Funny Necklace - Golden Saltine!

This made me laugh! Available at Chocosho

Spartan in this month's Lucky Magazine

Check out dear friend and client, Currie Person/Spartan, feature in this month's Lucky!
Better yet - go check out the goods at Spartan yourself!

Hermes Beauty

Am a bit in love with this journal from Hermes

Girl Effect

One more reason to be excited about girls and global change

Juicer by Assaf Israel

Hat tip to Assaf Israel. Place over any normal container and viola! juice!

Dutch Bikes!

Bringing Bikes to Austin soon!
Check out these beautiful rides

Beautiful Reuse

A lovely creation from Johanna Keimeyer

Smart People Will Pay Attention to This.

The Airago is the brainchild of Studio HiMom founded by designers Krijn Christiaansen & Jeroen Bruls. They aim to design products 'dedicated to public space phenomena'. You can lock your bike to the rack and/or pump your tyres with the shiny pump.

The goal with the Airago was to 'stimulate an interaction between neighbours while pumping up the tyres of their bicycles'. It was concieved as an art project in a newly-built neighbourhood in the Netherlands, Ypenburg.

We'd love to see these in front of stores, grocery, Whole Foods - are you listening???

Via Cycleiliciousness

Greener Gadgets Talks

These talks are incredible. Check out this short talk from Chris Jordan.

Giving the Trailer Kiosk a Stylish Run for Its Money

An alternative to the popular trailer coffee / taco / cupcake trailer.
Cool layout and interesting color. Berlin - Mitte

Someone after my Heart

Here's a person who is in the search of the perfect breakfast.

Calling all hideous furniture!

Cool project to promote better design. Get out your cameras!

How many of these do you want?

Confused Direction's designs focus on mutability. All are created to travel, store, move....
This chair is one of my favorites.

Holy Smartness

I love it when design is so simple, useful and serves a true need.
Nice work from Gemeinsam sind wir Stark - Together we are strong

Summer's Coming

How smart is this?

If I were a Ring

More beautiful jewelry from Erie Basin.

Pasqualina Azzarello

This is some street art that I caught on a recent work/scouting trip in New York. This is a piece by Pasqualina Azzarello on East 12th Street in front of an old church that is being torn down to make room for a 26-story NYU dorm. I was lucky enough to catch the website in one of my photos and highly recommend checking it out. The artwork is beautiful. Seeing this work was one of the most exciting things during my whole trip. There are loads of images on the website.




Also included on the contact page is a quote from John Steinbeck, East of Eden. Somehow the quote seems particularly meaningful right now.

"And this I believe: that the free, individual mind of the exploring human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual."

Made me Look

A good reason to stay in America.

A Great Way to Start your Day

Eat your morning toast on one of these Breakfast Boards from Elkedag.

The Magic of the Market in Kreuzberg

I was feeling homesick for the Turkish Markets in Berlin today. It's a cold and rainy day and it reminds me of shopping at the wonderful, color-filled, noisy, busy markets in Kreuzberg. I found this video and it takes you through all the stalls there and you get a really nice sense of the bustle there. I sure miss all the wonderful spices, people and delicious cheeses.

Mayer - Berlin

From the Mayer 2008 Summer Peace Collection.


This is from an older collection from Mayer. The red leather neck piece is separate from the coat.

The white is also from the 2007 Summer collection. You can see here how the white leather neck piece stands alone and is delicate and strong at the same time.

Heath Ceramics

Floor at Clear Creek Spa

These two installations caught my eye. Check out Heath's website and read their story. These are true artisans. I want to be on their staff - the staff profiles are great; what interesting people!


Entryway at the Maritime Hotel - NYC



{via Heath Ceramics}

Museum of Wonder Doo-Nanny: 12th Annual

Butch Anthony and many others are gearing up for the 12th Annual Museum of Wonder Doo-Nanny. Never seen before sights are the focus of the party. Seale, Alabama. March 29th 2008.

Berlin's Environmental Zone

Since the start of the year, drivers to the inner city of Berlin - the 88-square kilometer area inside the subway 'ring' - must display badges to show their cars meet new rules for particulate and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions. Cars without badges are subject to the not-too hefty ticket price of 40 Euros (US$58) and a penalty point on the errant driver's license. Police say they will go easy on delinquents in the first couple of months. Altogether about 1.7 million older diesel cars and gas cars without catalytic converters will be too polluting to meet the new emission requirements and are thus banned from the heart of Berlin as well as Cologne and Hanover. Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Munich as well as 14 other cities will all deploy the system later this year.





In Berlin's 'green' zone, eventually only cars with a green badge will be able to pass go. In 2010 the emissions law will be further tightened, and only 'green badge' cars will be able to go into the inner city zones. Perhaps the measure will put even more Berliners on their bikes and help the city reach its goal of 15 percent of city traffic made up on cyclists.
Via Berlin.de

The Octopus has more arms than the Sock Monkey

Pretty Socktopus from Elsewares. The Socktopus is the seafaring cousin of the famous Sock Monkey. Made from real recycled sweaters.

We Can do This: Eco-Design Game

Here's a chance to create innovative ideas about recycling and re-tooling design - in a board GAME. Got to love it!
The latest from playrethink. The game is about creating new functions for standard, everyday bits; grocery trollies, tables, old books.

Pema Chödrön - Troublemakers

Here is the link to Pema's video on the Troublemakers in our lives.
She has written a number of wonderful books and her latest book, Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns and Encountering Naked Reality, is a powerful piece.

Bike Nation - Can the US do IT?

Congressman Earl Blumenauer was in Portland this week to kickstart a fundraising campaign for his re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
{via Bike Portland}

In recent weeks, the media has taken note of Blumenauer’s rising position of influence in the halls of Congress and his reputation as the “bike guy” on Capitol Hill.

“It’s about changing land-use patterns so you don’t have to burn a gallon of gas to buy a gallon of milk.”

Much of his talk focused on the example Portland is setting for the entire nation. He called Portland, “the epicenter of an American cycling revolution.” He spoke about our campaign to establish a network of bike friendly streets and said, “families cycling on bicycle boulevards are an indicator species of a livable community.”

He also rallied the troops and spoke of the critical importance of a “citizen infrastructure…the people who’ve decided that they’re going to make a difference.” Blumenauer wants to, “make the cycling community a powerful political force”. He said that if one million “cycling fanatics” around the country could get together than it would have “a transformational effect on politics.”

(Anyone up for organizing a One Million Man (and Woman) Ride to Washington?)

Here’s what Blumenauer said about the climate change crisis:

“We’ve got about 10 years to turn around the global warming equation. We’ve got an 80% reduction by 2050, which means we’ve got to get started on it now; it’s energy, it’s transportation, and it’s land use, and the bicycle is something that can bring people together that can make a difference in a hurry, and start changing the way we that regard how we work with one another, how we deal with natural resources, how we live a little lighter on the planet. So this isn’t just about bicycle advocacy, this is about saving the world, and healing the political process.”

Blumenauer also stressed the importance of taking advantage of the current political climate in Washington:

“We’re going into a three year window of opportunity that is unparalleled. We have 378 days until there is a new administration, and in that period of time, we’re going to be setting the table legislatively and politically.”

Blumenauer said that he guarantees that no matter who the next president is, “he or she will be much more receptive to what we’re trying to do, without question.”

As for the recently defeated Bike Commuter Benefit, Blumenauer was upbeat and spoke of a silver lining,

“We got a bike commuter benefit through the House twice this year…it was the Republican road block in the Senate that knocked it out, but we’re going to get there. We’ve now got people in the House Ways and Means Committee that agree it makes sense…and the good news of them knocking it out is that we’re going to be able to raise it when it gets back in, it’s going to be a bigger number. It’s the sort of thing that will level the playing field. We don’t even have to level the playing field, but if we just don’t tilt it quite so much against cyclists and pedestrians I think it will make a huge difference.”

And on the next Transportation Bill, which is up again in the next Congress, Blumenauer said the cycling stars are coming into alignment with Jim Oberstar — the “#1 cycling advocate who’s ever served in Congress” — is in line to become chair of the House Transportation Committee.

Blumenauer said Oberstar’s leadership of that committee will be “transformational” and “profound”. He also said that Oberstar is convinced that what Portland has done with cycling, transit and land use is “part of what’s going to save America.”

Blumenauer also noted that the chair of the House Subcommittee on Transportation will be Oregon’s other bike-friendly congressman, Peter DeFazio.

But Blumenauer also warned of some storm clouds ahead. He said the Transportation Fund is going into deficit next year for the first time in history and that he “wants to make sure we don’t have to have a food fight for table scraps over transportation.”

Blumenauer seemed to pin much hope on a grassroots, citizen-led movement for bikes. He closed his talk by saying,

We’ve got to transform this into a national movement. We’re making progress, we’ve got a great opportunity, but it’s going to be tough sledding because there’s lots of competition and we’ve got some significant hurdles to overcome.

Polish Pavilion

This is a rendering of the conceptual design for the Polish Expo Pavilion for the 2010 Exposition. Architects Wojciech Kakowski, Natalia Paszkowska, and Marcin Mostafa will be designing the Polish Pavilion for Shanghai's World Expo in 2010.
The building's design, the architects write in a mass-circulated press release, was required to "denote, by its esthetic distinctiveness, the country of origin," and it had to "constitute, by the strength of its stylistic connotations, an evocative, recognizable and memorable cultural ideogram."
In this case, the "cultural ideogram" their winning design was meant to embody is "the motif of folk-art paper cut-out[s]."

{via BLDGBLOG}

Winter Warmest - Funny

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. You can actually purchase this at Scandinavian Grace. This is almost as funny as a tattoo I once saw on the inside of an index finger. It was a mustache and by making the little-kid mustache gesture with a finger - viola! - you are mustachioed!

{evidently - there's a whole community of finger mustache people}