tantramar

New York And Beyond

I've just come back from a little jaunt to New York and Philly so I thought I'd mention some of the things I recommend there. Like (my favourite book shop in the world) Housing Works (on Crosby).

It has a great atmosphere and a few years back on world aids day I had the best coffee of my life in there. It also has the best collection (in regards to quality not quantity) of second hands books I've seen.

While I'm on books I also stumbled across the Community Bookstore in Cobble Hill (Brooklyn). It's a pretty crazy place and reminds me a bit of The Thing (in Greenpoint)

I was glad to get to Philly to have a little look around, since the last time I was there was in the 1980s. My main goal was to get to Space 1026 which is an artist run space constructed in the vain of Fort Thunder. The shows they have are awesome and have brought out an almost ridiculous list of young talent.

I was also pleased to make it to The Empire Dinner for breakfast before they close it (if they do), sharing space with the ever so slightly camp crowd in Chelsea.

Another gallery in NYC I was very keen to get to was Cinders, possibly my favourite gallery in the whole world. They always have great artists I love like Mark Todd and Matt Leines. This time I discovered the super great work of Mel Kadel.

Kiosk (interior below) is shop that Luke put me onto. It looks like a tattoo parlour so you wouldn't really venture up the stairs but it's worth it. It's a shop that's curated by a bunch of people who travel around picking up random products made specifically for a certain shop in places like Mexico, Kyoto or Berlin.

Yes, I have no idea how they afford to do this since the products for sale aren't 'that' much. Lots of weird and wonderful things though and it changes frequently.

The City Foundry (on Atlantic Ave) blew my mind. They have bear rugs, robots and the best collection of home wares I have ever seen. It wasn't cheap though and I could have spent about 10 grand on bits of random junk quite easily.

They seem to have some sort election at the minute in America and some people are doing interesting things that promote action.

This was the best I saw. Don't Walk, Vote. Nice.

Getting Supplies

I strolled down to Park Slope in Brooklyn yesterday to check out the superhero supply store. If you're not familiar with this concept store then I should explain.

The shop is a front for a schools project to help children learn to read and write. It was set up by the author, Dave Eggers and you can hear more thinking behind this and the pirate supply store (in San Fransisco) in his Ted talk here.

The shop itself is a bit of a joy. It's run as a non profit and I seriously doubt it makes any money, (although the pirate supply store apparently does).

Due to the nature of comics and superheros everything has been handled in a very playful manner. You can buy a slow burning fuse, top up your X-ray vision or buy a stun gun. You can also of course, buy spare capes, hoods, tights and everything the well equip modern day hero might need. There are many supplements to aid the keen crime fighter or villain such as extra muscles or a replacement for that jar of antimatter that has just run out.

Because the subject is so playful all the signage results in a little smile or chuckle. I think as soon as I walked through the door I was instantly 8 years old again, picking up ray guns and looking for magic dust to charge my sonic distorter.

It occurred to me that while there is a little bit of playful behaviour online in relation to how brands / sites talk to their users, (Twitter and Flickr for example), in the real world there's even less and this seems kinda sad.

Occasionally advertising is playful but usually only in ambient approaches. If shops were just a little more fun with how they treat people, shoppers would enjoy it every so slightly more and it's obvious how this could make a huge difference.

For example; a sign (in a shop) at the top of some stairs that made reference to you being out of breath (after the climb) or perhaps witty anecdotes to read while queuing (anything to improve queuing right?!) Obviously just examples, but surely there's some mileage here. Does the shopping experience really have to be so... grown up?

There are some more pictures of the shop in a Flickr set should you be intrigued by what you see here.

Got A Wedge?

I met Diana who runs Wedgecard yesterday to discuss the mobile aspects of their business. Wedgecard is a business set up by John Bird (The Big Issue). It's about supporting independent shops, something I do give a damn about so I joined up sometime ago. You buy the card for £10, £5 of which goes to charity. You then get discounts or offers in certain shops who have signed up. There are hundreds of shops that use the scheme in London, probably more than you know. Have a peek on the site and support your local community. It's just in London so far but it is growing...

Robbing An Idea

These guys are not the first to do this, but I do like it.
The concept of taking a 'thing' which people are familiar with in terms of location, colour and design and subverting it to your own ends is nearly always entertaining and thought provoking.

I imagine that if they had used the yellow with a blue band design used by the Police,  they would have gotten into trouble.

Kazmattazz is a pretty good trainer shop too.

Rough Trade No More

So it's finally happened. Rough Trade in Covent Garden has closed. I've been buying records there for about 10 years. Part of me is dead. Ok, so it was only half good and they never had quite enough choice or stock, but the shop was tiny and it had a lot of charm. I saw so many in-store performances there from Joanna Newsom to LCD Soundsystem.

I'm looking forward to their new massive shop on Dray's Walk just off Brick lane. That should be great - opening Friday.
The one thing Rough Trade's departure does do though is leave a bit of a glut for record shops in the west end. As Fopp is also now closed, that only really leaves Phonica and Sister Ray and neither sets of staff are that knowledgeable across the board.

East German Toy Museum

It’s bit of push to call this packed to the rafters shop a museum, but the place is so charming it doesn’t really matter. This is the East German Toy Museum (in Berlin) and it’s quite a site to behold. If there is any wall space, floor space or even ceiling space you can bet it’s covered by something. The toy-obsessed owner of the shop obviously loves toys more than most might think possible.

When you go through the back of the shop to get to the museum section. Philipp (below), the curator of this toy carnage explains which stuff is for sale and which stuff is for show. The items are mostly from the DDR era and are beautiful – hand painted wooden and plastic toys, bizarre exploding jigsaw puzzles, paper models and games.

The pictures show pretty effectively what the place is like.

The ever enthusiastic Philipp comes round from time to time to show you things you’ve missed and demonstrate how some of the toys work. He clearly loves this stuff and you might suspect that he plays with everything after closing time.

These puppets were pretty special.

There were quite a lot of instructional toys to help kids understand elements of grown up life like this nice collection of scales.

Philipp explained to us that he had scratched the ceiling quite badly when installing a Christmas tree one time. Did he try and cover it up? Re-plaster? Nope – he turned it into a feature. The little guy on the ceiling is a skier and the marks are naturally his ski tracks.

Colours For Kids

This shop in the Mitte area of Berlin sells coloured stuff for kids to play with and learn about palates and shapes. They had really nice things that looked all hand crafted.

The block sets below were just beautiful. There were sets of varying sizes and of course I wanted the really big one but I would’ve need a sherpa to carry it back to the UK, so I passed. The lady that ran the shop was very nice though and let us all play with the blocks for while.

Tasty Furniture

Trouve in East Berlin has some great little design trophies.

I couldn’t afford most things – even in Berlin where this stuff is cheaper but I did buy this nice hanger.

Four To The Floor

This was a pretty proficient dance music record shop in Berlin. It's the complete opposite to the Hip Hop shop I posted the other day.  The dividers are priceless - all exactly the same size, same font, almost scientific. The Hip Hop shop had hand drawn alphabetic letters. This has sections for every label you’ve ever heard of and more you haven’t. Nuts. It seemed like to qualify for a section you only need two records! Dedication to the cause. They had a lorry load of quality electro and house and techno - a bit of a one stop shop. The guy here was real nice spoke great English. I just bought Justice – Waters Of Nazareth, which I was lacking. I'm sure I could have spent a lot more.

Hip Hop Ya Don’t Stop

This Hip Hop shop in Berlin had the mother lode of Hip Hop records. I’ve not seen a collection this good on sale possibly ever. Good record after good record. There really weren’t any fillers. Miami bass, electro, west coats gansta, New York indie, it was all here.

I also really liked the way it looked a bit like someone’s front room, with records in milk crates – you know – how it’s meant to be – diggin for tunes. I only bought two records but then I don’t need too many more these days. Finding an a cappella of Funky Cold Medina and the Goodie Mob Soul Food album on vinyl was good enough for me.

Books And Magazines Galore In Vancouver

I think this is my last post from my Canada trip. I lost the pictures so that’s why it’s so late. This book shop in Vancouver needs to be seen to be believed. They had crazy amounts of books and comics and magazines in there.

Upstairs were the books and downstairs were the old magazines. I’ve never seen this many magazines. Stuff from the 1900s onwards. Some titles they had back issues spanning 50 years. Plus it’s not that expensive.

I took five or six items to the till and I was informed it would work out cheaper if I bought two more things. So I got two other books and the whole lot came to less than the total for the five books. I’m not totally sure how they made money out of this! There were also several fat cats sleeping on piles of old 60s magazines, which I always find kinda charming. Why don’t you get that in England?

Beyond The Valley – Freak Animals

A little while back Beyond the Valley had a series of shops open around Soho in London, with various bizarre oddities on display. There were many nice things for kids to see and wonderful games to play. The best thing though by a ways was McKinley and Son’s taxidermy creations. They are making hybrid animals, and they are mad sick. Rabbits with wings, two headed lambs, I was impressed.

A flying rabbit and below a siamese teddy!

The Thing, Brooklyn, New York

This junk / record shop has become pretty famous over the years, mainly because it’s just insane. Dusty, dirty and very cheap it has tens of thousands of records all UNSORTED! Seek, and ye may find if you’re really lucky, although I did find The Boy From New York City by The Ad Libs for 50c. Sweet. If you're in the neighbourhood you gotta pass by The Thing!

Recordland, Calgary

Recordland scared me. I think it would take me a week to go through it. This is the silliest record shop I’ve been into. It was on the outskirts of Calgary opposite a dodgy Harley Davidson diner that actually had pretty tasty grub. As you can see from the pictures there were sections for bands that really don’t need sections - Foreigner - c’mon. They had multiple copies of albums I’d never even seen before. Sweet but deadly.

Edinburgh is Analogue

Analogue is a great book / print / gallery shop in Edinburgh on West Bow. It’s independent to its very core. It has shows on by folk like Will Barras, Jon Burgerman and currently Lucy Macleod. They seem to have all the best books around, and some damn nice prints as well. Be sure to stop by if you find yourself in the area.

Below are some pictures from the recent Will Barras (Scrawl Collective) show.