Tag Archives: architecture

foundling

{24 July 2010}


three trips to Omega Salvage in as many weeks led to a desire for this chair that was just short of obsessive. actually, there are three of these chairs. i brought home one today, to be my office chair, but i confess to having spent several hours last weekend trying to figure out how to rearrange my already-cramped living room to accommodate the other pair of chairs. i haven’t figured it out yet, but i will! there’s this wagon-wheel coffee table i must come to terms with first…

the other thing that poking around Omega has done is caused me to pledge never to buy another piece of laminate furniture from IKEA again. i didn’t anticipate this sudden rejection of IKEA-style, though i should have seen it coming. a few years ago, when my (non-arts-employed) friends started eschewing IKEA in favor of “real” furniture, i was still in the financial/maturity bracket to look at IKEA and think “this stuff is cheap and awesome! and you can bring it home in the back of your honda!” for a long time, IKEA has represented a step up from where MOST of my furniture comes from: theatre hand-me-downs*, and casts-offs from ex-boyfriends’ parents. believe you me, being in a financial position where i can buy NEW hardwood furniture is far far off, and probably not in this lifetime, or at least this career. but i love old furniture like i love old houses: i know the plumbing’s iffy and that the floors slope, but there is an integrity of construction, and a feeling of history, life, depth, that makes me overlook everything but the crown moulding in the bedroom, the little metal plate bolted on to the back of the chair.

replacing my office chair has a practical function as well: our household is feline battleground right now as our cats try to figure out why the fuck is that other cat still here?, and one of Eddie’s favorite tricks is to hang out underneath skirted furniture (especially my now-former office chair, which is next to Zeke’s food dish) and growl at Zeke, taunting him into snarling confrontation.**

* if you walk around my darkened apartment at night, you may still encounter bits of glow tape here and there.
** yes, our furniture growls.

on the road again

{24 November 2008}

i’ve been traveling a lot this fall. first it was idaho, and the bay area, then minneapolis, then southern california. so, here are some pictures of pretty things.

minneapolis. mpls, as it turns out, is a great city. i’d never been there and didn’t know much about it, but architecturally i found it to be this incredibly aesthetically appealing combination of new and old, industrial and modern. i was there for a couple of nice, mild fall days: i went for runs along the river and walked around the city quite a bit. however, the architecture of the human habitrails make it clear that winter in MN is no joke.

long beach. what does long beach have going for it? well, as near as i can tell, it’s not orange county. forgive me, my beloved OC’ers, but i had a pretty visceral reaction to the OC last weekend*. anyway, about the last thing i saw on the beach here was this shot, immediately afterward this weird mid-afternoon coastal fog rolled in and obscured everything. and made my hair curly. it was a lovely, 65 degree day, which meant that midwestern tourists like me went to the beach and the locals stayed home and wore polar fleece.

the gypsey den. so as not to totally malign the OC, i did get the opportunity to have a big hippy breakfast and the best chai i’ve ever had and what is probably the lovliest independent coffee house on the planet. i claim no credit for discovering it; it’s a childhood haunt of lau‘s. and it is a goodly place.

*contemplating a move there for work. more details when i’m able to process them/share them/know them myself. tantalizing, i know!