I don’t think any of these things would stand on their own as a thread, so I figured I’d batch 'em up here and share them with you.
I drive through Salem Massachusetts twice a day to get to work and back. The street I drive down is Lafayette Street, and Salem State College is there. Anyfizzle, there are a bunch of 3- and 4-story apartment buildings on this street, all built around 1900-1920 (I think) which have names chisled in granite on the fascade. Some of the names are Napoleon, Martel, Fairfax, Fairmont, and E. Gagnon. I imagine they were originally student housing for Salem State, though my limited research hasn’t turned anything up. The names intrigue me, I think, because they are sort of anachronistic and slightly out of place (even though I’m still discovering “new names” after driving by them 5 days a week for two years).
Then there’s this grafitti, also on Lafayette Street. It’s hard to make out unless you blow the picture up a little (I snapped it with my Treo), but it’s a man’s head and beneath it it says, simply, LIES. Weird, but strangely appealing to me. I wonder what message the graffito is trying to send. I presume he’s telling us the Government is lying to us (about everything). Intriguing.
My neighbors, Boris and Natasha, are curing some preparation of meat or fish in their carport. It looks like large, flattened sirloin steaks, though I admit it could be fish. I haven’t had a close look. They’ve acquired one of those outdoor chimneas, and it appeared as though they were going to smoke the meat, though I never actually witnessed them pullign the trigger on that. Boris works nights, so he’s on a completely different schedule than me and I almost never see him. Otherwise I’d ask him what he was making. I think knocking on his front door and asking would be a bit… too much, though. Still, I wonder what he’s making - I imagine it’s some old school Russian dish passed down to him through generations, but I suppose it could just as easily be something he read about on teh Interwebs and wanted to try. 
So that’s that. Stumble across anything that intrigues you lately?