london

the last leg of this business trip is to london, which is a city i know well and absolutely love. my impressions of all cities change each trip and i've been coming often to london for the past 18 years, but i remember my first impression was formed when i spent a week in mumbai/bombay after my first trip – that london is the great mother/father of cities and New York and Mumbai are the half-siblings of travel/conquest/trade – each raised in a different time. and even though the siblings grew up and developed on different continents and different times, one can see the seeds of utopian urbanism in the parent. i see this when i visit all the post colonial cities including sydney and even hong kong – i actually feel like alice through the rabbit hole traveling to alternate realities of the same place or perhaps the cities are morphing through time and just the people are concurrent to my age...i'll devote a separate entry to my musings on utopian urbanism as i see them applied in various cities.

so needless to say, when i'm here, i never have a dearth of things to do and people to see. this trip is no exception.

day 1: dan, my friend and former coworker from my london days as creative director at reuters came in to meet me at the glamorous metropolitan hotel [i got a good rate by london standards from tablet hotels, check out the site here. i booked my rome (the pulitzer hotel which i highly recommend) hotel via them as well. it's a great resource for design savvy travelers like me as an ugly room/hotel can really depress the aesthetically sensitive]. we had lunch at a little pub in mayfair near the hotel that specializes in polish and mexican food [i did not make that up]. we both had the wild boar sausage with mushroom sauce and mash – amazingly deliscious. we then went to the london design museum which always impresses. the had a show on industrial design on one floor, a photography exhibition and a retrospective of richard rogers architects work. the design museum of london is something that the cooper hewitt in NYC needs to study more. i truly feel like the collections and shows are curated by design professionals whereas the cooper hewitt [the american museum of design, part of the smithsonian in in nyc] seems guided by corporate sponsors and populist trends with little research on the true innovators in particular genres. that said, the london design museum could be a bit more international, for example, why are my designs not in the collection and not in the shop? [dear reader, please feel free to email them yourselves and ask them for an answer, their website is here]. moreover, why am i not in the cooper hewitt? [again dear reader, feel free to research and email/contact their curators from their website here. i am an american designer and the cooper hewitt is the national design museum!] THEN we had dinner with mia and kevin who have a lovely toddler named george who was born in my 2 year absence from london. he is adorable. i left them to meet darren at the british museum which is open late on fridays now...so overall...lot's of culture in one day.

day 2: a bit of window shopping and visited selfridges to check out nooka there as well as their new concept store within the store, the wonder room. selfridges is a great store and really merchandises well. they are also early adopters of nooka, so check em out there when you're in the UK. at the moment, nooka is on the 4th floor in the men's department but will soon migrate to the wonder room. i'll update the blog when that happens. i also went to primark, which is the uk version of h&m but even less expensive – it was a ZOO, so i'll go back monday morning to really check out the goods [i can't shop in a crowded shop]. talking of zoos, i met darren at the london zoo where he is a fellow and we had v.i.p. treatment – i got to pet a lemur named dana who was so sweet and affectionate – an incredibly memorable experience. their butterfly exhibition is also amazing with the insects bred on-premises and they are quite tame. not as big as the bronx zoo, but well worth a visit.

i think that's enough for one blog entry. no?

elton john in venice

on wednesday night, i had the pleasure of seeing elton john play live in piazza san marco in venice! it was a concert to raise money for the maintenance of the square, and it was packed with over 4500 people in the open air event, just elton john, a grand piano, and the night. the last time i saw elton john was when i was still in junior high school and he performed with a full band and numerous costume changes, and i must say, seeing him perform with just his piano is preferable. he stuck to the old stuff, which was good as far as i'm concerned, and though he doesn't hit the same high notes on his recordings of the 70s, but he's still a great performer. needless to say, the setting made it all the more magical.

here are some pics, and special thanks to roberto of nooka italia for arranging the last minute trip to venice! i personally love the backlit foto of the guy with the beard in the first row.

i can write more about venice but i think wikipedia does a better job, but we had a great meal afterwards with great company.

i'd like to write about where you can buy nooka in italia but i'm still waiting for a list from roberto.....

in london now and let me say, gatwick was a nightmare....more on that later perhaps?

high school musical spoof...

breaking hollywood news on my blog? it's possible...

i met the lovely and talented marisa lauren at the nooka party at ddc lab in los angeles last month and we've been emailing back and forth since [we are members of each others mutual admiration societies] so i was excited to hear that she's now filming "Private High Musical", a "High School Musical" spoof to be released sometime in 2009. as you know from this blog, i'm more of an indie/alternative guy here but i don't live in a secluded hipster cave – i know that high school musical is hugely popular:)

these are totally unofficial photos from the artist, but make sure to check her page for official updates when they become available. her site is here. and doesn't she look great! she's well on her way to pop stardom i think. note on foto#2, that is a candy cigarette. also, on another note, we are developing a worldtime nooka, but until it is released, you can do what marisa does – wear more than one nooka!

from sunny at HOT rome italia...

nookanooka in rome

der nookanooka wurde über Berliner Himmel entdeckt

my trip to berlin is winding down. i got to see my friends, do some shopping and visit the holocaust memorial near the newly opened u.s. embassy. last night, after dinner at a beer garden [i drank this thing called berliner weissen which is bright green woodruff syrup in a light wheat beer] i met yuna at platoon, an art organization that does some cool stuff in korea of all places [as well as locally and in europe]. i signed up as a member of their platoon and got a membership dog tag. their website is here. berlin is full of great art spaces and it seems every night is a party right in the museums and galleries . we hit a photo installation on one street and then a dj party at the KW [kunstwerk] after platoon. the dj at KW was amazing but the cops came and made them turn the volume down at midnight.

foto is of a nookanooka near alexanderplatz. next stop...rome!

nooka loves berlin

day 4 in berlin and i am writing my blog in a laundrymat as i've run out of things to wear, and even though i do love to shop, the weak dollar has made even that thought painful [i am a practical person at heart!]. germany, like scandinavia is a region nooka should be a big star in, but we're having a slow start – so here i is! (i also have friends and godkids here to visit, so it's a great coincidence that our distributor for germania is located here as well)

day one was great! falko picked me up at the airport and took me to my über-chic hotel, the velvet oranienburgerstrasse. we later met up with ben, one of his sales people who is hollywood actor handsome [see foto]. before that though, i spent the whole afternoon trying to find a usb-ethernet adaptor as the hotel does not have wifi [luckily i know my way around berlin, but it was still difficult to find. i thought i had packed mine, but it turned out to be a dvi plug! anyway, bought one only to find out the hotel has problems getting macs online even on ethernet! between caled to NYC and going to a cafe next door, i finally got online. needless to say, there are very few open wifi connections in berlin so my iphone is offline].

we had a great german dinner and discussed strategy. it was very productive to do face to face as we had never met. as nooka is successful in 2 different types of stores and press in the US, it was confusing to how to approach in germany. also, germans like to see a brand on the market for a while before they are comfortable buying. many things to study to fine tune our communications as honestly, as a start-up and a small company, we do not have a full time marketing department to craft brand messages in every language. it's exciting to identify new things to improve though and it seems that the new photography and look book will appeal well to the german fashion market and we may even do a party like the one we did in LA last month here in berlin, but with a more fashion-focus.

i had a wonderful time riding a rental bicyce ALL over [rode one to the laundrymat too!] as like stockholm, berlin is a very biker-friendly city with protected lanes in many of the roads. i got to catch up with friends [actually spent an adfternoon with shinya and yuna for those who know who they are] and see my god kids too...so far a wonderful trip continues. not sure if berlin loves nooka yet, but i sure love berlin.

top pic, falko is wearing the new BKc collab watch, available here and at other fine retailers.

nooka loves sweden

i am writing this in stockholm, which as most of you know is the capital of sweden, a country in scandinavia. stockholm is very picturesque, a series of islands full of parks, hills, old buildings [you don't want to come here for modern architecture, as there's not much of any] and beautiful people! [they do have a lot of modern engineering like an extensive tunnel system that keeps traffic off the streets, something NYC LA and Tokyo should really look into for their congestion problems]

i came here to meet with my scandinavian distributor and research/assess the market a bit as i think nooka can do a better here. i was a bit shocked to see how poorly merchandised accessories are in general here, so it's no fault of our distributor. i'm actually curious as to how other similar designers/companies do here now that i've seen the shoppes. it seems that sweden is better at exporting it's high-design image than it is applying it internally:) also, i think our strategy in the US of placing nooka in fashion boutiques [as opposed to larger stores] needs to be translated better overseas. anyway, it's a learning process and i'm just very pleased that this little project called nooka is taking me all over the word!

i was taken out one night by swedish rapper, adam tensta, and had a great time at SPY, stockholm's most exclusive nightclub [we went to ambassa deur first, but it was full of the most pretentious lot of young people i've seen in a long time]. spy bar had 2 rooms, one with a house dj an the other pop/rock. adam is an amazing guy who will release his CD internationally in november. look up his name on youtube as there are many vids available. he's very popular here in sweden so i'm interested to see how well he does, first in europe and then in the US. also, as you can see, he's a fan of nooka, and the purple zub looks great on him.

i won't bore you with all the details of what i've done, but the sun doesn't set in the summer here, so it's easy to stay out longer than i'm used to! i need to plan a trip here where i can take in more of the music scene, as many of my fave bands are swedish [the knife, the caesars, the shout out louds, etc.]. it's also funny timing that 2 of my fave local NYC acts were/are playing live while here [not that i was invited or anything!], MGMT and the magnetic fields.

fotos: adam tensta with magnus [our distributor out of malmo] in the subway, me with magnus's baby, downtown club area at 3:00am – so however you slice it, stockholm ROCKS!

for those of you still reading this: i also had a nice day catching up with my friend ake who is a sake sommalier/importer here, had a lovely dinner with the brothers of our current intern, and had smoked rheindeer ham with breakfast. the only food i wasn't able to eat before leaving is isterband, a type of sausage eaten with lingonberries. if you need a cool hotel, the clarion skanstull where i stayed is very nice [shocking considering what the same chain gets you in other countries] with modern art everywhere and a trendy bar that was packed at 3:00 am on saturday night.