The Pocket Square

I'm coming home to Wu-thering, Wu-thering, Wu-thering Heights.

Liveblogging some event is not real news, as a thousand bloggers have already set their minds to the Oscars, Super Bowl and Presidential election returns. Live-Tweeting however strikes me as just a touch more novel, and, hopefully, fun. In lieu of an event, though, I’ve decided to live-Tweet a book. I started Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights this week and have commenced the feed. My Twitter username is TheBrothersBell, a nod to the pseudonyms Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë used (watch those initials): Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell. I really have no idea how this little experiment will turn out, but at the very least it will serve as a decent journal of my thoughts as I go. My sincere hope is that others will join in the conversation and hopefully an informal book club will start. Check it out @TheBrothersBell or come check me out @ThePocketSquare.

Boomer and Helo outside of Moishe Safdie's main branch of the Vancouver Public Library in the "Bastille Day" episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Films and TV shows have long been shot in Vancouver for the financial savings, North American cityscapes and significant natural beauty it offers. So it was little surprise to see the city in the “Bastille Day” episode of Battlestar Galactica I watched last night. As the characters Helo and Boomer, marooned on a scorched interstellar colony called Caprica, now run by the robotic Cylons, made their way through the deserted city, they came upon one of the worst buildings the city has to offer: The Vancouver Public Library. I’ve had mixed feelings on architect Moshe Safdie for some time. His claim to fame, and still his best building, wowed me when I saw it a couple years ago on a Dwell trip to Montreal. His Habitat 67 is unlike anything else in the city, a tessellated mound of geometric modules piling up cheek by jowl that served as housing during Montreal’s 1967 World’s Fair. It’s still the architectural hallmark of the city, and the work that catapulted the 24 year old Safdie to the international stage.

Moshe Safdie's wonderful Habitat 67.

I saw other Safdie work while in Montreal, including an underwhelming department store that was little more than an exercise is aimless post-modernism: A tossed-off thing by an architect whose star was on the wane but still had plenty of brand recognition in the town that helped make his reputation.

So as I came to the Vancouver Public Library last summer I had a feeling that it would make or break my impression of the architect. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed. The blandness of a facade of beige concrete and high, opaque windows is only barely mitigated by the structure’s gentle nautilus curl. I appreciated the open-air arcade that allows one to pass through the structure while staying outdoors, but the high galleries inspired less awe than boredom. Enthralled with his homage to classical forms (one can’t help but think of a Greek amphitheater or the Coliseum) Safdie failed to say anything about the here and now. And considering what a milquetoast city Vancouver is architecturally, with slowly patinating copper condo towers dotting the skyline like stripped pine trees and elevated freeways marring the waterways, I held Safdie responsible for a severe lack of imagination. Not only does the library loom over a pedestrian mall, but it says little to the buildings around it, instead rising from its considerable plaza with an undue hauteur.

Why then did I like seeing it so much on Battlestar Galactica? I think it was because it managed to look at once futuristic and arcane. Like so much science fiction set in a galaxy far, far away, BSG manages to at once suggest the technologies and environments to come, while drawing heavily on antiquity for cultural touchstones (Caprica, Apollo, Thrace, Gemenon, Sagitarion, Cyranus and Agathon are the names in play), and human drama. Vancouver offers that well-scrubbed urbanity that we like to think the distant future holds, while still retaining styles and structures that many of us hope never to lose. Shot in heavy sepia tones, the lonely VPL, in its expanse of concrete, appears like a temple and a relic bereft of any recognizable iconography, an ancient form repurposed for advanced times. Though I’m not sure what he aims to do or say about present day Earth, Safdie, unbenownst to him, I’m sure, turns out to be the ideal architect for post-nuclear, Cylon-controlled Caprica. Though those commissions, one presumes, are far tougher to get.

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit (Objectified, Helvetica) will be one of the panelists at my April 24th Dwell Conversation. Photo from www.objectifiedfilm.com

I’m really excited to announce that I’ll be moderating a panel called Objectified in America: Design, Consumerism and Sustainability in Our Changing Economy for the next Dwell Conversations on April 24th at the AutoDesk Gallery space at 1 Market St. Suite 200, San Francisco, California.

The panelists include filmmaker Gary Hustwit, who made 2007’s wonderful Helvetica and has just come out with a new film examining our material culture called Objectified. I’ve not seen it yet, but there are some upcoming screenings co-sponsored by Dwell at the Sundance Kabuki Theaters.

Founder of CITIZEN:Citizen and my neighbor, Philip Wood (pictured here with his wife and radio journalist Tania Kentenjian) is just one of the speakers on the panel. Photo from last year's Dwell on Design conference taken from www.roseapodaca.com

Also on the panel is CITIZEN:Citizen founder Philip Wood, a very smart and charming guy who I see around town pretty often. I just got off the phone with him and he’s got loads to say about how we view objects in terms of materials and use but also for their talismanic, iconic nature. He’s spoken on Dwell panels before, and will be on another I’m doing on Design Entrepreneurs at this year’s Dwell on Design Conference in Los Angeles. Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO and Tom Dair, co-founder of Smart Design will also be on the panel, round out a really bright and engaged group, one I’m quite pleased to lead in discussion.

Buy your tickets to the event here. They go for $15 and we’re expecting a big crowd, so get them soon. I hope you all can make it, and do go see Objectified. If it’s half as good as Helvetica (which you can watch On Demand on Netflix) you won’t be sorry.

Jeans galore and beers to match at the Self Edge/Style Forum party last night on Valencia St.

After a late dinner of salad and Spanish tortilla–I do make a mean tortilla–Drew and I took a walk down Valencia St. and stopped into Self Edge as the Self Edge/Style Forum party was winding down. I missed the old time motorcycles that Paul d’Orleans had brought over for the event, but was happy to arrive when I did. The chilled-out vibe and not-too-crowded lower level made for easy browsing and an unexpectedly interesting theological debate with Mark Miller, a professor of Catholic Studies at USF.

I approached Mark to compliment him on his rather natty double-breasted chambray blazer, but before long things turned to precisely why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against the Jews as they sought to gain their freedom in Exodus. It’s been on my mind lately as Drew and I prepare for our annual seder this Wednesday, and it seems that God deliberately set up Pharaoh as an adversary to the Jews with no possible chance of his freeing them on his own. Drew made the point that the Exodus story is more about the founding of a nation than anything else, and though it works as a narrative device, it certainly appears that God’s love isn’t available to all when he sets certain people against him. Mark argued that God’s love is available to all–certainly a more embracing Catholic notion than the chosen people mentality of the Old Testament–but in my view he didn’t fully satisfy the question. He talked about Pharaoh turning away from God and essentially hardening his own heart, but I still read it as the first step in a display of God’s power to and for the Israelites (the plagues, parting the Red Sea) not to all of his creations.

Another element of the Exodus story with which I have always struggled is how Pharaoh’s magicians managed to perform some of the same feats as Moses and Aaron, such as turning their staffs into snakes. On what power do the magicians draw? Demons, their own gods? If there are no other gods than the God of Israel, and Exodus is certainly His book, whence the ability to turn staffs into snakes unless it is in fact God who is doing it. Considering that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to display his might to his people, certainly doing the covert bidding of the magicians only adds to the theater. Puzzling, and at some level, rather disquieting.

Nonetheless, it was a really fun time so thanks to Kiya at Self Edge and to Style Forum for a fun night.

The very mid-century modern facade of San Francisco's new Paul Smith store at 50 Geary. Photo from www.paulsmith.co.uk

I attended the Paul Smith opening party at 50 Geary St. on Thursday, and for all the worry over who got in and out–a trio of profoundly mascaraed blonds in black busily womaned the door–the sheer number of people (about 600 Smith estimated) inside the London fashion guru’s new retail space put one in mind of a tube station at rush hour. In terms of fashion, the gents, peacocking in all manner of springy neckwear and colorful pants, far outstripped the decidedly more sedate ladies, and Smith himself looked dapper in a navy suit and pink open-collared shirt. The man of the hour moved through the crush with ease, if only because everyone wanted to shake his golden hand–though one did overhear quite a few mildly-panicked whisperers bleating, “He’s here?!?! Which one is he.” Joy Bianchi, looking like the lost bride of Le Corbusier in her signature thick black frames had little trouble finding the man, nor did Apple design don Jonathan Ive, a man whose sartorial stylings extend, thankfully, beyond iPod white. Willie Brown made nice with the swells, though his broad-shouldered woolen suit and peaked pocket square evoked the powerful torsos of the 40s and 50s more readily than the reedy chests conjured by Smith’s Swingin Sixties cuts.

Robert Wallace, a jet setting window dresser and interiors fixer in Smith’s employ aptly described the large store’s concept as mid-century modern in front with a nod to a rather more buttoned-up British clothiers, wooden wainscoting and all, in back. Vintage bric-a-brac sat alongside the pricey clothes and the break in aesthetic from front to back deftly alluded to the the two traditions out of which Smith’s aesthetic was born. Design aside, one of the most hotly-anticipated elements of the evening was of course the gift bags. A purple Paul Smith toothbrush was the most coveted swag, though the long arm of the New York media world reached even into the flimsy black totes handed out at the door: No one left without the new issue of Vanity Fair and a book of essays on the movies edited by Graydon Carter. But only to be a lonely outpost, so far from the center of the world. I’ve yet to use the toothbrush, but I did port my Paul Smith tote, a tossed-off thing at best, around Glen Park Canyon on a long walk today. It did the trick but is certainly nothing to write home about. Though apparently it is something to blog about. Hmm.

I got the purple one.

A truncated version of my thoughts on the party appeared in today’s San Francisco Chronicle in the Style Section. For a video of Smith wandering around inside his store, 7×7 has the goods.

The latest edition of my column, The Pocket Square (check out the archive here), is out in the San Francisco Chronicle today. I took up ballpark style, a tricky issue at times considering what a sartorial minefield sportswear can be. I’ll actually be attending the the A’s-Red Sox game a week from Monday at the Coliseum so we’ll see how the gents fare fashion-wise. I presume that straw boaters and spectators are out of the question, though you never know when Chicken John will show up. I went to a party at Self Edge last night where I got to chatting with the owner Kiya and it seems that he’s a massive A’s fan so here’s hoping that he and I get to take in a game or two this season. I’m so thrilled that the show starts today and actually have moderately high hopes for both Bay Area squads. Now if only my beloved Nationals could catch a break and maybe, just maybe, win 75 games.

It’s been noted before that Canadian prog rockers Rush are having something of a vogue right now. A prominent role in the new movie I Love You, Man, a daffy little recapitulation of their track “Limelight” in this week’s Adventureland, and a recent spate of other nods (a montage set to “Tom Sawyer” in Chuck and an homage in Freaks and Geeks to “Spirit of the Radio”) have the power trio set as the not-quite-ironically-not-quite-sincerely loved rock punchline of the moment. Geddy Lee’s astoundingly high tenor, the pretentious lyrics and a general sense of brainy bombast have always set Rush up for mockery, and though this recent bit of winking love comes coated with more reverence than disdain, it’s starting to smack of manufactured nostalgia. Perhaps the best pop culture Rush sighting of late came on the Colbert Report, fittingly a program whose line between admiration and mockery is both razor thin and ever-shifting. That Pavement showed a similarly ironic reverence back in their 1997 song “Stereo” now feels somehow more genuine and truly unusual.

In the early 00s Styx’s “Mr. Roboto” had the same kind of kitschy clout, appearing in a Volkswagen ad as well as getting a shout-out in Austin Powers: Goldmember. The meme cruised through the Net, a hundred thousand dormroom-made mix CD’s before finally coming to ignominious rest where all things seem to die: The King of Queens. A quick look at the song results for Denis DeYoung’s sci-fi confection at AllMusic reveal that between 2003 and say 2007 “Mr Roboto” was suddenly de rigeur for any 80’s rock compilation, a clear response to it’s newly-found left-field cachet.

I fear that the Rush love, particularly for “Tom Sawyer,” is no fly by night affair, and with box office comedy pacesetters like Apatow and Co embracing them, it’s only a matter of time before Lee, Lifeson and Peart find that though the royalty checks are bit bigger, their cred as hard rock elder statesmen heads south. Though they’re far too sober, mercurial and well, Canadian, to ever go the way of Bret Michaels, shamelessly pandering to adolescent hard-ons, Rush is back in the limelight for as long as the joke lasts, even if it’s on them. Once again, they owe their fame to moving pictures.