Making shit is fun! The guys across the street have literally nothing hanging on their walls so I decided to fill some thrift store picture frames with some quick art projects from my stack of old magazines.
Continue reading "Just a bit of pop-art weirdness from yours truly" »
I was already delighted to leave behind SOMA for my new Lower Haight digs. I don't really go for that ultra modern warehouse loft with sparsely decorated cocktail bars with neon blue lights and 12 dollar martinis. That part of town reminds me of that Saturday Night Live sketch where there is a whole family of foreign people living in an apartment all named Nuni. They all sit on bizarre chairs either hung from the ceiling or made of ice or chairs you have to get on your belly to sit in....
The Haight is like a completely different city from South of Market. You have a feeling of history here that doesn't begin in 1995. The buildings have been preserved and the people are delightfully eccentric.
The SO and I moved into a 3rd floor apartment in an old Victorian home slip up into 5 apartments. It's hard to pick what I love the most about this place. The yellow walls? The red kitchen? The fact that every room has at least two windows. The hardwood floors. The bay window. The inside french doors leading to the bedroom. The unusual crawl spaces. The massive kitchen counter space. Forgive me for bragging, I feel I deserve it after a year in modernized property managed SOMA hell.
The most interesting feature of this building by far is the back of it. In order to take out garbage and recycling, you have to go through a terrifying basement with ceilings so low you have to crouch and waddle through it. Once you are behind the building its like you've actually hit another world. You can't hear the noise from the front of the building, and you find yourself in an overrun and overgrown "garden" I use the term garden loosely as I doubt nothing could actually grow here other than weeds.
A clawfoot bathtub hangs out inexplicably by a rusty rickety table. I almost expect to look in the tub and find Miss Havisham's wedding silver amidst the weeds and birdseed. Here are some recent photographs.
Continue reading "As close as I'll get to Secret Garden in Lower Haight" »
Surfing around the internet avoiding work I stumbled upon this at The Curiosity Shoppe
For $45 clams you can retromorph your cell phone into a landline phone. Something about this really amuses me.
I never thought I say this, but sometimes people take vintage too far.
Nothing gets me going like a good estate sale. I'm easy. I get excited over a mediocre estate sale. Of course it's one of the darkest things I regularly participate in. They call it an estate sale but what they really mean is "you're going to have to fight through crowds of hipsters and packrats to buy dead people's belongings for a fraction of what they're worth"
I have to put this out of my mind. This is San Francisco. The cost of living is so high the homeless people ask you for twenties. I'm 24 and obsessed with design in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I can't afford to grieve.
I won't lie, I like the sportsmanship. I've hustled people away from items I was sharking. I'm a competitive person and the estate sale puts a frantic game in one of the calmest laid back hobbies: art and design. And besides, isn't it more special when you find it yourself? Any dope with money can hire someone to have good taste for them. Often time its about being creative enough to take something heinous, stripping it painting it and making it something tasteful. As far as money will get you in the design world, it can't buy you the satisfaction of DIY.
Here's a hideous stool I bought last weekend. The fabric had time traveled from munchkin land and smelled like something had died inside of it.
They say that California is the place that always used to be better. Apparently this is true for all points in time. I must disagree. It's the relics of this allegedly better past that makes it so great to be in the present. San Francisco has a particularly spectacular history of architecture and design. As time wears down the more ornate Victorians and Painted Lady houses, those who choose not to maintain these structures will be relinquinishing their building's ornate architectual elements to the salvage vultures like myself.
Now more than ever San Franciscans are making their homes and offices hyper-modern, which leaves those of us with a fondness for the imperfect and decayed swimming in the salvage riches.
Here are a few places to aquire the best salvage in the Bay Area
Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley
I haven't actually made it out here in person but I drool over the website constantly. Here is some current inventory:
Maison Reve
This is another place I haven't had the thrill of going to in person. Mostly because I fear the amount of debt I would get myself into. Amazing things online to look at, though.
Moving Sale! A bit more digging involved here but so much fun nonetheless.
Cookin'
This Divisadero store focuses on recycled gourmet kitchenwares but the owner has a nice selection of salvage brought back from France. Everything in here is wonderful. I love the fabulous bitchy owner I saw almost make a grown man cry. Truly a role model for a budding Miss Havisham type. We prefer the term "mentally hilarious".
Urban Ore in Berkeley
A warehouse full of anything and everything.
I've decided to move my girlier art and design posts from www.lefora.com to wordpress.
We'll see how it goes!
