Let's keep Labor in Labor Day

And by that I mean an appreciation for labor, both the organized and the casual kind. It's become fashionable to ignore the accomplishments of the Labor Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but every single working adult today owes those brave men and women a tremendous debt. They put their lives on the line to guarantee themselves and their descendants a better life.

The Andrew Carnegies and Henry Clay Fricks of the world left a great legacy and they accomplished great things. However, it was their immigrant labor force and their refusal to be treated like slaves any longer that left a more lasting and widespread mark on our culture. Labor Day was intended to be a day to commemorate those same, unionized workers. This link, from the US Department of Labor, gives a brief explanation of why today is a US holiday.

The American Labor movement has been controversial since its violent birth well over a century ago. The last 30 years of American politics and economic practice have done a thorough job of demonizing organized labor and its history, but it's a lie. It's a campaign of lies actually and it's been unrelenting. But at the end of the day, Exxon and IBM did not come up with the five-day, 40-hour work week out of the goodness of their hearts. Just about every idea you have and I have about work and life balance came about at the insistence of organized labor. Despite what you might think of the AFL-CIO or the UAW, you're still standing on their shoulders. History works like that.

There was some great literature that came out of that era. If you've never read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, or Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives, pick up a copy of either. Or both.






Better yet, pick up a copy of Paul Krause's The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892. You'll never look at your work life the same way again.






I'll put away my Norma Rae routine for now. I'm seeing clients today, so there's no rest for this American laborer. Whatever you're doing today, I hope it's fun.

Dirty money, filthy lucre; a designer's confession

A long, long time ago, I worked for a fancy schmancy kitchen design studio. We worked the very high end of the market and with the help of a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, we had a reputation as the high class joint where somebody with money to burn could go to get a kitchen or a bath straight out of a magazine. In fact, a lot of our stuff ended up in magazines. We had a reputation for being an ethical, service-oriented firm peopled with designers who were completely committed to their clients' needs, wants and whims.

I worked there for two years and in those two years I worked on a couple of interesting projects, but most of it was just overpriced exercises in more is more. It was pretty soul-deadening. My big project though, was a home that was under construction for the entire two years that I was at the fancy schmancy studio. It was a grand home; a complete, period-perfect reproduction of a plantation house. We were contracted to design all of the cabinetry and casework in the entire house. It was a tremendous opportunity to learn how to design such things as coffered ceilings and wainscoted walls. It took a year-and-a-half to complete the designs.

Finally, when we priced out all of the cabinetry and casework the first time, the numbers came back at 1.3 million dollars. And no, million is not a typo. Eventually, we edited down the designs in the project and got it to a more palatable but still galling $400,000. A couple of hours before my boss and I were to present that revised proposal to the architects, he and I met to review the numbers one last time. When I was digging through the internal, itemized price sheets I came across an $85,000 charge that didn't have any kind of history or back up. The $85,000 had been folded into the total and since the client never saw the itemized back ups, no one would really know that it was in there. I asked what that charge was and he informed me that it was to pay for the builder's kitchen renovation.

I wanted to vomit. I am not a naif, I know that payola and kick backs go on all the time in my industry. But I'd never seen so naked a grab in my life. What ever respect I had for my boss or the contractor went out the window at that very moment. I swallowed my revulsion and made it through the meeting. I went along with it and said nothing. I was a junior designer on the project and I told myself that it wasn't my place to make waves about the graft I'd stumbled across. I left the firm a couple of weeks after that, and I never got to see the completed house. It didn't matter by then. In my mind the whole thing was tainted and I had a hard enough time looking at the plans, seeing the real thing would have done me in. Many years later, that situation still bothers me.

The payola, the graft, I stumbled across that afternoon wasn't an isolated case. I don't mean just at that studio either. "Paid referrals" are a common practice throughout the industry and I react to them now the way I did then. I'm repulsed. I think the practice is sleazy and unethical. I don't pay for referrals and I won't accept money for one. Take the money you would pay me and charge your customer less. What a concept!

I'm hooked into a network of tradespeople and suppliers I know and trust. When I refer my clients to my tile setter, or my electrician, or my lighting supplier, I want them to know that I am referring to the best person I know for the job at hand. I want them to know that they will be taken care of. Their job will be completed as promised and they will be charged a fair, though not necessarily a low, price. I want them to know too that the fair price they're paying doesn't include a kick back to me.

I was reminded of that whole situation this week when I got a phone call from an interior designer I'd never met. She had two clients who wanted to renovate a kitchen but that a kitchen plan was beyond her skill set. As we talked about the job she was proposing, she told me that her clients wanted something nice, but they were pretty price-sensitive. She then told me that she was willing to waive her usual 10% referral fee and "only" wanted me to tack $1000 onto the job total for her. Only. This was a sentence or two after she described them as price-sensitive.

I told her that I'd love to talk to her clients but that I wasn't going to give her a dime. There was a stoney silence on the other end of the line. "Really?" she asked in a near whisper. "Why is that?"

"Because it's sleazy," I said. "It's unethical and it makes projects cost more than they should. If you're any good at what you do, you should be able to make a living from the fees and commissions you earn. Payola is dirty money, it's a used car salesman move. I'm not a used car salesman. Are you?"

"Ummm," she nearly whispered, "maybe we're not a good match."

It was the smartest thing she said during the three minutes she was in my life.

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New York New York, a wonderful town...

Yesterday's FedEx brought me an envelope, there's nothing unusual about that. However, when I opened it, out fell a brown leather wallet. Not a billfold mind you, but a full-size, breast pocket wallet. In it was my itinerary for my trip to New York on Thursday.

The fine folks at Brizo are flying me to New York for a series of meetings with their marketing and product development departments. I love this kind of stuff. Really. I find product development to be fascinating, and it makes me feel like a player when I get the chance to go behind the scenes. So I'll spend all day Thursday meeting the people behind the brand.

New York Fashion Week starts next week too. And speaking of feeling like a player, Brizo is taking me to the runway show of designer Jason Wu on Friday.

Wu's show is at the St. Regis Hotel on East 55th Street.

After the show, we're going to the after party. It's a mingle in a penthouse, a room full of fashionistas and assorted glitterati. This will be a gas. I would never do something like this if I were left to my own devices. But you know, some of my life's best experiences have come from times when I've been thrown into something. I don't really know very much about fashion beyond a handful of names., but I've been a fevered follower of Project Runway from day one. Thanks to that show, I have an understanding of fashion as an art form I would not have otherwise. I'll be sure to watch The Devil Wears Prada before I go too, as a cramming exercise of course.

So despite my appreciation for the arty nature of Brizo's offerings, I never quite understood their connection with Jason Wu and why I was going to his show as their guest. Then I saw this video and it explained it all perfectly. It's a beautifully-produced spot, so pull up a chair, it's a good watch.




I'll continue to post while I'm in New York, though my schedule may be a little off. I'll be Twittering my thumbs off the whole time too, so if you're a Twitterer come find me @saintpetepaul.

I MUST have this chair!

Mein Gott in Himmel! Three cheers for the artistic use of found materials.

Builder and visionary Dan Phillips on a walkway made from
Osage Orange branches. Osage Orange is a wood species usually
thought of as useless scrub.

Yesterday's Home section of The New York Times featured a story about a different kind of home builder in Huntsville, Texas. Dan Phillips builds affordable housing from discarded and reused building materials and the results of his labors are as sensible as they are sustainable.

These are the bottoms of wine bottles made into
a stained glass panel in a Dutch door.

Since 1997, Phillips' construction company, The Phoenix Commotion, has built 14 homes in Huntsville. On the whole those 14 homes were built from the ground up and 80% of their materials were salvaged from construction sites, hauled out of trash heaps or simply found along the road.

These house numbers are made from the bones of cattle
from a nearby slaughterhouse.

Homes built by The Phoenix Commotion are quirky and oddly beautiful. There's a rhythm to the images here and patterns emerge from the seeming randomness of these found objects. The man's a real visionary and what he's building is the anti-tract home, the anti-poverty trap. What Phillips and Phoenix Commotion are doing too is shooting holes in the idea that "going green" means spending great wads of green.

This is a cork floor made from grouted in wine corks.

Too often, what's marketed in the US as "green" is synonymous with expensive and "going green" is an opportunity to strike a sanctimonious pose. What gets lost in the sticky gobs of marketing speak is the idea of sustainability. Sustainability's all about the wise use of resources, and so many of "green" products spawned by consumerism have nothing to do with using resources wisely and everything to do with the pose. The projects from The Phoenix Commotion profiled in The Times yesterday are a brilliant example of an anti- "green" green and represent the spirit embodied in the word sustainability. Read the article, it's a great story.

This ceiling is made from discarded frame samples from a frame shop.

This is a roof made from mis-matched roofing shingles and
arranged by color into stripes.

This is an exterior wall made from discarded lumber. Beautiful!

And of course, The Chair. It's made from chair parts and cattle bones.
The vertebrae finials remind me of doves.

All photos by Michael Stravato for The New York Times.