Day-bracelet of eelgrass (Zostera, a genus of the Zosteraceae or seagrass family), wrapped around the wrist at the beach and gently tied, then allowed to dry to a beautifully deep black-green, as modeled by Katie.
Equally beautiful, handcrafted non-seagrass bracelet by our friends up in San Francisco, Curator.
Happy birthday, America.
Here’s to a year full of more peace, more love, more rainbows, more unicorns, less hate.
Yesterday, via Curbed + the LA Times, we heard tell of an anonymous group of Los Angeles artists who, in the dead of the night Monday, installed an 80-square-foot Japanese style tea house not far from us in Griffith Park. The structure—made from wood reclaimed from the massive 2007 fire in the park—sits on a previously abandoned concrete slab atop a cliffside path we’ve walked many times before. The view from that point was always spectacular; now this group of artists has made it truly magical.
According to the Times, the collective’s ringleader came across the spot some six years back: “I come to the park to run a lot — and I would just see it and I kept thinking we could do something with it.” He continued—”The idea of a teahouse rose to the fore early on. I’m a big fan of tea … and I’d looked at teahouse design books and I happened to visit Japan during this time, where I spent a lot of time looking at temples.”
Part of the entire project too, according to the artists, is to see how the public and the park will react.
For the public’s part, they’re embracing it with open hearts. I ran there early this morning with our dog, Owen, and, between the people who’d sought it out and those who just stumbled across it, everyone we met was overcome with appreciation for both the beauty of the tea house itself and the beauty behind the communal effort to bring it to reality.
The park, on the other hand, is rumored to have plans to dismantle the tea house. So we strongly urge you to both visit as soon as you can and sign the online petition for the city to adopt the tea house into the fold of the park, not tear it down.
Head over to the original LA Times article to view video of the Tuesday morning dedication ceremony of the tea house.
Below, some photos we took this morning of the house, the wishes made, and Owen waiting to ring the bell. Poor Isaiah. Hope he gets his cat.
Continuing our monthly mixtape tradition, we put our July mix together with summer pool parties in mind.
We start off with more jangley, raw, glitchy numbers from the likes of Los Angeles’ Cayucas (who we caught at KCRW a couple weeks ago), Richmond, VA’s…uniquely named Manatree, and masters of the electro-bizarre, Born Gold, who we caught with the life-afirming Braids last week.
Then we move on to new stuff from our Brooklyn pal Oberhofer before hitting up to local baroque-rock favorites, Moon Honey, and then pleasingly poppy numbers from Cleveland’s The Lighthouse and the Whaler and newcomers from the Minneapolis area, Bad Bad Hats (“Psychic Reader”).
Finishing things off, we go into straight party mode with new songs from Little Boots, Jamie XX, and Major Lazer. If you like that last one, check out the full stream of the most recent release from Diplo and company, Peace is the Mission. Great for the party AND the after party.
Not sure about after the after party. I’m usually in bed by then.
Enjoy! And stop burning down people’s fucking churches, America!
We just added the lookbooks we did for New York-based vegan shoe comapny Novacas to our work portfolio.
Novacas is the house brand of MooShoes, so it’s one that’s especially close to our hearts and one that Sara + Erica back in New York thankfully have a lot of control over in terms of production—not only are the shoes 100% vegan and animal-free, they’re also produced in worker-friendly, fair-wage factories in Portugal out of PVC-free materials. So, good for the animals, good for the people, good for the earth.
From a purely design-minded perspective, it’s also a brand we’ve defined and driven for may years now, so it’s always exciting to take that brand to new levels year after year.
You can see more images from these most recent lookbooks and download full PDFs through our portfolio.
The two most recent books feature a custom cover pattern inspired by a visit to an ancient Chinese art exhibit. Astute readers may also recognize the color palette from the spring 2015 cookbook (below).
Came across this old outtake from a shoot we did for some custom wedding invites years back.
Bon weekend, all.
This past week/end, Katie + I were traveling in NYC + PA for a combination of work, fun, and wedding. The wedding was that of Jon Roth—our longtime friend and drummer in my old band, Speedwell—and his new wife, Laura Wertman.
The night before we left New York for Allentown, Pennsylvania, I received an email from Meredith—who sang and played guitar in the band and is now a talented videographer and editor—with a link to the video below, entitled ‘Best Wedding Present Ever?’
Since the band formed in a college basement in 1996 to this day, Jon’s always been our biggest cheerleader. And his wife, who we just met this past weekend, sincerely claims to be Speedwell’s biggest fan (she actually did the artwork for Speedwell’s posthumous discography, which came a few years back). So, needless to say, in addition to the blenders and jade bowls and hand towel sets, this was, indeed, a well-recieved wedding gift.
The video features one of our oldest songs—“Pacifique”—and a small, very well-edited sample of the 8 hours of terrible haircuts, über-emo kids, and the most adorable of naivety that is the footage of our ’98 tour with Engine Down, when we were all tiny, tiny children. According to Meredith, culled from that footage was also a serious discussion as to what, exactly, kale was.
Below that, I couldn’t actually find any photos from that tour, but did find some from a later tour, like this one by Jamie Brown from a show at Greensboro’s College Hill Sundries, where I look especially awesome. Thanks for that, Jamie.
You can read a long, sprawling interview I did with us all chat-style a while back on these pages…but I seriously do not suggest that you do.
Yet another fond farewell to our favorite city in the world. Back soon, love ya.
Above, one of Shepard Fairey‘s more recent murals, down on the lower east side/Chinatown.
The happiest, most panda-filled of birthdays to one Ms. Katie Frichtel.
Traveling this week and never realized until last night—we totally miss the quintessential, graffiti- and sticker-covered New York City bathroom. Like this one at Barcade in Williamsburg.
Who knew?
