philly

Above is a photo of some acrylic scrubber sponge thingies my grandma knit. While I was staying at my parents' house over Christmas, my mom gave me the two to take back home. She said that they're the next big thing in the Korean grocery stores (Han Ah Rheum and H-Mart) these days and sell for $3 a pop or so. Apparently they're supposed to be bacteria resistant so very good to use as sponges/scrubbers for dishes. My grandma's quite the wiz with yarn.

I got a call Friday afternoon from my mom about my grandma. She told me she was sick. People get sick. But my grandma's 96 years old. She's seen war first hand. She's seen her homeland torn apart. She left a lot of her family behind. She's still very active and only recently started using a cane.

But I guess she's feeling pretty weak right now. My mom wants me to come home on Monday to see her. She's never asked me to do anything like this before. It might be the last time I see her. My mom said that if it's really looking bad, my grandma's going to go back to Korea. She didn't say "before it's too late" or "to die there" but I knew what she meant.

Here's a shot of my grandma a few months ago at her 96th birthday party just before we blew out the candles. The iMac is video Skyping my cousins [her grandchildren] from Korea who are teaching english for the next year.

Here's a shot of my grandma with my cousin and my mom standing in front of her garden in May. The lettuce greens were coming up nicely at that point.

It'll be an unexpected trip back up to NY, but what are you gonna do. I'll find out what time I should be headed back in the morning.

I went on another stroll around town with Andi for the Philadelphia Grid Project we're a part of. For December 2008 and January 2009, the grid is a dense one basically covering the area west of Broad St from Girard Ave to Washington Ave and a little bit of the western shore of the Schuylkill.

The shot above and the lead shot are from around 22xx Washington Ave, I don't remember exactly. There's this large warehouse with huge wonderful dirty windows behind iron lattice caging which just screams to a person with a camera.

A few blocks down on 22nd St between Ellsworth and Federal is a gem which I haven't seen in 2 years - the Keith Haring mural adorning the wall of a slim neighborhood park. What a beauty.

We hopped into the AndiCab and rolled up to Francisville by Girard College. Just steps from Andi's parked car was this low rider parked on the sidewalk.

Around the corner was Twins Detail shop - a car detailing shop run out of a very tidy garage. The twins didn't want their photo taken, but were more than happy to let us walk around their shop and take shots of the immaculate workspace.

A nice square of 36 images in this flickr set.

I took my first walking tour of Port Richmond 2 weeks ago. I had driven through Port Richmond before, but never walked through it at any point of my 5 years here in Philly (so much more Philly to walk through too!). I went out with my friend Andi to shoot last month's Philadelphia Grid Project assignment.

Above is a shot of someone's dashboard. It had about a dozen hardcover books on the dashboard. Weird.

Here's a flickr set of 26 shots from the couple of hours we spent walking in the area bounded by Aramingo Ave and Richmond St and Allegheny Ave and Indiana Ave. That area is so Polish that many of the stores don't have a speck of English in their signage. Cool spot.

Hey I got a photo published in the Philadelphia Inquirer! Photo credit and all. It's a picture of us. To go along with an article on the ongoing series of food blogger potlucks (this was #5).

The Inky's Rick Nichols came by the potluck (with some delicious baked ricotta and provalone cheeses from Claudio's, a crazy Italian dessert and vino) to meet the gang. Apparently, he was also working on a story. Unfortunately, the story was primarily a print journalism thing so URLs took up a lot of space (but they are all correct - first thing I did was check them all when I saw the online version - just double checked and noticed e's blog Foodaphilia's link is broken so she gets a double mention here: go here for good stuff!) and there wasn't enough room for all the fun quotes from everyone at the potluck.

Philly's got such an incredible food scene in all corners of the city. From the physical eateries to the paid reviewers to us: the lovers of food who pay someimtes ungodly sums of money for the food we love; scour the city to find the best deals on Heath toffee bars (if we can find them at all!); try dishes from every lunch cart in the line to keep things new; spend hours in the kitchen trying to get that recipe you saw online just right; sweat in the summer baking goods in the oven for friends you care about; gorge yourself with just one more bite because you must. I'm glad the dead tree people of old media are getting interested in what the rest of us are doing for little to no pay - certainly without an expense account.

But it should be noted that some of the Philly gang are getting monetarily rewarded for their passion, expertise and excellent prose: Marisa, one half of the on-screen duo that makes up Fork You! is the lead blogger over at Slashfood; David of Philafoodie is an instructor at The Wine School on Fairmount and a restaurant critic for The City Paper and Dynise of The Urban Vegan has an urban cookbook coming out in late 2009 to name a few of the success stories.

Philly's food scene is the shit. And we've got 60+ foodie blogs to prove it with new ones popping up quicker than we can keep track of and subscribe to. Take a look at this [growing] list!

• 1 Wine Dude
• A Food Coma
• An Equal Opportunity Eater
• Beer Lass
• blogalicious
• Burning Pasta
• BYOB Map
• Challaman's Bread Blog
• Chicken-Fried Caviar
• City Joints
• Classic Wines
• CP: Meal Ticket
• Dish + Bitch
• Eatin' Good in the Hood
• Farm to Philly
• Farofa and French Fries
• Finding Philly
• Five Spice Duck
• Foobooz
• Food Country Restaurant Reviews
• food enthusiast
• Food Nerd
• Foodaphila
• foodzings
• Fork You
• fries with that shake
• Gastronomy Philly
• Gruel Omlet
• Holly Eats
• I'll Eat You
• Illadates
• John & Lisa are Eating in South Jersey
• Lavender Sky
• Le Petit Cochon
• Living on the Vedge
• Lyle's Guide
• Mac & Cheese Review
• McDuff's Food & Wine Trail
• Menupages Philadelphia
• Menutopia: Philly
• Minor Gourmandry
• Mutual Menu
• no counterspace
• Oh Kitchen What Won't You Do?
• Philadining
• Philadining - Quickies
• PhilaFoodie
• Philly Food and Drink
• Philly Food Guys
• PhillyCooksLocal
• PhillyEats
• Refined Sugar
• Robert's Market Report
• Spilt Wine and Sticky Rice
• StellaLand
• Straight from the Farm
• The Great Cheese Quest
• The Onion-Bean
• The Plastic Bowl
• The Real Potato
• The Student Stomach
• The Urban Vegan
• Trav's Gone Gluten-Free
• TV Food Fan
• Veggicurious
• when words fail
• Wild Thyme Kitchen

Lady forwarded me a story from Philly.com a couple of days ago that really made me sad. My heart has grown somewhat numb over the years as a result of many things - a general tough skin needed to survive; heartbreak; betrayal; cynicism; shortcomings of those I once respected. It wasn't a story about a death or idiocy by the current administration or fuckup by SEPTA. It was the announcement that my favorite bookstore, Robin's Bookstore is closing its doors for good.

I've been shopping there since I moved to Philly 5+ years ago. I love that place. That place is not just a brick and mortar warehouse schlepping books off at discount prices and then ripping the covers off of books that don't sell and trashing them instead of giving the books to charity. Robin's has a heart. It has a face (or several if you take the time to look at the beautiful mosaic outside). The store creaks. The shelves bend. The aisles are narrow. The owner smiles.

I was very sad when their Rittenhouse location closed. I was worried when I saw the sign in the window of the 13th St location advertising the children's section up for rent a couple months ago. I hated to think of somebody moving in there and the kid's books shoved in a corner, not for lack of care, but for lack of space. I feared the worst would come next, but I, for once, was silently optimistic. I really thought Robin's would pull through this shitty time. During this perfect storm of downturn-turned-recession, big box store and internet sales. But it won't.

I wanted to purchase Zoe Strauss's book [America] there, but they ran out so I bought it in person at her book signing. I dread having to walk into B&N to purchase a book when the time comes. I know there are still a few indy bookstores in town, but Robin's was my indy bookstore of choice.

I'll be taking a stroll through the first aisle in the days to come and remember the fun I had in there going through magazines and odd books. The readings and showings I went to. The cut-in-half playing cards they'd give me for my collection of bags I'd drop off at the counter. It'll be lights out 3 days before my 29th birthday, what a shitty gift. Get there before January 31st. Say goodbye to Robin's Books.

I've had my trusty Motorola Q for about 2 years now and it was dying. The battery wouldn't last a day, the phone would just freeze up, the phone would turn off at random times throughout the day and it took way too long to start up. Time for a new phone… I wasn't about to leave Verizon Wireless while still living on the East Coast. I wanted a smartphone. I didn't want a Treo (with it's stupid stub antenna). I wanted a physical QWERY keyboard. I didn't want to spend much money (heh). I really wanted a Blackberry. So I got the Curve (pictured above).

The Curve just happened to fit all categories. With the $50 VZW credit for renewing my 2-year contract and the Curve carrying a $70 rebate and VZW picking up my bill for 2 months (their final offer to get me to renew my contract), I came out ahead a good deal in the end and got the phone for free. Ever since I got it 3 weeks ago, it's been outstanding. The device itself feels nice and the sound quality is great. It's a breeze to use and many times better than my old Q which never had the oomph to do everything I wanted it to do (but it did hold up pretty well over 2 years). The keyboard is wonderful, but it took a few days to get used to since I was so used to the keyboard positioning of the Q, but now, I'm a pro. Personalizing the BB was quite easy. I uploaded the same .wav of Jimi Hendrix's 'Voodoo Chile' I've been using for the last 3 years or so and adjusted my profile to use it as my ringtone. I cropped a photo of City Hall I took a little while back and uploaded that too and set it as my home screen - it fits nicely into the 'L' theme of my homepage as you can see above. I've downloaded a ton of apps [all free]. Let me briefly go over them below (I have an unlimited data plan)…

Weatherbug sits prominently on my homescreen broadcasting the current weather. It's nice to take a quick look at it in the morning and see what's what. Another couple of clicks and I have the full forecast and details for the day.

Twitterberry is a wonderful mobile twitter app. I think it keeps the last 175 or so of the most recent updates in its cache which is great because I can't possibly keep up with it all in real time (although I've tried). Very easy shortcuts to [r]eply, [d]irect message from the timeline. They list an option to post photos, via TwitPic directly from the photo viewer to twitter, but I can't. Instead, I simply email a photo to my special TwitPic account.

Google Mobile - I've installed Maps, Gmail and Sync. With VZW, the GPS feature is nixed so no über cool Maps integration, but still pretty awesome and fast. Street view works like a charm. Gmail is nice, but I use the built in BB email. I fire up the dedicated app if I need to * a conversation. Sync is awesome, sort of. Google originally just had calendar sync which is awesome. I love how it works. It automatically syncs whenever a change happens on either end (handset or web) and every 2 hours. To have reminders pop up on your phone while you're entering a new event via web, you just select the 'pop up' choice. Google recently added in a contacts sync. Unfortunately, this one is a little clunkier and I don't use it. It doesn't help that my contact list is a bit all over the place, but the way the contacts are sorted during the sync doesn't work for me. Syncing my contacts via MS Office works best for me.

Windows Live Search is a pretty sweet app. You stick in your city and it remembers it when you search for maps, directions, traffic, movies and weather. I find the movie search particularly cool. You can browse by theater or movie title and it'll pull up all kinds of information like times, phone numbers, addresses, directions, even how much the movie has grossed to date. If you look up a business, you can even add it to your address book in one click - an annoying "added by Live Search" shows up in the 'Notes' field, but can easily be deleted.

Opera Mini is something I use when sites don't show up quite right in the BB Browser. The BB Browser is fine for most things though and I can't set Opera Mini as the default browser to launch links anyways. One cool thing about Opera Mini is that it can sync bookmarks with your Opera account. This was helpful in initially adding bookmarks to my BB. I've heard of some sites not working with the BB Browser period, but so far have only come across sites that don't render well yet render well in Opera.

Instant messaging is a strong point for BB too. I use Gtalk and AIM apps on my phone. Don't have any friends using BB's that I know of so my my BB Messenger's buddy list is empty for now. Both IM apps I have installed work quite well. Chats are easy to keep track of and the Gtalk conversations are archived in my Gmail account as usual.

Flickr is an app I use just about daily to post quick mobile photos on the go. The application can resize photos on the fly and add to sets. I've set up this set to store all my mobile photos. I've found that the app can hang if I'm uploading the full sized files so I normally just set the size to 'medium' and get 500px wide photos. If I want to upload the full photo, I just email the whole thing to my special Flickr email upload address.

With the new Blackberry OS 4.5 released, I get a now free app: Documents to Go. It allows me to open and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Can't create them on this version, but I have no need to do so. I might have the need to open files emailed to me though making this a handy [and free] app. Also coming with the new OS is HTML email which was previously a pay app and the ability to stream live video via the browser on YouTube [recently showed a co-worker the Alanis 'Humps' parody video on my phone].

And now for some apps that don't get much use just yet and some convenient bookmarks-apps…
Tellme is a funky search application you use by speaking what you want. Directions, maps, business lookup, movies, sports scores, weather… You first enter in your city and then just hold down the talk/send button and talk. Release the button and it starts up its voice recognition algorithm and spits out an answer. It's usually pretty quick and fairly accurate. The UI, once the search results come in, is cool. You can get directions or a map via Live Search or call the number listed with the press of a button. You can purchase movie tickets via Fandango from the movie lookup. If you'd like a more conventional lookup, you can just type in what you want in the search field at the bottom too.

Qik is a livestreaming video service you use from your phone. It sounds pretty awesome and if I could get this thing to work properly on my phone, it would be awesome. Apparently there are some known bugs and the Qik team is trying to sort them out. I've received twitter replies for help from their staff and forwarded them the logfile from my phone. When it finally works, my videos will be up here. For now, the videos seem to record fine, but they don't upload at all or just 1 second of the clip.

Viigo is basically a feature rich and categorized RSS reader for your phone. v3.0 is currently in Beta and still has some holes in it. I prefer using the mobile version of Google Reader for my RSS needs, but I'll be keeping an eye on this app.

As far as bookmark-apps go, I have links to NYTimes, ESPN, WashingtonPost, CNN and LATimes for quick links to their website front pages without having to fire up my browser and scroll through a list of bookmarks. It's handy and cuts a few clicks.

If anyone's got questions, let me know, I'll try to answer them. I'm a big fan of the Curve. The only thing that isn't so hot so far is the IMAP with my Gmail accounts doesn't mark email as read on the web. No idea how this feature is on Enterprise Servers though. I got a scratch on the screen in under 24 hours too. No fault of the BB though. I had it out of it's free holster/case thingy floating in my pocket with a bunch of stuff during a day long photoshoot and it got scratched. Such is life.

Why I don't want an iPhone: no likey touchscreen keyboard, no likey non-VZW, no copy and paste?!, no MMS?!, annoying headphone jack, no user-replaceable battery, no memory upgrade. Why I do want an iPhone: the 2-finger pinch thing is bad ass, cool apps!, SIM, true GPS. Why I don't want a G1 Android: seems on the clunky side, 1st generation bugs, non-VZW. Why I do want a G1: Google phone!, SIM, GPS.

I've had the distinct pleasure to know the great Zoe Strauss for the last 4 years or so. Watching her style evolve and mature has been a pleasure to see in real time courtesy of her flickr account with 4k+ photos uploaded to date. Her I-95 shows are the coolest serial installation I've ever heard of. Walking through an area larger than a football field of photos is indescribable. And now, this - a book! And a book signing?! At the Quaker City String Band Mummer HQ on 2 St!

Published via AMMO BOOKS (buy it here), the book is a tight edit of her work over the last 8 years (she's only been taking photos for 8 years!). Flipping through it, emotions roll with each 2-up spread.

But getting back to the signing. I headed down with Lady, Andi and Addie. We met a whole host of friends too - Brad, Jill and her hubby, Mike and Kaela and a bunch of other familiar faces in the crowd. There was free pizza and Lager as promised (awesome!). And there were books and $5 prints for sale. We got there early and got our pick. Above is Zoe signing my book to me and Lady.

It's fun to describe the feeling of all of Zoe's events - there's a sense of jubilation, pride and community. This girl knows everyone by first name no matter how many times she's met them. Addie actually bumped into Zoe and Lynn on Black Friday down in South Philly for the first time; she was greeted with a big hug, typical Zoe. Everyone was all smiles.

And one final shot of us with Zoe giving us the "did these fools pay for that one?" look. Some more pics here.

It's a Zoe world, we're just passing through it. Congrats to you Zoe. Thank you for recording the beauty everyone else overlooks.

I won't be able to go to next week's Great Expectations Big Canvas Confab (Saturday December 6, 1p - 4p) at the Radisson Valley Forge Hotel and Convention Center [gotta do other work], but I urge anyone who's interested in Arts and Culture in the region/state to take the trip. I've been attending these events for the last year and change (most recently at Swarthmore) and have had a great time at every single one. I've met some wonderful and thoughtful people who are really interested in what's going on in SEPA.

Take a look at The Inquirer's Chris Satullo's column from earlier this month, posted here, talking about the big Confab.

The Big Canvas is an initiative of the Great Expectations civic project, begun last year by The Inquirer and the University of Pennsylvania for the city elections.

At this event, we'll gather arts and civic leaders, elected officials, and ordinary folks. We'll report, based on earlier forums, on the core principles for a regional arts strategy that seem to hit citizens' sweet spot, and on the specific ideas that excite them.

Then everyone will sit down together to discuss ways to turn this input into meaningful action.

Pennsylvania's first lady, U.S. District Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, a driving force for the arts in Philadelphia, will offer the keynote address.

There will be rides provided by the Philly Van Go trolley from Philly leaving at 11.45a at The Rotunda (40/Walnut) and Logan Circle (18/Parkway by The Four Seasons). Call 215.854.5956 to sign up for a ride. You'll need to register for the event as well by going to this website - they gotta know how many people to expect, right?

I'm sad I won't be there, but I'm looking forward to the reports afterward which will be up on the Great Expectations blog.

So Lady got some bad news yesterday: she'll very likely be getting laid off and very soon. It's not a matter of the bad economy, it's a matter of poor budget management of a very large grant.

Who knows where she'll be able to find a secure job, in a field she's devoted her time and energy to for the last 4 years, with benefits, that treats her like a human being. She's got a nice Master's degree from Temple in Mass Media and has been working with leaders in her field for the last year and a half. Anybody in need of a smart, problem solving, published, media literacy maven? Leave a comment here or over at her blog post.

But for now, a bit of belt tightening on our end for the next little while. No more delicious double smoked hickory bacon, no more shooting film (but just got one last roll of Neopan 1600 developed and will be posting it here), no more eating out, turning the thermostat down a little bit, canceling TV/home phone from Comcast…

Luckily, I work at a Fair Food Foundation and get a discount on delicious, local food so our general eating habits won't be taking a turn for the worst. And my photography biz is finally picking up a good amount of steam lately so the blow to our combined income is rough, but not as rough as it would've been 6 months ago.

But on the bright side, maybe a little bit of time off will be good though. Recharging of the batteries and all. We've got a lovely living situation and Lady's gym membership is paid for the next year so she'll be housed and in shape! Perhaps even more so with more time to go to the gym. She'll have more time to do things she wants to do and fix up some delicious meals she's been wanting to prepare for the colder months ahead.

It's not the end of the world. Lady's already got some leads here and there from her network of friends and co-workers, but it can't help to ask some more people for leads, eh? Let us know if you hear of anything.

I shot a roll of Fuji Neopan Acros 100, a black and white film emulsion which was supposed to be very sharp. I found it to be incredibly sharp, almost digitally so. It still had that analog feel to it, but it was just so much sharper and finer in grain than any other film I've shot with. Above is the first shot I took with my [now dead] Yashica Electro 35 GSN rangefinder camera. I was on the corner of 11/Filbert St where there's usually a good photo to be made by the odd sculpture installation on the SW corner of the intersection. This day didn't let me down.

The tonality of the film was very nice. I very much liked the contrast which was enhanced by the crispness of the film. I got my film processed/scanned at Philadephia Photographics [10/Arch]. To see the full set of photos I took, check out this flickr set.

Sadly, the camera died when I was almost done with the roll. It seems like the circuits may have fried. And somehow, the little red and yellow indicator lights on the top plate of the camera have disappeared. I at no point dropped the camera while out shooting that day. Weird. Now it's a fixed shutter, at 1/500s, rangefinder. Sending it to Georgia to Mark Hama for repair is out of the question right now, but maybe down the line. For now, I'll be shooting 35mm with my Nikon F3 and FE2. And I'll be buying more Acros 100 in the future for those cameras. Right now, I have a ton of Fujicolor NPH, a roll of Neopan 1600, Superia 1600 and 2 rolls of Tri-X in the fridge.