Do you remember Maria’s post on the sort-of-creepy-but-pretty-neat Rube Goldberg Fifth Avenue apartment?
Well. That is just…peas…compared to Scott Jones’ palatial estate. Considering Scott’s background (Scott invented VOICEMAIL, ChaCha, MOG, Gracenote, etc.), it seems only fitting that he owns a 27,000 sq. foot mansion filled with tech treats and hidden surprises. The house was featured on HGTV’s “Top 10 Most Amazing Homes” and, more recently, MTV TEEN CRIBS.
Fact! I did not even know MTV Teen Cribs existed (Thank you, Phil), but the episode above (well…I only watched the first crib: Scott’s home presented by his son Andrew) is far more satisfying than any other Cribs episode I have ever seen. The house has a secret passage (concealed by a bookcase!), a giant slide, a movie theater, a tree house, and a T-Rex head. The tech stuff is pretty cool, but I could not stop thinking about the (Disney Channel Original Movie) Smart House. Which, if you do not recall (or if you spent your youth watching more worthwhile things), was about a tech house “of the future” that goes bat shit.
Finally…Question. Is it just me or is the intro speaker’s voice much higher than the usual speaker? Follow-up Question. When a certian thing is “kid-a-fied,” does that automatically equal higher-pitched voices? Like…Kidz Bop (I admit, out of all the Kidz Bop songs to feature, this is a poor choice. BUT PAY ATTENTION AT EXACTLY 2:38 AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH IT.)
PS- If the video above does not work, this is the link. I don’t think embeded MTV likes Stickers and Donuts, because the video almost never loads. Womp womp.
Copyright Pepsi
Last weekend, I was in DC for a reunion right before the Inauguration. While there, I tried to spot as many of the Pepsi “HOPE” advertisements as I could. Unfortunately, my camera didn’t want to cooperate with the single digit temperatures, so I wasn’t able to snag them all. The above are just a few of the spots we saw plastered over Metro stations, buses, and billboards.
Although I think the general consensus from the various design blogs I read is that the Pepsi re-branding is a bit of a flop, I do think this campaign was great. Maybe it was just being in DC and around all of the excitement for the Big Day, but I thought seeing all of the uplifting signs added to the atmosphere. That, and I respected that they went with pinks and yellows and oranges rather than the patriotic color palette they could have. It broke up all of the American-flag-monotony around town. Check out more images/video of the campaign at this French site and read about it and the other Inaugural campaigns at Creative Review.
Maria’s Note: This post introduces a new S&D blogger, Lorraine, whose great design-sense I discovered through her own personal artsy blog. I’m very excited to have her here, and very jealous that she went to the inauguration!
By way of introduction: Lorraine grew up in Missouri, but claims Nebraska as her home state after spending half her time visiting family there while growing up. After college at Missouri State, she interned in Nuremberg, Germany for a summer and fell in love… with Nürnbergerbratwürste. She is currently working as a graphic designer and, in no particular order, enjoys: cheesecake, printmaking/letterpress, languages, badminton, watercolors, and antique doorknobs. In her “free time,” she reads a ton of books, plays around with her gocco printer, and blogs about design and DIY culture at her personal site, Lorraine Design. We are glad to have see her very first post on S&D!
If you read blogs, there is a medium to high chance that you have some nerd-qualities, which is why I thought you might like a report on Nerd Nite Nerdtacular, one of several Nerd Nite (motto: be there and be square) events that happen at bars in Boston and NYC. (If you aren’t a nerd, you will still dig the bar where this Nerd Nite took place!) Nerd Nite is either free or has a very small cover-charge (last night: $5). (more…)
This weekend I went to a Cape Cod wedding (yes, the hurricane did put a literal damper on things). My favorite parts about Cape Cod include: visiting family, the beach at off-times, the sad-influenced flora, the quaint houses, and s’mores.
My next favorite thing is, yes, the Christmas Tree Shop (no, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas trees). The best one is in Hyannis, Massachusetts (the Sagamore shop pulling a close second for its straw roof).
The Tree, as we regulars like to call it, is a chain store full of super-amazing bargains — and I am not one to use the word bargain lightly. The sales flyer, which you can view on the chain’s (albeit, limited) web-site, is the least of The Tree’s bargains. If you scour this store you’ll find name brand make-up for mere dollars and cents (yes, sometimes literally cents), home products, and more, much of which was probably over-ordered by those companies.
Although you may picture such a center of bargain happiness to be like the Playtogs of old (Do you remember that store? Large bins of stuff stuff stuff = a little scary!), The Christmas Trees on Cape Cod are actually quite nice. As I said, my favorite is the Hyannis shop (pictured here), with a pretty outside, bright details, and satisfying displays. Not all Trees are such happy places, but you can expect something above mere bargain bins (but still with bargains!) at most of the Cape Cod locations.
This article from the New York Times really caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist sharing it with you, so just one more post to end the week and begin the weekend!
For those subway riders who get off before the last stop — almost everyone — the end is just a sign on the train. What’s there, anyway? It turns out there is often mystery, lonesomeness and beauty (NY Times).
This interactive “Going to the End of the Line” project includes photos, video, and audio from the “end of the line” (places most of us never see… unless we happen to live there) on NYC subways.
Above: plaque at entrance, grand Entrance, map at entrance (I’d bring my own, too!)
This week, I’ve been highlighting all kinds of things Flushing, Queens, especially the World’s Fair grounds at Flushing Meadows Park. You can find all of my Flushing/Fair post here, or navigate to specific posts using this list:
You can find lots of information about the fair grounds and all that they have at nycgovparks.org, this page includes a little map that you might want to use in conjunction with google maps. There are also a number of about.com articles about the park if you want help planning a visit.
To end my fair grounds posts, I’ll just highlight a few additional places I stopped by briefly at the grounds — you can’t quite do everything in a single day!
Above: I want to point out “The Fountain of the Planet of the Grapes of Wrath” (actual fountain at center, title at right) from the Flushing Park map at the entrance to the fair grounds. Do you think the word “planet” is a typo from “The Fountain of the Planet of the Apes?’
Above: The New York Hall of Science is also at the fair grounds. Although it’s more expensive than the art museum, it looks like a fabulous place to take kids — there is a crazy looking playground out back!
Above: There is a carousel right next to the zoo! I couldn’t resist the cotton candy.
This weekend I visited the dilapidated version of the pavilion at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York, home of the 1964 World’s Fair (all my other Flushing & fair related posts can be found here).
Technically, all of the fencing and “Do Not Enter” signs currently surrounding the large structure should have kept me out, but it was one of the main reasons why I wanted to visit the fair grounds in the first place.
The pavilion was a colorful hot spot in the days of old (pictures above from jetsetmodern.com, which has tons more old pictures, and a detailed history of the pavilion), but is now falling apart.
It’s now, actually, quite beautiful in all of its misery, and it is the inspiration for lots of photographs (two at left my own, beautiful photo at right from a New York Times photography project).
Creative photographers love it, including Tod Seelie, who took photos of a dinner party inside the pavilion remains. You can read a bit about the party here (and see a gymnast hanging off the unisphere!), and view lots of great of it photographs here.
As for my friend (left) and me (right), we just like to stand around it, and imagine what it was like back in the 60s, before the internet, to see all of the cool things the World’s Fair had to offer. In our imaginations, the World’s Fair was a spectacular event. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s fun to pretend.
We sneaked peeks instead the center of the pavilion, which was locked off.
The pavilion and two observation towers (of Men and Black fame), as seen from the unisphere.
The Unisphere, leftover from the 1964 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Flushing, Queens (that’s a mouthful), is a stainless steal model of the earth that extends twelve stories high!
The fountain below the sphere, like many others in the park, is now empty, and is often filled with a handful of skateboarders or rollerbladers. The empty fountain also means you can stand right under the Unisphere to take pictures or just admire its massiveness.
The Unisphere is the highlight of the Flushing Park and is arguably the most prominent symbol of Queens itself. The Queens Museum of Art (with its awesome panorama of NYC) is located directly behind the Unisphere, and its little gift shop contains lots of specially collected old World’s Fair memorabilia, like the Unisphere salt and pepper shakers (for some reason, these just really crack me up).
Side Note: The Unisphere, along with other Flushing hot spots, like Shea Stadium and the Observatory Towers (right), are featured in the movie Men in Black.
(Two more pictures after the jump.)
If you’re in Manhattan, you have dozens of amazing museums at your disposal — so why would you make a trip out to Queens to see a lesser-known museum, with lesser known artwork? One word: PANORAMA. The Queens Museum of Art, located just behind the unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, home to the New York World’s Fairs of old, has a mixed bag of exhibits, but the Panorama of New York City really steals the show.
The panorama is a giant, 3D, scale, changing (the buildings aren’t glued down, so when the city changes, the panorama changes) map of all boroughs of New York City. (Yes, if you live anywhere in NYC and have a sense of direction, you can find your house!)
Check out the picture above carefully and you can see people on the platform in the background — that should help give you a sense of scale. The entire panorama is bigger than the average Manhattan apartment (according to CNN, the average Manhattan apartment is about 1300 square feet, in which case the panorama seven times larger at 9,335 square feet)! It was created for the 1964 World’s Fair and contains over 895,000 individual structures. The panorama is to scale, 1 inch equaling 100 feet.
Museum Info: Hour long tours of the panorama are offered at 4pm Saturdays and Sundays, but you can visit the Panorama during any museum hours without a tour. Although the museum web-page suggests that museum entry costs about $5, I got in for $2 with a student ID. As for travel, you can get there by bus, train, subway, or car (free parking), all modes of transport are described on the museum’s web-site. You can make a day of it and visit the World’s Fair grounds, right outside the museum’s front door, at the same time.
If you want more info on the panorama, or you want to see a person standing in the middle of it, check out this NY Times article from last year.
Remember to check out all of my articles on Flushing here — more will be added throughout the week!
Checkout the slideshow associated with a New York Times article about a New York University mural depicting six famous writers who lived in New York and the spaces in which they wrote (with special attention paid to their bookshelves).
