Brooklyn: Even Our Hardware Stores Are Brainy

I refer to the Pinchik Oracle, a piece of “local color” I done wrote about for some rag:

Baltimore has the Poe Toaster. Punxsutawney, a groundhog that predicts the weather. In Brooklyn, the piece of modern folklore that peaks local interest isn’t animal but electronic—specifically, an outmoded telephone that occasionally pops up across the street from Pinchik Hardware on Bergen Street in Park Slope.This ancient and partially wooden crank phone is humanity’s only link to an otherworldly entity known as ‘The Pinchik Oracle,’ an all-knowing being that has decided to periodically field our questions and answer them on an electronic sign above the hardware store in question.”

Read the entire thing here. If haunted hardware stores aren’t your bag, go find out how I feel about the new Black Dahlia Murder album. If death metal records that may or may not be tributes to Michael Jackson aren’t your bag, well, shoot. Go look at “Kittens Playing Guitar Hero” or whatever the blog of the moment is.