Spanish Popeye describes a loophole in New York City law regulating the adult-entertainment industry. The law permits a business to operate outside adult-entertainment zones if at least 60 percent of its merchandize is not X-rated. The Times explains that the term is a coinage of Robert Sacklow, a buildings inspector who once found eighteen thousand copies of Popeye cartoons dubbed into Spanish, in a sex shop with “only” twelve thousand porn videos.
From the monthly archives:
September 2004
Jennifer and I are shacking up, starting this weekend. We’ve spent the last week painting and packing and freaking out. Blargh.
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Thanks to the world’s best girlfriend, the 25th-anniversary edition of London Calling has arrived, as an early birthday present. I’m listening to the Vanilla Tapes now, and if I have time between boxes later, I’ll pop in the DVD. Yes, Nagl, the U.S. release has the video stuff. Yay!
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Leave it to Metafilter to remind me how old I am. It was 20 years ago that the original Robin, Dick Grayson, gave up that identity to become Nightwing.
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For those who think they know the streets of New York City like the back of their hand, think again. For those who don’t know how to get around Gotham, here’s a chance to get to know the city in all its glory. New York: The Photo Atlas combines exquisite aerial photography and detailed street atlas maps to provide a truly unique perspective of the city — high above the concrete. The breadth of the area covered is stunning: All five boroughs are included, as well as several New York and New Jersey suburbs. Trace your bike route, find your apartment building, or take in the sights without leaving your living room. Even if you don’t know New York well, you will find this book fascinating.
The New York Times discussed the book yesterday, calling it “remarkable in its intimacy and its breadth.” The article goes on to discuss the book’s inception and the way it reveals otherwise-unseen elements of the city, such as a biplane on a building’s roof or the hidden backyards of New York neighborhoods.
I have serious lust for this book.
Tuesday is Leonard Cohen’s seventieth birthday, and in his honor: Seventy things you probably don’t know about him
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Here’s a blogger who found a camera’s memory card in a taxi. With no way to ID the card’s owner, he’s posting the photos on a weblog, and commenting on them as if he were the owner. It’s a funny look at the banality of personal photography.
[via The Morning News]
The group who built the secret cinema-restaurant-bar complex underneath Paris has met with the Guardian reporter who broke the story.
Huddled round a table in an anonymous Latin Quarter bar, the group’s members - of whom only Lazar wanted to be named - relate past exploits: rock concerts for up to 4,000 people in old underground quarries; 2am projections in a locked film theatre; art and photo exhibitions in supposedly sealed-off subterranean galleries.
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The Daily News reports this morning that the MTA is backing away from a full ban on subway photography. The ban, thought to be unenforceable, was proposed a few months as a security measure designed to help prevent terrorists from gathering information on the city’s infrastructure. But the proposed ban was blasted by civil libertarians and transit fans, and now it seems the MTA and the NYPD are working toward a narrower restriction against “sensitive areas” of the system such as equipment rooms and underwater tunnels.
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