Once, in a happily naive time not long ago, I sung the praises of a certain soap far and wide. That soap—Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap—is a deep, rich brown and something about its smokey, pine-rich musk just fundamentally soothes me. I can’t explain it exactly, but for years, it was my must-have soap, to the point of bringing it with me on weekend trips so as not to be without it.

Then, I realized that the primary ingredient in Grandpa’s Pine Tar Soap is derived from palm oil; tropical-forest razing, orangutan-killing palm oil. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, ask this panda bear for more details, but, basically, the flourishing palm oil industry is very directly linked to massive deforestation, tropical habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty, indigenous rights abuses in the (now many) countries in which it’s produced. Many people, myself included, think that even supposedly ethically sourced palm oil is troublesome due to both lack of oversight and demand on non-ethical, mainstream palm oil generated by the ethical streams.

So. It’s bad.

I’d long avoiding it in foods (including in vegan butter), but hadn’t ever considered it might be in other products. Like my beloved soap. So it’s been a long, sad time since I’ve experienced that pine-tar-induced euphoria.  Thanks to Katie, I’ve got a new fix, man.

Los Angeles-based, Texas-inspired lighting specialists and apothecary Jones County Road makes, among other things, a Campfire Hand and Body Bar that matches if not exceeds that euphoric shower experience I so missed. And the small-batch, hand-crafted soap is totally palm oil free. As they put it:

“The Jones County Road mission is simple: to provide an alternative to the overly manufactured merchandise of our time by bringing handcrafted and expertly designed products into the everyday home. Mixing cues from its headquarters in Los Angeles with its roots in small-town Texas, the Jones County Road aesthetic is both classic and modern as well as functional and unique. Everything at Jones County Road is carefully crafted by hand with top-quality materials.”

Which makes perfect sense in my case—JCR gave me both a wonderful alternative to a mass-produced favorite and the opportunity to support a small, local business.

You can order the company’s products via their site or find their soaps at General Quarters on La Brea, one of my favorite menswear shops in town.

More importantly, you can sign the pledge to stop buying palm oil and find out more at saynotopalmoil.com.

Over at our print portfolio, we just added some collateral work we recently created for longtime collaborator, NYC-based creative collective, Pel.

The work covers coffee labels we again did for Pel’s annual caffeinated client gift and some new print notecards. Both designs revolve around an idea we came up with involving brightly colored powder—we wanted to play with the concept of vibrant, real world elements coming together to form and enhance Pel’s existing branding. With the postcard, we accomplished the goal by taking three separate shots from our shoot of the powder and having them come together to form the three blocks or pixels (also known as pels, or Picture Elements), playing with transparency on the blocks to further the impressions that organic is coming together to form the digital.

Then, with the coffee labels, we further the concept by subtly bringing in our photography of New York and Los Angeles to tie the coffee blends to the city themes Pel’s principal, Paul Singh, communicated to us in the early stages of conceptualizing the designs.

You can see more work for Pel in our portfolio and then check out our 2014 and 2015 write-ups of each label on these pages.

Still kind of amazed this snow-capped paradise is a mere 2 hours from downtown Los Angeles.

Is there public radio version for the term alma mater? If there is, we’d readily apply that to New York’s WNYC, our previous aural house of knowledge and virtual collegiate environment, usually kept on throughout the day in our Brooklyn studio.

Moving to Los Angeles also brought a move to our new home city’s most prevalent public radio station, KCRW, and, for the most part, we haven’t looked back…though we do miss Brian Lehrers‘ yearly April Fool’s joke new story and Leonard Lopate‘s general comically grumpiness.

A recent exception is our participation all week in a new project from Note to Self—WNYC’s “tech show about being human”. The project, titled Infomagical, aims to help participants combat information overload in this age of non-stop everything and we have to say, it’s been pretty great. Like many, we’re not always the best at stepping back and examining what we’re doing and why, we’re more the tackle-massive-to-do-lists-and-say-yes-to-everything-even-if-it-means-collapsing-in-a-pile-of-emotional-exhaustion-every-day types. So this project—comprising interactive, largely text-based daily exercises—has been both enlightening and (honestly, no drama) potentially life-changing.

As they put it: “For the week of February 1-5, Note to Self will issue a daily challenge—a task designed to cut through the information overload and help you think more clearly.”

You sign up, chose a personal goal for the whole thing (i.e. – be more creative, spend more time with family, et cetera) and set off on your stress-shedding, life-streamlining adventure. We won’t give the whole thing away, but we highly recommend it.

Clearly, the week’s over now and they actually capped participation earlier this week, but NtS also recently announced that they’ll be doing the whole thing again next Monday. So head over and sign up at Note to Self’s Infomagical site now! You won’t regret it.

Now stop staring at a screen and go hug a dog on the street or something.

Cool graphic via Note to Self; below, my newly Zen-ed out iPhone screen.

Yesterday’s mixtape featured a song from a Los Angeles band—Harriet—who first caught our attention with a pretty great video for another track, “American Appetite”.

The band, fronted by Alex Castoff (formerly of Dawes and Papa), just released a debut LP of the same name last week and everything we’ve heard from it is pretty damn dope.

Watch their video for “American Appetite” below and keep an eye on the band’s Facebook page for coming live shows.

New month, new mix—that’s how we work it.

February’s mixtape features a pretty eclectic array of songs from an equally eclectic group of musicians. We’ve got a brand new one from Canadian electronic duo Junior Boys—a welcome return from a name we haven’t heard in a long while—two songs from two new Captured Tracks artists,  B Boys + Charlie Hilton, a crazy 8-bit-y love song from Perth, Australia’s Sable (via Mark Redito), a beautiful, not so new song from a Montreal band I’m late to (and that may not exist any more), The Luyas, a haunting start from Christchurch’s Doprah, and a really, really superb debut from Vampire Weekend bassist, Chris Baio, who’s going by the simplified Baio as he ventures out on his own—Bio plays Los Angeles at the El Rey tomorrow night for anyone interested, by the by. And a ton more, of course.

Give the whole thing a listen below or on our soundcloud page any time.

Yesterday, we received a very generous gift from a printer we’ve worked with for years now. The printer—Orton Tofte at Park Printing—is based in Minneapolis and he also happens to be a fellow corvidophile…. Yes, I totally made that word up, but it’s a pretty good guess as to what lovers of crows and ravens might be called were there more a need for such a word.

Orton’s other business is woodworking, which he does under the name Raven Construction, and he made this beautiful wooden raven sculpture which he was kind enough to give us.

Raven Construction doesn’t have a web presence, but let us know if you want to put you in touch and we will.

Last summer, we received a strangely mysterious email from our friend, chef, and Mud Hen Tavern co-owner, Kajsa Alger about a new venture they were all embarking on—Blue Window, “a take-out window like you’ve never seen before.”

The concept was relatively simple, but innovative at the same time—they use a kitchen-adjacent take-out window to supplement the dinner-only tavern during the weekdays with a totally different, themed menu that’d last only 6 months before turning over to a new theme. Our main take away was that they further Mud Hen’s already vegan-friendly leanings, offering that “all items can be made vegan—just ask!”

The first iteration was an Asian themed menu, featuring some amazing items like a BBQ jackfruit-filled bao, vegan gochujang hot sauce wings, a vegan bahn mi, and many more craveable selections. We wrote the whole thing up last year when Kajsa + co. invited us to Blue Window’s preview tasting event.

This past Saturday, Blue Window successfully retired their first menu and again invited friends of the restaurant to a tasting of their new menu—Blue Window: Junk, celebrating…well, junk food—decadent deliciousness; the street-est of street food; the opposite of kale. And again, all can be made vegan—just ask! And some menu items are even vegan as are.

You can view the full menu on Blue Window’s site, but our favorites were the vegan braised beef cheddar melt (which stacks carmelized onion, really great housemade pickles, braised, saucy vegan beef-style soy meat from VeriSoy, and superbly melted Daiya onto a vegan mayo-slathered, amazing soft sandwich bun) and falafel battered onion rings with black olive honey (actually agave, so, vegan) and richly spicy tahini hot sauce.

Blue Window: Junk officially opens for business today at noon. So fair warning to all those who missed out on or didn’t quite get their fill of Blue Window: Asia—you’ve got sixth months, friends.

Below, the vegan braised beef cheddar melt; the by-default vegan fried artichoke po’ boy with cornmeal-crusted artichokes and oyster mushrooms, housemade remoulade, and pickled lettuce + tomato; the falafel onion rings; a nacho baked potato topped with housemade vegan nacho cheese, broccoli, guacamole, vegan sour cream, and pickled jalapeños; the vegan chili cheese Frito tamale with Fritos, 3-bean chili, vegan sour cream, and pickled jalapeños; and a special we hope they make a regular—chocolate whoopee pies (or gobs if you’re from PA) filled with peanut butter-banana meringue made from (wait for it) chickpea brine. So very good. To the right, Super Team Blue Window, shot by Kajsa via BW’s Instagram.

We’ve never been huge Queens of the Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal (respect)/Josh Homme fans, but we are Iggy Pop fans, and we’re liking this new song from a collaboration between the two, born of an album recorded last January on the sly, it seems.

The album, Post Pop Depression, comes out March 18th and can be pre-order via Pop’s site; the first single from it, “Break Into Your Heart”, can be listened to below and streamed along with another track, “Gardenia”, at iggypop.com.

Long live the spirit of Bowie.

My friends are far too kind.

I recently celebrated my 40th birthday, and, though they shouldn’t have, some of my friends brought me some really wonderful gifts. One such gift from our lovely friend, Maureen—a bottle of Akashi Japanese whisky from the Eigashima Distillery in Akashi City, Japan, near Kobe…where they massage cow because they like them so much, right?

Eigashima claims the dual titles of Japan’s oldest and smallest distillery, having been founded in 1888, thought the distillery has spent the large portion of those years producing the traditional Japanese spirits of sake and shochu sake and shochu. Eigashima only started making whisky in 1984, building a new facility for it as it became more popular in Japan and imports from the west more in demand. The distillery’s whisky season is only 2 months long, lasting from May 31st to July 31st, with the rest of the year being dedicated to sake and shochu. They import specialty barley from Scotland and make use of the same water from their underground spring that they use to produce their traditional spirits. From Caskers: “This, combined with the fact that less than five employees handle all of Eigashima’s whisky production, makes the distillery’s signature Akashi White Oak Japanese Whisky some of the rarest in Japan, not to mention elsewhere around the world.”

The end product is beautifully rich and insanely smooth lending a “malty, citrusy aroma with scents of black cherry, toffee and oak. Notes of vanilla and pine nuts dominate the palate, and lead to a long, malty finish” (again, Caskers).

Highly recommended as a lovely sipping whisky and makes for a nice citrusy Manhattan with orange or yuzu bitters.