May 31, 2005
oh, canada!
meghan, mike and i were up in ottawa for the marathon this past weekend.
ottawa really is a cool city. very livable, green, and a real european feel to it. we checked out byward market, a great open air market. we checked out a cellar bar that had a fantastic beer menu, called vineyards. i also had a great "baseball steak" at the keg.
megs was hoping to run the marathon, her 2nd one, in sub-4 hours. i'm happy to report that we turned in a 3:51! yep, she made her man really proud, yup she did.
oh, and mike played some great defense.
Posted by brianf at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)
May 24, 2005
word to herb
i just started my herb garden this weekend. 
.
i'm extremely excited for the bountiful (ok, as bountiful as can be given my 5' x 3' NYC terrace) fruits my herb garden will soon bear. nothing is better than fresh herbs to make any food taste better. i'm a card carrying memeber of the jamie oliver fanclub, and really enjoy studying his style of cooking--almost always advocating the use of fresh herbs.
i've had commitment issues in the past with respect to plants, but this is my breakout year to embrace the traditions of the great farmers that have speckled our nation's history. i am told that herbs are less tempermental than many plants, but now that i have begun reading more about them, just like anything else, seems like there is a good deal of complexities - soil pH, sunlight, water, containers, and more...alas, i'll learn the hard way what works and what doesn't.
Posted by brianf at 11:04 AM | Comments (2)
May 23, 2005
get this on your radar
after winding down its short-lived operation in 2003 due to a poor ad market, i'm excited to say that radar magazine rolled its first "v2" issue off the presses recently. for those who long for the untouchable pop-satire of spy magazine, you should at least give radar a shot. though i fear that the 2005 version, in an attempt to draw a wider audience, may get too mainstreamy--i'm still giving it a shot.
Posted by brianf at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
kuuru bizu...god bless you!
Did they just say that the fashion industry has the smartest strategy for reducing energy costs and global warming? I am SO into japan's new "cool biz" idea (the story follows), yet another example of completely inventive problem solving. And to top it off, its been tried before! I was LOL about the reference to the "energy saving" look...
read on:
Is a Salaryman Without a Suit Like Sushi Without the Rice?
By JAMES BROOKE
New York Times
Published: May 20, 2005
TOKYO, May 19 - The fashion models who prowl the catwalks of Japan tend to be long-legged and slinky. But the latest style setter here has a leonine glare and the kind of commanding bark that makes junior executives sit up and take notice.
Skip to next paragraph
Mina Genenz for The New York Times
Standard uniform for business.
Fuminori Sato for The New York Times
A department store clerk in Tokyo straightens up the Cool Biz display.
Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Toyota Motor, Japan's largest company, is about to make his runway debut, promenading before the cameras for a new national campaign to cajole Japanese men to help the nation save energy by shedding their jackets and ties in summer.
This blatant appeal to hierarchy comes as Japan - the world's second-largest oil importer, after the United States - charts a sartorial revolution intended to cut summer air-conditioning bills. The dark business suit, the beloved uniform for generations of salarymen, is supposed to stay at home this summer. All public and private offices - in a bid to save energy and reduce output of global warming gases - are to set their air-conditioners at 28 degrees centigrade, or a sweltering 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Japanese often feel they cannot do this or that if their bosses are not doing it," said Yoshihisa Fujita, the environment ministry official in charge of the campaign. "We targeted top executives of major corporations to lead the movement because smaller company employees would feel, 'We cannot remove neckties when our customer, company people, wear them.' "
Until now, office air-conditioning settings have varied, with some women complaining of glacial temperatures that allow their male colleagues' suits to look crisp. Next Tuesday, a rules committee of the lower house of Parliament is expected to vote to allow members to doff their coats in offices and committee rooms, a throwback to the 1950's, before air-conditioning.
With air-conditioners blasting less hot air into streets, the nation's dominant city also hopes to attack its summer "heat island" syndrome. With few parks, vast swathes of cement and new high-rises blocking sea breezes, Tokyo's number of "tropical nights" - when thermometers never drop below 77 degrees Fahrenheit - jumped to 41 last year from fewer than 5 a century ago.
"This summer I will not allow anybody with tie or jacket into my office," the environment minister, Yuriko Koike, told ministry employees on April 1, well in advance of the June 1 unofficial start of the air-conditioning season. In a press conference, she said that Cool Biz, a vaguely American fashion label pronounced "kuuru bizu," had been chosen among 3,200 suggestions submitted for Japan's new casual summer look.
Some Japanese men sniff a plot by the nation's apparel industry to copy the boom enjoyed by American men's clothing stores a decade ago, when Casual Fridays forced office workers to augment their wardrobes with pressed khakis and nice sports shirts.
"We welcome the Cool Biz move; it is a favorable wind for us," Masaaki Kato, spokesman for Renown D'urban Holdings, one of Japan's largest apparel companies, said in an interview. "The fence between business and casual has been crumbling recently. There is a decline in the traditional view that the man who is wearing a suit is a businessman and the man who's not is unemployed."
The catchy Cool Biz name is essential because many Japanese cringe at memories of a fashion crime committed by a prime minister after the 1970's oil shock. Called the "energy saving" look, this short-lived suit featured jacket sleeves cut off above the elbows. This hybrid salaryman safari suit bombed.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi unveiled the casual summer look in April, pitching it as part of Japan's effort to meet its 2012 goal of cutting its emissions of greenhouse gases by 6 percent from 1990's levels.
"The government will take the lead in prevention of global warming," he said. "From this summer, government is planning to start no necktie, no jacket."
Japan is the birthplace of the Kyoto Protocol, which only adds to the popularity of the global warming pact here. In an Asahi newspaper telephone poll last November, 79 percent of respondents said they believed that global warming was their "own problem."
Last month, Mr. Koizumi's entire cabinet approved casual business dress guidelines, a first for Japan. The policy calls on government officials "during June through the end of September, to work with light clothes with moderation that would not deviate from social norm, except for unavoidable situations brought about by diplomatic protocol, etc."
Bureaucrats mortified by informality can wear pins blaming their casual look on the national drive to meet Kyoto targets: "28 degrees/we are in the summer casual dress campaign to achieve minus 6 percent."
But salarymen are not expected to surrender their dark suits without a fight. On a recent afternoon in Otemachi, Tokyo's financial district, men on their lunch breaks predicted little loosening of one of the world's most conservative dress codes.
"The main obstacle is outside the company," said Seiichiro Yabui, a 36-year-old salesman. "How you appear when you meet clients, especially old clients."
Noriyuki Ushiyama, 51, agreed. "In Japan, the relationship toward the customers is a very delicate one," he said. "For a dress code change to become real, you have to start right there."
Members of the Diet have worried that going tieless would erode "the authority of the Diet." Others have worried about live TV broadcasts.
Several younger men have shown near panic at the idea of having to improvise a wardrobe beyond a white shirt, dark tie and black suit.
"There is something very convenient about wearing suits," said Naoto Oshima, 33, a systems engineer. "It is very easy to get dressed in the morning. I don't have to worry about what to wear to work at all."
Tomonari Kori, 25, stated flatly: "I wouldn't know what to wear if we had to dress down."
Shinro Hayashi, editor of Men's Club, Japan's oldest men's fashion magazine, traced the salaryman's comfort in the anonymity of a dark suit to a group ethic that dates back to feudal days.
"Japanese wear suits so much because of their sense of belonging to a house, sense of belonging to a clan," he said. "By wearing uniformed suits, you can hide in the uniform and not reveal your individuality."
Beyond that, the suit means business. "The suit represents, in a world language, that the guy you are talking to understands the sense of contract, the rules of business," said Mr. Hayashi, who was wearing blue jeans and a white cotton shirt with French cuffs. "Twenty years ago representatives of the Chinese Communist Party never wore suits. Look at them now."
To wean more Japanese men from their suits, the government has asked a famous cartoonist, Kenshi Hirokane, to start dressing his main character, a salaryman, in Cool Biz.
But bracing for diehard sartorial resistance, the government also is preparing to play fashion hardball.
Mr. Okuda of Toyota not only leads Japan's largest company, he is also chairman of the nation's most powerful business group, Keidanren, or the Japan Business Federation. That first Sunday in June, when he walks, or marches, down the catwalk, trailed by 12 lesser executives, it will be national news.
"Mr. Okuda is the top businessman in Japan," Mr. Hayashi said. "If he is really serious about the no-tie movement, the father of the house must demonstrate it himself."
But what happens if the following Monday morning, the business-suited legions march on to Tokyo's trains as if nothing had happened? The next step could be random, unannounced office raids by fashion police.
Posted by brianf at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)
what will those crazy kids think of next?
its cool to see that wacky japanese games are getting their propers at E3 this year. after my stereotypical run with the atari 2600 like any kid growing up in the 80s, except for an occasional "over the shoulder viewing" at a friends' house, i had been on serious leave from the gaming world until the past year. i've been studying video games in education as part of my instructional technology and media program at columbia, and got hooked not on how far the graphics have come over the years, but rather the simple power of creativity, engagement, and gameplay inherent in the format--the same qualities that have been present as long as games have been around. when i travelled to japan in 2002, i was blown away by this hillarious limitless pursuit of the bizarre formats in japanese arcades, many of which, ironically, have more to do with mundane, every day tasks as compared to firing a flaming missle through your opponent's chest while jumping off a building (unless, of course, that is your reality). katamari damacy and orisinal games were really the ones that opened my eyes to how cool these alternative formats could be. though these titles are still not the top sellers, over time, i think we'll find that the aesthetics, game mechanics, and emotional engagement of these games will have strong influence over a broader scope of media.
Posted by brianf at 12:57 PM | Comments (1)
May 17, 2005
alex and robbyn
i was feeling a bit sentimental about london leafing through some pics (this one happens to be of alex "holding up" an extremely rare 3-wheeled car on a sunny day in brighton).
so decided to pay a long overdue visit to alex and robbyn's blog to find out what was happening back on the old sod. you really must spend some time reading this, there is some priceless stuff there. some of my favorite recent entries are: observations about british signs. i also remember having this conversation one night with alex about how the ipod "random" is hardly that...he has done a brilliant job of articulating the behavior of the random feature. of course, who could leave out alex's never-ending rant about yankees hats in london.
Posted by brianf at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
oh, MAINE
planning our annual family summer trip to maine this year. we're going to be renting this house for the week. on the lake, close by to hikes, and the coast is also only a drive away.
Posted by brianf at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)
real estate and human nature
meghan and i are starting to think about buying a home here in new york. of course, the mind immediately starts racing about how to maximize your investment - how to find an area that still has some good growth in it, but in bad times, will be reliable. this article tries to explain the volatility of buying property around the ny metro area. as you think about it, it seems logical, but cool to kind of think how this breaks down:
seems as though blue chip will always be blue chip. these areas probably started as simply convenient, and probably had some nice qualities - trees, a park, etc. so builders built there. because of the history and mistique that has taken root over the years, the dollars have followed in - over many years. essentially, that equates to building reliable infrastructure and the perception of quality. examples in new york are the goald coast, upper west side. beacon hill in boston. pacific heights in san francisco.
some of the more speculative, newly-gentrified areas, though a bit more vulnerable, can still be good bets during a downturn--if they have simple, universally good qualities (trees, nice looking buildings, low crime) and reliable infrastructure (eg. parking, subway). examples are brownstone brooklyn, soho in nyc. i think of the south end in boston, or cole valley in san francisco.
seems as though the key is to avoid the trendy, completely speculative stuff that does not have inherently good infrastructure. sounds simple, but there can be a tendency to gravitate toward this type of property. when times are good, these areas have the greatest upside, so folks get wrapped up in squeezing short term return. the "pros" can spot these areas a mile away (i saw a guy in a beret with thick rimmed glasses and paint on his shoes drinking coffee there!), and also have visibility into how long the waves will last. so, you get developers buying up properties in harlem, red hook, and bed stuy. they collaborate with real estate agents to "create" a story around how these areas will be the burdgeoning community, as soon as the sunday ny times real estate section covers it (i'd love to be selling ads for that page, must be like collecting tickets at the carnival), it is go time. they restore the properties, flip them in 12-18 months, and get out before the bottom drops. those who are either thinking only about the short term gain, or who actually believe that the good times will last forever, also buy in. some get lucky and make out well, others get caught on the tail end, or are locked into holding onto their property for the long term. of course, this seems to be what you need to avoid as a buyer. examples seem to be chelsea, soma in san francisco, east boston.
in short, buying patterns seem to be totally predicatable, and really just a reflection of human nature - in bad times, peeps want liquidity, cash, and fall back on the age old notion of only needing "the basics" - good transportation, safety and a old tree.
Posted by brianf at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2005
i-sumo
this is an image that my friend jon keegan created for our buddy gweez in japan. jon, you will learn, was the original "buzz agent" for apple, decades before the notion of word-of-mouth advertising was even born. he was trying to convince him to buy a mac...gweez is the world's biggest (white) sumo fan. with this convincing sumo-style UI, and i'm sure will be a happy mac owner soon.
Posted by brianf at 01:28 AM | Comments (0)
Hello World!
hello!
Posted by brianf at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)