Saturday, August 23, 2008

We Still Got That Meat Lover's Pizza in the Trunk

Just one more plug for our stoop sale tomorrow – we're still adding stuff by the minute and it's going to be a pretty amazing little collection, if I do say so myself.
Magazines...
...and more magazines...

...and books. We've added a bunch more books. Design books, fashion books, history books, other books.

There are also some random VHS tapes for sale...

...and a few copies of the Visionaire "Exquisite Corpse" DVD.

There's actually a lot of random Visionaire stuff. This is a somewhat beat-up but still worthwhile copy of no.15, "Cinderella."

So anyway, I'll leave it at that, a lot of interesting things to be found. Please stop by.

Sunday, August 24, 9:30am–4pm
14 Saint Felix Street
between Fulton and DeKalb
Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Also,

Friday, August 22, 2008

All the Fun We've Had

The New York Times is reporting that Pervis Jackson, of the Spinners, has died at the age of 70. Jackson (pictured above at top right), who was born in New Orleans, is survived by his wife Claudreen, who he married in 1968, and four children.

The Spinners, who were based in Detroit, had a bunch of hits ("Could It Be I'm Falling In Love," "Working My Way Back To You," "Then Came You," "I'll Be Around," "It's a Shame" – the list goes on) and it's tough to pick a favorite. Here's a lesser-known album cut from the Spinners/8 album, recorded in Seattle and released in 1978. The group was in turmoil right then and not charting the way they were used to, but I really like that record, and particularly this introspective song.

The Spinners I'm Tired of Giving mp3

And for good measure, here's a clip of the group doing "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love" on Top of the Pops, 1977.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Keep on Movin'

Here are just a few of the things we're selling this Sunday at our stoop sale in Fort Greene. (This does not even begin to get into the clothing. Anyone who knows my wife Imelda Marcos Nan Kempner Emily knows she is obsessed with fashion.) There will also be some furniture, kitchen stuff, CDs... a little bit of everything. The stoop will be chock full of bargains—and we'll be sipping on sizzurp and playing fast and loose with the till, so everyone wins.

It would not be a stoop sale at 14 Saint Felix Street without a gang of dope records. There will be about 5-6 crates total and most (including those you see here) will only be $2. I believe it was the RZA who once said "We gotta move. We gotta move, baby."

Visionaire 27: Movement (display copy). Designed by J. Abbott Miller, with contributions by Martin Margiela, Peter Saville, Nick Knight, Hussein Chalayan, the Steves (Meisel, Klein), Alexander McQueen, Mario Testino, and the usual gang of characters.

This book would be really cheesy, except for the fact that it was designed by Herb Lubalin, with photographs by Gary Winogrand.

A whole bunch of other books. You must learn.

This vintage film editor. It's way cool-looking but I don't really edit films. I always thought I might make some kind of film strip art project out of it but who has time for such things. You are reading my art project.

All these male fragrances I got for free when I worked at Visionaire. They all smell lovely, but I don't really wear the stuff, for fear of smelling European.

A ton of magazines.

Some packs of old Polaroid film that have been in our freezer for about nine years.

...and much, much more, all priced to move. Stop by and help us finance an epic roadtrip.

Sunday, August 24th, rain or shine
9:30am—4pm
14 Saint Felix Street between Fulton & DeKalb
Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Rock of Ages

The 30th issue of Wax Poetics is on newsstands now, featuring cover stories on Bad Brains and Elvis, and features on Sixto Rodriguez, Bo Diddley, Jimmy McGriff, Ike Turner, Dave Bartholomew, The Rascals, Babe Ruth, and many more. I think I mentioned previously that I really wanted to print on foil paper—so the rock issue would be metallic—but the cost was too outlandish. We did it at V magazine with issue 37 (Mary J. Blige on a gold cover, photographed by Mario Testino) but Fendi picked up the tab. When you print on metallic paper, you have to first print a white layer, and then each subsequent layer has to air dry—it can't go under a heater. Depending on the paper, you also have to spot-varnish the uncoated inside covers so the ads will print glossy. The whole process is fairly complex and we couldn't swing it this time out. Still, a very cool issue, and editorially an interesting juxtaposition of Bad Brains and Elvis on the front and back covers.

One of my goals in re-designing the magazine was to change the display type with each issue, possibly picking up type from record covers that figured prominently in the issue. This time, though, art director Josh Dunn did a 3-D metal chunk treatment to Lubalin Graph, so we stuck with that for the second issue in a row.

More info at waxpoetics.com, and check the digital music site as well, where you can download playlists from each issue and tons of other good stuff.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Une Sale Histoire

Yep Yep: we're having a stoop sale this coming Sunday, in attempts to make a little scratch and lighten our load before packing and moving across this great land. We have extraordinarily good taste, so grab some cash, stop by and pick up some of our duplicates and extra crud. We might even feed you a Sunday morning michelada or a tallby in a paper bag.

Sunday, August 24th, 9:30am–4pm
14 Saint Felix Street between DeKalb & Fulton
Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Fab 5 Freddy Une Sale Histoire (Male Version) mp3

PS, I stole that image of the girl on the motorcycle from Wooooo.

Every Day Comes and Goes

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Nature meets the gothic in a story from New York magazine's fall fashion issue, by Harriet Mays Powell and photographer Andrea Sjodin.

I think this airy, ghostly, gloomy tone in fashion at the moment must result from a heightened awareness of the environment, contrasted with the hidden morbidity of a never-ending war.

There's also a sense of an earlier era's inward-turning response to similar phenomena, i.e., it has a 197o, quieter-parts-of-Black-Sabbath feel. Compare and contrast:

In any case, I dig it. More images at nymag.com, and be sure to snap it up from the newsstand this week as well.

Mental Movies

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This past Sunday morning, Sky and our step-brother Chris (in town from Portland, Oregon) and I met up for a quick trip to the Fort Greene flea market. It was mostly uneventful—no records worth reporting—but Sky found a really amazing book: former Life magazine photojournalist Leigh Wiener's Tijuana Sunday, a series documenting 52 minutes at a bull fight on a sunny afternoon in 1961. (Click to enlarge the pictures.)

Wiener's point of view on bull fighting is clear; I'll spare you the gruesome shots of the bull being tortured and eventually killed, to the great delight and/or horror of much of the crowd. This sport, despite the glamorous culture that surrounds it, is sick and wrong.

The photography is captivating. At first glance I thought Tijuana Sunday was a great book, and easily worth the $15 price tag—but it became instantly legendary to me when Sky showed me these spreads:

Long time readers of this blog (hi mom) will remember that I posted this photo before. The man in the picture is a young Dennis Hopper, so I always assumed it was a film still. I've been trying to figure out what movie it came from since high school, when I clipped the picture out of a magazine and promptly forgot the context.

There you have it, mystery solved.

More info on Leigh Wiener (1929–1993) at his website.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Rock 'n Roll Taco

On Saturday Jason, Aoife, Janice, Emily and I motored out to Rockaway Beach for some grub at David Selig's new solar-powered taco shack, one block off the sand at Beach 96 Street.


First things first:

The food is simple and superb. They make their own chips, the guacamole is chunky and delicious, and the tacos themselves are exactly what you want in a taco by the beach—very few ingredients, combined beautifully and cooked to perfection.

We had the fish and the chorizo:

I'm willing to firmly state that Rockaway Taco is the new Red Hook ball fields, which are now completely blown (all the ladies cooking on card tables are gone and it's just trucks now; tastes great but there are lines and lines of hipsters waiting for authentic Brooklyn experience in taco form). As Emily mentioned, this won't be an issue for us soon, because there's tons of good Mexican food around the Northwest—but in New York it's hard to come by.

Rockaway is really far away but definitely worth the trip. A good taco can make your whole weekend.

We ate ours at the beach, maxing and relaxing in the beautiful sunny breeze.

Defying all convention, Jason refused to wait one hour before taking a dip.

Bells Beach is named for Stephen "Bells" Belson, a lifeguard here for many years. He was also a firefighter (Ladder 24) and died in 9/11. Each summer the FDNY has a Steve Belson memorial swim at Bells Beach.

Airplanes from JFK are constantly overhead in the Rockaways.

And it ain't Coney Island, but there's a steady stream of characters on the boardwalk. The people watching is pretty great.

There's also a skatepark, full of little dudes shredding it up by the beach.

When the clock struck 4 everyone was thirsty, so we headed out. On the way back we noted a few outdoor bars and the Jacob Riis Gateway National Recreation Area, which we'll try to get back to before we head west next month. (The "before we go" list only seems to be growing at this point. More about that later.)

We ended up at Commonwealth in Park Slope.

A Columbian church was having a parade down 5th Avenue for some saints or something when we got there.

Later on we had some dinner at Blue Ribbon, and called it a night.

Tacos, the great outdoors, the company of some good buddies, and a tequila-marinated steak for dinner. As the great warrior poet Ice Cube once said, It was a good day.