The Booksellers is a fascinating exploration of the world of antiquarian book selling in New York City, it highlights rare finds and the collectors dedicated to preserving history. Dealers discuss the challenges and passions of their trade amidst a changing retail landscape. It’s a full length film, but well worth the watch if you love books.
Check the time with NYC Street Clock — telling the time using more than 20,000 Google Street View images found around NYC .
I can be an infinite bore when it comes to giving travel advice. Over the years I’ve learned to temper my enthusiasm and try and only share travel suggestions on request. However, that doesn’t stop me from sharing other folks great advice. So here are some excellent “Pro-level travel tips.”
“I love traveling to new places and getting to enjoy new experiences. And as much as I love travel, it can be chaotic.
A friend once said that if you’ve ever tried to meditate and failed to quiet your jumbled mind, you should take a trip instead.
Because when you travel, your entire world distills down to finishing a single task to keep yourself safe and alive, letting everything else fall away (just like meditation!).
First, you have to find your plane. Then you have to find your luggage. Next, you have to find your hotel. Then—surprise!—you need to find dinner at 9pm in a city you’ve never set foot in. Good luck!
So here’s a bunch of tips I use to keep the chaos at bay, to feel more at home when I’m traveling, and bring some semblance of control back into my time in new places.”
Sometimes going to a museum can transport you to another time and place, so it’s no wonder that when filmmaker Michel Gondry and his visual effects artist brother Olivier Gondry created this retro-futuristic short for the Musée du Louvre, the museum’s Pyramid structure would blast off into space and land on the moon.
The bande-annonce, a promotional trailer titled Louvre-Moon-Love, was gifted to the Paris museum for their philanthropic Le Grand Dîner du Louvre 2026 event. The theme: ‘Le Louvre, la nuit’—The Louvre, by night.
With a computer graphics vibe from late 1970s and early 1980s analog technologies, the Gondry directing duo mixes the whimsical and surreal with paper craft, synthwave hues, fuzzy scanline textures, and glowing vector lines.
Cadgy. OneLook, a terrific resource for all things word-related, recently launched a new and slightly addictive word game. Creator Doug Beeferman explains: “In Cadgy, you get a new grid of letters every day. You find 5-letter words by clicking one letter from each of the columns.” Grids contain 20 words each day, except on double days when there are 40. Beeferman says he stumbled on the word cadgy while testing the game: It’s “a Scots and northern English term for ‘cheerful’ or ‘merry’, with occasional notes of ‘amorous’.”
When I was at one of my favorite indie bookshops ( Labyrinth Books in Princeton, NJ) searching for some appropriate titles for my nephew’s 8th birthday, I could have used this wonderful new tool. Dream Books A terrific resource for parents and teachers. Dream Books is a well-organized database for finding kids’ books by age, grade, reading level, series or award – with a community layer that lets children/families build a library, share progress and see what friends are reading.
cain culto & xiuhtezcatl – ¡basta ya!
I’ve tried a dozen or so types of instant coffee to bring on my travels and have yet to find a brand that I would rate as good , although Blue Bottle’s instant is okay.
| Works in Progress, takes a deep dive into the century-long quest to make instant coffee actually taste decent. From wartime rations to high-tech freeze-drying and today’s ‘instant coffee as a service’ – I had no idea of the innovation required – engineering, logistics, investment – to make instant coffee… not horrible. |
A poem by Frank O’Hara. It’s the first poem in *Meditations in an Emergency*, 1957:
To the Harbormaster
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
Where Europe’s Population is Shrinking, is an excellent example of how large-scale spatial data and clear visual design can come together to tell a nuanced geographic story. In this case, the story is one of Europe’s rural depopulation and how emigration and demographic decline have reshaped entire regions since the end of the Cold War.
The map draws on newly harmonized municipal-level data from the EU’s Joint Research Centre and charts demographic change across roughly 100,000 localities over more than six decades – offering a detailed spatial analysis of European population trends since 1961.
The map’s simple red–green color scheme is immediately effective. Growth and decline are clearly legible, and the continental pattern emerges quickly: a Europe where expansion is concentrated in urban cores and their commuter belts, while vast rural areas steadily fade.
Beyond the data itself, the accompanying narrative effectively connects demographic change to its social consequences. Declining populations are not just numbers on a map – they translate into school closures, reduced services, and increasing pressure on infrastructure in rural areas. At the same time, the map hints at future challenges, including ageing populations and the growing importance of migration in sustaining Europe’s overall population.
The guided story map provides a strong overview of 60 years of population trends across Europe. At the end of the article, however, readers can explore the data for themselves. The interactive map included in the CORRECTIV story even allows users to switch to a 1991-2024 view, making it possible to examine the more recent population changes over the last three decades.
Via: Datawrapper’s Data Viz Dispatch
Letterform Archive has published a new large format peel and stick book Hotel Retro: Vintage Luggage Labels from Tokyo to Buenos Aires. A 330-sticker-long journey through this new age of global travel by train and sea designed by San Francisco agency MacFadden & Thorpe, this incredible design archive of souvenirs takes you on a tour around the world: “From cosmopolitan European capitals to cultural havens in Bali, from pristine ski resorts in the Alps to the bustling beaches of Rio de Janeiro,” Lucie says. “The sheer variety of their represented styles is also fascinating, reflecting both regional preferences and the rapid aesthetic developments of their moment.”
“In the late nineteenth century, as industrialization allowed for the emergence of the leisure class, an unprecedented number of world travelers began touring the globe via train and sea. From far-off destinations they brought home a curious collection: eye-catching labels bearing the insignia of grand hotels, pasted to their steamer trunks as souvenirs. Today, these labels are also souvenirs of graphic design—from the opulence of art deco to the minimalism of Swiss Style. Featuring hundreds of delightful examples from the collection of Letterform Archive, Hotel Retro highlights the labels’ artistry in illustration, lettering, and typography, and restores them to their original adhesive use for the pleasure of a new generation.”
Those of you who stop by this site on a regular basis are likely aware of my interest in cities, urban transit and city planning. These subjects don’t suggest a topic for a children’s book, but in 1937 New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s Committee on City Planning saw an opportunity to get kids interested in what makes their city work. The ABC of City Planning is still fascinating today for urban planning geeks.
The little book opens with this foreword:
CITY PLANNING is not for “Adults Only”. Children of all ages can understand the necessity for a finer, better, safer and
more convenient city. Unless they do understand it, and it becomes as fundamental as the ABC, we can never hope to make
our city the healthful, happy home it should be for our children and our children’s children.
The entire pamphlet is available here, thanks to the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, an NYC housing non-profit.
The TV comedy Broadway Books released its pilot episode, “The Tipping Point,” on YouTube last month for Independent Bookstore Day. The creators noted that the debut came “after a successful bookstore tour (with stops including the Brooklyn Book Festival, Baltimore’s Atomic Books, & Boston’s Porter Square Books)” last year, along with showing the pilot at the Dances with Films fest in Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City’s the Downtown Festival. Crowdfunding is underway to produce additional episodes for a full season and you can be a producer (for a donation).
Written and directed by Carianne King, Broadway Books was developed in the Upright Citizens Brigade Pilot Writing Program and inspired by King’s experiences as a bookseller on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Featuring music by Martin Courtney (of the band Real Estate), the project’s cast includes Carlos Dengler (founding member of the band Interpol), NYC comedians Joe Apollonio, Lauren Servideo, and Ruby McCollister.
Describing Broadway Books as “a love letter to neighborhood bookstores everywhere, and the important role they play in our communities,” the creators said the series will portray “a group of over-educated, under-employed bookstore workers struggling to keep their independent bookstore in business using increasingly desperate measures. In the pilot, the team scrambles to raise the numbers for that night’s Malcolm Gladwell reading, drawing upon lessons from The Tipping Point to do so.”
If you want to start a heated discussion with booklovers ask “what are the best indie bookshops in the U.S.” I have my favorites, but then again I’ve only visited a few hundred. Conde Nast Traveler shared its picks for “the best independent bookstores in America,” noting: “If you’re ever feeling lost in a new city, walking into a local bookstore will help anchor you. Far more than just a place of transaction, a good bookstore can serve as a sanctuary, a community space, and a portal into the town it calls home–all thanks to the dedicated owners and staffers who stock the shelves, scribble down recommendations, and welcome in readers, both young and old, through their doors.”
Out of the two dozen or so bookstores cited in the list, I’ve only been to six of them, which doesn’t seem to be a small number when you take into account that there are more than 10,000 bookstores in the USA. If I had to pick a favorite on the list, I’d probably choose Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah. It was a pleasant surprise to discover this small, but exceptionally well curated bookstore in the small town outside of Arches National Park.
Another top pick of mine from the article is Title Wave Books in Anchorage, Alaska. My selection is largely based on the fact that the shop is the furthest from home, but still in the USA and has one of the largest collections of any bookstore in the nation. There are some small town indie shops in Alaska that I loved, but that’s for another story.
The last bookshop from the article that I’d like to endorse is Duck’s Cottage in Duck, North Carolina. The selection is slim, but the place is so damn quaint and it’s situated on a barrier island in beautiful Duck.
Travel Between The Pages 