thanksgiving

I'm renewing my vows (click) this year on Tumblr (click).
Happy Thanksgiving, and thanks for stopping by. xx

good genes

Going through these photos for Dossier, I found the one of Mom Mom on the right, and it made me think of my sister, on the left. I'm missing her extra (that kitchen is in Australia) as yesterday was her birthday!


Stay posted on my news of fashion (and, for the moment, family) at Closettour.

x

Os Gemeos: the boys are back in town

Thanks to Os Gemeos and an 80-foot Genie Boom, I got to fly high above the city on Saturday:


You can find my details about the twins' new painting in Chelsea at Dossier (click), and I'll likely divulge more soon. I had Brazil on the brain at Closettour (click) this weekend too.

love and death on the Q-train

Romance blooms and a Silly Band snaps on a summer morning in Manhattan.

flown the coop

...for the time being.I saw this little arrangement in a window in Stockholm, which is where you can find me for the moment. (Click.) Or, as ever, at Closettour. (Click.)

Yours truly,

The Jaybird

spread the love

Again, Tom Slaughter (click) makes it easy to spread the love, just click, print, cut, give. 

In the meantime, I'm spreading the love at Dossier (click) and Closettour (click). Come find me there!

xx

all the world's a stage

As I reported Saturday morning for Dossier (click), it seems I'm not the only one who finds my subway landing to be somewhat cinematic.


Erin (my friend, neighbor, and editor at Dossier) and I will be keeping our eyes out for the Chanel ad starring our street. In the meantime this sign, left on South 5th, points directly towards home on Hooper.

We'll see what's on the script for 2010...

california christmas

Thanks to my friend Jeremy Black, a San Clemente-dwelling, convertible-driving, easygoing, natural foods magnate, I have had the ultimate California Christmas.

Here's the view from the deck where I'm writing right now, while the bells from the church down the street play "Lovely Weather for a Sleigh Ride Together."

Here's the sleigh I rode on Christmas eve,

appropriately enough, at a surf break known as Church.

Jeremy and his next-door neighbor Mark point the way.

Santa puts his shirt back on.


Here at Casa Black, açai (click) is the new egg nog,

and hemp buttered whole grain bread is the new French Toast.

I've been getting my butt kicked daily at the yoga studio down the street and waking up my mind, body, and soul with dunks in the chilly Pacific.


It's not going to be easy going back to snowy NYC, but I feel stronger with some Pacific salt and California sun in my veins, and I'll do my best to spread it around.

boas festas

Boas Festas is Brazil-speak for Happy Holidays, but literally it translates to "good parties," which is what I'm wishing for you, via a scan of a Christmas card I picked up at the flea market in Rio last summer.


It seems especially appropriate this year, since I'm writing from Sambazon's (click) San Clemente headquarters, while the Black brothers, my hosts, prepare to take off for Brazil tomorrow.

I'll happily hold down the fort for another day before I head back to NYC, where the forecast is for...snow. I've got lots of love to keep me warm, so fueled with that, some California sunshine and saltwater, and a boa festa or two, we'll pull through the rest of this winter.

Boas Festas, Happy Holidays, lots of love!

baby, it's cold outside

I was really looking forward to another Caribbean Christmas (click), but it seems, at the last minute, that it isn't in the cards this year.

For a day or two, I was excited about staying in Brooklyn. I listened to Petula Clark sing "Baby It's Cold Outside" at least 20 times.


I walked around, admiring Christmas lights.

My favorite, a fox in the snow.


I baked peppermint and peanut butter kisses for a party (while listening to Petula Clark.)


I donned a festive and shimmering gold sweater for said parties.


And tromped cheerily through the snow to arrive.

And then, I thought, "Baby, it is cold outside," and briefly considered stowing away on a container ship (click).



I found myself feeling more, "Fox in the Snow" than Petula Clark, and then I thought...don't I have a half a ticket to L.A. leftover from this spring? As it turns out, I do. So I bought the other half, and now this fox is getting out of the snow, headed to San Clemente for a few days in the waves.

good morning

hallelujah, holy shit

Well, I'm writing this post by candelight, and not because it's Hannukah.


Just a little while ago, not long after I finished my final re-write (graduation is tomorrow morning), I was doing a little housekeeping. My head was in the hall closet when suddenly everything went bright white and blue, and there was a loud buzzing sound.

It wasn't a Christmas angel descending on Hooper Street, but rather my living room light fixture, spewing sparks and igniting a small flame on the ceiling. An involuntarily yelp leapt from my lungs and I slammed off the light switch and called 911.

Three wisemen (hot firemen) turned up lickety split. The flames had died down by then, so they just knocked down part of the ceiling to make sure there were no embers still burning, and told me to have the super make sure the circuit breaker was off.



I had planned on having a Bloody Mary before graduation in the morning, and I'd say I still will, but it will likely be with Stefan, my stupendous super, while he fixes the wiring. He said he'll come early so I can get to school on time.

If I hadn't been home when this happened it could have been a really bad scene. But I'm just chillin' here in the dark with my corner store candles and a small pile of my ceiling swept up into the trash can. All my school-work is done, dad is on his way in from the airport, and I'm going to get a manicure. All's well that ends well.

what is a quince?

Every time I think about that man in the audience asking where my sweater came from (click) I can't help thinking of White Men Can't Jump, when Rosie Perez finally gets to bring it with "foods that start with the letter Q."

I still have a couple of rewrites to do before graduation on Wednesday, but you better believe that by Thursday, I'll be celebrating over Quahogs and Quarterdecks. 

good night.

CUNY, Room 308, after it all went down. (click!) I'll explain more later, but for now, I am so happy, and ready to sleep. More details to come...

CLOSETTOUR

First I was Gathering String (click), then I was trying to solve the Sartorialist's Dilemma (click), but now I've landed on CLOSETTOUR (click).


I know, it's been a bit of an identity crisis, but that's what getting dressed is like sometimes. The blog you see at CLOSETTOUR right now is just the beginning of what I hope the project will grow to be. I'll write more as it develops, but for now, please note that CLOSETTOUR is the new Sartorialist's Dilemma.

"It sounds like an animal. It came from the Planet CLOSETTOUR!" Joe Walker, hyperlocal blogger, The New York Times

I think he meant it sounds like a planet. Come visit me there! (Click.)

thanksgiving

thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you
thank you

rising tides, ferocious waves

You might remember that last week (below) I gave you a peek through the door of the Bryant Park Library into my old-school (microfiche!) research via iPhone. The week before that (further below), I was indulging in magazines and martinis, considering what the future of journalism might hold for yours truly. Now, with CUNY's J-school graduation just two weeks away (!), David Carr gave a quick synopsis of what he perceives to be the "Fall and Rise of Media" in today's Media Equation column (click.)

Mr. Black on the ferocious NZ waves, 2008

When I finished it, I exclaimed aloud, "F-yes! Thank god I read that to the end!" It was this bit that got me:

For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.

One hell of a kicker, right? That's us, knocking down doors with our iPhones (or respectfully photographing them at the Bryant Park Library.) Graduation, here we come. Now back to work.

Pssst!

Shhh...secret research at the Bryant Park Library, observed by iPhone.

Microfiche!

Literary lions, guarding the gate.

magazines and martinis

"Drink for reward, not for inspiration."

A New York Times columnist told me that a few years ago, as I was entertaining the thought of quitting my job at Edun to get a graduate degree in journalism. (He was about to speak on a panel; I offered him a drink.)

In any case, tonight I ignored said columnist's advice and drank for both reward and inspiration. It was a long week. As you likely know if you're reading this (since there's a solid chance you're related to me), I'm looking down the barrel of my final weeks of journalism school while interning at one of the bastions of long-form print journalism. Tonight, in the descending elevator at Condé Nast, one editor mentioned he was ready for a martini. Me too, I thought--but I would have mine at home.

I was exhausted, and furthermore, I knew Jeff Jarvis (click), was expecting our notes from CUNY's New Business Models for News conference. They called this forum a Hyper Camp, which I just love because it reminds me of Mike Myer's hyper-hypo, one of the great SNL skits of all time.



In all honesty, I don't think my notes from my short (is there any other kind?) stay at Hyper Camp need to be that extensive, because if you're really that interested, you were probably reading the tweets of everyone that was thumb-dancing on their blackberries around me while I took notes--in my notebook. I'm tempted to just scan them in, as we did my notes from Cynthia Rowley's Spring 2010 show(click), but alas...here's what I thought was interesting from the Hyper Camp (I love it!) meeting about Community Engagement and Marketing--from my notes in my notebook. I'll make bullets, in case anyone's averse to paragraphs.

• Mary Ann Giordano (click) said Brian Stelter (click) told her it takes a year for a blogger to build an audience, and that they have to be their own marketers.



• Debbie Galant, who founded Baristanet (click) said everyone in her family learned to blow up balloons in the early days of building her business--there's a specific helium proportion she recommends for longevity. You could email her for that. She also talked about the importance of readers' tips, citing the example of Baristanet's reporting a Monday night microburst, which is actually like a small tornado, even though it sounds like a meteorological event invented for Hyper Camp.



• Soraya Darabi (click), who manages online social media for The New York Times, told the bloggers on the panel to go where their audiences are (meaning websites they frequent), start a conversation, and if it doesn't catch, move on. Seems like good advice in general, no? (Darabi, btw, looks like she's probably had a fair deal of practice playing hard to get--for someone who specializes in virtual presence, she's rather striking in person.)



• David Cohn of spot.us (click) called himself a "relentless self-marketer." Next to that I wrote, that's just hustle. Nothing new there. He also said the transparency of his website's reporting made it appeal to civically minded people, that it takes a year for an audience to respond to you and trust you, and that it doesn't require a budget, it just requires sweat.



• Tina Kelley (click), of the Maplewood branch of The New York Times' Local Blog (which lots of CUNY students--click, click, click, contribute to), pointed out the problematic nature of covering contraversy in her own neighborhood. Debbie summed that up nicely, citing the motto of the Lake Wobegon Herald: "We have to live here too."

I might be dealing with a little of that myself.

more fall colors...

Just cause I'm busy doing research doesn't mean I'm not cruising for babes at the bus stop. Check out my latest style shot at Dossier. (click).