Resist the temptation to try to come to terms with SXSW logically. These aren’t tax forms you’re dealing with, but 2000 bands, playing in clubs, in tents, on streets, in parks. By design, it reinvents itself every year, and there are countless pathways through the mayhem, all of them leaving you exhilarated and exhausted. You face the assault on your senses and then pick your spots for visceral gratification. The fact that the festival overlaps with St Patrick’s Day is a blessing or a curse depending on your feeling toward public intoxication and fake Irish accents.

17 Comments

South by Southwest is commercial, chaotic, concentrated. It’s also elemental, extraordinary and the most essential week in American music. In the last few years we saw bands from Au Revoir Simone to Andrew Bird, Beach House to Midlake.  Not in a field with 100,000 stoners or the echo chamber of Madison Square Garden, but in clubs where you’re 50 feet away from Warpaint or School of Seven Bells. At this late date you’re not getting a room at the Hotel San Jose, but you can still road trip to Austin and crash on the couch of your friend who’s still working on their thesis at U of T.  Then head to Marfa check in at the Thunderbird Motel and you’re feeling pretty smart indeed. Don’t worry about tickets, there are free concerts all day, everyday and light beer for everyone.

Every concert needs its audience, so get thee to Austin.

21 Comments

You think you’re braced for New Orleans’ lax approach toward human frailty, but you’re probably not.  Like an upper classman with a fake ID, the city encourages you to drink with little concern for the consequences.  Many of us don’t need much persuasion in the first place.  You already know the classics: The Ramos Gin Fizz, the Sazerac, the Pimm’s Cup, and, lower down the list (much lower), the Hurricane.

At the indispensable Tujague’s, the astute barman Paul devised something called the Green Rice.  All he would reveal before we tried it was that the liquor was gin, which of course was no problem.  It tasted slightly of citrus, and had an incredibly clean finish, without being bitter.  The reason?  Rice vinegar.  Sometimes it takes vision to invent a new level of vice.

23 Comments

One of the great stores has no walls and, in fact, isn’t even a store at all.  Consider the Andrews of Arcadia stall at Spitalfields Market in London.  Every Thursday, John Andrews sets up his booth of vintage fishing tackle and it couldn’t be improved on by all the art directors on Madison Avenue.  Antique angling wares—bamboo rods, cork floats, checkered sailing flags, restored reels, the odd canvas bucket—all laid out perfectly, priced fairly, and described with care and not a trace of snobbery.  It’s a very sweet thing.  Then lunch across the street at St. John Bread & Wine, and you’re enjoying the better part of civilized life.

11 Comments

The internet gives us access to so much graphic misbehavior at a given moment that it’s noteworthy to discover that a small book still has the capacity to shock.  The volume in question, described yesterday in the NY Times, is an 1870 guidebook of the ins and outs of Manhattan’s brothels.  The Gentleman’s Directory is an indispensable tome for those who required knowing details about the houses of ill repute in our good borough.  It couldn’t be more discreet—yet there’s an implicit appreciation of worldly topics that should be known but not discussed.

The Directory makes special mention of Harry Hill’s on Houston where ‘an hour cannot be spent more pleasantly’ while Greene Street is dismissed ‘a complete sink of iniquity.’

9 Comments

The Champions League—celebrated here in the past—is the tournament for the best club teams in Europe. The final, Saturday at the Bernabeu in Madrid, pits two classic sides against each other: the German stalwarts Bayern Munich against tenacious Inter Milan.

Bayern Munich's Arjen Robben

27 Comments

This is the second in an ongoing series of interviews by David Coggins.

Andy Spade’s arc of success is well-documented and yet it remains a cause for satisfaction. The simple, utilitarian design exemplified by Jack Spade seems straightforward, but like a good bistro or garage band, the key is the execution. It turns out that’s not so easy after all. Jack Spade also worked because it was at home in any neighborhood, dressed up or down. And yet it never took itself so seriously it couldn’t release a frog dissection kit.  The case of Andy Spade is a reminder that just because something feels inevitable doesn’t mean it isn’t visionary.

We met at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle Hotel.

David Coggins: You live up here by Bemelman’s?

Andy Spade: Right, just around the corner.

DC: And you’re drinking a Vodka Southside.

AS: Right.  It’s a southern summer drink with vodka, simple syrup, a little lime juice and soda water.  Usually it’s made with gin.  That’s my favorite light drink.  This is what I order in a bar, at home we drink wine.  We spend our summers in California, so we drink a lot of wine, mostly red.  I love this Alexis cabernet is by the Swanson family, who are friends of ours.

24 Comments