[dovate.com] » 2007 » October
Sometime in the early to mid-1980’s the Toynbee tiler made a trip to Brazil, Argentia and Chile, laying tiles in Rio, Buenos Aires and Santiago. These were the tiles that made a lot of people stop and take the mystery seriously. There’s something about an international mystery that’s a lot more intriguing than one restricted to the northern and eastern United States.
The fact that the Santiago tile contained a Philadelphia address… the only clue known of their origins for years, only made the mystery that much more interesting.
A couple days ago, these pictures and videos appeared from sunny Buenos Aires. It’s great to see that at least a couple of the tiles are still around.
For months I’ve wanted to go to the little Korean shack out at 69th street. For avid readers of this site, you’ll remember my description of little white shack as one of the best Korean restaurants in the Philly area.
It’s an extremely nondescript building found wedged the middle of a parking lot out in the middle of a trolley turnaround a couple blocks past 69th and Market. I’ve been told that the name of the restaurant is Pojangmacha. I don’t really know how to pronounce it and have no idea what it means. All I know is that Pojangmacha has some of the nicest owners and best pajeon (seafood pancake) I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
The restaurant itself has half a dozen booths and a diner style counter with the kitchen behind it. Everything is made to order by the owner and her husband. They have a liquor license and stay open late. The owner speaks very little English, and I speak no Korean, but she’s extremely warm and surprisingly communicative with a few words and a lot of gesturing. This helps, because all signage and the carved wood menus are all in Korean.
But sadly, Pojangmacha is no more.
After months of craving I finally went for dinner a few Saturday’s ago. It was great as usual and my girlfriend was loving it as much as I was. Just as I was settling into the happy thought that I’d be enjoying many more meals there, the owner came to the table and announced that after 17 years, it was their last night in business.
My old co-worker, who introduced me to the restaurant and was well aware of its impending demise was sitting at a table behind me. It was his 4th visit in 8 days. When we caught up a few days later, he told me that they were shutting down because of this redevelopment plan:
See that green space? That’s where one of the best Korean restaurants in the tri-state area used to be. After the announcement, the meal got a little depressing. I still gorged myself, but damn. It got even worse when a very large man appeared and started yelling in his cell phone about the place still being open and how they were supposed to have left the night before. He said something to the owner about changing the locks on Wednesday, paced around for a while and disappeared out the door.
At the time, the fat man became a Disney-style villain. I thought that maybe he owned the parking lot and was forcing the couple out so that he could add a few more parking spaces or build some crappy condos.
Later I learned that he was a local councilman, instrumental in keeping them open as long as he could. So he wasn’t so bad after all. But unfortunately, as long as he could was weeks ago. The owner mentioned some loose plans about opening a spot in center city. If they ever do, they’ll blow the competition out of the water. Here’s hoping.
So yesterday afternoon I was enjoying a nice walk home from Reading Terminal when I hear a woman screaming. She’s not screaming for help, but she’s definitely in distress. At 13th and Filbert, this is what I see:
A minivan. In the passenger side is a kid, maybe 10. In the drivers seat is the screaming woman. Outside the car is a sweater wearing man banging on the window, pulling on the door and generally trying to get into the car with what appears to be uncontrolled rage. The woman is scared, very scared.
I stand there for a second mulling my options.
1. Confront the man and try to diffuse the situation. I decide that although this woman may be in immediate danger, this isn’t my best option. I feel kind of bad being such a pussy, but I don’t really want to get into a fight with an extremely mad and unpredictable lunatic. The woman knows this guy and she’s obviously terrified of him. I take that as a character assessment and think of my other options.
2. Call 911. I decide that this would waste time. Why?
3. The courthouse is right there and it’s always teeming with cops. I decide to go flush one out. I go over to the courthouse, but it’s Sunday and it’s shut tight. Damn. The woman is still screaming and the man is madder than ever. He’s gotten the door open, or she’s opened the door. He’s leaning into the car, but it doesn’t look like he’s punching or stabbing or anything. If anything, it looks like he’s hugging her, but the woman is still screaming and scared. I feel bad for the kid. I jog up the street and see a cop. He’s walking quickly towards me and when I stop him he tells me he’s already on his way. I continue on my walk. I hope the woman and the kid are ok, but I doubt they are.
So this afternoon I’m locking my bike up in front of Photolounge on Chestnut Street. A man walks up to me. This is out conversation:
“Excuse me, do you know where Breakaway Bikes is?”
“Yeah, it’s a couple doors up… just…”
“Yeah.” The man says with a free and easy tone, “that man just collapsed.”
Up the street, next to the bike shop he’s looking for is a large man lying motionless on the sidewalk. A small crowd is mingling around him. One person sort of pokes at him. Out of all the cell phones on all the ears of all the people in center city, no one milling about the apparently dead man is making a call.
“umh… it’s just past that man lying on the ground.”
“Thanks!”
The bike store guy jogs away and I call 911. Then I head into Photolounge. By the time I get out of the store, a fire truck is there and the ambulance is half a block away. I hope that man is OK. I think he’s the doorman at the apartment next to the State store.
On October 25 of the year 2000 I wrote this product review for the “Ouija Board” for epinions.com:
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If the dead want to talk, let them come to YOU
Oct 25 ‘00
Pros
good for contacting the dead
Cons
the dead will bore you to death
It’s about time for my favorite holiday, Halloween. I figured I should review something a little freaky. What’s better than the good old fashioned Ouija board?
The first time I used the Ouija board, it was me, my girlfriend and my uncle Teddy. I was about 15 at the time. These days Teddy’s upstate for boinking kids on a Cambodian vacation, but back then he lived in Burlington County NJ. All in all, he was the creepiest part of the night. Dimming the lights and lighting some candles, Teddy broke out the Army of Darkness edition of the Necronomicon and asked to speak with some dead people. Sure enough, some spirit began moving around the little pointer thing. We were all pretty excited, talking to the dead and all. Uncle Teddy had gotten us pretty liquored up with some Southern Comfort. We asked the name of the dead person and he said “Todd.”
That’s when we knew it was going to be a boring night. “Todd” went on and on about how he used to be alive. It took him forever to write out anything. He couldn’t even spell worth a damn. Turns out Todd was a single, shoe salesman who hung himself at age of 32 right in my bedroom! That was sort of interesting, but the fascination soon faded. Todd went on to spell out the words “died a verjan.” We supposed he meant “virgin.” My girlfriend told him she wasn’t surprised and Todd got angry. He tried to blow out the candles, but they just sort of flickered. We laughed and taunted him a while and eventually he left. It was an all around disappointment.
A few years later, me and some friends were bored. I had since moved out of the “Todd” house. It was 3 in the morning and all the bars were closed. We’d been drinking Southern Comfort again, (weird) and smoking opium. After a confused conversation, my friends and I decided that we were sharing hallucinations. All of us kept seeing little men running around under the recliner. Curious as to the nature of these little people, we decided to initiate contact via the Ouija board. We had no luck. The little men weren’t interested in us. Either that or we were just imagining them. We decided to go another route. We got one of my cats and put him near the recliner. Since cats are mystical creatures, we thought he could guide us. But the cat just licked himself and wandered over to the water dish.
At that point we decided we were just imagining things. In a last ditch effort my friend Stephan picked up the Ouija board and folded it up. Creeping over to the recliner he smacked the board down, right on top of one of the little men. He was all squashed and bloody, but you could see his little man hat and his little man pants. He looked like a tiny garden gnome. His little man beard was all stained with blood. My friend felt so bad for killing the little man that he started to cry, asking the other little men for forgiveness. But the other little men had already fled in fear. The next day, the corpse of the little man had turned into a dead cockroach. I gave it to my cat and he ate it.
Recently I took out the Ouija board again. I figured it had to be good for some entertainment. Again I was with friends and again we were drinking Southern Comfort, (I swear to you all, I never drink the stuff. It’s just one of those weird coincidences.) One of my friends got up to vomit in the bathroom. He came back white as a ghost. I asked if he was all right and he said that he was. He told us that he saw a fat woman lying face down in the bathtub. When he walked in he said she turned to look at him. Just as she turned, the SoCo made it’s return to the world and he hunched over to vomit. By the time he finished, the woman was gone.
“Weird.” The rest of us said in unison.
Incited and intrigued, we decided to get to the bottom of it. We took the Ouija board into the bathroom, wiped up the spatterings of sweet peach vomit with some balled up toilet paper and sat in a circle by the tub. We asked to speak with the woman. I’ll spare you the details of this encounter, but the woman was even more boring than Todd. She spent her earthly days watching daytime television and collecting disability. Then she asked us for plot updates on the Young and the Restless. Eventually we discovered that she had drowned in the tub after slipping on a bar of soap. The drain – clogged with matted balls of hair – had pooled around her feet and she died in 3 inches of dirty, oily water. This had been right before I moved in. I remembered pulling clumps of hair from the drain and shuddered in disgust.
The Ouija board is a good tool to contact the dead. But do you really want to? The dead are rarely more fascinating than the living. And on top of that, they usually haven’t talked to anyone for a very long time. They go on and on, trapping you with their stupid, irrelevant stories. The novelty of talking to a dead person wears off real quick.
The bullet has been bitten and the Canon 5D is here with me now. While the U.S. rebates I mentioned last week didn’t affect the camera itself, the 5D has plummeted in price over the past few weeks. On October 1, Calumet… aka the really big camera store that all other Philly stores lock their pricing to, listed the 5D at around $3000. That was about standard nationwide.
Today, reputable, trustworthy, non-gray-market retailers are selling the 5D for $2200. Are they clearing stock for the 5D Mark II or some 5D sequel camera? I don’t care and neither do many 5D owners. The camera is and will remain to be solid.
In the past month I’ve been fortunate enough to have made nearly enough money with photography to cover a huge majority of the cost. For me, it was a really good month. In my quest to become a full-time photographer, reinvestment of earnings into upgraded gear is a completely justifiable expense.
When the camera arrived, I took it out to the South Street bridge to shoot some of the street art that lines the footbridge. After just a few shots, here’s my review:
The camera feels like the 20D and looks like its older sibling. Bigger body, bigger LCD screen, more ISO settings and a much bigger sensor. Almost all the buttons, functions and controls are identical and there’s very little learning curve switching from one to the other.
The difference comes when you lift it to your eye. For all you DSLR users out there, imagine a 24mm lens actually looking like 24mm. No crop means 24mm = wide angle. This kicks ass.
Then I hit the shutter.
A problem I had with the 20D was shutter noise. I shoot a lot of dance and a lot of dance has a lot of quiet moments that I want to shoot. But there was always the problem of the big [CLICK] in the middle of that silent, beautiful moment. I hated that and usually waited to take my shots when the music and/or sound was loud enough to drown out my shutter.
The 5D is… well it’s more like the Nikon’s I’ve heard snapping away all these years. Very quiet.
And now for the important part.
Review of IMG_0001
This was set at ISO 100, f/5, 1/80th of a second, (real) 24mm.
First the bad… or at least the imperfect:
Full frame cameras are known for vignetting, or light fall off at the edges of the frame, especially when shot wide open. At f/5, you can still see it in the corners. Still though, it’s easy to correct if I need to, I don’t care about it THAT much most of the time and it’s still a hell of a lot better than my slower 17-85 on the 20D.
Lens Distortion: The image is slightly distorted. Again, let me repeat that it’s still a hell of a lot better than my slower 17-85 on the 20D.
Color: Out of the box factory settings here and the sky is a little off. This will take more than a few dozen photos before I can form a solid opinion.
That’s all for the bad. Now here’s the good:
Everything else: but especially…
Noise/Detail: OK. On the 20D, I’d take a shot. Like all digital cameras, when you zoom in, the quality degrades, the image breaks down, you see nothing but speckles and digital fuzz. Even taken in the best conditions, 100% crops often looked frustratingly… shitty. Here’s a really, really unscientific comparison, but it will give you some idea.
First the 20D:
and a detail crop of pilot man there:
And for comparison, here’s IMG_0001 and a detail crop:
crop:
I think that about speaks for itself. For now, I’ve gotta get some photo-work done. I’d really love that 16-35.
For months I’ve heard about the amazing Indian food in Edison, NJ and for months I’ve wanted to go. But a trip to north Jersey for a single meal? The idea sat in the back of my mind never making it to the top of the list of things to do.
Then a few weeks ago, this post appeared on the Toynbee tile myspace page. (Yes the tiles have a myspace page)
there is an ‘original’ style tile located on a u-turn for the menlo park mall. rt. 1 edison nj. i havent seen this on any lists. i have been sleeping on getting a good photo of it. just throwing it out there.
With 2 solid reasons to go to Edison, the trip was on. Armed only with these scant few lines, a google map and the promise of the best Indian food in North America, we set off for New Jersey.
I assumed that the tile was somewhere in one of those left turn from the right lane New Jersey style ramps. At the Menlo Park mall, there were 2 of them. Frustratingly, the first and most obvious ramp was in the middle of a tile destroying repaving project. The first ramp came and went with no tile.
Then the second ramp passed without a sighting. I was disappointed, but my tile sense remained active. At the Molly Pitcher rest area on the Jersey Turnpike I once spotted a tile fragment by sheer will. I had the inexplicable feeling that something was at that rest stop and using this sense, I found it.
With the second turnaround falling behind, a flash of yellow caught my eye at the intersection of Parsonage and Lafayette. There it was! We pulled over and I took some photos.
What we have is a classic original style Toynbee tile in excellent condition. The tile is actually identical to the Molly Pitcher tile in size and coloration and was probably part of the same run. Here are the photos:
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And for comparison, here’s the tile at the Molly Pitcher Rest Area. Notice the identical color pattern. The hand is Justin Duerr’s:
And finally, the Indian food was as good as promised. Did you know that Edison has huge south Asian population? They do and the food is great. Go with someone that can order and/or explain the menu to you and the trip is well worth it. That’s all for now.
I’ve always wondered why the figure in Jacques Lipchitz’s Kelly Drive sculpture, The Spirit of Enterprise has such an enormous penis. I mean look at it. It’s fucking huge. It’s so big that an eagle landed on it. It’s a disability more than anything.
This isn’t the spirit of enterprise, it’s a portrait of a man who sits on his giant balls all day collecting social security. That man is unemployable. I feel sorry for him.
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If you like bird and nature photography, take a look at the work of Jim Neiger. Here are some of his Bald Eagle photos. When asked if they were ’staged’ in photoshop, he wrote:
These are natural images of wild Bald Eagles in the wild. Most of the images were made in Homer, AK where Jean Keene (the famous “Eagle Lady”) feeds the eagles every winter. She has been feeding the Eagles for over 25 years and they now congregate there by the hundreds in winter. There is alot of fast and furious action as the eagles compete for the food. The city of Homer has recently banned eagle feeding, but they made an exception for Jean thru the year 2010.
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What do Charles, Darwin, Carl Sagan, L. Ron Hubbard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the 9-11 terrorists all have in common? Not much, but all are targets of a Reading Terminal area street prophet:
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Word on the Canon forum is that with the rumored release of the 5D Mark II early next year, Canon will be looking to reduce stock of the 5D this winter.
Rumor is the recent price drop to $2299, will be coupled with a DOUBLE rebate on Monday the 15th. That would bring the price of the 5D body to $1699… or well under the 5D < $2000 or price point I’ve been waiting on for more than 2 years. If this is true, I will soon be the proud owner of a Canon 5D.
Fingers crossed.
This has been stuck in my head for weeks. It’s funny how thoroughly the internet has changed the primary definition of the word ’scat.’
So it’s Almost mid-October and I haven’t posted last months search awards. What can I say, I’m busy. Here are last months most amusing search hits:
30. homemade groundhog killers
29. the federalist papers 15 problems
28. skeleton pegasus
27. blogs girls mating pictures
26. the medieval social pyramid
25. different types of golems
24. brett favre out of the closet
23. best website for crack whores
22. chimp clans
21. fbi name check piece of crap
20. humans are pawns
19. friends saw flat chest
18. what part of vagina is broken when it fucked first time
17. strange street signs found all of philadelphia new jersey venus
16. eating frozen cum
15. paranormal object vagina covered with hair
14. toynbee idea spreads across the world
13. what is the meaning of a hawk’s visit to my window
12. licking human deceased bodies
11. seaworld’s commitment to mother earth
10. abstract cop
9. colon cleanse on 2nd in market phila
8. is licking anus harmful?
7. piss drinking indigestion
6. how to stop mastrubating yourself
5. silicon slimy thing washed up on beach
4. yearly deaths from spoons
3. high definition pumpkins
2. cyborg citizens 666
1. shakespeare schwarzenegger
A couple weeks ago I finally saw Penny Suit Man.
Penny Suit Man is one of Philly’s more elusive street characters. Like the Toynbee tiler, Mister James the El-Prophet*, the elderly lady at 12th and Market that dresses like a school girl and smears lipstick across her face, Sign Guy**, Jesus is White guy, the Zulu Warrior and many others, Penny Suit man is one small piece of what makes this city so beautifully fucked up.
For some reason, most of these characters are generally hemmed in by 8th and Broad, Sansom and Arch. Spotted at one of those mosaic benches near 12th and Filbert, Penny Suit Man fit the mold.
But what is Penny Suit Man?
Very simply, he wears an armored suit made of pennies. It looks like a normal fabric suit, with thousands and thousands of coins glued to it. His shoes are enormous, with a 3 or 4 inches of armor attached. They must weigh 10 pounds each.
While passing by, I was filled with glee. I’d heard of him but had never actually seen him. He sat alone, shimmering in the streetlights like some southern gentleman wearing a suit made out of pennies. I tried to catch his eye and send some kind of non-verbal acknowledgment to all his hard work, but he was too busy staring at my girlfriend with a disquieting focus of sexual rage. Penny Suit Man might have a cool suit, but he’s also a little weird… and kind of frightening.
notes:
*Mister James sticks religious notes in schedule holders on the Market Frankford line. Double-sided and written in magic marker, the notes include notable quotes like: “Some rich + educated Humans are partakers with Satans own who goes around stealing killing poor folks that sleep walk in these filthy, nasty, smelly, dirty, fowl, gross, diseased, germed filled, cursed, lousy, unjust, uncooth, odd, weird, grotesk, repugnant, devil infested streets.” Here’s a scan of one of Mister James’s notes, scanned by Justin Duerr:
**Sign Guy stays West of Broad, generally in the vicinity of 17th and Chestnut. I saw him last week at 20th and Market as he worked a large sign into his cap. Here’s a photo of sign guy taken by Albert Yee:
Several days ago, a Storm Trooper was spotted in Rittenhouse Square. This evening I saw these guys. (They agreed to have their photo taken) Does anyone know what this is about? I don’t want to miss this.
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This afternoon I bought a turkey sandwich from Salumeria in Reading Terminal. House sauce, with everything. It was great.
I handed over a $20 and got about $30-70 change. I didn’t notice until I went to buy a crab cake for dinner and saw that the $10 they gave me was a 1950A, $10 bill in absolutely great condition. While it would be smart to keep it for a few years, I may just head down to the coinshop at 18th and Chestnut and see what they want to give me for it. A few minutes of internet research says it’s in the $25-$65 range, depending on condition. It looks good to me, but I have no idea if it makes the CU cut.
Due to a ton of work over the next few weeks, I won’t be posting so much. In the meantime, please enjoy some photos from last Friday taken at Hawk Mountain in Kempton, PA.
If you’ve never been, here’s the scene:
A couple dozen people (on a non-weekend day) sit on the open face of a small PA mountain in Berks county and watch the raptors fly by. When a bird is spotted, someone calls it out and we all watch it come over the mountain. Workers and interns from the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary watch and record each bird.
Over 3 some hours on Friday we saw, 4 bald eagles a half dozen osprey, several red-tail and broad wing hawks, a harrier or 2, merlins, kestrels and a peregrine falcon, a raven, some turkey/black vultures and about 100 sharp shinned hawks.
I had my 300mm lens on all day… which is the bare minimum length for bird photography. Here are a few photos:
The Mountain:
Broad Winged Hawks:
Sharp Shinned Hawks:
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Turkey Vulture:
Bald Eagle:
just before sunset:
