Brace yourself for breathtakingly belated coverage from San Francisco SantaCon 2003. Yet another conference hits the City by the Bay.
I finally joined the 21st Century and set up a live photoblog: http://www.cheesebikini.com/cam.
Technically my phonecam belongs to its manufacturer, Nokia. But it's mine for the semester.
(Definitions: A phonecam is a mobile phone with a camera built in. A live photoblog, also called a "moblog," is a site where snapshots from a phonecam appear live as they're taken in the field; the photographer can update the site using nothing but a phonecam.)
The phonecam I'm babysitting is a Nokia 3650; it can capture still photos, audio and short video segments, and it can send this content to any e-mail address. With a little messing around, you can use this to build a photoblog.
I'm working on a project for Nokia at Berkeley; we're developing applications for these phonecams and creating metadata frameworks that we hope will make it easier for regular people to create, annotate, retrieve, share and work with photos and video. Here are details of the project.
UPDATE: Our Senior Manhattan Correspondent David Danzig made a video of the mob. It's a 5.5 Megabyte download; get it here. David badly needs help serving up the video. If you have a little extra bandwidth and server space and you wouldn't mind mirroring the file, please contact David (david [at] danzig.com).
The fourth New York City flash mob headed to a hoity-toity fancy-pants SoHo shoe store, where participants pretended they were on a bus tour from Maryland, and acted excited yet bewildered about the whole thing.
For more great photos, visit Satan's Laundromat and moistandtasty.com and Happy Robot. For more details about this flash mob, see David Danzig's description. Bravo, New York.
Were you there? Post links to your coverage in the comments below.
At least 150 flash mobbers spun in circles this evening while crossing busy Market Street in San Francisco. They spun and crossed over and over again, back and forth, until the flash mob suddenly disappeared, 10 minutes after it began.
More photos here. Post links to your coverage in the comments below!
The Manhattan flash mobs keep growing. Above are photos from the third flash mob held in New York, courtesy of fredhoysted.com (top photo) and satanslaundromat.com (bottom photo). You'll find more photos at Satan's Laundromat.
It seems that between 200 and 500 people (reports vary) gathered along the city-block-sized railing above the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel near Grand Central Station, then at a given moment they all engaged in 15 seconds of raucous and unexplained applause, before filing out again.
Attendees were instructed to bring dollar bills too for some reason, but they weren't used. (There were three terrorism scares reported earlier today in New York City; perhaps that's why the dollar-bill plan was nixed.) Thanks to fredhoysted.com, to satanslaundromat.com, and to our Chief Manhattan Correspondent David Danzig for early coverage.
UPDATE: Jane has more photos at moistandtasty.com.
Do you have photos from the event? How about video or audio? Please link to your coverage in the comments below.
(For background information, see the first flash mob post.)
Our Chief Manhattan Correspondent David Danzig posted the following dispatch at 8:29 pm Eastern Standard Time:
I just returned from Flashmob #3. This was called "The Grand Central Mob Ballet," and was supposed to involve claiming to be waiting for a train, and writing the word "MOB" on a one dollar bill, but none of that came into play.Instead, we got a form saying:
*** MOB #3 ***
Change of PlansIf you are reading this, we have decided to change venues.
(1) By 7:02, walk out to 42nd St. and look for the main entrance to the Grand Hyatt. Enter and take the escalator up one flight to the main lobby. Loiter until 7:07.
(2) At 7:07, start taking the escalator and elevators up one floor, to the wraparound railing overlooking the lobby. Stand around it, looking down. Fan out to cover as much of the railing as possible. If asked why you are there, point down to the lobby and say, "Look."
(3) At 7:12, begin applauding. Applaud for fifteen seconds, then disperse in an orderly fashion,
(Note: the exit on that floor is not a pedestrian exit.)
I was actually a little suspicious that this was someone's attempt to divert the mob, so I found another Mob project representative at Grand Central who handed me the exact same form.
The turnout was about 300 to 500 people, I'd estimate. It went off just as it was described, and much as you'd imagine, with very nervous security people very nervously scampering about, but never interracting or thinking to ask anyone what was going on.
[End of dispatch]
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These are snapshots from Flam Chen's fire circus last night. It was an impressive outdoor show on a spectacular evening in San Francisco.
After the show I spent most of the night just cruising all around town with my housemate Cheu, hitting the best hillside viewpoints like a wide-eyed tourist. The whole city was out playing, because in San Francisco we rarely see a night like last night: it was clear and warm enough to wear shorts, even on top of Twin Peaks. Last night, this town was Heaven.
UPDATE: Derek Powazek took better photos of the fire circus.
The First International Moblogging Love Hotel Conference:
Just remember, it's not about the sex.
Wherever you are now, I know you're not taking any shit.
I've been a Red Elvises fan for a few years, but I didn't see them live til last night, at Slim's in San Francisco. What a show! This was the best live music and the funniest show I've seen in years.
The Red Elvises are a Russian/punk/surf/country band that winds the crowd up like you wouldn't believe. The lead singer's a young Lawrence Welk on methamphetamine. The keyboard guy's a rabid Elton John stripped of the cheese. (If that's possible.) They're good guys who don't seem stuck up at all, which is a refreshing change in San Francisco. The bartender at Slim's displayed more attitude than the whole band put together.
If Satan has a bar mitzvah, The Red Elvises will provide the music. They play in L.A. a lot; see them if you can.
Here are a few crappy photos.
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Last night I went with housemate Dav to my new favorite restaurant: a crazy, cozy, wonderful sushi joint called Country Station. It was a bizarre meal, indeed.
A strange drunk woman told Dav she was entranced by his "look." She immediately began photographing Dav, and she continued to snap shots and compliment him for about an hour, until we paid our bill and headed out. Then she stumbled along after Dav, babbling and snapping photos on the street.
Later we headed to a bar a few blocks away, and guess who was there? His new groupie lurched over and happily began a new photo session. Then I started photographing her photographing him.
Things became interesting as the other bar patrons tried to figure out who this celebrity was. A smarmy yuppie sidled up next to me and said, "Yo bruh. Who's your friend? Oh come on bruh, tell me his name."
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So I said, "Come on now, leave him alone. He never goes out anymore because people harass him like this wherever he goes. Do you know what I had to go through to drag him out tonight? I promised not to answer any questions about him; if you want his name you'll have to ask him."
"Fine. My girlfriend will know anyway," he said. "She knows who all the celebrities are."
Five minutes later, just as Groupie Number One wrapped up her final photo shoot, the girlfriend showed up and began interrogating Dav.
"I know you're someone famous, who are you? Are you David Morrow? Seriously, you are David Morrow aren't you?"
(Incidentally, who the hell is David Morrow?)
Dav -- who emphasizes now that he did not adore the attention -- had to escape eventually, so I hailed a cab and we headed to one of those oddball San Francisco parties where a naked woman lies on a table, and chefs carefully cover her body with freshly prepared sushi for the guests.
Yes indeed. Last night, sushi was the magic word.
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Glen Canyon is one of San Francisco's little-known gems, and it's less than a mile from my doorstep.
The last few days have been unseasonably sunny. The wildflowers seem to think it's spring already...
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Meet my new housemate, Mr. Kai Jettmar.
Here's the scoop: Kai's mother Eva is an old friend who was one of the first tenants in the house. Kai, Eva and Eva's mother Elfriede usually live in Austria. But all three moved to the U.S. temporarily because Eva took a teaching-assistant gig at Stanford that will last several months.
The Jettmars are living with us for a couple of weeks while they seek longer-term housing.
Now fasten your seatbelt: Dav, who lives in the downstairs room, is Eva's old ex-boyfriend. But Dav isn't Kai's father.
There's no need to watch TV here in San Francisco, where we cultivate a surplus of real-life slapstick and drama.
But I've never had a cuter housemate.
