Spiderman update part 2: Came home last night after Pride weekend warm-up drinks at XL and dinner at Elmo with Phyllis and George Glass. Took a cab home, but the ride was cut short by massive activity on Court Street. The area surrounding the Cobble Hill Cinema was blocked off, with production, camera operators, and extras in full effect. The marquee of the cinema had been changed to read "Stuyvesant Cinema" (or something like that), with Bridge on the River Kwai listed as one of the movies. They basically just seemed to be shooting extras waiting in line to get into the theatre (the extras were annoying by the way, as we walked by the movie theatre one extra remarked to another "Oh, they're just normal people." Excuse me, Senor Non-speaking Role?) Catering service was in full effect too, but I was too tired to try to steal a bite of anything. No star sightings, but we basically stood around for only a couple minutes before giving in to exhaustion.

UPDATE: 423 Smith has some pictures of the whole shebang. The fake smoke alluded to there smelled really odd, like the New York Aquarium had just evaporated.

Update on the Spiderman front: When I got home yesterday much of Smith and Court was coned off for no parking (although a few creative individuals had apparently gotten out of their cars, threw the large orange cones onto the sidewalk, and parked anyway). There was a large camera crane on Court, but no actors, catering service, or actual cameras in sight. This isn't the first time my neighborhood's been overtaken by camera crews (one bizarre morning I ran into the "can you hear me now" guy), but I'm just really curious about the whole thing, even though you just know that this whole production will account for a whole whopping 30 seconds in the film.

Cool tidbit of the day: Spiderman 3 will be filming right up the block from me. If my building gets in the final cut, will my property value skyrocket? Do you think Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst will start going to Area Yoga?

So, the major life event that I never blogged about (didn't wanna jinx anything) is complete. We are now home owners (well, co-op owners, we don't own a house I suppose, just part of it).

We closed and moved last week. There are people that like to pack and there are people that like to unpack. I hate packing, not because it's boring (although it is), but because I can't shake the feeling that as soon as I pack something I'm going to need it. So what if I have all my bank statements going back to when I was in college, and I haven't used them in years? I may need them tomorrow! You never know!

So, as soon as the movers left I was ripping boxes open so that we could get settled in as quickly as possible. The older I get, the more I feel the need to "nest" once in a new home.

My main concern was my cat. When we first moved to our last apartment she hid behind the radiator for two days and wouldn't budge. Here, she was running up and down the hallway leading to the main bedroom at 3 a.m., waking up both us and our new downstairs neighbors in the process. She hasn't done that since she was about six months old.

Owning your own place is odd, there's now this huge shadow looming over you due to this new mortgage that everyone except you is convinced that you can afford. But, there's a certain happiness that overcomes you when you unlock the door and walk into your living room after work. This place is yours.

I'm just loving the new place. It's so great not living right on top of Smith Street anymore. It's not that our old place was terribly noisy, but there were the too frequent wake-up calls from the bar-goers next door (buy us a couple beers and ask us for a few good stories) and it feels a bit more calming to leave your apartment and not be right on a main street. I can also sleep through the night without hearing the latest reggaeton track blasting from the cars on the street.

No Daddy Yankee at four o'clock in the morning... it's a good thing.

Here's some fantastic photos of our neighborhood from the olden days. I often kick myself for not taking a picture of every block down Smith (which has changed drastically) and Court (surprisingly, not nearly as much) when I first moved out here eight years ago. My memory completely fails me when I try to remember what used to reside in the current locations of Boat or Quench or even Cafe Luluc. With a second round of major changes rumoured to be in the near future, maybe it's still a good idea to get the camera out.

Best commute ever today. Walked to the Brooklyn Bridge. As I was waiting for the light to change to cross the street to get onto the bridge, some random woman pulled up in her car and said "I need three people to get across the bridge!" Me and three other people standing at the corner just looked at each other and said "...OK!"

I got dropped off two blocks from work, made it in on time. Today is a good day.

It's great to see something you are witness to every morning immortalized in the Times : the G Line Sprint. Now, do you think they could use the left over conductors to run some more F trains? My commute always seems to quadruple in hellishness once winter hits.

On Saturday, some guy around the corner from my apartment had a huge used record and CD sale. The sale was to start at 10 am. My train out to Long Island (doing yard work for mom and dad) was at 11:15, so I left the house early enough to allow myself a decent window of time to sort through whatever was there, grab a bagel and coffee, and hightail it over to the LIRR. Since I had planned on getting there at 10 am on the dot, my largest concern was whether the guy would actually be set up yet. I began dreaming of the rare treats that I would find for pennies. Perhaps he would be getting rid of the Adam Beyer remixes to Damon Wild's "Warpath," ending one of my hunts from the past few years.

OK, so it's 10 am, the thing's just started, right? I get to the guy's front stoop and there's like 20 guys there. Every single obsessive compulsive record collector in town was there to get first dibs. Shit was crazy.

Everyone was in this "I'm going to find a bargain" fever. I got shoved about five times within the first minute. I would be flipping through a line of CDs, and someone would come over and start flipping through the same column that I was looking at. I couldn't even make it to the area where the vinyl was, but someone was holding a copy of Nirvana's Incesticide on vinyl that was two bucks.

I was becoming frustrated rather quickly. I hadn't had my morning coffee yet. Then crazy old school Brooklyn lady arrived, and I swear I almost completely lost it.

So this lady comes from down the street, sees everyone going buck wild, and realizes she's missing out on the chance of a lifetime. She grabs the first pile of CDs she sees (from the electronica section I might add, I might also add that this lady is 55 years old) and yells "Can ya hold these aside fuh me?!?" Keep in mind she's not asking anyone in particular this question, as she doesn't see any difference between the crowd of people looking through the inventory for items to purchase and the person sitting by the curb counting his money. Certainly we all would have a hard time identifying the best person to ask questions regarding the record sale in this situation.

She then sees that one of the CDs she's holding has a rather racy cover and decides to tell me "Oh, I won't be buying that one." Then, another question popped in her head that needed immediate attention but was directed at noone in particular - "How much ya got all these tapes fuh!?!?" An important side note here - there were no tapes at this sale, only CDs and vinyl, and all prices were clearly marked with a yellow sticker on each item.

After realizing that she didn't know any of the artists in the pile of CDs she was holding, it was time for the next question. "Ya got any oldies?!?!?" No one answered so she asked this like five times, getting louder each time. I ran over to pay for my item and got the fuck out of there.

I got the Beth Gibbons solo CD that came out a few years ago, but I never picked up for some reason, for three bucks. Word!

i'm having a hard time being productive at work today. it's monday, i'm exhausted from my study-free weekend (school's out, yay!), and i'd much rather be preparing for christmas and new year's than tracking revenue. needless to say, i've been the fish-eyed web-surfer today, and satan's laundromat has been my savior. it's a blog of some really terrific photos of new york. there's a photo taken in my town (carroll gardens) that i can't place for the life of me. web diversions, they're a good thing.

this site really has me wishing i had bought one of those yaschika cameras when they were mad cheap years ago so i could take a stab at photography. i would like to have more art and photography on my walls, but i just can't afford to pay for original stuff or good cindy sherman prints.

friday time waster alert: come out to brooklyn and play hipser bingo.

speaking of coney island, the siren fest is coming soon. did i tell you it's free?