“Not long ago, Erez Itzhaki, a thirty-four-year-old Israeli real-estate broker and developer, and his business partner, Eric Salomon, decided to sponsor a contest to name their latest venture, a shawarma-and-falafel restaurant on Third Avenue at St. Mark’s Place. Wanting to involve their new community—they have worked mostly in SoHo—they posted a bright-yellow advertisement for the contest over their boarded-up storefront and offered twenty-five hundred dollars to the winner. So far, seven thousand people have sent in roughly thirteen thousand entries.”