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I popped up in Athens to face a phalanx of police riot shields. In LA, Stephen Spielberg's mother showed me her wall of fame to her son (it's on the way to the restroom). Then there was Occupy London ... and the $10/night Kung Fu hostel in Hong Kong with its Changi prison aesthetics and crazed woman who refused to budge from my bunk bed … SPOT PLANKING: One of the funnest things you can do in Geneva at the Gagosian Geneva gallery. Thanks to Johan @Gogo for being a great sport! My latest escapade was a complete departure from anything I've done before - the Damien Hirst Spot Challenge - a kind of global scavenger hunt where you had to dash around visiting 11 galleries showing his Spot Paintings (NY-LA-London-Paris-Geneva-Rome-Athens-HK), and as a reward, receive a print personally dedicated to you by the older YBA himself. It was one of the stressful and exhilarating adventures I've ever undertaken. The full spot-by-spot journey is thrashed out on my art s

I'm suddenly the lucky owner of this homage to Mr Sulu/George Takei - since it's about art, go forth and read about it on my ChelseaGallerista blog .

VIDEO: My brief swan around just a tiny corner of the cavernous Comic-Con convention at the Javitz Center.  PHOTO GALLERY on Facebook Oink la Rouge by Goran Lelas My lighthearted,   recent FastCompany post on Executive Toys drew a nice little perk: Tenacious Toys , online purveyor of little G-rated adult toys in plastic, vinyl and plush, invited me to the final Sunday mayhem of Comi-Con 2010, a sprawling frenzy of comic and toy fantasy and fandom attracting thousands of strangely dressed people. Believe it or not, while some executives are having board (bored?) meetings about C&C machined parts on combine harvesters, others are passing around models of a plastic Labbit (Chinglish/Japlish for "rabbit") with a smoke drooping from its non-existent mouth. Or baby vampire dolls drinking blood from bottles. Or strange animals made from what looks like a fluffy toilet seat cover, with impossibly giant noses. That kind of thing.  Slander Snake

Joy Ohara, Susan Lee , me (with Damien's bracelet), and pals form university days Lye Kok (back) and Damien Dernoncourt outside the Maritime Hotel, Chelsea, Manhattan On Saturday I had the pleasure of meeting Damien Dernoncourt, CEO and principal of John Hardy , makers of extremely fine silver jewelry in the Balinese tradition.  Apart from a mutual friendship with Bike Friday customers Lye and Joy, Damien had something in common: a handmade product with a story. In Damien's case, a stunning range of high-end silver jewelry made in Bali, where his company is the tiny country's biggest employer.  In my case, my little Traffic Cone Bag that's made in America (and of course, Bike Fridays , made in Eugene, Oregon).  When you see Damien's jewelry displayed in chic 5th Ave store windows, seemingly untouchable unless you're dressed well enough to hit the buzzer and enter, you'd never imagine the human and inspiring story behind it. First, the Balinese have th

From this article by Nicolai Ouroussoff : "But traumatic events have a way of making you see things more clearly. When Rem Koolhaas’s Prada shop opened in SoHo three months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was immediately lampooned as a symbol of the fashion world’s clueless self-absorption. The shop was dominated by a swooping stage that was conceived as a great communal theater, a kind of melding of shopping and civic life. Instead, it conjured Champagne-swilling fashionistas parading across a stage, oblivious to the suffering around them. The Chanel Pavilion may be less convoluted in its aims, but its message is no less noxious." Maybe it's just as well I didn't go inside! Here's my take on something even more noxious

The latest addition to Wayne Takazono's 'Famous Paintings On Vacation' series. Buy a cool print of this original for $29 from the man himself, email wtakazono at hawaii dot rr dot com Ah, my Hawaii sojourn is drawing to a close. Before I jet off to Arizona for the annual Bike Friday Desert Camp I'm making a quick trip over to check on my postage-stamp-sized piece of Hawaii and dream about what I can do with it. I was thinking of investing in a condo of some sort (using coconuts and bike parts for currency) but this is one alternative to consider - build your own shack, rather than pay dearly for someone else's shack. Especially when the sun and rain are free and plentiful in Hawaii. No insulation needed, no heating or airconditioning if you build it right. Land has dropped down to around 10-15k a lot, but you don't buy there to make a killing. You buy because it's just one killer place to live. Take a look at my photos from '05-06. The lava is slow

I WASN'T going to rush out and see this exhibition, given the $26 entry and the oversize, see-it-all-anyway technicolor psoters on bus shelters and bus sides. And then there was the controversy about the bodies being of Chinese prisoners exhumed without asking their permission first ... But a surgeon friend, Dr Steve Chang, said it was "excellent - wish we'd had it at med school" and his colleague even offered to accompany me and provide a laparoscopic commentary, so how could I refuse? The exhibition starts out modestly with a display of fairly unremarkable skeletons – we've all seen those in high school anatomy classes. Except these skeletons are shown playing football, doing hi-fives and striking other admittedly PG-rated poses, complete with ridiculous smiles on their faces, and staring eyeballs. On this particular day, a no-holds-barred mitzvah (or what sounded like it) was in full swing upstairs, which ruined the potentially contemplative ambience.