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On becoming an accidental candidate at a job fair at the height of the 2009 recession UPDATED 2023 with additional intel.  Originally published: 2/25/2009.  Read an edited version of this post on Fastcompany We interrupt this program for a report from the cold, hard pavement outside your window. A jobseeking friend invited me to join her at a Women for Hire Career Fair  2009 at the Sheraton New York. Thinking it might provide a palpable insight into the current state of the nation for my FastCompany blog , I hastily printed out my resume as required (complete with a nice glaring typo - doh!) and jumped in a cab to make it by curtain call. Might I add, my color printer suddenly chose to malfunction that day, and printed out a resume striated in red, white and blue, like a glorious 8 1/2 x 11" American flag. No matter, it's a just a formality for my friend's benefit, right? On arriving at the entry cutoff time of 1.15pm - 45 minutes before the advertised closing time of 2pm...

Patience , one of two lions guarding the the Beaux-arts building of the NY Public Library, knows that it's only a matter of time before folders may pass into the library unscathed ... My somewhat ballsy Tikit on Trial experiment spanning 2007-2010, which   tested whether I could ever so politely sashay my way into office buildings with marble front desks and starched uniformed gatekeepers - is now archived off the Bike Friday website. The links below are copies saved by that giant, silent hoarder of everything ever blogged, the Wayback Machine. The articles are mostly intact - but for a quick pictorial tour, check out the Photo Gallery and YouTube movies. 0.  Summary  (archived) 1. The experiment  (archived) 2. The results  (archived) 3. Photo gallery  (current) 4. The movies  (current) In a nutshell, it was an experiment to see how the the  tikit , the Bike Friday commuter folding bi...

All in a day's work: Former gravedigger and now cemetery historian Donato Daddario demonstrates the key that releases the two rosette-shaped screws and releases the marble faceplate from a compartment. "THE boiler would come by with his two big cauldrons, disinter (dig up) the bodies and boil 'em up to remove any remaining meat. He'd then chop up the body at the joints, box up the bones and they'd be loaded on a ship bound for China ..." In case we needed a better visual, the ebullient Donato Daddario whacks a cleaver-shaped hand against his elbow and knee. "We used to say, they used the broth to make chop suey!" We happened to stumble across Donato during a personal tour of the  Evergreens Cemetery  led by distinguished historian and über sailer  John Rousemaniere , author of   Green Oasis in Brooklyn: The Evergreens Cemetery 1849-2008   Heading over the Brooklyn Bridge with galpals Pamela Talese and Cathy Eatock (from downun...

Laurie Anderson with her Explorer's Club certificate of appreciation, while hubby Lou Reed looks windswept and interesting.   The Explorer's Club  is officially busting out of its extreme snowshoe and crampon mold: Last night's event - a surprising detour from summit-talk and diving bell banter - was a discourse between famous avante-garde composer Laurie Anderson and experimental muso and "philosopher-naturalist"  David Rothenburg . And what's this ... DJ Snoopy slated for an upcoming talk on the calendar? Edmund Hillary eat your stuff sack out! But even more surprisingly, Lou Reed was in attendance. More about that in a moment. For the uninitiated, the Explorer's Club is an oak-clad clubhouse hung with the stuff of "distinguished" hardcore adventure - dug out canoes, sleds and snowshoes worn by someone with Wikipedia creds. It's where scholarly thrillseekers rub ice picks under the watchful eye of a giant, gnashing, taxidermied pol...

VIDEO:  Shot by the Galfromdownunder on the corner of 23rd St and 8th Ave NYC.  Music by Honest Charlie, sampled live in Tucson, AZ.  THERE'S a perpetually problematic corner on 23rd St and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. And I'm not referring to the stalwart sales associates handing out the Rite Aid and eyebrow threading leaflets either.  In torrential rain, this corner becomes a deep, impassable twin lake, causing pedestrians to walk an extra block, give pause, or if they're lucky to be wearing the ubiquitous Manhattan Hunter rubber boot (women only), slosh smugly right on through. When it snows, it becomes a glacier and lake combined - necessitating some mini mountain climbing (see video). Squint your eyes to block out the buildings, street and yellow cabs and you can almost imagine you're in watching National Geographic documentary on Greenland - before global warming set in. I have no idea why the city hasn't brought in a truck with some concrete to build t...

‎*** WARNNG: Parental Guidance Alert! Santa Spoiler! *** Visiting the Macy's Santaland on the top floor of this iconic NYC retailer in 2009, with Bike Friday customer Brenda Carlton. When I was a kid, there was just one Santa, needless to say, me and my nosy camera were hustled out of there ever so nicely by the tireless, velvet suited  elves - they deserve a great Christmas tip! Merry Christmas everyone! Santa's Elf 1: beats folding t-shirts! Santa's Elf 2: tip this man!  Scenes from Macy's Miracle on 34th St puppet show. Bear Crossing!  My advertising bent: putting the Macy's branding front and center The final scene from Miracle on 34th St Everyone gets this cute little badge

WARNING: Strong Kiwi content including an accent that will melt the hearts of lovers of the Kiwi lilt ... Watch on YouTube to leave a comment IS it possible for the words "romance" and "rugby" to tête-à-tête in the same sentence? Chief behind-the-scenes enabler of the recent NZ Rugby Stars in NY at Saatchi bash, Sarah Smith, makes a ruck and a maul sound like warm handshake and canoodle as she describes the aims and aspirations behind the program - to facilitate a very sporting cultural, educational and potentially economy-enhancing exchange between New Zealand and the USA, via the medium of stellar student Rugby. I interviewed the NZ Trade and Enterprise attaché at the ThreeTarts , One of Oprah's favorite micro-desserteries in Chelsea, where treats are no bigger than the average Chelsea toy chihuahua ('s poop). The November 12 event at Saatchi netted $23,000 to fund two very smart and presumeably large-biceped exchange students via the Play Rugb...

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 Sn...

" Ratting on the fat cat over the road on 21st and 10th Ave, Chelsea, Manhattan. Have you seen this large inflatable rat around town? I always thought it was a giant advertising balloon for a vermin extermination company doing their mouse-mulching in the building immediately behind. Clever! But no - it's actually the protest mascot of construction industry unions. "Come in! Take photos!" said a picketer in a hardhat plastered with a  "UNION" sticker when I stopped by with that typical "what's up with that?" expression on my face. He pointed across the road to a wooden skeleton of a building alive and crawling with the sound of hammers and hi altitude girder-walkers. "The owner is employing non-union workers at minimum wage, like five bucks, no benefits." I looked around at the apparently unionized throng languishing behind the barricade, all dressed up, iphoning, and nowhere to jackhammer. "A union member gets p...