This Week in Awesome (7/3/10)

Happy 4th of July, everyone. Yes, I know I didn't post this yesterday. I did say that the schedule might get iffy...

First things first: fireworks safety is very important today. (Funny or Die)

Do you ever think about the room vignettes that are styled and photographed for catalogs like Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel? Me neither. But someone does, and they obviously have tons of free time, because they have gone so far as to create characters and a back story. (Racked)

Earlier this week, a young woman robbed a shoe store in New York. She did so while wearing a cat mask. The police issued a wanted poster that is quite possibly the greatest thing ever. (This even made it onto The Soup.) Later, some extremely fuzzy video surveillance footage was released, showing the woman walking into the store without the mask and then putting it on. Needless to say, the suspect is still at large. (The Awl)

And now for the dorky retro arcana portion of the program, so if this isn't your thing you can just stop here. Charles is a gentleman who lives in England but grew up in Boston and has fond memories of shopping downtown when there were many fine stores, none of which still exist. He posts his recollections, with lots of old photos and newspaper ads, to share with everyone at Shopping Days In Retro Boston.

And in a similar vein, I stumbled across a site filled with info about the old days of telephone numbers, when the exchange (the first two or three digits, for you youngsters) was referred to by a word, and the letters in those words corresponded to the numbers on the dial, and the words usually had some connection to the geographic area that contained those phone numbers (example: the Boston exchange 536 was for KENmore). Like I said, arcana.