Coming Soon… in Fremont

We walk by Coming Soon [a retail pop-up installation space] a couple of times a week as we roll down the hill into the center of the universe, aka Fremont. From what we’ve read the space is inspired by pop-up art stores in New York City. We don’t know what pop-up art store means exactly - I still call contemporary art, modern art and receive stern looks from those in the [k]now - but we like to stop and gaze at the installations. They bring a smile to nostre faccie. The current show (and pictured above) is called Of Paper and Light by artist Jesse Brown which features cut-out paper sculptures.

Oh, Possums! Dries Van Noten

I seldom understand high-concept, fashion displays in windows of stores. I don’t find them playful or artistic or informative or really all that interesting. I tend to just walk on by. However, the other day while passing Barneys @ the Pacific Place Center I had to do a double take at the window display shown above by the Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten. It has mannequins doing what looks like housework. It was the yellow Playtex gloves that got me. Later that evening we were watching Dame Edna clips and I was wishing I were witty enough to figure out what she would say about this window display. Maybe something like this: “Oh, Possums! Call me old fashioned, but the last time I was in a window display, I was working it, not cleaning it.”

Departures: Flying – Does It Feel Like This To You?

Our 'favorite' magazine, Departures, arrived today. I can’t flip through it without finding something that stands out to me. In this case it was this ad from Cathay Pacific. An awkwardly skinny woman passenger is handed what looks like are pajamas in a deserted cabin with very spacious berths. Where is everyone? Why doesn’t flying ever feel this (wonderfully) desolate to me? There is always a child kicking the back of my seat, someone in front of me that goes to full recline mode, and a mouth breather next to me. The text reads “What I loved were the little touches that made me feel so cared for.” Well if you are the only passenger and that flight attendant is feeling lonely too on that deserted plane, of course you’ll bond.

Departures: Rifle Ceremony and Blondie Bonds with the Locals

If the Departures magazine is just going to show up in front of us, then it’s fair game to make fun of. This time, two country ads caught our attention. The first ad is from South Africa and shows a group of four people greeting (or at a standoff?) with an elephant with the text reading “Elephants have greeting ceremonies for friends returning from voyages. Secretly, I hoped that when I come back, they’ll remember me as much as I’ll remember then.” The group of four is carrying rifles. Some greeting ceremony. This ad does nothing to want to make us go. Koyaanisqatsi anyone?

The second ad is for Panama and it shows a blonde (American?) getting a stripe painted down her nose and now she has the bragging rights of have so “done” this culture! Again, does nothing to attract us; next time just use a picture of the landscape please.

Departures: The Day and Night Watch

We got our Departures magazine this month (the same magazine that gave us Luxurious Flying) and were so delighted to flip through it. Boy are there lots of watch ads. You know how well we love our watches at TravelMarx (see this post). One ad stuck out for us, and that is the Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome’s watches made from pieces of the Titanic. Okay, not so bad we thought, though, a bit ugly.

Later in the same magazine there was an article on “necessary luxuries” with a quote from the WSJ wealth reporter Robert Frank that goes like this: luxury is not dead, just conspicuous consumption is. Furthermore, we are now in an era where we are buying (luxuries) that “fuel our passion and fulfill a part of our identity”. Does that include food, gas, and healthcare?

After a bit of poking around on Frank’s blog site this article on a watch that doesn’t tell time caught our eye and voilà we are back visiting the Swiss watchmaker. Romain Jerome’s Day & Night Watch only tells you if it is day or night. Why bother with the actual time? If you are wealthy enough to buy this watch, perhaps people wait for you? I immediately think of the Elton John song Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters with the lyric (from the 1972 Honky Chateau album):

While Mona Lisas and mad hatters,
sons of bankers, sons of lawyers, turn
around and say, "good morning" to the night.
For unless they see the sky, but
they can't and that is why,
they know not if it's dark out side or light.

The watch advertising goes “the Day & Night watch offers a new way of measuring time, splitting the universe of time into two fundamentally opposing sections: day versus night”. And to think we thought the calculator wrist watch was radical.

Luxurious Flying

We just got back from the East Coast and took a non-stop from Seattle to Boston and back. While not a bad flight, regular class is always a bit cramped and a strain. At least we had the means to make the flight. Today we received this magazine that couldn’t be farthest from our style but it ends up in our mail every so often. (Just call us uneducated and uncouth, but outlandish jewelry dripping with gems and uber-fancy resorts with not a soul in sight just don’t register.) The magazine is called Departures. (It’s so exclusive you can’t even see its Web site without logging in, so there!) In flipping through the magazine we just had to share these two advertisements for a type of flying that is a world apart from what the average person experiences. Welcome to the world of luxury flying. In the first ad, check out the size of those seats! A family of four can easily fit in one. In the second ad, you might think it’s an ad for a hotel room and you would be partially correct. It’s a “personal bedroom at 35,000 feet with dual sliding doors”! What if you have a really loud person one “personal bedroom” over? Diminishes the $9,000 or so for the space. Stick to economy, set your expectations low, and hope to be pleasantly surprised.