31 May 2011

It's live! My Destinations Magazine debut

The new issue of Destinations Magazine came out yesterday and my article and photography are featured in it. Ever wonder about Zaragoza, Spain? Read my article and learn all about it.


You can read the whole piece by following this link. Thanks Destinations!

25 May 2011

It's official

As of today I am now closer to 50 than 40. That's such a disconnect I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

How did this kid in 1969


turn into this guy in 2011 and where the hell did the last 46 years go?


I keep reminding myself that I enjoy getting older but it's a hard sell today.

At least 50's an event.




But this late 40s stuff is a strange holding pattern. I'm glad to be here, it's just odd.

24 May 2011

What's my favorite color: a Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What's your favorite color?"

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I may have put away my designer shingle these days, but some things never really go away. One of those things in my case is how deeply affected by color I am. The topic today asks me to pick a favorite color and I can't just pick one. I can't imagine ever having to pick just one favorite color.

When I look over my long list of favorite colors, every one of them is based on an experience I've had or a place I've been. As I go through my day to day life I'm struck by the memories certain colors trigger. I cannot imagine myself ever saying something like, "my favorite color is blue." Rather, I'm a lot more apt to say something along the lines of "That color blue reminds me of the color of the water on the northern end of Cat Island on an August afternoon." It's sounds kind of strange, but that's just how I operate. I have a hard time taking colors out of context.

Said beach on Cat Island

So here's a collection of some of my favorite colors and the places where I saw them.


Some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire US is in the hills of Northern California. Every September, those hills turn the most amazing color of gold I've ever seen.


I love combinations of purple, red and green. This is a bromeliad on my patio with a visitor on Christmas Eve two years ago.


Despite the bad mouthing they get, I love the color yellow dandelions are, especially in the spring when the rest of the earth is still half-asleep. They don't grow in Florida, so I took this photo in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago.


The ochre colors of the Spanish countryside look like something from another planet. I'm not at all accustomed to seeing cliffs and hillsides that appear to be painted, but even if I were, Spain would still stand out.


I love the emerald-turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I am not a native to these parts, but the Gulf of Mexico exerts a pull on me I have a hard time articulating. When seen from above I fall in love with it all over again.


These are the winter blossoms of a tree called a Tabebuia, and they're scattered like lilac confetti on a street in my neighborhood. I'm not usually a purple person but spent Tabebuia flowers on a brick street in January are almost enough to convert me.


When the sun sets every evening, the Sorrentine peninsula looks like it's on fire. If only those colors could be put in a can.


I love the colors of patina-d metals. My great-great-great-grandfather's monument is made from cast zinc and it's the most striking gray-blue I can think of.


As I mentioned before, I am not a native to the part of the world where I live now. Though I may hang my hat in a tropical climate, in my heart of hearts I remain a Yankee's Yankee. The only time I really miss the Northeast is toward the end of October when the maple trees start to turn. This was my back to school back drop every year as a kid and no matter how far away I go, I'm always drawn back when I know the leaves up there are turning.

So what are my favorite colors? Well, this morning they are Bahamas Afternoon Blue, September Rolling Hills Gold, Christmas Eve Bromeliad, Brooklyn Dandelion, Spanish Hillside Ochre, Gulf of Mexico March Turquoise, Tabebuia on a Brick Street Lilac, Cliffs on Fire Orange-Red, Ancestral Grave Marker Blue-Gray and Pennsylvania Autumn Riot.

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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's postss. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.








18 May 2011

Congratulations to Delta/ Brizo!

The first kitchen and bath manufacturer I ever interacted with was the Brizo faucet brand and its parent, the Delta Faucet Company. It's no secret that the Brizo brand has a special place in my heart.

A couple of years ago, Brizo was the new luxury brand from Delta Faucet. On the watch of Delta Faucet Company's brilliant CEO Keith Allman, Brizo was allowed to develop and flourish and shortly after that they started working with MSL. To call MSL a PR Agency sells them short, but I suppose that's what they are. Maybe if I called them the world's PR Agency of record it would come close...

Anyhow, MSL's Director of Social Media Outreach is a guy named Charlie Kondek, and two years ago Charlie reached out to me, an unknown kitchen and bath designer in St. Petersburg. Charlie was working very closely with Brizo's Senior Channel Manager, Jai Massela.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Jai, Charlie and lived out a real-life social media case study over the last couple of years. In the course of living out the case study; a guy in Ann Arbor, a woman in Indianapolis and a guy in St. Pete developed a friendship I treasure. In the course of watching Brizo grow into the recognizable brand it is today, it's been a real thrill to call the people behind the brand my friends and I love recalling how I knew them when.

Here's a shot of me and Jai from a couple of years ago but oddly, I don't have one of me, Charlie and Jai. Charilie? Jai? We need to arrange a photo op!


On May 5th, Brizo and Delta cut the ribbon on their new showroom at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. It's over 3000 square feet with 96 working examples of their products. The Showroom is called DREAM2O. Among those displays are 40 working lavatory faucets, 40 working kitchen fixtures, 11 full showers and five H2Okinetics (shower and body spray combinations).

They're on the fist floor of the Mart and if you're in Chicago, please stop in and say hello. If you do, tell them I sent you. What follow are some photos of the grand opening from May 5th.

Endless congratulations gang, you deserve every accolade you get for this new showroom.


 







16 May 2011

Beautiful lighting from Flos

One of the reasons I like going to New York so much is that all of the objects I normally see only in catalogs are there, in person, in a showroom somewhere. I spend a lot of time poking through lighting showrooms in Manhattan and a couple of weeks ago I walked into Italian Manufacturer Flos' showroom on Greene Street in Soho.

There I met Marcel Wanders' Skygarden.


At first glance it looks like any number of half-dome suspended lights on the market. Upon closer inspection however, Skygarden's underside is a riot of nearly baroque activity.


Stunning work. What do you think?