From time to time here at Murketing, new features will be introduced. For example: Q&As. There was one yesterday, and there will be one tomorrow. There will never be three in a row again, I can assure you. But this one, here, today, below, is the one I want to introduce with a few words, because I hope it’s an example of the first installment in an open-ended series, a specific subset of Q&As.
The interviewee in this case is Bethany Shorb, and the subject is the ties that she makes and sells, mentioned in an earlier post. (She does a lot of other things as well, and those are addressed below, but see here if you just can’t stand the suspense.) Since that earlier post she has launched the Cyberoptix Tie Lab: “A new take on conservative menswear.” All of this makes for a good example of what I want the open-ended series to be about: interviews with people who are artists and entrepreneurs, finding ways to make a living from creative enterprises.
Clearly, this general theme is a long-time interest of mine, and I’ve pretty much done all I can with it in the various other venues I write in. My focus here is somewhat different, and so is my one and only criteria for these interviews: Here on Murketing I’ll be interviewing people whose work I, personally, find interesting.
Here we go:
You’re from the New York area originally, you have an MFA from Cranbrook, and you live in Detroit. I guess you ended up in Detroit because you went to Cranbrook?
That’s correct — in the Fall of 1999, I packed up all of my earthly possessions into the back of my little red pickup truck and headed for the Great Unknown. I was living in Boston at the time after getting my BFA at Boston University. I cried my eyes out for days upon arrival.
But wait, looking at your blog, your views on Detroit have softened a bit? I’ve never really spent any time with Detroit and sort of fascinated with it.
There are great things to be said about Detroit from a creative standpoint, there is definitely a justifiable fascination with the city. It is relatively inexpensive to live, especially compared to places like New York, Boston and Los Angeles — and that allows you to allot much more time to making art rather than making rent, and there is much more space to do it. Detroit seems to be a unique incubator for quality art and music, there are less distractions and I think people get a lot more done as a result, but if I didn’t make a trip to either coast every few months I’d probably go a bit crazy. Music is a huge exception, there is usually somewhere you can go every night of the week and hear excellent music — whether you want to party or pull up your laptop in a dark corner of a coffee shop or dive bar, I think a flourishing music culture really goes hand in hand with any kind of art making.
The downfall of the Detroit area is that the economy here is not the best at the moment, so people are consuming little else than what is necessary to live, thus why I really want to get my product out to more areas of the country where people are actually spending on luxury and fashion items.[ Read more
When I saw this “Stop Rockin’ Fake Shit” T, created by a Georgia-based brand called Prestigious, written up by Freshness, I was immediately interested in what Susan Scafidi would think about it. Her current project is a web site (and book in progress) called Counterfeit Chic, and it’s “about the culture of the copy within the multi-billion dollar global clothing and textile industry,” her site’s Introduction explains. “It’s about New York’s Canal Street and Beijing’s Silk Alley, but also about the cognitive and sociological reasons that make us want to buy or reject knock-offs in the first place.” Generally knockoffs are thought of as a luxe-world issue, but it’s a topic in the brand underground as well, albeit with some different spins. Whether these T’s actually get much consumer traction or not, they do express a particular point of view on conterfeits that’s worth considering. Prof. Scafidi graciously agreed to answer a few questions.
Q. In the luxe world, the fight against counterfeiters seems to play out in the form of legal and/or legislative moves, which tend to be focused more on producers than on consumers, right?
A. That’s right – we haven’t seen a grassroots “Save the Vuitton” movement or (role) models proclaiming, “I’d rather go naked than wear fakes.” Most anti-counterfeiting efforts have been pursued through the courts or through law enforcement efforts. But a quick tourist travel advisory: in France and Italy, consumers can face steep fines for purchasing fakes. Also, bringing counterfeits back into the U.S. is prohibited.
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In Consumed: DuraCoat: In a “Pimp My Ride” era, no object is immune to the customized “cool factor.”
When Steve Lauer developed DuraCoat, it was a technical innovation with a practical application. In the few years that it has been on the market, it has been adapted to serve an aesthetic function as well. While such adaptations seem to happen all the time these days, there are still some objects that seem like unlikely subjects for snazzy customization. Guns, for example. . . .
Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site via this no-registration-required link.
Links: Lauer Custom Weaponry; DuraCoat picture page on Jim’s Gun Supply site.
Too bad it isn’t available online for free, but the August 10 New York Review of Books has a good writeup by Witold Rybcznski on three recent books about shipping and transportation; two are specifically about shipping containers, how they came to be standardized with specific dimensions and so on. Here’s the part I agree with most heartily:
Globalization is often described as involving the movement of information, people, and employment, but it is largely about the movement of goods, and the cheapest way to move products around the globe is in containers … It is likely that without container shipping, the economic upsurge of China would not have occurred as quickly as it did … Likewise, third-world countries would be unable to sell many of their products to European and American markets without extremely cheap shipping. Modern manufacturing, in which components are made on one continent and assembled in another, would also be impractical without rapid, predictable, and cheap shipping. In a world of high technology, the story of the container is a useful reminder of the continued importance of old-fashioned mechanics.
Given my interest in shipping containers, I was fascinated to learn, through this post on We Make Money Not Art, about a store in Zurich made from “17 rusty, recycled freight containers.” The store belongs to a company called Freitag, whose founder said in a mini-interview on the site: “Freitag bags are made of used truck tarps, bicycle innertubes and car seatbelts. Hamburg is one of the biggest logistic Mecca of Europe – the perfect location for a FREITAG flagship shop. Inspired by the trucks and the harbour, we placed a 40″ Container (artificial) into our shop-location. For the shop concept in Zurich we took it one (or even two) steps further: an entire building assembled from 17 used freight containers.”
Freitag’s Flickr stream includes several sets of photos of the shop’s construction, and its final state (see above). Pretty cool.
Surely you read the New York Times every day, right? Well, if you don’t, there is one story today that I recommend, right there on the front page. Written by Damien Cave, it’s about cell phone culture in Iraq. The story explains that the “cool kids” all want an an Apache phone (named after the military helicopter) or a Humvee phone, or an Afendi (which the story says means “dapper,” in Turkish).
Even more telling are the text messages and images that Iraqis share over their phones. … One of the most popular messages making the rounds appears onscreen with the image of a skeleton. “Your call cannot be completed,” it says, “because the subscriber has been bombed or kidnapped.”
Aaron Rose is always up to cool stuff, whether it’s working out the next stop on the extraordinary journey of Beautiful Losers, the exhibition he co-curated, or working on the ANP Quarterly, among other things. His new project is Alleged Press: “Our mission now is to create a unique series of wonderful monographs, beautifully designed and printed, which spotlight the works of young artists, graphic designers, photographers and filmmakers who we believe reflect the tempo of the times.”
The first offering is a book called Out and About, by photographer Ari Marcopoulos. Here’s more on that.
Posted Under:
Pleasing,
Subculture Inc.
This post was written by Rob Walker on August 7, 2006
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Who is down with YarisWorks, the previously mentioned DIY/craft events that “empower everyday creativity and DIY ingenuity,” all “courtesy of Toyota”? You may recall from that earlier post that there was some consternation about corporate involvement in the DIY world. Make Magazine‘s blog offers its wrapup of a Yaris event in SF.
Posted Under:
DIYism,
Murketing
This post was written by Rob Walker on August 7, 2006
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The other day I noted Target’s couture line, which is not actually available at Target. Since then, there have been a couple of interesting bits of news about America’s trendiest big-box retailer.
Notcot recounts a visit to the Target pop-up store on Melrose and La Cienega. What’s on sale there, through the end of August, is the current round of a Target series called “Go International,” which is basically collaborations with cool (or whatever) fashion designers. This time it’s Paul & Joe, a brand you can learn about at Target’s site, if you want to. Of the store/collection, Notcot says: “It is VERY impressive in presentation and packaging AND the collection was as cheap as they claim, and better quality than i expected.”
Meanwhile, Giant Robot publisher and co-editor Eric Nakamura, on his new-ish blog, offers up some pictures of items in Target’s new “‘alternative’ indie type of line, called Independent Studies.” Evan Hecox notebooks and Deanne Cheuk plates are included. Some of the stuff in this line is apparently limited edition, according to Nakmura, who adds: “While you’re at Target, get an Icee. They’re still pretty good.”
The “brand underground” story got a number of interesting reactions, ranging (predictably) from those who thought the piece was too adulatory, and those who found it too critical. The criticisms I got by email and in the comments to last week’s posting of the story on this site leaned slightly toward the “too adulatory.” Criticisms on blogs leaned a bit the other way. Obviously those who liked the story said similar things whatever by whatever means. For what it’s worth, the three main subjects of the story all seemed to think they were treated fairly, which undercuts the theory the theory that I was dismissive of them, but could be taken as evidence in support of the theory that I gave them too much hype.
Anyway, here’s a representation of what my (vanity-driven?) search for online feedback yielded.
Con: Coutorture says I’m old and un-nuanced and meandering and I just don’t get it; full-on attack by TrendyNation for allegedly being too critical and dismissive; Acronym says outsiders, contrary to what I suggest, do in fact define subcultures (or brands, which Acronym I gather sees as being the same thing as subcultures).
Pro: Thoughtful response from Heyblog; kind words from Business Week’s Jon Fine, and from Freshness; high five from Vulture Droppings for admitting that I’m not in the target demo.
I’m not sure, but interesting: PSFK says (in contrast to the above complaints that the story didn’t take the brand undergrounders seriously enough), that my take was “too romantic” (but adds that the story overall is consistent with things that other people have already said); Owlspotting examines the issues by way of a recently-received T-shirt; Pretty Goes with Pretty says “It’s a metacritical Hyperconsumerist World; We Live in It.” The always-interesting Marginal Utility wonders if “the next culture ‘war’ may be between the cool types Walker profiles who are obsessed with their own identity and measuring their own impact on the world … and the people who reject that kind of significance and atttempt a kind of anonymity that will feel more and more like freedom.”
Each category above represents a sampling, not every single relevant post. I appreciate all opinions and feedback. I don’t particularly appreciate the various blogs that simply re-published the piece in its entirety without asking. Whatever. Anyway, since the Times version many people linked to is now behind a firewall, I’ve just put the full story on this site.
August 13 Update: The NYT Mag has a sampling of letters about the article in today’s issue.
[Since the version of this story many people have linked to is behind a firewall now, here it is in full. By Rob Walker, from July 30, 2006, issue of New York Times Magazine:]
Aaron Bondaroff is 29, part Puerto Rican, part Jewish, Brooklyn-born and a high-school dropout. His life weaves through the most elusive subcultures of lower Manhattan. A-Ron, as he is also known, is one of those individuals who embodies a scene. “I’m so downtown,” Bondaroff is fond of saying, “I don’t go above Delancey.”
Even so, he longs for something bigger, like the cultural noise made by the Beats in the 1950’s or Andy Warhol’s Factory in the 1960’s or the bands and fans who clustered around CBGB’s in the 1970’s. He wants to “make history” and join “the time line” of New York. He is not an artist, an author, a designer, musician, filmmaker or even a famous skateboarder or graffiti writer. So in another era, Bondaroff might have had to settle for his cameos in some of the acclaimed images of youthful outsider debauchery captured by his photographer friend Ryan McGinley. He could be, in other words, a counterculture muse, like Neal Cassady or Edie Sedgwick.
In our present era, however, he may not have to settle. There’s a new alternative, one that’s neatly summed up in a question that A-Ron has been asking himself lately: “How do I turn my lifestyle into a business?”
The answer he came up with is worth paying attention to because it speaks to a significant but little-noted development in contemporary culture. Read more
This week in Consumed: Mimoco: Why form needs functionality — however vague.
Cheap, boring devices don’t sit still for very long these days before somebody comes along to breathe new life — and profit margins — into them, through clever aesthetics. So it is with flash drives, which have lately become the raw, functional device onto which a variety of design identities has been layered. The most compelling example may be Mimobots, the creations of Mimoco, a “designer- toy studio meets consumer electronics brand” based in Boston that has pulled the drives into the context of collectibles.
Read the rest of the column at the NYT Magazine site, via this no-registration-required link.
Related links: Mimoco; Popgadget; Popgadget on sushi-like USB drives; Popgadget on branch-like USB drives; Gizmodo on World Cup USB drives; Flashbag; Availabot; Swiss Army Knife with USB drive.
Posted Under:
Consumed,
Subculture Inc.
This post was written by Rob Walker on August 6, 2006
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Several weeks ago, after reading an item in Ad Age a few about American Apparel having its own island store in Second Life, I decided I had to check it out. “Second Life,” Ad Age explained, “is one of several virtual online worlds where trendsetters are flocking to exchange ideas, egos, and virtual property using IM-equipped ‘avatars,’ or highly customized 3D representations of themselves.” At left is my avatar (avatard? do people say that? is it offensive?) self: Murk Story. Since my readership here is dominated by people I’ve met, who thus know what I look like in real life, I won’t dwell on similarities and differences. I’ll admit, however, that I wanted my avatar’s aesthetic to match that of this site.)
I really am out of the office for the rest of this week, but before I disappear for a few days, I thought I’d post this dispatch from my experience getting out of the office, while I was still in the office….
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