New York State

And continuing, some things in the shape of the State of New York! 

Plate Art: http://www.etsy.com/listing/82950697/new-york-state-shaped-map-made-out-of

Wall Hook: http://www.etsy.com/listing/92256094/wall-rack-key-hook-wall-hanging-state

Skillet: http://felionstudios.com/pans/northeast/

Paper: http://www.tropicalscrapbooking.com/SS-P154/new-york-state-shape-paper-by-stamping-station.html

Pills: I’ll skip this link

And let’s not forget the obligatory “I Love New York” products! http://www.spreadshirt.com/i-love-new-york-C3376A5736994

Memories

Remember when I was trying to convince my now fiance to move to NYC and on a walk home on the first night he was visiting, I found a dead body?  Oh, memories.

Divine Chairs

There's a flea market gem on the upper west side of Manhattan called Green Flea.  Among the junk collectors and treasure collections was a vendor called Divine Chairs.  It's been a while, I am not even sure if they are still there but her website seems to be up and current.  Check out these groovy re-upholstered chairs!

Sessed: Donni Charm

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of working with a company called Donni Charm.  Alyssa, the creator of the company, is a great woman with a great team behind her.  

The story behind Donni Charm is worth mentioning.  Alyssa went through the tragedy of losing her father unexpectedly and created scarves with charms on them as a way to remember and honor him.  She started to expand in the past two years and for her Spring 2012 catalog and asked my place of work for some additional models and shooting space (see below for finished product).  

I can tell you first hand these products are super soft and super cool.  I wanted everything!  (There is a hamsa charm so you know I am into it.)  In addition to this new Spring line, Donni Charm has also teamed up with the Grateful Dead.  Yes, that Grateful Dead, to create a unique and kick-ass line of scarves.  

Go check them out and get some, a percentage of the sales goes to a selected charity each season.  So yea, it's not only just an amazing line of products but also has a philanthropic side.  Not hard to figure out without saying, who benefits from this season's sales.  

Limelight Marketplace and Brocade

Limelight Marketplace opened over a year ago and has been continuously changing since.  Every time I roam in there, there are different stores and layouts of the place.  The price points of these stores are very affordable, something you would never expect.  Recently, I went in and found this store, Brocade, and it is dreamy.  Before I get into it, a little about the history of the building.

It used to be a church, which is fairly obvious when looking at it from the outside.  Then, a nightclub and then a private event space.  Now it is transformed into shops but maintains the church design.  It's easy to get lost but fun because every corner is a new space.  My friends and I stumbled upon this really cool lounge area that I bet we will never find again.

We made it to this spot through Brocade.  This store is right up my ally.  Even cooler is the set up the store has.  Its just like a home so you can really get a feel for the stuff.  Even down to the bedrooms that are sized for Manhattan ones.  Just check this stuff out!

Friendly Fires at Summerstage

Spent a summer Sunday doing one of my favorite things.  Went to Central Park Summerstage for a FREE concert and the band was awesome, Friendly Fires.  Here is their performance of Love Sick and Chimes.  I want to dance with the lead singer, Ed.

New Yorkers For Children Spring Gala 2011

Info and photos from New York Social Diary.

When: April 12, 2011
Where: Mandarin Oriental, New York
What: A Fool's Fete.  More than $550,000 was raised to benefit youth in foster care.  The event was designed by David Stark.
Why do I care:  Well besides a good cause, it looked fun!

The Kitchen NYC + Chef Jet Tila + TY KU

My friend Rachel has been working hard on the launch of this awesome new concept called The Kitchen NYC.  You know when you think it would be awesome to hire a chef to come cook for a dinner party but your kitchen sucks?  Or you really want to throw an event and have to deal with catering issues due to lack of equipment?  Or you are an awesome chef and want to throw a party?  The Kitchen NYC is the answer.

It's a state of the art kitchen WITH an event space.  A 7,500 square foot space.  They are extremely flexible with decor and set up too so the options are open.  From an intimate dinner party to a cocktail party for the World Series, you can do it there.  And it's pet friendly!

The event I went to featured Chef Jet Tila.  Currently at Wazuzu in the Wynn Las Vegas, he was in NYC and taught me (and the rest of the room) all about Yellowtail along with Chef de Cuisine Scott Okazaki, who was a great sport answering my stupid questions about travelling with knives.  Things I retained: The collar is a delicacy (Mr. Wynn enjoys it) and this particular fish came from the waters of Australia due to the state of Japan and it's waters.  I wish I remembered more!  I was too distracted by the bomb spicy crunchy tuna rolls and TY KU mojitos!

That’s right, my friends at TY KU were coincidentally there providing drinks for the night.  They also launched their brand new Silver Sake, a more affordable yet still quality bottle.  After the demo, Chef Jet did a superb job of working the room.  He showed a couple ladies how to make sushi rolls, and actually COMPLIMENTED Cleveland during our conversation with him.  He couldn't have been more friendly and I am happy I got to meet him.  If I do ever break the Vegas spell and end up going there, I'll be sure to make some reservations at Wazuzu.

Buddha Chillin

via Gothamist

This Week In Movies

Bill Cunningham New York

A documentary portrait of the legendary, ascetic New York street photographer.

By Nathan HellerPosted Friday, March 18, 2011, at 6:32 PM ET


Manhattan, it is well-known, is an island nation governed by peacocks. Trolling up and down the city's concrete channels, gazing into restaurants, you see a spread of lavish fabrics boldly worn, garments exotically blended, women gorgeously done-up and men dressed studiously down, each eyeing the other for a moment before rushing headlong back into the throng. For those who can't spend hours wide-eyed on a street corner every day, there is Bill Cunningham. The New York Timesphotographer shoots and curates the paper's "On the Street" and "Evening Hours" photo columns—weekly roundups of sidewalk and nightlife shots beloved by fashion doyens and people-watchers alike—and after more than three decades on the job, his visual chronicles have gained an avid, almost cultish following. This week brings the limited release of the first feature-length tribute, Bill Cunningham New York (Zeitgeist Films), a documentary about the man and his city by director Richard Press. The movie takes us on a tour of Cunningham's eccentric life and stranger social circle, hewing closely, all the while, to its subject's style and ethic: Using the low-key approach that shapes Cunningham's column, Press works up a portrait that's as raw, gentle, funny, and—in the end—irresistible as the pictures themselves.


In this, he has ample help from his subject. The Bill Cunningham captured here is a puckish, eightysomething man with electric energy and a wish to devour all of New York through his camera lens. Aboard his bike, he weaves through lurching Midtown traffic with his left hand while occasionally snapping drive-by pictures with his right. (No helmet is involved.) On foot, he camps out on street corners to assess passing pedestrians, swaying toward passing dresses like someone keyed up for a game of Whac-A-Mole. Then, all at once and with a single swoop, he lunges, snaps, and melts back into urban anonymity. What's he hunting for? "Some marvelous, exotic bird of paradise," he coos, "meaning a very elegant and stunning woman or someone wearing somethingterrific." Back at the Times, Press' cameras find Cunningham surfing frantically on the back end of his deadlines, skipping meals, crossing out negatives, and trying to get his page just so. The curve of someone's hip should echo a draped garment one frame over. Bright colors on a dress should play counterpoint off a nearby coat. Cunningham started as a print journalist and retains a writer's sense of composition, a reporter's eye for news. His photo essays call outpatterns, mark trends, and flow with soft humor, giving space to flamboyant characters oroutlandish excesses. Where most fashion photographers strive for something like sartorial perfection, Cunningham delights in catching well-dressed people splashing messily through slush.


An irony shapes this pursuit, and Press' movie—one that's based in the gap between Cunningham's lush work and his weirdly ascetic life. Although he may be one of the few people alive capable of making Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour go all wobbly inside—"It's one snap, two snaps, or he ignores you, which is death," she exclaims—the photographer himself seems to own about five hangers of clothing (mostly blue), dines on the cheap (his favorite repast is a sausage-and-egg-sandwich special, $3), and is so detached from the glamorous events he covers that he'll refuse even water when he's on the job. The documentary's chief plot point is Cunningham's looming eviction from his tiny studio over Carnegie Hall, a space where he has dwelled for decades. It has no private bathroom or kitchen. When he started taking pictures after hours for the nascent Details in the early '80s, he refused to be paid. When that magazine got bought by Condé Nast, he wouldn't cash his check. "If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do, kid!" he advises us at one point. "That's the key to the whole thing: Don't! Touch! Money!"


Photographing money is something else: Part of the pleasure of this documentary is being shown not just Cunningham's working process but the world of power brokers, fashion mavens, and well-dressed eccentrics transformed by his camera over the years. It is a colorful bunch. In one interview, Patrick McDonald, aka "the Dandy," explains why he always covers his face while changing hats; in another, Iris Apfel, better known as that lady with the glasses, lovingly strokes a stuffed animal seated on the couch beside her. We meet Editta Sherman, photographer to the stars and fellow Carnegie Hall evictee. (Editta is a self-taught ballerina, too, and in one lick of footage needlessly but irresistibly spliced into the film, we see her performing the dance of the swan from Carnival of the Animals, a thing she liked to do for guests whenever there was a full moon.) Cunningham was the only press photographer invited to Brooke Astor's 100^th birthday, and yet he also mingles his camera with kids clubbing downtown or garment workers picketing in Midtown. By his own account, he doesn't care about famous people, many of whom he doesn't recognize—he has no TV—just their clothes. He comes across as someone who has found his way into the stuffy center of the palace chasing butterflies.


The hidden subject of Bill Cunningham New York is the space between the fashion industry and fashion as it's worn and loved by real people. Cunningham spans the gap between the two, and so, deftly, does Press. Shot with noninvasive consumer cameras and no crew over months, then winnowed, the director's approach is a direct echo of Cunningham's—and his product shares the subject's upbeat, nonconfrontational style. The film's climax, when the neurotically private, self-effacing Cunningham is asked about his past experiences with sex and religion, is filmed on a diagonal, from a distance of a few feet. It's the least dramatic treatment that this crucial interview could possibly have and, as a consequence, the frankest, rawest moment of the documentary. Press seems to know what Cunningham knows, which is that the camera isn't so much a pen (or a sword) as an open ear, an instrument for picking up the moments of quiet greatness real people sometimes create for themselves. Or, as the photographer himself put it, tearing up as he received one of France's top honors in the arts, "It's as true today as it ever was: He who seeks beauty will find it."


Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2288743/

New York Freaking City

How beautiful is New York?  This is a pic from free movie night in Bryant Park via guestofaguest.

Clever

Dior on 5h Ave is under construction.  

Photo from New York Social Diary. 

NYC Holiday

Drove to NYC for the holiday weekend.  After a solid drive we came to a halt at the GW Bridge but we saw some fireworks in the distance so that was kinda cool.  Woke up and went to look at apartments on Wall Street.  They are throwing in some great deals down there!  The highlight of the trip happened the first day too.  We were chillin in Washington Square Park and we saw them filming Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Spotted Larry David, Wanda Sykes and Jeff Garlin.  The reason I am best friends with the person I am best friends with is because of Larry David.  She wrote for her fun fact during sorority rush "I love Larry David" and the girl talking to us asked her if that was her boyfriend.  We laughed and walked away and that was that.

Food, one of my favorite subjects, and generally what I base my plans around.  We went to Ed's Lobster Cart for lunch and it was the best lobster roll I have ever had (the most expensive also).  Also checked out the Standard Hotel Bier Garden.  $8 ticket gets you a beer, brat or pretzel.  The pretzels were the biggest things I have ever seen and came with a sweet and a spicy mustard sauce which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I would go back here again for sure.  Stumbled over to the Frying Pan after that and got some prime seating in the front of the boat and watched the sunset.  Also enjoyed brunch at Good where I had a Basil & Goat Cheese omelet on a sourdough slice of toast and the following day, eggs benedict at my fave, The Smith.

For the 4th I set up a little picnic spot for my friends in Central Park and spent the day there relaxing.  It's the one thing I wanted to do and I did it so I was thrilled.  Then some friends and I walked down to the west side to watch the world famous fireworks.  A guy even proposed to his lady friend in front of us during it (she said yes).

The only real problem I had was that I hate being a visitor in my own city.  I was spoiled having an apartment there.  It's stressful staying outside the city and having to worry about if you brought everything you need for the day.  By the end of the day I was so exhausted, I didn't even have the energy to go out at night which kinda stunk cuz I was hoping to.  Oh well, I'll be back!

New York Things

It's tough not to be in NYC for the summer.  But luckily there are just so many New York-centric things to surround myself around that it helps.

Bond No.9
Eau de Parfume has an amazingly aesthetic collection that happens to smell nice too.  It "has a dual mission: To restore artistry to perfumery, and to mark every New York neighborhood with a scent of its own. Each fragrance represents a specific downtown, midtown, or uptown locale or a city-wide sensibility. With new introductions in the coming seasons, Bond No. 9 infuses the island of Manhattan with scents."  Pretty cool concept! 

Above are Chinatown, High Line and Union Square scents. 

They also have candles, adorable travel size spritzers and of course limited editions. 


Absolut Brooklyn 

Infused with ginger and apple flavors and matched with a celeb, Spike Lee.  $50,000 will be donated to Habitat For Humanity's Project Bed-Stuy.  To learn more about the product, check out their facebook page. 

Mini BKBridge

I love it!

$250 from Refinery29 -> Racked -> Noir Jewelry

Yoga In The Park (and Rain, Sorta)

Yesterday was epic. 10,000 people in Central Park gathered to take part in a recording breaking yoga session. Flavorpill live streamed and I watched and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, after an hour of stage "performance" which was somewhat entertaining but slightly long, the show began. Within 10 minutes, it was over. Rain had ended the event. But everything happens for a reason, right? Flavorpill says they will return at the end of the summer to retry the event. I hope I'll be in town because I would have loved to have been there first hand.

Photos from flavorpill.com by Ryan Jensen

Why me MTV? I'll Tell Ya!

As I am sure you all know by now, I am campaigning for a spot in the MTV TJ search. This is my DREAM JOB and I am PSYCHED!

I have already asked for nominations via twitter, facebook and my blog but I feel lacking. I feel that I need to express why this is the perfect job for me and so behold, my essay. (If anyone knows the MTV genius' behind this contest, please feel free to pass this one to them!)

Why I Should Be MTV’s First TJ (In List Form)

by Rebecca Meyers

1. I am part of the MTV generation. Been watching it for years and don't plan on stopping any time soon.

2. Total music affectionado.

3. Pop culture is my specialty.

4. I am red carpet trained. Been to a few from my entertainment publicist days.

5. Know how to talk to celebrities/people in general. For some reason, conversation is just as easy with a billionaire movie star as it is for me with my neighbor. In fact, it has lead to many great times such as dancing with Snoop Dogg, a piggyback ride from Michael Strahan at his Superbowl Party and driving Lewis Black to the airport.

6. I never forget a face and treat everyone like a celeb.

7. I am somewhat tech savvy. Since the social media craze, people have been telling me I have a "talent" for it, whatever that means!

8. Love New York City, traveling and being at events.

9. Adjectives that describe me: creative, hard working, dedicated, motivated, adventurous, awkward, funny, witty, diverse, youthful (and apparently after this list, somewhat conceited).

10. Capable of being engaging and appropriate, even in 140 characters. Also very audience conscious.

12. I need a job, want this job, and read the entire contract and am 100% eligible!

So there it is in the smallest nutshell I could think of. Of coarse I'll be following up with a video as well, keep an eye out for that soon.

If this totally convinced you that I am the girl for the job, please follow me on twitter @beccameyers, facebook friend me - Becca Meyers, and post to all of your friends after you go vote for me, @beccameyers at http://tj.mtv.com/open-nomination/

Thanks!

Ronson Love

Just another reason I love the Ronson family:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/7801221/Charlotte-Ronson-Were-not-the-Royal-Tenebaums.html

Hoax

I HATE April Fool's Day! Instead of ranting about how for some reason I'm gullible today and no other day, I'm going to give props to a prank.

In-N-Out Burger, the west coast burger chain, pulled a fast one today. They went through some pretty extensive lengths, hanging up signs in NYC, making people think they would open up at some point.

True or Not, a TON of people are talking about it and will be today if they aren't already. For a way to get your brand on people's minds, HIGH FIVE. Granted, I don't know how my knowing about In-N-Out and not having one available will boost their sales in any way, I still give them props for stirring up some chit chat.

@BurgerConquest on Twitter posted photos.

Kell On Earth Season Finale

Sadly it's au revior to my favorite show of the season. There isn't too much commentary on the actual workings of PR for this blog entry. I am sad to see it go.

One of the reasons I loved the show was the interaction the "cast" took upon themselves on twitter. They live commented on the show, answered and retweeted watchers, and really took reality tv to a new level. Kelly herself has responded to one of my tweets which was awesome and in fact as I am writing this, Kelly's assistant Andrew just answered a question I had! @AJMukamal: recession duh! RT @BeccaMeyers: @AJMukamal WHY would you take the subway with that cake?!?! #kellonearth

I gotta give credit for Kelly jumping on that bandwagon and recognizing that these marketing and social media aspects are key, such as the viral video. She gets that and I think any company that doesn't are missing a key aspect. I don't know if I would go as far as to say she is "pioneering the revolution" but she's pretty bad ass for producing these for such major players in the industry.

I hope Bravo signs them on for a second season. That would be just fab! :)

P.S. In this episode you see this DKNY shoot and they are in front of a graffitied side of a building right around the corner of their office. I LOVE this wall! I would see engagement shoots taken there and I even posted a pic from my favorite part of the wall TODAY on facebook.