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Photo of a NYC Halloween Voter sticker with a drawing of a pigeon wearing a witch's hat carrying a jack-o-lantern candy pumpkin in its beak. Silhouettes of bats and a witch also appear. The text reads "HALLOWEEN VOTER 2025". There are also small white ghosts and Vote NYC logos.

Voted early again this year but didn’t make the rookie mistake of not voting on Halloween this time. Sure, they give stickers to all voters, but none can match the cool factor of the coveted Halloween sticker!

I realized that it was a year ago this week when I loaded my former sailboat on a trailer. While I miss sailing as frequently as I did when i had my own boat, it was wonderful not having to think about hauling a boat out this fall.

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Photo of a diver sculpture with a speaker rather than a glass window in its helmet. It is painted with gold and brown, dripping paint.
Audio Diver at Industry City

An errand took us near Industry City on Saturday. So, we stopped by for lunch and poked around some of the shops. That is where we met the Audio Diver pictured here.

I softened my YouTube ban in the last couple weeks by not totally blocking it on my computer. Unsurprisingly, I started slipping back into old ways. There are so many “interesting” things to click on in YouTube. Go there to watch something specific; the next thing you know, it’s midnight and you’re watching 35 minute clips about running an all sourdough bakery in Arizona.

My new strategy involves following the few channels I really care about with RSS. That lets me watch their new videos without being tempted by the constant stream of related or “you might also like” stuff they serve up.

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Photo of a very skinny house, not much wider than the front door. The house is overgrown with vines, the stoop is falling apart and the door is very weather beaten. The rear end of an abandoned car is visible on the left.
A very skinny house on Stillwell Avenue in Brooklyn.

Programming note: The notification email has been resurrected after many years. If you subscribed ten years ago and this email comes as total surprise, sorry—no hard feelings if you unsubscribe.

I’ve wanted to check out the MTA’s annual pop-up shop, but always find out about it after the fact. My luck changed this this year, I read about Debi Mazar’s subway shopping spree while the event was still on. By the time I got there, things were somewhat picked over, but they still had a lot on offer. It was mostly signs, but there were also some other items, such as air gauges and other random train parts. I walked away empty-handed, but it was worth the price of admission if only to see the excitement of the people coming out and posing for photos with their loot.

Since I was in the area, I walked down to Coney Island. On the way I saw this incredibly skinny house on Stillwell Avenue. Despite its compact size, the owners have a difficult time with upkeep.

Coney Island is quiet in the off season, but a couple of the places on the boardwalk are open. There were a surprising number of tourists milling about, confused about he ordering system at Nathan’s. Strange to see them so far from the more popular attractions. Good on them for exploring, even if the subway ride is more exiting than the destination this time of year.

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A freshly poured pint of Guinness sits atop a stone bar. "THE CANARY" and a drawing of a canary is printed on the glass. Mixing glasses and liquor bottles are in the background.
The best Guinness I’ve had in recent memory.

We went for lunch in Crown Heights on Saturday. We were unaware of the annual Panamanian Parade happening on Franklin Avenue, but it was a nice surprise. The sometimes drenching rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the marchers or the spectators. By the way, lunch was delicious, as was the Guinness.

There’s a write-up about my Personal Newsletter in the Projects section. It’s a short one—an appropriately short post for a short project.

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Spent some more time on the personal newsletter script I started back in July. It’s in a pretty good place right now and I like getting the updates every morning. I’ll post a quick write-up on my projects page shortly.

This week’s Jamulus jam was just two of us. Thankfully, we weren’t plagued with the same connection/sound quality issues as last week. We started messing around with an original song by the lead singer. It has a lot of potential, I just need to come up with a grooving bass line.

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