verre-y cool necklaces

thanks to oh joy! i came across these at verre new york.



this necklace, in addition to the one toast n candy made, inspired me to make a necklace of my own... which i will post once i actually make it ;)

diamonds in the rough

i went into the payless shoes the other day to look for the abaete for payless line and see what i could find. and look what i found:



these come in gold, black patent and silver and are $20. they even seem like they'll be comfortable too ;) the collection is uneven - actually i think these were the only cool pair there but i am glad i waded in and checked it out - got my jolt of metallic for spring for $20 ;)

*addition as of 4/1: the NY times apparently agrees with me!

flaneur-ing and poketo

when i looked at this photo that i took in hong kong...



... it reminded me so much of the concept of the flaneur in late nineteenth century french art. particularly, this painting, Place de la Concorde by Edgar Degas:




a flaneur was a 19th century term for someone who walks about (Paris) seeing what there is to see. i feel that could be me walking about san francisco. at any rate, when one walks about one sees bits and pieces of people, groups, signs, stores as one passes by. this sense of passing by is reflected in the man walking out of the picture frame, in the horse swinging round as I walked by and moving out of the frame ie. my line of sight. sights seen by the flanuer are transitory, incomplete, always moving away and on from the viewer flaneur as the flaneur moves on herself. it also makes just a cool alive image - the person/horse/whatever moving just out of the frame.

to flaneur is also a way of describing to surf as in surf the internet. yesterday, while surfing around, i found poketo, which promotes the work of independent artists and is worth checking out. especially the shirts by hannah stouffer, marc atlan and tim gough. go crazy people! not only are these rad, but the customer service is most excellent.

you won't believe where this bathroom is

look carefully.

hint: it is not a disco.

ming yellow

on my very last day in hong kong, i saw this in the art museum. which i thought was extraordinarily beautiful and, for something hundreds of years old, very fashionable in color.

the yellow dish was offset too by this blurry but beautiful blue vase:


i have more from hong kong to share, but i am going to string it out a little...