SF, any day

I have hurts-so-good blisters from walking from Midtown to Uptown to Downtown and back to Midtown this morning. Went to ABC Home, teary eyes blinked amorously at everything, then to Fishs Eddy across the street. Got the cups, of course!

It's impossible to highlight everything in that space, but two similar pendant lamps from ABC Home:

Beat Lights, Tom Dixon

Drum set. Not a particularly original design, but isn't this series of pendant lights beautiful for the hand-beaten brass interiors juxtaposed with matte black patinated exterior? Not liking the tall shades too much, but mm! for the wide, flat shades.

The Beat Lights in the Shoreditch House, a private members' club in East London. Oooh!:

And a similarly black and gold pendant lamp in a simpler silhouette:

GE Pendant Light, Kartell, designed by Ferruccio Laviani, £120

It's kind of cheap luxe while not actually being a cheap buy. I suppose this is a defining characteristic of a good deal of modern/designer furniture. Design Within Reach, anyone? A very limited use of the the word "reach."

A less expensive alternative might be Ikea's Kulla pendant lamp, which is steel rather than plastic (for which Kartell is known). Maybe you could gold foil or decoupage the interior?

Kulla Pendant Lamp, Ikea, 70

So I've been sitting in the Rose Reading Room of the NYPL for a while. Beaux-Arts, incredible, tall windows and gorgeous, but all this ornamentation really is too distracting. An art history professor claims that every girl has an Art Nouveau phase - loving long, sinuous lines and depictions of flora/fauna. If this is true, I think I'm over it. Likewise with this Beaux-Arts building - I've hardly swooned for historicism in architecture all day (but did so for the very modern wide Tom Dixon Beat Light). What is wrong with me

Photo: Peter Aaron/Esto


I've really enjoyed hanging out with my uncle's family (not to mention the best non-turducken turkey I've ever had) and walking around this city. Love the logical grid, Flatiron Building, and probable excess of museums, but every assertion of Manhattan-ness that I see, I counteract with growing nostalgia for SF. In other words, NYC faces a huge burden of proof for a very very biased person - I would choose San Francisco, any day!