As clarified in the comments, the dog statues are Paparazzi Dogs which have apparently travelled the world. They just arrived in Dumbo:
A cheeky play on the ever-present photographers shooting the iconic and picturesque streets of DUMBO and the equally present population of neighborhood dogs, DUMBO makes for an ideal location for this playful art.
They are for sale, $30K each…
There is a very small subset of the population who can identify this show. But to that subset it’s obvious. I’m not in the subset, but I was there last night.
Guess in the comments…
My 13 year old fell asleep after school and my 9 year old is hanging out in her room. I’ve been playing the Amazon Prime “Miles to Go: A Jazz Roadtrip” playlist for almost two hours…
I’m an Android guy, but I’m also a cookie monster fan…
Note the letter and number of the day at the end…
The World Press Photo 2016 winners. A great summary is here. Each one is amazing.
Demonstrations in Paris against terrorism. This got second place in the spot news category.
Sports single image, second place.
Daily life single image, second place. Indigenous Munduruku children play in the Tapajos river. Where did that top kid come from?
Nature single image, first place.A massive “cloud tsunami” looms over Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, as a sunbather reads, oblivious to the approaching cloud.
Nature single image, third place: Colima Volcano during a powerful night explosion.
Nature stories, first place. Where exactly was the photographer?
There are a ton more, all awesome. Check them out.
Some change anyway. The owner of the most popular Middle Eastern Import store in the neighborhood is retiring after 51 years.
One of Atlantic Avenue’s longest-standing businesses, Sahadi’s has grown to three storefronts, offering more than 250 cheese varieties and a counter of house-made Middle Eastern eats, among some 5,000 other globally imported products. Colorful jars containing familiar and foreign nuts, candies and other sweets bring an old-school appeal to the shop, which is beloved by locals old and new.
We have friends who moved from Brooklyn who basically demand we bring the spicy hummus from Sahadi’s if we visit. I’m munching on pumpkin seeds from one of those jars as I type this.
Thankfully his kids have no big changes planned:
“Very little change will be visible to the customers, because the customers are happy,” Christine told the Observer, noting that visible differences will likely end at a new coat of paint.
The place is a Brooklyn institution…
Reposting the best remake of one of my favorite Bowie songs..
The Amazon Echo/Alexa is great for Christmas music mixes. But regardless of how you play it, there’s still one album that beats all others.
If you have Amazon Prime, you can stream it for free….
The kids like this one (all acapella)…
About 20 years ago I read a story about an American couple in Japan. They wanted to go from one city to another and went to a travel agent. They asked how much the flight cost. The travel agent said the train is much cheaper. They said they wanted to fly. The travel agent said the train was very scenic. They said they wanted to fly. The travel agent said the train was very fast. The couple got frustrated and walked out.
They later learned there was no flight between the two cities.
This highlighted a key element of Japanese culture that Americans do not get. The Japanese do not like to say no. Anyone with any clue of Japanese culture would have realized that the travel agent was doing his best to say, “dude, there’s no flight, take the train”.
It would have helped me if I had read that story a few years early. I spent 9 months in Japan in the early nineties with Ringling Brothers. We were in Osaka, where English speakers (at least back then) were not so common. I had found a place to get a haircut with a young guy who spoke some English. When you work with the circus, days off are few and far between so one there was one day I needed to get a haircut. The place was quiet with only one woman working there. She didn’t speak English. I did the universal two finger sign language for haircut. She didn’t seem to understand. Being American, I simply tried again. She waved me into a barber chair and cut my hair.
It was a total butcher job. I had to go back to the place the next day and get my regular guy to fix it (resulting in the shortest haircut of my life).
If you are paying attention, you’ve probably figured out what happened. She wasn’t a barber. The place was closed and she was cleaning. But she couldn’t say no to me.
I haven’t thought of this story in many years, but today I walked into my regular barber shop, which is primarily Russian. And when I sat down and explained my very simple haircut, she looked confused and called out in Russian.
Thankfully, she was really a barber and her boss clarified what I said. My haircut was fine…
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 