(Des) Mess Around

New York: Shakespeare in the park!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 20:21:00 +0000

Awesome thing to do in New York is to go to Shakespeare in the park. Not easy to get tickets (my husband arrived at 7:30AM on a Friday and waited until noon to get ours), but if you can get a day off, some flexibility at work, it is more than worth.

Happening since 1962, Shakespeare in the park is one of the things that happen in New York and make you love to live here. According to Wikipedia " Although much resisted by politicians at first Shakespeare in the Park has gone on to become a New York City institution and a favorite among many who return year after year for their free ticket to the evening's performance". Names like Danny DeVito were in that stage (1975, Hamlet) and according to the Blog The Bowery Boys, this was a sensation that started in East Village basements before it arrive at the Central Park.

The season was playing Shakespeare "The Comedy of Error". I was not familiar with the history and the play not only added as a Friday night event, but also to get to know this work. It is about two identical twin brothers that were separated at birth. One set was servant to the other and without knowing about the other identical twin set, they arrive at the same city, Ephesus. As it is unknown to city inhabitants and to the twins that there is a double counting going on, confusions are set and a lot of misunderstood happens in the city.

The twins were played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (from Modern Family) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (from Old Christine).

Pictures unfortunately are not allowed in there, but before we know that we took some, like the ones at the bottom.

Fashion cheap found - Metallic pump on Target

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 03:36:00 +0000

Jimmy Choo version

Looking Lucky blog, I saw by chance a post on cheap versions of the amazing Jimmy Choo metallic pump. It seems there is a Target version of the pump for US$29.99 (US$8.99 in stores!!!!).

So I am adding a new cheap version for the amazing Jimmy Choo metallic pumps that I've mentioned here.

It is funny that the author of the blog took a photo by her own of the pump and indeed it looks much better than the one on Target's website:

(indeed this photo doesn't look good)

(much better on this two she posted):

Source: Lucky

Photos from the original post:

Williamsburg Bridge walk + Peter Luger lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 01:23:00 +0000

We have lunch today in Peter Luger, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY. Peter Luger is a traditional steak house that has been around since 1887! Yeahp, since 1887 serving steaks. The food is very good. I am not a huge fan of American steaks. I honestly prefer the Argentinean, Brazilian, Uruguayan steak style with salt and some garlic. Even with this taste difference, I would say the food in Peter Luger is very good and tasty. I ordered the Hot Fudge Holy Cow Sundae. Amazing. It was totally worth the 1000000 calories that must be in each portion.

Williamsburg Bridge
While I loved the steak house, I must say the best part of today's walk was on the bridge. It is like the Woodstock version of the Brooklyn Bridge. While the second is full of grace, chic like you almost could listen to Frank Sinatra while you walk there, the Williamsburg Bridge seems like a pass to the 60's or 70's with a mix of 80's punk, in pastel red/pink color, with graffiti all over the place and all kinds of different people walking on it.

Looking on Google about the history of the bridge and the neighborhood, I've found a pretty cool video with the inauguration of the Bridge that can be seen here:

Some photos that were taken today:

Williamsburg
The new hipster cool neighborhood of Brooklyn that was originally founded as Boswijck when purchased, by the Dutch West India Company and later Bushwick in the beginning of the 18th century when bought by the real state speculator Richard Woodhull. Important industries were stablished there later in the mid 18th century, like Pfizer, Domino Sugar (I love their vintage package!) and important publishers. In the beginning of the 20's, eastern Europe people moved to the region, being followed years later by European Jews that were running away from the War. During the 50's with manufacturing development in the region, Hispanic communities arrived in search of works.

As a typical New York area, Williamsburg has being going trough a deep transformation in the recent years. Old factories are being transformed in new buildings and the mixture of Hasidic Jews, Puerto Ricans, Lithuanians, hipsters and Wall Street people can be found in the region, as well as tourists and new yorkers looking to know the diversified environment that is surrounding the big City.

Source: Brooklyn Public Library
Wikipedia

Peter Luger
Serving "finest steaks since 1887", Peter Luger is one of the $$$ restaurants you should visit to fell the NY traditional style. The specialty, the porterhouse steak is very good, well done and I recommend if you are a fan of the American steaks.

Coming back home
Saw walking in East/West Houston:

Photos by: Sarah Ross

Fashion tip: cheap shoes

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:19:00 +0000

I crossed by this store while going for a walk in the Financial District in NY. If you want cheap options for flats and summer sandals, this is your store: PayLess.

I bought two shoes. One was a black ballet flat that comes with a comfort-thing on the bottom of the shoe. Extremely comfortable (more than the US$100 flats I bought 2 weeks ago) and with a very good price, US$14.99 and that can be found here.

The other shoe was a summer orange sandal with golden medal detail. It was US$19.99 and perhaps in H&M or Forever 21 I could have found a better price, but the quality is very good. You can find it here:

They have many color options for this last one like black, yellow and brown. I saw a beautiful white version of this model on the store but that apparently it is not available in the only store.

Blue Hill Farm at Stone Barn experience

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 01:43:00 +0000

Restaurant entrance

Last Sunday we went to the Blue Hill Farm at Stone Barn restaurant. Apart from the good, which is incredible, go there only for a walk is totally worthy.

Walk trough the main lobby

Rockefeller library tower

Rockefeller library view from the inside - incredible atmosphere here.

Isn't that just wonderfully crazy? And the taste of those vegetables is incredible!

Icy radish!

3 tasty mini breads: love it!

Asparagus stick and asparagus burger.

Lettuce soup.

Coffee.

Candy log.

Annie Leibovitz

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 May 2013 00:54:00 +0000

John Lennon and Yoko Ono

If you don't know her by name, you probably saw a photo taken by Annie Leibovitz without knowing she was the author.

A controversial life, surrounded by financial and personal problems, Leibovitz work outstanding. Famous people outstand in her lens.

Whoopi Goldberg

Meryl Streep

Bush administration

Angelina Jolie e Maddox

Demi Moore

Mikail Barishnikov

Annie Leibovitz

Michael Jackson

Happy Birthday Mr. Davis!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 23:50:00 +0000

Photos from São Paulo county side

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 23:40:00 +0000

A selection of pictures taken in Monte Alegre do Sul, São Paulo, Brasil, December 2012.

Snow white princess decadence.

Photos: Sarah Ross

The Village

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 15:49:00 +0000

W 4th street between Broadway and Laffayett.

Isn't the Village awesome?

Leap into the Void, 1960

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 12:52:00 +0000

Yves Klein (French, 1928–1962)
Photographed by Harry Shunk (German, 1924–2006) and Janos Kender (Hungarian, 1937–1983)
Where can be seen? MET

A man caught in the midair. How impressive is that? A photo that can save one specific moment.

I didn't know Yves Klein. It was interesting to get to know more about him. Apparently he was this crazy French artist that worked not only with photography, but also with life women models, using their bodies as part of the painting process.

Eduardo Kobra colorful graffiti

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 12:24:00 +0000

I've posted Kobra's work in Chelsea without realizing it was his. Since a reader commented, I've been trying to collect more of his pieces besides the Niemeyer one in São Paulo that also certainly deserves attention.

Source: Abduzeedo

New York tip - Edward Hopper exhibition

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 05:03:00 +0000

Edward Hopper's drawings are being exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American History in NYC. The idea is the explore the creative work of the author. It seems a great exhibition worth going to.

Where: Whitney Museum of American History
When? May 23, Oct 6, 2013

Reading of the day - The New Yorker: Edwards Hopper's Details

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 04:37:00 +0000

From The New Yorker

I've just been recent introduced to Hopper's work. And the funny thing is that in the same week my English teacher introduced me his work, my husband came back from the MET very excited with a new artist for him that it was Edward Hopper. This article from the New Yorker is worth reading.

EDWARD HOPPER’S DETAILS

POSTED BY JEREMIAH MOSS

“Edward Hopper is called a realist,” said Carter Foster, the curator of drawing for the Whitney Museum, one recent morning in his office. “But his real process was about memory, the way it infuses subjectivity, and he focussed on the material memory of the city.” The desk, walls, and shelves of Foster’s office are currently crowded with clues to Hopper’s creative process, all gathered for the Whitney’s current show “Hopper Drawing.” Large foam-core boards stood pinned with reproduced photographs, sketches, maps, and other ephemera, looking like a scene from a detective movie: the evidence laid out for investigation. At first glance, the missing persons seemed to be the lost architectural structures of Greenwich Village on which Hopper’s most famous New York paintings were based.

If you are the nostalgic sort, you might long for Hopper’s paintings to represent reality, and for that reality to still exist on the streets of the city. You might want to find an actual diner, for example, where the faded imprints of the nighthawks’ elbows can still be observed in the Formica countertop, or at least know the hallowed ground on which the diner once stood, if only to have a place for pilgrimage, a place to point at and say, “There it was.” Foster doesn’t identify with this particular pang.

“I don’t know what people want,” he said of those who wish for Hopper’s paintings to be accurate copies of the real. “That’s not what Hopper is giving them. He’s giving so much more. Maybe people don’t want the art. They want the thing. But the painting is the thing. I don’t need to find a diner. What’s better is to understand how the artist’s mind worked.” Foster’s investigation has not been so much about locating the vanished architecture of Hopper’s city but, rather, about revealing the painter’s method.

“Hopper was a synthesizer,” he said definitively, pulling out a sketch of a fire hydrant, a study for “Early Sunday Morning.” He then pointed to a 1914 photograph of a fire hydrant planted on a stretch of Seventh Avenue near Fifteenth Street. Is it the same hydrant? The one in the painting is portlier than the one in the sketch, and may have been borrowed from another street. The scene’s barber pole materializes in archival sepia, in photo after photo, but Hopper enlarged it, aggrandized it, and cast an unreal light upon it. (As Foster wrote in the show’s catalog, “Hopper had no problem bending light to his own will.”) The building in the painting was real, but different, less moody—and you can’t make a pilgrimage to it. It was demolished in 1939, less than a decade after Hopper committed it to canvas.

On another of Foster’s evidence boards, the corpus of “New York Movie” comes together from multiple sources—a sketch of a balcony, a carpet’s floral whorls, a newspaper article showing the military-style uniforms of usherettes. “Hopper had to have real details,” Foster said, talking fast. “He had to go out and look for it in the world. He was walking the streets of New York constantly, absorbing the world and putting it into his paintings. So the real was very important. But to turn it into something poetic, he had to do something to it.” That something was the addition of a certain mood, one that many have called melancholy. Hopper didn’t like his work to be described this way. He once protested, “The loneliness thing is overdone.”

“If you interpret his paintings as lonely or melancholy,” Foster said, “that’s about you. The paintings are screens onto which the viewer can project their own feelings and ideas.”

“Nighthawks” might be the one painting that invites the most projection, and which has inspired the most longing for a real thing. It might also be the most synthesized of Hopper’s Greenwich Village paintings. Foster pointed out a 1908 photo showing the curvilinear glass prow of the Flatiron Building. He theorized that Hopper plucked that curved window from the Flatiron and married it to the wedge-shaped Crawford Luncheonette, which once stood behind the Loew’s Sheridan theatre on Greenwich Avenue. A close-up photo of the luncheonette’s interior reveals the silhouettes of men in dark fedoras and waiters in white shirtsleeves.

“Hopper probably looked through those same windows,” Foster said with excitement. He grabbed a 1937 Life magazine from his desk and flipped it over. On the back cover of that issue is an advertisement for Lucky Strike in which a woman bends her elbow to hold a cigarette aloft by her face. She resembles the woman seated at the diner counter in “Nighthawks,” as Foster demonstrated by holding the magazine next to Hopper’s sketch.

“Hopper read Life, and he smoked cigarettes, though I couldn’t find out what brand he smoked. This magazine might have been on his nightstand. The woman in the painting, what is she holding? A pack of Luckies? A wad of money? Hopper’s wife said it was just a sandwich.”

Whenever “Nighthawks” comes to New York, crowds swarm it the way they swarm the “Mona Lisa” at the Louvre. Foster isn’t sure why this painting has become so popular, but he suspects it has to do with storytelling and voyeurism. “You can imagine yourself as a pedestrian on that street. And the title—what does ‘Nighthawks’ mean? What are these people doing? Looking at it, people make up stories in their heads.”

But Foster doesn’t look at the characters and imagine their conflicts and trysts. “Hopper was painting a strata specific to the urban area,” Foster said, referring to windows at night, upper-story bedrooms glimpsed from the elevated train. “In New York, you can look into people’s lives. That’s the feeling I’m interested in. You don’t get that in Iowa.”

Source: The New Yorker

New York Covers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:05:00 +0000

How cool isn't to look old magazine covers?

If you are a cover-freak like me, you will enjoy this new periodical post I intend to do. I've decided to start with the New Yorker - the latest magazine I've been trying to follow in this new adaptation period of moving to NY. From the first to the 49th edition. Enjoy:

Source: Cover Browser

Fashiolista - new way to list your fashion

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 25 May 2013 12:38:00 +0000

Sites that help you to find nice fashion trends, indicate where to buy and similar have been around for a while.

The first one that I found out was Polyvore. You can create a set or collection with existing items on a list, follow people that have a similar taste than yours and receive fashion tips from the editors of the website. One thing that I love about Polyvore is the ability to have similar items when you chose one from different brands and, of course, prices.

Lyst is also a great website to follow trends. I tend to find it a bit more elitist but even tough, a great source for fashion trends.

This week I was introduced to Fashionlista. The difference for me was that you don't just follow people that post good stuff, but you can also easily add items to your own list from websites with a love button that can be easily downloaded.

I am wondering if there are more sites like that around. Three good ones are already too much for me to follow, and so I try to decide which one will better fit me.

Kobra graffiti in São Paulo - Brasil

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:26:00 +0000

A reader well noticed the Chelsea wall with the "Kissing the war goodbye" graffiti is from Kobra, a famous Brazilian graffitist. In our last week in Brazil before moving to São Paulo we took some photos from Kobra's wall in Paulista in honor of Niemeyer - an also famous Brazilian but an architecture.

(note that the moon can be seen even during the day in this photo):

Source: Sarah Ross

Photos from the internet:

Source: Street Art 101

For a very special little cat

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:19:00 +0000

Nov2008

Filippa K new collection

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:20:00 +0000

I love BlaaBlaa.com blog. News every day, a lot of information and a health practice of trying to understanding a post when you don't understand the language

This week BlaaBlaa.com called my attention to Filippa K new collection. While there are no stores in the US, we have many in Europe and some in Australia. Ebay lovers may also find interesting deals on the brand on line.

ZARA May Woman collection

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:19:00 +0000

Boho trend, with printed shirts, pants and, of course, flowers.

Zara TRF LookBook

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:14:00 +0000

Just recently Zara website added to its global website a LookBook section. It was about time!

Flowers and minimalist shapes were the theme of TRF May LookBook.

Color of the week: yellow

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:52:00 +0000

Yellow is not just one of my favorite colors (yes, I am the type of person that changes from time to time its favorite color), but also the best color to describe the hot season that is arriving to NY - we reached the 80's this week.

I love my IKEA yellow couch. It was cheap, comfortable, has style and space. The fact that we put the couch together brings its unwanted consequences, like the fact that the top fabric sometimes get a little loose... but that is part of a hip apartment.

Photo: Sarah Ross

The yellow could bring some joy to your style, to your bedroom, to you office and to plate.

Taking the opportunity, (Des) Mess Around lunches its Pinterest, starting its first panel entitled "Color of the week" with the color YELLOW.

I hope you enjoy it: Pinterest - Color of the Week: Yellow

Metallic pumps

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:32:00 +0000

Jimmy Choo metallic fine point toe are the new sensation in fashion and they can be all yours for only US$650 (available here, in Sak's).

Source: RoundedOff

If you are a mortal and look for a cheaper, but not cheap version, J. Crew released its own metallic fashion boost that can be found here in both silver and gold colors.

One possibility is the crackled cheap, really cheap, version of UrbaNOG.com.

Gnocchi (Inhoque!)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 May 2013 23:36:00 +0000

Home made gnocchi was easier than I thought.

The secret is really to wait the potato get colder before you put the egg and to not put too much flour.

If you want to try in your own home, I share the recipe I've used:

Gnocchi

2 big potatoes (I've used organic ones)

1 egg (organic too)

1/3 of a cup of all purposed wheat flour

(most people would put 2 cups, but I think that is also a great secret for a good gnochi: don't add too much flour on it!)

How to do it?

Boil the peeled potatoes in a large pot (15-20 minutes). Add salt to the water.

Smashed it with a fork (I like to fell the small potato pieces while I am eating, so I do not smash a lot;

you can chose to make it less rusty and smashed it hard).

Let it get cold (10-15 minutes).

Add the egg after gentile, knead and slowly goes adding the flour until dough forms a ball.

Make little snakes on a floured surface and cut it with the fork in gnocchi forms.

In a large pot (I've used the same water used to boil the potatoes), put the gnocchis and let them cook for 4-5 minutes, until they raise to the top of the water.

I've decided to serve it with a simple tomato sauce made with real tomatoes.

Kissing the war goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:33:00 +0000

I love this photo, and the wall made inspired on it above is absolutely crazy.

It is funny because when I first saw this photo, I've instantaneously imagined a veteran that returned anxiously from the war to the arm of his lover. I don't think I was the only one but the funny it is, for who may not know yet, they were completely strangers to each other at the time that occurred.

Kissing the war goodbye is a great title for this picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square

The photographer who took the photo, Alfred Eisenstaedt, has a great collection of photos. He was a good man to be at the right place, at the right time, with a camera in his hand.

Living on the edge

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:17:00 +0000

Highline park.