My bad

Found today while walking to work

Today in Photos: Miss Pussycat, primary colors

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

Nom Wah Tea Parlor is downtown on Doyers Street, but don't let the sign fool you, it's really a dim sum den. Great signage, typography, and use of the word "parlor."

Williamsburg's answer to Mardi Gras

I am walking down the street in Brooklyn on a softly spitting Ash Wednesday morning and looking down at a sidewalk that greets me with this, an adamant pile of rocks calling out:

So maybe some kid just dumped his fishbowl in the gutter. Or maybe, somehow, the world is woven with invisible threads tying people to cities, to hours.

Somewhere, sometime, Wynton Marsalis said that in New Orleans culture doesn't come down from on high, that it bubbles up from the streets.

Playboy at the bike shop

So today I go into the bike shop to get my bike fixed for the katrillionth time this week, and lo and behold, there was a gentleman in his 80s who started chatting me up (this is the kind of luck I'm having with guys lately). He pulled several interesting things out of his pockets to show me (including a Viagra keychain with two grimy old pills inside, just in case), but here he's showing off a picture of Hugh Hefner flanked by a bunch of playmates, only Hef's face has been replaced with a photo of himself.

After telling me a bunch of dirty jokes, he said he had to go run an errand for his wife.

Complicated Life

New Orleans at its best: a bike ride on a hot day to the accompaniment of swelling horns and little kids swinging from lampposts. Yeah, you right.

Reason #832 to love Brooklyn

Looking out of one's window in the morning to be presented with this glorious tableau: three of my neighbors put a TV on the sidewalk to simultaneously watch a show and wash a car (note ShopVac to the left). Amazing.