August 31, 2009
Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.

John Ed Pearce

August 23, 2009
August 15, 2009
Kansas in four parts.

Kansas in four parts.

August 7, 2009

The World According To Jane Jacobs

A friend once described Jane Jacobs as his “intellectual crush,” an appropriate term for the urban genius. As her beautiful obituary explains, “At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs’s prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism — in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble.” New York is forever indebted to Jacobs because, after all, downtown is for people.

July 30, 2009
Cool is
July 27, 2009
July 24, 2009

That Glowing Screen

Conceptually and aesthetically, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Theaters” series is brilliant. Photographing movie theaters across the country, Sugimoto matched each photograph’s exposure time with the film’s projection time, thus capturing an entire film in a single frame. In each image, a glowing white rectangle illuminates an entire theater — an effect Sugimoto himself calls “interesting, mysterious, and even religious.”

July 21, 2009
July 18, 2009
So many steps on the LES.

So many steps on the LES.

July 15, 2009
Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.

Raymond Loewy

July 12, 2009
July 9, 2009

Hollywood, As Per Edith Head

Edith Head was a costume designer and eight-time Academy Award winner who dressed Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Marlene Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor, among many others. She even inspired the folks over at Pixar a few years back. In 1967, Head published a book called How to Dress for Success, full of whimsical drawings.

July 6, 2009
Washington Square weekend.

Washington Square weekend.

July 3, 2009
I think that these days the really cool girls want to wear men’s clothing.

Yolanda Zobel, Vogue, September 2008

June 30, 2009

Downtown Living

When you buy a $102,000 72-room house at 190 Bowery in 1966, it becomes the hottest piece of property (and increases in value 400-fold) 45 years later. Behold photographer Jay Maisel’s six-story LES abode, courtesy of New York.