I usually wouldn’t post something here that’s already made it as far as BoingBoing, but this is seriously amusing. If you’ve ever shopped for a digital camera online, you’ve probably noticed that there are an awful lot of reasonably-large photography websites for stores based in Brooklyn. A Brooklyn resident who participates in rec.photo.digital has taken it upon himself to take photos of the storefronts of all of the Brooklyn-based camera vendors who have been mentioned on that newsgroup.

Some of them are just little mom and pop camera stores:

Others push the creepiness factor way up:

Others bear a remarkable resemblance to a Mailboxes, Etc. store. I’m not sure why I find this so amusing. It’s neat that a bunch of existing camera stores have managed to get out of their beat-up storefront and rough neighbourhood on the Web, I suppose, but it’s equally neat to pull back the curtain to see who the wizard really is. Now I want to see the storefront of some of the other mom and pop stores that have made a name for themselves on the web, like Thomas Distributing (rechargeable batteries), which always struck me as being as tiny as those Brooklyn photo stores.