Here’s an interesting Squid List submission we recieved today. I think this one can easily be filed under: “Only in San Francisco”

Vibrabridge, May 2, 5:00pm

Come (if you can!) help us kick off National Masturbation Month and the Sex Workers Film and Arts Festival with a Sensory Immersion Celebration of Vibration in an interactive community art project. Bring your friends, a towel, and your favorite vibrators and join us on the Islais Creek Bridge on Third Street by Evans. This bridge which is made primarily of metal grates vibrates joyously with the passing of the many cars and trucks that cross it, and we will lie out on the pedestrian crossing and vibrate, en masse, over the oddly beautiful industo-natural landscape. The vibrations will be coming from our vibes and the bridge, brining us to a trembling union of harmonic bodies, and hopefully shivers of ecstasy! Dress comfortably or sexily, but understand that vibes will be used over or under clothes and that nudity is not expected or desired for this art project, as we don’t want to get *too* much attention :). Parking is available by the small park very nearby, and a generator will be provided for plug-in vibrators.

Firefox is celebrating 50 million downloads today. That’s pretty astounding for a little open source project who’s focus is to help people “rediscover the web”. Their plan seems to be working.

Tiger, version 10.4 of Apple’s of Mac OS X, is out today. Thousands of geeks lined up at Apple stores around the country this morning to be among the first to get a copy.

One of the many new features is Safari’s RSS feed integration, giving you yet one more way to manage and read your feeds. For instance, now when you view laughingsquid.com with Safari on a Mac running Tiger, you’ll see a blue “RSS” icon in your browser’s url window. Just click on that icon and you’ll automatically be subscribed to the Laughing Squid feed. Firefox has had this feature for a while, but it sounds like Safari’s approach may be a little more advanced and easier to use.

Hey, I wonder if Siegfried & Roy will be ugrading to Tiger? At least they would be able to control this one a little better.

UPDATE 1: Niall shot some great photos of the Tiger launch at Apple’s flagship store in San Francisco.

UPDATE 2: Jonas has been doing an excellent job of keeping everyone informed on various Tiger update and compatibility issues. Tiger Vittles is another great upgrade resource, along with Daring Fireball: Tiger Details.

Located in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco, The Albion Castle, formerly Laughing Squid’s web hosting tech support center and host of our Blog Launch Party, is for sale. Jackson gets the scoop once again with today’s post to SFist.

Here are some photos I shot of the castle in all it’s glory, before and during the Laughing Squid party last week.

UPDATE: Speaking of the Albion Castle, Joe Reifer did a Mafia inspired photo shoot there a couple of weeks ago.

The illustrious Attaboy is having a solo exhibition of his new work at Kidrobot. The opening is tomorrow, Thursday, April 28th from 6pm to 9pm and the show will be up through June 27th. The San Francisco Kidrobot store is located at 1512 Haight Street. Come out and take a peek at the great stuff that Atta’s been working on lately.

Attaboy’s the Drones, a series of original paintings on plastic at Kidrobot. Come get a free yumfactory calendar, get your Axtrx toys signed, see upcoming toy prototypes, purchase limited prints, and drink comp. red stripe beer in the most amazing toy store filled with designer vinyl from all over the world.

Look out! Attaboy and Annie Owens’ toysploitation magazine Hi Fructose will be out in May.

BORG2 Art Proposal deadline this Sunday, May 1st. If you have a proposal you want to submit, time is running out. Here’s more info on the BORG2 art proposal process.

BORG2 is a experimental project founded by Chicken John, self styled ‘Defender of Justice’ who challenged Burning Man founder Larry Harvey to an ‘Art Duel’ with the goal of getting more Art out to the annual event in the Black Rock Desert with democratically chosen funding and to demonstrate ‘a radically collaborative community-based process to fund and curate public works of art.

The BORG2 is dedicated to making the Art of the Burning Man 2005 event SPECTACULAR. Towards this goal, BORG2 is running a demonstration project using MASSIVELY Collaborative DO-MOCRACY as a means to inspire, facilitate, curate and fund public works of art for Burning Man.

Artist submissions could not be easier, as a visit to http://www.borg2.org/artists.php3 shows. Artists need to include a Description of the Artwork which should be as complete as possible, explaining the concepts involved, along with a budget outline and safety provisions in the time for the May 1st deadline.

Between the deadline and the voting date, the BORG2 Art Curators, Rosanna and Doyle of the Madagascar Institute, New York, will review the proposals and work with artists should any areas need clarification.

Voting takes place May 26 thru 29th after which votes are tallied up, winners being picked from the most votes, down the line till the Art Fund is gone.

photo: Bob Hsiao

The May 2005 issue of Popluar Science has an article on Munich’s annual Recorder Race. It’s a competition of classic “Walkman/Boom Boxes/Ghettoblasters” that have been modified with wheels, gears, spoilers, etc. so that they can race each other down a 15m gym floor powered by their tape drive mechanisms. Obviously they would all want to run in “fast forward” mode. Here are the Recorder Race mission and rules.

Maybe we should invite these guys over for this year’s Power Tool Drag Races. Of course they would have to upgrade to something like an old Open Wheel Recorder to compete with the big boys.

photo: Denis Pernath

Last night’s Laughing Squid Blog Launch Party was amazing. Thanks for everyone who made it out and for bringing all the beer, wine and food. MJ’s Shish Kabobs were a big hit (here’s her tips on how to make them).

Thanks Paul, for hosting the party for us. We’re going to miss this place.

So, here are some photos I shot of the Albion Castle before and during the party (they’re up on Flickr as well).

UPDATE 1: At the party I met Jonathan who runs “Jonathan’s Coffeeblog” (hosted at Laughing Squid, I might add) and he just posted a great write-up of last night’s festivities.

UPDATE 2: Per Andy’s suggestion, the Flickr tag for the party will be laughingsquidbloglaunch.

UPDATE 3: So at the party, several people decided to strip down and take a dip in one of the cavern’s natural springs pool. Our friend Jonas Luster was one of these people. Subsequently, photos starting appearing on the internet and Jonas became inundated with questions regarding his nudity. In fact he was asked so many questions that he decided to write a FAQ on the topic. A few days later, Jonas’ frolicking was immortalized with the launch of nakedluster.com.

UPDATE 4: As you may have overheard at our party, The Albion Castle is for sale.

Xeni Jardin’s NPR report on the recent SRL show in Los Angeles is featured on today’s edition of “Day to Day”. Xeni has an excellent recap of the show on her Boing Boing post that features several of my photos, some of which are on the NPR website as well.

That’s right, the rumors are true. Chicken John has sold The Odeon Bar. SFist’s Jackson of just broke the story to the stunned residents of San Francisco. We have know about this for a while, but have been waiting for some kind of official announcement from Chicken. I just spoke with him and he said that he’ll be sending over a write-up in the next few days, which we will post here. Until then, you might want to make a few more trips to our little clubhouse in The Mission and definitely make sure to catch an another installment of Ask Dr. Hal while you still can (in fact there’s one tonight). It’s then end of an era and I’m sure the beginning of something equally unique and chaotic in the Chicken John timeline.

Now I just have to find a new home for our squids.

That 50’s guy with the pipe is up to to his old tricks again. No I don’t mean Fred MacMurray. Behold, this Friday and Saturday night is the Church of the SubGenius - Official Spring Apocalyptic Film and Video Fest at the House of Dobbs Slackplex in Oakland. Come on out for a generous dose of Slack and see some movies from our favorite 26 year-old cult. See The Squid List post for more info. All praise Bob!

View original videos by Dr. Hal, the late Jeff Robins, Doug Wellman, Dr. Philo Drummond, Nancy Denny-Phelps, Mark McGothigan, K-Rob and other visionaries. Multiple screens– three, count ‘em, three separate simultaneous projections! SEE! Ultra-rare films by Bishop Joey and Dr. Howland Owll!

Illustration: Hal Robins

Lori’s mother Vera passed away three years ago today. She just posted a nice tribute on her blog.

Oh hey, things have been so busy around here I forgot to mention that Lori Dorn just launched a blog: hrlori.com

She’s “Attempting to Unravel the Complex World of California Human Resources” and doing a pretty good job of it in her first 8 days as a blogger.

You are invited to the…

Laughing Squid Blog Launch Party

Thursday, April 21st
7pm to 11pm

Albion Castle
881 Innes Avenue
San Francisco

At the beginning of the year, we launched a blog for Laughing Squid (running WordPress of course), so we are going to have a little blog launch party this Thursday, April 21st at the legendary Albion Castle in San Francisco. Yeah, I know we launched the blog a while ago, but what better reason or place to have a party, plus we haven’t had one in a while.

If you haven’t been to the Albion Castle before, it an amazing and historic building located in the Hunter’s Point area of San Francisco. It once was a brewery and it has a natural springs next door which is accessible through caverns that go 200 feet deep. Many wonderful events have taken place in these caverns over the years and this may be your last chance to visit them. The owner of the Albion Castle is selling the place and our friends are moving out at the end of the month. One of the residents, Paul de Jong, just happens to be Laughing Squid’s Help Desk manager for our web hosting operations, so among other things, the Albion Castle is essentially Laughing Squid’s tech support center. Here are some photos of the Albion Castle.

Please bring some beer/wine/etc and Paul will be firing up the BBQ on the terrace, so bring something for the grill as well. This is an small event for our loyal visitors and feed readers and it is not being promoted beyond this blog, but feel free to bring a friend if you want (if you do, bring extra beer for your friend).

The Albion Castle is located in Hunter’s Point, just past The Box Shop and not from from Hunter’s Point Navel Shipyard. Here are directions, a map and the Albion Castle as seen from space.

For more on the Albion Castle, check out the website.

UPDATE 1: If anyone is interested in doing an acoustic performance in the caverns, let us know.

UPDATE 2: Although this is party is analog by its nature, there is a wireless network that is accessible from some parts of the “castle” for those live blogging types (you know who you are).

UPDATE 3: The photos from the party are now online.

Our friends Niall Kennedy (Technorati) and Annalee Newitz (EFF) are both mentioned in an New York Times article (registration required) that came out today about people who write about their employer in their blogs and what can happen if they say the wrong thing (wrong, that is, according to their employer). Niall follows-up on his blog.

Well at least I can post whatever I want about my employer without ever being fired.

UPDATE: Here’s Lori’s take on the whole thing.