Culture

There have been a lot of projects this year relating to Marshall McLuhan because people are using the 100th anniversary of his birth as an occasion to re-examine his legacy and his contributions to media studies, culture, and art.

What do bacon covered doughnuts, green tea beer, strip clubs and farm-to-table restaurants have in common? A little place called, Portland. Much like the bran-muffin-hippy-jam society Portlandia portrays, Portland’s restaurant culture and nightlife is shockingly progressive for a society supposedly stuck in the 90s.

Just hopped the red eye back from Tokyo town. The city is somehow more profoundly exciting than I remembered it, maybe because the typical tourist stock is missing in action.

Tim Heidecker is more awesome than his television program with Eric Wareheim could even suggest.

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

There are a lot of street art books on the market today but there’s never been one quite like Taschen’s Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art. This 300-page publication links multiple genres of public intervention from the last 50 years with an amazing selection of visuals and extremely well-written essays from a number of perspectives.

BEST OF THE WURST

Interviewing Gavin McInnes is for a 25-year-old magazine writer, sort of like interviewing the architect of your personality. That said, you’d think I’d have been more prepared. I leapt at the chance to interview Gavin when it came up, thrilled at the opportunity to talk one-on-one with of the neatest people in the publishing industry ever, and then was completely terrified when I found out the article was meant to be for the fall fashion issue, since I know nothing about fashion, other than a vague understanding of things I like or don’t like to wear.

RARELY DO HOTELS INTENTIONALLY WORK TO ASSOCIATE THEMSELVES WITH FECES AND ILLNESS, BUT AMSTERDAM’S HANS BRINKER BUDGET HOTEL IS NO ORDINARY HOTEL.

Billed as “The Worst Hotel In The World”, the Hans Brinker brand, developed for over 15 years by Dutch advertising agency KesselsKramer, is an exercise in counter-intuitive marketing. As you know, the modus operandi of most advertising is to tell lies about the product being pitched. KesselsKramer wanted to try something different with Brinker, so they created their campaigns for the hotel under a doctrine of “extreme honesty”.