I enjoyed reading the Guardian article this week on the significance of the letter ‘O’ to designers, but having seen this in New York, it’s certainly a double edged sword…

…more from New York soon.

Illustrator Christoph Niemann has been playing with his sons’ Lego set. He’s created these lovely vignettes of New York life.

There are more here. I wonder what the London equivalents would be?

When my girlfriend and I were in New York last year we found a great Diner where we went back a couple of times for breakfast or coffee. Well, I just heard via some incoming searches to this site, that it’s closing down. We found the Cheyenne Diner as it was opposite the world’s largest photographic store, B&H, and so heavily laden with new lenses etc we staggered in for some pancakes.

It had been there for 19 years, but now the commercial pressure for development is forcing it to close its doors. Even so, the landlord says “I don’t want to knock it down. I want to save the building,” so perhaps it will become a trendy trainer shop (sorry – sneaker store) or something. At least we got some great shots of it while we were there. Click the images here to see more on Flickr…

Last year we also had to come to terms with the closure of the New Piccadilly Café in London, another place we had just started visiting before the owners were priced out of the area. That had been there for half a century and has just been lying derelict ever since it shut down.

Well, if you’re looking for the few remaining places to enjoy an affordable no fuss bite to eat and nice retro cup of tea, there are lots of sites around which can point you to somewhere a little more imaginative than Starbucks. Remember to support your local independent shops and cafés, otherwise pretty soon it will have to be Lattés and Ciabattas all round…

…got a suggestion? Post it here…

Plastic bags needn’t hasten the end of the world, they can be fun too. Artist Joshua Allen Harris tied some to the subway grates in New York, and look what happened when a train sucked past…

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Back this week from a 5 day trip to New York to take in some sights, snap a few photos, and take advantage of the insanely good dollar exchange rate!

Had a great time and managed a good mix of shoppng, tourist stuff and more off the beaten track wandering. We went to a few bars, saw some bands in the East Village (Kelly Buchanan was good), ate cupcakes in Greenwich and walked in Central Park. We crossed over to Brooklyn to look back at the Manhattan skyline and then walked back along the bridge for some more fantastic views (and a little vertigo – I’m not keen on bridges!) We saw art at MoMA, being amazed that they let everyone photograph all the exhibits and ate many, many bagels. Breakfast at the Cheyenne Diner was great, eggs sunny side up and seemingly endless refills of tea…

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum where we were shown around a genuinely restored immigrant tenement and told about the stories of 2 immigrant families to the USA. The place was really atmospheric and we learned a lot from the guided tour – I’d definitely recommend a visit:

One last comment about our hotel. We stayed at The Pod Hotel, which was great. The rooms were small but smart and clean, and the whole place was very stylish. Apparently it’s New York Style on a shoestring, so if you need somewhere to stay in NYC, give it a look. This, for instance was the roof terrace where we ate our lunch:

If you’re curious, click here for the Flickr set.

Definitely back in the UK now though, same old desk, same old drizzle…

I got my hands on the iPhone!

I couldn’t resist a little to trip to the Apple Store while in New York, to goggle at the iPhone. It was crazy, they had stacks and stacks of them with huge queues of sales people selling them with handheld card machines. Seriously, they must have been selling one a second.

Due to the difficulties in unlocking the iPhone reliably, I didn’t buy one to take back to the UK (You have NO idea how hard that was!) but I did have a play with it and it WAS fantastic… Read the rest of this entry…