One time while were riding in the elevator in a really, really tall building one of our favorite jams came on the muzak, and we felt transported to a dark, light-dappled dance floor. We’re not sure the other people in the elevator were transported to quite the same place, and it became clear when the [...]

There was a time, not all that long ago, when we imagined most of our life would be spent living in a beautiful train, airplane or space shuttle that was finished with only the most elegant and extravagant furniture and gadgets, and from which we would run our global resistance movement while evading the evil [...]

You know, it’s not just people that wear costumes on Halloween–you filthy humanist!–cars, vans, buses and motorcycles gotta get their “trick or treat” on too. And we’re not just talking about the dog-mobile from Dumb & Dumber, there are innumerable real-world examples of vehicles dressing up as other things (no, not Transformers). Cool Material has [...]

True story: one of our best friends’ mothers growing up was one of Canada’s leading quilters. She would travel around the world (though never into space) attending quilting conferences and the like. She used the family’s garage as her workshop, and had the largest Canadian flag in the world stored there in several boxes. Why [...]

During a summer bike trip down the West coast of North America some years ago, we passed a broken down clown car and couldn’t help but offer assistance to the unfortunate performers in peril. In true clown transportation tradition, we managed to fit eight clowns on our bike in various precarious ways, which we’re pretty [...]

In a loving Los Angeles Times piece last week on the occasion of Saturday’s celebration, Mike Boehm remembers the time 50 years ago when L.A.’s idiosyncratic, cathedral-like folk art monuments the Watts Towers were almost torn down. Built by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia between 1921 and 1954, the property was slated for demolition, but rescued [...]

Since we’re pretty serious architecture enthusiasts, not much gets us more hot under the collar than impassioned debates about the aesthetic quality (or poverty) of our built environment. After all, so much of our architecture is the work of developers looking to make a quick buck, rather than thoughtful designers, engineers and artists trying to [...]

Today is Leif Ericson Day, an occasion to celebrate the achievements of that valiant Norse explorer (approx 970-1020), most notably being the first European to set foot on the North American continent, likely somewhere near the tip of what is now Newfoundland. Given his broad region of influence–Iceland, Norway, Greenland, North America–you might find celebrations [...]

A very interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times explains that our brains are often at their most active, creative and effective when trying to process bad instructions, misinformation, or trying to find patterns when no signs are present. The accompanying image (pictured) shows a blank road sign on a desert road, which got us [...]

As you presumably heard, last week the International Olympic Committee made the right decision for once, and awarded the duties of hosting the 2016 summer Olympic Games to Brazilian megapolis Rio de Janeiro–rather cities in recent host nations Spain, Japan and the U.S. This marks the Games’s first visit to South America, and since it’s [...]