Design Means

Two of my great loves — pre-Modern interiors and flea markets — join forces in one fantastic mashup: The Brooklyn Flea’s temporary digs at One Hanson Place.

View looking over the mezzanine rail.

During the colder months (till March 28), The Brooklyn Flea is movin’ on up, from its standard location in an empty asphalt lot to the palatial lobby, mezzanine, and underground vault of the former Williamsburg Savings Bank.

If you’re into this sort of thing, it is quite a special experience. The mosaics on the walls and ceiling are spectacular. The food court can be found behind a 6′-thick metal door in the old vault. Vendors populate the old teller booths. The light streaming through the Gothic windows makes the wares seem to glow with their nostalgia.

No need to spend a dime, even. The space is enough of a treasure.

Detail of the mosaic on the back wall of the lobby (seen at a distance in the photo at top).

Snuggle up with your nearest radiator. Obvi.

I’m curious: How do y’all feel about “fun type?” You know—typography that feels ‘bouncy’ or ‘playful,’or like what it really wants to say is  Party Time!!? Well. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

The thing is, I’ve been kicking around an idea for a personal project, and the last time I paid a visit to Momma’s house I hit upon a fitting title: Carter’s. (Not ready to tell you yet what the project is exactly, but that’s beside the larger point; you’ll just have to bear with me.) Title inspiration struck when I unearthed this old photo of my grandmother, Mary, with a couple other gals in Milan, Tennessee, in 1962, next to grandpa’s pickup, emblazoned with the name of the gas station he used to run: Carter’s DX. See—that was their last name. Carter.

[side note: DX was a midwestern brand of the Tulsa-based of Sunray DX Oil Co., which merged with Sun Oil in 1968. In the late ’80s, Sun began rebranding the DX stations under the Sunoco name.]

Anyway, I thought Carter’s would be a fitting name for my project. So I set about thinking up a logo. I was originally going to lift the type treatment right off the hand-lettering on the side of the truck, but as you can see, whoever scrawled that on there wasn’t exactly a wiz in the aesthetics department.

As I played with the letters of the name, it seemed it wanted to be a bit off kilter. The letterforms just didn’t fit snugly enough when they were all in alignment. A page from my sketchbook below:

Which brings us back to my original quandry: It looks so damn playful!

I think what it is is that type that doesn’t share the same baseline with the adjacent letters automatically looks like it’s having a good ’ol time. Why is this? Is it some residual effect of epic 20th century branding efforts (on the part of kids’ products, toys, cereal, etc.), now ingrained in our visual-cultural mental library? I mean, why does it automatically scream out, “I’m having fun!,” and not “I’m drunk!”?

To get to the bottom of this, I investigated other venerable brands that use a similar treatment. There’s Playskool [Won’t be getting into all the questions the spelling raises, in this post]—

—Obviously, they’re just doin’ it for the kids.

But then there’s the inexplicable PriceWaterhouseCoopers logotype:

Um, please explain? Is this solution just to horizontally compress such an incredibly long name? ’Cause it looks pretty fun to me, and I don’t see how that could be what they’re going for.

The last witness I’ll call to the stand is the title treatment for the play/film Alfie, which kept the “playfulness” intact from the Michael Cane version all the way through to Jude Law’s interpretation of the role.

And here’s Jude, for good measure:

(Alfie was [is], like, a playboy, I think. Which must explain all the playfulness going on.)

All of this to say that perhaps I’m okay with Carter’s sans consistent baseline? Or maybe I’m venturing into treacherous waters, and should just stick with the truck type? (The more I investigate this question, the more I think the latter might be the way to go.)

Watch for it…

I ’bout fell off my bicycle Saturday afternoon riding across Brooklyn through Crown Heights, when I rounded a boarded up pre-war apartment building and came upon this giant yellow monster.

So this is the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Why didn’t anyone tell me Brooklyn had one of those? I really should get me a kid, so I can be in the loop on such swell goings-on.

Not only is the museum a gem to behold, it’s super-sustainable. Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects and opened last September, the building achieved a LEED Silver rating for its use of rapidly renewable and recycled materials in construction. The big yellow building even has geothermal wells for heating and cooling purposes. Wow. I wonder what those look like.

And check out the Museum from above:

Photo: Michael Moran

Lovely. It’s incredible to see such bold design in a public project—plopped in the middle of Crown Heights, no less, rather than in Dumbo, Brooklyn, or some such trendy (read: ridiculous) location. This place for kids could hold its own against any boutique hotel on the Lower East Side.

Score: 1, NYC Department of Design and Construction. And one for Brooklyn.

It’s a Tuesday in early August in New York. And damn hot. But miserable as these conditions may sound, there are smart, energy-efficient ways to beat the heat. One solution is detailed below, with expert demonstration by a seasoned city dweller:

1. Find a spot in the apartment with ample room to sprawl out. Your position should be located strategically between open windows and oscillating fans for maximum circulation. Consider your preference for sun or shade, and gauge the sunbeam trajectory throughout the course of the afternoon.

2. Place yourself in your chosen spot in the following fashion: Lie on your back, belly up, legs extended, and tail out. Now, do everything in your power not to break this pose for as long as possible. Nothing else exists. The phone does not exist. Emails are not streaming in. There are no deadlines. No meetings. No errands. All you have to pay attention to is the back of your second set of eyelids, for the next God knows how long.

3. When at last you’ve returned to consciousness from your first extended nap of the afternoon, take a stretch by slowly shifting your front legs (or arms) to the opposite side of your body. As you begin to turn your head in the same direction, your lower half will follow suit. This will also afford you a view of what other creatures in the room are up to. You can yawn now.

4. Once you’re all settled into your new pose, you’re ready to drift back to sleep and wait for either (1) the temperature to drop, or (2) feeding time, whichever comes first.

A friend who lives nearby sent along this lovely photo of Metropolitan Avenue at Graham—our closest subway stop (Graham Avenue on the L line). It was taken in the summer of 1937 by Berenice Abbott (available from the New York Public Library digital archives here).

Curious, I went out and snapped my own, from the same spot:

The differences and similarities are equally striking! 72 years did quite a number, but to my eyes it appears that not a single building has been razed. Altered considerably, sure, but the structures still stand—people still pass them everyday, climb their stairs, and call them home.

The intersection was unquestionably more beautiful in 1937. I don’t think I need to tell anyone here how unspeakably tacky vinyl siding is (Unless—landlords? Y’all listening?) compared to the facades of the thirties: the Victorian cupola on top of the corner building anchoring the intersecting avenues, with rounded pediments on either side giving balance and proportion. The ornate cornices along the tops of all the buildings have been lopped off, leaving them no better crown than a fence. Where the windows have not been bricked (or sided) over, they’ve lost all the framing that made them make sense in the larger structure—eaves, ledges, sills, gone. The wide friezes separating the storefronts on the ground floor from the residences above have given way to bulbous prefabricated awnings and roll-down metal gates. Charming.

Interestingly, the cast-iron subway entrance hasn’t changed one bit. Evoking Industrial-Age New York (Ms. Abbott captured her photo the same decade the Empire State Building went up), the chunky balustrade around the stairs is supported by thick, tightly spaced posts (I wonder if they were forest green back then?) and lanterns signal the entrance.

There was a beer ad (and Coca-Cola too, of course) spanning the south face of the corner building in ’37, so I can’t rail at that in the modern world. But look at that poor lamppost littered with paper scraps and tape gunk from flyers and solicitations—in the age of Craigslist, no less! The streetcar tracks laid into the cobblestone have presumably had black asphalt poured over them. One thing we do have, mercifully, on the streets these days, that was missing back then: trees.

So the latest iPhone came out this past weekend. (Heard about it?) It can do so many things I can not comprehend (30,000 apps and counting). It’s just incredible.

I still don’t have one.

I’m so tempted to jump on the bandwagon and integrate this tiny machine into my life. But as lovely as the little gadget is, I have a hard time giving up (read: throwing away) my perfectly good, sufficiently slim cellphone, measuring in at just a quarter of an inch thick—half the fatness of the iPhone. Ha!

But oh, you say, the iPhone is capable of so much more than that old hunk of junk. Well, I understand this argument—but I already own other gadgets that duplicate the key bells and whistles of the coveted device. And all of the pants I pull on each morning feature multiple pockets for stowing all of these little doohickeys on my person, for easy access throughout the day.

In addition to my current cellphone (yesterday’s beauty queen), I carry with me a planner (the paper kind—timeless), which I understand the iPhone has integrated, in digital form. My planner adds but an additional 3/4″, putting it over the thickness of the iPhone, but I do so love keeping notes on actual paper! The extra bulk is a nominal price to pay.

Oh, and eat this, iPhone: I rarely leave home without my digital camera, which I understand you have as well, but mine’s got yours beat! More megapixels, and a flash. All for just an additional half-inch, bringing my total stack up to 1.5″. Peanuts.

Then there’s my trusty iPod—I believe you two share the same mother. I like how itty-bitty it is. Do I really want to go jogging with an iPhone strapped to my arm? I rest my case.

Wait—case not rested quite yet. I almost forgot my little travel-pack of Kleenex, which usually gets a jacket pocket in colder months. It does add some bulk, but hardly any weight. (Where’s your Kleenex app, iPhone?)

Oh, and it’s always smart (they tell me) to keep a ready supply of business cards handy, particularly for the freelancer in the city. My business-card case is really one of the slimmest accessories in my collection—and also something Apple R&D apparently hasn’t gotten around to yet.

Also smart: carrying around a pack of gum (less cumbersome than a toothbrush and paste), for after meals, chance encounters on packed subways, cigarette-break substitutes, you name it. Which brings my overall burden up to three inches. I think I can manage.

I almost forgot—keys! Whew! That would have been a disaster.

And I feel downright naked without a pen handy—clip that to one of my pockets.

And a tube of Chapstick. Weighs practically nothing! As you can now clearly see, I’ve got the iPhone whipped [by some measures] in the multi-functionality department.

One other small small addition, but something I sure wouldn’t want to be caught without in a pinch: a condom. (iPhone, where you at?) Travels with me, just in case, on hot weekend nights, when heading out—all done up, pockets loaded—to the club!

One last essential, when dashing around the big city, relying on public transportation: reading material. The New Yorker serves admirably.

So that’s my total haul, on an average day. A whopping six inches! (Now we’re talkin’!) But distributed among my multiple pockets, bag, and couple of hands (give or take a cup of coffee), it really isn’t that bad.

iPhone, you and I may try to live together real soon, but for now, I think I’m alright.

Sent from my iPhone (jk!)

“As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.”
—David Rakoff, from the essay “In New England Everyone Calls You Dave,” collected in his book Fraud.

“One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.”
—Frank O’Hara, from the poem “Meditations in an Emergency”

The crowd at David Byrne’s free concert in Prospect Park, Brooklyn—rain forecast be damned. June, 2009.

Um, really?

One of my very favorite things about New York in summertime is that everyone seems to up and move outdoors. The park is our backyard. The rooftop turns into the living room. The stoop becomes the kitchen. The fire escape: the den.

I’ve always chalked the phenomenon up to we New Yorkers’ lack of indoor space. Our apartments are just so tiny—there sure ain’t room for a decent-size get-together. If the weather’s right, let’s just spill out into the street. Plus it’s so hot and muggy; no window a/c unit is going to churn out cold air fast enough for this crowd, and no indoor space is going to be as well-ventilated as plein air.

It’s a treat to walk down my block and hear other folks’ music pumping out of speakers pressed up to the window screens (usually), smell what they’ve got on the grill, see the colorful buffet all set out, and run the gauntlet of kids steering bikes and scooters across the sidewalk, oblivious to adults (so far up!) with something to do, someplace to be.

But then maybe the writers I quoted above were talking about Manhattan. I haven’t been there in years (well—called it home, anyway). When I go back for a visit (almost daily), the lovely human-scale buildings seem to be disappearing as fast as Bush supporters, and slick glass high-rises are the way of the future. What if a person wants to set up a lawn chair out front? What if I want to have a Saturday stoop sale? What if we want to throw a rooftop party? The answer, I guess, is: Move to Brooklyn.

As I stood in line at my local U.S. Post Office today (mailing a Mother’s Day package), having to dispose of an old envelope and a used-up stamp book, I was outraged that there was no recycling bin in sight. Standing in a post-office line gives one ample time to think, and often leads to pondering (hating) the state of gov’t services in this country. (I was reminded of living in Helsinki, where the Finnish postal system was a picture of efficiency, the post offices a treat to visit.)

The U.S. Post Office has publicized their recent efforts to “go green” by focusing on the fuel-economy of their delivery vans and the efficiency of their routes. Why not also have a recycling bin in every post office? There are 36,000 branches in the country, visited by 9 million people each day. I wonder how much paper trash they’re (we’re) generating?

On the way home from the post office, I passed the office of some design/planning outfit. (The name eludes me.) Toward the front of their office, through the glass window, I could see their garbage bins clearly labeled: The one with a blue plastic bag for “glass/metal/plastic,” the clear bag for “paper,” and the black plastic bag, rather than being labeled, “trash,” said, “landfill.”