Wordplay

Shop keepers Tara Alexander and Peggy Garvey stock this place stocked with cool booties and jelly sandals and lots of beads. Beaded bracelets, beaded tunics, beaded boxes, beaded headbands.

If you don’t like beads, you probably shouldn’t shop here. I happen to be in the minority that does.

The yelp commenters don’t share my taste, I guess:

“I wouldn’t say this is a total hippie store, but there is a definite whiff of patchouli in the air. Don’t let that dissuade you; take a bite of Mango and taste the colors, man.” – S. M.

“If you use the word ‘groovy’ frequently or like to hug trees, you’d certainly consider this place far out.” – Sean S.

“They have lots of long, flowy dresses and skirts and many cozy sweaters and tops that can be described as as ‘relaxed.’ “-Carrie E.

“HIPPIE ALERT!!!!! HIPPIE ALERT!!!!!  THE WINDOW DISPLAY WAS ONLY A LURE TO GET NORMAL PEOPLE, LIKE MYSELF, TO COME INTO THE STORE AND BE CONVERTED!!!!” -Kimberly P.

(Sorry, had to share)

Anyways, found some things I liked and finally purchased a pair of tribaly earrings to wear with my new headdress while I grind maize from the harvest next to my cornhusk doll collection in my buckskin teepee.

If you’re in Philly and decide to shop around Chestnut Hill, stop by and smell the patchouli.

8442 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19118
215-248-9299

I’M NOT KIDDING. HOT GLASSES + FRAMES + FREE RETURNS FOR LESS THAN $100.

It’s no lie. It’s Warby-Parker.

“Warby Parker was founded with a rebellious spirit and a lofty objective: to create boutique-quality, classically crafted eyewear at a revolutionary price point.“

Rebellious because they make things you want to buy without a middle man mark up. Lofty because they have to handle all the trendy craftmanship themselves. Revolutionary because for every pair you purchase these guys actually donate funds to help other people get vision care around the globe. What the what?!

It’s true. I purchased a pair on Friday and was wearing them the next Wednesday.

The best thing is you–mostly–never have to talk to the inept eyeglasses clerks at your doctor’s office. You will need to send in your PD (pupilary distance), but any nabe eye doc can measure it for you for free in 30 seconds by the front door.

Sadly, due to incredible demand, their try-on-at-home system of sending empty frames isn’t operational at the moment. So yes, you may have to take a leap of faith on your frames, which isn’t easy to do. But come on, for $95, you’d do worse.  I risked it all on the Nedwin and I’m wearing them right now to write this post and have no complaints. Just saying. How can you not love this system they’ve constructed? Especially when they tell the story of how their tongue-twisting name came to be:

“We’ve always been inspired by the master wordsmith and pop culture icon, Mr. Jack Kerouac. Two of his earliest characters, recently uncovered in his personal journals, bore the names Zagg Parker and Warby Pepper. We took the best from each and made it our name.

Kerouac inspired a generation to take a road less traveled and to see the world through a different lens.

We hope your new glasses will provide all the style you need to travel your road with class, and their price will leave you with some extra cash to use on your journey.”

Now, time for a second pair. I’m feeling Zagg. Thoughts?

iPhone + Camerbag app + blooms = new post

What a tiny city! (The process of tilt-shifting isn’t just for the insanely talented. Do it to your pictures in a cinch.)

Oh, just wishing for spring on this cold, blistery day:

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

Location: Montego Bay, Jamaica

Let’s be honest: It was a three-day free-for-all in the land of jerk chicken and lightening storms so you can only imagine the parts I’m leaving out. But to give Thrillist and JetBlue a little credit, I’ll mention a few things that I remembered I actually did and post THE VERY FIRST photos of yours truly on Wordplay. Yes, I’m THAT excited about this trip:

Arrived knowing ZERO people (found out later that some of us have friends and Murray Hill block apartments in common). Surveyed the journalists/bloggers in the security line: Early judgement=THESE PEOPLE WANT TO PARTY.  

Best JetBlue flight I’ve ever drank Red Stripe on, hands down. Maybe only? UNLIMITED Pom and Red Stripe, UNLIMITED photos being taken of this far-too-early consumption by Thrillist photog Nick McGlynn, UNLIMITED people excited to get out of miserable New York. Also, I took UNLIMITED bathrooms breaks (4!) thanks beer being poured down my throat. 

Got on the bus to the Ibero Star Rose Hall Suites while Thrillist folks read us our rights: Full amenities, all-inclusive drinks and food, 6 bars, infinity pools, individual suites (with swings!) for every guest, personal butler services for every guest, internet access for Tweeting (duh!), and other things I can’t recall because at this point I had drifted off into a hazy funk of “where am I and how in the world did I get this lucky?”

After ogling at my suite for a good 20 minutes “Oh My God, the closet…Oh My God, the bed…Oh My God, the pool-side porch with swing!…Oh My God the 4-people-can-fit-inside-this-thing bathtub!” we clawed our way to the beach for BBQ (jerk jerk jerk jerk), surf-sitting, playing catch with tennis balls (?), pool bar drinking, waitress drinking, vertical drinking, horizontal drinking and one really sad/weird/fun/crazy game of flag football, which you can watch with your own eyes right here, via Abroad’rView.

After the best bath of my life we sipped on Pom and Starbucks cocktails (because who would I be if I didn’t mention our sponsors?!), watched some really talented and scantily-clad Jamaicans dance their asses off, sat by a fire and watching lightening scare the booze our of us, and disco’ed it up on the dance floor. 

DAY 2: Wake up, miss my excursion (7:30 AM for horseback riding? Uh, I’ll take the 11:30 AM beach outside my hotel room instead), think to myself: HOLY CRAP, I’M IN JAMAICA! After more beaching/Roman bathing in the spa, we dressed for a Sandals epic island jam that I CANNOT stop thinking about. Bussed it to Sandals, boated it across the bay to a private white-bedecked food orgy, and proceeded to get my mind blown by the legitness. We drank, we ate, we danced the night away. Rain could not stop us. Exhibit A, B and C:

Most of this is AFTER a monsoon of a storm that left most of us wet, so we decided to go swimming in our finest of whites (always a good idea when there’s cameras around, I find) and the only way to dry off? Shake it real good. The downside of a rain dance party? When the scaffoling falls onto the dancers, injuring 6, sending some to the hospital to discover a broken collarbone because the wet sand gave way at possibly the most inopportune moment in all of time and the universe. After a lull in the festivites, the injured parties were reported as A-OK, and the white party returned to the Ibero Star for a slow but steady “Tonight’s gonna be a good, good night” dancefloor reboot.

Trinity riled up the crowd (confetti! confetti!), causing some Thrillist employees to blush just a tiny bit and every guy in the room to fall instantly in love with the British singer (it’s true: she rocks). And for just a moment–Jamaican time– respected New York journalists dropped their guards, downed their shots, and formed some unlikely friendships in some very unconventional ways… 

JetMystery, you ROCKED my weekend. Give me 300 days and I’ll be ready for round 2.

***

See a LOT more pictures from Random Night Out/Nick McGlynn here.

See a lot of cool videos of our antics from new bud Courtney Scott here. 

See new bud Carson Griffith’s review of the weekend on Guest of a Guest here. 

Check out the awesomness that is Thrillist here and sign up for their newsletter here to see if YOU get invited next year…

The Bright Side Project features lovely interesting designers and lets you win their goodies just by posting answers to the artists’ questions on their blog. Do it before April 25 for these WONDERFUL MULTI-USE SUPER VERSITILE TOE-PLEASING MOHOP SHOES:

Image from The Bright Side Project.

You can tie them up however you like, whenever you like, for whatever you like.

I like. Mmmm. Mohop.

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!

SALE SALE SALE!

Found these cuties at Payless today on sale for $19.99.  They’re called Mayflower Buckle Pumps. Mayflower? A little late in the season for that, I suppose, but this is no time to be picky. Feet need shoes. And these will do quite nicely. Now for my pilgrim hat. If you see one, let me know…

Image from Payless

What do you think?

In my hiatus, I have added several things to my ever-growing TO BLOG list. This was one of them. Hopefully it makes you consider your wasted bread crumbs and be more mindful of our feathered friends. Our recession is their recession. Waste not those crusty bits of toast that fall to the floor and end up on the bottoms of your feet. There’s a pigeon on a windowsill somewhere that needs to feed his family.

Image from Serious Eats.

It’s hot:

New endeavor from a gaggle of (laid-off) Portfolio.com staffers that wish to bring the world more sticky recession news. It’s only for the time-being (so they say) and hopefully it won’t be here forever. Catch it while you still can (good for passing time whilst wistfully waiting for employment opportunities to arise).

1. Watch some of their recommended  feel-good movies–feel good because you’re better off than these suckers:

The Fly–because you could be half-insect.

Cast Away– because you could be stuck on an island and not only have no paycheck, but have to talk to a volleyball smeared with blood.

Carrie–because you could constantly piss people off by accidentally setting them on fire. Well, or maybe you could view this film as a how-to.

The Wrestler–because you could be on the minor leagues wrestling circuit–and yep, that really would be worse.

2. Watch for their daily Recession Briefings — a day’s worth of corralled doom and gloom heds from the papers.

This week:  Mom, I joined the Army–because I couldn’t find a job from CNNMoney
The Department of Defense says all branches of the armed forces met or exceeded their recruiting goals for January, despite the two ongoing wars.

3. Follow Joe the Trader’s daily schedule of life after Wall Street:

Monday, 3:18 p.m.:
Go to Equinox on 45th and Lexington. When it first opened, it was conveniently located near Barclays, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and the Park Avenue hedge funds. Bear is gone, and I wonder how much longer the others will be around. There sure are a lot more guys here in the mid-afternoon than I would have expected. Are they all out of work too? Or do they just have nothing to do at work? I guess one positive benefit of the recession is that a lot more Wall Street guys will be able to run an eight minute mile.

4. Think you have creativity left in you? One contributor mentions how to decorate your new (smaller) apartment (near JFK)  in these tough times, including a $0 project made from old spiral-bound notebooks. Trash diving is now posh, I suppose.

Me? I just Rasterbate when no one’s looking. It’s free and it feels good:

Photo by Iñigo Amescua (I like how he sees U.S. photography), NYC, 2008, Rasterbated on 8.5 x 11 sheets of printer paper, meticulously trimmed and joined with Scotch tape and a careful eye.

In honor of our new jute rug (purchased at the 23rd St. Home Depot, but doesn’t seem to be up on their site any longer), I thought I’d do a little investigating about this mystery material. Turns out I do know this long, soft, shiny vegetable fiber, just by another name. And I should have guessed. If it looks like, feels like (and smells like?) burlap, it’s probably burlap. Technically, jute is the fiber that can be spun into threads that can be weaved into fabric which is called burlap, but hey, that’s just me getting into grass technicalities.

So why are there so many jute rugs floating around (underfoot) these days? Besides the fact that they’re playing that “natural fibers” card (might as well climb on board that eco-wagon or you’ll be the only one left in plastic town), they’re cheap! Yep, second only to sir cotton in amount produced and variety of uses, this silky plant is really making its way in the world. Twirl some jute and suddenly you’ve got twine and string and rope and rugs…not to mention shoes and blinds and bags. Oh, the bags (well I mentioned burlap, you had to see this coming)…

Ruffle tote from DrikaB (via Etsy)

Cressier bag from Iragrant/My Little Bird (via Etsy)

Cresent bag from Infusion (via Etsy)

And these understated recycle bags from World Market. (Is that you multitasking by keeping your recycling IN a recyclable container? Mighty clever of you…)

This stuff is sturdy, easy to keep clean and biodegradable for the natural-fiber loving generations that come after you. Works for me. Now if only I can stop this Jute Quest that I’ve started…I’ll take a break for now and take a cue from the NYC MTA: If you see something (made of jute), say something (to me!)…

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