August 16, 2011
Recent changes
So I’ve been pretty busy the past few months. Here are some updates:
-I started taking swing dancing classes at Dance Manhattan. At first I was just doing some dabbling but it’s stuck and now dancing is one of my new favorite things. So much so that I’m going to do some traveling to other cities next year (for dancing) and go to dance camp. Yes, dance camp. I started off taking East Coast Swing classes, but I’ve advanced over the past few months and now I’m working on Lindy Hop, Charleston , and Jazz moves as well. I really like the Charleston and the many variations of it. Aside from that, I’ve dabbled a little bit in Balboa and next month I’m taking a Collegiate Shag class. I think for the remainder of the year I’m going to focus mostly on Lindy Hop and Charleston and try to “catch up”.
-I moved from Williamsburg to my own place in Greenpoint. I love my neighborhood and I’m pumped about living alone and having a place to myself. I’m currently working on decorating and making the place my own, which I’ve never really had the opportunity to do in the past. I’m trying to balance being tasteful with being lazy, hopefully it works out.
–Bedford & Grove is still in the works. We’re hoping to start pursuing it more aggressively next month, once our new website is finished and we start going to buyers to get our stuff in stores.
-I bought a new bike. It’s a Linus. Here it is in Mcgolrick Park in Greenpoint:
April 13, 2011
Bedford & Grove
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been working on a menswear line the past year or so and we’ve just released some dress and sport shirts. As a man who wears shirts (and obviously biased towards my own designs and company), I’m really happy with the end results with the factory we worked with. All the fabrics are from London and the manufacturing is done in the USA. Below is a shot of one of my favorite shirts from this first line, but please head over to our main site and check out the rest.
November 14, 2010
Sun-bleaching leather: Alden pocket knife holder
A while back I bought the above Alden Shell Cordovan pocket knife holder and pocket knife. As an experiment, I decided to try out sun-bleaching leather, and this seemed to be a good item to try it with. After about 1-2 months of being taped to my west-facing window, the branded side has become many shades lighter from sun exposure. This could be done to shoes, belts, and watchbands with some very interesting effects as the sun lightens portions of the leather differently. Just remember if you’re doing this to shoes you should condition the leather afterwards, because in addition to lightening the sun will also dry out the leather, shortening its lifespan.
October 23, 2010
My business partner and I in a style blog
Virile – West Broadway and Lafayette St…Soho NYC….
My business partner and I were photographed on Broadway last weekend. It was cool boot day.
October 15, 2010
Gordon Rush Boots, 1.5 years of wear
My Gordon Rush boots have gotten a lot of wear since I’ve bought them. I’d guess that I wear each pair twice a week most of the year, and in terms of maintenance I do the following:
-Always putting shoe trees in while not worn.
-Alternating between applying tan Tana shoe cream and Saphir Renovateur Leather Conditioner/Cleaner every 1-3 weeks, depending on visible wear.
-I avoid wearing either pair of boots in the rain or snow, though there have been some unavoidable circumstances where they got significantly wet. The leather has held up really well despite this.
-I had the heel pads replaced on both pairs with Vibram commando heel pads. This was about $30 per pair and they match the boots perfectly.
The Tana shoe cream has given my dark brown GR boots some tan and reddish hues, which I personally really like. The color of the Tana cream mostly matches the whiskey/tan GR boots though, so their color is mostly the same if not a bit darker and bolder.
October 5, 2010
Bedford & Grove shirts, coming soon
I’ve been working on a menswear line with a business partner lately, and we’re starting to see some finished products. Above is one of our more recent samples. We’re going to have a line of shirts finished soon and we plan to expand to suits soon afterwards. Stay tuned!
June 30, 2010
New (old) bicycle – Schwinn Hollywood
I’ve been obsessing over buying THE perfect bike for 2-3 months now. I haven’t ridden a bike since I was a teenager, so I had to learn all about what makes good bikes good and what I should look for since I’ll just be riding around the city. In the end I decided on a single-speed vintage Schwinn (which may or may not be a girl’s bike). Old Schwinns are amazing because they’re American-made, high quality and have the vintage aesthetic that I’m always into. Many 50-year old Schwinns are still around and fully functional today.
I started looking and found a few different bikes in Brooklyn but unfortunately didn’t act fast enough before they were sold. Then this past weekend I was walking around my neighborhood and some dude was selling this on the corner for $125! I bought it right then and there, and it was absolutely worth it. This particular bike is a Schwinn Hollywood probably from around the 1960s. I got this pretty cheap all things considered, so I’m going to buy some new parts for it and fix it up over time.
The first thing I plan on switching out are the grips. I’m going to get either leather grips or cork grips to replace the current childish ones.
I also have a few other bike-related purchases coming up now. I plan on getting a new messenger bag from Archival Bags for when I’m out with my bike for the day. My current bag is way too large to wear over the shoulder comfortably. I also need some new shirts for biking, because it’s been 90+ degrees in NYC lately and madras shirts just aren’t cutting it.
January 6, 2010
Trip to Boston
Went to Boston for the first time while on vacation in December. Some random highlights and pictures:
- The Eastern Standard by Fenway Park is a great restaurant/lounge that plays great music. Every part of my meal was great and it was decently priced.
- The Isabella Gardner Museum is inspiring. Unfortunately they are very strict about not allowing any photos to be taken inside.
- The New England Aquarium is amazing, I obviously am fascinated with jellyfish and they had a bunch
- The Museum of Fine Art is great. I want to go back but I’m going to settle on going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead.
August 20, 2009
Randgrid – electronic music studio for the iPhone
Thanks to the iPhone I’ve been producing a lot of music that hopefully I will turn into complete recordings soon. Right now my favorite program to use on the iPhone is Randgrid. Randgrid is a great sequencing app with with a few different drumsets and two synthesizers. Right now I’m pretty much using Randgrid exclusively for any sort of music production. It’s amazing to work out ideas on and the two synthesizers are perfect for the type of music I’ve been working on lately. The video below shows what Randgrid can do in terms of sequencing/synthesis. Hopefully soon I’ll be posting some of my own projects in Randgrid.
BrownBoots 