My woman (and myself to a lesser degree) has been looking for some new plates and stuff, so when I walked by Tart on Melrose and saw these very, very cool plates in the window, I had to take a photo and show them to her. The store was closed at the time, so I couldn’t go in for a closer look, but I figured we could get them online later…

Sure we could… for $80 per plate! Awww damn. A little out of my price range… I mean, even the coffee mug was $70!

I need to remember to get rich so I can have fancy plates one day.

If the above clip is any indication, Lagos would be one hell of a trip.

I should remember to visit places like this…

(via Gridskipper)

After an hour delay on the tarmac and a 13 hour flight next to a crying baby and a coughing old geezer, I finally made it to the very cool Park Hotel in Shiodome Towers in Tokyo! With a view like the one above of Tokyo Tower from our room’s very large window, I already love the hotel. The bed’s nice, the lobby seems cool with live music most nights and it seems pretty central to a lot of places worth checking out.

I even managed to have my first udon noodles of the trip last night at some small noodle shop around the corner where you ordered from a vending machine, then brought the ticket spit out to some tiny lady hiding in a tiny kitchen who whipped up your meal in what seemed like 2 seconds. Of course the vending machine was all in Japanese with only 3 photos and something like 50 options, but picking dinner Deal or No Deal style seemed to work well.

I have to remember to pull myself from the live broadcasts of Lovely Complex and get out of the hotel as much as possible.

Three years ago I went to Hong Kong for a vacation because after the first SARS outbreak, it was extremely cheap to travel there and I’d never been to Asia before. One thing I imagine every westerner is immediately struck by when going to someplace like Hong Kong is how everyone lives right on top of each other. There’s just no space between people’s personal spaces. The funny thing is that there’s plenty of room in Hong Kong for people to spread out, they just don’t.

I had somewhat forgotten about this whole phenomenon until I ran across a post entitled Michael Wolf and the Architecture of Density over at Magical Urbanism. Then it all started to come back.

Don’t forget the multitude of clothelines poking out of buildings like thorns, the bamboo used to build monstrous residential units, and the bizarre alcoves where people must look out of their windows right into someone else’s.