Earlier in the year I was living in an apartment above a small shopping strip in Brooklyn. On the weekends I would wander past this small white and blue shop front with a wooden garden box holding up a roller door. It was never open the hours I was going to and coming home from work, so it was only on the weekends I could see what it was all about on the other side. It seemed it was all about food. The small, discrete shop front was a humble little cafe with busy women working inside and hungry patrons treating themselves to hearty sandwiches and delicious baked goods. One day I went in and bought some shortbread. It was olive and buckwheat and a delicious collision of salty and sweet all rolled up in a biscuit. The next day I went back for lunch; a crunchy salad of kale, goat cheese and pear.

The following week, I began my endeavor to eat my way through the top ten sandwiches in New York. This little place made number four, the Scuttlebutt: a stacked sandwich of fresh greens, eggs, capers, carrot, parsley and beetroot, lathered together with aoli and slapped between fresh, house-made bread. Owned by local foodies Rebecca Collerton, Caroline Fidanza and Elizabeh Schula, Saltie is dedicated simply to fresh flavours and seasonal produce. It’s a rather small place too, there’s not much room to sit. If you do, this is lucky, ‘cos then you can rest atop a stool with a plate at the ready to catch the drips from under your chin. They also make ice cream and pastries and have a blog called The Gam. The Gam is filled with sweet little color pencil drawings of beetroots, ramps, turnips and the other garden veggies, that are pasted in between posts about how to boil an egg or what they’re doing with saffron.
It’s all rather neat, and I miss it because I don’t live there anymore.

www.saltieny.com
http://thegam.tumblr.com/

Saltie
378 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Hours:
10am-6pm

Everyday feels like the 5th floor of a 6 floor walk up. Sigh. Maybe it’s because I am a sourpuss or maybe it’s because I live on the 6th floor of a building with no elevator. For me, being in New York is all at once amazing, frightening, bizarre, crazy, annoying, fantastic and just plain old bothersome. So it was with a feeling of empathy and plenty of common ground that I scrolled through the entire history of the Darcel blog. Darcel is an egg shaped cyclops character who lives in New York, casting a cynical eye on himself and his surrounds. He explores the everyday trivialities, documenting things he sees on the streets and the anxiety and confusion he feelings about it. The man behind Darcel is New York based illustrator Craig Redman, of Rinzen art collaboration.

Redman’s posts are personal diary entries of what he does in New York on a daily basis, and through his computer-generated illustrations, he puts his alter ego of Darcel through the paces of simple but unfortunate, only-in-New-York situations. It is so familiar that it makes you wonder is Redman Darcel, or is Darcel me? Sometimes someone walking directly in front of you at turtle speed makes you want to kick them in the shins, sometimes you are not so impressed by going to Guggenheim, sometimes it is confusing that junkies can shop at places you can’t, and sometimes the last thing you want to do at the end of the day is queue up at Wholefoods for an overpriced box of leaves. Like everyone, Darcel experiences all sorts of unpleasantries that come with living in this city, and there is something quite reassuring about knowing that you are not the only one who is frequently attacked by pigeons and often having a certifiably miserable day.

Several stylemakers have cottoned on to the charm of Darcel’s sad smile, and Colette in Paris has been collaborating with the artist (for several years in fact). But for the first time they have dedicated an entire exhibition to him. And a miserable day to you too is an exhibition of paintings, prints, sculpture, animation and blogging, which is on now until the 29th of May. Better get to France tout suite.

http://www.darceldisappoints.com/
http://www.craigredman.com/
http://www.rinzen.com/

Confetti System have a dream job: they make party decorations for a living. Known mostly for their large diamond-shaped piñatas, which have been seen in window displays in Opening Ceremony and Urban Outfitters, at runway shows for United Bamboo, and on stage with bands including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Beach House, the duo (Julie Ho and Nick Andersen) can typically be found in their West Village studio, cutting tissue paper into strips for the fringing on large garlands which hang from the roof. “It all starts with just flat sheets of tissue paper and we usually have an idea of how we want it to look but it kind of evolves while we’re building. It’s like we look at it over a few days in the studio,” Julie comments.

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A new audio journal based out of Melbourne, Paper Radio is it is neither made of paper nor a radio. But it acts just like both. Streaming prerecorded literature online, Paper Radio is materialising something they felt was missing from our headphones: a contemporary podcast reflecting a unique antipodean culture, with high production values, custom sound design and illustration for each episode.

Told she had a “good face for radio” while working in scientific journal publishing, Jessie Borrelle, one part of executive producer duo, said she would have died of boredom if she hadn’t stumbled across This American Life while at work. “Nothing can deaden the soul like data entry, and there is nothing that makes data entry bearable like good radio.” So began her entry into the world of radio and she began devouring American-based podcasts/radio shows like The Moth, Wiretap (from CBCC Canada) and the New Yorker Fiction podcast as well as Radiolab and NPR in general. “There is a fairly rabid fan base here in Australia. I know a lot of people, including myself, who would like to get trapped in an elevator with Ira Glass.”

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A dear friend of mine is a tailor.  He was trained in Saville Rowe in London and makes bespoke suits. This chap will come to measure you up, at work or home, and within weeks you will have a trouser and jacket that fits, well, like a suit should. He makes a suit a pleasure to wear everyday.

So when I was handed this little book, Exercises for Gentlemen: 50 Exercises to Do With Your Suit On, I thought of him immediately. As a lady, I too find myself often compromised by attire choices: bike riding in a short skirt, walking distances in heeled boots, cooking in a silk blouse. But, there are ways around these situations, and I thought it was better to look good doing something inappropriate (with regard to your outfit) than to look inappropriate doing something good. Sometimes your outfit does not match with your activity, but you take it in your stride. Literally.

This book is a little etiquette guide that takes advice from The School of Health, a reference book from the early 1900s that directs one through low-impact exercise. Its aim is to help men with little time to devote to activities outside a busy schedule, enabling one to get the physical exertion they should on a daily basis, regardless of your restricting threads.

With illustrations and instructional notes to accompany the routine, each chapter focuses on the exercises that will target a different region of the body, including Standing Exercises, Head & Trunk, Leg & Foot Movement. The tome also delves into matters of Personal Hygiene & Tonic Measures. In between chapters, there are quoted tips that often relate to the upcoming chapter such as: “If the directions have been carefully followed, the position will be one of erectness, dignity and grace, and pleasing to behold.” Something we all strive for no?

After moving to America from Australia several years ago, Tahli and Sammy Harkham decided to set up a shop with long time friend David Jacob Kramer. David was living in New York trying to write for magazines, Tahli & Sammy were living and working on the West Coast, where a subculture of live music and DIY aesthetic was brewing under the shiny, celebrity surface. When they spotted the perfect location in LA, David packed up and moved west, and the three Aussies opened up FAMILY–a curated bookstore selling books, music, clothes and art.

And now, briefly, they’re making their way east. Starting on Thursday at 70 Franklin Street, FAMILY is setting up a pop-up store called Thirty Days, which will have a fairly obvious life span. The interior is designed by artist Ben Jones of the New England art collective Paper Rad, and there will be a series of free artist conversations, live bands, performances, author readings, art exhibitions, and art projects curated by David and Sammy. Ever since I got to New York two weeks ago Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) seems to be everywhere, not physically, but he seems to have his fingers in pies all over town, so I am not surprised he is involved with this too. Moore will be performing live with Kim Gordon as Mirror/Dash this Saturday night (April 10th), where they will be signing books for Sonic Youth’s Sensational FX.

Throughout the month there will be a Charles Willeford Symposium, Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht will perform Text of Light with a psychedelic light show by Gary Panter (pictured) and Joshua White. Artists in residence will include Meryl Smith, Aska Matsumiya and Matthew Thurber. As they pull together the interior of the space in Franklin Street before Thursday night’s opening, piles of books flow through the doors in crates, such as KRAUTROCK Cosmic Rock and its Legacy, Real Life Magazine and a compilation of tales from The New Yorker called Reporting at Wit’s End (certainly one I want to pick up).

Thirty Days
April 8 – May 7
70 Franklin Street (between Church & Broadway) New York
www.familylosangeles.com

Photography by Brian Derballa