1—me, circa 2002
2—other people named David Wertheimer (at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USC, respectively)
3—images in blog posts I’ve written on aiaio
4—my son and his cousins
A full look at Google Images brings up numerous croppings of the other Davids as well as my wedding photo and various inanimate objects.
Category: Observed (Page 7 of 24)
One of the more random occurrences in adult life is discovering the company one keeps in one’s office building. Companies rent space, and the neighbors can be all sorts of interesting.
I haven’t had all that many exciting office situations over the years, but a few stand out.
1. Viacom. Specifically, MTV, in the Viacom building when I worked in the Viacom building (also in the music industry). Working for a medium-size company in the headquarters of a huge company was all right, because it meant we could sneak into the huge company’s cafeteria and get subsidized cheeseburgers with curly fries and eat on a swanky roof terrace in the middle of Times Square. And I worked at 1515 Broadway during the height of TRL’s run, so we could hear screaming crowds daily at 3 p.m. For all the noise, though, the MTV crews were surprisingly unintrusive.
2. XM Radio, which had half a floor in The Economist’s headquarters when I worked on Economist.com. Having left Billboard to go to The Economist, I was pleased to find myself down the hall from a radio network, and I even auditioned for a job on their alternative radio station. (The program director called me decent but unpolished.) In 2002, XM was where smart, cool, fringe-of-the-industry types worked, so I got to meet folks like Pat Dinizio from time to time. And, of course, Gene Simmons.
3. Butterfly Salon. My current job is on the same floor as a beauty parlor, which means my colleagues and I are subject to any of the following on a given afternoon: lots of strangers on our floor. Embarrassingly dirty bathrooms, often covered in fresh cut hair. Pretty, standoffish young stylists. Chemical smells from permanent wave treatments. Then again, we have a standing discount at the salon, and they periodically ask us for models who get free haircuts and highlights, so it’s not all bad. Our CCO has a standing offer from me that for the right price I’ll volunteer and dye my hair black, but he hasn’t pulled the trigger yet.
(And by unexpected, I mean no listing stuff like the time I had drinks with The Pursuit of Happiness at the bar at Mercury Lounge after their gig. That’s too easy.)
1. Gene Simmons, in the XM Radio studios in New York. Unexpected not for the location but for how I wound up hanging out with him. I think he had come in to do some promos. I worked down the hall so at the radio tech’s suggestion I stopped by for no particular reason. This was late-period dickwad Gene Simmons, not mid-period cool-as-fuck I-wish-I-were-in-Kiss Gene Simmons, so he was grouchy and bewigged and all sorts of imagination deflating, but still, Gene Simmons.
2. Ira Kaplan, selling his own band’s T-shirts before one of the Yo La Tengo Hanukkah gigs at Maxwell’s in Hoboken. I was all “hey, whoa, you’re Ira! from the band!” and he was all “well, yeah, I am.” We hung out for a minute or two, mostly because he was selling me a T-shirt.
3. My Sister’s Machine, at the Cheesequake rest stop on the Garden State Parkway at 3 in the morning after their gig opening for King’s X at Tradewinds down the Jersey shore, which I had just seen. They never made it, but I still recall the juxtaposition of a band in full metal mode, off stage, buying lukewarm fast food. And milk, if memory serves. We were all “hey, we just saw you! nice gig!” and they were all “yeah, um, we’re not here ok?”
4. Taj Mahal, at a summer camp, hanging out with a bunch of us CITs after he performed for the camp as a favor to the owner, who was a friend of his. This meeting forever changed how I listened to music and was reprised 18 years later, but those are stories for another day.
As I walk my dog this morning a man appears ten paces or so in front of me, walking a bit unevenly. He’s the kind of person who talks to anyone and anything, unafraid of confrontation or judgment. He reminds me of Chris Tucker.
Walking toward him, I can tell that he’s going to talk to me. (How do I know this? Because he is presently talking about the trash bags at 194 Riverside to, well, nobody.) Conversations with loopy strangers are not on my morning to-do list, but I sense he’s non-threatening. He is clean-shaven and decently dressed, with a keychain hanging off his waist, so I suspect he’s not homeless or a beggar. Then again, he’s slurring his speech at 8:30 in the morning, so one never knows.
He spies me and Charley and turns around. “Good morning!” he says with abundant cheer.
I decide to go with it. “Mornin’.”
“Walkin’ the dog, ah?”
“Yes I am.”
He turns away, says something I don’t hear, then spins back and approaches me.
“Hey, can I ask you a question? First of all, happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and I wish you the happiest of holidays.”
Great, I think, here it comes. “Sorry, man, I’m not carrying anything.”
He pauses for a split-second, breaks into a huge grin, leans toward me, and continues:
“Can I borrow your dog?”
Nathan has this new coat for fall that Amy picked up somewhere. It’s a hip brand, and a nice coat, all corduroy and fleece and fluffy soft and cute in its big-people-style-little-people-size way.
Of course, distressed clothing is in these days, and Nate’s coat is skidded with white. On both sides of the front of the jacket, and covering most of the back, is a big, pale streak.
This, we’ve discovered, is the end limit for distressing clothes. Because while we know it’s intentional, other people think it’s, well, shmutzy. “Did Nate sit in paint?” is a line we’ve heard more than once. Concerned looks become a different kind of concern when we say, “No, that’s the style.”
Oh well. He’s warm and he’s still cute. But now I know why I’ve never wanted to buy jeans with a hole in the knee.
(As an aside, I love Rafe’s thoughts on modern aesthetics, which have stuck with me for a long time.)
The little coffee shop on West 21st Street has, dangling under its potato chip rack, a row of flip-flops.
I pointed to them today as I bought my pretzels. “Sell a lot of flip-flops?” I asked the owner, an affable woman who’s always manning the register.
“You know, we open sometimes on Saturday nights, when the weather’s cool,” she explained to me. “And all the clubs around here, they don’t let women in wearing flats. So all these girls come out after wearing their heels all night, and they say to me, ‘Do you have flip-flops? I’d pay anything for a pair of flip-flops!’
“So, we got some flip-flops. I know how they feel–I once spent $20 on flip-flops after a night like that. But they’re all college girls, you know? I don’t want to rip them off, so I just charge five dollars.”
Have your customers voiced unexpected needs to you? How are you solving their problems?
This is a cross-post from aiaio.
My fifth headphone review went live on Boing Boing Gadgets Friday, marking the midpoint in the series I’m doing this summer. I’m penning 10 pieces covering 11 models from seven different manufacturers.
And what have I learned? More than I expected, some of it obvious, others less so:
- Greatness is variable. Undoubtedly, almost all of the headphones I’m testing are great, in one way or another; the cheapest pair is a hundred fifty bucks, after all. But what defines greatness? To Etymotic, it’s pure reproduction of original sound; to Klipsch, it’s top-to-bottom balance; to Audio-Technica, it’s pumping abnormally strong bass through miniature devices; to JVC (coming next week), it’s replicating its audio style across product lines. More than once I’ve found myself thinking, really, who am I to judge?
- MP3s truly are a crappy audio medium. Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to the sound, and I don’t deny progress. But the high quality of electronics in my possession exposes an MP3’s flaws and has me casting a skeptical eye on my iTunes library. Someday I’m going to switch to a 200GB iPod and a lossless audio format.
- I’m a picky son of a gun. Etymotic has pure sound the likes of which I’ve never experienced. My wife swoons at the mere memory of listening to music through them. But I disliked the lack of low-end punch, which I noted, and which made my contact at Etymotic downright wistful. Maybe I should lighten up a bit.
- But hey, I know what I like, which is a balanced output that brings warmth and resonance to music at low volume levels. While I remain impressed by it, I don’t need Etymotic’s hyper-clear output. Give me the Klipsch, thanks, with a side of Audio-Technica‘s mind-blowingly good noise isolation. Heck, I’d take the Audio-Technicas, too. I like bass. (I’m bringing them both on a business trip I’m about to take.)
This project has been a ton of fun, and I haven’t even written about the fancy models yet. My continued thanks go out to Rob Beschizza and Joel Johnson for giving me the platform.
Gee, I haven’t done this in a while.
I’m onto something interesting following Alice, the new ecommerce website that enables CPG companies to sell quasi-direct to consumer. On aiaio, I dissect whether the alice.com business model is really new, and next week I’ll be critiquing the site’s shopping experience.
On Timely Demise: Crabtree & Evelyn’s bankruptcy and a handful of old and local stores this week. And, with a sigh, Joe Jr.’s Restaurant in the Village.
Select recent oh-so-important tweets:
- + They may *seem* just like other bread products, but pretzel rods are decidedly not breakfast food.
- + Cyclists: can I dangle a bag of Chinese food delivery off my rear-tire rack and bike home without losing my dinner?
- +I have an undying and boundless love for mom-and-pop hardware stores.
- +I STILL LOVE MY PAPER TACO TRUCK it’s on top of my cubicle ready to serve paper tacos to paper college students
- + Reviewing headphones. Having a blast.
- + “Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years, although he hinted that he could turn it into 350 for you with almost no risk.” http://cli.gs/j20tm
And, of course, Nathan got a Cozy Coupe.
Are high ceilings a sign of wretched architectural excess or just good taste? in Slate.
Having moved from a postwar 1980s apartment to a century-old Manhattan prewar, I can confirm the finding of this article, which is that high ceilings have good architectural effects. A 10-foot ceiling makes a room feel larger, airier, and more comfortable than ones with 8′ ceilings. To someone six feet tall or larger, postwar heights create a hint of claustrophobia and shorten light throws.
High ceilings were actually part of our search criteria when we were buying our apartment. Now that we have them, I’ll probably never go back.
As Slate’s writer notes, “Living and working in older buildings, people discovered that taller rooms simply felt–and looked–better.” Amen to that.