Everything Glitters

Streetwalking, Paris
Makes you feel dull in comparison.

X Ray Vision

Nina Ricci, Avenue Montaigne

One at a time

Rose Bakery, Paris

"Well, I don't think so, they're not here very often"

Sigur Ros - Við spilum endalaust - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Lush Color

It's odd when you find yourself drawn to polar opposite agendas. My palette is rigidly muted. My favorite colors are black, grey, ecru, putty, greige, nude, and every such variant. But i find myself often collecting and crushing on images with the opposite, lush, candy colored, impossible-to-resist ROYGBIV ethos. I keep them these tacked up on boards and glue-stuck in little notebooks. Here are a few. Could there be anything more childishly obvious and heart-achingly lustworthy? I think it's instinctually appealing. Like bees to a buttercup.








(from Luxirare)




(from The Selby--Christina and Swaim Hutson)





(still from the first film in the Trois Coulers series, Bleu by Krzysztof Kieślowski.)


(photographer Alex John Beck)




(Le Ballon Rouge, 1956 and Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge, 2008)


(Laduree macaroons)


(sharpies!)


(best of beauty!)

Colors arranged like this are often cues for my own shutter as you can tell my a lot of the photography i've featured here. You need only look! But here's an example:



The blog MY NYC IN COLOR also has so many divine photographs of new york alive with color, along this vein, you could spend hours feeling breathless over it. I couldn't even start to post all of the images i like, and it would ruin it to isolate them from her insightful writing, and discerning edits.

deflated.

Amidst the images surfacing from the streets of Milan, this picture caught my eye (from Garance Doré). I quit smoking over 5 months ago. I wouldn't say that I haven't looked back, but I have looked forward, and that's a smoke-free picture.

In 2006 I lived in Madrid, and if ever there was a great place to smoke, it was there. Normally my fellow ex-pats and I were loyal to Camel Blues (ah, how they differed from the Camel Lights of our humble states), but if I managed to find Galoises, I was transported. I was Parisian. I holidayed in Monaco. I had fine-tuned and superior tastes and indulgences. I had secret knowledge! I smoked a brand lots of people couldn't pronounce.

On one of my visits to Paris, with my closest friend who was studying in Florence, I stocked up on the red cartoned cigarettes. So funny now, how i couldn't tell you a taste distinction at all, only that i knew that it was my favorite. And as i would sit outside, talking for hours, taking photographs with my cigarette-free hand, everytime i would glance down i was reminded that i was closer to being naturally there, in Paris, than most visitors, particularly other americaines.

On my last night of that trip, some hommes we had met there noticed me lighting up. "Galoises?" One of them scoffed, in that way somehow women find endearing but in retrospect is actually more mean-spirited and repulsive, "My grandmother smokes those." And he offered me redemption in the form of Marlboro Reds.

I think I like it...

This is amazing. From facehunter

I don't even know how the fur is connected to the jacket, or what material the pants are, or why she's wearing a jacket tied around her waist under the coat with a batik scarf. But man, does it work!

I'm sure if she wasn't so pretty, it wouldn't have the same effect. Or maybe the reason it did catch my eye is precisely because she's so pretty and takes risks (masculine, shapeless, unusual silhouette) and doesn't look like every other blogger or model off duty in their mesh dresses and studded shorts. Just saying. I would totally want to know this girl.

Good use of color no?

New York, I love you

Since my last post, I took a brief sojourn to Paris (why not?) and came back through customs with a bit more recklessess in my step than when i left. Better that the details not be posted here, because i'd rather my wild moments be left to memory, not blogging commentary. But here I am, back, rejuvenated, with an anecdote to share:

I had a professor in college who felt that the subway experience, uniquely in New York (not London or Paris or Montreal) was a paradigm for the entirety of New York existence and psyche. He likened this to DeToquevillian ideas of humanity living in their own individual insular worlds but being forced to interact with one another, like atoms colliding, "with hearts and minds renewed." And while I may not be doing the explanation justice, I love this idea. One of the indispensable characteristics of growing up in New York, or living here, is that you are forced to interact with everything and anything on the subway. Riding it, day in and day out, makes you tougher, more seasoned, and generally a better person--because you are not sheltered from all that you might not elect to see or experience (schizophrenics, indecent exposure, trains suddenly going express without warning). Unlike in L.A., where you drive everywhere, and life is dainty and facile and comfortable, navigating New York is a trek, and you inherently earn each and every experience. And New Yorkers love to earn their gold stars, in any form.

In any case, my love for the subway is not always so shining. A few weeks ago, on a friday evening after a rather intense week of work, I descended the stairs to the truly heinous crowds of the Times Square 1/2/3 platform. Of course the uptown local was packed--I mean sardine packed--and I, in uncomfortable heels and huge bag, wedged myself in hoping the doors would close so that I could lean. No such luck, as seven people squirmed in after me, leaving me brushed up against a not fondly-remembered, smelly, older gentleman carrying a humongous cooler (what was inside? Cold beers? Black Market livers? Who the fuck knows).

Opposite me was a group of red-faced frat boys whom i didn't really notice until the train conductor started making announcements. "This train will be held in the station until we receive word from the dispatcher." "FUCK the dispatcher," screamed one of said-fratboys, "the dispatcher can suck it!" "Ohhhh i am so fucking drunk," screamed another one, "We're going to miss the start of the game." And then, a total non sequitur, the first one, making gyrating lewd movements, screamed, "Suck my dick, look how long and hard it is," etc. etc.

Now none of this was particularly appalling, but it was incredibly annoying, so i propped in my headphones to tune them out with some much needed post-work sounds of Daft Punk. "Shut up dude, look, that girl can't stand the idea of your dick, she's putting on her headphones." "What, you think you're too cool for us??" etc and so forth, as they verbally accosted me from across the car. The woman next to me, with full red lips and a severe updo, turned to me in solidarity and rolled her eyes. These assholes, clearly not from these parts, were literally terrorizing the car, hooting, hollering, and acting just so totally inappropriate. Keep in mind, we are still being held at the station with the conductor announcing "This uptown local will be moving momentarily, we apologize for the delay."

Like a stroke of brilliance, it suddenly occurs to me that this horrible group of boys, are in for a delicious taste of New York justice. I turn to this very cougar-esque woman next to me: "Umm, do you think these lovely gentlemen might be headed to the Rangers game?" Given their Rangers paraphernalia, this was a clear yes. The woman looks at me and instantly gets it: of course, they are on the wrong train.

"Whatever you do, DON'T TELL THEM," she implores, while they are profanely talking about "69-ing" in the background. I manage to keep it together but once the doors finally close, I start to collapse with laughter. She joins me, with her arm around my shoulder, and now everyone around us has figured it out too, including cooler guy, who is giving us the "shush" signal, as in, lets see how long it takes these assholes to figure it out.

"50th street," the conductor announces, and tears are streaming down my face from having to hold in laughter, and cougar's too. The doors are about to close when a very sharp, drunken "OH SHIT" is screamed in chorus. "WE'RE GOING THE WRONG DIRECTION!!! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL US??" and looking around at an entire car of laughing commuters, the first guy (apparently with the big dick) goes, "Because you guys are douchebags."

As they catch the doors within inches of closing and race out on 50th street, a guy in a motorcycle jacket tells me that Karma is a bitch, and these guys deserved to be so thoroughly humiliated by an entire car of New Yorkers who, in solidarity, felt that they did not deserve to be told (especially since we were stationed at 42nd street for a total of 20 minutes).

But come on, how rare is it to have such a gratifying, tangible demonstration of justice? For the duration of the ride between 42nd street and 50th, everyone within a five body radius was thinking the exact same thing, exchanging smiles, back pats and thumbs-up. All the social walls of isolation were broken down. I turn to my newfound friends, my partners in crime (if only for a subway ride) and point out the best part: that at 50th street, you cannot transfer from uptown to downtown--that you have to exit, and then pay again to reenter across the street.