Street-shopping is a time-honored city tradition. There is nothing a New Yorker loves to brag about so much as their new pashmina scarf/gloves/rip-off handbag that they got "on the street for like 5 dollars!" — nothing, that is, except for scoring something cheap and vintage.

Morningside Heightsers embracing the mantra of their adoptive home can now combine their two favorite boasting claims and...buy vintage on the street!

Laurent Ghislaine has been setting up shop on the east side of Broadway between 108th and 109th since 2005, packing her huge white van full of old fur coats, costume jewelry, hats, and cashmere sweaters. She's been in the vintage industry for 23 years, and has a basement full of gems at home in Pennsylvania. But why choose 109th Street? Well, "kids love vintage and are always very happy to see me," she answers, but explains that she doesn't have a permit to sell a few blocks up, closer to campus.

You can find her at Barnard's vintage clothing fair, or at Low's beginning-of-year street fair, but Ghislaine wishes "they could put me up there all the time" as business on 109th is sometimes slow. So walk a block and a half past American Apparel this Wednesday or Friday and find a cardigan that every single person you know doesn't have.

Bwog kicks off Halloween early this year with a special guide to two of the neighborhood's best costume purveyors, Ricky's and Possibilities @ Columbia.

You can divide the world in two camps: Those who love Halloween and those who hate it. Bwog falls into the former camp and we hope you do too. But we understand, fun is not for everyone. If you're a Halloween hater, a self-conscious self-customer or just not in the spirit yet, Bwog's here to help. Today, we're guiding you through two of Morningside Heights' most unabashed Halloween haunts, the already infamous Ricky's and Possibilities@Columbia.

Bwog's guide to the best dollar-store toy shopping in Harlem: a detailed narrative. By Alex Weinberg, with help from Hillary Busis.

A walk through Harlem will most likely lead you by a few dollar stores. Go into them. You can stock up on red Solo cups, sure, but moreover, you can find the most flamboyantly packaged, lead tainted, and generally dangerous Chinese toys possible. Although the warnings on these toys will never be too alarming, be assured that these are the kinds of gifts you should buy your children if they were mistakes and you want them to die. Even the toys that aren't potentially lethal are just embarrassing. Here are some unexaggerated highlights of the things I've found:

• A faux Barbie doll with the title "Benign Girl."
• A package of blank cylinders labeled "Perfume Liquid&Stick Glue."
  "SPNRT ZONE: PRACTISE BALLS" on a bag of nondescript plastic spheres.
• "Super Airplane" on a plastic bag that clearly contained a helicopter.
  
• A toy soldier set featuring six different battalions: two from Uruguay, and one each from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile. What war were these five South American nations fighting? According to the package: the Gulf War. I'd love to find this toy company's interpretations of other historical skirmishes, like that famous battle in World War II when Hitler and his 300 Spartans braved the onslaught of Hannibal's elephants in a race to conquer the Moon.
  
• Sets of jokishly large pencil sharpeners. Large enough to sharpen a baby's whole fist.
  (Read more...)

For students, shopping period (though not christened as such) is a time for self-exploration, stress, and belly butterflies. For professors, it's a time to show off remarkable wit and sometimes-sexy whimsicality.

Prof. David McKenna in Auteur Studies: Clint Eastwood:
"Don't e-mail me. I repeat, DON'T E-MAIL ME. I have the Internet to follow San Antonio Spurs games and also I watch pornography."

Maura Spiegel, Intro to American Studies:
"Keep it real, and stay black, man."

Prof. Lydia Goehr in Philosophy of History:
"The future of the present is the futurity of the past."

David Yerkes in Archaeologies of Language:
Introducing the first assignment: "I am a merciful God."
"I LOVE catching plagiarists. It really gets my adrenaline going."

Richard Bulliet in Islamo-Christian Civilization:
"When I proposed this course to the committee on instruction, they said, well, you're just making students read your own books, aren't you? And I said, well, yeah..."
On the Great Books curriculum: "Cicero is not discussable after a potluck meal."
And on the power of historians: "Historians rule the world, because they rule the past...The gullibility of the readers of history is almost unlimited."

The rumor mill is spinning with reports that upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods is set to move into a new condo development to supplant Park West Village, along Columbus Ave. from 97th to 100th Streets. New York real estate blog Curbed notes that, "because something about these Whole Foods rumors always seems to play out, we're calling this one a done deal." Bwog speculates that this could spell salvation for Whole Foods fans otherwise disinclined to trek down to the Columbus Circle store for fancy foodstuffs, not to mention competition for uptown mainstay Fairway and nearby newcomer Citarella. With the long-departed West Side Market set to reopen at 110th and Broadway soon, our area's grocery store wars could be heating up again.

Meanwhile, the new luxury high-rise Fifteen Central Park West (designed, incidentally, by architect Robert A.M. Stern C'60, who also left his touch on our very own Broadway Residence Hall) will bring electronics megastore Best Buy a little closer to campus when it opens in the tower's Broadway base. The neighborhood's certainly come a long way ever since Meg Ryan learned, in that quintessential 90s romantic comedy, You've Got Mail, to stop protesting, and fall in love with chain stores- or at least their proprietors' charming online personas.

-CJS

First years know this, but you upperclassmen might as well come along for the ride: Bed Bath and Beyond is offering a 10% discount for all Columbia students today (Monday) with I.D. from 9 AM to 10 PM. They're even shepherding you to the store with a free shuttle! Looks like it's time to get that paper shredder you've always wanted.

But a word to the wise: B³ is not also altogether benevolent. One former stock boy says that the megastore already marks up its wares by 50%, and mocks the offer of a paltry discount. "Damn that accursed store," our tipster seeths. "There was something about serving customers who were willing to pay $10 for a gourmet ice cube tray, which irritated me. For the first few weeks of work I'd develop horrible headaches to the point of becoming disoriented. I quickly found out that the source of my headaches was none other than the giant room of overpriced Yankee candles."

As far as Bwog can tell, there's no catch to your enjoyment of their interior decorating recommendations.