Check out this census data for Brooklyn in the 1840's. Love the job descriptions:charcoal dealers, agents of the Brooklyn Temperance Society, furrier, ship joiner, wheelright, leecher and cupper, etc...

A few notes about sonograms for those of you who have never seen one live.

1. Normal sonograms are cross sections (imagine a slice of an apple) so you are looking at the outline... it's all fairly murky when you view them live until you see the beating heart. Usually the doctor will also include an audio monitor so you can hear the heartbeat. Seeing this is all fairly interesting in a cerebral sort of way until you see a turn of the head or the appearance of a hand. Then it gets dramatic, none of this can be captured by a still image. This sonogram was taken fairly early on so there isn't much definition. The baby is the size of a large avocado. Later on the outline of the features becomes much clearer.

2. Most hospitals don't let you take pictures (i did anyway).

3. The doctors give you little printouts... which are invariably illegible smudges. These printouts are on low quality thermal paper which fades, so scan them if you want to preserve the image...

4. There are now 3D sonograms, but the images they produce are a little creepy.

A little while ago, I turned off the lamp which let me see out the window and noticed a guy in a suit standing motionless in the middle of Sydney Place. He's holding a briefcase and he's been like that for at least 5 minutes.

The city is empty, everyone seems to be taking off to enjoy an extended Labor Day vacation. Most all the lights in the houses are dark. I walked home 2 hours ago and for about the last 15 blocks I didn't pass a soul. My family is away so I was returning to an empty house. A few blocks from home, I stopped in the middle of the street myself to enjoy sound of the cicadas and the strange light in the sky coming from Manhattan. I watched the wind in the trees and waited... I might have been that guy in the suit myself for a bit. He's still down there.

As far as I'm concerned it's always time for Nha Trang. My order:

2 limeades (because one is never enough)
spring rolls
hot and sour soup with chicken
bbq beef over rice

oh joy.

Nha Trang is @ 87 Baxter. Thaison next door at 89 Baxter is also very good as is Nha Hang Pho Viet Huong @ 73 Mulberry (the order here is the beef in grape leaves). My favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Saigon, has been replaced by Doyers Vietnamese @ 11 Doyers Street. 11 Doyers is delicious, but no match for Saigon which had spring rolls that made you forget your name. New York Magazine touts Spice Market, which calls itself Vietnamese, as as one of the best dining experiences in the city. I disagree heartily. Vietnamese in name only.

I've never searched out Vietnamese restaurants in Brooklyn or Queens (there is nothing in Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill/Ft. Greene), but the chowhounds have a few suggestions. As my family has decamped for a few days I've been thinking of going out to Elmhurst to look for a good meal. Will report back tomorrow.

My house in Los Angeles was owned by Esther Williams back in the 40’s. She of course put in the pool. She also, if old architecture magazines are to be believed, planted the gardenias, the palm tree, and the grand old olive tree in the front. She did not plant the plum tree in the back. Plum trees generally have lifespans of only 10-20 years and mine, according to an arborist who examined it, was almost 40 years old. "Extraordinary," she exclaimed while poking and measuring it. And completely unpruned." I had called in the specialist because the tree wasn’t producing fruit and I wanted to see if there was anything that could be done, you know, fertilizer or something. "If you want plums, the best thing would be to chop this tree down and plant another one," came the answer. The poor thing is about 20 years past it’s prime."

If she was right and the tree actually was 40 years old it would have been planted by the hippies who owned the housed throughout the 60’s and into the early 70’s. Silverlake had yet to be gentrified, places were cheap, and according to my 80 year old neighbor Rosita who was born on the block, "Those kids turned that house into a real love shack. There were 11 or 12 of them and they didn't like to wear clothes."
"Where did they all sleep," I asked (it’s a two bedroom house).
"Oh all over the place," came the answer, "there were two of them in the garage, and one of them sometimes liked to sleep out in the back in a tent. You know it was the 60’s. They smoked a lot of grass."
"Do you know if they planted the plum tree," I asked. "Oh they had a whole garden back there.", Rosita smiled, "Plums and oranges and all sorts of lovely tomatoes."

I did not heed the arborist’s advice. I pruned the tree. I made sure it was watered. I found fertilizer for stone fruit trees. But none of this had any effect. Summers came and summers went, and no fruit. At some point my then girlfriend, now wife, Jenn arrived. She breathed life into the house. After she arrived the kitchen was always humming, her actor friends would come and go sometimes doing acting exercises in the living room (she’s a theater director), and once again there was a garden out in the back. Each spring it would fill with heirloom tomatoes, carrots, and squash and winters would bring butter lettuce, arugula, and strawberries. A pair of mallards took up residence in the pool.

And then one day out back Jenn looked up at the tree and said, "Hey... plums," and I ran over, stood under it speechless staring up, and saw the tree was loaded with plums. I practically shouted, "We made plums! We made plums!" Throughout that summer the tree gave so much fruit we had to give some away and each time we would go outside to harvest it felt like a small miracle. Winter arrived, and we decided to move to New York by the end of the next summer. The tree flowered in the spring, but summer came and it was once again barren. Or so we thought. Right before we left as Jenn was doing a final walk around she called me over. There were exactly two plums on the tree.

We sold the house, to an actor of dubious taste. I made the mistake of returning to visit a few weeks after the sale. He had ripped out the garden, was surrounding the place with a high concrete wall, and worst of all for me, he had chopped town that plum tree.

I am not a superstitious man, I don’t believe 13 is unlucky, I don’t believe breaking a mirror is bad luck, I don’t even believe finding a four leaf clover is good luck, but I believe those plums were made for us. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they would be almost indescribably delicious, and of course they were.

I've only been through Wisconsin twice (and then on road trips), but Christian Patterson photographs it just as I remember it: here's part of his continuing On Wisconsin series. His show Sound Affects shot in Memphis opens here in NY on October 25 at Yancey Richardson.

Twice this week friends have said they had extra tickets to a baseball game but didn't invite me because they didn't think I was "the baseball type.' For the record I love baseball especially live. Even minor league (especially minor league actually), even college baseball. Next time don't forget.

Conversations with Jenn's mom:

Jenn: Did you like Franz? [Jenn's former cat]

Mrs. Yun: Franz was ok.

Jenn: Come on mom you never liked Franz. You said you wished he would die because he looked "like man".

Mrs. Yun: Ok. Ok. I'll tell you. It's like this. In Korea people think cat has bad spirit. . . Actually all Korean people hate cat.
. . .
Mrs. Yun: Never sleep under fan. Sleeping under fan you can die. [she's a great believer of fan death] So terrible to die because of fan sleeping.
. . .
Me: It's really hot here again.

Mrs. Yun: Well you know, 'end of world' time. Anything is possible. Better go to church. What if you are left behind? Weather too hot!
. . .

Becky: Mom, Wrinkle jinkle isn't a word.

Mrs. Yun: Really?

Becky: It's just wrinkle.

Mrs. Yun: (long pause) Then what is a jinkle?
. . .

Becky: If you could be any animal for a day which animal would you be?

Mrs. Yun: Animal?

Becky: It's a game, just pretend.

Mrs. Yun: Oh I know. Poodle.

Becky: What - why?

Mrs. Yun: Because no one is mean to poodle. They give good food and brush hair and put ribbon in. It's nice.
. . .

Mrs. Yun: What kind of movie is this?"

Becky: It's Godfather. It's about gangsters.

Mrs. Yun: It's not about God?

Becky: No mom, that's God the Father, this is the Godfather.
. . .

Mrs. Yun: Raul. You should come to see play. It's amazing. There are animal and Jesus is flying.

Me: Flying?

Mrs. Yun: He is flying so much. Jesus can do anything.

1. Wake up on the couch with a stiff neck because you fell asleep watching a movie the night before.

2. Find your recently repaired air conditioner broken.

3. Hear an awful grinding sound from one of your hard disks. Perhaps because the room is a thousand degrees without the air conditioner.

4. Haul 100 pound air conditioner down 4 flights of stairs into the car. Air conditioner leaks a sticky oily fluid all over your shirt.

5. Blow out a tire on the Gowanas Expressway in an area with construction and no shoulder. Look desperately for an exit. Drive on a rim throwing up showers of sparks. At some point it dawns on you that this is not wise. You stop.

6. Realize your aversion to cellphones is mighty inconvenient.

7. Abandon your car. Walk several hundred yards down the Gowanas Expressway with traffic whizzing by suffering occasional insults from passersby.

8. Be refused a phone in 7 or 8 businesses because you are drenched in sweat, covered in brown air conditioner grease, and looking wild eyed.

9. Walk back onto the Gowanas and back to your car as demanded by a tow truck operator named Joey who refuses to pick you up at the deli because he would have to go a few blocks out of his way. Arrive back at your car. Pray you won't be rear ended. Wait. Realize you should have picked up a drink at the deli. Argue with a cop who says he's going to have to tow you. When Joey finally arrives almost an hour later his tow truck is blasting a band named Malevolent Creation.

10. Discover you must replace both front tires at a cost of $670. Have the guys at the garage laugh when they give you the bill and say, "Oof. That one stings." One guy adds, "You know your brakes are totally shot. "

11. Arrive back to your sweltering airless office. Grab some things for a meeting in the city. Realize you left important papers from your car in the Joey's tow truck...

Should I continue?

Do over please.

It seems like every time I pass the 1rst and Houston there is a couple making out, hugging, or just generally intertwined (in one case a couple was staring deep into each others eyes massaging each others shoulders and crying). If I go through my archives I can probably find a dozen pictures like this taken at exactly the same spot. Upon reflection I realized Jenn and I might have had a few long goodbye smooches here back when she lived on Mott street even though we're generally not big on extravagant PDAs... Hmm.

Artist Ahree Lee took pictures of herself everyday from 2001 to 2004 and edited the results together as a movie, a clip of which became popular on youtube. The original can be seen in it's entirety (after an annoying long ad) on atom films .

Noah , it's time to make that movie...

More obsessive photography and time related projects can be found at c71123.com .

UPDATE: The atom link is dead, but you can see the film on youtube.

Don't miss Baldomero Fernandez' lush set of photographs titled "Santiago De Cuba" taken on his first visit back to his native Cuba.

1, Step into a deli and ask for 2 plastic bags.

2. Double bag your wallet, camera, phone, etc.

2. Walk home.

3. Enjoy the rain.

"Once, a mangy groundhog meandered across a hundred yards of barren lawn to arrive at the feet of my father, brothers, and our family dog. The dog was the last to notice the new addition to our party. When the dog finally growled, the groundhog let out a terrifying, human scream, slumped to the ground, and was dead before anything touched it.

The scream bothered all of us for days."

I always love a photographers who look their subjects directly in the eye without flinching or hiding behind a long lens. Check out Nadia Sablin's Baba series. (via Jen Bekman)