This is not an occasional thing.

Years ago I used to make sure to write celebratory writings on the occasion of a celebration of an occasion. In other words, back in the days when my head was clearer, before the fuzz began to lay along the meridians and frollocks of the brain and the world didn't quite seem so muddy. On the occasion of the new year, for instance, I'd write something resolutionary. Though even then, back when I had short hair, sometimes very short, and big eyes, sometimes very big, and sported a generally slightly bored look, I wasn't bored. I was consternated: our new year is not necessarily their new year and their new year is not those other people's new year and so is it really the demarcation of anything?

That was probably a sign of early onset. Meanwhile, the helliday tide of family joy and angst (— someone make me up a word mixing those two and I'll send you some pie. Joyangste? Pronounced the french way? Gives a dressiness to it. Jangst? Sounds Freudian. Jongst? Isn't that the name of a famous skier who wrapped himself around a tree in Gstaad? — ) has come and gone, and with it my marathon baking session that nearly melted our kitchen wall to death. Which was a very great thing. The net result of 4 cheesecakes, 7 batches of peanut butter cookies, 4 batches of chocolate chip, a killer batch of twice-baked shortbread, a whole herd of jelly kiss cookies and lots of satellite batches ungapatchka'd together from leftover sturm und drang is an accelerated Kitchen Renovation Plan.

Apparently, and this is switching into confessional blaggage over here so forgive me or skip, I have been, um, yelling for a couple of years about the kitchen. I have no recollection of yelling. Maybe a goddamit the fiftieth-whazztheyeffith time my knife fell between the crack between the dingy 9th-hand tiny stove and the loose scrap of faux formica counter (color: burned marshmallow, from years of someone who apparently liked to flambé her toast), and I therefore had to fish it out using the handle of the swiffer, teasing a mound of old yam shavings and dog hair and vintage mysterianisms into the middle of the kitchen floor where, somewhere in their greasy midst, was the knife.

Maybe, sure, just a little, little curse when the linoleum backsplash absorbed the boiling over tomato-based sweet and sour chicken soup instead of deflected it. Maybe a tiny little noise when the cardboard box of teabags plummeted from the cabinet over the sink into the soaking soup pot, endowing some very fancy Japanese tea with an unwanted iridescent lavender-eucalyptus cast. Just a little squeak.

Worth mentioning, however, that the stove has tantrums. What come are strange spikes in temperature from the oven: bake at 325º can become char at 600º if you're not there to monitor, to cajole, to turn, to readjust. That may have had something to do with the melted wall. And since a marathon baking session is also like pulling triple shifts as a museum guard in the Picasso galleries when the psychotics had their field trip, I may have been a bit distracted from the whole wall thing. Which I did. And was. I was a guard at the Museum of Modern Art, and I did once chase a deranged man through the catacombs between the fake walls during the blockbuster Picasso show.

It's a good thing the wall finally melted. Melting walls speak so much louder than quietly unyelling cooks. But FYI in the spirit of the luncheonette we are not buying the veneer farm or the New New New this or the Shaker farmhouse look or the up-the-value-of-the-house thing. We are not going to spend thousands. I am hoping to keep the atomic-modern metal base cabinet underneath the 1940s sink, and the 1940s sink, and the 1950s'cabin pantry closet, though all are a little — scabby. But the horizontal beadboard trimmed with scraps, the warbled strips of wood paneling, the linoleum backmelt,  the 1970s vinyl faux stone floor tiles that shifted during the Big Melt (the ones around the stove sort of  skated around), are gone yesterday. There is retrofunctional and vintage workable and then there is junkyard dysfunctional. Stay tuned.

Luncheonette x Sartorialist

1980s bittersweet boots in the warmth of the studio, luncheonettevintage

same boots photographed freezing outside on the feet of this adorable girl, thesartorialist

Dog photo of the month

1940s kodacolor, vintagewarehouseny

What do I love about this photo? Who is this man paying attention to, trying to twist to smile for the camera and hold his beloved shepherd at the same time? And does that trio behind him care? Not a whit. They're in their Sunday best. Gloves and hats. And proudly so, with a little turn of the ankle, the better to show a tiny bit of leg. They know what matters.

The photographer snapped the shutter a bit too early, they probably said later, over coffee and cake. I'd disagree. And look at the shadow on the ground, that perfect shepherd profile, the tongue. The clearest face in the whole photo.

And I am a dog person. So here it is, the resplendent intersection of dog, vintage, and story. In its kodacolor glory.

And then the girlie flash 

reno tart earrings by katinkapinka

1950s cocoa gem clutch, small earth vintage

anchor hocking jar, sarahanntiques

becasine vintage clogs with faux fur, bOmode

1950s seamprufe slip, studio1950

And then there's the punk roots, riffled deep into the ground

Pushing that pesky heritage envelope once again

1950s McCoy flying duck planter

heritage windowsill megabricabrac

1980s bittersweet georgia logger boots

heritage clodhoppers

1980s honeydipper stetson fedora

heritage miami beach

1960s bearclaw and sterling silver pendant

heritage illegal

1970s yam fries sweater vest

heritage acrylic

1940s brass keepsake pocketbook photo album

heritage miss you

Going overboard on Fishing with Dynamite by the ACL guy

Michael over at ACL wrote a post about trying to find masculine (ahem) vintage on etsy. And got a whole flop-dead school of responses. But in comparing it to the assumedly masculine pasttime of fishing with dynamite, he got a lot of people kind of -- rolling over on their bellies and flashing silver. To push the metaphor right into the hook, I like ACL, but got steamed — so unlike a masculine preparation for fish. How girlish of me. So my comment became a letter became an essay. And while I wait for it to be moderated, I get to put it here. How ballsy.

your comment is awaiting moderation.

[Herewith, a most likely unecessary long comment that I nevertheless feel inclined to complete. Maybe it's the girl in me, crying to be heard... how feminine of me. Or maybe it's my response, after reading ACL for so long, to the utter (and at times blessed) long windedness of your concept with my own longwinded retort.]

I read ACL fannishly and had continued to do so with great respect until this post of a faux pas fell from the sky like a chunk of late-1950s male-attitude scrap metal and fell smack dab on my enthusiasm. I don’t think anyone would deign, or stoop, to accuse you of being too masculine, despite your penchant for glorifying the American Obvious and contributing to the New Heritage movement, in more of its maleness than its, let’s just call it non male-ness. Fine. It’s your blog. But you also are part of the grand mission to influence a new appetite for the same stuff. Aka the Plaid For Its Glorious Plaidness Should Cost a Lot of Money movement. A more obsessive AL fan may be able to point to comments #47 or #52 on a particular Sunday and show that someone has, however. And I mostly like your taste regardless, having grown up in Brooks Brothers, silly girl that I am.

All sites have their ethos and it is a nice practice, in the 21st century — for crying out loud — to accept their leanings (hello), and yet try and avoid those old retro-vintage tropes of snap-judgement and establishment sneer-age that make the flip side of vintage so sad. That would be the ‘isms. The ‘isms, as in racism, let’s just say, or sexism, let’s just say, are what smear that heritage veneer just a giant bit. Those lovely hunting shots you keep posting with such reverence for the scent of Kodachrome: scratch a fellow in a perfectly worn and faded old duck hunting jacket and ask him just what he thinks of that new family moved in down the road? Noting against the guy, but there’s a whole package to be considered here.

So the trick, as I see it, would be to avoid any leanings toward that rather unpleasant, American’s-worst-vernacular direction. Unfortunately you seem to be willing to not avoid. Are you so swayed by the beauty of a well-cut boot that you’re willing to vote the whole ticket? Which way, in fact, do you lean?

What you say about etsy (ew, girls….), you don’t even say that well. You whine about it, and then your finds are completely domestic (ew, women’s work). Perhaps what makes them masculine is that they are well photographed? Or they lack flowers? But a flour sifter? Mr. Canvas Duck wouldn’t be caught near that back in the day. And you, mr. pitch-perfect quiet marketing guy, don’t even credit the shops you found them in (unless in my fervor I have missed something, in which case I apologize). You certainly don’t offer up any information about them.

Is that for fear, possibly, of allowing the impurity of their more girlish (ew) wares of filtering into and polluting the boy’s club aesthetic of your stalwart blog? So you’re also not telling the entire truth here. How, sorry, but really — How incredibly and sadly and wrongly American heritage of you.

You should be celebrating etsy. You should salute it.

Visually functional

There is a euphemism going around the kitchen this morning as I sort through padlocks and hinges and combination locks and things that look like tools. Visually functional. It's not a contradiction to a writer. Is it.

Functional visually

1920s combination lock, luncheonettevintage

That's the other euphemism. It means it works too. Old string, manila tag with industrial reinforced punchhole, ancient, now defunct but venerable maker of locks, handwritten — in fountain pen ink and a careful hand — combination and name. Tidy. Analog. You could call this one a heritage lock.

Black and white and etsy all over



I love this treasury. Hard to explain to non-believer's, I guess, but treasuries are the ritual of the etsy observer: assemble lovely items in a group based on a theme, contact everyone. Like throwing confetti to the skies, sometimes. Sometimes it's better, like filling a pontiac with Christmas presents and driving to Ohio, where fruitcake and peppermints await.

But this time, which is best of all, it made etsy's front page this afternoon, setting off a flurry of graphic, elegant happiness worldwide.

Search & rescue  & recovery

Katie and Scout, human remains detection K-9 team on Eagle Valley Search Dogs.

Out of line

Catalog cover: Carin Riley, Belinda (2010), Out of Line. Slag Gallery, NYC

Writing the catalog essay for the spring drawings show at Slag Gallery in NYC was a blast. These are anything but prosaic works on paper and the artists are tremendous. I grabbed the bit and ran with it.  An excerpt, or read the whole essay.

Before we are taught to perceive a line in terms of letters and words, we respond to line as pure line: scrambles, curves, loops, straights. Each shape has a different hum, a different vibration, character. Molly Stevens’s giant ink drawings on paper (Ink Mountain, 2009) have that primal quality, have palpable personas. In an elemental motion, the line surges from the bottom to the top, hovers up there, then plunges down to the baseline. Tall as humans, a pair of lines double each other, one awkwardly spooning the other. These are giants entreating, murmuring, humming. Stevens draws them with a brush attached to a stick in one continuous motion from beginning to end, placing herself at a distance from the page, a distance that allows for accidents, for change. There are countless attempts, but only occasionally does it resonate. There’s one in a heap of them in which the lines make the right sound.

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