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Give the Gift of Light

Bare bulbs are lighting up homes and offices everywhere. We love this twist on the popular industrial chic design trend. Each hand-hammered Filisky Little Pear will cast a soft diffused light across any room. One will certainly hold its own, but a cluster of three would really sparkle. They’d also make a luminous housewarming or holiday gift.

Filisky Little Pear, Souk Shop, $70

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David Poppie’s decontextualized split pencil sculptures are candy-covered bliss.  

Thank you 2Or3Things for posting the stunning paintings by Alex Kanevsky and Chelsea Bentley James. 

Los Angeles based artist/architect/provocateur Greg Lynn’s new upcycled plastic toy fountains reincarnate toys that generally wind up curbside or passed on through mommy groups. One part Jeff Koons, another Tivoli Fountains, they’re at once classic, nostalgic, and futuristic. I can imagine a huge one smack dab in the middle of Disneyworld piled sky high with Mickeys and Goofies, ears and tails everywhere. Or how about the already snowy Michelin tire guy spouting antifreeze into customers’ reusable antifreeze containers at a Jiffylube station? 

Online dating has been around longer than you thought.

My parents had one of their first dates at the 1964 World’s Fair in Corona Park, New York. Now it seems that they might have been at the fair searching for dates instead. Almost 40 years later, it’s hard to say how much digital dating has improved since an early IBM computer spurt out pink and blue cards to help liberal Upper East Siders find love, but it is good to see it less stigmatized.

Last year Levi’s celebrated workers with a gritty vintage ad campaign and community focused, pop-up printmaking, photography, and music workshops across the U.S. produced by the nimble Sub Rosa creative agency in New York. Now the brand wants to elevate our daily bike commute with The Commuter Collection whose denim jackets and pants are water, stain and odor-resistant, and feature nifty features like U-lock friendly waistbands, reflective taped seams and flattering lines to show off to those left in the dust. Ride on.  

Part DIY, part readymade. This stool would have been a perfect addition to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Technocraft exhibit curated by Yves Behar in 2010. Customizable design like this is a wonderful way to personalize mass market consumer products. I can imagine rotating the magazines according to one’s moods (and OCD).. all National Georgraphic yellow spines for summer, all black Monocle ones for winter… Thank you 7x7.

What a clever and inspiring way to translate community into visual form. Nike commissioned designer Ben Loiz to create a mural representing team Brasil for NIKE’s Joga Bonito campaign in Los Angeles, April 2006. The mural was made by covering soccer balls with paint in Brasil’s country colors and then having soccer players from the community kick and throw the balls at the wall to make a larger circular form.  

When my Gram finally gave in to using a cane, my dad found her a sleek, clear, Plexiglas one that made her feel hip–not old and diminished. I’m pretty sure Gram would have liked Allan Zadeh and Rie Norregaard’s candy colored versions for OMHU Design.  

Get to Baltimore, quick! Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out Of Balance is on view at the National Aquarium. The Monterrey Aquarium is magnificent for jelly-philes, but this is surely a spectacular exhibit.  

Curse Gluten All You Want. Then watch this documentary about Tartine Bread (by ChronicleBooks)

After watching this delectible short documentary, waiting in line at San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery should be a lot more tolerable. Word on the street is that the famed bakery will use ancient grains in their expanded bread bakery, which are naturally gluten free. Watch this space.

Wise Sons Pop-Up Passover Seder.

As I prepared to head to the motherland aka South Florida for Passover with my family, I imagined that San Francisco would provide me with some local, organic, Kosher for Passover gifts. Bi-Rite, I think you missed the boat, but for those of you staying west, here’s a local option that is as Jewy as it is authentically San Francisco inspired. 

Wise Sons Pop-Up Passover Seder still has seats available at its Monday night seder and can save the day if your attempt at a potato kugel created dense brown bricks worthy of the pyramids.