Christmas in New York

On the upper east side of Midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 50th Street, sits one of the world's most iconic department stores, Sak's Fifth Avenue.

Despite the fact that Sak's has grown into a department store chain, their 1924 building across the street from Rockefeller Center remains their flagship.

Christmas is a big deal in New York, obviously. Every year Sak's rises to the occasion and rolls out a display that integrates their historic facade.

Last year, their night time display broke new ground in projected animation with their story of "The Snowflake and the Bubble." I remember standing on the West Side of Fifth Avenue on a Friday night in mid-December last year and being blown away.




I figured that they'd spent so much money on that animation that they'd use it for a couple of years.

Clearly, I underestimated Sak's. Two weeks ago they rolled out "The Snowflake and the Bubble: The Sequel."

I don't think I'm going to make it up there before the display ends on January 6th, 2012 but this new animation makes me want to drop what I'm doing and just get on an airplane.

I love New York so much it hurts sometimes; the Delancy Street "Low Line"

This is the Williamsburg Bridge.

It connects the Lower East Side of Manhattan with Mid Brooklyn and on its Brooklyn side, it marks the start of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. On the Manhattan side, The Williamsburg  crosses over Roosevelt Drive and what appear to be endless housing blocks.

The approach to the Williamsburg is Delancey Street, a pretty non-descript patch of well-traveled road that looks like the rest of the Lower East Side.

 However, underneath Delancey is an abandoned rail yard.

It's but one of countless abandoned rail yards in Manhattan and it always amazes me that the city with the most expensive real estate values in the US has so many under utilized nooks and crannies.

A couple of years ago, an abandoned, elevated railway was turned into New York's now-legendary High Line. However, a couple of forward thinkers have an similar idea for the Delancey Street only instead of a High Line, they've come up with the idea that's come to be known as the Low Line.

The Delancy Underground is its official name and at this point it's in the process of raising money to make the dream a reality. I remember when the High Line was in a similar situation and just look at it now. I have no doubt that the Delancey Underground will happen and based on the speed of the High Line's development and conversion, it will happen pretty quickly.

However, the Delancey Underground is very different from the High Line, primarily because it's underground. However, the plan for the Delancey calls for a host of sky lights, solar collectors and fiber optics to bring the light of day underground. The light levels underneath Delancey Street will be intense enough for trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses to grow. check out these renderings.

It's going to be amazing and if any city in the world can pull this off, New York's definitely the one. No where else in the world can mount projects on the scale New York can and nowhere else on earth can channel ambition and vision the way New York does so regularly.

Man I love that town and the Delancey Underground is one more reason to hold it in as high a regard as I do.

New Yorkers aside, what public space initiatives has your city undertaken? Are publicly-funded, public spaces important and worthwhile? Talk to me about this stuff.

Real design stars and a concrete counter guy

During my travels last fall, I had some incredible opportunities to meet some people whose work in the design world I admire greatly.

Everything started at Cersaie in Bologna last September. Endless thanks to Chris Abbate, Novita Public Relations and Tile of Italy for making it possible for me to meet and talk with some people whose work I've long admired.

In order of appearance, I met Patricia Uriquiola,

Philippe Grohe

and the Bouroullec brothers, Ronan and Erwan, all in the same day.

I've written about these peoples' work quite a bit over the years. I shower with a shower that Ms. Uriquiola designed and Mr. Grohe brought to the market. It was great to be able to tell them how much I appreciate their vision and hard work in person.

Later in London for BlogTour 2011, I met such notables as Nicky Haslam,

Barbara Barry

and Lee Broom.

There were more people whose work I admire during those weeks on the road but I don't want to be too much of a name dropper. BlogTour 2011 dropped me into the middle of the London Design Festival and were it not for BlogTour I'd have never been there otherwise. So thank you.

But out of the entire who's who of the world design scene I met, none can compare to a man I had the pleasure to meet in San Francisco last month.

I'd been brought to San Francisco by Zephyr to attend a design event at their spectacular showroom in San Francisco's Design District. One of the night's speakers was Fu-Tung Cheng, the man who brought the decorative and functional possibilities of concrete to the world's attention.

There were at most 30 people in attendance at Zephyr's event and most of us knew one another. It felt more like a dinner party than it did a formal function.

After Fu-Tung spoke, he mingled with the everyone as if he were just another guest at a party. Never mind that there was a stack of his books by the door.

Here's a little back story. In 2002, Fu-Tung Cheng published his first book, Concrete Countertops; Design, Form and Finishes for the New Kitchen and Bath. I was a relative newbie to the kitchen and bath industry then and his book was nothing short of a revelation. It gave rise to a new aesthetic in my work but far more than that, his first book showed me that I could forge my own way and that I could create a career for myself. All I needed to do was channel my passion and my energy as tirelessly as I was able.

Concrete Countertops was far more than a book about a new idea in surfaces, it was a wake up call for me and it challenged me to strike out and make a place for myself in the world. Fu-Tung Cheng's generous spirit jumped off the page as I read his words and I realized that my making a place for myself wasn't a matter of my ambition. A career of my own making could only happen if I could be of service and use to other people.

Part of me knew that already, but Cheng's book about concrete drove home that point and sent me on my way. I'm not kidding when I say that his first book changed the trajectory of my life.

Fast forward to October, 2011 and I found myself in the same room with the man who'd had such an impact on me. I walked up to him and told him essentially what I just wrote in the previous few paragraphs. He was as gracious as he was grateful to hear that he'd impacted me so positively.

We ended up having a longer conversation and later, exchanging business cards when the event was breaking up for the night. And in a final gesture, he inscribed his latest book, Concrete at Home for me.

I'm a fortunate, fortunate man. I say that all the time and I mean it. I have opportunities extended to me on a regular basis that make my head spin, not the least of which are numerous opportunities to meet some of the  people I admire. So thanks Zephyr for a great event and thanks for allowing me to complete another circle.

A Sunday traveler's tale

On Thursday morning, I boarded an American Airlines 737 in San Francisco and I was bound for Dallas and then later, Tampa. The same plane was going to complete the journey after a one-hour layover in Dallas. I didn't have an assigned seat until I got to the gate and I begged the truly helpful gate agent for an aisle seat for the entire length of my journey home.

She found one, seat 7C in the first row after first class. I knew I was in for a long day (3-1/2 hours to Dallas and then another two hours to Tampa) but all I cared about was that I had an aisle seat and ready access to the bathroom.

When I boarded the plane, the first of my two row mates was immediately behind me. She had a heavy carry on and I put it in the overhead for her. She thanked me and we took our seats. A moment later, our third row mate arrived and she took her seat at the window. There we were, seats 7A, 7B and 7C; complete strangers.

It was a clear day when we left San Francisco, the San Joachin Valley and the Sierra Nevada seemed close enough to touch. No where else in the Unites States is more beautiful from the air than Northern California, though Utah gives it a real run for its money. Anyhow, from three seats away, I couldn't help but to crane my neck to look out the window to watch California's golden hills unfold.

I started gasping about the scenery and my row mates noticed my responses and the three of us started to talk. The two women, one an aromatherapist from Melbourne and the other a microbiologist at Stanford, listened as I prattled on about the majesty of California and how much I love the sight of the Sierras.

Before too long, the three of us introduced ourselves and we started talking about where we were from and where we were headed. It turned out that all three of us were bound for St. Pete, almost three thousand miles away.

Though none of planned to do so, we ended up talking the whole way to Dallas. We talked about books and science and art and more than anything we talked about our shared love of travel. We professed our mutual love for Bologna and London and talked about places one of us had been but the other two hadn't. As a result of that conversation, Peru and Ecuador are now on my list.

By the time we landed in Dallas we'd struck up one of those wonderful but rare situational friendships that crop up when you're tired and far from home. We were looking out for each other and helping one another get bags out of overheads and giving pointers about how to navigate various airports.

When we reboarded in Dallas and assumed our seats again, we started talking about the center seat holder's native land of Australia. She pulled out the airline magazine, turned to a map of Australia and told us about her grandmother who started out in Wellington, New Zealand, and ended up marrying a Swiss man and moving to Perth. She told us about her years as a medical volunteer in East Timor and how much she loves Jakarta and the South of France. The microbiologist talked about her Italian heritage and her love for dance. The three of us lamented the US's refusal to adopt the metric system and we talked about getting used to driving on various sides of the road depending on where we are.

It was beyond cool to bond with three strangers like that. We had so much in common despite our varied backgrounds and career paths.

I've been traveling a lot this year and though I'll never pass up the opportunity to talk to a stranger, I've never felt the momentary bond I felt with those women on Thursday.

We shook hands and exchanged cards when we landed in Tampa and part of me wants to keep in touch. Another part of me however, wants to keep Thursday what it was, the most anomalous of anomalies. The Australian called it a rare synchronicity.

I've been all over in the course of my life and without a doubt the 5-1/2 hour conversation I had on Thursday was an absolute stand out.

Experiences like that are a lot of what I'm looking for when I travel. I'm forever looking to find common ground with people whose lives are wildly different than mine. I want to find that common ground but at the same time, I want to savor the differences.

Now that I'm back and reacclimated to my native time zone, I have lots of stuff to write about from Bologna, London, Toronto and San Francisco. Stay tuned, I've seen some pretty amazing stuff int he last few weeks.

Big love for London

It's hard to believe that I took that photo of my foot a week ago. That was a marker in the sidewalk in the small park behind St. Paul's Cathedral and the inscription actually read "Here stood Paul's cross." I had just walked out of the Cathedral with my friends Bob Borson and Stacey Bewkes. Borson noticed the marker first and a great photo op was born.

Endless thanks to Modenus and the sponsors of Blog Tour 2011 for getting our rag tag band of North American design and architecture bloggers to London for the Design Festival. Here are some London highlights.





London is an amazing city. It's beautiful, clean and huge. As much as it embraces the 21st Century, it's still present to its history. Some of the greatest minds humanity's ever produced called that city home and their fingerprints are everywhere.

The group with whom I shared that great city last week are a special lot. The are Susan Serra, Tamara Matthews-Stephenson, Carmen Natschke, Veronika Miller, Mollie Magill, Jonathan Legate, Elise Jones, Michelle Jennings-Wiebe, Meredith Heron, Mae Hacking, Andie Day, Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo, Leslie Carothers, Michelle Carangi, Bob Borson, Tim Bogan and Stacey Bewkes. All of us knew each other before the trip but most of us had never met. It's a curious state of affairs brought on by the social web and it was a real treat to meet up with a bunch of people with whom I have more than a few things in common. All of our Blog Tour posts are being aggregated on the Blog Tour website and our photos ought to start showing up there this week too.

Blog Tour wasn't a one-time thing. In March of 2012, a group of UK design bloggers are coming to New York for the AD (Architectural Digest Home Design Show). I can't wait to be there to reconnect with my UK friends. Then in April, Blog Tour's taking a mix of North American and UK bloggers to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. After that who knows? I'm holding out for Mumbai and Beijing but wherever it ends up, Blog Tour is here to stay and it was an honor to be part of the its maiden voyage.

A Toronto Tweet Up presented by Caroma and Modenus

via

Greenbuild 2011 runs from 4 through 7 October and it's taking place in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I'll be in Toronto representing Modenus.com and we're working with Caroma to host a Tweet Up at Caroma's booth on Wednesday morning at 10:30. Here's the link to the press release that went out last week.

So come meet me for a cup of coffee on Wednesday morning and while you're at the booth, you can learn all about high-efficiency bath products. You can also register to win an iPad2 and a host of other electronic gadgets.

In the interest of disclosure, my travel costs are being covered by Modenus, a website with which I have more than a passing interest. I'm a regular contributor to that site and I say it's the web's best resource for interior design inspiration and product information.

The Caroma brand was launched in 1941 and has been an innovation leader ever since. Caroma products are distributed worldwide and you can learn more about Caroma on their website. Caroma products are beautiful and in looking over a Caroma bath, you'd never know that their fixtures and fittings are highly water efficient and sustainably produced.

Caroma's booth number is 2111N in the north building and if you're at the show or in Toronto this week, I look forward to meeting you on Wednesday.

No baloney, Bologna is heaven

I'm still reeling over the sights, the sounds and that tastes I experienced in Bologna two weeks ago. Endless thanks go to Ceramic Tiles of Italy, the Italian Trade Commission and Novita Public Relations for making my trip possible. Here are some highlights of Bologna and the immediate area surrounding it in Emilia-Romagna. For a city that never appeared on my radar before, I cannot wait to go back. Everything about it is magical.

Italy is an enchanting place. For all of its problems, nowhere else on earth manages to combine the ancient and the modern so seamlessly and nowhere else on earth knows how to concentrate on what's really important the way Italy does. Who cares what the IMF thinks, there's great gelato around the corner and the crimini mushrooms are in season. No other place I've ever been wallows in family, friendship and hospitality with the passion Italy does.

The world needs places like Italy as a reminder that having constant internet access and 400 TV channels doesn't really mean a whole lot. What matters is your family, your friends and your neighbors. Thanks for the reminder Bologna.

Travel plans

Venice isn't the only city in Italy with canali, the old part of Bologna is full of them.

2011 is turning out to be the year that keeps on giving. Even though my plans to go to The Bahamas this week have been thwarted, I have two more locations to look forward to this month. The Italian Trade Commission, in it's North American incarnation as Ceramic Tiles of Italy, is sending me to Cersaie in Bologna. I leave on September 17 and what awaits is the largest tile and bath show in the world. I have a couple of days of free time when I get to Italy and I cannot wait to park myself in a cafe, grab a copy of Corriere della Sera, and read all about Silvio Berlusconi's latest offenses. That I'll be up to  my elbows in tile and bath products is the kind of bonus only I can imagine.

I'll be in Bologna from September 17th through the 22nd when I depart Bologna for London
where I'll catch the tail end of the London Design Festival. I've been selected as one of the design bloggers being sent to London by Modenus.com. If you don't know Modenus, you really ought to.

London is part of what's being called BlogTour2011 and it's an attempt to unite design bloggers in the UK and the US. Something the scale of Blog Tour has never been attempted before and I cannot thank Veronika Miller of Modenus enough for including me. Blog Tour has its own website and all of the participants' updates will be syndicated there. The sponsors of the Modenus Blog Tour 2011 are Modenus of course, the Architectural Digest Home Design Show, MyDeco.com, Blanco, DuVerre hardware, Spirit of Sports, Wallunica, Samuel Heath, 100% Design, The London Design Festival, Decorex International, The Society of British Interior Design, Tent London, and Design Junction.

Check out all those sites and keep posted for my updates from the other side of the pond.

The August issue of Destinations

The August issue of Destinations Travel Magazine features a story about Valencian architecture penned by yours truly. As a bonus, the article includes a bunch of photos by the world-famous, Dallas-based architect Bob Borson.

Here's the link to the article.

Bravery or madness?

This is the Verzasca Dam in Ticino, Switzerland. In this shot, it has its spillways open.

via

The Verzasca Dam is 220 meters tall (that's 720 feet) and here it is with its spillways closed.

via

This is my great friend Doug bunjee jumping off the Verzasca Dam on Monday afternoon.




Not bad for a man of 52. Better him than me though, I can barely stand watching the video. I used to be fearless when it came to this sort of thing, but those days are long past. Thanks for the thrill Doug, I can't wait to hear all about it when you get back here.

Back to New York

from Wikimedia Commons

Man oh man do I love this town.

You know it's funny, this is the sixth or seventh time I said "I'm going to New York" on this blog. Or is it the seventh or eighth? Who's counting?

Anyhow the K&RD show is going back on the road next week and I'll be in the City from Tuesday through Friday. This time, the great folks from American Standard are bringing me, Saxon Henry, Andie Day, Laurie Burke, JB Bartkowiak and Rich Holschuh together for a few days to learn about American Standard, Crane Plumbing, Jado | Porcher and Eljer products.

This is going to be a great week and I owe a great debt of thanks to American Standard's PR folks Nora DePalma, Wendy Silverstein and Jen Datka for making all of these arrangements.

I guess it's a function of having been around for a while but I know all of the bloggers who will be there so this will be as much a reunion for many of us as it will be an opportunity to get some product education. And what better place than New York? And by the way, they're putting us up at The Standard. Woo-hoo!

Everybody arrives on Tuesday and everybody involved will be live-Tweeting the action as it unfolds. If you're a Twitter-er, follow these people to keep up on the action as it unfolds.

Me @Paul_Anater
Saxon Henry @SaxonHenry and @adroyt
Andie Day @AndieDay
Laurie Burke @cabinetgal1
JB Bartkowiak @BuildingMoxie
Rich Holdshuh @ConcreteDetail and @adroyt
American Standard @amercanstandard
Professor Toilet @professortoilet
Nora DePalma @noradepalma
Wendy Silverstein @WSA_PR

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!

In unity there is strength

My title today is the translation from the Old Dutch Een Draght Mackt Maght. Een Draght Mackt Maght is the motto of the Borough of Brooklyn, the second-most populous of New York's five boroughs. Brooklyn was an independent city from its founding in 1646 until 1898 when the five boroughs consolidated to form modern New York. Even though it's part of New York City, it's still its own county, Kings.

One of the main thoroughfares through Brooklyn is Flatbush Avenue. Flatbush is an anglicization of the Dutch phrase vlacke bos and it means "wooded flatlands." I took a walk along modern day vlack bos, Flatbush Avenue, and one of its many neighborhoods, Prospect Lefferts Gardens yesterday morning.

The area where I took my morning constitutional was founded by a Dutch family in 1660. By 1893 it was a single estate that was owned by James Lefferts. Lefferts divided his holdings into 600 lots and sold them to developers.

The neighborhood where these photos were taken were built between the late 19th Century and the 1950s. It's the center of Caribbean culture in Brooklyn and it has a charm and wonder I can't quite describe.

Ahhhh, would that I were a good photographer. Hah! Even so, I saw a side to New York last weekend I'd never seen before and I learned the lesson so many before me have learned, that there's life beyond the Isle O' Manhattan.

What do you carry: 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 are you carrying?"

----------------------------------------------

I fancy myself to be a bit of a traveler and the many places life's brought me so far have left an indelible mark on me. I'm a better man for having seen some places most people only read about and it's not something I take lightly. So whether it was trekking through a Panamanian rain forest or having the Spanish steps all to myself on a rainy Sunday morning, places and experiences stay with me.

I like to travel lightly and I'm not much of a shopper, but something I've been doing for the last 20 years or so is accumulating odds and ends from the places where I've been. These stones and sticks, bones and feathers end up in a jar on my dresser. That jar is my world in miniature it reminds me how fortunate I am every morning. The theme this week is What do You Carry? And my answer is that I carry with me every experience I've ever had. Some highlights:

This is an ancient Roman bell, it's one of the three ancient Roman artifacts I own. That this bronze bell was once sewn into the hem of someone's clothes thrills me to my core.

This is a small piece of brick from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. The ruins in Rome are crumbling and this small piece of brick ended up getting washed off the building that once held the grandest baths the world has ever seen and it landed on a path I was walking on. Holding a piece of Roman engineering is almost as thrilling as holding a piece of Roman ornament.

These are shells from a beach in Honduras. If you ever want a get away for some solitude,  Honduras fits that bill nicely. The Honduran people are amazing and they need your money. Go.

This is a piece of pumice I fished out of a hillside in Pompeii. This piece of pumice is one of the billions of pieces of pumice spewed out of Mount Vesuvius on August 24th, 79 and buried Pompeii.

This is pumice I pried out of the cliffs in Herculaneum. This stuff looks so harmless now. 

This is a piece of granite from the summit of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California.  Mount Tam was the backdrop to an important period in my life and when I hold onto that rock it's like I'm there all over again.

This is a feather I found on Cat Island in The Bahamas. It once belonged to a common ground dove, which are the most comical birds I've ever had the pleasure to interact with.

This is a piece of quartz from Guanajuato, Mexico. Mexico is a beleaguered country and good news from there is hard to come by in the US press. Mexico is a wonder and it has a history that predates anything on this side of the border by centuries.

My great friends Bob and Rick live just outside of Philadelphia and this is a piece of mica  I retrieved from their woods.

This is a shell from the beach in Positano. I've written about the wonder that is Positano here before and this misshapen shell is a perfect metaphor for the place.

This desiccated tree frog once stowed away in my luggage when I was in Panama. I never knew he was there and by the time I got home he hadn't survived the ordeal.

This is a shell from a beach in Mayreau in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The extreme southern Caribbean is littered with unpopulated islands, many of which are only accessible by sailboat, which is how I got there. Why anyone would set foot on a cruise ship is beyond me.

I bought this ring from an old woman in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica for around 75 cents. It's silver and I wore it for nearly ten years.

This is a piece of lavender I picked from a roadside in France in what seems like a lifetime ago. It's at least 16 years old and it still smells like lavender.

This is a piece of stainless steel I retrieved from a factory parking lot in Germany last winter.

So what do I carry? My history and the stories I've accumulated.

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.