A mysterious envelope was slid under my door in the barely lit hours of the morning. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and I ran to see who left it but the elusive purveyor had already slipped out of sight. When I opened the envelope I found this:
“You never know what you’ll find when you turn out the lights
A secret rendezvous of the “road less travelled” persuasion
Midnight at the umbrella factory”
I have to take candles…and the mask! I instantly recognized the handwriting…Dear I <3 NYBoy, what kind of mischief do you have up your oh-so-vintage-and-lovely sleeve?
Midnight didn’t come too quickly. The day seemed to linger on and on. Time is funny that way—it can drag its heels in the dirt or sprint like hell and it always seems to do the exact opposite of what you want it to.
But when 11:30pm acquiesced, I carefully picked a candle and set to the street… eagerly and curiously moving towards that dodgy old umbrella factory. The closer I got the more people I saw carrying unlit candles…. We stole glances at each other as if part of some secret society. Why were we all here? And what was the meaning of this midnight tryst?
There was a flaming torch outside the steps of the factory accompanied with a sign offering simple instructions:
“Light your candle. Climb the stairs. Third floor.”
I put the wick to the flame and trudged up the staircase. Floor 1. Floor 2. Floor 3. The whole place was alight with flickering flames… Hundreds of tea lights multiplied against the tall, shattered windows and shadowy faces were glowing under musky, high ceilings.
I had heard of this before: a dark party. A late night mingling sensa electricity… So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I noticed a drum circle pick up in the center of the room. Barely visible hands giving life to a rhythm… and everybody in the building starting to dance. I floated through the small crowd to get a better view of the musicians. One of the drummers had an all-too familiar face.
I love brainstorming… sitting down and making lovely lists… covering scraps of paper with doodles and bite-sized ideas. So when I recently stumbled on a mess of mismatched buttons, I knew I needed a little collaborative brainstorming to dream up what I could do with my newest trinket treasures. I put it to my lovely friends on facebook…
“FOUND: a bag of mismatched buttons… but what to do with them? Anybody floating through facebook have a whimsical or cheeky idea?”
Hardly to my surprise, my always-creative friends had quite a few ideas.
Below are some of my favorites:
“Go into telephone booths and leave them in the change dispenser, you could do it in vending machines too!” –Louise Clohessy
“Drop them into peoples handbags or pockets, and when they look inside they will find a button, and it will make them smile.” –Freddie Peppiatt
“Go to a bookshop, and leav ea button between the pages of some books! When people open the book, they will be rewarded with a cute button for reading!” –Sofia Best
“Leave a trail of them from a train station to a second hand bookshop.” –James Lawford
So with my little bag full of buttons, I faced the cold, blustery day to carry out some of these lovely ideas… Of course, I wish I could’ve taken all of you with me… but these photos will have to do!
I was struck by how perfectly normal it is to have a three-hour breakfast in Berlin. The city really embraces the notion of it being the most important meal of the day and a time to be sociable.
Fhrustuck just means breakfast but it is a very specific kind of breakfast. One for sharing – sharing meat, cheese, bread, coffee, fruit…the list goes on. For me this was a breath of fresh air from the usual “in a hurry skinny-cap-in-a-paper-cup-to-go” kind of breakfast.
Another advantage of a long breakfast is it makes room for my favourite pastime of people watching. It seemed like everyone comes out for Fhrustuck – from people like us night owls en route to bed, to ordinary folk with their dogs, new mom’s gathering, walk of shames and kissing couples.
I think the very idea of Fhrustuck is what weekends at the very least should be about. Relax, and make the days and nights as long as possible. We should take the time to enjoy a slower pace and ease ourselves into the day.
Flicking through my collection of beautiful strangers has really got me thinking about some of the things I have found along my many travels and those that I’ve lost. All around the world, littered in cafes, bars, parks, on sidewalks, between cushions and on table tops are things that people have lost or left behind like footprints in the snow, waiting to be followed. For some one to come along and tell it’s story.
From to-do lists, random thoughts and love notes scrawled across paper napkins to christmas cracker toys, postcards and well loved second-hand books with notes in the margin and underlined words, paragraphs and passages. My imagination and curiosity has always been sparked by these glimmers of intimacy.
This kind of sentimentality reminds me of when I was a child. I used to covet things, wear them, play with them, and hug them till they fell apart – at one point I had a bear without a head but I didn’t seem to care. There’s a romantic innocence perhaps in these finds; living as we do in a culture that’s constantly evolving and looking for newer, bigger, and better replacements for the things we have as we upgrade, exchange and refund to keep pace with the shiny new instead of mending and nurturing the faded yet reliable. So I say – in with the old and out with the new! Let’s bring back some of that romantic innocence and let our imaginations run wild. Send me your finds – the wierd, wonderful, strange and beautiful and I shall do the same – let’s share what we have found and retell some forgotten stories!
This is a vintage Japanese postcard sent from Honolulu Hawaii to Brooklyn in 1908. I discovered this precious gem in a Williamsburg thrift store the other week. Love the bright colors and the message scrawled on the back seemingly in a hurry!
I have a hobby that perhaps is now bordering on a creepy obsession. In general I don’t think collecting old photographs is considered strange, but what I like to do is adopt whole family albums.
My collection started with a family vacation day trip to the Porte du Montreuil flea market in Paris. I found a small green battered suitcase covered in travel stickers, inside was an immaculate handmade fabric covered photo album.
At 8 euros for the two plus a duck head umbrella I jumped at such a bargain. Originally I wanted the album to display my own pictures, however, as I flicked through it soon became clear that this was the album of the previous suitcase owners. Poignantly this was their travel album, it belonged to a couple from Germany. Seemingly childless, they liked nothing more than to hop on a train to Italy or Switzerland, photographing themselves in the most glorious of surroundings.
How could I just rip out and throw away such a carefully put together document of a happy moment in time? So I decided to keep the album with their memories intact. Each perfectly square photo has a colour and quality missing from new pictures – a quality that makes even the most average of subject matter take on a unique beauty.
I’m not sure what I am going to do with my burgeoning collection of strangers’ lives and sometimes I ponder on if anyone would want my holiday photographs in 50 years.
All I know is I like them and to add to this collection I am becoming equally obsessed with Super 8 films inspired by this beautiful Brazilian home movie.
I take it back – my retro cassette tape was not my best present ever. Upon hearing about my little trip I heart NY boy gave me possibly the loveliest present ever. I mean it this time, I’m really not sure he can top this.
He knows how much of a fan I am of Dave Eggers work and so from Pirate supply store 826 Valencia he bought me a bottle. Not just any bottle, a bottle in which he has written me a message. A message only to be read in a lonely emergency, I can just make out a few words…have, primro, pizza, veronic….maybe I should stop guessing at what it is says….
