Let’s Get Busy Here – Crosby Street Hotel
By Erin Feher
I am so over sleeping on couches. I don’t care how good the party is, how old the friends are or how cozy the cushions. I’ve spent more than enough nights sharing a three-foot-wide hunk of ultra-suede with a string of past crushes, clinging to the romantic notion of body heat as my bare feet poke out from beneath a cat-hair-covered throw.
So maybe it’s no surprise that I’ve grown into a serious hotel girl. And not just a king-sized bed and soaking tub kinda hotel girl—my hotels gotta make me squeal with design delight. No two rooms the same, bold wallpaper, custom light-fixtures, head-scratching art, perfectly curated vintage accessories….
My next trip is to NYC, and while the hotels may be pricey, the cost seems perfectly fair considering I don’t have a single friend who has managed to move-on-up to an apartment with a guest room (the ones whose own beds aren’t crammed between their sofa and their stove have made it big).
So I’m heading straight over to SoHo, where between Prince, Spring and Lafayette Streets I will find the Crosby Street Hotel. This is the first US property for Firmdale, a UK-based boutique hotel operator with six unbelievably stylish hotels in London. Headed by husband and wife Tim and Kit Kemp (adorable? Yes), wife Kit has quite an eye for design and outfits all the hotels herself.
The rooms, lobby, restaurant and bar are each decked out with details that will more than make up for all those nights of couch surfing.
For more design-to-die-for hotels around the globe, check out the brand new 2010 edition of The Design Hotels Book. Don’t leave home without it.
In Case of an Emergency – Super Sexy C.P.R. Video
A public service announcement from Sex+Design. Enjoy.
So…Are We Gonna Fuck or Should We Split This?
Let’s face it, the days of proper courtship and courtesy are far behind us. Dating today is like going on a job interview with a loaded gun pointed directly at your crotch. Give the wrong answer? BANG! We are plugged in, turned on, living fast lives and want even faster results.
So, from a male’s perspective, what is so wrong with expecting a little sumthin’ sumthin’ once the plastic comes out? Is it really okay for a woman to go out on a date with a guy she’s not into? Is it alright for her to use her God-given ass-shaking ability to garner a free meal? With the Women’s Movement and everything that has occurred in the past few decades are we truly at a point of equality? I can’t recall ever hearing a woman treating a guy out to nice night out on the town. So if a woman knows she is not interested shouldn’t she pony up some cash for her half of the date or at least hook a brotha up and give him some play for his efforts?
What I’m suggesting isn’t like prostitution or anything. I really don’t think taking a woman out on date should be a direct invitation for sex. But being who I am, and going out on dates with women who were not interested me, I would have really appreciated them saving me the humiliation, let me down easy and compensated me for their share of the evening. If she’s not interested it’s essentially like going out on the town with your sister. And would you bullshit your sister? Get up to go to the bathroom the second the check is set down? Probably not. So ladies, at least offer. Give the guy the chance to refuse (but to be honest, in this economy, I don’t think any man would deny a woman compensating him for her share of a date once he knew he wasn’t getting past the dugout).
The sad fact of the matter is, with all of the advancements in social standards, living standards, social equality and technology, over the past few decades we have all become more distant from each other. With the advent of social networking sites and dating sites and every other internet site, it’s really sad to know how disconnected emotionally we all have become from one another. People still expect the worst from each other and have no compassion for someone who probably in all likelihood wants to treat someone to a special night they can share with them.
So, in the cynicism of our generation and world, I plead with the women of this brave new world to have compassion on us men. Biologically we all know what each sex is all about. Men are supposed to be hunter gatherers and women are supposed to be comforting nurturers. But, in this brave new world where there are no clear roles between men and women and the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, take some responsibility and be honest with one another. Men want sex and girls; well, I guess girls just want to have fun. But at least be honest and forthright and don’t take advantage of each other.
Good Artists Copy. Great Artists Steal. Right Steve Jobs?
In this early video making the Internet rounds, Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs likens Apple’s shameless stealing of “great” ideas to artistic practices. It’s a nice philosophy, though I’ll note the company only supports stealing as a creative end when there’s a demonstrable profit to be found. iTunes DRMs aren’t exactly facilitating sharing and I’m guessing the iPad won’t either.
I Will Never Go Hungry Again
Splatter Art by Holden Starstruck
The first and only thing you should know is that this life isn’t for everyone. This isn’t Carrie fucking Bradshaw pondering on the holy trinity of style, nightlife, and romance. This column is the Fight Club meets Disco Bloodbath of the online sphere.
The drugs, the alcohol, the sexual escapades, the drag, and the explicit life get to people after a while. Some people get tired, some people get apathetic, some people get psychotic. Other people say it’s sinful. My sentiment on that is irreversible evidence for an afterlife has yet to manifest. So for all that’s proven, this could be hell, and for a lot of people it is. Hell or heaven, the Odysseian path and Swiftian sensibilities I choose are those of the lover, the libertine, the scholar, the gypsy, and the party monster.
May I never stop wandering. This path, this life upon a moving hearth I’ve inherited, originated from the first time I ever read from a little book known as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, at the fresh age of fifteen.
For months all I wanted to experience was acid. I had never smoked a joint, taken a pill of Ecstasy, or even fucked another guy (that’s right, I’m a fairy). I eventually did locate Lucy after months of calling her number.
It was intense, to say the least. It seems as though that ever since my life has been nothing less than bohemian rhapsody. The following years of high school for me were full of stimulant binges, psychedelic experiences, poetic exploration, journalistic intrigue, and sexual deviancy.
I lost my virginity in a threesome in my senior year of high school. With a girl and a guy. They were a couple. My first near relationship was with a 29-year-old drag queen I met after drinking in a Castro alleyway at the age of seventeen. It lasted a good three or four months.
That brings me to my life now. I don’t live for “the scene.” I live for myself. You can choose to do so too, but I’m sure as fuck not going to tell you how to live your life.
I choose to live for myself because any other way of living leads to personal failure. No one is going to love you unless you love yourself. And in the end, taking care of yourself is the only way you can learn for all the hangovers, the vomit, the teeth chattering, the serotonin loss, the breakdowns, and the heartaches.
And I genuinely think a good majority of the populace don’t take care of themselves as much as they should. They should drink more water. They should sleep more. They should give less of a shit what others think and act through what they feel.
At such a young age, I’ve discovered that I’m not okay. I’ll never be. My emotions will always be a splatter painting from my personal experiences. Life is like that. And if I don’t cherish my emotional art, I’m ashamed, it’ll fucking mean nothing. And if it means nothing to me, then it’ll mean nothing to everyone else. I refuse to let the shame laid down by society prevent me from receiving the pleasure it has on hold.
So here I am. To experience all that the land, the waters, the offices, the bars, the papers, and the notes that life has to offer. And I refuse not to reciprocate with this life that I love.
Pop Stars Gone Drag Queen. Fit or Phat?
Sex+Design, specifically fashion design is what brings us here today. Sexy, fashion, sex-y fashion, fashion sex- when these two words are paired a number of people could come to mind. Sure, i could write about Madonna, Michelle Obama, or Lara Stone, but being obvious like that isn’t sex or fashion. No no, let’s focus on two very different and unlikely choices: Mariah Carey and Kristen Stewart.
Ok, Mariah Carey will never really know how to dress well and she will never have style, personal or otherwise, but she does have sex+fashion. Her clothing is ALWAYS 3 sizes too small = HOT and she has to wear 2 extra layers of Spanx to sausage-case her back fat- but Mariah Carey is clearly a bacchanal tart. She eats too much, drinks too much, probably does too much coke or at least used to, and fucks that squirrely child-husband of hers too much. Mariah Carey is a sessy hybrid of miss piggy and a paperbag full of legal Nevada hookers. When a person is too busy being sensually excessive, said person is too fucking busy to worry about style or clothes. She doesn’t even bother with those ridiculous My Little Pony hairdon’ts she used to perpetually try to out-diva herself with. She’s no Kate Moss or Sienna Miller thank God (or P. Diddy). Those women make fashion a serious task and though I can’t say I don’t love their fashion aesthetics, it is not terribly sexy to obsess about carbs and date abusive men who fuck around on you with the nanny or are Pete Doherty. Mariah Carey LOVES Mariah Carey. That is sex+fashion.
On the other hand, Kristen Stewart looks like shit in a dress and any other attractive clothing. Absolutely crap. Her legs and arms appear to be at odds with her torso. There’s always violent Sean Penn versus Amy Winehouse versus Chris Brown type brawl between her hair and makeup, but again she exhibits sex + fashion because her fashion sense is so very terrible. Not akward in a Tina Fey “what the fuck do i do with this strap on this dress”, but more like Jodi Foster or Lily Tomlin or K.D. Lang cluelessness. Kristen is too busy getting stoned, taking her “craft” seriously, hanging out with a fag in her mouth, and/or dressing up Robert Pattinson as a young Melissa Ethridge back stage at Lilith fair for fuck times to give a shit about clothes. I can’t wait for her cinco de gayo people magazine cover. Too bad it will be 17 years from now after her pluck is all gone. selfish bitch.
item of the week: prom dress
Who the Fuck is Banksy?
Banksy, Banksy, Banksy.. this guy seems to be everywhere from Chinatown to the Mission alley drunk hipsters pee in. Andy Warhol would be steaming with jealousy of all the inches published on Banksy over the past few years.
His name and art may be familiar to millions of people worldwide, but there are very few photos or details known about the actual artist. “Banksy is Britain’s most celebrated graffiti artist, but anonymity is vital to him because graffiti is illegal. The day he goes public is the day the graffiti ends, ” said Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian, one of the few reporters to interview him.
“The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.” Banksy in the Guardian interview.
I Deleted My Faceboook Account Today.
I don’t have a lot of illusions about privacy when using social media such as Flickr or Twitter, but there is a difference when a company like Facebook behaves in a really sleazy fashion.
I work on websites every day, including my own such as the art calendar ArtCat. I did not start out with one privacy policy for the calendar, and then gradually claim the right to use more and more information submitted to us. For example, I could offer a list of contemporary art galleries for sale to advertisers or artists looking for representation, but that would be wrong because it’s not what the galleries expected when they gave information to us. However, given the changes in Facebook’s privacy policy since 2005, they would consider this perfectly reasonable behavior.
In addition, with recent changes to their development platform, Facebook applications have more and more access to your private data, including applications you have not chosen to install, but your friends have. Want to share information only with friends? You’re sharing it with applications that your friends use.
And how about those neat new sharing tools introduced by Facebook? Until they corrected a bug, visiting sites that are using Open Graph allowed them to install an application to your profile without asking you. Given their privacy track record, including the recent exposure of private chats, I wouldn’t trust them to fix those holes quickly. “Instant personalization” indeed.
FLAWK You Like a Hurricane
By Veronica Christina and Nico Johanna
One look at Lauren Rassel and Dexter Simmons and you know they’re in fashion. Well, fashion or some fabulously underground creative circuit of taste-makers influencing the styles most of us won’t see for years. Yet the dynamic duo behind the uber-clever fashion and accessory house FLAWK isn’t all glam and feathers. This team works. In just a year they’ve debuted numerous, well-received collections, styled and modeled in countless photo shoots as well as designed an entire accessories line. Prolific and voracious, FLAWK is the future of fashion and have already set trends inspiring the heavy-hitting design powerhouses they are one day sure to become.
How did Flawk form? Where did you two meet and how did you decide to collaborate?
Dexter and I met as buyers for the Wasteland on Haight in 2004. We became neighbors, best friends and business partners in 2007. We decided to do a show together for fun/ exposure and ended up making a fashion label.
What unique ability to each of you bring to the table that makes FLAWK fly?
Dexter has amazing model magnetism…Amateurs and pros alike trust him… He also has an endless addiction to mixing sexy and bizarre when designing…
Lauren is a negotiator and FLAWK pusher. She has a tendency to blur the line between clothing and accessories.
Define FLAWK in 5 words or less….
Fashion scavengers
If you weren’t designing clothes/accessories-you’d be?
Making paintings, installations and sculptures – the things I do to take a break from wearable art. – Lauren
Working backstage making people look good -dex
Tell us about your new collection, how is it different from the others?
It’s extremely cohesive and marketable. The focus was on the magazine launch so the look is young and sexy. All
dresses are the same silhouette made from pants and fabric remnants. Each one also has a detachable necklace.
Is this your first collection of shades? What other accessories will we see from you?
Not our first time with sunglasses just the first time doing a large scale cohesive bunch.
Where can we find your stuff in the city?
Wonderland SF
What other projects if any are you working on to gain more exposure?
That’s top secret.
If you had all the money in the world, where would your ideal shoot be?
Lauren – In a circus for a week
Dexter – Costa Rican rain forest
Biggest vices for each of you?
independence *Lauren
gold * dexter
Best party you’ve ever been to? Details?
Hard to say but recently the Jeremy Scott after party for fashion week in Feb. At a club 2 stories underground in Manahattan…Santogold and a wild crew of street dancers busted out and performed throughout the night.
Why was Brooklyn fashion week so much better than NY fashion week- details?
There isn’t an official fashion week in Brooklyn. We showed at Williamsburg Fashion Weekend which was an indie more party oriented show environment. It was cool for us because of our subversive independent approach.
The Irony of Having Sex, Being a Player and Falling in Love
The Sensitive Player By Alex Crevar
Why is player a bad word? I reckon it’s because for a player to exist, someone else has to get played … at least that’s the logic the recently played spout during the sober light of day. Of course when the nasty electricity of nighttime builds, it’s a different story.
It’s the playahs, the groove merchants, the seduction hawkers, that give any get-together, disco, club, or house party that delicious, wicked, sexually charged vibe. Frankly they’re the reason to go to parties – even ones that are supposed to be tame. “God, I hope this gets out-of-hand,” the bored – one hip cocked, staring at the ceiling, sipping from a martini glass – seem to collectively think each evening as the gates of their normal lives part and they walk onto streets dripping with possibilities, which players are busy creating.
For the contrary, please answer truthfully: though you may not normally be naughty, don’t you at least want to know you have a choice beyond just an after-work drink and then going home to your TV’s depressing blue light? Don’t you want to believe you could end an evening with your pants suit/dress/overalls in a pile behind the door and a shiver down your spine?
That’s the player’s department.
Players are the ones who push the point. Sure, they may not go home with you and meet your parents during Christmas vacation. They may not water your plants when you are away on business. They may not remember your name. But they’re the ones who encourage one too many I-don’t-know-what-they-were-called-but-they-went straight-to-my-head cocktails. (“Where are my panties?”) They inspire the shedding of layers. (“It is a little hot in here, you were right.”) They encourage rump-rocking epiphanies and nether-region tingling. (“Yeah, I guess I could wear the same outfit to tomorrow morning’s meeting.”)
But, have you ever wondered what it would be like if the player lost his touch? If suddenly it was the player who got played? Now imagine the player and playee were the same person. Imagine if that he-thinks-he-can-do-that-to-me-and-just-forget-to-call sumbitch began unconsciously sabotaging his ownself. Time and time again.
Welcome to the Sensitive Player’s world.
Listen here baby, I play. Sho nuff, do I play. But I’m also trapped in a universe formed by an overly receptive and slightly self-destructive personality set. I am a tortured soul that loves to play AND has grown a conscience. For the player, that’s the death knell.
First, I’m Southern. I genuinely love hosting people and having folks, who were previously strangers, suddenly dirty dancing about the place. Rocks glasses in hand. Riding a knee. Rubbing a backside.
Secondly, when the room thumps and I go under the spell of a backbeat, I’ll dance with just about anyone. Anyone becomes a partner in crime. Anyone becomes prey. All the while my judgment is finding its own rhythm through copious amounts of bourbon. And don’t be fooled: I am an adorable drunk.
Sounds like the typical sleazy so-and-so to me, you think. Well, I would be except for one fatal flaw: in the heat of the moment and all at once – dancing, drinking, Southerning – I am not Playing. I am genuinely in love. Gosh darn it. Rather than finding a person’s faults, I find their strengths. Such beautiful lips. My god, what a neck. Her face is perfect when she’s serious. Is that a lilt in her laugh? Yes, rub that thing on up over here.
In fact, I fall so in love I become tongue-tied and have a hard time closing the deal. Can you imagine anything sadder than a player – lubed up on Southern whiskey and shaking it with a lovely young thing lost in his web – who can’t close the deal? It’s cataclysmic. It’s Tony Orlando without Dawn. It’s Chico without the Man. It’s Peaches without Herb. Lawd knows, it’s just sad is what it is. Sad.
But I’ve decided to put my plight to use. For all those who wished a player would get his, I’m your man.
I live in Europe and am given regular opportunities to fall in love. Most end in clown-like failure. This column will follow this Herb-less, the Man-less, Dawn-less Sensitive Player through almost-affairs across the continent as I fight through language barriers and convince the unsuspecting that “James Brown plus Jim Beam is actually a really good way to learn English” and then document my fall from the heights. And lest one should feel sorry for the Sensitive Player, don’t worry: I’m still flitting about a room dancing, sneaking a kiss, and trading naughty glances. And occasionally even SP ends up with his chain mail piled in a corner.
***
This episode comes from Zagreb, Croatia, where Mr. S. Player has been holed up under the guise of a freelance travel writer. Naturally SP is in a bookshop, looking sharp, smart, and trading bedroom eyes when he’s thunderstruck by a beautiful Croat: tall, blond, breathtaking … literally, I lost my breath. She must have noticed it because she came over and spoke – in English – to the Player.
“What are looking for?” she asked, her alert breasts resourcefully reeling in homeboy.
“Dunno,” homeboy replied with a tone that could’ve been mistaken as mild retardation.
“Well, let me know if you need any help.”
Only then did SP see the nametag. It was the first stage of heartbreak. I should have aborted then. Naturally, I didn’t.
“Wondering if you’d like to go with me to a hockey game tonight. I’ve got good seats,” SP asks while buying something inconsequential just to have an excuse to do a little jawin’. (The Player always has comped, of course, tickets to something. Tickets can be abandoned but they can’t always be secured.)
“Okay,” she said simply. “Meet you here at 8?”
The Player was in love. Period. And it wasn’t just her looks. It was her directness. It was her saying yes without hemming and hawing. It was her breasts.
We drank early and often at the game. Lawd knows SP was funny and witty and cute. After, we went to a pub and traded shots of brandy. We laughed easily. I brushed her hand with mine. She was receptive. The gods helped by laying down the soundtrack for the evening: Otis followed by brother Ray and then Reverend Al got in on the act. At one point we swayed into a hip-grinding slow dance so tantalizing and sweet that others were inspired to get off their stools for a little something something. I softly kissed her neck. She ran her fingers through the back of my hair.
All right … stop. Truly, I needed nothing else. I didn’t need to see her naked. If I had died there while nibbling on that soft, silky neck as Marvin Gaye told us to “Get it On,” I’d have been more than okay. Then why on earth didn’t we just remain in that heavenly cloud? The Player can’t quite answer that. That answer is wrapped in biology and animal instincts and lawdy, got to be honest here: when someone got their hand running through the Player’s hair his brain don’t work so good. All I can say is that the Player needed more. And like most tragedies in SP’s world, trough-scraping lows are a product of groin-throbbing, mountain-reaching highs combined with greed.
“Let’s go to a club,” the Player suggested. “But it’s raining,” Ms. Wonderful said. “What’s a little rain?” the Player foolishly retorted instead of dancing to Parliament. “Okay … I guess.”
It was in the rain, waiting on a tram that SP misplayed his hand and went in for a dramatic, romantic smooch. Ms. You-one-big-MFing-fool pulled back with a lurch. I am sorry, she said. I’ve got a boyfriend, she said.
Time stopped. Cars screeched to a halt. Dogs and cats started speaking in tongues. Somebody scratched the album on the record player and then switched “Songs in the Key of Life” with “The Heart Touching Magic of Jim Nabors.”
The Player played it cool though. When she asked: should I just go home? I said: no, stick around if you’d like. Then we met up with folks at a place spinning funk. Ol’ SP drank a bottle of whiskey. Just before she left she said: you were dancing with a lot of girls. I said, with a stumble and some slurring: that’s right, baby.
To Do: Buy Kneepads
By Erin Feher
Remember when you were six and you had a list of incredibly cool things that you wanted to do when you grew up? Well, that list worked out pretty well for me (live in California, write a book, marry someone who hails from a sketchy South American country, own one of those one-piece bathing suits with the stomach cut out), so I never really abandoned the habit. And now I have a new item that has pretty much taken priority: dance like Ciara.
This idea came to me like many brilliant ideas do: coming home too late after too many drinks one night and watching MTV. Her newest video “Ride,” is the hottest fucking thing I have ever seen. And there is no reason—like being white, or thirty, or without access to a mechanical bull—that I cannot be just like her. So, being a woman of action, I told my yoga instructor to peace out for a while, signed up for three-months worth of dance classes, and most importantly, bought some expensive sneakers with metallic accents. It is SO on.
Artificial Insemination
By Erin Feher
I’ve been getting blasted with images of all the architectural T&A popping up at the Shanghai World Expo, and one in particular has got me riled. At the Seed Cathedral, 60,000 glowing fiber-optic rods jut out at the viewer, displaying a seed implanted in its tip. If you ask me, that’s not a hypersexual metaphor like Jackass isn’t a sado-masochistic homoerotic showdown. And the architecture crowds are simply exploding in their pants over it. Surprisingly, it’s the creation of the usually buttoned-up Brits: design star Thomas Heatherwick conceived it as something of a conceptual Noah’s Ark (the first sex cruise in history).
The seeds were gathered with help from the Millennium Seedbank Project, which is working to collect and categorize the seeds of 25 percent of the world’s plant species by 2020. Something about all this scientific research and architectural inventiveness on behalf of procreation (even if it is between plants) gets me all unexplainably tingly. Like that time I tore the clothes of my high school boyfriend after watching a show about the mating habits of sea creatures on the Discovery Channel. I guess it gives new meaning to the term “design lover.” (When it shows up on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters remember you heard it here first, kids.)