The Visa Diaries

For people who don’t live in Brooklyn, old things may very well just be old things. An old typewriter, say, whose keys stick and whose ribbon is pretty much dried out would be worth less than a new typewriter, for example. And really, anywhere else, people probably wouldn’t want typewriter at all, because who has actually, seriously typed anything within the last 20 years? In Brooklyn, however, the value of things is a little skew-iff. Anything old gains a hipster halo of somehow bucking-the-man and not-buying-into-mainstream-American-values. So much so that these old things actually become more expensive than their new counterparts.

I went to the Brooklyn Flea last weekend, and nowhere is the Brooklyn aesthetic more more in effect. Besides old typewriters, they sell old frames, old paintings, old jewelry, old cloths, old furniture, old records, old junk. I understand that there are flea markets elsewhere that also sell old stuff, but there they sell it for cheap because its old. I also understand that some old stuff becomes more valuable either because it is especially well made, or exceedingly rare. In Brooklyn however, its more expensive because its old, no matter how mainstream or middling quality it originally was. Really its a goldmine for the vendors, who basically go pick up trash anywhere outside the City, bring it here, and watch it magically alchemize into cash.

So, I was wandering around the Flea, feeling somewhat nonplussed by the $100 old cowboy boots and $50 old (not good) paintings, when I saw a very strange sign. “2$” it said, and it was attached to a shelf of (yes) old little apothecary bottles. First of all, I was shocked that anything could be had at the Flea for $2, and that includes a bottle of water. Second, I was shocked because these were vintage, ie old, bottles. Right up the Brooklyn alley. Why wasn’t the vendor charging extortionary prices for them?? I looked around furtively to see if anybody else had seen the same sign I had. I quickly made my way over and examined the bottles more closely. Sweet little things, in a variety of sizes and shapes, the glass having taking on a variety of patinas over the years. One said “Listerine” in raised letters on the glass. They were beautiful by themselves, and several grouped together made a wonderful little collection. They reminded me of a set of vases I had put on my wedding registry, before the shop that sold them had gone out of business. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get them, and of course these were different, but they evoked the same feel. I felt that rush of discovering a true find. I selected a group of ten – altogether less than a single one of the vases on my registry. (Which is as it should be. Those were new.)

The vendor explained that these bottles were, indeed, trash. They had been thrown into a town dump in Pennsylvania sometime in the early 1900s, and were now being dug up and resold. What was literally one man’s trash, now, 80 years later, was my treasure. I had to laugh, half ironically and half gleefully, as I exited the Flea, cradling the bag with my find.

What is the deal with businesses that produce things in cheaper countries turning around and hawking them here for premium prices? There are tons of examples I could think of, but I am referring specifically right now to John Robshaw textiles. My annoyance is heightened by the fact that I really like his things, I’d love to have more of them around my home, but they are too expensive! I am annoyed because they are traditional – for the most part Indian and Central Asian – designs, made in traditional ways, in those countries. We all know that he is probably paying about $.50 for a pillowcase that he turns around a retails for $100. His wares are beautiful, but its not because he has personally innovated or designed anything wonderful – he is selecting, appropriating, and refreshing from designs and production methods that craftspeople there have developed over centuries. (This funny article from NYMag points out the same for Madeline Weintraub, who is suing Pottery Barn for supposedly copying design from her that she copied from the Moors and Taksim people). Why does he get that mark-up? I mean, I understand a business making a profit, but couldn’t it be a reasonable one?

John Robshaw sheets from Anthropologie

I am realizing two things as I write this. One, there must be some extra level that he is adding in terms of curatorial eye and production quality, because even though you see other Indian-produced or Indian-inspired things around, they are generally not done as well. Either the quality isn’t as good, or the line isn’t as extensive and consistent. Or, they are even *more* expensive, like this precious little boutique not far from my house. As obvious as it seems it should be, doing a good job at any business is not all that common. Maybe its not actually necessary to be innovative, its only necessary to be competent.

Two, the fact that his products *look* Indian is probably contributing to my annoyance by making me think they should be cheaper. The fact is, just about everything I buy is probably produced for pennies in a country like India or China, and then marked up as far as the company can possibly manage before they sell it to me. But when a design looks more ‘Western’ or modern, it doesn’t remind me that it was produced somewhere else, and thus doesn’t remind me how much extra I am paying.

Three, maybe I’m just jealous. Maybe I should be traveling around the world and sourcing lovely home products. Yup, that’s probably it. His fey, self-satisfied product notes don’t help. For example “Crisp and graphic blocks still remind me of mountains and fruit orchards of Uzbekistan and my last trip spent working with the weavers. – John Robshaw” sort of makes me want to barf. Its like he wants to be a BBC correspondent or something.

Anyway, I recently acquired a set of his sheets from Anthropologie, for about half what they would go for direct from him. I also have 2 pillowcases, bought off Gilt.com at a similar mark-down. Every them I look at them I have mixed feelings. I love the colors, patterns, and warm, hand-made feel. And I am still annoyed at John.

I wrote a while back about buying a carpet in a Souk in Marrakech. I haven’t been to Marrakech recently, and sadly no upcoming plans to go, but yet I need a new carpet. So I am trying carpet-buying American-style this time, which is quite a different process. No tea is involved. Nor such beautiful, unique carpets for such good prices. Nor the high-pressure, mind-messing sales tactics. Alas.

I need the carpet for my living room, and it has to go with a very specific color: my couch is a surprisingly difficult to replicate eggplant-y, gray-ish brown. Or perhaps its more purple-y, brown-ish gray. Or if I were J. Crew, I might call it something like “Polluted Midnight” or – I know – “Oilspill.”

Finding a color that compliments that couch, as well as the light gray floor, and my bright pink chairs, is the order. It also needs to be neutral – there’s a lot of other action in the space. And it must be cool. I’m over shag rugs, I think most modern carpets with designs are trying too hard, and then there is just a whole world of “classic” designs that really should be called “tacky” and not even allowed through Homeland Security.

I started out not thinking much of this carpet-buying task, but this turned out to be a serious underestimation. I have come to long for a local souk to ply me with tea and apply minor torture until I have purchased several carpets. I will spare you the painful details of all the websites searched and the samples ordered, but I will tell you what I now know: stores have plenty of browns, and grays, and a few aubergines, but they do not have brown-y, grayish purple.

I finally did find one with the right colors, but it was way too expensive – $1500. Really? For a girl who is just graduating from Ikea that’s a bit much. So I kept on looking. And kept on, and nothing showed up.

After a few years (ok, it couldn’t have been years, I realize, but it felt like it) I decided to bite the bullet and buy the expensive carpet. I didn’t tell Matt the pricetag, since he was dubious about the look of it anyway. I put it on my credit card and eagerly awaited to carpet that was so dear, yet so perfectly colored.

Finally it arrived. We unwrapped it, unrolled it, adjusted the placement just so, and stood back to survey it. And it was… ok. It was fine. Nice even. Just not the perfect wow I was hoping for. Eh.

What to do? I lived with it for a week or two. Matt actually liked it. A two-year old narrowly missed dousing with o.j. Then my credit card bill came. The $1500 extra dollars sat rather heavily on that bottom line. I took a gulp, wrapped it up, and trundled it back to UPS. Maybe one day it won’t have to be perfect for $1500, but today it does.

The old Ikea shag that was acting as a placeholder is back on duty. I was dispirited for a while, but now I am back on the horse. There is a carpet out there that will be just right, I have faith. I am considering felt. I will let you know how it goes.

Back in April, I got an email from my lovely neighbor Nick, asking what did I want to do with our common planters? Growing season was upon us, he pointed out, and the dead sea grass in there just wasn’t coming back. Simple and kindly as it was, this email made me want to curl up into the fetal position. I had been clinging to the idea that the sea grass would come back, and his note shattered my delusion. I liked the sea grass – it gave me a sort of Hampton-on-Brooklyn feel – but that wasn’t the real reason for my distress. The real reason for the little knot of panic was that I knew as little about gardening as I do about Arabic, and it seemed about as complicated. On top of a to-do list that was already on code red, adding on the project of learning about what to plant and how to care for it seemed too daunting to contemplate. I went outside, hoping in vain to see little green shoots in the straw brown mass of (clearly) dead grass. Alas there were none. The breath became quick and shallow in my throat.

My seed packets

Fast forward 2 months, and sappy as it sounds, it turns out that sometimes when you face your fears and take ownership of a situation, life really does spring up to meet you (literally in this case) in wonderful ways. Left with no choice, I decided that I would indeed take on the garden task, and a whole new world opened up to me. Problem No. 1 of the urban gardener, no car, was temporarily fixed the following weekend, when Matt and I had a car rented for another purpose. A Home Depot magically sprung up on our route, and I discovered to my delight a whole section not only full of plants of wondrous variety, but also big bags of dirt and even pots. Who knew?! One hour and $130 later, we had the beginnings of a respectable patio garden: a reddish tree that we thought was a Japanese Maple, but have since discovered is not, and still remains unidentified; several creeping Phlox fillers for the planter with bright purple flowers; and a spunky Persian Lilac. As we pulled the old grass and filled the box with rich new soil and blooming plants, I felt terribly earthy and rooted to Life, and I understood for the first time the appeal of dirt under my fingertips.

This exercise would have been enough to stave off garden guilt – my planters were full of living vegetable matter. However, a funny thing happened: I kept going. I got some Clymatis vines for the roof; the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had their annual plant sale, and I came home with a Violet, and a Jasmine, and an happy light green plant with little purple flowers, and an evergreen with pink flowers; my brother came to visit, and gave me hanging plant with bright pink flowers; while at the local hardware store, I picked up some seeds for Cosmos and Morning Glory, and I planted those; another time I got a Dahlia bulb, and put that in a pot too (upside down, I believe). I turned pots (so expensive!!) into an arts and crafts projects and now have an lovely, eclectic collection of multi-color spray-painted pots.

Each evening when I come home, I check in and water the plants. The slow steady progress is incredibly soothing and fulfilling. The plants that have come up from seed are especially thrilling, but even coaxing a bloom out of a pre-grown plant is pride-inducing. Hell, just keeping them alive makes me feel good. This all probably sounds like ‘duh’ to people who’ve been gardening for years, but hey, now I get it. Better late than never to the garden party?

A few months ago, a friend told me that if he heard the phrase “In this economy” one more time, he might explode. Little did we know, then, how many more times we’d get to hear it, and, frankly, how much more we’d care about hearing it. How we’d probably come to hang on the words of stories that began that way, and how we’d pray to move beyond it.

This is a story that begins “In this economy.” It’s a story about the joy that consumables can bring us, and the ability to find that joy for under $20. It’s a story about a showerhead that has changed my life, or at the very least, my mornings.

I live in San Francisco. I know I’ve mentioned that, but to me, San Francisco goes against the status quo. My default location tends to be the east coast, where life is both more coarse and more refined. Faster in the north where I tend to take quick trips to New York, slower in the south where I like to linger for weeks or months. Life on the east coast is not about a wholeness of the soul. Little time is spent talking about work/life balance, or balance of any sort, really. But life in San Francisco is somewhat obsessed with this. Companies compete to offer the most holistic view of life–which inevitably includes a LOT of work, but also a bit of a balancing act. At least, companies give the promise of this, and I’d argue it’s more prevalent in SF than back east.

And yet, people here still work too much. I work too much. I am constantly trying to balance my desire to press ahead in my career, working as hard as I can, with taking some time to relax and enjoy what’s around me. This has rarely been more startling than last night, when watching the Real Housewives of New York City. I only caught a few minutes of the episode, but as one couple departed Brooklyn for St. Barts, I realized I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I ever took a vacation as an adult. In fact, I have never taken an actual vacation, if you consider a vacation a trip where you go to spend time away from work that doesn’t include a family reunion or visiting friends. My trips are always, always, always to visit family or friends. This idea of taking time away from work and spending money on myself is just not something I engage in. I hope one day I will.

In the meantime, and “in this economy,” I’m trying to find pleasure in the small things. My consumer victories are fewer and farther between, and they also are less costly. But they are there… in the happy hour glass of wine or the deal on Kiehl’s shampoo at Marshall’s or the use of a frequent flyer flight on JetBlue. One of these recent purchases has made a bigger impact than the fleeting high of getting a good deal, it actually has changed my attitude about luxuries in my own home.

Last fall sometime, my showerhead began to squeal. Not all the time, but LOUDLY and without avail when you changed one of the pressure settings. Then, in early winter, it began to squeal all the time. I was fearful my neighbors might one morning break down my door, demanding that I turn off the water and with it, that bloody high-pitched scream. So onto my Christmas list went a consumable: new showerhead. My only wishes were that it be the handheld kind, be silver, and have multiple water spouts. I also hoped it would cost less than $40.

My parents found one at Bed Bath and Beyond for $60, got the online price in-store at $50, and used a 20% coupon. This brought us down to somewhere around my price point. I got the gift on Christmas morning, but saw the $60 price tag and was appalled. Even when they told me they’d spent less, I decided to keep looking to find something less expensive. It’s a showerhead, for goodness sake, and in my mind, utilitarian items should be cheap.

I kept looking, and eventually found the identical showerhead at Marshall’s for only $19.99. I was thrilled. I lamented the economy, the fact that goods were selling for next-to-nothing in January, but I scooped it up, installed it in my apartment in SF, and anxiously awaited a new-and-improved, non-squealing shower. Little did I know I would come to love it.

My first shower was an adjustment. I had to find the right water setting out of all 12 promised by the manufacturer. I discovered that there were truly only 6 settings, and that each of those individual spray-types had a low-to-high pressure scale, yielding at least 6 additional sensations. And in this selection process, I found a setting I’ve never had on a shower before. It is a fine, delicate mist, but with enough spouts to give even, adequate pressure. It is great. To me, it feels like standing in a rain forest, surrounded by lush green foliage with specks of bright blue sky coming in through the leaves.

This entirely new feeling means that I now look forward to my showers. They are points of luxury, of relaxation, of indulgence in my day. As my own private rain forest inside my SF concrete jungle, they are the counterpoint to my stresses. What’s even better is that these showers have opened my eyes to other indulgences at home that I have been missing. Like making time to sit on my rooftop and look out over the San Francisco Bay, or to do yoga in the evenings in my living room.

My point in telling you all of this, in light of “this economy,” is that reclaiming the luxuries right under our noses can be rewarding in lean and lush times alike. And so in light of balance, I’d like to offer a gentle nudge toward seeking your own (small) indulgences. Toward giving your day a bright spot to counter all those stories that begin  “In this economy…”

Oh dear. sigh. Has it really been so long? I know it must be bad when my father of all people says to me, “Kate, you’ve basically shut down visa diaries, haven’t you?” My father is not a man who is waiting for his latest dose of shopping gossip, so for him to notice – ouch.

Good thing Carter wrote just a little while ago, or else I would really only be hearing the lonely echo of my own tappity-taps on the keyboard. Good thing she wrote… except for the fact that she has just (and justly) shamed my more consumeristic and less socially conscious urges. How am I supposed to gloat about a new pair of shoes or sunglasses now that she has reduced them to nothing but a pile of toxic chemical inputs and permanent landfill outputs?? Ironically, I happen to be doing a project for a major cosmetics brand at work, and as a result have been buying all sorts of new make-up… not that I would tell you all about my peacock liquid eyeliner, or my new ‘deep throat’ blusher, because then I’d be shamed off the Internet – the shallow one who still bought lipgloss as the planet was burning…

Ok ok, I’m sure that’s a little extreme. I know that we are all making pained noises about the planet, while we semi-abashedly continue to buy take-out for every meal and forget to bring our eco-bags to Whole Foods. I am not the only one. But still, let’s have a think about less toxic lipgloss alternatives in the world of shopping and consumption. I mean honestly, there are a million and one ways to spend our money, and surely we can still shop and be decent global citizens at the same time.

Perhaps this is a good time to test out my theory that high design is good for the planet. Here’s why I think so: highly designed things are more expensive, so they create more wealth – more gdp, which is what the capitalists care about – with fewer natural resources. Plus, well designed and made products should also work better and be more pleasing to have around, so they generally raise satisfaction in using and owning them, and we will hang on to them longer. A truly classic design never goes out of style, and if for some reason it no longer fits into your home, it will be snapped up on eBay quicker than you can say “mid-century modern.”

For example, if I could afford it, I would buy this chair from Linge Roset:

I have seriously been coveting this chair for almost 10 years, since I first saw it in the swanky Istanbul house of some Eurotrash friends of mine. Since it costs, like, mega-bucks, a couple of years ago I bought a pair of knock-offs at Urban Outfitters. They have the same general shape, but are missing the extra excessive cotton padding and pillow-y down-y feel. Result: as soon as I can afford it, I will buy the Ligne Rosset original, and get rid of my knock-offs. Hopefully not just trash them, hopefully pass them along, but still. The point is that it would have just been better to buy the real, good object that I wanted to begin with, and then keep that forever.

So, how is my Post-Lipglossist theory shaping up? I admit that probably there is still some hard scholarship to be done, but basically I think Post-Lipglossism is just a fancy word for that age old wisdom: Two Zaras do not a Prada make…! er, um, I mean quality is better than quantity…

As I mentioned, last weekend I saw my friends Mara and Adam from San Francisco. Mara is one of my favorite people on the planet, and she was lucky enough to find someone worthy of her in Adam, who besides being a tall, gorgeous, intelligent, ex-Olympic sailor, is also the founder of cleaning product company Method. Method has been one of those wonder brand revolutions in a product category that everybody thought was exhausted. About five years ago, Adam and his partner Eric took a look around and thought, “I can get designer lifestyle clothing, designer lifestyle sheets, designer lifestyle coffee, for my young- urban- designer- lifestyled- ass… Why then can I not get designer cleaning products??” and voila, Method was born. Five years later, their Karim Rashid packaged, cucumber scented, Target distributed, designer cleaning line is a clean-up (haha) success.

Now, I’m going to tell a dirty little secret (and Method are “People Against Dirty”…): much as I love Mara and Adam, I had never bought a Method product! Granted, I was out of the country for several of the years of their ascent (they are only just starting to be carried in the UK), but really – what kind of friend am I??! After seeing them again this weekend, I realized that was an absolutely untenable position, and I ran out to Target as soon as possible. I was totally enamored of their ylang-ylang shower spray, not only because I love saying “ylang-ylang”, but also because it claims you never have to scrub your tiles again – really?? sign me up!

I’m sure all their products are great, and I intend to try them all, but here is my number one Method tip: the scented candles. As I was looking at some $35 candles in a boutique in NYC, Adam sidled up and informed me that Method candles are not only way better value, but also better candles, because they are soy so they burn cleaner. Amazingly they cost on $5.99 – madness! After smelling all the flavors, I settled on Mint & Eucalyptus, which is modern and light and lovely. OK, Diptyque these candles are not quite, but neither are they $50. At $6 a pop, I can have a whole forrest of these twinkling away 24/7… er, which I have been since getting them. My apartment now feels like and enchanted, minty-lyptus fairy garden. Now, my only question is, when does the Method-sponsored masseuse show up?

I am about to start on my xmas shopping, so watch this space for bigger items soon, but first I wanted to quickly muse on the random beauty of the late-night Walgreens run. I am lucky enough to live right next to a 24-hour Walgreens, one of the only things that does stay open all night in this town. This past Wednesday, after my big critique, and after the multiple sleepless nights leading up to it, and a lot of pizza and beer to celebrate with classmates, I found myself hitting the WG with my friend Bethany on our way home.

Somehow through my stupor, a profound appreciation for Walgreen welled up in my heart. Where else can you get protein bars with your cold medicine, cheesy christmas decorations with your toilet paper with your blank CDs? I love the way Walgreens has *everything* from food to electronics, to cleaning supplies to office supplies to drugs. I love how it is all bathed on terrible fluorescent light, and is all terrible beige peg-board shelving and mottled white linoleum. I sort of even love that there is always a drug addict plaintively asking for change outside the door, and a couple of jaded bored salespeople inside, and how when the line gets really long they make an announcement telling you the cosmetics counter is open. I love how they give you cash back, any amount even if you only buy a $.99 pack of gum, and how they sell drug panaceas for all sorts on ailments that are unmentionable in good company – just about one of the only places where you can let it all hang out, be broken. I love their hideous script typeface logo, that they have decided to modernize by rendering in blue and red neon. I love Walgreens because it is so utilitarian (and not in that trendy Home Depot way) so practical, so bell-and-whistle free, yet they always have everything. I love walking out with orange zest kitchen cleaner in the same bag with my Edy’s Toll-House cookie dough ice cream and a new pair of Tweezerman tweezers, and that its next door and open all the time.

Sometimes convenience without pretension is so comforting.

I am a bit of a sucker for the bizarre, pseudo-medical, purported miracle cure. I’d say the afore-mentioned MBTs fit into that category. There also seem to be lots of lamps, doling out various sorts of beneficial light therapy in that category – I am the proud owner not only of a daylight lamp to lift my mood in winter, but also a special UV lamp to clear up my skin, and an infra-red lamp to help heal repetitive strain injury. Then there are the cures leave even the pseudo-science behind, and that fall into the woo-woo physics camp, like sacro-cranial massage, homeopathy, and acupuncture. I love them all! I have even been known to wear a “Tachyon energizing coil” that my friend Steph gave me to wear around my neck as a pendant, that was supposed to do something like reverse the spin on our core molecules…?? Maybe I’m making that up, but whatever it was, was equally unintelligible. Anyway, I happily wore it, and did feel better I swear, until I misplaced it.

Each time I learn about and embark on one of these new regimes, I feel a sense of uplift. Maybe *this* little malfunction, that the cure is now purporting to fix, has been the root of all my problems! Maybe, rather than being a complex cookie, the only thing the matter all along is that my spinal fluid is not in proper sync, or I’m not getting enough sunlight. I have this vision of simplicity, a cosmic key, that once it fits in its proper spot, all the stars re-align, and I live happily ever after.

My latest foray into this realm of wishful thinking through weird science is a set of anti-allergy covers for my mattress and pillows. These are supposed to form an effective barrier against dust mites, these gross microscopic little suckers.

Just seeing the pictures of these beasties is the best marketing ploy these companies could do – they are nastier than any alien or monster ever invented by Hollywood, and there are literally millions of them living in your mattress and pillows, feeding on your dead skin… Really, I’m not trying to scare you away form my blog – you can go barf now, I’ll still be here when you get back.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe that these mattress covers will do what the doctor and company say they will. Where I am straying into my wishful thinking territory is in going, “well maybe without those nighttime allergies, I will sleep much better, so I’ll only need, like 4 hours of sleep. And then I’ll wake up much more rested and be super-productive. Like, I bet I’ll get 4 times as much done as normal! And, like, maybe there’s some link between allergies and mood, and weight loss…”

So basically, I am expecting to be a whole new person when I wake in the morning tomorrow. Stay tuned. And next time I will talk about something pretty, I promise.

Well, if you thought I got away form Marrakech with just a couple of rugs, you still don’t know me very well! The total booty haul was:

2 rugs
1 yummy woolen winter hat
1 gorgeous rafia woven handbag
3 punched tin lamps (2 are a wedding gift for my friend Steph)
3 bottles of rose water
1 black leather belt with gold studs (woof!)
1 malachite ring
1 pair of handmade leather slippers

Plus an assortment of food, drink, and entertainment, including 2 hammams and 2 suppers at the amazing outdoor food stalls in Place Jemma El Fna.

If this seems like a lot, you will be amazed at the restraint I showed, given all that I possibly could have bought out of the pile of teak, ceramics, leather, silk, spice, and on and on that jammed the souk

I am particularly chuffed about the hat, which is just toffee-colored hand know yumminess and will be a constant companion this winter (unsure why the Moroccan knit heavy woolen hats? it was over 100 degrees the whole time). And also the tin lamps, which were made by Mak’s friend Hassan Hajjaj, who is Morocco’s answer to Andy Warhol. He takes traditional Moroccan crafts, and mashes them up with funky pop references. Very cool stuff, and a big shout out to both him and Abdul for giving me a bit of orientation around Marrakech. If you are ever there, you must stay his Riad Yima.

Anyway, what can I say? I love traveling, and I loved Marrakech – warm desert air and dusty pink walls, donkeys in the streets and snake charmers in the square. Mint tea and more mint tea. Objects are memory devices, a physical way to bring home and save a small bit of a beautiful experience. I don’t know when I will get back there, but padding about my apartment in my handsewn leather slippers, I will remember the souk fondly and, just perhaps, be able to close my eyes and feel a warm ray of the north african sun.