Posts Tagged “wood”

It’s been a while since we had an interesting update in the wooden electronics department, but two recent developments in the not-so-typical use of wood hit the ducky radar last week:

Wooden covers for humanizing

The smart and stylish humans at iamhuman have finally restocked their selection of wooden laptop covers.  Not full shell covers (wouldn’t that be cool and absurdly expensive?) but more like the decals you often see, but these are made from real wood veneer.  iamhuman’s tagline is “human individuality for non-human objects” and that’s precisely what they deliver by using real wood.  No two are alike.

Wooden covers for human eyes

Meanwhile over at shwood, they’re making sunglasses with hand-crafted wooden frames in a sort of wayfarer style.  There’s something you don’t see every day.  I spent a brief moment indulging in splinter-paranoia panic before settling into a slow-burning jones for these specs. There’s no mention of prescription lenses, but I’ll keep watching and hoping.

I’m not going to make any claims on how green it is to use wood like this, but it sure is a nice break from some of the glossier surfaces and materials that are popular out there.  The built-in individuality is a definite plus, too.

Not that long ago, I used to travel a lot for work, it seemed I was never home.  Occasionally I would join newoligarch for “neighborhood patrol” wherein we would walk around our neighborhoods, taking conscious note of stores opening and closing, construction, homes for sale, and other changes that can pass you by when you’re out of town.

In that spirit, I present some local square updates:

1. Davis Square

The shell of CD Spins didn’t have much time to get cold before a hermit crab of a new business moved in.  They don’t quite have all the signage yet, but La Chic Boutique is definitely open for business at 235 Elm Street.  It’s a fashion consignment shop that also carries (or aspires to carry) according to their literature (abridged), “Hummels, Swarovski Crystal, Frankoma, Hobnail, Lunchboxes, Weathervanes, Transformers, Acoustic Research, Duck Decoys, Doorstops, Microscopes, Old Tube Radios, Ambrotypes, Tiffany Lamps, Folk Art” and more.

2. Harvard and Davis

I had blogged briefly on Bowl & Board earlier.  This bit from NPR makes it sound like things are even worse, and the Globe also mentions their exodus from Harvard Square.  I went back and bought that cutting board like I was talking about.  I hope that little bit helps them some. It’s a nice foil to the granite counters in limeduck kitchen stadium.

3. Harvard Square

Crema cafe was mentioned in the Globe piece above as a sign of life and business in the square, and I’ve been tardy in visiting.  Professor M lured me there yesterday and I had a double espresso while she enjoyed mint tea and an eggplant sandwich.  The place was packed but still relatively calm.  My espresso was good but not outstanding, having a bit of a sour tang.  The eggplant was crisp, with entertainingly stretchy cheese and excellent (house made?) bread.

There’s still life in these old squares yet.

Yesterday, I blogged about being too lame to spend some found money, but I also found what might be just the thing to buy.  I was in Bowl & Board in Davis Square, looking at cutting boards.  I had been coveting one of those bamboo numbers, all sustainable and asian chic and all.  But then I noticed a display of wooden bowls and boards (how fitting) by Spencer Peterman.

Each one is unique and handmade from fallen trees.  How’s that for green?  And they’re made in Western MA, how’s that for local?  I don’t think we grow any bamboo around these parts.  They’re not cheap, but I have to say I’m warming to their wabi-sabi look.

A cutting board is something I know I’ll use, probably for a long time, and buying local handcraft from a local merchant is pretty high on the localvore scale of where to put your money.  It assuages a small chunk of the guilt I feel buying stuff made overseas from national or international chains.  A small chunk is better than none.

Where else can one satisfy both discerning taste and the desire to keep money in the community?

I visited the hip South of Washington Street (SoWa) arts district Accompanied by some good people from the DeCordova and gallery buddy L for the YMOD gallery walk.  There was a similar event on Newbury Street in the Spring.

We began at the 450 Harrison at Thayer Street complex with Gallery Kayafas, Bromfield Gallery, Kingston Gallery, OHT Gallery, Samson Projects, Soprafina Gallery and Steven Zevitas Gallery.  The Thayer Street alley itself was decorated with some timely guerrilla art.

Nearby were also the Laconia Gallery and Boston Sculptors Gallery, and the crew wound up the evening at Rocca for some snacks and drinks.

It would take several posts to describe everything I saw, but I’ll devote some extra space to the work on view at Gallery Kayfas because Arlette and Gus were such gracious hosts.  Kayafas has just moved upstairs from their prior location and approximately doubled their exhibition space.  They have three shows running now: Robert Knight, Bruce Myren, and “Ahh, Italy,” a group show of images of Bella Italia.

Knight, whose current body of work, “My Boat is So Small” investigates the spaces we inhabit and the stuff we keep there, was good enough to give a brief gallery talk and answer some questions.  He photographs people’s homes and is always looking for subjects, so get in touch.

Bruce Myren showed a completely new body of work, The View Home, as well as a trio of tripychs from his markers series.  The View Home shows each of Myren’s residences photographed at an angle directed at his current home, along with the duration of his habitation and the bearing and distance.

In the interest of disclosure, you should know that Bruce is a friend of mine and my tonsorial inspiration.  He also has an upcoming solo show at the Danforth Museum in Framingham where you can see his Markers:Memory work.

The small show of photos of Italy included classic images by Mario Giacamelli, a set of 1891 photogravures of Venice, and more contemporary work from the likes of Nick Nixon and Eric Lewandowski.

Also of note, Rose Olsen’s subtle translucent geometries on wood panels called Just Colors No Curves at Kingston, and Randy Garber’s What You Already Know – prints with intricate verbal and typographic themes – at Bromfield.

We ended the evening with drinks and appetizers at Rocca, a stylish italian place next to the galleries.  Despite a minor mixup on what was vegetarian and what was not, we filled up on tasty finger foods in the engaging company of the other gallery walkers.  Plus, I must give kudos to the alert valet who recognized me coming out of the restaurant and fetched my car without even asking for the ticket.  Wow.

One time, at podcamp, somebody stood up and talked about how her business – an art gallery – had invited local art bloggers over one night for a gallery tour and general chat, and about how this had been a wildly successful PR and community-building exercise. If any gallerists are reading, I suggest you take note. And if any expensive restaurants or clothing stores would like to try this, please do get in touch with me right away.

Yesterday, I got just such an invitation from one of my favorite institutions, WBUR-FM, an NPR station that is more or less permanently tuned on my home and car radios. The good people of WBUR have had the foresight to invest in new media initiatives, including the excellent blog, The ConverStation, ably helmed by Ken George, to which I referred earlier.

Ken invited local bloggers and social media types through facebook, twitter, and maybe even personal invitations, and despite biblical weather, about 15-20 people showed up for a tour of the station, networking, chatting and eventually, eating and drinking. See the WBUR socials flickr group for some not very incriminating photos.

What the heck is that, you ask? It’s a beautiful wooden sound baffle, on the wall of the engineering room next to one of the air studios at BUR. Reminds me of old type-sorting cases. I totally want one. You can see it with more context in the background of some of the flickr pics. Each box is few inches across and has a different depth, turning it into an acoustic black hole, especially at the lower frequencies. Bass checks in, but it doesn’t check out.

Unfortunately, this might be a metaphor for the future of public radio in a digital, on-demand world. Here are some thoughts from the free-wheeling discussion after the tour. I’m sure a lot more was batted around at the bar after, but I had to cut out early for dinner.

Everybody agreed that we all love NPR programming, and eveybody agreed that we all hate pledge time. Some even hate underwriting announcements, and they’re about as painless as ads can be. I learned that NPR underwriting messages cannot include any call to action or any mention of competition or offers. Sadly, this helps confirm why as a marketer, I consider underwriting to be a donation that makes the executives feel good, not a marketing program that drives business.

So what does a roomful of smart social media types say about this? Some suggested that they’d be happy to pay for an ad-free (no underwriting, no pledge driving) audio stream or podcast on a subscription basis. I’ll leave the logistics of pay per podcast – and what to put in the stream gaps left by excluding the pledge drives – to the techies. This hints at the basic problem the old commercial (or pledge) system has: you can’t fast-forward TV or radio, but you sure can fast-forward a podcast. Actually, with TiVo and the like, you can fast-forward TV, and I think there’s something similar for radio.

The next idea that circulated was wondering if people would pay for individual programs by subscription, or individual episodes on demand. This led to discussion of whether public radio looks at how much pledge money comes in from different shows (they do) and whether the pledge-per-show model might let some shows float themselves and others that can’t pay their bills just dry up and die.

I opined that the very premise of public radio was that some kinds of programming could not support themselves in the market, but had such redeeming qualities that it was in the national interest to subsidize them. The elitist and paternalistic nature of public radio is at odds with the both tough-love capitalism and the populism (Diggocracy?) of the internets. Ouch. I guess we really are all batch of quiche-eating prius drivers.

I bet that lots of public radio shows could be commercially viable: Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion, and even This American Life come to mind. (Not all examples are WBUR shows, and NPR syndication is a bit piece of the puzzle here that I’m going to skip for brevity) But what about the stuff that they are essentially subsidizing, Con Salsa, RadioLab, and most of the news? On the one hand, the low, low price of internet distribution could put some of those shows back in the black if they could avoid sharing the big fixed costs of terrestrial radio production and distribution. But on the other hand, dropping those shows from the air would likely make them even even less able to raise money, especially if the station cut them off from a share of the pledge pie.

I’m usually all about free marketeering, but for the small slice of my taxes that goes to support cultural stuff, I’m pretty happy to subsidize and then to pay again on top of that. I hope Ken and the WBUR crew can find their way in this brave new world.

Speaking of free and not so free markets, if you have any disposable income left after tithing to public radio, you might look into the latest in expensive wooden radios, the Tivoli Audio NetWorks internet radio, available in cherry, walnut and wenge, pictured below. (Wikipedia says its endangered, Tivoli says sustainably harvested, go figure)

You may recall that I have a thing for wooden radios, and I periodically check in on what’s new in tree-based audio products. I’ve been critical of Tivoli for getting things painfully almost right in the past, and I think this is another one of those. But the release to market of a $600 internet-only (FM radio costs you an additional $50) audio device has got to mean something to the discussion above. Tivoli is pitching hard on the angle that you don’t need a computer to use this thing to listen to hundreds of radio stations from all around the world, you just need an internet connection. If there’s a place where lots of people have high-speed internet but no computer, I must have missed it. Maybe they just mean you could put this radio in a room where you don’t have a computer, like your bathroom. If you need a $600 internet radio in your bathroom, you need more fiber in your diet.

I haven’t seen or heard or touched this device, but I’m going to tell you what I think anyway since I’ve seen and heard and touched many other Tivoli products.

It’s gorgeous – from the waist down. The geometry of the box and the speaker and their colors and materials look great. I love the wenge especially. I recognize that it probably needs a digital display, but couldn’t they come up with something less ugly? I would think that a color screen wouldn’t be hard to pull off at this price point. And maybe you don’t need those two rivets on the display frame? Ick. The credit-card remote looks like it has those awful blister buttons, too. There’s a button or knob on the top of the unit that might – just might – approach the joy of the geared-down knob on the Model One, but sadly, I doubt it.

It’s expensive - I’ve mentioned this a few times and I’m still a bit in shock. For $600 you get a mono internet radio. Other internet radios cost half that. If you already have a computer, you can get speakers for even less. And you have to add $50 more for FM and another $100 for a second speaker for stereo sound. I can’t tell if the second speaker is connected by cable or wireless. Conspicuously absent, an ipod dock. Clearly, this is a premium product, so I say, just take the whole kaboodle up to $800 or $1000 and don’t nickel and dime your premium customers.

It probably sounds great - I really don’t know, but the reviewers seem to like it, and it has some spiffy buffering technology that might reduce the chop of a lousy internet stream. The wooden case bodes well, too.

It’ll be interesting to see how this product goes for Tivoli. If they’re right, there are some people willing to pony up big bucks to get good looks and good sound with internet radio. If they’re wrong, the XM-Sirius monster might eat their lunch, or the internet radio generation will just pass them by. That would be a shame, I think the world needs more and better wooden cases for its electronics.