Ahh … the suburbs of Brooklyn! From the Typography of Sanborn New York City Maps.
Um yes. Also? Terry Gilliam was hot. Or at least cute enough to not kick out of bed.
Presto, Instant Playground
The trend of urban interventions continues to solve really problem with design methodology.
Robot:
Part of nearly continuous mural from Irving to Knickerbocker on Myrtle in Bushwick.
Brunch. Bourghetto style.
I’ve been become something of a known brunch hater. The reasons are myriad: the food is almost uniformly poorly done (it’s a cheap way for a bar to make extra money, and they don’t skimp on the cheapness); conversely the food is way over-priced; the ideal of brunch is full of bourgeois trappings that are about nothing more than keeping up with the Joneses; etc. (cf. Amy Sedaris quote at end of Urban Bohemian on the subject.)
But that’s not my complaint now. No it’s far worse.
I’ve agreed to go this thing — a gay blogger brunch on Sunday. It’s at an Italian restaurant. (I mean COME ON. There’s no breakfast tradition in Italy! Why? Sputter. Meh. Pant.) Okay, why did I agree.
Peer pressure. More specifically twitter pressure.
I’m trying to spin this as an opportunity to meet some of my favorite gay NYC bloggers. One or more I may or may not have a crush on but that’s all I’m saying. If I have nothing more than toast an OJ. Well that’s life.
But here’s the other deal — brunch is mostly a group gab fest. And as any of you that are late deafened know, there’s almost nothing more anxiety producing (and if not that at least completely useless) that being in a group conversation.
This may or may not be influencing my thinking on brunch overall. I’m not introspective enough to know yet. And you’re not paid enough (meaning at all) to help me figure this out.
So I’m looking forward to sitting, in a what I’m sure is a lovely Italian restaurant, staring at my overpriced breakfast food while trying to get the person next to me to write things down in my sketchbook. And thinking about the fact that I could be doing laundry. I may have an attitude problem here.
At least, let’s hope I get drunk.
"We promise it will have the most beautiful presentation of legal stats you have ever seen!"
— From Immigration Equality about the new annual update. Go take I look, it’s my design.
Comment spam, climate change edition
Rule29, a creative agency in my hometown of Geneva, Illinois, enters the fray about whether massive snow in the mid-Atlantic mean that “global warming isn’t real.” It’s an odd argument that seems to be percolating. My response:
Or a case of bad branding? The trouble is “global warming” — which all evidence by any peer-reviewed scientist indicates is happening at an alarming rate — sounds like everything (all seasons) should be getting warmer. And while they are. It also means that there will be extreme weather, horrible storms that dump massive amounts of snow on areas unused to it.
“Global climate change” is a term that aligns more with our experience of living in a warmer planet better. (And by “our” I mean those in North America, ask drought and heat plagued Southern Hemisphere about the heat thing. Australia may be uninhabitable the situation is getting so dire there — they are running out of water and suffering under massive wildfires.)
The issue is not whether global warming or global climate change is real, but how are we going to deal with the extreme weather, the pressures it puts on fragile international networks of people: more war, starvation, island nations and coastal cities lost to rising sea levels, and yes massive snow storms.
But we can spend time arguing about word choice too. As long as we make some hard choices about our consumption patterns and how our ecological choices reverberate around the globe.
