  We only see a small fraction of the matter in the universe, but the rest
gives itself away by the impact of its gravity. The distortions from pure
Hubble flow (or peculiar velocities) that this matter creates have the
potential to be a powerful cosmological tool, but are also a nuisance for
extragalactic astronomers who wish to use redshifts to estimate distances to
local galaxies. We provide a quick overview of work on the local peculiar
velocity field, discussing both simple spherical infall models, non-parametric
modeling using redshifts surveys, and full velocity and density field
reconstruction from peculiar velocities. We discuss results from a
multiattractor model fit to data from the SFI++ sample of peculiar velocities -
the best peculiar velocity data currently available. We also talk about the
future of samples for the study of the local velocity field, especially the
2MASS Tully-Fisher (2MTF) survey.
