid
    • The Honey Grove Kid
    • The Indiana Wonder
    • John Henry Strosnider
    • The Leatherhead Kid
    • Lilly the Roper
    • Little Chappie Lohr
    • Plunk Drucker
    • The Postal Kid
    • Red Lager
    • Slobbering Bob
    • The Square Faced Kid
    • Tear-off Arthur
    • The Yellow Kid Weil

    Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

    July 9, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

    Away from me, you vampire!

    Custom Vampire Fangs / Dental Tooth Flippers/Caps – $69 (Lower East Side)

    We Are One Of The Best and Only Stable And Well known Custom Fang Makers In NYC (Just Ask About “Penguins and Vampires). We Use The Top Of The Line Dental Acrylic (all ADA Approved)and Customize each pair to the customers teeth for the most realistic Fangs that will have your own mother have Nightmares. We Also Make Fake Teeth That Clip in between Your Own teeth or Tooth Caps For Chipped/Broken Teeth.

    Our Shop Has bin around For Over 20 years and Have bin know for its custom Guitar Straps, Leather goods including: S&M Selections That Supply most NYC Fetish Shops. Sub culture T-Shirts. Custom Collectible Brass Knuckles, And Many More Thing That you Would Never Think you Can Have customized.

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    Featured Video: “Your Boyfriend Or Husband Is Having Relations With Your Cousin”

    July 9, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

    This footage, from something called Expert Village, is an apparently sincere how-to video in which a dillweed named Ryan teaches you how to talk trash to your “opponents” and defeat them with your brilliant insults. Never, ever take any advice from this genius or you will be punched repeatedly in the face.

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    “He’s The Booth Who Saved A Lincoln’s Life”

    July 9, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Edwin Booth in his Hamlet costume five years after his brother assassinated Lincoln. (Image by J. Gurney & Son.)

    Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation relates the author’s road trip to those sad places where American political murder has occurred. I think just about everyone knows that Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, came from a famous theatrical family, but Vowell zeroes in on an interesting sidebar: the life and career of the celebrated Shakespearean performer Edwin Booth, the killer’s brother, after the horror of the murder. A passage in which the writer explains to a friend who Edwin was:

    “I tell him how Edwin was known as the Hamlet of his day, how his father, Junius Brutus was the greatest Shakespearean actor in England, until 1821, when he emigrated to Maryland, at which point he became the greatest Shakespearean actor in America; how three of Junius’ s children became actors themselves–Edwin, John Wilkes and Junius Brutus Jr.; how the three brothers appeared onstage together only once, in Julius Caesar here in New York in 1864 as a benefit performance for the Shakespeare statue in Central Park;

    how their performance was interrupted because that was the night that Confederate terrorists set fires in hotels up and down Broadway and Edwin, who was playing Brutus, interrupted the play to reassure the audience; how the next morning Edwin informed John at breakfast that he had voted for Lincoln’s reelection and they got into one of the arguments they were always having about North versus South; how Edwin retired from acting out of shame when he heard his brother was the president’s assassin, but that nine months later, broke, he returned to the stage here in New York, as Hamlet, to a standing ovation; how he bought the house on Gramercy Park South and turned it into the Players Club, a social club for his fellow thespians and others, including Mark Twain and General Sherman; how he built his own theater, the Booth, on Twenty-third and Sixth, where Sarah Bernhardt made her American debut; and how, in the middle of the Civil War, on a train platform in Jersey City, he rescued a young man who had fallen on to the tracks and that man was Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son, so he’s the Booth who saved a Lincoln’s life.”

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    Excerpted: “Welcome To The Slavoj Žižek Show,” Spiegel (2010)

    July 9, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

    "His last wife was an Argentine lingerie model, 30 years his junior." (Image by Andy Miah.)

    A very entertaining douchebag who needs to be smacked with both hands, the Slovenian philosopher and Leftist cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek is the subject of a profile by Philipp Oehmke on the Spiegel website. An excerpt:

    “He gives more than 200 lectures a year and has held visiting professorships at elite American universities. He recently spoke to an audience of 2,000 people in Buenos Aires. He is the subject of two documentary films, and in another film he interprets movies from a psychoanalytical point of view as he speeds across the ocean in a motorboat. There are Žižek T-shirts and Žižek records, and there is a Žižek club and an international Žižek journal.

    His repertoire is a mix of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegel’s idealist philosophy–of film analysis, criticism of democracy, capitalism and ideology, and an occasionally authoritarian Marxism paired with everyday observations. He explains the ontological essence of the Germans, French and Americans on the basis of their toilet habits and the resulting relationship with their fecal matter, and he initially reacts to criticism with a cheerful ‘Fuck you!’–pronounced in hard Slavic consonants. He tells colleagues he values but who advocate theories contrary to his own that they should prepare to enter the gulag when he, Žižek, comes into power. He relishes the shudder that the word gulag elicits.”

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    Old Print Article: “Bears In Terrific Fight In Central Park Zoo,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1902)

    July 8, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Come get some, Garibaldi. (Image by Sakurai Midori.)

    People seriously had nothing to do in New York back in the day, so they would stand around for hours at a zoo and watch a couple of bears beat the crap out of each other. Thankfully, a reporter from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle likewise had nothing better to do and was on hand to file a ridiculously long and unnecessary article for the September 28, 1902 edition. The piece was subtitled, “Rocky, the 960 Pound Grizzly Boss of the Cage, Meets His Equal at Last.” An excerpt:

    “While nearly a 1,000 people cheered and groaned alternately, Garibaldi, a 450 pound cinnamon bear, fought to a standstill a 960 pound grizzly bear called Rocky in the most terrific and bloody fight ever witnessed in the Central Park Zoo yesterday afternoon. The battle was fought on the cliff in the bear cage, and, although, neither one was killed, both were so badly used up that they lay on the ground panting for half an hour.

    Garibaldi is a trained bear, and this fact is probably responsible for the defeat of his heavier rival. He was presented to Director Smith of the zoo a week ago by Joseph Sareix, a wandering Italian showman, who told Mr. Smith that Garibaldi was becoming so ugly in his temperament that he was afraid to keep him longer. Sareix said that the animal had been trained for a number of years and was as agile as Jim Corbett. He knew all the tricks of wrestling and was especially strong. His long confinement had made him ugly and Sareix was afraid the animal might turn on him and kill him.

    Rocky has been in the zoo for some time and has been master of the bear cage. He is an ugly looking brute and has always been considered dangerous. Director Smith feared if the two were put together a fight would ensue, and he concluded to keep Garibaldi in a wooden cage until he got used to the feed and the ways of the keepers in the zoo. So the new bear was put in a cage near the big bear cage and the keepers soon discovered why the Italian showman did not care to keep him any longer. The first day he was put in the cage Garibaldi attempted to force the sides.

    This will be my best story ever for the "Eagle."

    The climax came yesterday morning when keeper Billy Snyder went to feed the cinnamon. He discovered that the bear had gnawed a large hole though the cage and that it would be a question of a only a few hours when it would be large enough for the bear to crawl through and make his escape. Snyder reported the matter at once to Director Smith, and, after a consultation with other keepers, it was decided that the only thing to be done was to put Garibaldi in the big bear cage. It was concluded that the little bear could not kill the big fellow, and if the cinnamon was killed the city would not be at a loss, for the animal was a gift.

    The word was spread rapidly through the park that the bear was to be transferred and that there was liable to be a fight, and a big crowd gathered. The reserves were sent from the Central Park station and the crowd was kept at a distance by a roped line. When all was ready the cage was carted up on top of the hill and Garibaldi was admitted to the big bear cage.

    Rocky had been attracted by the crowd around the cage and the roars of Garibaldi, who tried to resist the efforts of his keepers. He recognized a foe and made ready for his entrance into the cage. The cinnamon didn’t flinch, but waited for the grizzly to approach the top of the cliff and then suddenly springing into action dealt the big fellow a blow on the head. Garibaldi had knocked the chip off the other fellow’s shoulder and the fight was on.

    The terrific growling of the bears served to attract a greater number of people than had witnessed the transfer, and when the battle opened there were nearly a thousand people surrounding the bear cage. Men yelled and cheered the little bear on and women groaned and some cried as blow after blow was struck and the bears clinched. For fully twenty minuted the fight continued, first one, then the other, seeming to have the advantage. When the fight was about half over both animals were covered in blood and the sight was so sickening that the women were forced to go away and dragged their children with them.”

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    Urban Studies: I’d Like A $14 Pack Of Cigarettes And An Inflatable Couch, Please

    July 8, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Notice the “Urban Outfitters” sign below the yellow “Grocery” sign.

    In the Wall Street Journal’s commercial real estate section, Anton Troianovski has an interesting note about the forthcoming Urban Outiftters store set to open at 2629 Broadway (near 100th Street) this fall. Instead of the store’s usual facade, it is going to have four faux storefront facades: bodega, bar, hat store and hardware store.

    A chain store trying to make some sort of ironic comment about the disappearance on Mom & Pop stores in Manhattan depresses me a little, but I have to say that the branding firm Pompei A.D. has done a pretty spectacular job on the facades. (Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing me toward the article.) An excerpt from the WSJ piece:

    “Philadelphia-based retailer Urban Outfitters plans to split the facade of a new store on the Upper West Side into four distinct ‘storefronts’: a hat store, a hardware store, a neighborhood bar and a bodega.

    ‘The whole idea was to do this kind of ironic statement of lining the building with storefronts that would be reminiscent of independent businesses,’ says Ron Pompei, creative director of Pompei A.D., which designed the store, slated to open in August. ‘It’s the story about the streets of New York as they once were.'”

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    Featured Video: The Tallest Man Ever (1930s)

    July 7, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

    Robert Wadlow was an attraction for Ringling Brothers in 1935.

    Robert Pershing Wadlow was born in 1918 in Alton, Illinois, and never stopped growing during his brief life because of a pituitary gland malfunction. The tallest human being in recorded history, Wadlow reached close to nine feet high before his death in 1940. British Pathé made a pair of 35-second newsreels about him, in which he appeared to be a good-natured guy with an artistic side. Watch them here and here.

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    Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

    July 7, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

    Wow, that hurt like a bastard!

    selling bullet proof look alike vest – $75 (Upper West Side)

    selling bullet proof look alike vest. the vest looks like the real deal but its not bullet proof, i has gun holster, clip pockets mase pocket, clips to close the vest. selling for $75 no less text or call only if serious dont waste my time

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    Featured Video: SPFX “Handsome Guy” Mask

    July 6, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

    A company called SPFX Masks makes realistic imitation faces that are creepy and have been used by criminals to commit robberies (though the company undoubtedly does not endorse this behavior). Your definition of “handsome” may vary–wildly!–but it is impressive-looking work in its own bizarre way. (Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing me toward this video.)

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    A North Carolina Billboard That Smells Like Beef

    July 6, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Eat me.

    “Dang, That Billboard Sure Smells Good!” is the title of an AP article that tells the odd story of a grocery chain that has gone the extra mile to advertise a new line of beef. The company has put up a billboard in Mooresville, North Carolina, that uses fragrance oil and fans to spread the smell of beef to passing cars. Vegans will be pleased. An excerpt:

    “It’s not just the picture of beef on a new billboard in North Carolina that tries to catch drivers’ attention, it’s the aroma coming from the sign.

    The billboard on N.C. 150 in central North Carolina emits the smell of black pepper and charcoal to promote a new line of beef available at the Bloom grocery chain. Bloom is part of the Salisbury, N.C.-based Food Lion chain.”

    Old Print Article: “Umbrella Duels,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1895)

    July 6, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Hellcat will stab you in the head.

    According to this asinine article in the July 6. 1894 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Old Timey women were using their umbrellas to beat the snot out of one another. An excerpt:

    “Two or three umbrella duels have occurred in this vicinity of late. Women were the duelists and there were no fatalities. Jealousy and hatred were the inspiring causes of these conflicts and a good deal of skill was exhibited in the use of weapons. We have always believed that when the new woman entered the field of honor she would import into that gory reservation something worthy of her own sweet self. And she has.

    Men may cling to the pistol, the rapier, the saber, the poignard, the Kentucky shot gun, the bowie of Mizzoura, the bolas of the Argentines, the putty blowers of Paris and the cowhide boots of New England. But woman has a more effective instrument in the umbrella. That is, it is more effective when directed against another woman. A bullet merely kills and often does not hurt much. An umbrella on the contrary does not often kill, but it does worse, it scratches and disfigures and with it the appearance of a rival bonnet may be utterly ruined. Every steel rib is devised to catch a ribbon or a piece of lace, or even to impair the bloom on the cheek of innocence or insurance agents. One woman is known to have made a terrible threat of putting her umbrella down the throat of a certain person and opening it, from the outside. Compared with this possibility of punishment the sports of Romans with the early Christians must be regarded as mere amateur cruelties.

    Weapons of mass destruction.

    Still, the umbrella has a good deal to commend itself, as opposed to the pistol. In the first place the pistol is monotonous. The people have tired of it as an implement of the novel and the drama and will be glad to welcome something different. Again, the startling noise that accompanies the use of firearms is avoided by the use of umbrellas. Instead of reports there are only screams and whacks.

    Again, the pistol duel is sometimes conclusive after a single shot; whereas the umbrella duel is a truer test of sincerity in the attacking parties. A person who is convinced that she has right on her side can do prodigies of skill and daring with an umbrella, while, if a pistol had been used, a lucky or unlucky chance might have settled the battle before it had begun. It is hoped that the new woman will continue to employ the umbrella when she has a cause of war with a neighbor. We hope this because if she should take to using pistols it would be the innocent man in the back yard next door but two who would be hurt.”

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    Listeria: 19th-Century Baseball Team Names

    July 6, 2010 in Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

    The 1889 Brooklyn Bridegrooms led the American Association in fancy-looking mustaches.

    According to Baseball-Reference.com. Surviving teams are linked to their modern incarnations.

    • Boston Beaneaters
    • Brooklyn Bridegrooms
    • Cleveland Blues
    • Detroit Wolverines
    • Hartford Dark Blues
    • Kansas City Cowboys
    • Louisville Colonels
    • St. Louis Maroons
    • Troy Trojans
    • Worcester Ruby Legs

    Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

    July 5, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

    What's that thing? Ken doesn't have one of those.

    Adult Talking Toy Doll Flasher – $5 (Coop City)

    “Watch Me Grow ” Adult Talking Toy Doll Flasher

    The Very Dirty Willy

    The “Watch Me Grow ” doll is a sound activated adult toy. It is 9″ inches tall and requires 3 “AA” batteries (not included). When Willy detects sound, he opens up his trench coat, exposes himself, and speaks any one of five possible comments. Comments include:

    • “Oh yeah, I’m hot. I’m ready”
    • “Hey, Hey Hey, I’ve got this big rod”
    • “Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha”
    • “Yeah, super, superman does not need viagra”
    • “That’s why I’m dirty berdy, ha, ha,ha,ha”

    Makes a great gag gift or conversation starter.

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    Featured Video: “The Snob” (1958)

    July 5, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

    James Dean: Who's that tough chick with all the algebra homework?

    It’s 1958 and Sarah’s parents are worried because their teen daughter prefers doing high school math homework to hanging out with her dopey peers. The other kids think she’s stuck-up. But Sara doesn’t care because she’s a rebel–a rebel without a cause! The thing I like about this 13-minute time-warp mental hygiene film is that the James Dean role is played by a girl. And she’ll will beat your ass if you ask her to dance. It wasn’t intended as a movie about a feminist awakening, but that’s how it plays in retrospect.

    Sarah is played by Vera Stough, who is excellent as the distaff Dean. It was directed by Herk Harvey, who four years later made the horror classic Carnival of Souls. Watch “The Snob” here.

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    Science/Tech: “I Have The Pattern, The Risky Pattern. In A Sense, I’m A Born Killer.”

    July 5, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

    "Cousin Lizzie" was acquitted of murdering her parents in 1893.

    What if you’re a neuroscientist who’s been studying the brains of violent psychopaths for 20 years and then you find out your brain and genetics are just like theirs? That’s the situation UC Irvine professor Jim Fallon found himself in after an offhand remark made by a great-grandmother led him to look into his own family’s historical predisposition for violence. Even spookier than finding out that he is a relative of Lizzie Borden, Fallon discovered that his brain activity and genes are identical to that of vicious criminals. Only a happy, loving childhood may have saved him from his natural tendencies.

    Fallon’s story is told by Barbara Bradley Hagerty in “A Neuroscientist Uncovers a Dark Secret,” part of an NPR series about brain science and criminology. (Thanks to A&L Daily for pointing me in the direction of this piece.) An excerpt:

    “Jim Fallon says he had a terrific childhood; he was doted on by his parents and had loving relationships with his brothers and sisters and entire extended family. Significantly, he says this journey through his brain has changed the way he thinks about nature and nurture. He once believed that genes and brain function could determine everything about us. But now he thinks his childhood may have made all the difference.

    ‘We’ll never know, but the way these patterns are looking in general population, had I been abused, we might not be sitting here today,’ he says.”

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    Gleaned: David W. Mauer’s The Big Con

    July 5, 2010 in Books, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Stop fishing through the garbage for books about con artists, stupid Afflictor.

    I gleaned a really nice book this morning just two brownstones away from my apartment. It’s a copy of The Big Con by David W. Mauer. The author was a linguist and academic with a taste for the raffish. In this book, originally published in 1940, he catalogued the lexicon of cons spoken by Americans with names like Slobbering Bob, The Hash House Kid and Lilly the Roper.

    The classic, which was reissued in 1999, had somehow gone out of print for quite a while. The great Luc Sante wrote an intro for the new edition, in which he pointed out that Mauer studied “carnies, junkies, safe-crackers, forgers, pot smokers, faro-bank players, shell-game hustlers, race-track touts, pickpockets, moonshiners, prostitutes, and pimps, but his interest in the language of confidence men was a case apart.”

    I think con men get too much of the glory. You can’t run a proper confidence game without a good pigeon. So I present an excerpt from a chapter called “The Mark”:

    “People who read of good con touches in the newspaper are often wont to remark: ‘That bird must be stupid to fall for a game like that. Why, anybody should have known better than to do what he did…’ In other words, there is a widespread feeling among legitimate folk that anyone who is the victim of a confidence game is a numskull.

    But it should not be assumed that the victims of confidence games are all blockheads. Very much to the contrary, the higher a mark’s intelligence, the quicker he sees through the deal to his own advantage. To expect a mark to enter into a con game, take the bait, and then, by sheer reason, analyze the situation and see it as a swindle is simply asking too much. The mark is thrown into an unreal world which very closely resembles real life, like the spectator regarding the life groups in a museum of natural history, he cannot tell where the real scene merges into the background.”

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