london

i am in london, and man, it was cold the past few days. luckily it's in the 50s F [15ºC] today! i'm staying in shoreditch house and i must say, membership does has it's privileges – best stay ever in london [london, like NYC, is a city where even paying $200+/night does NOT guarantee a nice room, or even good water pressure in your shower]. i just wish my room had a bath tub...

so, i got the most of the cultural stuff out of the way on monday, as it was a bank holiday here: design museum, tate modern, and even a show on royal british armor at london tower [my friend darren dragged me to that one]. great shows at both the design museum and tate but it bothers me deeply that my products are in neither of the 2's gift shops [but i won't get into that here].

darren also arranged tickets to see hair, which he did the press for. it was a bit of a mind fuck for me on a few levels. i'm not into musicals, but hair is one i grew up listening to because of my parents brief hippy phase [my mom's huge afro and colourful dashikis were part of my aesthetic influences] and also, the drama club in my high school did a production of it [against my best advise, inner city NYC public school with maybe 5% white kids is not the most supportive environment for a hippy musical. no one came]. the mind fuck part is really about NYC – a city that spawned jazz, folk music [still can't get my head around that], glam rock, punk, disco, AND hip hop is so different now, it's hard to process how much has changed even since i was in high school and i wonder how a city like new york will propel itself into the future. london seems so motivated by their olympics, shanghai by the the world expo...why is NYC so not interested in big events to force major improvements to infrastructure? of course, the federal government is part of the problem with nyc being bled dry of tax revenue, but i'm not an articulate enough writer to address this complex issue up...just mentioning it in the context of what went through my brain while watching a production of a musical.

anyway, excited to meet with illustrator extraordinaire, ken chung, go for a tour of the royal society of arts HQ, meet with the ilove dust team...all between now and friday when i return to NYC.