A few weeks ago I went down to Philadelphia to poke around the Urban Outfitters headquarters and get all up in everyone’s business. The folks at URBN decided it was only fair to flip the script on me and come up to my apartment in New York and go through all my stuff. I have to admit the resulting pictures are pretty fun and semi-ridiculous at the same time. I mean, for a grown man to collect thermoses!

You can see the whole photo essay here. Make sure you read the captions — there are some funny tidbits in there.

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There was a little gem in the back (front?) of the new issue of Free & Easy, Cramp leather goods. (That link worked last night but not today — fyi.) Cool stuff,  strange name. Lately Free & Easy seemed to be getting more bizarre by the minute, making you feel like you had taken acid and were mowing a lawn of dandelions on a John Deere tractor. Luckily the good folks who put out my favorite non-English magazine were able to shake off the psychedelic haze for the May home issue. The Cramp canvas and leather shoulder bag, plus the other items pictured below, are some great looking accessories. Definitely something I need to keep an eye out for on my next trip to Japan.

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Anyone that reads this blog fairly consistently knows that canvas gets a lot of play here on ACL. It is just such a simple yet perfect fabric. I fondly remember the smell from an old army green canvas tent my dad had growing up. That is something you just don’t get with nylon. Occasionally I’ll get a little whiff of that tent smell the first time I put on my Barbour coat in the fall. So naturally when I saw the canvas goods from Portland, Oregon based Beckel I took pause. The crunchy, dare I say, campy company makes tents, bags, lawn tarps, just about anything you can think of from canvas and all here in the United States.

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Mordechai Rubinstein is one of my all time favoite people in the city. Someone I continually look to for inspiration, Mordechai embodies New York cool. When I saw him at a little get together at the Hickey store last night I knew I had to flip-the-script on Mr. Mort and take some photos. Just a coincidence that Mordechai is wearing a Barbour coat like a previous Street Style photo that is now known as “The Aaron Levine Incident.” If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Rubinstein’s excellent blog, you have a lot of explaining to do. Mister Mort.

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Nothing like a chair shortage to spark a nationwide squatting trend. That is exactly what happened in 1959 when a bunch of University of Arkansas fraternity brothers decided to make their chair-lacking displeasure known by “hunkerin‘” all over campus. The funny looking practice spread throughout Southern colleges and then eventually throughout the entire country. There is a nice little write up over at Ivy Style — who tipped me off to the whole hunkerin’ thing in the first place — which you can read here. More photos after the jump.

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The folks at Beams are at it again this spring. Anyone that has spent any on the Beams website will likely report frustration on a variety of levels. One being that it is hard to navigate (especially for me since I don’t speak a lick of Japanese). Second, that the online offerings aren’t as much fun as real life or even the catalogs and third the clothes aren’t available to North America / Europe.  Luckily the folks at Beams send me (us) their catalog via special delivery so we can at least know what we are missing. Torture, I know.

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Every year at the beginning of spring I have the same thought. “I should throw away all of my spring / summer shoes and start over with just the classics.” Do I ever build up the guts to do it? Not so much. But since this is the internets and I’m free to play with hypotheticals, this is what my dream team would look like. Everything I need, all that I want. Classic. Shoes that work for 2009 and 2049. Are there other scenarios that could be played out here? Yes. The good news is, I’ll leave it up to all of you to name your summer all-star starting line-up in the comments, thereby saving your lowly steward some grief.

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