July 5, 2006
Guilty pleasures: Traffic/tourist webcams and street-fashion photo blogs
I suspect that everyone has guilty web-surfing pleasures, and mine are traffic/tourist webcams and street-fashion photo blogs, both of which give me a peek at life elsewhere, whether from the sky or on the ground. (One needs something to break up the cavalcade of exhibition and book reviews, essays, and text-heavy weblog posts one reads, right?)
Several years ago I put together a bookmark folder with cameras pointed at popular spots in twenty-plus cities. Here are a few favorites: the BBC Jam Cams in London; two city government-sponsored webcams in Vienna; a weather cam in Dublin; a street corner in Milan; the Tokyo "riverside skyline"; seven views of Moscow; traffic cams in Barcelona; fifteen cameras in Paris; a view over the Madrid skyline. Here is a world map with links to even more.
More recently, I've taken an interest in sites that post pictures of people randomly encountered on the street. (I don't have the guts to stop someone and ask to take their picture.) The first I came across was Hel Looks, based in Helsinki; then The Sartorialist here in New York; FaceHunter in Paris; stilinberlin; Moscow Street Fashion; the Clothes Project in Singapore; and Visions of Warsaw.
I hope these links help someone pass the time.