In Love
Photo by Jennifer Graham Photography
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Our Italian Honeymoon
A few windows into our beautiful views from Lake Como in Italy. We stayed in Varenna, hiked to San Martino Church for the stunning views, and indulged in delicious Italian food. See Steve below about to partake in the homemade sausage at Cavatappi, a small local restaurant with only five tables lead by a great chef known locally to be a little "crazy", hence the delicious food they say.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Views from London
We're larger than life in Elstree, outside of London, where we spent our first afternoon on the other side of the Atlantic in nature of all places.
Enjoying a delicious bite of Steve's favorite meal at Wagamama, Yasai Yaki Soba. Can you taste it?
Marination
So we’ve already defined cities, and we’ve already defined love (as imperfect as those definitions may be). Now we ask – what does one have to do with the other? How can cities facilitate love? What kind of cities would love build?
I don’t think I’ve ever asked those questions before. But they’re blowing my mind, because these are exactly the two questions that sit at the junction of my personal and professional lives. A junction that, I realize, I’ve just arrived at.
Who knows if this contemplation will yield something worthy, or how long I’ll need to marinate on these questions to yield something juicy. But they certainly warrant serious contemplation. Which I will begin post-haste, over a seven-course meal and possibly a bottle of vino rosso at an intimate ristorante listening to Lake Como lap the foot of the Italian Alps. Even if you can’t join us there, please join us in the contemplation, because I don’t think I’m getting out of this roundabout alone (cannot…get…left).
I don’t think I’ve ever asked those questions before. But they’re blowing my mind, because these are exactly the two questions that sit at the junction of my personal and professional lives. A junction that, I realize, I’ve just arrived at.
Who knows if this contemplation will yield something worthy, or how long I’ll need to marinate on these questions to yield something juicy. But they certainly warrant serious contemplation. Which I will begin post-haste, over a seven-course meal and possibly a bottle of vino rosso at an intimate ristorante listening to Lake Como lap the foot of the Italian Alps. Even if you can’t join us there, please join us in the contemplation, because I don’t think I’m getting out of this roundabout alone (cannot…get…left).
Milan Fashion Report
If you’ve ever spent an hour at the Milano Centrale train station during rush hour, you might ask yourself – what’s all the hype about the fashion here? I’m not saying people were frumpy. But many were in a state of near-frump. And at best, they reached the heights of fashion-lite. For the younger, casual set, it’s all v-neck t-shirts with swirly designs like the side of a recreational vehicle, possible supplemented by incoherent English phrases and made up American sports team (although I am a huge fan of San Diego Regulation Baseball Club). For the professional set, they looked like they were pouring out of the cubicles of some Class B office tower ready to ride BART back to wherever. Maybe that’s the kind of commuter that is served by Milano Centrale (as opposed to the St. Albans PM express out of St. Pancras, which we accidentally rode on Tuesday, which was full of very sharply dressed banker or banker-proximate types). And I thought I'd look out of place in jeans - bah.
This now concludes my first and possibly last ever fashion blog. We now return to the regular programming.
This now concludes my first and possibly last ever fashion blog. We now return to the regular programming.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
First Love
London is my first love, as cities go, and where I fell in love with cities. So any time I return it’s a bit of a nostalgia tour. Come with me, won’t you (as Abbie just had to), as I believe there is much here to explain who I am today.
When I arrived in 1992, I’d never lived in a city before, and had really no conception of what urban living was like. Well, you can imagine the introduction that London provided. I was enrolled for a semester at the august London School of Economics. I joined the school’s Tequila Society and the boxing team (punching each other to the uplifting sounds of Stereo MCs). I ate in inordinate amount of kebabs. I navigated the wonderful public transit system. I stood in awe of all the ways people were, how they expressed themselves, both in keeping with and opposing their heritage. I was inspired to be different. I could reinvent myself in the way an awkward college kid needs to reinvent himself.
I came back in 1994 to continue the process. While the rest of my friends moved to NYC to become bankers and lawyers, I worked as a dorm manager for a building full of student from Beaver College. I parlayed my philosophy degree into a series of waitering jobs, culminating in me serving a fruit juice to Bjork at the original Wagamama. I moshed to Mudhoney. I taught myself to play guitar. I was on my own, for the first time. I was still an immature arrogant little wiseass. But I was heading in the right direction. When I was emotionally deported (i.e., my work visa expired and I had no practical black market-able skills), I dreamt I was moving back to London every night for months, sad to wake up in DC (where I’d relocated to, trying to recapture the magic). Only when I moved to San Francisco in January 1996 did those dreams of London subside, replaced by the joy of my new home.
I’ve been back to London four times since, and I recognize that on each visit I spend more time being nostalgic as seeing the City anew. I return to the old dorm, eat noodles at Wagamama, pay my respects to the Arnolfinis at the National Gallery and Ophelia at the Tate. Only on our last day of this trip did I realize, in fact, that I had shrinkwrapped London in my mind, bemoaning any changes instead of celebrating the freshness I loved about her in the first place. Especially how the whole world lives here. How the density is supportive of hundreds of walkable, overlapping neighborhoods. How the incredible transportation network serves millions of people. And how those conditions have transformed a stodgy, hierarchical, declining society back into one of the world’s most vibrant and transformative cities.
We came to London first because it was a soft landing (many thanks again to our hosts DJ, Keely, and baby Isla). We leave rested and ready to see with those fresh eyes, even the city I’d put under wraps nearly 20 years ago.
When I arrived in 1992, I’d never lived in a city before, and had really no conception of what urban living was like. Well, you can imagine the introduction that London provided. I was enrolled for a semester at the august London School of Economics. I joined the school’s Tequila Society and the boxing team (punching each other to the uplifting sounds of Stereo MCs). I ate in inordinate amount of kebabs. I navigated the wonderful public transit system. I stood in awe of all the ways people were, how they expressed themselves, both in keeping with and opposing their heritage. I was inspired to be different. I could reinvent myself in the way an awkward college kid needs to reinvent himself.
I came back in 1994 to continue the process. While the rest of my friends moved to NYC to become bankers and lawyers, I worked as a dorm manager for a building full of student from Beaver College. I parlayed my philosophy degree into a series of waitering jobs, culminating in me serving a fruit juice to Bjork at the original Wagamama. I moshed to Mudhoney. I taught myself to play guitar. I was on my own, for the first time. I was still an immature arrogant little wiseass. But I was heading in the right direction. When I was emotionally deported (i.e., my work visa expired and I had no practical black market-able skills), I dreamt I was moving back to London every night for months, sad to wake up in DC (where I’d relocated to, trying to recapture the magic). Only when I moved to San Francisco in January 1996 did those dreams of London subside, replaced by the joy of my new home.
I’ve been back to London four times since, and I recognize that on each visit I spend more time being nostalgic as seeing the City anew. I return to the old dorm, eat noodles at Wagamama, pay my respects to the Arnolfinis at the National Gallery and Ophelia at the Tate. Only on our last day of this trip did I realize, in fact, that I had shrinkwrapped London in my mind, bemoaning any changes instead of celebrating the freshness I loved about her in the first place. Especially how the whole world lives here. How the density is supportive of hundreds of walkable, overlapping neighborhoods. How the incredible transportation network serves millions of people. And how those conditions have transformed a stodgy, hierarchical, declining society back into one of the world’s most vibrant and transformative cities.
We came to London first because it was a soft landing (many thanks again to our hosts DJ, Keely, and baby Isla). We leave rested and ready to see with those fresh eyes, even the city I’d put under wraps nearly 20 years ago.
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