January 30, 2010
» Tiga – Shoes (3:48) – 8.2MB mp3 @ 293kbps
Dior Homme Chukka, via HB as always.
At this point in short history of IYK, it should be fairly obvious that I have a thing for shoes.
Hiroshi Fujiwara is on point as always. Via DQM.
Hair and shoes say it all. Everything in between is forgivable as long as you keep it simple. Trying to talk with your clothes is passive-aggressive.
–Rick Owens, Rules of Style on Details.com. Total classic.
Jak & Jill has an absolutely gorgeous (vaguely pornographic) look at Louis Vuitton's F/W 2010 Accessories
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January 17, 2010
» Autechre – Bike (7:58) – 9.2MB mp3 @ 160kbps
Mark Jenkins via Arrested Motion
The mild weather in New York this weekend has been highly conducive to activities known as “getting out of the house,” especially with regard to my favored mode of transportation, biking. Since I returned to the NYC three weeks ago, I’ve taken to doing laps around Prospect Park for brief cardiovascular excursions, while my single-speed has taken me to various destinations around the boroughs—most recently to dim sum in Bay Ridge.
In retrospect, I regret not biking at all when I was in China. While the feasibility, practicality and efficiency of biking in Beijing were debatable—rentals were clunkers and I didn’t want to buy a bike for a two month stay—I grossly underestimated the ecstasy of cycling. At the most visceral level, I find it liberating: not only from the limits of bipedal locomotion, but also from traffic laws, which also become very fast and loose—to spite every other form of transportation—at cyclists’ own risk.
Apparently, free association also becomes very fast and loose at bloggers’ own risk:
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January 12, 2010
798 Dashanzi Arts District – Pace Beijing
I had intended on writing a longer-form essay on the Beijing art scene—among other stillborn topics such as food, drink, work and leisure—but I settled on a few profiles and discursive remarks regarding specific artists. Just as there are emerging artists, I would say that there is an inchoate art world that is still redefining itself.
However, I have decided to refrain from writing an inane opinion piece or a tedious art-historical treatment of Chinese contemporary art.
Instead, I will resort to a simple device: interpolating quotes (which invariably resonate with my experience in Beijing) from a highly relevant news article (which was conspicuously absent from my previous NYT-heavy aggregation of interesting news items) into a series of photos from the 30 Degrees opening at Red Gate Gallery last fall.
This juxtaposition may or may not reveal profound connections between words (taken out of context) and images (of images) within a thematic framework of contemporary art production and exhibition in China.
In other words, here are some pictures that I didn’t get around to posting and some quotes from a recent New York Times article.
Zhang Jie – Pigs Might Fly / Mao Yu – Tree of Man
Being Chinese-American makes it easier to be an observer of what’s really happening because I’m camouflaged,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean I understand any more what people are thinking.” Still, Ms. Ho, 40, revels in her role as outsider in a society that she says is blindly enthusiastic about remaking itself.
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December 23, 2009
With any luck, I will be back in Brooklyn in 24 hours or so, enjoying a chicken parm sub from 3 Luigis… assuming I make it back before they close. (The Continental website has already posted an hour and half delay for my flight, so I’m expecting the worst.)
Beijing Capital International Airport Website—this is how I will always remember Beijing
Some brief thoughts (afforded by the inimitable medium of blogging) as I finish packing—
China by the numbers:
–43 blog posts
–6 drafted posts about China that may or may not see light of day
~250 cigarettes
~150 km (running)
~200 km (walking)
~3.5 websites designed/launched
Things I will miss: cheap food, cheap alcohol, cheap cigarettes, lower cost of living in general, D-22, Asian pears every morning, free lodging and meals, having a maid, 798 Art District, Gulou, the Bridge café, and not really having any responsibilities whatsoever.
Things I will not miss: the slight language barrier, slow Internet, blocked Internet, packed subways, an hour-long commute to work each way, spitting, and godawful Chinese taste as reflected in the ultra-gawdy aesthetic in everything from architecture to fashion.
Things I missed: friends, NFL regular season football, Sportscenter, Mad Men, Jersey Shore (?), Neon Indian/Glo-Fi/Chillwave, tacos, biking, cheese… you know, the little things.
Placeholder image; no time to come up with anything better for now...
As far as I go
As far as I know
I’ve always got
A place called home
Across all the seas
It’s fine by me
‘Cause I’ll never be
Far from home
–Tiga, “(Far From) Home”
December 22, 2009
As some of you may have noticed, my previous post on getting around Beijing focused on public and bipedal transportation without giving transportation by pedal its due.
Read on to find out more about these beauties...
Over the summer, I took to biking as my preferred mode of transportation around New York, in keeping with the trend of bicycles as a legitimate form of transportation in Gotham; specifically, the fixed-gear / single-speed subcategory of cyclists (and/or hipsters). [Full disclosure: I ride single-speed; I never said I was that cool.]
[Similarly, I must admit that I have yet to ride a bike here, be it a traditional, iconic pigeon or a noble chromoly steed. Inexpensive rentals are everywhere, but I never found it particularly practical to actually partake.]
The Famous Flying Pigeon
First, a bit of shoptalk: the vast majority of the bikes here are cheap single-speeds with low gear ratios and even lower cool factors. Saddles and tire pressure also seem to be slightly too low. Meanwhile, geometries range from relaxed to very relaxed: top tubes tend to be parallel to the bottom tube as opposed to the ground, like a woman’s bike, and some models have no top tube at all.
Bikes of larger persuasion are sometimes outfitted with lawn-mower-sized motors that get surprisingly (and dangerously) fast; bike-wagon hybrids are invariably motorized. Scooters, on the other hand, sometimes have pedals as well, like a vestigial tailbone. In all of the above cases, the pedals are entirely superfluous: petrol-power always trumps people-power.
Finally, any contraption with fewer than four wheels is allowed to go in any direction on any street or sidewalk at any time, at their own risk. Hapless New Yorkers—bikers and non-bikers alike—often complain about reckless, holier-than-thou cyclists acting like they own the streets; in Beijing, they actually do. For all the semi-authoritarianism of the state, bikes alone seem to be exempt from legislation. Maybe the government thinks they’ll die off on their own.
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December 17, 2009
DJ Craze is playing a free show at Punk tonight. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t heard much of his stuff—I’m downloading his Fabriclive mix as I write this—but his reputation precedes him. (If nothing else, he keeps good company: A-Trak can do no wrong these days and I used to see Klever regularly around ATL.)
I hope I can make it out there.
DJ Craze
Punk
The Opposite House
The Village at Sanlitun
北京市朝阳区三里屯11号
Thursday, December 17th
December 4, 2009
I retract my initial characterization of D-22: it could pass for a “Lower East Side hotspot.” It turns out that my previous warehouse-turned-clubhouse description is far more appropriate for neighboring metal venue 13 Club, with its spacious main floor, multiple side rooms and pentagonal windows. I stopped by 13 Club last Saturday for the first (and possibly last) time before heading over to a show (pictured below) at D-22, and I must say that my musical allegiance lies squarely with the latter venue. [Footnote: D-22's address is listed as 242 Chengfu Road and 13 Club is supposedly at 161 Chengfu Road, yet in reality they're two doors down from each other, a perfect example of the irrational street numbering here.]
Also, Weezer’s “In the Garage” is probably a more accurate description of this DIY practice space. I might have to go with Carsick Cars’ 中南海 as the D-22 theme song (more on this in a future post).
But hopefully, I wasn’t too far off the mark… and I have pictures now, to prove that it actually exists (as opposed to just being on other blogs.)
Noisemongers The Offset: Spectacles (who I had the pleasure of seeing again yesterday) were first up on last Saturday’s bill; they’re perhaps as good as a post-rock band can be without a drummer. While I respect their mastery of the tension between swirls of feedback and low-end drone—alternately ponderous and urgent, depending on the song—I am of the opinion that even a crappy drum machine (à la MBV) could take them to the next level.
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November 15, 2009
or, I Assure You, BJBus.com is SFW
This is the second installment of my (admittedly verbose and highly parenthetical) chronicle of my time in Beijing:
First, a quick geography lesson: Beijing lies landlocked in the North China Plain, 150 km inland of the Bohai Sea. The city center is surrounded by a series of ring roads, loosely centered on the Forbidden City, such that the second ring road separates the dense city center from the outer districts, which stretch to the sixth circumscription.
My map of 北京. Wudaokou is in the upper left corner.
My home for these two months is in the heart of the 五道口 [Wudaokou] neighborhood in the 海淀区 [Haidian District], which constitutes the Northwest outer borough of the capital (top-leftmost marker on the Gmap). Wudaokou is regarded as Beijing’s prestigious university-town area, since two of China’s top universities are here, which means that 1.) I fall into the demographic of the local populace (though it’s less appropriate for my aging grandparents), and 2.) the requisite amenities and nightlife offerings are nearby… not to mention the profusion of foreigners enjoying the novelty and low cost of living here for a semester.
[I am still ambivalent about the 外国人, since I probably relate to them (even the Europeans and Australians) more than the native Chinese, but I have yet to warm up to my countrymen... whoever they may be. Either way, I play it cool.
That said, I have shamelessly been taking advantage of certain establishments that clearly find a non-Chinese audience: the (overpriced) coffeeshops and gym facilities. I'm not sure whether or not my patronage of these foreigner hotspots is a dead giveaway as to my nationality—that and the fact that I drink Americanos and smoke Camel Lights while perusing English websites and drafting blog entries on my MacBook. More on this in a forthcoming chapter.]
My only grievance about Wudaokou—a plaint about Beijing in general—is that it is relatively out-of-the-way (just outside the fourth ring road): it takes over an hour to get to work on the subway and at least half an hour to get downtown. With nearly 12 million residents in 4,000+ sq. km of metro area, Beijing is easily one of the largest cities in the Eastern Hemisphere (it is second to Shanghai for that title in China). Fellow New Yorkers, imagine Grand Street as one of the biggest cities in the world and you get the idea.
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November 10, 2009
Liu Bolin
The flight was unremarkable: the 13 hours really flew by.
So I’ll start with a quick rundown of the crucial details about my stay in Beijing, each of which is subject to further elaboration as my Adventure in Chinaland unfolds:
1.) I arrived on October 19th and will be in Beijing for just over two months. This duration, in and of itself, is significant, as it is just enough time to get a feel for a city without getting sick of it. The finite amount of time is (to use a favorite metaphor) a double-edged sword: December 23rd represents both a deadline that motivates me to explore my new territory, foreign in some ways and familiar in others, and a conclusion to I can look forward to, since the past three weeks have been more than enough time for me to miss New York.
2.) The last time I was in China was just over four years ago, in the summer of 2005. Last year’s summer Olympics were only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the slightly haphazard and often over-the-top Westernization that has occurred in a short half-decade. My grandparents are older, Beijing is younger, and—just as (or maybe because) I am a different person at a different place in my life—it feels like an entirely different city. Also, you wouldn’t think there was a one-child-per-family policy by looking; it’s like Grand St. x 10000, everywhere, all the time.
3.) The exchange rate is roughly $1 = 6.8 人民币 (RMB), so for quick calculations, 10RMB = $1.50, 20RMB = $3.00, etc. Additionally, I have derived a conversion rate based on cigarettes and/or meals for practical purposes. Suffice it to say that living in China is dirt cheap—usually at the expense of being, well, dirty.
4.) I am staying with my grandparents. This was a choice that I made early on and would/has/will inevitably define my entire experience here [further explanation to follow].
5.) My command of the Chinese language is conversational at best. I can understand 75% of ordinary speech but my responses are limited to a fraction of that vocabulary. I am largely unable to read or write; technical jargon—about half of the news, anything related to my job—is lost on me. I’ve been trying to improve my 普通话, but the proliferation of English signage is an annoyingly useful crutch for someone trying to learn how to walk the walk (or rather, how to talk the talk).
6.) I am working at an aunt’s media company, doing web (re)design, media research and consultation.
7.) Finally, I should note that China is 12 hours ahead of EST… which is not to say that the difference between New York and Beijing is like day and night; on the contrary, the disparity is far less stark and therefore less tangible (most of the time, at least; Roberts might argue otherwise) in uncanny and sometimes insidious ways. While jet lag lasts a few days or a fortnight at most (as was the case for me), cultural acclimation can take months, even years, if at all. One of my uncles, who has spent most of his time in the States since emigrating some 20+ years ago, claims that he can’t stay in China for more than a few months at a time without returning to America to “unwind”—despite spending the first half of his life in the motherland.
More to come soon…
