Category: Before

Samantha Storey has an article on sticker art in Sunday’s New York Times: Download, Peel and Stick, and All the World’s a Gallery

Some of the photos in the story are mine. So, you know, . . . rock on.

• A barista pours a leaf pattern in the top of a latte, panicking briefly near the end, and her coworkers cheer her.
• A couple sitting at a table next to mine are talking with a realtor about an apartment in my building.
• It dawns on me that the work I’d set out to do is more complicated than I’d thought it would be.
• I’m distracted from work when I rediscover instant messenger.
• To my surprise, Samantha slips in beside me with her coffee.
• A woman screams at the baristas, “How can I be homophobic? I’m a lesbian myself!”
• I close my laptop, Samantha is finishing the last several pages of her book, so I read a few pages of mine.
• I wander over to the front and get a glass of water.
• The barista and a police officer are filling out a trespassing complaint against the woman who’d made the scene earlier.
• Two children play on an old Mac in the back corner. Music erupts occasionally from their computer’s tinny speakers.
• Samantha finishes her coffee and the last page of Swann’s Way, and I ask her how it was. She says that Proust was very interested in recording all his memories. I mention that the book I was reading is about recalling memories, and I remark that its writer, wrote the most recent English translation of Swann’s Way.

Here’s an overview of recent sightings in the ongoing street sticker watch.

There are hand drawn monkey faces and bug faces up on parking signs around Capitol Hill. I tend to think that they fit The Bald Man‘s M.O.

Boing Boing linked indirectly to the LibraryLookup bookmarklet. LibraryLookup allows users to find and reserve a book on many public library’s sites from an Amazon.com book detail page or another book site. But it can easily be adapted to check any number of book sites – libraries or booksellers – against each other.

Here are a couple of ideas:

• Check BookFinder: This bookmarklet loads the BookFinder.com search page for a book. BookFinder runs searches on a dozen separate bookseller listing sites and aggregates them together into one listing. It’s one of the best bookseller sites and the first place I check when I’m looking for an out of print book.
• Big Cash for Jeff: This version isn’t very helpful. It launches an Amazon.com detail page with my Amazon Associates ID attached to it. I’d get a small kickback for referring someone who used this bookmarklet and bought something from Amazon. (Don’t use it. This one is silly.)

To use the LibraryLaunch bookmarklet or one of these variations, drag the link to your bookmark folder or bookmark bar, visit a book site, and click on the bookmark you created. Your mileage may vary. (The first book site has to use the book’s ISBN in its URL, though they doesn’t seem to work when I try launching them from the Seattle Public Library site

Update 9/29: Librarian.net linked to two other LibraryLookup variations.

• The Worldcat/Goodle Bookmarklet will load the book’s page at Worldcat. WorldCat checks the inventory of nearby libraries based on a zip code.
• The xISBN Bookmarklet checks the xISBN database for other editions of a book and includes them in the library search. The other bookmarklets mentioned here are limited to searching for one edition of a book. For example, if a user was viewing the Amazon detail page of a paperback copy of a book, the other bookmarklets would miss a hardcover editon of the same book. Unfortunately, the xISBN Bookmarklet doesn’t work in Safari.

I was gathering together another batch of sticker art photos and it sort of turned into a collection of Cold K photos.

Update: The Stranger published a short interview with the main Cold K artist. They also tagged their cover: “I used to live in the Central District, and one night when my girl and I were out on a walk, we saw a man get murdered. When I told the police, they wouldn’t even listen to me.”

Emptied store fronts with temporarily exposed structural elements and forgotten layers of drywall and paint…

This was a Chinese Restaurant (the one mentioned here) on Fourth Avenue.

There was a nicely dressed man hanging around the church hall as I walked up to the door. He asked me, “Fulfilling your democratic duty?”

I nodded, “That’s right,” and I stopped to take some photos of the church entrance.

Another man, who was obviously a transient, walked up toward the entrance.

The first man told him, “Lunch is in the back this week.” (A community lunch for the homeless is served at the church every Tuesday afternoon.)

“What?”

“The community lunch is in the back of the hall this week. They’re voting in front, so we’re serving lunch around back. You can enter over there.” He pointed around the side of the building.

“Oh, right.” The homeless man shuffled across the lawn toward the back door.

Presumably the man at the door recognized the other man from past lunches and could assume that was why he was there. But why couldn’t he have been there for both lunch and voting? Lunch was being served almost every time that I’ve voted there, and I’ve never considered the apparent lack of overlap between those who were there to eat and those were there to vote.

This weekend I ended up at a baseball game with Samantha, Cat, and Cat’s friend Sameer. The Mariners lost to the Red Sox 8-0. Reagan was president the last time I went to a Mariners game. They lost that game too. Am I bad luck or what?

Oil leaks and antifreeze spills from months or years of parked cars burn a low spot into the middle of a parking space at the Washington Mutual parking lot, and a sparrow sips day-old rainwater from a shallow puddle that’s formed there.

The miniature replica of George W. Bush’s cowboy hat is in the mail, on its way to its new owner. The final bidder paid $26, and that was immediately donated to MoveOn.org. Thank you to everyone who bid. I hope to see Bush wearing that cowboy hat again soon… when he rides into the sunset on Inauguration Day.

Register to vote.