1 post tagged “cooper hewitt design museum”
My favorite museum in the world is The Met? I can't remember exactly when the first time I climbed up those impressive steps and had my mind blown open was exactly, but I was a really little kid. Since the I've paid hundreds of visits, and I think I have spent more time at the place than anywhere else in New York City. I just love it. As a museum, as a hangout, as I place to learn things. As a place to be stoned. As a place to go on dates. As a place to nurse breakups. As a place to sneak away on lunch breaks. As a place to be horribly embarrassed as I fall down the daunting marble steps and do a Tommy Boy into the classical sculpture garden.
Normally, this is the part of my blog where I start to critque the Carnegie Mansion nail by nail and cornice by cornice. Today I'm going to head down a slightly different path (don't worry, you'll get my overly opinionated analysis of C-H buildings sometime soon in a different post).
Every three years a bunch of smart pants designers get together and choose amongst themselves what they think are the most interesting things going on in the world of design. There are two key concepts here. One, they use design in its' broadest sense; the exhibit has clothing, household goods, toys, models, electronic whiz-bang gizmo's and structural materials. My Italian grandmother was say, 'A brische and a brosche': a little bit of this, a little bit of that. The panel that chooses what's on display don't necesarily pick what is the 'best' in a conventional sense. They choose items that are interesting for one reason or another. I can attest tho this because quite a few of the exhibits were broken from being over examined, so they aren't the greatest designs. I give them a lot of credit for not necessarily choosing what is 'hot' right now, but going with there gut feeling for objects they clearly enjoy. This year's show, titled Design Life Now, is a gathering of items and concepts that are currently out in the world. From the second you turn the corner onto 91st Street, you know something very cool is going on. The front of the mansion is covered in brightly colored flowers from sidewalk to roof in random, occasionally overlapping patterns. The light poles, fences and walls are inundated with cool signs that feature various items featured in the exhibition, like one of my favorite, that ubiquitous creepy cartoon rabbit, Dunny. Granted, I'm extremely prejudiced towards Coney Island (it's where I met my wife), and I can never pass up a chance to mention it, but there are cool signs with the iconic parachute jump all up and down 5th Avenue proclaiming the exhibition.
I believe it's more or less impossible to describe what exactly good design is. People much smarter and more eloquent than I have written entire books on the subject and they still haven't come up with a passable answer. My criteria for something to win my good design award is pretty simple. It has to be something that I own,use and enjoy. Yeah, I'm sure Maserati's are wonderfully designed and engineered cars, but I don't have one. Hell,I don't even really know how to drive. So there's nothing on this list you won't find me rolling with on the R Train on a regular basis. It keeps things honest. The next rule is it has to do what it was born to do. Sure, Tall Bikes look a treat, but they're hard to pedal, hard to ride, don't get you where you're going any faster than walking and are dangerous as hell. Pretty but useless disqualifies items from my list. It has to be elegant. Elegance is hard to define as well, but it's a case of, 'I know it when I see it'. Elegant in form, elegant in function and elegant in looks.
The last time that I owned or wore a watch it was a Swatch, with one of those rubber 'face protecting' guards that looked like a colored washer. Swatches were considered new and 'wild' at the time, to be paired with Skidz pants and a fanny pack. I have never liked the idea of being reminded of times passage constantly a few inches from my eyes. I have also never found a watch that is cool enough for me to enjoy looking at constantly, but with a clean enough design that I would wear it every day. During a recent trip to Alessi, where I spend a large portion of my lunch breaks, I discovered the perfect watch. Alessi's Kaj watch designed by Karim Rashid (who also designed the flagship Alessi store where I found this watch). The Kaj is simple enough that it goes with just about anything I'm wearing. You can get it wet. If,(and if you're me)when I break it, Alessi will replace it. It is really inexpensive for a watch by a fantastically talented designer. More than anything, it looks really brilliant. I constantly get compliments whenever people look down at what's on my wrist. I have a black one, but it comes in quite a few other cool colors as well, the pink being especially super-fly. This is the watch that got me to start wearing the time on my wrist after 19 years going without.
To many people, a pen is a pen. It's something you buy a dozen at a time, for as cheap as possible from Staples. When you have a pen in your hand for as many hours as I do, you start to notice the huge differences between a good pen and a crappy one. At this point in my life I've experimented with thousands of pens. I've written with everything from ultra fancy Mont Blanc pens (sorry...'writing instruments') to 20 for a buck dollar store specials that contain .000007 milliters of ink and have springs that become eye poking projectiles the second time you try to click it open. No other pen I've written with can touch the one's made by the Japanese design collective Muji.Their Gel Ink Ball Point Pens are very comfortable to hold. The writing tip retracts inside the body of the pen, so you don't get broken points and leaking ink all over the inside of your bag. They actually use a quality spring, so the pen doesn't break long before the ink runs out, which tends to drive me crazy. They have a sturdy little clip for attaching them to the inside of your bag, or to the strap on your Moleskine Notebooks. They are available in six different colors, including some fun ones like purple and green. The ink goes on smooth without smudging, and dries very quickly. The clear body of the pens lets you see how much ink is left, and looks very techy for a pen. Additionally, they have little stickers that are filled with cool looking Japanese writing that I can't read. The best thing to hold your Muji pens, is the clear plastic Muji Pen case. It holds four pens, snaps shut, is clear so you can
see what pens you have with you,and is practically indestructible. What separates Muji in a big way from other contemporary design groups is the fact that there products are dirt cheap. There is really no other well designed products out in the world available for as little money as the items Muji produces. My English friends tell me there is a Muji on every corner in the UK, and Muji is hugely popular across the pond. Muji even designs and builds homes in Japan! Sadly,Muji hasn't quite made it to every corner here in the USA. I get all my Muji goodness at The MOMA Design Store, and rarely have to spend more than $2 or $3 dollars on any item.
I mention my love of all things Victorian quite often. One great Victorian custom that I wish would make a comeback is the concept of The Calling Card. 'Miss Dickinson, while you were out taking a turn around the Pump-Room, Red Whiskers paid a call. He left his calling card for you Miss'. Now that's sexy. Sure,most of us have business cards, but what about cards for purely social reasons? This is a wonderful concept. There's something sweet and endearing about meeting a new person and have them hand you a card with all their contact information that doesn't center on what they do for a living. Flickr, the amazing, free, photo sharing site and Moo, have helped bring back calling cards with a 21st Century twist. Moo allows you to choose any of your photos from Flickr, and have them printed up as terrific, high quality mini calling cards. You can choose as many images as you like for the front side, and Moo will give you an equally distributed amount of each image in your pack of cards. Even though they are tiny, Moo provides enough room on the backside for all your contact infomation: name, mobile number, Blackberry, email and blog adress. They also give you the option of putting a big Creative Commons license symbol on the rear as well, to show people you meet that you support the open and fair exchange of information. The bright pictures and odd size of the cards really make them stand out from the drab business cards that most people use. Also, if you put a photo of yourself on the
Remember the days of Floppy Disks? No? I guess I am getting old. Once upon a time, like when I was in college, and men wore powdered wigs and monocles, everyone carried around their documents, pictures and character files for the video game Wasteland on floppy disks. These behemoths could a wopping 1.44 megabytes of information. They also loved to stop working whenever you needed to access something important, like a great poem you'd just written or a downloaded list of cheats for Castlevania. Really, the only good thing about floppy disks is that they were portable. My Verbatim U3 USB Drive is a geeky little piece of wizardry that I never leave home without. Contained on this microscopic hunk of silicon are several collections of my poetry, a copy of my resume, a couple dozen photos of my various engineering projects, a few photos of myself (you never know when you may need to whip up a profile for something on the fly), a couple of E-Books, a video of me giving a poetry performance, a copy of my phone book and address book, as well as a fully functional open source word processor and a copy of Firefox that loads right from this drive. More or less, I have a stripped down version of my Macbook with all my favorite and important documents that takes up almost no space and works with nearly any computer on the planet. I like to think of this little drive as my electronic Swiss Army Knife, because it can get me out of almost any computing jam, any time or anywhere. If someone would like a copy of one of my poems (probably a mentally ill pervert...) I can just give them one on the spot. If I meet someone interested in one of my bicycle frame designs, I can pull up the photos and plans immediately. If I need a phone number, it's there. Conversely, if there's a document, photo, song or webpage I'd like to hang onto for later, I can just pop it in my drive and make a copy. I like my Verbatim drive because it's large (1 GB), it has a cap for the plug side, a handy lanyard for attaching it to the inside of my bag so it doesn't get lost, and it was absurdly cheap. Actually it was free, I bartered building a set of wheels for someone and they gave me the drive. It is cheap at a store though. I don't know why everyone isn't carrying these around at all times.
I enjoy my I-Pod quite a bit, but truthfully there is no substitute for listening to the radio. I'm not being nostalgic either. There's something special about radio occuring in real time that separates the experience from that of listening to pre-recorded music. Here in NYC, we're lucky enough to get a decent signal from WFMU (91.1), which has some of the most brilliant entertainment available in any format today, as well as our local NPR station WNYC (93.9). Those two station alone make it worth my while to have a radio. I realized that the junkie tuner built into my all in one stereo just wasn't cutting it, when I discovered this gorgeous beauty pictured on your left. The Dolmen Mini Radio designed by Rene Adda is so absolutely stunning that I would keep it on my desk if it did absolutely nothing. However, it is a radio as well as a funky looking box. A damn good radio at that. The controls are simple, with shiny chrome buttons for on and off,AM or FM, as well as volume up and down.It's is a very simple device without a million useless features that have parts that can break. The speaker is surrounded by more chrome, and a gigantic tuning knob sits on top of the shiny chrome plate at its' top. The antenna goes up and down to make it easy to take the Dolmen along with you. Which is further simplified by the fact that it runs on batteries. Having lived through both 9/11 in close proximity and The Great New York City Blackout (during which I passed a kidney stone) I can really appreciate the usefulness of a battery powered radio. Really though? It's the color. Have you ever seen a blue so fantastic as the blue on this radio? I'll admit, sometimes I just want to lick it, because I know anything edible this color blue would just taste so good. Like the wonderfully blue Boo-Berry Cereal. I saw the color of this radio from across the store, before I even knew it was a radio, but my mind was made up. I would have that blue thing, whatever it was! It makes me happy every morning just to see it hanging out on my desk, playing NPR while I drink my coffee.
Riding a bicycle has been my primary means of transportation my entire life. I've never had a car. Getting around New York City by bicycle is hyper efficient, and once you've honed your survival skills it's actually a swinging good time. Getting around by bike presents a whole series of challenges. Where do I lock my bike up? What kind of lock do I use (simple,the Kryptonite NYC Fugghedabout Chain and a Guard Gate Keyed padlock)? What kind of tires? What's the one burning questions that's always on every riders mind? What do I wear? I really have pondered this question for years, and until recently I could never find the perfect pair of riding pants. Chrome's Shins Riding Knickers are the ultimate pair of urban riding pants. To start with they are shants - short pants. They come to about mid calf,so they don't get caught in the drivetrain, but long enough to protect your legs from scratches and gunk. They are also the correct length so you don't look like an asshole when you're off the bike. The have a very, very thin chamois. [Emily Dickinson's Educational Tip of the Day: A chamois, pronounces sham-mee, is basically an ass pad that is usually built into 'real', ie spandex, ie embarrassing cycling shorts to prevent excess wear and tear on your booty during long rides. Yes, I wear those shorts when I'm on my road bike.]
Because the chamois is much thinner than the type usually found in cycling shorts, it works while the pants are able to remain baggy, you can wear underwear if you so choose (although the last time I wore a pair at any time they had Yoda on them), and when you are off the bike getting a beer or shopping for books, you will be spared the ridicule of people thinking you are wearing an adult diaper. These shants are slightly stretchy thanks to the crazy nylon/spandex blend they are made out of, wind proof yet breathable and water resistant. Amazingly, if you get these suckers drenched in a rainstorm, they dry out cartoonishly fast. Almost like magic. However, it's the little details only a rider can appreciate that make these pants truly perfect. They are cut higher in the back, than in the front so your ass doesn't hang out of the back when you stand up on the pedals or get down in the drops. That is pure genius. The belt loops are enormous, and ridiculously reinforced so you can ride around all day with your Kryptonite chain pulling on your belt and not rip the belt loops off. Genius. The pockets zip closed
so that your keys, change and i.d. don't go flying onto Madison Avenue when you have to jam on the breaks to avoid being crushed between Mister Softee and some douche in a Bentley talking on a cell phone and fingering his trophy wife. Most riders in NYC know it's a good idea to blackout the logoes on your bike with tape or reflective strips,so everyone thinks your Sachs is a $20 Huffy, and Chrome has gone through the trouble of doing that for you with your shants. There is just one very tiny, tasteful, embroidered logo on the front of one pant leg. In this day and age of 'branding' every single inch of everything, it's great to find a company that lets the quality of its' products, not a bunch of tacky logos do its' advertising. The best thing about my Chrome Shants is that I can lock up my bike, walk into a bar and hang out all night, and not only will no one suspect that I'm wearing cycling clothes, but I'll get compliments on the 'cool shorts' I'm wearing. That NEVER happens with cycling clothes.
I really searched high and low for a case for my Blackberry. I'm serious. I dragged my wife in and out of least 20 different stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn searching for a case. It seems the only case available for this Blackberry is that corny 'Mr. Businessman' fake leather holster with the belt clip. I'd rather just use a brown paper bag, thanks. I'm sure there is some turn of phrase or hackneyed saying for this, but I found a brilliant case five doors down where I work, which was of course the last place I looked. Mt good friends over at BAPE hooked me up with this out of control blue ape camo Blackberry case. Like every other thing A bathing Ape makes, it looks too sick for words, and there are probably only 4 of them in the entire universe. I'll vainly admit I like being the only kid on the block with a camo BAPE Blackberry case. It gets oohs, ahhhs and 'Where'd you get thats?' every time I take it out of my bag.
Let's face it folks, America is a bunch of fatties. I don't begrudge anyone else their right to be as huge as they like (although I do think it's fairly sad that heart disease related to obesity is the number killer of Americans). Go ahead and grab that fourth half-gallon of heavy cream for your cereal. What I do hate is the fact that nearly every piece of clothing, in every store in the US is sized for fat people. I'm tall (6'1") and pretty thin (160 pounds)and it is like Khe San trying to find a pair of pants that fit me correctly. Every pair I try on are either way too baggy and big around the waist, or if I can find a pair that fits my waist they are too short. All pants seem sized to fit pear shaped men with huge guts (and these men would seem to love pleats as well). Cue the Busby Berkly whirling stage sets, and in steps my hero J. Lindberg. My J. Lindberg pants fit me so perfectly, it is as if Gepetto, g-d of tailors, descended from on high and and sewed them directly on to my legs. Neither too baggy, nor too tight, they have that custom tailored look and feel. Every seam and stitch is perfect and there is not a stray thread anywhere. These pants have two metal buckles on the inside of the waist band for good holding power, but they can't be seen on the
'Lost Girls' is a brilliant masterwork by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie which depicts the erotic adventures of three young women. These aren't just any three young women. The three volumes of this graphic novel focus on Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, Wendy Darling from Peter Pan and Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as they journey into their sexual awakenings. Physically, the three hardcover, slip cased volumes are quite dramatic looking with gold leaf all over the place, lush full color illustrated pages and heavyweight paper, and uniformly lovely dust jackets. It's the type of book that would get pride of place on any shelf, and begs to be stared at. What's between the covers will just stop you dead in your tracks. Genius is a rare commodity, and a genius doing his best work is a rare force of nature that absolutely alters everything it contacts. 'Lost Girls' is an example of such a phenomenon at work. From the minute I laid eyes on this set I knew I was on to something special, and it is indeed special. This will most likely be remembered as the best work from one of the greatest writers of comics to ever live.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and any other subject so feel free to email and blow up my Blackberry or comment here until your fingers fall off. Until next time...
Cheers
Michael (aka Sexy Jesus aka Emily Dickinson)
emilydickinson at gmail dott com