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December 31st, 2005 / 23:02:00

MARITIME

When I teach classes at Parsons and NYU, one lesson I always instill is to treat everyone you meet in life with equal respect. That’s something i learned very early on. It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a million dollar corporation or the janitor. I will deal with you in the same respect. A perfect case example of this is my good friend Mari Koda (who just stopped by after shopping at Reed.) I met Mari while I was attending NYU. There’s a little Japanese restaurant on campus called Marumi. She used to wait tables there and when I’d go there for lunch, we would just chit chat. Man….that was like…11 years ago! (fuck, again. I am old.) Anyway, she was an aspiring dancer and if you ever talk to a waitress, they typically are an anspiring “something”. Anyway, I just liked her energy and spirit so we just always kept in touch over the years. Fast forward to 2005 and now this aspiring dancer has been in motion pictures, music videos, was the opening act on the MTV VMA’s, is a VIP Charter member of the Rocksteady Crew, does commercials for national TV ads and travels to Japan on the reg to teach and showcase her boogie. But we treat each other the same now as when she was a waitress and I was a student. Before I even had an inkling of what Staple Design was…we was cool. And we’re still cool. People like that priceless. Look out for Mari in the latest Best Buy commercials.

 
December 31st, 2005 / 16:47:00

NEW YEAR’S SNOW.


Brunch this morning at Lapalapa with Miguel and Marlene. In the middle of our brunch, a beautiful heavy snow fell. It was nice, but it also foiled my plans for the day. Mattress shopping and Duane Reade will have to wait…Thanks for brunch Miguel.

 
December 31st, 2005 / 03:20:00

NEW YEAR’S PRE-EVE.

Apparently, my stress tension levels are very high.

My friend & business partner Riko Sakurai put together a nice gathering of friends and associates for a little pre New Year’s Eve dinner. This is a great idea who’s time has come. You avoid the madness of New Year’s Eve and are able to enjoy everything much more. We converged on the main table at Nam in Tribeca and chowed down on some really dope Vietnamese food. Suzanne Kennedy was looking lovely in her Diane Von Furstenberg custom dress. She is Barry Diller’s assistant and used to work at Def Jam with Riko. John Paul was an editor at Vitals Magazine and is now working freelance. Ben, his wife Zarah and their 12 year old cool ass daughter Ava (happy birthday girl!) was also on hand. They run LTB. If I tried to describe what LTB does, it would crash my server, so just peep the link. Tim is a personal trainer in London and an all around cool dude. Ishino just came in 4 hrs prior from Tokyo. He does business stuff…like finance. All I know is he has a phat crib in Tokyo and I’m gonna crash there when i go in 2 weeks. (Thanks Ishino! Don’t worry about the housekeeper!) Horacio Silva is an editor at New York Times. It’s no use dressing nice when you hang with him cuz he will crush you like a fly in that department.
I’m not usually a big fan of large gatherings like this, but Riko really knows how to put the right minds together and make it a chill time. I had a great night, and no, the back rub from Suzanne had no bearing!

 
December 30th, 2005 / 23:49:00

COMPLETE TECHNIQUE.


Osa dropped by (as he so often does) to show us the new shit he is up to. He is the founder of a custom jewelry line called Complete Technique. We’ve been supporting it at Reed Space. since day 1. So it’s definitely good to see how far he has advanced. Osa also has a pretty good gade away jumper.

 
December 30th, 2005 / 21:35:00

CONSUMED.


One my favorite weekly readings is the New York Times Magazine. Both from an editorial and design standpoint, it’s just dope. And one of my favorite columns in the Mag is CONSUMED. (A close 2nd is The Ethicist by Randy Cohen.)
CONSUMED is a 1 pg short feature on just about anything people buy…but don’t really need. Everything from Stop Snitchin’ t-shirts to Planned Obsolescence in Retail to Espo. The author of the weekly column is Rob Walker. So when I had the opportunity to sit down and break bread with Mr. Walker, I was greatly looking forward to it.
We met at Inoteca and had an excellent 2 hour conversation about payola, bribes, consumerism, exclusivity, paying rent, corporate marketing fools, “The Tipping Point”, and why Jersey City is better than New York City. Rob is cool. From the outside, he looks like a complete alien in the realm of downtown-skate-hipster-thugs. But after hearing him speak for 5 minutes, you know he’s on top of the game. It’s probably better that he’s not a “groupie” of the culture. It provides him with an outside viewpoint that you simply cannot have if you live within it. I’m looking forward to his upcoming book…

 
December 30th, 2005 / 03:58:00

OH…..CANADA.

Best Buy, eh? Picked up my new Canon across the border. Out of boredom mostly…How come our Best Buy uniforms don’t have US flags on the sleeve? I thought we were supposed to be patriotic.

I’ve been in Toronto, Canada for the last few days. Most of my friends have pretty negative connotations of Canada and Canucks. I personally, have never had beef with them. In fact, all my experiences with Canada has been pretty good. It’s a beautiful country with a lot of variety in their landscapes. (But y’all are missing, like, a warm place.) And the people are really nice and hard working. I work with a lot of different vendors in Canada with pretty good results. Anyway, the main purpose of the trip was to visit my grandparents who retired in Scarborough, a mainly Asian-Indian populated suburb 30 mins outside of downtown Toronto.
My grandfather has Parkinson’s and is being looked after by my Grandmother alone so its pretty rough. We try and go up as often as possible to help out. My gramps is in a really good senior citizen home. You spend 4 days with people who are dying and it really changes your perspective on life. You start asking yourself grandiose questions like “what are you working for?”…”what’s the point of all this?”…shit like that. And you wonder how you yourself will go. Or want to go. In a senior citizen home, you get to see every single possibility. Its a tough choice that probably for the better, we don’t have a say in.
Other than that, I learned how to play Mah Jong from my grandmother. Nothing like the age old ritual of passing a vice from one generation to the next. Its really addictive. Like Poker, but WAY more complicated. The challenge is now finding people in NY that play also. I snagged one of my gramps extra sets of Mah Jong tiles so if you’re game let me know. Also got a new digital camera to replace my Sony. Sony digital cameras really really suck. Mostly in the ease-of-use department. I used to have a Canon that I loved back when 3 megapixels was the shit….so I went back to Canon and I immediately fell in love all over again. Sony’s are like the Windows of the camera world while Canon’s are like Macs. (Funny thing is, Sony execs are reading that and not realizing it is in fact, an insult.) I came across another grandiose conundrum when trying to figure out how to shoot my digital camera for the blog. My mind got all MC Eschered out and I decided to forget it. So here, I got this one. I highly recommend it.

My gramps. (He strong. It’s where I get my confidence from.)

Like Poker…but…thicker. And considerably harder to read.

These helped to kill the time. World Series of Poker on the PSP is like cocaine…along with the Crackberry, I was pretty jacked up.

Oh and one more weird thing. We did this ad for one our clients, Starter, (a division of Nike) a while back. It was a ridiculous rush job…like ONE day to shoot, retouch, layout and upload a billboard ad. I just remember being so glad it was over and done with. Lo and behold as I’m driving in from Toronto Airport, I see it! I must say, even though the billboard is pretty remedial in design, it’s kinda cool to know some shit you had your hand is being witnessed by millions of hockey fans everyday.

Sometimes, design doesn’t have to be great. It just has to be done. (But for real, Jiffy Storage even looks OK in comparision. Damn…)

 
December 24th, 2005 / 22:13:00

HKNY

Mr. Tucker, as F.O.B. Fresh Off the Boat! He knows more Cantonese than me now!

The turnover rate at Staple is pretty low. But the rare times that someone does leave the firm, they usually go onto big things.
Take Sean for example. He was at Staple for almost 2 years. Now he’s the H.N.I.C. of the P.R.O.C. He left NY and took the 16 hr leap to Hong Kong and now he runs everything that’s dope coming out of Nike AP. (that’s Asia Pacific for you rookies.)
He handles and pretty much conceived the entire Nike [co]+lab concept, which Staple was also asked to be a part of. He brought some samples of last season’s collaborations. Ours drops next and I should have photos shortly. After kickin it for a bit and catchin up, we went to grab some dinner with our mutual friend, Damany. “D” runs a very cool shop called Flight Club. We headed to Typhoon, one of my favorite low-key japanese restaurants in the city. Really good homestyle japanese cooking. It was a good time and interesting conversation about the sneaker game. It was interesting because, the three of us literally represent every facet of the industry. The Conglomerate/Manufacturer. The Designer/Consultant/Boutique. The Deadstock Internet/Ebay/Reseller. I’m sure if I had taped our conversation, I could have sold it to some trend forecasting company for a pretty penny. (Damn…gotta think faster about these things…)

Some press about the Staple x Nike [co]+lab’s. I’ll have better photos up soon.

[co]+lab Season 1 featuring Phunk Studio and Tenmyouya Hisashi. Courtesy of Sean.

Sean, Me, Damany, Saikoro Steak, Miso Kalbi, Kirin and Agedashi Tofu.


The next day, I went over to Flight Club to pick up some shoes I’ve had my eye on for a while. The Nike Air Goatek. One of my favorites of all time, and interestingly enough, a great basketball shoe! Must be the goat hoof outsole or something, but i love playing ball in these. I think it would be dope if Staple could remix the Goats somehow. They have a very underground niche following. Yah!

 
December 23rd, 2005 / 23:25:00

DOLLY CAME IN.

No, not that Dolly from Steel Magnolias (why do I know that?). It’s the Kartell Dolly! We really needed to step up our chair game for the conference table (slash ping pong table). After all, at Staple, it’s only the best for our client’s asses. So those Ikea joints had to go. I was looking for a chair that is lightweight and comfortable (but not TOO comfortable. Don’t need people hangin out here all day! We gots work to do!) It also has to be foldable and stackable. The Dolly fit the bill perfectly. Its design is inspired by scissors and those old school folding measuring sticks. It’s very ergonomic and stashes away very nicely for when table tennis tournaments take center stage. They also come in sick colors. I opted for tennis ball yellow. It looks cool when sitting next to the deep green ping pong table. Very Wimbeldon if I do say so myself.

See Dolly Fold. See Dolly Stack. Italians are so good at this sort of thing.

 
December 22nd, 2005 / 22:33:00

1 MO 1 EIGHTY


I treated myself to these Air 180s and they just came in today. I had to get these from Nort Berlin I’m not quite sure the story on these, but i am pretty sure they were a European exclusive. Not sure if it’s part of some pack or somethin. (But they sure match my desk real nice!) Sometimes, people ask me why I even bother to buy kicks since its obvious I can get them for free. While I truly appreciate the free gifts from everyone, at the heart of it, I’m still a fan. And I like to support things I’m into. There’s a certain satisfaction in hunting, looking for and then buying something you really have your eye on. It’s the addict in me talking I guess. When you get something for free from someone, it’s a different sort of satisfaction. You appreciate what you got but more so, you appreciate the relationship that lies behind the gift. When you go and buy something, it’s a satisfaction that is completely innate and carnal…
1. WANT. 2. NEED. 3. ACQUIRE. Never lose sight of what makes you happy.

 
December 22nd, 2005 / 22:23:00

PUSHAMAN


To be honest, I wasn’t really into the Pushead Dunks when i first heard about them. They’re a lil too craze for me. But since my friend James offered to hold a pair aside for me, it was almost a no-brainer. They’re a lot better than I expected. The box is dope and makes this a really special piece. But the shoes themselves ain’t bad either. There’s a super padded quilted inside lining (reminiscent of the Hunter) and the exterior pattern is pretty interesting. Glad I got these…

 
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