Posts

New York Fashion Week: Folding and Tucking with Telfar Clemens and Bike Friday

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Fashion designer Telfar Clemens tests out the Bike Friday tikit PHOTO GALLERY    Small wheels, tall models MOVIE CLIPS   Playlist The casting (7 mins)  Young NY models audition for the show, including riding the tikitTM! The show (10 mins)  20 minutes of fame as 250  fashionistas converge on Telfar's lunchtime showing I just finished filming a collaboration between Bike Friday and young fashion designer Telfar Clemens at New York Fashion Week. No, that's not Telfar above, that's Pavel, one of the young models at the show, who you may see brooding from giant CK billboards. The photo is meant to show our comparative heights: if he's the Empire State Building, I am in comparison, the illegal taco cart in parked in the cutter. Below is a shot of me and Telfar Clemens, with one of the monogrammed tikits we loaned him for his show. Read the full monty below ... JUST WHO IS TELFAR, I hear you mutter as you tuck your Armani cravat under your h

Turning 46 in the Big Apple

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Two score and six years ago ... my parents did the default here I am. I've just landed in NYC after 4 months of rabid customer evangelizing downunder . I was met at the airport by a Manhattan midnight cowboy who immediately whisked me off to the house of superlative bi bim bap to celebrate, Gam Mi Ok . It's the best, most healthy Asian square meal ever, in a round bowl (vegetarians can always refuse the meat). Just before I got off the plane, my lawyer James von Boeckmann (the nicest lawyer you'll ever meet, 541-485-0912) called and told me my greencard petition finally got approved. Unbelieveable! It's the end of a longish road. Rather than waiting years going the traditional employer route, I opted to self-petition using the faster, riskier route: National Interest Waiver. What is NIW? You have to show "exceptional ability" (the rung above it, extraordinary ability, is for young Einsteins and Nobel Laureates) and that your work is in the national interest. H

One less car. One more parking space for you.

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That's what this t-shirt says. Think it will help calm road rage? I whipped it up using the Design-O-Matic t-shirt designer at www.remo.com.au Read my take on REMO and view the movie clip

More Bobbi's Pole: "I only do it for my triceps, honest."

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There's always a pole to practice on, like this one on New York's L-Train Amber, Miss Poledance NSW WITH THIS, my third – or is it fourth? –  post about pole, I'm starting to get funny looks at the confessional. How long can I keep up the line "I only do it for my biceps/triceps, honest" when, with all my gallivanting around Oz for Bike Friday , I've barely had time to shin up the $550 chrome wonder propping up our living room ceiling? After my first multimedia post about the school, the principals Vanessa and Bobbi gifted my mother and I with two ringside, or should I say, bathtub side tickets, to one of their July Showtime evenings. Yes, the third 2-hour, champagne-drenched recital by the teachers featured a smoking act involving a couple of plastic shell-shaped bathtubs, ankle deep water, two sea sponges and the reigning Miss Poledance Australia, Candice, and Miss Poledance NSW, Amber. (As a duo, I reckon they should call themselves "CandAmber

Dr Doug Meyer, RIP

Today I blogged on FastCompany about Dr Doug Meyer, who jumped 17 floors to his death. Read post Thanks to Doug's colleague Steve Chang, a great friend and Bike Friday customer, for providing insight into Doug's life. The last time I saw Doug was at Halloween in NY; such a low key and unassuming man, he stayed clear of my video. Steve, however, appears at the end. Halloween in NY movie clip I've been busy tripping north to spread the low-hydrocarb gospel in Brisbane . Here's how I arrived in Brisbane, 14 hours in a folding hotel room. Check out the folding frenzy of the Countrylink sleeper cabin (Movie clip) Before that I interviewed REMO, the purveyor of Stuff with a Story (Movie Clip) - astounding, given that I'd upset them by critiquiing their email campaign. Finally, here's the kind of urban jungle we'd all welcome - hidden in a fold of suburban Paddington in Sydney: Heading back to Sydney July 17, then to Eugene, Oregon, Aug 6.

Bobbi's Pole Studio: The new XBX of fitness

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PHOTO GALLERY: Bobbi's Pole Studio End of Term recital MOVIE CLIP: Poledancing - the perfect workout for the modern urban cyclista In just a couple of years since my mother and daughter excursion into this femme fatale fitness fad, it seems poledancing has become the new 5BX - or rather X(XX?)BX of exercise for women of all ages, stages and sizes. I landed back downunder to discover that the local PoleStars franchise, where I did my introductory course, was up for sale. However, an outfit called Bobbi's Pole Studio was going great guns, with reportedly 1000 students. When I asked Bobbi, an utterly magnificent speciman of the XX chromosome, why she was leading the pack, she replied, "I've been doing poledancing all my life." Her studio, discreetly housed on the 4th floor of an old diva of a building, has zero street presence, perhaps to deter any riff raff. When you mount the stairs, you arrive on a floor bathed in pink lights and shiny fabrics and p

Test driving a traditional Chinese Massage

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Picture of the moment: Speaking of bodily use-by dates (see below), this Will kit for Singles caught my eye - clever marketing, since it probably contains little more more than a Post-it note to pencil in the solitary name of the person you're leaving your stufforama to - that's right, Thou Thyself Thou! Highway robbery at $24.95 - how stupid do they think we singles are? OK, I admit I did turn it over and over and wonder exactly what it said inside ... I paused in front of a Chinese Massage/Acupuncture clinic today, and decided to go for it. I've been suffering from a bit of a stiff upper back, plus a disturbing recent development where my skull and neck make a loud "crunching" sound when I look down. It's probably everything to do with my work and play - I ride a bicycle for a living, I spend too much time laptopping, and I'm going to be 50 in 5 years' time. Despite conscientious efforts to stretch and remain flexible, poledancing classes and sepa