The Sun Appears, Villagers and their Spellin', a Problematic Intersection in Soho, the IPhone 3G, and a Lobster Roll

The sun came out today and lifted the steamy cloud that followed me throughout the holiday weekend. Herein are several short items gathered over the past several days, so this post should go down smooth. No required reading, although it occurred to me that I should start posting information about the books mentioned on this site. Accordingly, look for the Good Reads widget on the sidebar on this page, presuming that you're on the site and not reading the feed. Those who read WOTBA in a feed reader are welcome to come HOME from time to time, if only to do the laundry, get a sandwich, and read what's cookin' in the sidebar.

• I learned from reading the online New York Times that some of my fellow Villagers have difficulty with spellin'. (NYT CityRoom)

• A trippy cheap outer space staycation can be had by exploring the Tag Galaxy application for Flickr photos. By the way, Happy Paws, the pet boutique where I take the big dog to get her haircut, features an Outer Space room as one of its themed suites.

• What's the deal with the intersection of Mercer and Howard Streets? It's a potentially great Soho corner, but it looks like a movie set for the apocalypse.

• I'm sort of proud to have broken the news of the closing of Señor Swanky's Bleecker location, but I am mourning the empty space that languishes there. Over at Eater, the comment thread following the Señor Swanky's post raised the issue of whether it's proper to cheer the closure of a restaurant, even a bad one. The larger point in my own post deals not with the quality of the food at a particular place but with the effects of a deepening recession on the neighborhood. But to address this question, I think it's OK to quietly celebrate the closing of a bad restaurant by going to a good one.

• Which leads me to thumbs-up recommendations for Snack Taverna and Ed's Lobster Bar, two fine places that rescued an otherwise rainy 4th of July weekend. Snack is an intimate friendly nouvelle Greek place at 63 Bedford St., and if I could remember the name of the piping hot dish of tomatoes and some sort of beef that I ordered, I would recommend it. At Ed's Lobster Bar (222 Lafayette) a couple of us enjoyed our lobster rolls, brilliant mayo-covered lobster meat in a buttery role, perfect for the holidays. I forked my lobster roll, but the waitress said it was OK to pick it up and eat it with your hands.

• The IPhone 3G, appearing in Apple and ATT stores on Friday, will enable me to follow in my own footsteps.

• Do you know that I write about films for Reframe, a project of the Tribeca Film Institute? See the blog titled Shoe Leather.

• For the next walk I'll take us to the beguiling Bedford/Commerce/Morton/Cherry Lane part of the Village, and we'll all be charmed.