Practically every wine-loving American I meet – even those who say they don’t know much about wine – is sure of one universal “truth” that couldn’t be farther from it: Red wine should be served “room temperature.” What does that mean? And who said so? Poking around in old British wine books from the Victorian…
Read Moreintroducing anthony giglio
Our friend Anthony Giglio is a journalist, sommelier, and the author of many acclaimed books on wine and cocktails, including the Food & Wine Magazine’s Wine Guide 2011. He travels around the country leading wine tastings and helping people navigate the vast world of wine, cocktails, and “what goes with what”. He does all of this with…
Read Moretime off + wishes for a wonderful labor day weekend
We found this photo of a beach ball suspended in air on the New York Times’ slide show of Hurricane Irene pictures. That’s us, we thought, as we take some time to….stop…let ourselves be suspended…for this last official week of summer. We leave you with a swell post by our new contributor Anthony Giglio, perfect…
Read Morenyc taxi farmers: late summer update
photo: david saltman When we last left our New York City taxi farmers – the car service drivers who plant “crops” in vacant patches of land around the Bronx – they were gamely waiting for their urban garden to grow, even as they waited for calls from the dispatcher. Well, it’s been a tough harvest in the…
Read More…after the storm…
…the Great Hurricane of 1938 roared ashore while Katherine Hepburn was out playing golf in Fenwick, Connecticut: there was no radar or satellite to warn of what appears to have been a Category 4 hurricane. Somehow, she rode out the storm, although it destroyed her family’s summer home. Most of her belongings were lost or destroyed;…
Read Moreorigami made of anything (vic muniz’ birds of a feather)
photo: andrew moore We LOVED this piece from the last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine: After the Japanese Earthquake in March, the nonprofit Bezos Family Foundation invited children to mail origami cranes to the Seattle headquarters of its Students Rebuild program. Each would trigger a $2 donation, up to $200,000. The group received more than 2…
Read Moremind bath: jackson pollock at work (by hans namuth)
(Video link here.) Hans Namuth‘s Jackson Pollock 51 is ten illuminating minutes of the abstract expressionist painter at work at his studio on Long Island. Pollock’s sparse words annotates his process in real time: simple declarative statements that give wonderful insight into an original, creative mind, like the idea that reacting against someone or something…
Read More‘create your own’: building block system for your own inventions
We totally love this collection by of elements and connectors for making whatever you want, designed by Louise Cohen. It is like a perfect fusion of built-it-yourself Lego/Tinkertoy/K’nex/ErectorSet-esque material for adults. The CREATE YOUR OWN Collection is a building system consisting of 18 galvanized elements and 5 kind of connectors. According to individual desires unique living…
Read Moremakeshift street seating (harlem)
Since we’ve been hanging out with our friend Ana, helping her fix up her place in Harlem (more on that soon), we’ve noticed that people in the neighborhood love to hang out on the street. We see men sitting on folding chairs at card tables playing poker, and families on stoops, and there’s alway…
Read Morepaint a chair like gaetano pesce did
For a fat, liberating dose of inspiration, check out the long riff on Mondoblogo of chairs Italian Designer Gaetano Pesce painted in the nineties for his kids. His “Open Sky” chairs are out-there, fun, wild, loose, and awesomely beautiful…
Read More“don’t give up!” (the inspirational letters project)
The Animators Letter Project was started by Willie Downs, an animation student who, just a year ago, was an aspiring animator pursuing a career he knew wasn’t right for him. Petrified of the risk he would be taking in dropping out of an expensive and presumably more reliable degree program to attend animation school, Downs wrote…
Read More5 faves from “time’s 50 best websites of 2011”
Time Magazine has come out with their 50 best websites of 2011. We find that their lists are often chock full of useful stuff—last year’s list introduced us to Wakerupper, which schedules wake-up calls (.5 each after a few free ones) which we rely on to stop pressing the snooze alarm and get us out…
Read Moreannals of bad design: the digital ‘new yorker’
When our friend Andrea Raisfeld sent us a compelling scan from Malcolm Gladwell’s piece Creation Myth in the May 16th issue of The New Yorker, we went online to find the story and explore its ideas more fully. In the process, the post we intended to write about the creative process turned into a post…
Read Mored-i-y clear lego housewares: greenhouse, lamps…
photo: sebastian bergne We are slightly obsessed with the idea of using Lego’s to make functional objects that we can really use; it’s kind of a mindgame we play with ourselves that we hope to put into action one day, since you can now buy as much of any color Lego as you want at…
Read More4 ways to step outside of your comfort zone + conquer the ‘ok plateau’
(Video link here.) We recently came across this great talk by Joshua Foer that explores the success of “experts.” The video is 17 minutes, which we know is long, so we’ve culled the gist for you, hoping you’ll listen at some point; we think it’s truly useful and super interesting. According to Foer and the scientists…
Read Moreweekend fun: new danny macaskill video
(Video link here.) The brilliant Danny Macaskill ‘exploring’ an industrial train yard with derelict buildings; he and the bike are ONE. Related posts: danny macaskill’s joy ride danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery) fly! (merce cunningham) improvised bike trailer and storage bins
Read Morea non-ipad glimpse of bjork’s biophilia
(Video link here.) Here’s a glimpse of the interactive iPAD app that Björk recently created to be part of her recent album, as she tries to give create ever more dimensions in her music. Its introduction, narrated by David Attenborough, is a strange combination of beautiful, inspiring and ever-so-slightly hokey, in a good way. We…
Read Moreolive oil strategies, from batali’s faves to d-i-y
In a recent interview on Nowness’ FB page, superstar chef Mario Batali was asked what olive oils he “swears by”. The answer: “Da Vero from Healdsburg, Primo Olio from Sicilia, Castello di Ama and Capezzana from Toscana.” We’ve tasted three of the oils he mentioned and they ARE stunning, as well as pricey and not easy…
Read Moreour lives, in brief (secrets, 6-word memoirs, even obits)
Lately we’ve been enjoying the phenomenon of succinct self-expression. A friend turned us on to SMITH Magazine and the six-word memoir revolution they’ve started, which reminded us of Studio 360’s one-line obituary challenge. (Sally’s one-line obit: “Sally Schneider, 107, Drowns in Surfing Mishap”.) Before both of these there was PostSecret, where folks anonymously share secrets that fit on the…
Read Mored-i-y tinkertoy trellis! + dismantling self-judgments
While we were away, a reader left a Comment in response to our post about Constantino Nivola’s Tinkertoy lamps. She described a trellis she had made out of vintage Tinkertoys bought on Ebay. She devised it to display her tillandsia, which are also known as air plants because they grow without soil and can be…
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