corner of 60 Street and 37 Avenue in Woodside, there’s this Wonder Hostess Thriftshop warehouse. the yellow sign on the right side of the building says ‘Wednesday “Bargin”‘ with the W missing. Too bad I took this photo on a Sunday, although I don’t think the bargin thriftshop is still around. this is Queens - Queens is weird!
Unbelievable. Truly. I grew up not far from where this photo was taken, and can’t say I ever saw this many people piled into the downtown St. Louis area. Bob Dole’s visit during 1996 for his failed presidential bid drew both supporters AND protesters, and still numbered less than half of what the Wall Street Journal writes is an estimated 100,000 people. Given the city has less than 400,000 residents, and the metro area less than 3mil, and that St. Louis carries a lot of weight in Missouri’s electoral votes, let’s hope this is a sign that things really can, and will, change. To put it in another perspective, I seriously doubt that if McCain and Palin both were to campaign in St. Louis they could draw anything like this at an outdoor rally. Heck they might even draw more criticism from non-pro-America Americans than they would supporters. Wankers.
(My only criticism is the WSJ article is incorrect in labeling Missouri a “typically red state”. Missouri voted blue 14 times versus voting red 12 times in the previous centry; it voted blue as recently as ‘92 and ‘96 - and for the last 10 general elections has voted with the eventual winner, one of the few states to consistently maintain such credentials.)
The ‘Bee’ is a computer that was presented at October’s Dorkbot hosted at Location One, a NYC area non-profit.
The Bee’s homepage of sorts describes the machine as thus:
The ‘Bee’ is a mobile communication system developed by the Innovations Unit in UNICEF’s Division of Communication. The Bee will allow communication, connectivity and data access in field conditions where such technologies are often difficult or impossible to use.
Essentially a computer built into a weather-proofed case that can be taken to areas around the world otherwise lacking information access points or which have recently been devestated by natural or man-made disasters. Further into layman’s terms, basically a bunch of dorks being really innovative and inspiring, building computers for purposes and conditions often overlooked or not understood by most Western countries. An example given was compiling a localized version of the English-language Wikipedia - sans images - for deployment into regions of Africa that lack books and other educational tools. I forget the voltage and power consumption of the unit, but I think it was said it could run off of 4 AA batteries (6 volts) for approximately 2 hours. So a kiosk with the computer installed, and an accompanying solar panel could theoretically power the unit indefinitely.
The “ecosystem” refers to not only the operating system - running Ubuntu Linux - but also the physical construction of the unit, which was designed to be able to be constructed from off-the-shelf hardware elements, so that no matter where the “Bee” was located in the world, one should be able to replace or upgrade a physical component without the need to order from a specific proprietary hardware source
The Unicef dorks in action. The Bee is currently powered up, running off of its internal battery, and the Ubuntu desktop (Hardy Heron) can be recognized.
The keyboard layout and mouse interface. (no F-keys, something they were going to hope to upgrade with future prototypes)
someone pretend-typing, to demonstrate a sense of scale.
The Unicef dork about to fold the Bee into a piece of luggage.
All that remains is the lid.
Keep a lookout for this thing making headlines in the coming months, as while it is definitely not a direct competitor to the OLPC XO-1 laptop and its mission, it is capable of overtaking it in other capacities.
sent in via Shalin. thanks!
a little research reveals it is from this artist. (and was posted on Eyebeam’s reBlog some months back)
Last week I went to Mitsuwa, a Japanese marketplace with a number of stores across the country, including one in Edgewater, New Jersey. A $3 bus from the NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal will take you there, but you have to know where to get off and walk across a parking lot. I went with my friend Angie, who grew up near there for a few years and so knew what bus to take, where to depart, and what we were about to see (although admitted it had been around 5 years since she’s been here).
If you ever spent time outside of any super-dense urban center in America, then you probably have some association with Mitsuwa’s setup. A big food court with some adjacent stores, some weird shops owned by lonely men with exotic hobbies, a bakery or two, and a grocery to top things off, with an expensive restaurant near this mini-mall of sorts. Mitsuwa’s difference of course being that it’s a strictly Japanese and Asian styled market, so you’ll find tempura instead of french fries; ramen instead of pizza; green tea instead of coffee. If you’ve ever traveled to Asia, you’ll recognize the clash, or rather mutual combination, of east and west approaches:
The Food Court
Everything is displayed and decided based on visual layout and aesthetics. You can see what you’re about to eat, and it’s coated in a type of resin that gives it all a glossy seduction - it’s hard to not want to eat here!
The Grocery
is I’d estimate 90% imported goods from mostly Japan, but also South Korea and a few other Asian countries. I only recognized one-half aisle of cold refrigerated goods from Western sources, and these were overpriced since they were, given the context, exotic. There were palettes of rice; a seaweed aisle; Asian candies; a Pocky section; over 30 types of mushrooms; strange fruits; some really delicious Japanese iced coffees; very few butchered meats and many many types of seafood; and so-on.
manga hair dye aisle (this one’s for you Cassie!)
they even have a seaweed aisle! wow!
The bookstore
golf books section, complete with 3d model! They even had golf manga. Really strange adaptation of a Western sport, apparently it’s a big seller!
The place
is actually much larger than my images make it out to appear. The foodcourt could easily seat 300 people; the grocery is a full-size supermarket, as big as any Costco, Dierbergs, or Jewel-Osco as you might find throughout other parts of the country; there’s a full-size bookstore; a nick-nack store; a dinnerware store (lots of kettles, chopsticks, soup bowls, etc.); et cetera et cetera et cetera. From the back of the Mitsuwa marketplace there’s a really great view of the Upper West Side of Manhattan including some buildings I’ve never seen before, as they are otherwise masked by some obstruction - a taller building, some density of trees.
The view
of Manhattan from New Jersey, heading back into the city.
this one passed me by actually. Like the Giglio in Brooklyn, this is something I’m going to have to write down now, scribble into my just-acquired 2009 day planner, in the hopes I’ll forward-think about forward-drinking and remember to attend this next year, as it could be an absolute delight. Of course I hope the “festival” is larger than these three or four tables, but even then I’d be satisfied with sampling up to 20 different ales in an evening!
from the 2nd Manhattan Cask Ale Festival! their website is straight outta 1998, sans doctype and all! I love it! And I love ale even more!
image care of Honky275, a random Flickr user I encountered who takes some really wonderful food images!
