If you mishandle a ceramic plate or a water glass, it’ll chip or crack. In which case, it is likely rendered less useful and reliable. There are no easy fixes for either material. Sure, you can glue a plate or vessel back together, and you can sand down a rough spot on the edge of a glass, but as a consequence, its original function is somehow downgraded. (Although if you’ve ever seen a pottery vessel stitched together as a result of a break, you’ll certainly appreciate its beauty.) Believe it or not, I am not much of a collector. At least not intentionally. And these days I definitely think twice before adding anything to our lives. But, I looked around me the other day and realized that I have many many pieces of enameled metal: containers and plates and vases and trays, all of which get used almost daily. The large oval platters pictured here are, I confess, a recent purchase from Bought & Sold (the rustic branch of Lee Hartwell Antiques), one of my favorite shops in Callicoon. My personal feeling is that enamelware only gets better with time. The scratches, the dents, even the wearing away of the enamel all add character, but never really end up compromising its use. Unless we are talking about a cooking pot, which I’ve heard isn’t wise to use after the coating wears away. And certainly the most abused pieces can end up with holes. But a soldered patch can bring those items back to life. Here and here are some other pieces I’ve posted about before. The cup is a daily reminder to live simply.

A real ad from Craigslist in SLO (Saint Luis Obispo). Thanks Sandy for sending it my way!

I tried so hard. I dated a girl from Portland. I criticized cheese. I applied the term artisanal to every inanimate object that went in or on my body. I burned and singed my forearms just to make it look like I was going to culinary school. I grew Carol Brady hair. I got itchy from the finest flannel and I cut off circulation from the waist down with jeans that made my ass look like an elevator button.

. . .And I rode a fixie.

No more. It’s all gotta go. The hair, the macrame, the texting overages, the Netflix and Hulu Plus. The record collection (have you ever tried to box up and move an effin stack of LPs?!) . . .and the bike. Pictured below is the bike. It’s beautiful. It’s got red rims. Red chain. Red tires. Red handlebars shaped like devil horns — because it’s the devil.

The guys at the hipster store don’t tell you fixies don’t stop. So I will. Fixies don’t stop. Stop sign? Fixie don’t care. Car coming turning in front of you at a three-way stop? Fixie laugh. Want Chipotle? Nope. Fixie want protein powder/beet/purple carrot/bee pollen juice and won’t stop till he gets it. Fixie has a mind of his own.

Yesterday, Fixie got pulled over twice by SLO PD in three hours. In six months time, Fixie collected more tickets than a scalper for a Radiohead show at Hollywood Bowl.

I’m selling this badboy and tipping the dregs of my last PBR tall boy in his memory.

The (Devil) Fixie:
Cinelli Gazzetta Frame (2011)
Crane Creek and Origin 8 components

$1,100 ($1,600 new)

http://slo.craigslist.org/bik/3050996290.html

BTW, a Fixie is a fixed-gear bicycle.

When my friend Molly gave me this book years ago, I couldn’t figure out if she was sending me some kind of subtle message. Did she think I had issues? No, she did not. It’s just a great book. This volume may be a catalog of one man’s fears, but what’s crazy is that it turn out to be an inventory of all of our fears. More or less anyway. Hats off to Creativity Explored, in San Francisco, for giving Michael the support to create something so unique, yet so very universal. For more info on the book, go here.

This is a personal little tidbit: When I was 7 and my brother was 9, my mother decided to move us to Paris. She had visited a few months prior and left her notebook in a cafe. She decided it was fate. Or was it serendipity? Anyway, instead of relocating via airplane (boring!), she opted for the slow boat. The S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam. The very same ship pictured here. How she afforded it still baffles me. It was the last transatlantic voyage for this vessel and its Dutch crew. Any passage thereafter was spent in the Caribbean. We departed from a pier on New York’s west side. All the requisite streamers and champagne were there to see us off. It had to be one of the MOST exciting days…ever. Until my mother realized that she had left her luggage sitting on our porch back in Philadelphia. Oops. She was a trooper though, and made the best of an awkward situation. She also quickly made friends, all of whom were happy to lend her a dress here, a pantsuit there (It was the 70s). But mostly she just wore the same thing. We were supposed to dock in Le Havre, but there was a dockworkers strike so we couldn’t make port. Through some stroke of genius, or luck, or both, the trip ended up being extended for a few extra days before finally anchoring in Rotterdam. Photo via Old Chum via Electrospark.

Great piece in the NYT yesterday morning about a group of individuals in the Netherlands who, as a small but meaningful way to help reduce waste in the community, have organized the first ever Repair Cafe. Got an iron that’s burning your shirts, a sweater with holes, a vacuum cleaner not sucking up its share of dust and dirt…well, just bring all of the above and more to the repair cafe, and a group of talented and devoted volunteer fix-it practitioners will tend to your needs. As a result of their original success, thirty additional groups have started repair cafes across the country. There are so many things that are right about this program!! The primary one being that it takes a real stab at the planned obsolescence that has become so readily accepted in our material world. It brings to mind one of my earliest posts on this blog: The Repair Manifesto from the very thoughtful people over at platform21, a site that is sadly no longer.