cheesebikini?

[ Click a photo strip to see the full-size version. ]

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.

$500 / 0br – Large Manhattan Room (one catch)

Reply to: anon-12388299@craigslist.org
Date: Fri Jun 13 11:35:52 2003

I have a large 15×10 room in a relatively large East Village apartment for rent. The apartment has one full bath and a half bath which is in my room. There is a large common area. It’s a great space. There is one catch you should be aware of. I am a professional bee keeper. I maintain a rather large hive of Africanized honey bees. Due to the economic downturn and the reduced demand for honey I was unable to maintain my work studio and therefore I now work from home. The hive is located in the living room. I have plenty of protective gear and they mostly keep to themselves and go about their business of collecting pollen and producing delicious and reasonably priced honey. However, occasionally something sets them off and hive becomes enraged and tends to swarm. Generally you should be ok if you just keep your door shut but this can be a hassle at times. If you have any allergies to bee stings or maintain a large collection of predatory insects this is probably not the place for you.

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
this is in or around E Village

Plans for two upcoming flash mobs have been announced.

Wake up, London, Tokyo and San Francisco. New York already scooped you on this; will you let Minneapolis beat you to the punch?

A group in Minneapolis is planning that city’s first flash mob ever, to take place July 22 at 6:25 pm. For more details visit the new Minneapolis mob homepage. (Thanks for the tip, Minneapolis Mob.)

New Yorkers are planning a third Gotham flash mob to begin July 2 at 7:04 pm; I’ve pasted the event announcement below, as it was e-mailed to cheesebikini. (Thanks for the tip, MOB project.)

Mob safely.

(If you’re wondering what a flash mob is, see this entry for an explanation.)
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Today, on the 100th anniversary of George Orwell’s birth, his masterpieces really are more important to us than ever.

If you live near San Francisco, come out for the George Orwell Centenary Festival at Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco. The festival runs tonight, tomorrow night and Saturday night. It includes readings from Orwell’s most important works, film screenings, and “Free Victory Gin.”

Show up tonight and tell them “cheesebikini is doubleplusgood.” You’ll get free admission to the Thursday and Saturday night shows; normal cover charge for those shows will be $6 and $7 respectively. And remember: four legs good, two legs bad.

I want to be a guerilla cafe DJ.

Here’s what I need: a small, portable FM transmitter powerful enough to override the signal in any cafe that’s playing megacorporate radio. This would be especially useful in cafes tuned in to that unbearable Clear Channel snooze-jazz station that has infected so many San Francisco Wi-Fi cafes.

When I enter a cafe and power up my laptop, I’d like to plug this magic transmitter box into my laptop and use it to overpower the cafe radio’s reception of that cheesy station, replacing it with whatever music is emerging at the moment from my laptop’s sound card.

If you know where I can obtain such a device, please clue me in.

(If you know who created the power-tower graphic above, please let me know so I can give them credit. I pulled this image from the Web a long time ago and I can’t remember where it came from.)

Swarms of people dressed as Agent Smith converged in Tokyo and Osaka this week, following the Japan premiere of “The Matrix: Reloaded.” (The movie features hundreds of clones of the character Agent Smith.)

They even reenacted fight scenes from the movie. This looks almost as scary as a Star Wars opening night in Silicon Valley.

Photo courtesy of rottentomatoes.com, where you’ll find more photos and video clips. Thanks to chanpon.org for the tip.

UPDATE: Xaky from rotten tomatoes reports that a new, bigger Matrix mob event will take place in Tokyo Sunday, June 29. If you want to participate, see details here.

The First International Moblogging Love Hotel Conference:
Just remember, it’s not about the sex.

Here’s photographic evidence of the flash mob’s successful takeover of the Manhattan Macy’s fancy-rug department, courtesy of moistandtasty.com (above). Visit that site, as well as Satan’s Laundromat, for more photos.

New Yorkers used e-mail to coordinate a huge, instant gathering of people around a particular rug. Participants were instructed to tell questioning salesmen that they all lived together in a warehouse in Queens, and they were considering purchasing the item for use as a “Love Rug” back at the house. After precisely ten minutes the crowd dissipated.

UPDATE: This week’s edition of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered included a segment about the flash mob. (Thanks to Mike from Satan’s Laundromat for yet another tip.)

UPDATE: Here’s a look back at the event from Wired News. (Thanks for the tip, Mike.)

UPDATE: Here’s another money shot of the salesman, from ephemeroi.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.)

In no way do I condone or encourage the development of pernicious new club drugs.

But assuming that humans will keep inventing new ways to poison themselves, it might be funny to give the next big drug the street name “CapsLock.”

As in: “Can you believe those five kids in Microsoft Butterfly suits shattered all the windows in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then swallowed half of the stained glass shards before the cops and paramedics arrived? They must have been amped up on CapsLock.”

Our senior Manhattan correspondent David Danzig reports that New Yorkers are using e-mail to coordinate “inexplicable mobs” — huge crowds that materialize in public places and suddenly dissipate 10 minutes later.

Below I’ve pasted the e-mail announcement for the next mob, scheduled to take place Tuesday, June 17, 2003.
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