What the hell was Gap thinking?

Did you see Gap's new logo? Isn't it a monstrosity? 

What the hell was Gap thinking?  This looks like one of those fonts you download from the web for free because you're too cheap to pay the $39 or whatever to get a decent one.

Vogue September Issue-A True Economic Indicator

If you watch the news and read the papers, you can get reallly confused. One day the housing index is up, the next day it's down. One day the stock market roars for some weird reason, the next day it tanks for other weirder reasons.

And you know what the best economic indicator there is?

The Vogue September issue.

We just got it today and it's nice and fat again. True, you have to flip through hundred of ads to get to some flimpsy content, but the nice part about that is, advertisers are spending money again! Which can leads to all kind of good things.

And we don't know about you, but we are having this frugality fatigue, big time. Enough already with all this self-deprivation.  Sure, the way we spend money is forever changed, but if you really really want those Channel clogs and you don't have to cut into the rent to pay for it, why the heck not...

So here's to Vogue, and to better times ahead!

PS There's a lovely feature on an art-filled apartment.  Click here to see the slideshow.

Source:  Vogue

Gimme My Decorating Magazines Back!

The NY Times today has an article on The Selby.  You probably heard of the site.  It's about real people in their homes--some famous, some not.  The article also went on to discuss how people can relate more to "real places" than professionally decked up places frequently featured in decor magazines, which contributes to their ever growing popularity. 

We love the Selby too but in a way, it's like watching Rachel Ray cooks vs a professional chef.  There is no competition!    Magazines offer beautifully shot, gorgeous decor that we can fantasize about. We don't want to look at houses that look just like ours, for god's sake.  For example, look at the image below from Homebodies, one of the blogs mentioned:

We want our decorating magazines back!  We miss them, terribly.

What happened to our taste?

Okay, so we can't help wondering outloud, what the hell happened to our taste?  What is it that make MTV's Jersey Shore popular?  What is it that sells magazines that featured Gary Coleman's deathbed's picture?  Worse yet, CNN's poll shows that 85% of people think that it's OKAY for his ex-wife to sell those pictures!!!  Why, why, why we ask?

And did you know, the White House crasher made the cut to the Bravo's series Real Housewives of DC?

Here's an excerpt from the Bravo site:

"Michaele Salahi
This northern Virginia native and model is a big part of the inner workings of the D.C. life. She and husband Tareq together founded America’s Polo Cup, for which he is the U.S. team captain. Through her involvement in the Polo Cup, which has become one of the largest and most high profile polo events in the U.S., Michaele has met numerous political leaders across the globe. Additionally, the two are involved in running the Salahi family vineyard, Oasis Winery. Always on the move and juggling multiple projects at once, Michaele is heavily involved in charity work, including being an advocate and fundraising for MS and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. A family girl at heart, Michaele loves spending time at the family vineyard with her stable of horses and beloved dog Rio."
 
No mention of how tacky these people are and how many lawsuits they are involved with (check out the details here).

So pretty...

We saw this picture from Vanity Fair today and we just love it.  It's under the slide shows titled "Oscar Moms".  The picture is of a young Audrey Hepburn pushing a baby carriage (were baby carriages this big in the sixties?).

We also just finished watching a couple of episodes of  the "Real Housewives" series and thought about the contrast of how the women look there vs here.  Enough with the Botox, hair extensions, bad French manicures!

Doesn't Hepburn look so beautifully natural?

Image courtesy of Vanity Fair

Small Businesses Are People Too...

A friend of ours who runs a small drapery wrote us an email to vent about a particularly nasty client of his. The woman was referred to him by a friend.  She insisted on meeting early in the morning, so to get to her house at 10am in LA traffic, my friend has to leave his office at 8am.  He spent a couple of hours the night before picking out fabrics for her.  Once he got there, she proceeded to tell him that she only wants to have someone measure the windows for her so that she can buy the window treatment over the Internet.  Mind you, she wants to have the measurement done for free! 

Another friend of ours owns a restaurant in San Francisco.  We don't know if you know, but this is a particularly trying time for the restaurant business.  Our friend is struggling to survive.  At any rate, there was this group of four young guys.  They ordered a noodle dish and the dish had a tiny thread (that was used to tie the dry noodle together).  My friend apologized and made a new one.  When the check came, they demanded that the whole meal, including 2-3 bottles of wine, be comped!  My friend explained that that is not possible, but she would comp them for the appetizers.  They proceeded to stomp off and left the waitress no tip.  Then wrote a Yelp review about it.

One recent customer of ours ordered $4000 worth of merchandise, then proceeded to cancel/return/refuse 80% of them, leaving us with restocking fee, shipping fee and opened merchandise that we now have to salvage. 

Which leads us to the question, is common decency dead?  Do people feel that merchants exists to be abused and used?  Is common courtesy only goes one way-from the merchant to customers but not the other way around?

If a customer experiences bad service, and we have many times ourselves, there are many outlets they can vent to.

Yet if a merchant gets used/abused like this, all we can do is vent privately.    Yet the same customers will go elsewhere and repeat this deplorable attitute to other businesses.  Most small businesses that we know, especially retail/restaurants are working fingers to the bone to survive day to day.  Having this type of customers just kill us.

We wish sometime that people understand that businesses are people too.

PS We do have a lot of many good and amazing customers that we just love.   To them, we say thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Appreciating The Little Things in Life

Have you ever find yourself so wrapped up in the mundane tasks of life that you don't stop and smell the roses? We do. All the time. To the point where we stop enjoying life sometimes.

That's why we found this blog, One Thousand Awesome Things, so refreshing. It blogs about little things in life that make it so awesome. Here's a partial list:

■#1000 Broccoflower

■#999 That last, crumby triangle in a bag of potato chips

■#998 Getting grass stains

■#997 Locking people out of the car and pretending to drive away

■#996 Opening and sniffing a pack of tennis balls

■#995 Finding money you didn’t even know you lost

■#994 Waiters and waitresses who bring free refills without asking

■#993 Fat baseball players

■#992 Being the first table to get called up for the dinner buffet at a wedding

■#991 Really, really old Tupperware

■#990 Picking up a q and a u at the same time in Scrabble

■#989 Blowing your nose in the shower

■#988 The Gas Arrow

■#987 Picking the perfect nacho off someone else’s plate

■#986 When you pull to a red light and the guy in front of you nudges up a bit so you can make a right turn.

You can see the rest of the list here.

Now, didn't it bring a smile to your face?

Good.