fluid when shaken, stirred or otherwise disturbed

thong tongs

from the met food on vanderbilt avenue (thanks marketa for passing it on)

posted by thixotropic @ 10:34 AM 0 comments

r.i.p.: jane jacobs

Jane Jacobs, quite possibly one of the most influential urban planners ever, passed away today in toronto today.

she is locally famous for stopping an expressway from being built through lower manhattan by robert moses. in her great book the death and life of great american cities she presents a critique of urban renewal, advocating walking scaled, mixed use and mixed income neighborhoods as the key to successful cities. in more recent history, it has almost been a year since she spoke out against the then-just-planned rezoning of williamsburg.

oh and one more thing. she was a canadian, of course.

cities:canada

posted by thixotropic @ 10:38 PM 0 comments

hipster infestations

no, i'm not talking about the state of the neighborhood even with all the glass curtain wall buildings sprouting up everywhere and the rapid disappearances of entire warehouses.

i'm actually referring to a very funny article that takes the hipster handbook a step further - its a step-by-step guide on how to rid yourself of a hipster infestation, specifically using music as the tool:

There are two approaches to smoking them out musically:

1. Play non-hip music, and play it very loudly. Remember, hipsters all have iPod Nanos, so it’s going to have to be extremely ear-shattering to overpower the sonic armor of Death Cab for Cutie. Recommended selections include anything by Kenny Rogers or Green Day, or Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief (hipsters generally agree that this is when Radiohead sold out). Really, any popular, major-label artist will do the trick.

2. Play music they enjoy, such as Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah!, the National, or Monorchid. These recordings may prove a bit harder to find, however, so there’s always the “the” band theory: the Strokes, the Faint, the Hives, the Killers, the Vines, the Bravery, et al. are usually considered deck by hipsters, despite their popular major-label status. (Note: “the The,” however, will NOT work using approach number two. See approach number one.)

via tmn

Talk about salt in the wounds - first my favorite band ever since june 2001 sells out of the bowery ballroom in under three days before i could get tickets, and now, well, turns out they are also an effective hipster attractant. Pffft.

music:culture

posted by thixotropic @ 10:10 PM 1 comments

homosexual necrophilia is natural

clearly, i am working way too hard trying to get published. And this is the paper that helped me come to this realization:

The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae) as published in DEINSEA - annual of the natural history museum rotterdam.

Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard (in full adult plumage without any visible traces of moult) was present (Fig. 2a). He forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head (Fig. 2b).

And if anyone has this book, one of the paper's major references, i would love to borrow it :-P

sexuality:ducks

posted by thixotropic @ 6:14 PM 0 comments

claim to fame

marketa puts it best.

independent verification to happen sometime next week.

posted by thixotropic @ 11:34 PM 0 comments

fear and flying

so now that i finally get around to unpacking from my trip to lake tahoe, i find a little piece of paper in my snowboard bag that wasn't there before:

To protect you and your fellow passengers, Covenant Aviation Security (CAS) is required by law to inspect all checked baggage. CAS is a private company under contract with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to provide baggage and passenger screening at San Francisco International Airport.

Covenant Aviation Security? are you kidding me? next thing will be a mandatory prayer prior to takeoff. and of course, it's super reassuring to find out they were accused of cheating on a test that won them the contract. fun!

And yes, it is still snowing back in the sierra nevada - notably at my favourite mountain where 195.7 inches of snow fell in march alone. riding in crotch deep powder was incredibly hard work which was okay because falling was really more like sinking into a big pile of pillows.

planes:snow

posted by thixotropic @ 10:23 PM 0 comments

drinking locally... kinda

so freddy's bar and back room has been a fixture in the brooklyn music scene for a while now, and it's been one of my favorite bars ever since i first went there for the old-time jam - a musicians' gathering where the only rule is that the song played shall be more than fifty years old. Freddy's has been very active in the fight against the Atlantic Yards project, where Bruce Ratner proposes to build towers as tall as the williamsburg bank building, which has long been the signature profile in the downtown brooklyn skyline. if you google map the building's location, you can see how tall the building is in the satellite photo (alternatively, download this awesome KMZ file for Google Earth which gives you a 3D visualization of the project). Ratner proposes several towers at least as tall as the bank building itself. the basic issue is that the community does not what huge skyscrapers taking over their neighborhood. having seen this first hand in a number of contexts - williamsburg and shanghai - i don't really blame them.

but, back to the bar. i've long been a fan of the brooklyn brewery, it being based in my neighborhood - pro-local business, etc etc etc. well, it turns out that the brewery's president supports the Ratner project, so

Freddy’s Bar & Backroom removed their Brooklyn Lager tap last night —- after it sold its last pint of the brew — and replaced it with Canada’s Labatt Blue. But the bar is keeping the neon “Brooklyn Lager” sign in the window — now covered by a red plastic circle and a slash.

via metro

Labatt Blue! That's the beer of my far north childhood (think fake ids and carefully planned Beer Store expeditions), with hysterical ads that only a canadian would know about.

bars:development

posted by thixotropic @ 7:28 PM 0 comments