Salvage Slave

Snapshots from NYC

2011-09-24T12:03:00.021-04:00

The view from the Williamsburg flea which I watched from 7am until well past dark. Note to self, skip this flea, get a chair, fishin pole and a cooler of frosty beverages and eats..

I could jog home faster than this train (when you score a parking spot for a 15 passenger van, you leave it…until you get the $45 parking ticket, f--kers. Can't let my people go and don't get to bed before 2, yet up for school 7…not my best look. By 10am I'm lugging projects in from the car.

Restoring Italian beaded screen, God I may have to keep this one, the color combination is fantastic (and I'll never finish the work). Note to self: match paint and pantone chips for future use, that turquoise, brown and gold yum

Pile of hotel keys to separate, fish net to cut up and make scarves out of to sell this weekend at the Brooklyn flea markets. Love the keys with the holes in the middle, put your own little charm, picture or hotel medallion in there. OMG!! tie keys on scarf ends! I'm so pleased with myself, dork.

Cabin fever, brave the commute to see Nikki de Saint Phalle collection at Norma Haine gallery, 5th and 57th St. Oh crap, one of those behind gold doors galleries in a fancy building and you gotta sign in. Tourist filthy with backpack, I get the look but Checkpoint Charlie clears me. Here's some pictures I snuck. This crazy stuff as good in a small room as it is in the fountain in Paris. Play the game I made up with Wyatt, "if you could only have one thing, what would it be?" Golden Swiss cheese lady or giant skull with rotating fern head?…Duh, the skull with motor and softball-sized pewter teeth, "epic".

Breakdown at 23rd and the Flatiron building, laptop monkey on my sweaty back. I love that they have cafe tables and chairs in the middle of Broadway. Always a good time to people watch or sit and write. Speaking of people, I almost have an accident gawking at the Satmar in Brooklyn (Hassidic population). Crazy for the beaver hats, belted coats, wow that's a commitment to a look (it's 85deg). Shameless voyeurism, this image haunts me, how to get one of those hats.

Two fleas, two days, never again, but it's over and here are the booths. One in the beautiful Fort Greene neighborhood the other on the water in Williamsburg. Trend predictions: architectural is gonna rebound cause they're building even on the street where I live and well, I see all these great buildings and I miss these details so I'm gonna get some (details that is..right).

In my head see new spin on industrial softened with theatre and romance, gothic and medieval, muddy brown, oxblood, grey and lavender, textures like silk and velvet. Worn wood will continue to be hot, that and handyman's stuff. Seductive mood with tools for those dark hours ahead…oh behave!

Farmer's market at Union Square. I can't resist. A Yo Go frozen yogurt gets the whole $1 worth of bleeding raspberries, a peach. Picnic on the window sill of an ancient stone bank to watch the people pass, like molecules in a solid, there's not much wiggle room. Now dragging bag of bread and treats, have sugar need coffee...It's a haul, but it's Bubby's coffee in TriBeca. Roasted on site and ground before they make it for you, over ice. It doesn't get better than that!

Head east towards home with stop in the East Village to see Joel, the philosopher-genius who has a strange affinity for cast iron pans. Signed privacy agreement, so you'll have to imagine an ancient apartment with walls, ceilings and floors covered in cast iron cookery. I'm speechless, no really, and want to make a movie, write storie. Skip permission, beg forgiveness, here's another dealer's place. Beautiful, open, full of stories, just like Val. We share an obsession for things in quantity, but I'll let her do the 500 crates and 1000 folding chairs (like I'm 20 years older than her) Love these antique dealers, a field of the wildest brightest wildflowers.

Detroit, disassembled as it were and...

here's the world's fair, 1964 structure in Queens....

One last side trip, it's destiny. The Detroit Disassembled photos are right, I mean a 20 block walk, by the apartment at the Queens Museum on the grounds of the old world's fair. The ruins of the fair the perfect intro to the beautiful photos of Detroit ruins. Yeah, yeah the ruin porn. Don't hate me, I'm a walking talking Detroit ambassadress and I could fill a bus here with all the people who want to see what's happening in Detroit. It's all good news. Design Festival in Detroit in full swing as I type, I'm into it with barely a nap to catch up from the drive….

Magic and Madness in Every Nook and Cranny!!

2011-09-12T14:11:00.003-04:00

Madness and magic in every nook and cranny…no, I did not write that precious quote. I read it in Country Living whilst stuck in my van. No foul language, the dead giveaway and if you watched 6 inches of rain fall on your show, I'd like to know what you'd have to say about it. WTF!! comes to mind. It's now the infamous Brimfield of September 2011.

I felt like I was in a barrel under the Niagara Falls. The rain came and wouldn't leave. By thursday morning they'd closed May's show, the first time in history. The water was 6 inches deep around my van. I open the door, climb on top of the hood and jump to the embankment. By the time I reach my booth, I'm soaked and muddy anyway. Atleast the booth is on high ground and dry, but there's a pond a foot deep at the entrance to the field. This day's a wash. Of course I have to be there for this record-setting nightmare. I'm the embedded reporter, the Lakshmi Singh of Brimfield.

Thankfully team Tommy Hilfiger came by the day before and found magic in this madness. I'm paying close attention to what they're putting together, their advertising is free marketing for me and the time in to designing a booth pays off in sales here and at the new space in the antiques mall in Saugatuck,MI proves. This is how I justify that late night OCD episode the night before the show opened. Really, where to put that jar of sock cuttings is critical, maybe it wasn't such a great idea to start this undertaking after cocktails. Naturally, I'm jolted out of my sleeping bag at 4am by the sounds of arriving dualies and their diesels. It's the eager beavers who curl their hair rain or no, and want that pot pourri goo burning for an hour so that it's in the air, like napalm for everyone to enjoy. I slog through the mud for a timed 6-minute shower. Oh the fun of camping, the thrill of opening day!

Actually, I am remarkably upbeat and into the shopping. I must say, I scored some of the coolest shit. In this nook theater props, army gear, industrial furniture, oddities, science charts, letters, 60's and in that cranny, funerary…dying to know what this choice pick might be?…a large collection of Victorian era casket blankets and pillows in their own suitcases. Top quality rouched silk, crushed velvet and exquisite tassels, European to be sure.

I could lie to people and then secretly smirk to think of them placing it t in those happy homes completely oblivious… but, then I'd miss the look of joy on their faces when they read my tags. How I live for these blessed moments in my day, "They laid people out on these and did portraits in their own homes," I say all delighted with my magical, mad self.

Survivors

2011-08-29T18:24:00.004-04:00

Another rainy, not great beach weekend. This is completely irrelevant to 12 and 13 year-old boys. Wyatt and his cousin Trevor have built a fort with the weeds growing on the bluff at Lake Huron and the talk is serious about survival on "the island". Wyatt is making fishing spears and Trevor is collecting wood for the fire (Never mind that they'd sooner starve than eat fish and the wet conditions mean mom is the one getting the fire going).

Listening to the news, you can't train early enough for survival skills. Besides if Armageddon is coming (drought, hurricane, earthquake, scary leadership…) I say have fun with survival, be creative and stay ahead of the creepy "Lord of the Flies" types.

Survival mode is no time to play it safe. Salvage slave says experiment, try different ideas, maybe be a bit outlandish. A flame-retardant suit is a must when the heat is on. But then again, having desirable currency (for the time being) handed to you is a definite yes. Ok so the suit wasn't a money-maker, but that attention getter did bring in business (and left with 9 other items, which added up to real green stuff). You might need to make a quick getaway off the island, but that new sailboat in the driveway now makes two and there's another "fort" that needs work right now. Bartering works as currency in the new world order. Trade sailboat for kitchen remodel help (then maybe we can sell that not-so-small fort).

Who knows what survival will require in this ever-changing atmosphere? The salvage slave is looking to see what's at selling at antique shows now, and if it's lights made out bed springs and rusty wire baskets then why not ratty lampshades? We're stocking all this material-of-the-moment. These put-together lights do make ceilings so much more interesting.

I keep saying reclaimed lumber is in the design magazines, now my Midwestern clients are asking about it. Plenty of that around here. Someone wants to clad their wall. It looks great with industrial furniture as table tops to steel bases. I've started a pile of it. Scarves cut from vintage fishing nets? Can't we be fashionable while dodging spear attacks? Sold the first one I put out in New York, am gonna have a dress made out of it to inch the idea along.

If weird isn't the way, then you might be living under a rock. Stranger ideas than these have been advanced, some stuff works some doesn't. You gotta keep trying. I just had to run an errand at the dreaded mall. Looking around at the people and piles of stuff, I sure can see what won't be needed on this island. There's nothing you can make anything useful out of! There's nothing that inspires creativity, well unless you count Wyatt and Trevor running around like wild indians. Definite thumbs down. Now back to the studio, I hear drums beating….Brimfield, New York next week!

Same Script Different Day

2011-08-15T23:20:00.007-04:00

The rain is falling gently outside the bedroom's old rickety windows in the quiet of an early morning. The view is panoramic, romantic, a painting in muted shades of white, grey and putty juxtaposed with the wildflowers and lush greenery of Michigan's summer splendor…"cut! what's that in the corner?! Stylist! That bright red and white-striped sail does not belong in this picture!" My sail, like a loud drunk crashing this perfectly serene impressionistic moment, it's the prescient warning, the tension builds.

It's English country charm throughout and what you'd expect of this 40's stone cottage. But, is this my story? I stayed the course, ten years, I did, until a pile of signal flags (that Ellsworth Kelly clearly co-opted) showed up at the 100 mile Garage Sale this weekend. The sign of signs, you can't make this stuff up. And now there's four of us reviewing flags, lively discussing the whole idea of a period change, for the living room. It's epic. I'm fairly crazy about the prophetic nautical warnings like, "this vessel in distress and not moving (for sure)" and "this vessel altering it's course to port (that's right..and wrong)."

Will she divest herself of all those carefully collected nudes? Period quilts, rugs and fishing lures? The graphic pow of these modern masterpieces fills the screen, she can resist anything but temptation…Addiction. Intervention...What a front, the whole shop gig, that's why they're called "dealers," duh! All that country cottage crap, so much gateway drug to the modern minimalism hard stuff. Again with the signs and now the innocent child obviously experiencing advanced stages of fetal collecting syndrome, "Mom! Can I have one for my loft (packed to the rafters with stuff)!" It's epidemic, the buddy George is eyeing one for his bedroom too (probably hanging in there now). Is it true? Hot, sunny and blue waters scream beach day, yet these two 12 year-old boys choose the 100 mile yard sale in a blink, no prompting...

It's nobodies first rodeo here, the boys get the bikes, baskets and backpacks and we're off. Idling on the highway is for amateurs. We cover the distance, while all those poor folks are still trying to park. We know exactly where we're going and it's no more than two miles, skip the buzz kill of endless miles of consumer garbage and bad homegrown craft. Garage saling on this level requires one be in the zone, hyper focused. It's A LOT to plow through this much stuff, and man are the discard piles high these days. I am mostly not a garage sale shopper, but these too were such a hoot, they made it fun. The young pros already have the scan down pat, they know what they're after and not easily distracted (girls aren't on the radar yet). Everybody got a good laugh when they politely, but shamelessly, bargained for prices, it's sick! Call the authorities!

And this jaded picker found the ever elusive, "I haven't seen it before," early, folding, tin lunch box with the owner's name scratched in it, boat benches to make tables out of in weathered teak, a crate of yellow marquis lights will make a great sign (enough already) a hand-painted soda pop sign (stop her), a life ring in great colors (a little past saving, it and mine) and all those vintage cotton flags, you know how I love multiples. I also saw some longtime colleagues and got the local dealer news. It's good stuff. All your friends are doing it. Don't judge, you closet junkies.

Virality, It's not just for kids anymore

2011-08-09T19:24:00.006-04:00

I've just finished the July 17th newspaper. Hoarding red flag? I'll have you know some 14 year-old girls are quitting school to run blogging empires. 10-12 year olds in the know can't get enough make-up and fashion tips and everybody loves to make fun of the dumb girl in the embarrassing dance videos. She's building a brand, so who's dumb? Everybody! What a blast! Luckily nobody grows up, so even though my demographic trends a little older, I've got savvy style tips and near total lack of inhibition. It's a sure fire formula for attracting an audience. With my marketing moxie and just a little technical know how (not me silly, I'll get a 14 year-old for that ) I'll have them flocking to the blog, the store and the endorsements will be rolling in!

Look here, I just bought this terrific pair of 40's secretary pumps for $10 at the Royal Oak Flea Market (that earlybird shopping fee of $5 could be money in my pocket). These are sexy because they're not, get it? Pair them sockless with my sister Lia's hand-embroidered 70's denim skirt (on loan, guilt trip "the doctor" into buying first ad, get ball rolling). I can't decide between the crochet tank top (Garage Annex Antiques $10, ah crap they close in 3 weeks, make that Brooklyn Flea, hipster city) or the linen men's vest (Detroit estate sale $7, poor dear is probably dead…check probate records, those lawyers are always mugging for some ad, cha-ching).

I'll model the options and post them for your vote, tell everybody so my "virality" is assured. Be sure to call me as I don't reliably check either email account and won't know I'm "infecting" people positively. You mention my blog and website (Yuen Advertising-work tiger tag team bit, play down my asian light) and when everybody realizes there's no online shopping, they'll run to the store. The "exclusivity" of being open only two days a week will "create the sense of urgency." They'll be throwing money at me when they finally get in! (To think of all that hand-wringing about Ebay opportunities passed. Ebay will be paying me and I still won't be selling anything there, love it).

I was wearing my ripped-up jeans from Neiman Marcus (J-Brand $217, ok. it was the outlet and I paid $33, they'll never know!) with the aforementioned tank top and strapless bra (TJ Maxx $15, Target owns this, bonus!) when I attended the uber outsider performance of "Manifest Destiny" in Detroit the other night. I mention this intimate apparel item because crisis or no ladies, unless you pre-purchased enhancements before the credit crunch, mid-life is no time to go rogue (hmmm Eurasian Palin, publicity stunts? I like. I like a lot). When you are the oldest person in the room, perky matters! (don't forget plastic surgeons-top of the list!).

This carefully calibrated clothing choice contributed to a cool factor I felt on the hot set of this production. The hosts/new building owners/20-something cuties from another state, recognized me (ooh, joint video in that stunning, newly gutted former Jam Handy film studio on East Grand Boulevard...call Madonna's people, we grew up together, practically bff!). Doll, look it's not that I think I'm all that, really, it's the jeans! Turns out those darling young men were my guests at the Steampunk Exhibition (get mailing list, that dungeons and dragons groupie fest isn't free) and that pivotal wardrobe item worn with saucy top hat ($40 Royal Oak Flea Market-is this privately held?) and faux velvet stretch bustier (Lori Karbal, Birmingham-she'll be top tier) left a lasting impression!

The play was hilarious and bawdy and Detroit is the mecca for clever young upstarts from more viable places (so who's bankrolling these moves? check Hamptons et al for parent support groups, shake the trees). The play was an old timey Westward Ho theme suggesting that Detroit is the new frontier. The whole thing totally fired me up to buy my own behemoth, heck I'm gonna need it. Deconstruct it and they will come! I hashed the whole plan out on the pick-up tailgate (Chevy Silverado...can you see it? My dad, the GM reitree and me, the grandson, total home town heart-warmer, could be the new Eminem/Chrysler thing) while sucking on Parks BBQ ribs post show (hmmm colorful neighborhood, might have to bus 'em down on a food tour). Man that's good pig, and did I eat like one. Had to lean over cowboy style, if you get my drift. This isn't some come on, the jeans are money, and haven't we learned some investments are more important than others?

And lastly, when the heat index was at 110, that $12 tent dress I bought new at HM (am I the only mature shopper in this joint?) was the only choice for the Swedish jugglers' performance at TANK 425 (W. 9 Mile Rd., Hazel Park, isn't it in the contract that your husband has to endorse you? Kind of a drag it's the same kitty though). Wow is that a Cirque du Soleil try out? Totally mesmerizing and poetic, we were all stunned and it wasn't just heat exhaustion. As the dew turned to full-on perspiration, I said with complete sincerity, "this is pure joy," and hogged the fan to myself. I said the same thing moments later inhaling the berry vodka infusion in air-conditioned bliss (Valentine Vodka, Ferndale) Old broads love a stiff one... Joy is also being of the age where having fun in comfort matters more than the sure knowledge that a "tent" is the most unflattering thing you could wear. It's also not giving a shit, now that's sexy…soon to be viral, catch it.

Coasting into Shore, Great Lakes Style

2011-08-03T17:16:00.003-04:00

I say the drive home from New York doesn't bother me, though it's long and boring. Pennsylvania thinks it's Texas and won't get off of it until after a 450 mile-long argument. But, the weather's easy and Wyatt's keeping me company with compelling facts like, "Did you know you can dilute lime juice with water and clean a teapot? And, more mangoes are eaten than any other fruit in the world?"

We get in at midnight, not horrible. You know you are crossing into Southwest Detroit when you see the steam rising and the twinkling of lights low on the horizon. It's the Marathon Oil refinery which spans both sides of I-75. I think of all those christmas lights turned on and lying on the floor, waiting to be put up and high into the tree. It makes me smile everytime I come home this way. OK so the steam is also the smoke of noxious off-gassing and daytime here lacks some romance. I am trying not to think about lights high up, that would remind me of a magnificent canyon of architecture. I am trying to come home and not feel a hard uphill climb ahead of me.

That comes the next day and sweet Jesus do I need a vacation before I do another single thing. I feel the intense strain of a very long paddle out and the pulling of my whole self up, trying to get any part of that big East Coast wave. My own bed is like a resort that I never want to leave… oh, actually I can't. I make it to the front seat of the car for the first nap, crabby as could be. We are heading to the lake, pulling a sailboat, am I relaxing yet? The wind is coming out of the Northeast, steady, gentle wave maker, it's a sure cure if I can get there. Ahh the first dive into Lake Huron, man it's so good. I'm just gonna enjoy the sun for a spell....

Salvaging? Right, I forgot why you came. Of course I hit two flea markets in between naps and a sunburn. You didn't think I'd emancipate? Brimfield is four weeks away (breath), and maybe the Brooklyn Flea Market this time (please weather and fortune gods). I gotta represent (as my friend Mark likes to say.) You know that! Seriously, I did score in the most unlikely of places and no I am not telling you where! I got good stuff and making more of it with just this and that together all in my mind (so as to push out those scary banking thoughts) Good finds all along the way. The huge bus I'm driving is unloaded and the boxes are everywhere. I'll be yanking it out and not arranging it, a mess again, naturally. Dig in (that's Fridays and Saturdays for sure! With Mark that is, I'll pop in but I'm not done with that lake yet).

Manhattan Maneuvers

2011-07-26T01:06:00.004-04:00

Why am I standing on this late night, Forest Hills street corner smoking a cigarette after that 2-day marathon in the garage flea sauna? It's a necessary and disgusting habit, like schlepping antiques all over hell for two weeks that's why. I'm working out the remaining adrenalin while awaiting further instructions from my superiors. I shouldn't be telling you this, in fact your life is endanger knowing this much…I'm special forces. I know, I know, mild- (never mind) mannered midwestern mom-type with the requisite antiques hobby as cover (taxonomically speaking "job" might be over-reaching acceptable measure for this classification). But that's really why I was in that filthy Manhattan garage in 3-digit temps for the last two days of the East Coast tour. All I am at liberty to say is that strategic goals were mostly achieved, as best we can tell from command's grumbling, and I am on furlough so to speak, until Friday 0500 hours (when I reboard for new york, collect my progeny from camp and that full truck to make the fun drive home).

You can sleep nights knowing enemy combatants have been subdued (put down those fine ionic capitals dude, the password is NOT "are you gonna let me walk over $10?) and we've infiltrated by way of underground networks (they'd NEVER think to look for live people in this breathless box of death…by the way did we burn that stinking uniform?…oops, left it in the truck, note to self, pack hazmat bags and military strength orange-all spray). Hah! it only looks like a gross men's bathroom but actually it's a top secret command station where I quick-changed after 11 hours of duty (touching nary a surface mind you) and "showered" in the sink (remember this is the woman who gave you roadside cornfield latrine maneuver…I say suck it up, this is no time for prissy prudery and frankly we are beyond the term "shvits") and pulled that kinda short little black dress disguise on (really at her age…) Leave it to the female officers to convoy through manhattan and reconnoiter with the rest of our unit at headquarters (Bel Aire Diner, one billion other places to eat in New York, but there's the all night factor, free parking of large vehicles and complimentary mini muffins to consider).

The beauty of this assignment, which I will be repeating in September, is that there is no thinking. We know what they want (sorta kinda), we're well-prepared for the arm-wrestling, and they traffic in a currency we can trade in. Now if we can only keep Colonel Kurtz from losing it. That sleep deprivation and iced coffee defribillation makes the lips a little jiggy and voice a little loudish and with the "shoppers" wearing all manner of disguises beyond reasonable codes of decency (see-through lingerie, people on leashes, etc.), it's tough to concentrate on the the real operatives. Above all, we are there to keep our targets in the sight and to make the all-important trade. Ahh the smell of automotive grease and hot humans, the last minute deal-making by scavengers. I think I hear the flight of the valkyries playing and helicopters in the distance (so harmonic with new york accents and sirens). Re-entering familiar airspace in 14 hours and focused on destination my own mattress. Will face the tribunal and the missing documents later, the saloon calls for a cold one and then it's over and out for this soldier. Will report for duty at 0800, just enough time to have our story straight for the budget oversight committee on alleged abuses of funds.

Sleepless in Hot York

2011-07-20T23:54:00.005-04:00

Siesta was created because you actually can't function in the heat of the day. Is that why I couldn't find the subway stop as I circled it from 30 feet away? Sweet Jesus but it's hot on fantasy island. Let's hope that doesn't deter the tourists from shopping in the oven on Saturday (Chelsea Garage Annex Flea 26th and 6th or so). That this venerable flea market will actually close after forever I am unable to accept but August 30th is the end kids, so if you are in the hood buy a bag of ice, stick it down your pants and shop...think sweat lodge meditation for antique natives, sauna for slaves of salvage..free toxic cleanse with every purchase, doubles as a salt lick.. Secretly I love summer, bring it on (you weren't here when it was 2 and we were trying to load the van...no I am NOT over it). Tomorrow I'm going to crawl into a storage unit then onto a salvage yard, let's see if that degree clinical strength antiperspirant is all that. I'm holding back some great stuff for the store and word has it that MarkyD is pulling it together upstairs at ye ole heritage co.2. (Don't get excited, we're keeping it to Friday and Saturday for now, there's a pawn shop to run and mark is the go to prince of pawn in pontiac people!) And you know? I'm kinda getting ready for a BIG SELL OFF too, I'll even turn the AC on, big splurge. Scored a primo primo spot at Brimfield and I want all new juicy stuff for the September show (weekend after labor day). Thanks for asking, yeah the new van is running fine (giant repair bill later..don't get me started) Have yet another car to sell when I get home i.e. the cargo van (did i mention i am indeed parting with my beloved '67 porsche 912 and rick's '76 convertible karmann ghia is also on the block?) But first I gotta get this one back, but that's on the next trip to New York, never mind it's complicated...new stuff in the store first week of August, stay cool, RMA, shut up, love you mean it, go to bed, ok, shhh, ok, by, shit I forgot a photo, close your eyes, visualize the statue of liberty, scary dinner bills, good night from new york.

The Best Thing I Ever Found at Brimfield

2011-07-20T23:37:00.002-04:00

Sitting in front of the fan under this little white oven tent and selling my wares, I am counting the minutes until I can pack it all in and head to my little oasis. A dealer I met through another dealer I met showed us this pristine spring-fed pond. To dive into that alternate universe after the all day heat, dirt, stuff and the selling of it, keeps me going. I can swim the entire perimeter and see the lilly pads and the path the water creatures make escaping my current. As my longtime dealer friend lulu says, the people still in this business despite all the economic woes are the heart and soul of the business. Despite the conditions and long hours, to sit amongst our tents and share wine and hors d'houevres, complete dinners and then watch old 8mm movies on the side of a white truck, I can't imagine a richer life. I actually gave up a hotel room and the 30 minute commute to sleep in my new old van and bathe in a pond. I couldn't be happier about it. The full moon and sparkling stars mark a path from the bathroom, a bag of toiletries slung over my shoulder. I rise early with enough time to read for an hour before I head for the showers, dress and head to the food tents for coffee and breakfast. I am reminded of the gypsy encampments outside the city limits of Paris. Dirty barefoot children ran between the adults whose loud laughter rose with the steam from pots. They were having fun and I felt sorry for them. I have since learned that simple trumps fussy and while it is glorious to stay at a posh hotel and eat at fine restaurants, it isn't any more fun than this. Tomorrow I gauge whether to stay all or part of the day knowing I have to pack it all up and load the van in the hot sun and head to New York City. Next weekend is the garage flea market and all the city gypsies will be there. I can't wait for them to see the cache of worn wonderment as it spills out from my traveling show.

A New Holiday Work/Play Plan You'll Love!!

2011-07-04T12:45:00.008-04:00

Going on a trip should be fun and a good excuse to buy a new outfit. If you asked my mother and three sisters, a trip of unloading junk and selling it on the side of the highway is not fun nor would buying a 10-year-old, 1 ton, 5.4 liter V-8, 15-passenger van to do this next week, qualify as a chic outfit. What do they know? I know my 80 year-old, retired-engineer dad thought it was fun looking at used vans with me, not to mention it's his kind of outfit. It's complex, the son you didn't get, but didn't really want, that is still your daughter/child driving 1300 miles in an old van next week. He has that look on his face that says, I know cars and this one stinks, but for the right price? My daughter is crazy, thank God I'm here. This has made his day. But, the owning that spur of the moment decision-making and make-fun-work habit might by his genes? That's another story. He crossed an ocean with probably as much forethought and blind ambition. Did fun enter his mind? in between working like a dog? What if all he needed was the right manual?

My inner Martha Stewart says work and play is entrepreunerial, you just need a little multi-tasking manual to make it fun. The Fourth of July is ideal for this vacation. Your kid has to be collected from sailing camp and couch surfing in paradise, you have to find a van, pack it and do a show next week, just put the pieces in order. Simple engineering logic and plenty of time for fun! Just don't over do it! In a 48-hour plan, one needs two eight-hour stretches of sleeping time. You know two spots with queen pillow tops and 400-count cotton sheets that will cost you nothing. Suggest your company will make their holiday. Sound completely fried if they waffle.

Work up to the minute that the highways shut down on Friday. Grab bathing suit, toothbrush, vodka on the counter, don't forget old dog. Expect that one of the two last vans on the way to your first night's accommodation will be perfect. One just so happens to belong to an old client you liked, send plea out to the universe and to the ghost of the Big Three Gods. Your sister's spacious arts-and-crafts home in Kalamazoo is a sure thing, separate dogs, break out vodka, retire to the porch for cocktails, sleep. Her husband Rodger owns the original Heritage Co. store, shop there before you have to pick up your child. This feels like work, so make fun stop for berry picking on the way. Rodger knows mulberry tree 5 blocks away. With less than an hour, inspire genius. There's three of us, some kitchen bowls and a rain poncho in the car. Two people hold the poncho like a funnel, slip bowl in the poncho's neck, another shakes the branches, genius engineering. Laugh your way to a peck of free sweet berries, go to work.

On the highway by noon, expect the unexpected accident/road shut down by two, take uncharted tree-lined road where your car stopped. Promise you'll get for GPS next time, turn left. Be delighted by a sparkling lake on the right and the antique store in the middle of no where. Turn around in the next parking lot where the local girl scouts happen to have a dog wash stand. Drop the old dog off in the hot lot with the darling girls and make donation, go to work, collect fresh dog, take pictures, that's fun, continue. Child pick-up delayed, stop for homemade burgers at roadside grill, disregard smell, enjoy burger. Arrive at friend's home in paradise, hug your child, join adults for cocktails on the deck. It's really hot in the late afternoon heat, put on suits, jump in Lake Michigan, leave as not-so-fun mosquito party starts. Retire to the aforementioned hotel-like accommodations, sleep. Wake up and leave by noon, buy van from old client, rekindle friendship. Have fun firing off business possibilities as you peel off your last dollar. Stop on the way home for family party, eat, always fun when your other sister is cooking, endure fireworks, go home, sleep is the new fun.

Stay tuned for next weeks productive and fun work/play retreat workout to the East Coast!

The essence of imagination is a lack of focus

2011-06-26T14:39:00.003-04:00

Braniac Danny Hillis said this and is making millions by flitting from idea to idea (fascinating story see www.esquire.com). Is it vindication or hope I feel? Would anyone go along with this statement that I'm working all the time even though it looks like I'm pub crawling or making cookies or reading the New York Times?

Washing down the calamari with those yummy margaritas at El Barzon (www.elbarzonrestaurant.com) reminds me I have to wash those big tuna nets so I can cut them up for drapes. It's the complex layering of many and sometimes disparate elements that creates this seductive moodiness that I'm convinced draws people to places like third stop Cafe d' Mongo's (www.cafedmongo.com).

If it's now the secret to success to have several ideas firing at one time, the money should be rolling in anytime now. However, you might have to simplify some things to be fresh and productive, so Larry Mongo like yours truly, limits the hours of operation (the cafe is only open Friday nights). Me, I need some baking time. The other night while creaming the sugar and two sticks of butter, but before adding the eggs, a big decision was made to just go for it and do the red and putty-flecked, fabric-covered wiring with those black enamel shades. You don't add the flour until after all the wet ingredients are blended. It's a scientific procedure you have to follow. The washers and the bolts will attach the socket and shade together on a short length of eighth inch threaded rod and then that unexpected bit of colorful wire coming through and up to the canopy. Just right, don't overbake it.

The truth is it's all I can do to keep this entry to three ideas and the inventory to one truck load. It's about editing and I can't type too much longer, my shoulders are so sore from pulling the mass of grape vines off my building yesterday. I thought I was relaxing and being really efficient. You can really get into the zone gardening and I was making good progress editing the list of inventory. Plus the weather was gorgeous, Mark was outside playing beautiful music and I just lost track of time.

Speaking of time, I just read in the Times that they are covering trucks with artwork and glittery bits in Pakistan. I would love to do that, but I shudder to think how much extra gas you'd burn with the additional weight. Weight. Man am I feeling it across the top of my shoulders.

Ask Not What Your Garbage Can Do For You...Ask What You Can Do With Your Garbage

2011-06-15T08:39:00.009-04:00

These are not garbage, these are the white ones... it's a complicated story, naturally

These are mine...and definitely not garbage nor white....am I making this complicated?...Maybe

This is, or was, garbage, but someone bought it so it's not, here's the story...Breathe

Up early with the phone and now thinking...and drinking coffee...always a dangerous combination...and came up with this genius title while writing on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/heritageco2) about some salvage I skimmed off the top of the bulldozer's bucket (true story) when an idea (or more) came on. And, that is: there's nothing new under the sun (not this idea anyway) and plenty of old crap lying around (which isn't new either but free.), It just requires cleverness, and now about the ringing phone...

Today's requests (three before 7am) First, I NEED THREE END TABLES FOR MY PARTY THS AFTERNOON...no rush, just something cute, yet stubstantial, something "Detroit-y" for a big Detroit group...that can be outside and kicked over and not break cause we really just want to borrow it and actually not buy it...Of course I have the perfect thing, why else call me at 7am and the last minute? So, I'm gonna take some crates from the curbside mall and spray paint them (the crates not the people...hmmm) with...You guessed it.. " A BEAUTIFUL DETROIT BEGINS WITH YOU." Marketing savant that I am, I'm subtley selling the idea that this is now a cool thing that you need to BUY, AND, if not this exact thing, we'll whip up something else on what's lying around that you now want but need differently.

NEXT.... a set designer needs 1970's chic patio furniture for a pool scene of drug dealers, lots of them, dealers and chairs alike, but deco and groovy and they are in my backyard, well some and not white and not deco. There's a guy who said he knew of lots of them, but now can't find the guy with them, and would I want mine painted white? And why isn't the guy answering his phone? (that's the second guy) now that she needs them NEXT WEEK so she can have little yellow pads made for them. Maybe he's out of town, the second guy, she and he said, that's her and the first guy, and where's the concerta?... I guess they can be white, mine that is, if that guy fails to appear and/or changes his mind, are you with me? I forgot his number, oh yeah, he's two...sigh, getting paid is plenty clever in this business.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG (faster, it's after 10am now) the money is in from the last guy (which is a different guy than the first two, which makes three, of those who called before 7am, breathing). I gotta pick up the money from his bank and give it to another guy who is selling my guy, number three, a table, but not for the patio,...and now my other guy who never calls before 7am because he's a friend and isn't buying nor selling me anything, is coming to help me do my accounting, for free, which is nice and not clever nor garbage, but tiring so I'm making more coffee.

Designer Drug Dealer Digs and You

2011-06-13T23:11:00.007-04:00

Making the rounds of my favorite haunts in the city with an Elmore Leonard movie set in mind, I found a few stylish items that transition from a 1974 era drug dealers' hideaway to your home or place of business.

While the deal can be done nicely on this vinyl sofa, it's the perfect place for your toddler to spill his juice while watching t.v. Nothing like vinyl for easy clean up of sticky blood or sugary beverages. It sure looks great here in my driveway, where I dragged it from the neighbors. Instant office, just add laptop and my daily drug of choice, black coffee. When my colleagues showed up, we commenced our meeting, brilliant isn't it?

And how about these candy-colored lounge chairs? That fresh poppy lime and kelly green, safety orange and cherry red brings a room to life while someone else's is getting taken. And whether your selling kilos of cocaine or car parts, they offer a crisp professional look. Equally smart in the family or living room, these are really versatile with a contemporary or mid-century white or black leather sofa and great with danish modern teak furniture. I wouldn't hesitate to use them as dining chairs, you could pair them with a classic white Saarinen tulip table, the popular 50's retro Heywood Wakefield table, an industrial steel table or contemporary chrome and glass table. Whether on the lam or the run, you'll dine in style. Super clean, comfortable and lots to choose from.

Now hear me out on the lowly commercial carpet square. I know your standard issue detective office does not say high design, but when I saw this sea of similar but different patterns in all these shades of office greys, beiges, mauves and blues, I saw creative possibilities. Endless patterns made with different patterns, I'd mix it up and make a rug of one and a border with another. Don't stop with two patterns, create an optical illusion and expand outward making every border different. You could do a checkerboard or diamond pattern, stripes, or...maybe you should sit down, relax and let me do it since I kind of have an idea anyway. Like Jack Foley says, "you'd be surprised what you can get when you ask for it the right way."

Third Round Draftpick Team Steampunk

2011-06-02T08:12:00.005-04:00

Somehow I got it backwards. Aren't you suppose to start out living the gypsy life and then becoming conservative by the time you're crowding 50? Me in a suit, coiffed hair, heels at 25... that was an interesting role. Now I'm wearing 1900's french peasant clothes, enthusiastically describing an antique dealer's life on the road, adventures in foreign lands, the glitz the glamour, to a group of renaissance/goth/comicons on the steampunk tour.

I've just been told by the insiders that I'm now one of them. Seems like just yesterday I was with the green party, draft-picked from the shabbily chic having been picked up from the strictly architectural farm team. The making new things out of old things keeps me in rotation. I'm gonna have to sit out sword fighting and dungeons and dragons games and hope they overlook the ripped jeans and workbooks under the tophat and tails. I like costumes but I don't think I can play in a cinched corset. My longevity depends on adapting my market strategy but still be brand heritage co2. It's still about finding cool stuff, in this case gadgets and old machines, figure out what to do with them and get it built.

I am intrigued by the intricate fabrications and the engineering of this stuff. You gotta check it out (www.steampuffin.com). The tricked out wheel chair, computer desk on a victorian printer's stand, old typewriter parts and an armature holding a skull with glasses…provide a much needed new way of looking at antiques and design. And boy do we ever need to find a fresh market. Our hosts, The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, is promoting preservation of America's manufacturing heritage which fits right in with my message. The Steampunk City event in their hometown of Waltham, Mass. drew 10,000 aforementioned costumed steampunks..and curious locals. The movement is building momentum and a following all in less than two years, pretty impressive.

The 1950's folk art tractor and the floor lamp put together with an adjustable 1920's automotive headlight and a fine wooden surveyors tripod I brought got a lot of attention. So here I am wearing what amounts to old cotton undergarments and telling stories about how this all came to be. It's in the gypsy job description, that and wearing lots of hats, changing costumes and personas, keeping the act fresh and selling the new show from town to town. It's an interesting life and somehow there's always money to keep the show on the road. Best of all, you don't have to wear pantyhose. But for Godsake, don't tell the parents who put yours truly through university thinking I'd be an engineer, you know the regular corporate kind.

Exile at the World's End

2011-05-27T14:24:00.003-04:00

I committed myself to this steampunk convention, have a thousand things to do at the ninth hour to get ready and here I am with two 12 year-olds, wearing 3D glasses and watching a cheesy kid's movie. Mom kept her promise. Did they have to pick a two hour one? It's so riveting. Thor has been stripped of his power and exiled to earth. I'm trying to relate. Thor is working his program and fighting the good fight. I'm with him on that. It dawns on me; this may be a two-hour experimental therapy: have I been willed here by Thor's power? Oh Blonde God, with the seriously ripped body, I'm trying to keep up the fight!! Share with me the mysteries of your workout! Wait! there's the labyrinth left by the light beam that teleported him. Is he trying to show me we're caught in the same trap? I sure could have used him in Oriskany, New York when I was facing down that Minotaur. Ah ha! it's all a test! Wyatt and his cousin Trevor are my spirit guides. Numb mother senseless with deafening surround sound, violence in three dimensions and make her sick on popcorn! And yet, this is the best I've felt all day. Genius!

The dumb story is really just a front for complete mind retraining. I suddenly reminded of the grace in my exile. There's last Monday's dinner, the underground Clandesdine supper. Is this tied in with the whole end-of-the-world crowd? Detroit has been chosen to show the way! The just-another-empty Detroit space reborn as edgy and beautiful high design. Those giant concrete pillars like the centurions in Thor's kingdom, the spare brick and broken windows beautiful in the unexpected sunlight. It must have been sent by Thor's guard. The temple-like tented long tables, white linens, old 2x4 centerpieces adorned with kitchen towel-wrapped bread loves. The whole place lit only with votives. It's Thor's triumphant feast man! Flowing wines, a coffee bar and the finest foods from Detroit's best cooking talent, complex and all done makeshift on camping stoves as you'd expect at the end of the world, in an exiled city. Wyatt, Trevor, Thor thank you! I've made it to the holy land!! Hey wait! what does the Steampunk thing mean? It looks like Star Trek fused to some Dungeons and Dragons goth flick. I'm confused, Is this another test? Wait, don't leave me!!

Apocalypse Now: The Brimfield Sequel

2011-05-19T23:30:00.011-04:00

Scratch Vortex, make that a black hole. This trip to Brimfield is the trip from hell (and I totaled a van here once) but little salvage slave who could is a verb remember? Yeah, the van needs a computer part and the shop takes their sweet time telling me. It's 1:00pm Monday, still 3 1/2 hours to Brimfield, hot and I have to unload and reload a U-haul truck. Do you think I could pay one of those mechanics who are soooo busy? Not so much, well maybe after we watch you sweat it out and get all but the 2-ton cabinet and the 10' windmill....WTF!

I get to the show at 7:00pm and it opens at daybreak. My neighbors take one look at me and the back of this truck and unload everything. This my friends is what keeps me going, dealer camaraderie. No time to fuss, well just a little..I'm eating pizza at 10:00 pm and drinking smuggled beer with my New York pals Adam and Andrea.

It's complete mayhem at dawn and the deals are fast…good thing, I feel like I've been dragged through the mud. I'm stressed about the car repair and U-haul rental add-ons. The U-haul guy, my hero, took pity on me and gave me extra days and mileage. I have a few days before I have to think about driving back to Utica and returning in my van. Oh joy. The part should be in tomorrow, the mechanic says it's a quick job...

My neighbors at the show are like characters out of the movie Big Fish. Harry is the showman, a Greek Kramer who roams the field and talks in a shout. Then there's Mark and Mark, "We're from Kent, Ohio, you know where we shot the students." The Marks are sportin' camo, and Sr. talks like this is war and we're gonna see action. He's talks through teeth clinched on a short cigar (that isn't actually a cigar). Keith is our musician and d.j., a cool customer with jazzy selections I love and a sly sense of humor. He's got the back story on everybody, like the time Harry slept through an entire show day after a little self-medicating…I laugh till it hurts. Last but not least, Skeeter,the kid with the sweet disposition and ready to help. He watches my booth when I run off shopping and sells my stuff left and right…He's hired.

Yeah the van…promises promises until there's no returning of my phone calls. It's now 5 days on that quick repair. I'm overtime on the U-haul and freaking out…Except there's this little wrinkle. You see I was towed off a state toll road and only their licensed facilities can tow. My genius husband, who used to sell used car parts and knows all the sleazy mechanics' tricks, gets wise and calls the New York Transit Authority. Within the hour the mechanic is calling me having miraculously just fixed my van! Only now it's Friday at 5pm, too late to pick up the van until Monday am. Good thing I got Skeeter on the payroll (I keep him fueled with sugar) and the U-haul prince working every angle for me.

Time for a cocktail. I take one of Harry's bikes down to find my pals Matthew and Richard who have set up a full cocktail and hors d'ouevres bar at their deluxe truck encampment. I'm talking a portable bar, full-size grill, gourmet foodstuffs. Chef Richard has whipped up some delightful guacamole and Matthew is slicing artisanal cheeses, charcuterie, breads and crackers. I'm bumming cigarettes and pouring myself a stiff black russian and finally exhaling after the van drama...that is until the rain comes. It's the mad dash to haul all that light weight oak furniture under cover.

Of course it's the biblical kinda rain. It's now pack-out day and I'm standing in a pond. So much for last day business. Nothin' to do but tarp what you can and wait it out. What's this? The diehards are trickling in, taking cover and frantically trying to find something to buy before it gets packed up. Hooray! I count my blessings and take my time packing out. It's only 3 1/2 hours back to the scary hotel. I'm starved and tired, I'm not eating road food now. I invite Eddie from Brooklyn. The guy has 1000 stories and that accent, it's like he's reading lines. He accepts the invitation, "shoo-err, yor-uh not the soar-t of broh-awd ya walk away from (you're not the sort of broad you walk away from..you spell it). Thanks for the compliment Eddie and the memories, right, well it makes a good story now that it's over.

There's a Vortex in Brimfield

2011-05-09T12:37:00.002-04:00

I am now certain Brimfield and a surrounding radius of 300 miles is in a powerful vortex. Crazy stuff keeps happening here and the story I'm about to tell you absolutely proves it.

I'm down to the last 2 hours of the 12 hour drive and all of a sudden, the van loses engine power, I barely make it to the median as the cars are barreling through a construction zone with no shoulders. I've just had this thing tuned up to the tune of $850. A quick look under the hood reveals nothing easy like a loose wire. They send out the big tow truck and the drivers eyes get big when he sees the strain on the winch, "you got something heavy in there." Yeah, and I gotta sell it like tomorrow. It's Sunday, there's nothing doing. I gotta roll with it.

I buy the nice tow driver dinner at McDonalds and listen sympathetically to his oral surgery pain, the bipolar girlfriend who hasn't moved out yet and the leg that got crushed in a farm accident 30 years ago. He finds a penny in the parking lot and gives it to me for luck. My vans gonna be serviced at 8am when they open, I'll be set up and drinking a cocktail by tomorrow night.

Back in Brimfield my gal pal has found a nice man on match.com to buy her dinner, true story, but he's wearing a lounge lizard neckline and his hair is slicked back. She thanks him and fortified with a few cocktails, my happy pal heads back to the tents to find our drinking buddies.

The driver drops me off at a Ramada Hotel near the airport in Oriskany, New York. I am in the middle of nowhere, at a hotel with 3 people in it. It's the perfect setting for a remake of The Shining. I take a walk and find the main road. The tiny brick control tower at the airport is from the 50's. There are construction vehicles and piles of sand all around it. No planes are flying in or out of here.

The party in Brimfield just keeps getting better. My pal is having the kind of day that you never want to end. She heads back to the hotel bar for a night cap and it's full of fun people. She meets a darling 28 yr-old man, he says he's a professional Vegas gambler, they hit off.

It's pitch black here at the airport hotel and deathly quiet. I've managed to forget reading material and borrow a cheesy romance novel from the Shelly Duval understudy at the front desk. It's about a marine who finds a picture of a pretty girl in the Kuwait desert and believes it's a good luck charm. When he comes home, he walks across the country to find the girl who saved his life. I break for some vending machine food. No sign of Jack Nicholson, but I know where the main road is and I've got running shoes, Shelly Duval is on her own.

There's a lucky charm all right and and my gal pal has it. Though she' has a hangover and only three hours of sleep, love has prevailed. The lucky charm worked for the marine too, the evil ex-husband is vanquished and the marine finds true love with the pretty girl.

So far all my lucky penny got me through was the night in Oriskany, It's noon and I am still waiting to hear what's wrong with my van. I'm holding onto my penny and patience, now if I they could only get my van running…

Brimfield Time Again, Let the Dice Roll

2011-04-28T21:58:00.004-04:00

I have a thing about finding the next new thing. That means something more" graphically explosive" than the last thing (read stupidly large, heavy and unsaleable) or the unexplored regions of a cavernous warehouse (darker, wetter, creepier). Less dramatically, something truly compells me to look beyond what I know, what I've already bought and sold, and now, to venture beyond the confines of my store, retail, and Metro Detroit to find a new way of working or being. Is it a gene inherited from the Gaggino shipping captains of Genoa perpetually sailing into the unknown? Or more like I got bored with all the things I've seen or said, the same four walls year after year and the same news stories day after day. I see it's the same thing with selling at Brimfield. I have never set up at the same show twice. Who knows if this show is better than that, but I have to say, this time I have somehow miraculously landed what looks to be a sweet spot. My pal Carter put in the good word at the barn and instead of being 1000 feet from the road, I'm 20. Instead of being stuck in back on the fence that became a pond when it rained, or loading and unloading at that "hot, moneymaking" show that only lasts 4 hours (hot indeed...106 degrees, and heavy? Pockets, no..the load? You know me... quick weightloss program). I'm somehow in with Big Daddy's from LA and the people who look like their regular clients are moviestars that have people who follow behind and write their checks. Is it a good omen? I'm too practical to think like that. My overwhelming concern is are they gonna be fun? Will the weather be good for a change? Can I back my trailer up (no)? After another harrowing year in Detroit, don't look to me to set sales goals or chart what it is that's selling, how would I know? "Wow, the giant foam hammer sold, should I order more? That lucite toilet seat with the rattlesnakes embedded in it...is this a trend?" Come on, I'm saddled with the destiny of being into increasingly weirder stuff in an ever shrinking niche, year after year. I'm gonna be that old crone with thin silver hair and dressed in black, back in some corner of a flea market, invisible amongst the vaguely spooky collection of odd and giant things, startling the curious when I move or speak Gee maybe I'm just in it for the theater afterall, there's a shock for you.

Week in Review

2011-04-17T16:24:00.008-04:00

When big just isn't big enough. Or, when dumb isn't dumb enough

Me and my cool mother in our matching t-shirts, cool, so my idea

Inside the front page of the Sunday New York Times' section Week in Review, they give you the highlights from the week with punchy one-word headings. Wyatt says I would be "a lot cooler" if I could just stop talking so much. Maybe this format will have desired effect and up my cool factor with this oh so important demographic.

Bump: Out of the prime booth in Brimfield and the shared 24' truck and assorted expenses. Driving the ghetto rig meant overhaul, that was cheap. Time to work the phones to find a booth, preferably not in East Jesus. Good week to find a saviour. Did I mention the "BIG" scores like that 10' windmill, boat frame, neon beer sign and steel shelving units I'd already bought...guess I'm pulling a trailer, and that serious trucker Amy if I'm lucky.

Thump: That's the sound a solid oak dresser makes when you drop it. That's why I plan on having Amy on the other end. There's two straight women in this town who know how to move heavy items. What an accomplishment. Only 10 more things to pull together before the client's birthday party, which is the week before Brimfield. Ritalin darts please, note to medical. Meanwhile the one film job I have in the hopper is renting more stuff which is great, I just need to get those 10 big pieces ready for pick up Wednesday while that photo shoot gets underway upstairs today.

Grump: Best to give the keys to the photo shoot clients and let them handle the 6 models, their 10 handlers , the photographer and his assistant. Did I mention the models were toddlers? Medical not available until tomorrow, put the grump in the pool first, then let her pop in when they are finishing up with all those adorable (and they were) toddlers. They left the place clean as a whistle, best location clients ever. The photo shoot gig is the new marketing angle, tell marketing.

Hrrumph: Didn't meet goal for the webathon fundraiser (trying to finance ads to fight the governor's attempts to snuff out the state's film industry investment). Still have two days, check my facebook page for info. Just 5 bucks by Tuesday could do it, wouldya couldya? On a more positive note, Gleaners and Detroit Waldorf raised some serious dough. Our Beautiful Detroit Begins with You art piece sold for $25 over estimate. I'm gonna start producing more, and give $25 to various area charities of your choosing.

Stay tuned, already day two of this week, it's fully-loaded. Keeping my cool. Done talking.

Death, Taxes, Life!

2011-04-08T16:05:00.005-04:00

It's always darkest before tax day. I have to remind myself of that every year. The continuous loop plays on of funding gaps, gray days and crummy weather. The pickings are slim. While the call from American Pickers sparked some provocative discourse, it isn't paying my bills and filing an extension means no refund. A bright spot is that all my calling around for the show unearthed some interesting leads (and entertainment), it's always hunting season, especially when you're lean. Opening the store on Saturdays is getting to be a pretty good gig. And the people showing up on the weekdays are finding the door open now that David King's back from LA and working in the studio. It's a pleasant surprise and we're all grateful.

I forgot what a difference it makes to have someone else in the studio, talking about art and making it with salvage. Our conversation circulates to familiar places, Detroit, the people we know and what we're going to do next (get coffee, surf the internet, have a show…). Then we hear voices downstairs, people are drawn to a faint thump, gee there is a pulse. There's also the high pitch squeal of the chop saw again, the smell of saw dust and wet paint, the energy of creation.

We are talking about having a show upstairs, really. David painted the walls, and framed panels of scrapped lumber. I've looked at lumber lying all over Detroit, I was stunned how beautiful he made it look when he framed sections of it. Put the mask over your face and breathe normally. That display I've been wanting to do of washed up sports balls and crushed metal now has context. He talks about the culture of LA and sunshine, I respond with New York and snowstorms. He paints over old paintings and cuts them apart, I am spray painting sidewalks, my car, a wood panel, a mirror, with the Beautiful Detroit stencil. We restart our dialogue from last fall and salvage whatever is lying around in the ugly days leading up to spring.

The gray walls of the upstair's front room has completely faded beneath a wash of fresh paint, the vacant spaces starts to fill in. It actually looks like something is coming to life around here.

Detroit Gladiators, Stay Tuned!

2011-04-01T13:45:00.005-04:00

Detroit gladiator first round draft pick Jon, does animal rescue in Detroit, HOT!

Cass Tech High, well that's what it looked like a few months ago.

What are we like the Charlie Sheen of cities now? It's an episode of Survivor, "Look they're down to 700,000 people! Let's watch them demolish their city (see Cass Tech High, now you don't) and fight over the scrap!" From the ringside seats, all eyes are on the media show that looks like it's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome here. Bring on the gladiators!

We've got the attention of American Pickers anyhow. They're calling probably looking for an escort to that place in the city packed with motorcycles and Civil War rifles, do I sound cynical? Heck no, where there's fame, there must be fortune, let's cash in! On the one hand it feels like feeding on carrion with the vultures, on the other isn't it the job of the salvage slave to boldly go where treasure is buried, help a brother out who needs to sell something, and along the way spin the story that Detroit still has great people and energy? I feel the stump speech coming on.

Yeah, about Cass Tech, 3 million to tear it all down so we could get that much needed vacant land...How about some intelligent thought on saving iconic architecture unique to Detroit? Or restoring the leadership that nurtured successes like Peter Karmanos, John DeLorean, Lily Tomlin and Jack White (all Cass alum)?Believe it or not, there's still creative thinkers on the streets making life better in the D. It's just not as sexy as say gladiator sport to the masses. Seems to me the only sane solution for those of us invested here is to strengthen the network we already have and build momentum in a positive direction. Here pickers, is the great American story.

The salvage slave is consulting with the A-team, doing the background work, oh there's hidden treasures and good television here. Who knows? maybe this will uncover great merchandise for a few of us, put money in some pockets, maybe there's a t.v./film industry in our future, maybe we'll learn how to capitalizes on our assets without vaporizing them, and keep the things that make Detrot, well, Detroit. When the spotlight is on is the best time to tell your story. How about the one where the underdogs dig deep for that personal strength and come together to save the game, and themselves. I got my first round draft pick, you know he's got game.

Collected Stories

2011-03-15T22:44:00.005-04:00

I don't know, the headless puppet body, a 1900's maiden stamped on tin ceiling, toy gun parts and a workman's tool belt etc. that I bought in New York last weekend kept teasing with life stories. I was glad to shut them up in a box and ship them back to Detroit. You know I love the stuff, the stories and the people animating history from the beyond, but...there's a few things and a few people in New York to love…good thing I got information bypass (straight to laptop) so the vital needs get met and overload's averted. A blog and a roundtrip ticket to the Midwest are just what the doctor ordered.

I came to look at a collection, one animator, Maria, and 40 years worth of great stuff and stories as fun and creative as she is. Maria's inner artist has explored the sculpture in the classic carvings of Victorian architecture to folk art (dolls, spool furniture, collectibles et al), the painterly aspects of 19th century tole (painted metal) to peely painted furniture, and graphic modernity in primitives to vintage advertising. I scan a collection like I scan an antique show or market; searching for form, material, color and anything especially odd. As they add up in my head, I'm concurrently styling a booth or vignette to tell a story. In the boxes, cupboards and places I search, it is a narrative thread I am looking for. It's in the last place I look where I find the storyline for this collection. Turns out it begins with Maria's occupation..she sells jewelry..and an unusual connection back to me.

It's late in the day and up in the attic is our last stop. There it all is, a glittering tangle of 1960's silver from the southwest piled on a card table. The two of us can't stop ourselves from pawing through the treasure, what fun! The Native American jewelry is like a magnet and a door to my past. When my family moved from Arizona where I was born, my parents (probably my mom) had this groovy idea that we should take the proceeds of our modest bank accounts and buy Indian jewelry. I was 9 years old. I still have my little girl bracelets from the $200 investments I made that day. Southwestern stuff has always been part of my own collection and I love to mix it with antiques.

The story writes itself. Maria's jewelry will pull them into the booth I can now see in my head. It will be displayed in small cases, on rocks and hanging from cut branches, on top of her spool furniture. Architectural fragments will provide solid background to the furnitures' delicate shapes. Larger primitive cabinets with worn paint surfaces will anchor the collection. Rugs, quilts, dolls and other textiles will soften the solid forms and add color. I edit the pieces in my minds eye: this in, that out. The more the story develops, the more it stays the same. I natter over just the right effect like I natter over just the right word. Honing my craft, designing the booth, my store, your place and writing the best story I can so you will want to take it with you and be inspired to add your own to it.

Kind of Design

2011-03-13T12:23:00.005-04:00

I could be going to any number of world class museums in New York today or picking a walking route to look at buildings. Failing that, picking a central median say at 23rd and 6th or is it Broadway? and sitting at the smartly placed chairs where two avenues converge and just looking at the sea of interesting, brilliant, gorgeous and shocking people who pass by. That swimsuit model actually has the formula to harness all this human energy and end our dependence on natural resources. He looks homeless but is keeping your cell phone from dropping calls. That guy that looks like someone famous is. What does that guy have around his neck? Oh it's part of a drapery treatment. Everybody else is lost and can't stay out of the way( I recommend handlers, I have mine, you get your own).

I'm 45 minutes by the metro or car and 5 minutes by private helicopter. I am still in my pj's, writing this and making cookies with what I found in the cupboard. I will head in the opposite direction to see my fourth grade friend Linda and her 4 gymnastic kids in beautiful Lloyd Harbor and make dinner with the contents of her cupboards. In a sea of fantastic food and chefs, nobody has the time to cook and either would I, but I do. I want to contribute and make people happy. It will take me a week to sort out who said what to me this weekend and I'd have to drop everything to read up (with dictionary) to know what it meant. Man, even the people unloading trucks at the Pier Show have PhD's in something, I just wish they had listened to me say, "don't put the heavy boxes on top of the pegboard walls (crack)."

Practical at heart, handy and banking on pleasant in the absence of homework and unread assignments. How good for me to practice listening skills (please, I'm sensitive) and learn what I can about art, photography, comedy improv (on speed), current affairs, defensive driving. It's afforded me the time to study creative design solutions for everything under the sun and hopefully employ it in Detroit. Being kind and interested in other people could only make the solutions to any problem better, we just gotta remember that when we start designing them.

The Nature of Design

2011-03-11T00:20:00.005-05:00

I remind myself when I stall the rusty replacement cargo van with NO creature comforts, that travel is transformative. I got my priorities and a trip to pay for (was that mom van really me? Ok miss upholstery, power windows/locks). I could whine about the rain, ice, snow and the dirty cliffs the plows have carved, but that week on the green mountain, the ocean and the magnificent Gehry Guggenheim museum, were brain food and did I ever need that, and the promise of Spring. I've been working textures and contrasts around in my mind ever since and I find myself looking for them out my own window and in my store.

That shift from the rolling green hills all bucolic and sunny to the sudden draining of warmth and color at the cliff's edge, repeated itself when I stepped out of the airport in Detroit. Shades of gray, dark to white and cold ocean spray greeted my face with a sharp slap. The giant white waves were coming in with force and speed. Like a high-powered hatchet by the looks of those cliffs, that nasty edge menacing like concertina wire, not to mention the near vertical 50' drop. Though in some places it looked brittle as slate, the horizontal layers of shard were solid and I wished I had better climbing shoes. The palette from putty to mustard and dove gray, are the colors of linen, weathered wood and paint that put to mind classic French design. With their border just an hour away, it's clear this timeless landscape is the inspiration.

In some places the stone had the texture of dark bark in vertical striations, the smooth areas like patinated sheet steel. That visual memory resurfaced as I walked through the mammoth Richard Serra sculptures at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Now that I'm home, I see all these colors and textures on buildings, in the yard, in the studio, in the objects I'm drawn to.

The shores were striking by their differences. One was piled with black boulders, making trance-inducing sound as the waves pushed them on top of each other. You can't help but pick up the smooth small stones, work them in your hand, how it calms your brain. Ha! it's those tumbling stones in barrels at the shop! I watch as people unconsciously grab a handful, feel of them and drop them back, that sound. What a sensuous feeling to walk bare foot on smooth stones. Someday I'll install the tumbling stones in a floor and recall this ancient beach!

On the other side of the you-aren't-welcome cliff that marked this short beach was something else entirely, and breathtaking. I nearly killed myself climbing down a hillside trying to get there. "It doesn't look that far/steep from here (famous last words). I can do it, the dumb sheep do it..I work out!" Helps to have A. 4 legs B. lower center of gravity C. type B or C personality. The lounging chefs had a good laugh when I came home covered in mud and scratches.

I wasn't the first "enthusiast" to hike down, someone fastened a knotted rope to climb all the way down to the ocean, brilliant! What looked like a mass of solid stone with grooves dug by a giant fork from up high, ran below the water's surface with the shards turned 90 degrees or more. Hey! it's a foot hold, wait, no…. Kathunka! it's a diving board. Somewhere sheep are shaking their heads. Think I'll save the swimming for a heated pool, ponder those materials while I'm at it.

Hamtramck Blow Out

2011-03-06T00:01:00.008-05:00

I interrupt my regularly scheduled blog about Spain (beautiful blah blah I went you didn't blah, don't be a hater) to jump up and down about the Hamtramck Blow Out. Hamtramck, the little city within the city of Detroit, is full of great old bars and the Blowout packs them in with bands playing 40 minute sets, one after another, and we're starved for spring and meaningful congregation. It's over 35 degrees, people are overjoyed and I declare everybody looks beautiful and interesting. It's a serious point of pride, the music from Detroit and a spirit of true community in Hamtramck that makes an event like the Blowout successful.

We are out with my sister Alyssa, who I used to bar crawl with in our glory days, her friend Elena and our friends Mark and Michele who live here and co-own the Belmont bar. We wax nostalgic about Lilly's, now the Painted Lady, where Lilly sat at the back door taking money into her 80's. It looks exactly the same; this matters. We catch the Detroit Party Marching Band by chance because we could hear the base drum leaving The New Dodge Bar, I'm excited. They're 15 strong on this night, show up all over town, unannounced and in costume. I'd yet to catch them. They played the stripper theme song. Can you stand it? Tubas and bass drums…righteous! We drive on. It's 10 blocks to Smalls, pouring rain now and this is Detroit. $4 a gallon or no, this is how we roll (did we invent this term?). The truck gets stuck in a snow drift as we try to park. Yeah, no, Michele and I will not be pushing. I take the wheel, men to the rear and with one shout out, 6 guys cross the road and push that F-150 right out of the drift. You gotta a love a town where men are men and hands get dirty.

Smalls is packed, Michele and I are now yawning and taking a dim view of standing, crowding, headliner or no. The Gardens are playing at the Belmont, a solid Detroit rock band made fresh by young skinny guys full of energy with English beat haircuts and all we care about is sitting down. We got privileges here, pizza and beverages at the ready. Mark is the mayor, glad-handing and it's fun to meet the business owners keeping it going in Hamtramck.

Great night, but here's the best story. It's the essence of Detroit grit; the anarchy that makes me feel at home. It's outside Smalls, we hear some broad with serious pipes belting out rock and roll with real feeling. But there's no bar. It's coming from the parking lot across from Smalls. This band didn't make the roster, no tithe no free beer. This band rented a U-haul trailer, parked it in the gas station parking lot and played out the back. It's lit with a single strand of lights, amps and instruments all plugged into someone's electricity. Cold rain and 3 people watching, the show is going on, U-haul's paid for. You can hear her 2 blocks away, by the end of their set, 20 of us are standing there, no umbrellas, on cracked concrete covered in ice and mud. The broad is a 20-something girl. She passed out half a sheet of paper with this on it, "You've been shagged by White Shag…www.whiteshag.com." Love, pure and simple. Gotta give it to get it.

A small plate of Spain por favor

2011-03-01T00:20:00.005-05:00

It's been one week, time for a reunion of team Spain, time to eat! We meet at Roast in the Book Cadillac for their infamous happy hour. Monday is the day, chefs are off, and it's practically the only day you can get a seat in the bar. I'm early. Really. I'm early because I had to be at school at 4:00 pm to pick up Wyatt if you must know and yes he came with me to the bar. We are being European (and they let me). If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. If you want your kid to be civilized, bring him with you, he's on the team, he loves this, be a good example (it's 4:30-6:00pm, doable). Roast has fantastic small portion bar food for $3 and $4 apiece. It's Detroit's best answer to tapas, small plates, and it's as we were, a week ago in Spain.

We all agree this tapas thing needs more play here. You get to try all sorts of things, which is like eating off other people's plates (my bad, but everybody else's food always looks and tastes better right?). Not unlike sushi in Japanese cuisine, but more bang for the buck. You're hanging at the bar (and behaving remember) It's all very social, which is good when you are community-building, and the whole food-on-the-bar-help-yourself, which is so make-yourself-at-home, so thoroughly delighted our team. Ok, even if the food-safety nazis won't clear eggs and fish sitting out, you adapt, and the beauty of the whole deal is the sharing part. The key is simplicity, affordability and "good produce" as the Spaniards say. If you follow their style of smaller wine and beer portions along with the eating, it's easier to keep yourself in check too(and drive your kid home).

We started our trip in small Spanish towns and a typical bar might have a half-dozen things out to choose from…Until we got to the bigger town of San Sebastian. I came undone when we walked to the historic section of town in this already beautiful old seaside place and into the first tapas bar. The whole long bar surface was covered with like 30 or more different things. We are by the sea, it's seafood fantasyland. The pigs, goats and sheep are just up the mountain, it's sausage fest, cheese wonderment. Dave is hot on those white anchovies and baby eels. I might never have gotten over the visual if not for his zeal (gee those eel babies? they look like worms, white worms).

So here's the best bite: a slice of baguette, a schmear of aioli (olive oil and garlic whipped like mayonnaise), white anchovies, a bit of grilled tuna, pickled pepper slices or better yet, the tiny green ones (both on the mild side) and the baby eels on top. All pulled out of the sea 100 yards away, maybe this morning's catch or yesterdays, and put on these slices of fresh bread with other yummy bits and now looking like mini artists' palettes.

Seems fishy? (bummer for you) Have some sausage, look here's 20. The fattier and more saturated, the better it melts in your mouth. You are walking everywhere, you'll burn it off. Molly loves the croquettes, fritters with creamy centers of chicken, mushroom or seafood. I made everybody try my lightly batter-fried eggplant slice on baguette with pickled peppers atop the aioli with roasted red bell pepper, nirvana. The kabobs, it's a party for your mouth, maybe half a hard-boiled egg, then an olive, a little shrimp, a slice of pepper, yum! pretty! 10 different varieties! Really need familiar? Have a fritatta slice; it's a farmer's omelette. Choose one with mushrooms or ham, sliced potatoes, goat or sheep's milk cheese.

It's all in the "produce" remember? It tastes good not because it's fussed over but because it's fresh and it's fresh because it's from down the street, or just over the mountain. And I just saw the sheep grazing so I don't need to look for the stamp that says "grass fed" and because it's communal, you can bet whomever raised them is on a first-name basis here. That simple omelette tastes like a new invention. Right, fresh eggs, organic for sure, trust me, we know the chicken, she's lives close by, the egg was still warm when she handed it to me on the way over. And another thing, at $3.50 a gallon, do I need to go carbon hoof-print crazy on you? Best thing, these bar-top masterpieces, all fresh and fancy sounding? $4 each tops, many were less, lots were filling. It's for everyone! You can bring your team, bring your kids, fun in every bite. I think we have room for some of that.

Recipe for Fun

2011-02-23T21:27:00.011-05:00

You know what? I'm just gonna come clean right now. No dice on the junkin', finally found the flea market and it was the bad tube socks and underwear type. So much for keeping that genius antique concept on track. But the play is getting to be a lot of work and I for one may need a vacation from this vacation. It's certainly been a successful recipe for fun, everyone a necessary ingredient for late night revelry and later mornings (well noonish), endless snacks and hilarious antics. The meals out have been fantastic, but it's the impromptu market research and spontaneous cooking I've loved.

We've gone hog-wild, pun intended. Definitely not kosher and downright gruesome for vegetarian types, all those pig legs hanging in every deli, restaurant and bar, slung from the hoof with little cones collecting fat drippings. Nothing like the ripe smell of aging pig. It's the Imberico ham for which Spain is famous and it came home sliced thin (think prosciutto). Endless varieties of sausage, the more abstract, made with blood or some heart-stopping organ meat, the more Dave had to have it. In the end, he made delicious pizza with all those sausages. The daily and nightly spreads included white anchovies (precious stateside but reasonable here), regional olives, pickled peppers and cornichons, marcona almonds, goat and sheep milk cheeses, mandarin oranges and strawberries from the south, bosc-type pears (I'm particularly smitten with these, thin skin with traces of green in the traditional brown peel, sweet as honey), a little salad of greens with a simple vinaigrette of lemon and local extra virgin olive oil (bright green with a spring fresh taste) and it's that mediterranean diet you could eat every day, and we did.

Mark's the quick draw with the corkscrew, handy with a knife, continuously theatrical and ridiculously funny. He left no liver, rich cheese or wine pairing behind and Molly starts the call for meat when the sun comes up, has dispensed with the bread altogether and just eats the pates and foie gras with a spoon. Our chefs spared no expense, all things weird and wonderful came home and were shared, except the tab, which they rarely let us get. Molly is Betty Crocker and starts with a spotless kitchen and yummy breakfasts of everything-leftover-goodness. Christina and I filled in gaps, she at command central (her I Phone), keeping us plugged into world affairs (what's today's spin on Robot Cop-gate? where is that restaurant? how are we making that last flight to Detroit(not)?), saved our electronics from the only antique I saw (Molly's mother's adaptor sparking in the outlet), supplied smokey treats, some tasty jams (her research for a new business venture here) and late-night KP. Me? I'm the mother, spoon-feeding samples, fussing over torn acl's, curing car sickness with a sensible speed at the wheel, a little laundry service, coffee making, a few dishes, egging the comedy on. Our mantra got to be "it's all in the produce!" A simple recipe one adapts to available ingredients. Don't waste your energy or appetite on anything less.

Familiarity Breeds Content

2011-02-19T07:53:00.008-05:00

Last night I stayed up while the moon travelled more than half way to its eastern descent, and now I am watching the sun come up over the mountains. The birds get so excited, there's no sleeping late with the windows open. Guess they can't hold it in their pea brains that this is a daily occurrence. I gotta find a better time to write than late night or I'll never sleep. Now a group of about 30 bluebird-types are swarming round and round in some cloverleaf pattern. It reminds me of how old asian people do tai chi together in parks (and how Dave wears circular paths..) It must be some kind of zen communal health and training program shared by the species. I watch the sheep down the hill socializing in their specific manner. I love how they make a wall, together bracing themselves when the wind whips up from the west. We've watched a few storms come across the ocean, driving the waves wickedly and high onto the rocky shores. This makes serious surfers come out in their wetsuits. Later in the night, the sea settles and Dave and I look at that expanse and talk about sailing. The only other ones out on these seas are commercial fishing vessels, and we can see their bright lights late into the night.

Practically the entire spectrum of landscape is so close at hand and magnificent that if I were born to this place, I'd probably want to protect and keep it for my family too. The flag of the Basque region is modeled on the union jack and you see the separatists' colors graffitied here and there. No Spanish is spoken unless you start speaking it. I hiked through a grove of tall pines, past blooming wildflowers and small verdant farm plots. The black-faced sheep ambled right to the fence next to me, curious to see who was treading the otherwise lightly-used road. The hills rise up nearly at my shoulders in some places. It's incredible how these old towns were cut and wedged into this mountainous coastal land. If you were planning to settle here, the only choice is to cultivate and find livestock that can adapt to the mountains. When you look up, and not while driving, you see the squares of terraced plantings striped with stone retaining walls. These are cut into old growth pine forests which are interrupted by corduroy patches of grape vines grown vertically and, immediately adjacent to small velvet pastures with their cottony polka dots of grazing sheep.

Whew! All that to say my brain finds familiarity in these patterns and textures and the reference is the humble quilts that peasants and poor people made with clothing worn beyond repair. A longtime purveyor of old things, this is my particular landscape, the place I passionately protect and hope to pass on.The sun is now high enough to warm the path to the ocean, so I'm off to explore some more. The oceanscape with it's rocky cliffs and boulders is completely different. Of course I'll have a narrative to work out there because I can't help myself. I don't want to miss or forget anything and think if you're reading this, you should't either.

New Frontiers, Fabulous Food

2011-02-17T20:11:00.006-05:00

Travelling with 3 chefs is not for wimps. First of all these are hearty consumers of food and drink, they have opinions, about food for sure and just about everything else: politics, music, shoes, Detroit, sex, art, fire building, what's clean and what's not, did I say shoes? I'm just happy to taste a little, stay upright, see the full moon rise over the mountains and the big dipper moving to it's spring-time position in the northern hemisphere. I'm in Spain, my amigos are constantly amusing and the Jeff Koon's dog sculpture in front of the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is blooming with pansies. That Bilbao used to be an industrial power that waned and turned to art for its revival makes me hopeful all over again for Detroit and these creative, hard-working people whose opinions aren't necessarily the same but agree on what it means to make a good life in Detroit. In the end the pizza-dough wouldn't behave and refused to cook in the picture-perfect wood-fired oven. Chef Mark from Wolfgang Puck Detroit proclaimed he might not cook at all and it was well-marbled Molly (her name de guerre) that patiently got the fire burning and the chicken cooked perfectly. The cheap wine had everybody laughing, so all is bueno. Dave scored reservations for a meal that the newly-arrived Mark proclaimed awesome. We got to meet chef Victor Arguinzoniz and see his immaculate kitchen with all those grills at his restaurant Etxebarri. His sous chef came out to explain in his Florida accent what made the menu that included smoked goat butter and shaved truffles, grilled oyster, local-caught crab, impossibly tiny baby octopuses, a grilled egg-yolk with purple potato puree and more truffles, grouper and a rare grilled ribeye plus smoked ice cream and all this done at different temperatures, so special. No sooner had the food been consumed when we were back to menu planning and the grocery store, refueling the refrigerator. We got cooks and seriously particular eaters, empty wine bottles, and dishes to keep clean. The internet is streaming constant Motown R&B, because we always bring ourselves whenever we go and the commentary on the latest controversial Detroit fundraising for art, "Robot Cop" is being followed closely. We can't seem to stop facebooking, blogging, emailing and connecting to our home bases, but tomorrow we are looking forward to exploring the ancient town of San Sebastian and if I can get up before lunch, I'm going to make another solo hike down the rocky slope to marvel at the big waves that cut the rocky cliffs and the view from which daring Spanish explorers imagined a new world that we simply call home. In our own way each of us is looking at a new frontier that many also call impossible and imagining great things to come.

Vacation Salvation

2011-02-16T16:56:00.004-05:00

Dave and Molly along the river in Bilbao

This hke will be a snap

When the salvager is salvaging her own salvage it might be time for some salvage salvation, translation: vacation. Yeah I said I'd do some flea marketing but I'm traveling with 3 chefs so there's gonna be some eaten and drinken, a little sight seein and hikin to the ocean from our hilltop country house, as a crow flies maybe half a mile first. But oh what it took to get here. Did I say here is the Basque region of Spain? The latest mecca for foodie types? Yes I buried this detail a few lines in. What business do I have here? Frequent flyer ticket, house sharing with chefs, you saying no? No you are cashing in the change jar amigos. Our affable and charming, chef de pizza and most disarming, arranged a spacious country house with views of the mountains, terraced farms and sheep grazing, the ocean crashing. Ridiculously good. Chef Dave is making dinner, dapper in his dress clothes. Just something simple from today's farmer's market selections while Molly naps and I hike to the ocean. Better a man in the kitchen than say, in charge of all travel planning….

Now we know why he's picked alpha female travel companions. It seemed perfectly fine after landing to enjoy the afternoon kicking around Bilbao. Have some drinks and snacks, chill a little, look about. We'll check in with the travel agent later… on the only serviceable phone's last minutes. I's only an hour drive…that is if you actually know your destination, have an address. Here's what we have, "Drive to this little town Deba, ask at the church EVERYBODY knows the place…" Details! Disarming is a must when you have neither phone nor address and not really the right town. But, you can't get mad at Dave such is his charm. Did I mention we don't speak Euskada? It sounds like this: "zumba zaba zeba zaba zumba zaba zi" It looks like Greek. Few speak English. We don't know where we are going and yet we are going. Now with Molly at the wheel, Dave voted to the back seat, me navigating. It's a touchy stick, we keep stalling, on hills, with people on our tail. New information arrives, 'Molly can't really drive in the dark and gets car sick. Now I'm driving and it's harrowing switchbacks, on old narrow roads, pitch black, the ocean in place of a shoulder I'm driving which means I get to stop and ask directions, I'm big on this. I pull over, me who speaks no Spanish and them no English. This is just good theater, gesticulating and map drawing, but no mention of road numbers or names. These people have lived here all there lives. We've fallen into Laurel and Hardy improv and can't get out. No, it's "Afterhours" and we are going on 24 hours without sleeping. We drive round the roundabouts, Mollly turns green and Dave insouciantly lounges in the rear, nursing his torn acl.

Two hours later, it was a woman (I'm just sayin…) who walked outside and pointed with her finger to the direct route, less than 1km away. There patiently waiting was our house man. I get it, people pay big money for these corporate team building exercises. Team USA starts, stalls, starts, it's way to the finish line. I love a good laugh and I'm having some, on vacation in Spain.

Homecoming for a president

2011-02-06T19:57:00.009-05:00

Royal Oak Flea Market Finds: Smart WWII Soldier's Coat, 1895 Detroit Ledger

Steve gets the kiddie wheelbarrow his parents denied him

He's gonna put fruit in it (his parents are ok with this)

Hillary gets hands for her manicure station.

Talk turns to handymen...you get the picture

"It's hard work being president!" Seems like I've heard this line before and had something snide to say about it. Now there I go WHINING ABOUT THE SAME THING (Note to self, read previous blogs. Don't emulate THAT president). Feeling better, rested and happily for all of us, perky and grateful for everything. I am so mushy about all the people who came out in a snowstorm and on Superbowl Sunday to see what the big complainer brought back from New York, and to hear the stories which I love to tell. I feel like an old lady repeating myself: "The snow was this high!!!"(had to show picture) The people are so crazy!! (takes one to know one) and "I heart New York!" (did I mention I'm feeling better?)

Anyhoo, what a high to have customers who truly miss you and love what you do, read what you write then pack your store and buy things, bonus! They said they can't wait to see what I come back with next. You know I can't wait to go, especially this trip to Spain. I caught up with my local peeps first thing this morning at the Royal Oak Flea Market, bought a few things. I love this WWII soldier's coat, tailor-made to last and a great 1895 leather-bound Detroit business ledger, written in that beautiful ancient script with real pen and ink. As a writer, this sort of thing resonates with me. I love to hand write letters, but take the time for beautiful penmanship? Not likely. They barely teach cursive anymore. Can you imagine that a dollar's worth of goods warranted a hand-written entry into a thick hand-made leather book? Or that people engaged in pleasant conversation, spoke in complete sentences and used proper English? Now I do sound like an old lady.

I know the internet is what it will take to keep my business going, but you know my stump speech: it really does make a difference to people to see all this stuff together as I see it. Maybe it's my inner actress wannabe: the show of shows, my avant garde experimental theater, hey, weird sells some, really? ! Well they get called up on stage, it's interactive improv man and the performance thing is kind of my thing and people like to play, hence my love affair with New York and all those creatives. I got to be in their fun play (thanks for letting me out though, sheesh, long curtain call that one). Then there's the part about the art created in a booth or a shop. The players get to touch it, own it. It's the business model I wrote to give everybody a nice part and I remember you and your name, the thing you last bought, I tease you a little, you get your costume on (it's a metaphor nobody wore the showgirl costume, well I might have...) this is playing for adults! See Steve with the wheelbarrow, we went to junior high together. I took this picture to send to his mother because he said he really did want one of these when he was little and he didn't get it. She texted back, said he got everything he wanted, how hilarious is that improv? Hillary is one of those long time customers that I haven't seen in ages, she owns her own salon and we talk about doing everything ourselves and do we really need men for all that grief blah blah ha ha...but yeah, there's that naughty naughty...hey! we're adults and presidents so we get to have fun with the burlesque dialogue (there's some weird theater)..right, she needed the 6 hands for the manicure station.

But back to the stump and seeing and touching the items I sell mattering business model, building relationships and the how is our mutual friend, your chemotherapy, burying your mother, raising your sister's troubled kid when you retired, lots of not funny adult stuff people need to talk about and it really only happens when you are in front of someone and can read that they care, or seem safe..so I get a lot of good therapy with my captive audience, ha! Truth is it really has to go both ways to work. God, so much for proper English from the English major, but it's shootin the breeze at this hour and I feel less old, unless you ask Wyatt...speaking of the divine child, what a delight to have him come smiling through the door at the end of the day. How great that he's in a good mood and helpful, collecting up garbage, turning off lights, closing up shop, carrying home bags, no complaining. He still delights in the snow which fell lightly as we walked and he clowned delighting me. Hot cocoa is still good currency and he will probably remember none of this moment. Good for him, his life is so full of new and interesting things and fun play, that's how it should be. I will remember because when it's hard adult crap a day like to today is currency you really need but can't buy. You earn it the old fashioned way...see whiny blogs. Well that's tonight's address from the president. And I'm the decider here and I say quit imitating that president, I'm going to bed and then Spain!

Load, Unload, Load Unload, Load, Is it Over Yet?

2011-02-04T23:27:00.004-05:00

Another Show is so Doable

Design Tornado

Montmartre

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to plan this truck load show at the store the week I returned from New York. It only takes a few new items to make an entire redirection of the shop necessary. I love my handyman Ben, who took up the thankless job of helping me, saying, "like, do you have a core plan?" Design by tornado by definition has a core, it's just a lethal plan. I hope in the midst of my storm, he didn't inhale the same wicked respiratory virus I did. While he's pondering a safe place to stand, I'm considering introducing a cello's steamer truck to the art deco collection. Will they be happy together? Will a headless baby mold and a giant plaster longhorn steer make a nice pair? Is it something you would see with a collection of faded and torn 1940's showgirl costumes? Around the store it spirals, moving once, moving twice, around and around until it lands just where it belongs…well do arranged marriages last any longer than the ones you buy in Vegas? I have often wondered what goes on in there after I shut off the lights. Whoa, this road warrior life may not be conducive to lucid thought. I just got a look at myself in the mirror. Disturbing. Should I throw these work jeans out? You know I won't. I feel like a petulant girl scout. I earned the damn badge, I'm gonna cover my ratty jeans with them. I confess to two melt downs this week. And yet, here I am still up, still writing. You push this hard, you are gonna get to the other side. It's not for everybody. But it is kind of a zen practice for me now. I hunt the high and low, look for whatever it is that is looking for me, design it with whatever else is in the store, it looks random and inefficient, but I really am consistent in my taste and somehow it meets my aesthetic criteria. Though the method may only work for me, it has worn a particular groove and I always find it, get into it. Creative brain function occurs. Sick and tired, it happens on auto pilot regardless. The last thing I did tonight before I dragged myself out of there was take this picture of a display that represents what it is I really want to do. I call it "Montmartre" I want to create fantastic environments, I want to travel. I love Paris. Any number of experiences have gotten under my skin and they come out when I'm busy working. The little things please me like, how great the florist's funerary cross form looks with all that vintage upholstery trim wrapped around it. This makes a difference to me. Will you know how long I've had these materials? No. I promise you it becomes an entirely new thing when you change the relationships of things. Well, for a while anyway (Hmmm dangerous road…key change) Wow, I just now realized I'm salvaging my own salvage. More like, I'm going insane and I'm taking you with me. You won't be bored, but boundaries are probably a good idea.

New York New Year

2011-01-24T12:47:00.003-05:00

Pier Show Jan. 22-23 Photographer Peter Peck

Now that the word is out about Asian parents, I'm gonna blame mine for this crazy work ethic I have. Nobody should be speaking to me if they had the unfortunate occasion to put this last Pier Show together with me. I shouldn't speak to me and yet I keep speaking. Pass the nails! The show most go on...and on.. Martyr Marisa's very tired body, which just packed in that show, will dig deep to continue the long drag of her cross and assorted clanging van of junk, to set up next weekend for the Garage Flea Market. It's unheated and yesterday it was 2 degrees, could we collectively pray for say, 30 something come Saturday? I have found my people and are they as crazy as I to schlep their stuff, so that we may shop in winter conditions? It's New York! Listen, it makes a great story and if I got to set up with Adam and Andrea Forgash every weekend, there's no condition I couldn't endure. Please, I've been squatting on their couch since we met. The stuff here and at these shows is fantastic. Each booth it's own special box of jewels. A full size harness-makers framework of a horse? Giant wooden foundry forms that look like legos stacked 20 feet high? An explosion of creative thinking and many backs shoulder these productions. I need an energy drink and more time to see every show and what amounts to mini galleries of the very best stuff ever conceived and made.

Enough already, it's time to party and you're gonna need some energy for this one. It's Saturday night after opening day, Adam is celebrating Andrea's birthday with a party to end all parties. Don't tell his Jewish parents, but the man's a Roman. Marlow&Sons is the site, some ultra hip Brooklyn restaurant serving up unreal food. The party is out the back door, past the milk crates and, are you ready?… in an Airstream trailer. They gutted it and inside it feels like a submarine with walls sheathed in formed plywood and simple tile. A single small wood-burning stove and low lighting make it a cozy cave. An upholstered banquette on one side, folding chairs on the other, and tables at each end with one long one down its length, that's it. Adam packs it with fascinating crazy people who are curators and writers, artists, and antiques dealers, photographers and chefs, from 25 to retired. Most importantly, half of them are hilariously funny and it's raucous. We eat like the empire is falling tomorrow. It's all we can do to throw the money at Paul, we'll worry about Peter after we lick the last of that chocolate tart with sea salt (or was that crack?). Meanwhile the date who knew no one sat quietly at the end of the table until the plates got cleared, then became dj with the car radio/ipod. We're beyond tired but Ken is singing Neil Diamond and he's goin on with back up singers and dancers. Only Adam was sitting. Would you get up if women were dancing all around you? He'll be back selling antiques and lugging heavy boxes, as will a few of us on the morrow, but for this night Adam's set just the tone I want to hear for this new year. It's always hard work, but when Saturday night comes, let loose!

Going Insane, Taking You With Me

2011-01-12T23:17:00.006-05:00

These are the before pictures of two items I love so much that I want to throw them from the tallest building I can find. You know it would be so much easier to just sell regular antiques. I just can't do that. I gotta buy weird posts (you have no idea what these are for) and this metal thing the salvage yard referred to as "big sexy" (really? nevermind) "I like the form, I'll think of something...." she's off and there's no getting her back now. I HAVE A VISION. I am torturing my crew. "Big sexy" requires wiring 48 sockets, I get stuck with this tedius job, I can hardly wait. Atleast I can do this in my heated home. It was some part of a theater prop, I never did understand the guy's explanation of why it was "big sexy." New Yorkers, they are so theatrical. The second project with the 12 posts now involves scrapping the first design idea, which is half-built, and starting a new one more complicated idea… with a week to go. They knew when I said we would just skip the post project for this show, that I was lying. In fact they burst out laughing today when I said verbatim what they thought I would say, "I have to take those posts, but I think we have to make a whole new…." At least they are laughing, we are all accustomed to the last week, work-around-the-clock program. I really thought I could leave it, but these posts are so wicked! They have an obscure ancient purpose. I just can't tell you what they were for, I want you to guess. It's so weirdly practical in a form-follows-function kind-of-way. Each one of them has different shaped teeth or knobs and the cylinders are all different too but the same length (26" long). They've been sitting around since November. I swear I don't have one good idea until I'm in a pressure cooker. Throw in there some additional stress with blizzards here and in New York, truck issues, health problems and budget constraints and it's the perfect storm for productivity. Why today I finally got around to deciding what to do with those lab stands I bought….two months ago…Have I figured out the rest of what I'm taking? No, I decided to spend 3 days stripping paint off some scrap metal...I HAVE A VISION...welcome to my nightmare.

It's a New Year, Ready?

2011-01-10T10:46:00.007-05:00

Have a good new year. I tried…look I got no pithy resolution. And now I've spent a goodly amount of time trying all week to write something and not getting my 4th quarter accounting done. The more things change, the more they stay the same right? I can't think straight when it's dark and I'm freezing cold. I hate accounting. Do we have to be all perky and full of resolve? About all I can muster this frigid Sunday morning is the flea market. I have good friends there and there's interesting stuff. Plus it's warm and I have the excuse that it's my job, I'll account for it later.

What a good morning, the sun is shining for once. My pal Mark and one of my favorite dealers had three things for me. Here's a guy I want to support, it's a banner morning. I bought this beautiful pony-sized iron casting of a horse's head that should be an easy sale (famous last words). My clientele will have no trouble seeing it on a beautiful base in the drawing room or in the garden. Me? I can't wait to put it in my bed and simulate blood and the Godfather scene, take photos and send it to you.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say, I think you'll laugh, mostly. I learned from my plumber's brother…another plumber and a stand-up comic (hilarious right?), it's a fine line between funny and scary. I'll push the line towards scary since planning the joke is good therapy and I can lob it hiding behind my laptop. Moving right along, look over here! Isn't this a nice painting? It actually is, good local artist (King Caulkins) from the day (60's) when the hippies were making great art in the Cass Corridor of Detroit. The Detroit Institute of Arts has his work, he's listed and I want my clients to collect real art when they can. It's a good price and already nicely framed. I am thinking a certain someone in Detroit's Mies Van Der Rohe townhouses needs this one.

Last, but not least, there's this other painting. In a way, this is the most important thing I bought. No, it's not signed, just a nice little decorative painting that you can buy for the price of a couple beers and a burger. That's the reality for most of us these days. So here's your opportunity to eat in and feed your spirit. It's original art, a real person actually made it frame and all. I know it sounds all new agey but really, stuff people have put thought, what skill they have, using their own hands into, has a pulse. Can't get that out of a machine…I'm just saying.

Finally, something I can publish, but one more thing about Mark. He plays guitar, really well, started this band Michigan Basement. This is them playing at Goldfish Tea seven blocks from my house last night and I can take Wyatt. Live, free, music = good therapy. So, I guess that's the resolution. Do your best, trust your instincts, be a good friend, get out of your cave.

A Salvaged Christmas Story

2010-12-27T16:08:00.005-05:00

As much as I love to host a good dinner party, my preference would not be Christmas dinner. It's a long day, and a hard tour of duty in my small kitchen and house. First of all, you are jolted out of bed at some ungodly hour when you have a youngster around. My 72-pound darling jumped on top of my up-too-late and deeply sleeping body, raring to rip through all the packages under the tree. I barely get through that first cup of coffee before it's time to start receiving the guests, serving the brunch, then the snacks, making drinks. More people, more packages and paper, clearing and washing of the endless dishes. Pretty soon, the egg nog, wine and what have you starts to kick in and as my sister Lia's friend says, "Gaggino in Italian means loud," and boy is it ever. I love to see my boisterous clan having a good time, but I'm starting to get tired. Then I see across the room the very thing that reminds me why it is good to have cause to celebrate, no matter what. There is Wyatt, oblivious to the chaos, quietly locking and unlocking the antique tea box I gave him for Christmas. Turns out he was taking a break from his cousin who had just pissed him off about something to do with how he didn't eat his vegetables and how come he gets to have dessert. And rather than get into that ongoing feud, I say skip the vegetables, have some dessert and would he like to hear a good story about the tea box or the truth. Child after my own heart, he chose a good story. So I told him about a place called Hell's Kitchen, that sits on an island where the misfits, mavericks and mystics live. They don't have our big regular stores, because they aren't regular people and don't like all that regular stuff, and there isn't any room on this island anyway. Instead they sell their wares on blankets and out of boxes right on the city streets. They don't look regular either. One guy favors a one-piece hot pink spandex leotard, closely held clutch, big glasses and thinning hair in a pony tail. These big guys with thick accents looking rough in their greasy coveralls don't even give him a second look. Meanwhile I'm wondering how to move those 300# cast iron industrial bases they brought and what exactly they are saying in their lively wise-guy- sounding conversation. I do my best impersonation which makes Wyatt laugh as he eats his ice cream. I draw a picture of all the fantastic things I've ever seen in the countless shops and flea markets I've traipsed through over the years, put them all in this story. I tell him how my gimlet eye catches the glimmer of a diamond and it's this ancient tea box all the way from China. Half buried, I see it gleaming there. The real black lacquer, a dozen layers painstakingly applied one at a time. Real gold paintings of emperors and shrines all over it. The box still has it's key, a miracle really, which kept the valuable and highly-prized tea safe. Inside it has two elaborately etched aluminum containers each with an inner and outer lid to seal and keep fresh the precious and flavorful leaves. Wyatt is now old enough to boil the water and he makes himself the tea which he has just learned to like, generously spooning in the thick honey I wrapped up with the box. He noticed the repair to the foot, but only because I'd admitted it was broken when I bought it. He didn't say anything about the cracking lacquer. I eventually told him the true story, that someone had brought it by my shop right here in Royal Oak, but he wasn't listening anymore. His cousin had come up with some new game and Wyatt was off to play it, the feud forgotten, his mother left with an empty ice cream container and half-finished cup of tea. It was a little sweet for her taste, but she smiled and drank it anyway. She then said uncustomarily, to heck with it, and left the cup in the sink, and refortified, took her place once more at the adult's table.

Multiples: Because More is More!

2010-12-21T23:19:00.003-05:00

There's something primal about the attraction of things in multiples. I liken it to that promise of plenty: enough food to feed the herd, the never ending wine supply. It's quite likely it's the mathematical properties seducing our brains. The heaping bowls of oval soaps in the fancy bath stores, the orderly rows of identical objects in gradational color code. There's nothing I love finding more than a really good thing in a large quantity. Like why didn't I get all those differently colored springs in 10 sizes? It's on the list now. I did have the good sense to take the whole box of porcelain lab crucibles. Simply elegant, the thinnest porcelain, beauty and high function. I'd have been happy with 5 and yet, here's this whole box, an embarrassment of riches really. Can you imagine thimble-sized with it's own tiny acorn-like lid up to shot-glass size with perforated bottoms? I think of it as baby toys for adults. Pour the little one with truffle oil into the big one with olive oil, count 7 almonds into individual bowls and line them up with glasses of wine. Here's this jar of cigar bands on the other hand….look, man, hoarding is an art form! Can we thank those beautiful, smart, tortured people(me and you for instance) that can't part with a simple little wrapper cause it still looks like the ring you pretended it was when you were a kid? Of course the first thing I did was open the jar and try one on…it still fits! It must mean I'm to have them. I got not one serious idea for their use, I just like looking at the jar of them. And the funny, emotional thing is I only want to sell them to the person who understands that it's about the whole jar and our soulmate who saved them for us. Then there are all those worker's name badges. I nearly had a heart attack when I opened the bags and saw the hundreds and hundreds of them…with weird old names like Alvin, Dudley, Wendell and Scooter. It became a kind of physical therapy to separate out the 50 "Slim" from the 75 "Mick" and should I keep all the Sids and Sidneys, Pete and Peters separate or do you think the formalists will be ok in the same drawer with the upstart abbreviators? Can you say…O.C.D? I am trying to remain functional, so I just stuck names starting with the same letter in that file drawer unit I love…the one with the multiples of the same grass green, identical-sized file drawers. So far I managed to partially cover a pair of jeans with names. Now I want to sell them at a show cause it's getting a little claustrophobic. Can I off them in Ziploc baggies of 8?12? Same names or varietals? Could somebody please just buy a bushel basket and make a quilt with these? I need room for my new toys, that nice group of trophies with the same WWII airplane on it and richly-hued velvet-covered buttons. And no, I am not ready to share them...yet.

Blessed gifts

2010-12-16T22:32:00.003-05:00

This is my first holiday in 18 years that I'm not racing around in retail madness. Okay, it's not like I was ever Macy's or anything, but I tried to give dissenters a place to buy their friends "the deal gone wrong" shredded money ornament from Detroit. You can still have one, this time around the good news is that you get to have me make one or 20 (it was a lot of money) and it's a simple phone call. Chances are good I'm close by since I only live 4 blocks away. I know I keep making excuses for not having regular retail hours. The truth is I work better if I can just focus all my attention on you. When more than one person came into the store, I didn't have the opportunity to figure out what a good gift would be for the best friend who hates Christmas (funeral flag with magnet that sticks to your car or fridge) or the gay sister who just came out to a hostile home crowd (tooled leather holster, brown bag). Now I have the time to drive around, find that giant Christmas tree sign and take it to your condo, because you work all the time. Of course you had to get it for your sister who goes crazy at Christmas with 7 trees packed with ornaments and every room decorated with vintage Christmas. I can't imagine how you are going to wedge the 3'x6' sign into that display, let alone your little Honda. But then,when you are John Arnold and making display magic for all the best dressed homes and stores in town, making the impossible happen is all in a (very long) day's work. That's why they fly you across the country to decorate their homes, cause you made the ones here so brilliant with an actual 8 Mile Sign you salvaged for a backdrop to the outlandish Christmas trees you created. Had I not brought that sign over tonight, I would have missed your blessed mother shrine which you so lovingly adorned with the melted dolls from my store that look like angels (well to you, me and Julie at least). More importantly, I would have missed you thanking me again for finding them so that your friend who understands your aesthetic and mine could so generously give them to you as a gift. And, she would have missed how much we appreciate her because I was over and snapped that picture on my phone to send her and tell her so. So many good gifts and it isn't even Christmas yet. While you are making it beautiful for all of them, I will make a few things for the people who make it beautiful for me, while I leisurely hang around my store this Saturday welcoming the interruption to find that elusive gift for a very special someone. Of course, if that doesn't work out for you just call me, I'd rather wait until there aren't any distractions and it's just the two of us.

Epiphanies they come in threes

2010-12-08T19:11:00.007-05:00

Nothing says holiday like: snakes and apples in the garden of Eden(snake bite kit included), soldier's blanket and sock, burned out bulbs and plastic firemen, clothespins....run don't walk to our Etsy store (heritageco)

Wyatt and tonight's entertainment: homemade play-doh target...the rapture

My marketing guru Ann Siegle (www.triadesignfirm.com) just got done telling me that I could talk about whatever I wanted to in this blog except religion. She's not the boss of me. Ann, when you major in English literature, there's a story you gotta know. I'm permitting myself this transgression. It all began with that hard labor (it's my story, remember?). The building a business a little too out there for this town, the buying what I think will sell and not what I really believe in. It's so hard! It's so heavy! I'm shrinking! Small but mighty (of course the tide will turn as I leave the frontlines of retail and downsize my job description), and the Goliath of cheap, boring, generic shopping will fall to the Davids of small interesting businesses. I was told I'm a dissenter, so if you want to shop with this David you gotta call me and make a date or catch me when I'm in my store, which no longer has regular hours. But, I digress. Back to the hard labor (don't you love a martyr?). It took me a few years to figure out exactly what kind of business I wanted to have, wah, wah, and a few more to find an inn. New York has plenty of inns, it's a dissenter's dream convention and they're rolling up their sleeves to help me out, lend me a couch, push me around (can't be too comfortable). So, I'm gonna labor there a while longer. But either the baby mama is getting tired (really?) or this particular incarnation is really fragile, needy and hungry (no kidding). Behold! on this not so easy of days, the first Magi appears. She says "reach for the low lying fruit;" i.e. the internet. Dissenters worldwide! Yes, I'm behind. I thrive on working with live people. How great that my sister-in-law Nancy (Studiop-graphic designer)who has worn every hat for my business (and then some) has put our irreverant wreaths on Etsy (heritageco) and a few things on Ebay (heritagecoii), I'll get there. I'm a lot more excited about a cool looking and tech-saavy website that hosts this blog, another one I'm going to start soon, and whatever else I'm doing. I love what Yuen Hom (yuenadvertising.com) did with my business card and her website diagram looks like it sprang out of my head, sans the messy bits. Where there's fruit, there's a serpent (get the matching wreath!). The second Magi reminded me today not to pick more than I can carry, fruit that is. He thanked me for making his home a place he loves, service you can only provide if inspired and focused. The third Magi came with cigarettes, a big Indiana heart and a cautionary tale. The discomfort of transition is temporary, and I'm not going to apologize for bumming cigarettes while I suffer through it . (Isn't it possible that like all fathers in the day, this particularly expectant and stressed one, father or no, might have smoked a cigarette?did I say that out loud??) She was a sympathetic ear and reminded me that the first and only real baby I am still raising is a messiah to me. While we talked, a timely message of thanks came for an unexpected kindness I had shown. Everyone loves surprises don't you know? It's wondrous to receive them and I appreciated every one I got today. However, the pleasure I really get is in giving them. Well there aren't four Magis, but my clever friend suggested I might be a sort of Magi disciple and named me Maggino. Not a bad idea to have a fourth one, especially an Italian cook. It's a long, dark and hungry trip through the desert, but that's another story.

On Joy and good plumbing

2010-12-03T11:16:00.002-05:00

I am sitting here on this cold winter morning eating breakfast and reading about the puppet collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts. How nice for the plumber to come first thing and bring me a much more interesting idea to consider(and I love puppets, really). He has come because there is a back up somewhere from the kitchen to the bathroom to the laundry room, what amounts to the sole extent of our small water system. The plumber is now performing one of his regular rituals; methodically going line by line to solve this timeless problem: where is the block and where is the water going or coming from? The usual suspects: a plug, a vacuum, a volcano. I have no doubt he will solve the problem with our plumbing today. He is smiling, he must think so too. I discuss this philosophical notion he brought to me today. We agree that we both enjoy the logic and surety of the solution to be had on the other end. Of course it's despsicable, blockages are messy. But I am deriving such pleasure from having this rational exercise to begin this day, I think it's a great gift. I know this sounds weird, but before you write me off as just, well, off, consider that joy might be underneath a lot of crap (you knew I'd work it in). Try to forget the false promise of pretty packages, look for daily gifts in and amongst the crap. Ignore the relentlessly perky melodies or worse, the loop of disappointments playing in your head. Focus on a job you might do well today, deliver the gift of a small kindness. Joey just gave me one, and there's the mess all over the bathroom floor to prove it. I just called his boss Bob, owner of Royal Oak Plumbing. I told him Joey fixed the problem and that I'm happy and love his crew. He laughed, said he loved me too. I know, how queer and sappy. Think what you will, this really got my day off to a good start. I have a little painting job for a client's new store that just opened, I'm gonna finish it now and deliver it to her today. I have my crew replacing some workers at another new client's job. I am pleased to have his confidence and determined to do a good job and help him out of a jam. I still have a store to rearrange, the Christmas stuff is still in boxes. It's the hardest part of my day, I'm putting it off, writing instead. The holiday thing isn't really my bag, but I'm working on it. I know in advance what will and won't get finished, I am well aware it's a blockage. I will perform my daily ritual. It won't be cleared the way Joey cleared our plumbing, but pleasure like water, will find the open path. I will do my best to clear a path for joy, no matter how small. And once you get a line cleared for it, even a small trickle of it? Well it's the daily ritual to try and keep it that way. Hell, I'll give you Bob and Joey's number, maybe they can help you too.

One lap at a time

2010-11-28T21:38:00.005-05:00

It always starts with the first lap,"ugh..36 laps, it's too hard, I wish it was over." I say this practically everyday. I go to the pool, I complain, I swim the 36 laps, I always feel better afterwards. It's a ritual, complain, swim, complain, whatever. Another of my many charms. Ha! Taurus, does that explain it? Stubborn, it's frustrating but it's not all bad. The huge mess from New York, two weeks later, that's another hard one. The shop, that one with no retail hours, has to look a certain way, impossibly time consuming because I have this involved process that requires moving and removing the same things and it's heavy and there's a lot of stuff. Ugh, my patient husband offers to help me the day after Thanksgiving. I work through it, he lets me grumble, moves it twice, says nothing, what a saint. Perfect, I'm chasing my tail. He's an artist, how well he knows the process. I want the store to look as beautiful as that booth, I want that feeling to come home. It isn't going to be the way I see it in my head, not on this day. It's Thanksgiving weekend and I have invited my mailing list to come by and see all that great stuff I talked about. Plus, people person that I am, I miss them. I know, I know, no more retail hours, but it's about balance and this is how you find it, by trying something new, in small bites. Staying with a narrative, not finding out what happens at the end of a story. Adjusting and readjusting. I open the door to my imperfect world Saturday and promptly break the first rule of sales; apologize for the mess. But you know what I've consistently found? My customers don't see it that way. They love the hunt as much as I do. They like digging and poking and finding a surprise. It's a bright menagerie of interesting things to their fresh eyes, and though I worried they wouldn't, they did come. Though I worried they wouldn't shop, they did. As one new customer said to me, it's like the white fire surrounding the letters of the Torah. Magic happens around the words, in the interstitial spaces and margins of what isn't spoken, seen or planned and holds an important key to life. I wanted to have the perfect shop I had in my head, and it was perfectly imperfect and me, I just don't get that it's ok that way. I expected familiar faces from my list, but most of the ones I saw were new and just happening by. I was a little disappointed at first and then these great new people came in and what a wonderful unexpected feeling, the store still draws new people and with them fresh energy. You aren't suppose to say anything that isn't positive, but I can't help but tell them, my business model is messy. It isn't necessarily a bad thing. I got what I needed, the shop and I are o.k. just the way we are. And then a few familiar faces came in that made my heart smile, like long time antique dealer Jim Secreto and designer Steve Knollenberg, who let me know that what I write, mattered to them and that they thought my new business ideas were good. Yes, I'm not mainstream, the show circuit sounded crazy because it is, but beneath it they understood that it's my passion and they admired my strength. Jim said go back to the Pier Show, be myself wholly, and don't flinch. And yes, I need to balance the hard work required with the quiet acceptance that it's time for something easier, like making better use of the internet and asking for the help I need. Ultimately, it's the only way to make my business and my life better, and the life of those I love and the people I have the privilege to do business with. I could go on, but I think I've made my point. More importantly, I haven't made it to the pool yet today. 36 laps, boy will that feel good…just as soon as I finish. By the time you read this, I will be there and be glad.

Kitchen Accomplished (well almost...)

2010-11-23T23:31:00.004-05:00

Always happens, a job to finish just before a big holiday. This time it's client chef Dave Mancini and his kitchen is under construction and it's Thanksgiving. Of course he's cooking. He lives on Woodward Avenue, the route for Macy's big Thanksgiving Day parade and he's having brunch roofside for 20 people or more. It's not like we didn't know he didn't have a kitchen or that he would probably want to cook in it on Thanksgiving. No actually, I stopped production on the big piece, stainless counters, to jam a bunch of projects through for the Pier Show in New York. I think we can do everything! Or, we work well under pressure! Or I just want it all! The scary thing is it's all true and we get a lot done, actually we got it all done. (And now we are really tired). So here's how it all works. I cajole/encourage/beg/bug daily (ok, twice daily): Richard Gage Design Studio to fabricate and install 22' of stainless counter; Royal Oak Plumbing to install a sink, disposal, faucet and dishwasher and carpenter/electrician/all around handy guy Jim Linck to make, finish and install a cabinet. I also have to keep Dave reassured and calm amidst the chaos of having his large kitchen ergo his loft all torn up for weeks. Sometimes the little things mean a lot. Ahead of the big production, I send my crackshot do-anything colleague Amy Nolfo over to do a deep clean and organizing project. Just cleaning and getting stuff put away will make Dave feel better and his hectic life easier and the additional clean up later will be minimal. My plumber Bob Tourtillot is a prince, he had already rigged for Dave a temporary sink as a favor to me, it's a little insurance just in case we have to throw down plywood and call it a kitchen should everything fail. Yes it's busy and I'm stressed about getting it done and pleasing this client. But here's what's easy, here's why I love this job. I am working with clients who appreciate what I do and know I am doing my very best to achieve their goals. I am working with a team of skilled professionals that I have been working with in some cases for nearly 20 years. I believe in maintaining good relationships. These people know I will call them for every new project that comes up. Loyalty pays. You reward honest, good work, you pay the fair wage. You don't nickel and dime people, in the end you lose and save nothing. It comes with experience and time and I learned it the hard way, and I learned it but good. So it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving now. The counters are done, with extra details and top quality stainless that will stand the test of a serious chef like Dave. The sink, faucet and dishwasher are in, who knows who Bob put off (and let me know about it) but by golly he fit my job in. Jim Linck, is the calmest zen all around skilled guy who has everything ready for the plumbers and will wait for Bob who is running late and has zero time to waste. The best pizza in the city is waiting for me as I bring the key to Dave and I get that bonus I've been waiting all day for, the heartfelt thank you. I also get to be one of those people with a ringside seat for the best parade, at the best brunch, in this city with a big heart, on this day of thanks. Detroit. It has my loyalty.

Bad Company and I Can't Deny It

2010-11-22T09:26:00.003-05:00

It's a good thing I like 70's rock, cause that's all you get besides country and pop on a commercial truck rental radio. I'm bad company all right, hammering the 12 hour drive straight to Detroit, sailing through New York am rush hour drive, you know I think I fairly own this town. I'm on a mission (fueled by adrenalin) and I'm gonna use all that time to figure out how I actually make New York a regular working location while still doing business and maintaining a normal family life in Detroit. I feel so good, I'm actually pragmatic about the whole dismal return from the show. I figure it's a cheap PhD in building a new business. I did my job, created a booth I was proud of and passed out cards. All good, that is until I finally stopped, literally had to lay down on my packing blankets on the gravel in front of my shop. Oh my God I am so tired. While I was riding high on New York, all the harsh realities of Detroit and all my responsibilities at home were waiting for me. Can a middle-aged, albeit high energy, mother actually do this and not take prisoners? Of course something has to give and I couldn't drop the regular retail store hours fast enough. I'm a little impulsive, I send this newsflash out last week in between the standby flight and the next day drive out to New York. Nobody's gonna catch me and talk me out of this decision. I confess I felt a twinge not being there this first week, but then I had to stare at all that mess from unloading and more hard labor. Oh sure I'm gonna do this again? now? not! It's gonna take me a while to catch up with my own self. I'm beginning to understand that this transition will be slower and harder than I want it to be. When you are raised in a blue collar town and you've been punching a clock there (or responsible for whomever is suppose to be on the clock) for 18 years, believe me, you're gonna be looking around like you just fake called in sick when you stop doing it. There's also the promise of today being that day when someone's going to walk in and buy up the store that's still on the loop. I keep hearing "breathe" and other yoga/spiritual-type mantras…WTF!! would be more me. But you know something? I go to the new early-bird buyers club at the Royal Oak Flea Market and there's MarkyD, Dr. Art, Daya, Dennis and David with big hugs for me. Dr. Z has his new 2011 pocket calendar, one for me and one to send to Lulu. Bob and Larry are discussing socrates or the Schrodinger equation or whatever those two brainiacs discuss at their regular table over coffee. I do some shopping therapy, nice painting of death, gymnastic rings, creepy always a pick up. I got 7 hours of sleep for a change. Design projects keep coming, a new client I will secure later in the day works for the big rock station. Just my kinda client, a straight forward single guy with no crazy girlfriend, who just wants to get the place done and get on with the party. How cool is that? Tomorrow it's another project I like, commercial retail space and two brave young women opening businesses in Birmingham. My dealer friend in New York has asked me to scout stuff for our favorite Brooklyn restaurant. I send her a slew of pictures. I'm doing it aren't I? My family and friends are behind me, I got money in the bank today, what's the problem? F--k it, I take Wyatt to see the new Harry Potter movie. He holds my hand, we jump at the scary parts, eat a bucket of popcorn. "Rebel souls, deserters we are called…bad company till the day I die…" I gotta rock on.

Gotham City Glamour

2010-11-13T05:55:00.003-05:00

I've gone for baroque (see pic), jamming the machine to assemble this collection, my team, my 46 year old body. I called in every favor to get a booth at the Pier Show in New York. Only got word it was mine last week. Put Rick and his studio crew to the paces to get stuff built, including show walls (cause they cost $1000 in New York...well it seemed outrageous until we actually had to build them too). Flew home this past Wednesday from last week's trip to the NYC, literally changed clothes and went to work to help the studio finish, load (in the dark,$#%&&TYG daylight savings!), say hello and goodbye to my poor family and sleep a wink. I jumped into the van Thursday and hammered the 11 hour drive back to my friends' Adam and Andrea's couch, commandeered our friend Peter to help me set the booth up yesterday and break it back down Monday (his new mantra: lose my number lady). Then, I get to drive the 11 hours back home Tuesday, unload Wednesday, massage.... So basically it's the best booth in the entire history of booths (my humble opinion of course) Baroque and three ring circus (actual trapeze cape from the circus) crazy and I love it and this is putting hypomania to work for you. I swear soon I will lie down and not get up for days, in the meantime folks, it's showtime and I gotta get on the coffee drip to fuel this day. Wish me luck! Will have better pictures to post on the newly revamped website I'm gonna work on just as soon as I stop doing something else. Now it's Saturday, I am posting this, putting my show face on and taking the subway in to face New York! I hope everything sells out!!...but what doesn't comes back to the shop next week, so call and come see me (you come wednesday and take one end of any of this heavy shit and I promise you wonders! deals! the cure to salvage addiction!). Oh yeah, did I mention? Nor more store hours as of November 15. that stopping something else, it's retail. You like it better when I come in special just for you anyway.

Who would want to run the NYC marathon?

2010-11-09T02:15:00.003-05:00

No one. That's the truth. No one wants to run 26 miles. You run 26 miles because you have to. I'm glad I don't have to. But it's 2:18 am and I just sat down to eat something like dinner, it sure feels like a marathon. I think it was only 8 miles, but by foot and train from the West Village to my Forest Hills stop in Queens, it was an hour and 40 min. commute. Yes, I sat at the wrong platform for 3 trains, before I realized mine wasn't gonna come here. And, I lost my metro card and had to fumble around for awhile before I said f--k it, just buy another. O.K. that's it, I'm done whining. Roll your eyes if you want, I can't see you. This is a very big pond, my fish just got smaller. But in water's distortion, I think I am bigger. So I met two really lovely men at the Rhinebeck show last month, the ones that spent their time and money with me. They said it was because I was nice and funny, good information. When they said they couldn't hang the light they bought, I offered to come over and do it on my next trip. So I followed up and they invited me over. I'm not going to tell you how wide my eyes got when I arrived at their apartment. They have big jobs, it doesn't seem to be fazing them. They are decorating the place themselves. They hung the ratty flag with the nude unstretched over it and over their bed. When they told me my stuff changed the feeling of their place, well it did a little. I wasn't in the door 10 minutes and I found I was holding the lucky ticket...cigarettes...Like how did they know I don't smoke regularly and had them? Of course they don't either...nice bond, my husband will love this. We had 3-hour group therapy starting at 9pm and then I got busy on the consultation. Said the "cool" light should go over the pine cabinet (and not blocking the view of the water and the lights of New Jersey!) Asked for something to put it up on, like those matching kiddie chairs looking bullied next to that couch, plugged it in at the dark entrance and voila! I'm a genius...well they thought so. Now I'm 12..look at me! look at me! Next I'm gonna do cartwheels. We need lights next to the New Jersey window view. Those industrial caged bulb and socket kind lying on the desk. I need a 10' ladder. Do you have a drill? It's some old boyfriend's good Dewalt, they don't know they don't use it. Already got the right bit in it. 4 drywall screws, a measuring tape, some nails a hammer, those hooks doing nothing there. Now we have sconces on either side of the window, cords neatly tucked against the window frame. Take all those pictures down, put the old oars underneath, much better. Some problems solved. All of lower Manhattan out the panorama of views from New Jersey all the way around to the top of Citibank in Brooklyn. They said I was pretty, hugged and kissed me goodbye. What a really very nice thing they did for me. Now I've known them 5 hours and all our lives, at least that's how it felt tonight. If this is a distorted view, well ignorance is bliss. Shit, I forgot to take pictures...next time, they invited me back over :).

Running the NYC Marathon…

2010-11-04T10:20:00.004-04:00

Yes i've been training for years and I'm finally gonna do it. Pray i make it to the finish line, even if they have to drag me the last 50 feet…ok well not THAT marathon. I mean my parallel version of the nyc marathon where I fly into the city this weekend to check out doing the flea markets in December, fly home then turn around the next day in a loaded truck to drive back to do the Pier Show (November 13&14) that I just talked my way into yesterday. And I gotta write about this, right now? This my friends is the real antiques road show. It's an obsession and I'm a slave to it. All hands are on the bench, work benches that is. In between the new installation at the Detroit Science Center, Rick's studio is putting together the latest designs (oh no I can't just take Rhinebeck leftovers…)Remember the scraps from the Starlite lanes facade on 8 Mile Rd. The one where I was begging the demo crew to save anything for me? So far from that metal scrap, we cobbled together two 6' columns with light up stars. Those blue beauties are gonna be on the front of the booth. Then there's the void collection; simple modern furniture Rick makes from the voids left from punching industrial parts out of sheet metal plus lights we did out of industrial parts, etc. on one side. 20th century store display, signage and graphic looking stuff will go on the other and at the back some stunning pieces of historic architecture. It's the tiniest booth, costs more than my mortgage payment (a LOT more) for the weekend. It's a one-woman show and I'm taking deep breaths, but really it's me calling on all my friends to rent walls (scenic prop)borrow a bigger van (carlin construction inc.)hire crew in new york to load, set up, load out, sleep on the A team's couch (forgash photography&co) that makes it possible. I'm of course banking on bigger apple wallets and their love affair with Detroit. And what's not to love? If I could disassemble and truck the entire imagination station installation www.facethestation.com , that's what I'd really like to set up on that pier and I'd be hauling those tireless visionaries Jeff DeBruyn (president, Corktown Residence Council)and Jerry Paffendorfer (co-founders)the architect/artist Catie Newell, countless volunteers with me. Simply one of the most moving things I've experienced in Detroit. 150 people standing in a hush, waiting for the sun to set, the light at just the right angle to stream through all that wreckage art. I started the line and the man behind me finished, "There is a crack, a crack, in everything…that's how the light gets in…" Leonard Cohen.

Sacrifice, Adapt, Stay Afloat

2010-10-23T18:02:00.001-04:00

That the economy isn't coming around anytime soon seems to be working for some people and they are the ones making it work for me. I'm drawn to unstable ground which is what attracts me to water and sailing; the constant adaptation required to maintain balance my steady state.

I am back to working some regular Saturday hours unless I'm doing a show. Business was slow last Saturday, but one person came in looking for design help for a new family-owned restaurant, and she hired me to come out to consult on the spot. Turns out it's her retired parents who are spearheading this venture, ran a restaurant in this space for 40 years, and hope to start a new version of it up again after a 15-year hiatus. What? Why? Because their last tenant failed, and they are covering a big nut and it seems like doing what they know or used to know is the best way to cover the bills while trying to sell the building which is their ultimate goal. Got that? The daughter is a stay-at-home mom of 4 under 13, she's trying to help save the nest egg by handling it all herself including cleaning the filthy huge place. The change in the direction of the wind is easy for me to negotiate and I put the design hat back in the bag, synthesize the facts, impressions of the family players as described and intuit the feelings of mother and daughter in front of me. I call in my man-of-action contractor, Dave Carlin and his son Allen. Cost reality check, ouch, I propose the minimalist low cost "perk" and style staging to get the place sold (which hasn't been vacant long), while making it easily adaptable for a restaurant, if that's what they want to do. I'm happy for the vote of confidence and to be of service.

Next up, I am sitting in on a design meeting between a couple opening a 7000 sf coffee shop/retail operation and their architect. It's in an 1880's building in a prominent historic area of Detroit. They want to remodel it while keeping the historic character intact. Budget is tight, new is necessary in places, but where to make style sacrifices and still have historic reference and the authenticity that enhances the customer's experience and the bottom line is the trick. The architect has designed what looks like a suburban, made-to-look-old, but is obviously not, not cheap solution. I take this all in and determine that what I've got to sell is salvage solutions strategically placed to balance budget and look. This means finding them on my time and getting paid only if they buy something, probably sight unseen. Not the smoothest waters, which means I gotta focus on the tack or my small craft will capsize.

Meanwhile, I'm fielding text messages from other clients trying to open a new retail concept in Birmingham before Christmas. It involves multiple tenants with my clients controlling the look of everyone's build-out. They want the industrial Heritage Co 2 stuff they've used successfully in their other two stores. They know first hand that creative use of salvage contributes positively to the customer's overall impression and in a fickle economy, being the kind of place people feel good to come to and support is key to survival. No, it's not as easy as ordering from the retail display catalogue. Some hand-holding is required on both our parts to convince tenants, some without the ability to visualize, how repurposing rough-looking stuff can be adapted to suit their taste and will meet their needs. This is ultimately a matter of trust, they are buying into what I say we can do. There are sacrifices of certainty with the unknown and when things change so can the cost. I have to convince them of the value of uniqueness, sometimes over savings, ease and instant gratification. It's worked well with these clients and making them look good motivates them to sell me. That's smooth sailing.

It's Saturday again and here I sit on another slow day with not much to show for it this time. I've sacrificed a day with my family to sell this package in a not easy time or town. It can look like fair weather when you set sail, but a seasoned sailor is always prepared for the storms that come suddenly out of nowhere. When it's sink or swim, you better be ready to swim.

Perpetual Motion Marisa Machine

2010-10-18T22:41:00.006-04:00

I have no off switch. I don't even have a dimmer. Rick and I are invited to be guests of the chef for a 5 course fall harvest dinner at Goldner Walsh, Tim Travis' nursery in Keego Harbor, but I actually never sit down to the table. First of all I have a hard time preparing in advance for anything, so I'm forever making plans at the last minute. I am not prepared because I am perpetually overbooking myself. I think I can do everything, do it all myself and under estimate the time everything will really take. Only if it's a pressure cooker can I possibly get around to designing a table with those great fat posts that have been sitting around for 5 years for the show I'm about to do two weeks later. And, of course I have to express material for some artwork I'll have to frame in New York where that show is. What could possibly be the advantage of preparation and timely framing in your spacious, full-equipped studio at home when instead you can assemble them with someone else's tools in their New York apartment the day before the show?

We are childless and hungry, and I've been on my feet in a field all day looking at antiques at the Ann Arbor Saline Antiques Market. It's 7:00pm by the time I get home, the chef, Ross Yediak (www.walnut.com) and his partner Libby Shaw are easy going friends of ours, so we decide we are just going to "show up." No seats at the table, big surprise. We make our way back to the kitchen to atleast say hello. Have you been in a chef's kitchen when the food is ready to be served? It's hot and harried. We aren't in the kitchen 5 minutes and I'm plating green salads with risotto cakes and a Michigan relish. And this in one of my "get-ups," because I am actually going out and want to wear something "fun" after spending all day, everyday in dirty jeans and a t-shirt. On this night it's high heels and Joel's 70's patchwork jeans I bought off him at the Chelsea Garage Flea Market. I am now running in the hateful shoes out to the beautiful table with a salad. I catch someone who looks my dad's age eyeing the tattoo shirt that really looks like my entire torso and arms are covered with tattoos..exactly the sort of wait service he should expect in this suburb. Of course someone else could have served it, but I was already prepping it so I might as well serve it right? This is own- your- own work- alone mentality...or just hard-working, hard-headed me.

I was shocked to see so many dealers I know from out-of-town set-up in Ann Arbor. We are in a very tough market and coming here is dicey in my book. It's a beautiful day and the weekend ahead looks like more of the same, the best possible scenario for a good show...once upon a time. It should only take me an hour and a half to shop this show and I have 10 other things I should be doing, but I am lingering and catching up with everybody. This is as close to relaxing as I get. Truthfully, it may be the most important thing I do all week. I want all the dealers to do well, there are really great dealers here and really good stuff at this show, but I know how the crowd was in Rhinebeck where Chelsea Clinton just got married and if they were buying carefully... In the end I don't buy any of the things I really loved, too much risk. I only buy smalls. I get all the news, strategize for the next bigger, very expensive show in New York that I'm angling to do. More importantly, I cross my fingers I can share a booth and expenses there with a dealer I just suggested it too. He seemed intrigued. I am crossing my fingers. This is really the work I do

We are eating samples of the previous course off the top of the food warmer in between spooning kale, braised carrots and positioning the roasted chicken just so. I load the plates on my arm like I've done thousands of times before when I waited tables 25 years ago. You don't forget how. In a way, I never stopped practicing. I am starting to sweat.

On the way to the Ann Arbor show, I stop and take yet more pictures of a house that I have admired for 20 years. It has been boarded up all this time, never occupied and never offered for sale to my knowledge. I have a fantasy of gutting it to the bearing walls, painting it all white. I'd put only the essentials in it: a bed, a table, a chair, good reading material. I imagine silence. Oh yeah, almost forgot, a reading light...that would require a switch... oh never mind.

Brand Detroit

2010-10-13T08:31:00.008-04:00

I drove straight through from Rhinebeck, New York, Sunday night so I could be back in time for an underground dinner in Detroit. Don't think I don't know the risks I take. The show was no blockbuster. I was lucky to do as well as I did. Well it really isn't luck, I don't sit down. I speak to everybody and thank them for their interest. I tell them I'm from Detroit. It's not easy explaining why a 1930's photo of a dead baby in the woods is incredibly beautiful and important to share, how a medical model of a brain is an interesting thing to find in an art collection and why a set of cast iron branches from Detroit's train station are worth every penny, so fragile is our hold on this once magnificent building, on this still proud city. I can be thick-skinned, most of them will walk away and take nothing, it's cool. I'm a nighttime driver, I take naps when I get tired. I was 6 miles outside of Toledo at 7:30 am. Plenty of time to get home, sleep more, pick Wyatt up from school, throw a football, get dressed for dinner, head to an undisclosed abandoned building somewhere....The turnpike comes to a dead halt. Not a good sign, I saddle over to the closest trucker, bum a cigarette (another lousy thing that keeps you awake) get the news...Tanker caught fire, caught a second one on fire, it's gonna be an hour atleast. Oh good, I've just had breakfast, coffee and a cigarette. Sorry slave followers, you get it all, I hop the fence and head to the cornfield. I climb back over the fence, 36 hours of selling, 3 1/2 hour workout loading it all back into the truck, 10 hours on the road, 1 hour nap, makeshift cornfield facilities: figure that into the cost of goods. I'm fortunate to have prodigious energy, a low give-a-shit factor. It's not"salvage princess." I'm in bed by 10:30am.

It's worth all the hassle me getting to here, as we grab our map and find the mystery building where dinner will be served by top chefs in our city. It's a defunct automotive service center and showroom from the 20's. Still solid and cared for mostly, but windows broken or boarded up. I'm taken by windows lately, driving through our city, all the varying degrees of brokenness in windows, like lace, tattered lace, stained and torn and still beautiful but no one really wants to wear it. The sun is setting through the lace, we park inside and walk the spiral ramp up to the roof. People! all dressed for dinner and glasses of champagne. I can't stop taking pictures to say hello to the people I know, let alone speak to my guests. The sun is setting, the concertina wire sparkling, we are cradling this tattered city with sharp barbs like the most delicate fabric, that cuts you holding it gently in your bloodied hands, and the rest of the world is marvelling at our tenacity and our ability to love something so tattered and worn and harsh. They lead us down a now candlit spiral ramp...carefully across a rough surface in the dim light to some stairs, more candles. I feel like I'm descending into the catacombs. The showroom of peeling paint, long tables with white tablecloths and napkins, more candles. We can barely see each other. There is no power for lights, the chefs are cooking in a garage by generator with makeshift portable equipment. They are happy to be together, not missing their fancy kitchens too terribly. Dave Mancini, Supinos; Mark Djozlija, Wolf Gang Puck (and wearing the beautiful detroit begins with you t-shirt I gave to him); David Seals, Due Venti; Andy Hollyday, Roast; each comes out to introduce their dish, a wine pairing, a live musical accompaniment (Steve Jarosz, Clem Fortuna, Skeeter Shelton, Frank Pahl) A giant American flag flanks the corner. I am like a bee, hovering over the tasty morsels, catching up with my husband and friends, then over to my neighbor Chet and his partner Kyle (who made the view out my shop window special when they renovated old Billings), a film maker from New York is introduced to me, Heidi Ewing. John Arnold walks in late with his beautiful friend Julie Taubman. His shirt says "Defend Detroit." She is obsessively photographing every inch of the city, putting her resources behind a book she's publishing, a message she can put real authority behind. He kicks my ass saying you have to find beauty where you live or you are just lazy. We are all brand Detroit, as singular as your fingerprint, and New York wants it and Hollywood wants it and by God I say sell them a ticket! In fact, I'll even drive it there and sell it to them personally.

Salvage Slave: Building an Empire from the Empire State

2010-10-05T15:42:00.000-04:00

Salvage Slave: Building an Empire from the Empire State

Building an Empire from the Empire State

2010-10-05T13:57:00.006-04:00

A friend of mine from New York referred to my ever expanding and evolving business strategies as "building my empire." As I neared the border of New York yesterday with a fully loaded van for a show I've never done in Rhinebeck, New York, this week and saw that sign "Welcome to the Empire State," I smiled at the pleasure I take in actually following through on a dream I have and, a little like a kid, so proud of my bravery. I was reminded too of another girl from my hometown, Rochester, Michigan, who similarly went to New York to follow through on her idea, and look what an Empire the material girl built. Luck and bravery is surely required to negotiate the hornets nest of traffic entering the Emerald City at rush hour on a rainy Monday. So sorry if the shot of the George Washington Bridge crossing from New Jersey lacks the backdrop of the magnificent skyline, dude it was all I could do to follow the ridiculously complicated directions to my friends' place in Queens and not destruct. The white knuckles grippin the wheel after an 11-hour drive in the pouring rain with a load so heavy it made driving the van like steering a parade float earns me a girl scout badge for sure. Not that I'm looking for a badge, truthfully I could care less about the stress. I'm feelin on top of my game and having the time of my life. I got killer shit, way to much for the 8x16 booth I have, but the show costs more than my monthly mortgage payment so I will forgo the minimalist gallery look and give them Detroit salvage as it looks in the heritage company imaginarium. As usual, the paint was still wet on the table I designed and built with Richard Gage Design Studio. Then there's the last minute electrical issues with the newly made pile of lights. Of course I had to reload the already packed van because it looked like my axles might crack. What? I couldn't get excited about dealing in say postage stamps? Like the t-shirt says, Detroit hustles harder. Don't I know it.

Taking the Show on the Road to Rhinebeck, New York

2010-09-29T09:24:00.005-04:00

Call me spoiled, but all I have to do is collect up interesting parts, dream up some designs and the Richard Gage Design Studio builds it. This week we are feverishly building industrial lighting which is all the rage on the coasts. We also have in production a table we designed from old-balusters, a stand for a gladiator helmet made out of a street sign, a light-up arrow to restore and a light that spells "COOL" fabricated from a board found with a series of holes drilled through it. Detroit continues to be in the hot seat for creative inspiration of all kinds, and we've become a regular weekly feature in the New York Times ( see the article from last Sunday's NYT travel magazine titled, "Artists in Residence" www.nytimes.com/tmagazine from last sunday's issue 9/26/10). I've appointed myself the steampunk ambassadress to next week's show in Rhinebeck New York, upstate an hour and half from the city and I'm crossing my fingers the magic translates to good sales. What could possibly be easier? I get to keep my ratty jeans on and one of my Detroit t-shirts, have an excuse for my perpetually short dirty fingernails and dealer scars as if I looked that way because I just got done changing the oil in my used Chevy van. I hear it's a "decorator crowd" in Rhinebeck, all shopping for their multi-million dollar country homes and New York City apartments with their decorators in tow. Though it won't be like the good ole pre-Madoff days, even austerity has more zeroes behind it than I owe to the man. If Detroit is what they want, I'll just unpack the tool and die shops, factories and old Detroit now jammed into my shop and watch it take on that Marcel Duchamp quality it does when it's presented in a pristine white show booth. It may not look like it, but I also have a girlie side underneath the dirty blue collar and trash mouth which makes for a bi-polar design aesthetic that I manage to make work. Like pairing the factory grunge with the very beautiful cast iron laurel branches and medallion that I'm offering from that media darling, Michigan Central Railroad Station. I contend it was the far more beautiful little sister to its thriving big sister Grand Central Station which shares the same architect. Even though ours is in a ruinous state, negative attention is better than none at all and it's what's keeping it in the limelight and away from the wrecking ball. As long as it still stands, idealistic Detroit lovers like me still hold out hope it and other beautiful buildings like it, will one day be restored to something of their former beauty and purpose. The pair of vintage cast brass lions from an old Detroit estate and a copper deco pediment both in green patina remind us that Detroit still has plenty of its historic elegance. Hand-made folk art, 100+ year-old nautical carved wood fragments from a Great Lakes vessel, advertising signage and the random collection of found stuff makes for a fun display. It's a deep source of pride to come from a legacy of craftsman, designers, engineers and the hard-working skilled labor that built it all and I think that energy brings it together. It would be nice to have a big city trust fund, but I was raised with a midwest work ethic, on a GM engineer's salary and it financed a great university education so who am I to complain? I'm out there representing all of you Detroiters and Midwesterners, so wish a home girl some luck.

Back to School

2010-09-18T06:48:00.011-04:00

And I thought I had guts…In a stunning display of self possession and assurance, 11 year-old Wyatt Gage donned his new school uniform and strode into the 2 year-old Henry Ford Academy School for Creative Studies at the Taubman Center in Detroit for his first day of middle school. Wyatt is most likely the only kid commuting from the suburbs to attend this charter school. He is definitely a minority. He left the only school he's ever known, Japhet, the 11 kids he's grown up with and many of the 80 kids who make up the entire student body there. I was leaving for Brimfield and New York the next day, and in a way I feel like I'm going back to school too...what? Mother is crowding in on this spotlight? That's pathetic. Please tell me she is not going to go into that bit about reinventing herself again…Wyatt wouldn't care less about Detroit's history of divisions as any indicator of what's possible in the future. His interest in color is on a wheel and every subject he learns at this new school is taught through a lens of design. It's all quite experimental and we aren't sure of the academic rigor, but I'm not convinced that's what's gonna make the man anyway. He's geeked about the first day's "design challenge" involving dropping an egg without breaking it. I'm worried about dropping the company nest egg and breaking the bank.

I've got less to spend at this show than I counted on and with all the bad economic forecasting we keep hearing, I am wondering what I will be able to buy now and what I will be able to sell. There's over a hundred 6th graders and Wyatt's one of maybe three white kids. What does Wyatt see? A whole world of new friends to make and I watch him as he scouts them out.

I've made some new friends in New York and the connection seems to have a good future. In this economy, I'm really hoping I can work with these people to make something good happen for all of us.

I saw Matthew Barney speak about his Cremaster series at the DFT the other night. If you've seen this work, it's quite obvious that it's all in the salesman's power to sell it, cause that is not an easy thing to sell. I go back down to Detroit to join Wyatt for lunch that first day. I spot him at the table and see he's kind of keeping to himself. I go right into worrying he's lonesome for his old friends at Japhet. To which he says, "No I'm just tired, I'm going to need to go to bed earlier." Who is this? After a few days, he tells me, "mom, I have two new friends for sure, Cameron and Travis." I board my flight and stop worrying. Suddenly flying to New York and driving to Brimfield to shop or driving back to New York in two more weeks to set up and do a show, making new business contacts in the city, finding and selling esoteric junk is no big deal despite the big deal I've been making about it. I truly believe in the power of what it is that I sell, and I put all my power into it. That I've managed to keep the crazy train on the rails, making a living for nearly 20 years ought to convince me that this works and yet I still have those crises of confidence and stress myself right out. Here's this skinny kid coming from the safest nurtured corner of the suburbs, taking on this big school in the middle of Detroit without any fuss, and I'm recycling 18 years of the same worry? Really? What we don't waste energy on while children are performing miracles every day. You need a reality check? Hang out with a kid. They have a way of cutting right through all that manufactured adult crap. Why? Because it gets in the way of having fun and that would be dumb, so they don't do that. I'm lucky I have this weird job I invented. It doesn't need reinventing, it just needs consistent leadership and seeing as its worked for me all this time, I guess I'm providing it. So I'm gonna shut up now, work and have some fun doing it.

Urban Pioneers Start a Revolution

2010-09-04T13:32:00.002-04:00

Our client and good friend Dave Mancini, owner of Supino's Pizzeria in the Eastern Market, just celebrated his second successful year by hosting a big cookout at the Farnsworth Farm on the near east side of Detroit. If this party is any indication, Detroit might not just recover, it's gonna start a revolution. The steampunk pioneers are circling the wagons and looking to make a new model settlement on the rugged, high speed global frontier. In the middle of this untamed community garden, local urban farmers, businessmen and artists, grandpas and babies, diehard city dwellers and curious suburbanites stood in line for Dave's grilled pizzas (eyes wide when they saw the sophisticated toppings: tuscan pulled pork, just cut basil, fresh mozzarella, roasted peppers, etc.). Motor City Brew flowed continuously in the bayou heat and kids zipped over and under adults and on top of a giant log jungle gym. The party was a buzzing hive of new ideas. Creative collaborations are being planned and executed under our noses. It was a joyous display of creative talent, including those new to the D and the prodigal children from places like New York and Amsterdam. Detroit is a giant magnet and they come for the spectacle and find themselves staying. Music wafted from the experimental art gallery/theater/performance space squatting in the abandoned building across from the garden. Lo and behold there was my 11 year-old Wyatt on electric guitar playing with the big boys. Actually, this is a whole block (and then some) of experimental gallery/theater performance space. There's the west end anchor; full-blown farm of urban farmers Kinga and Andrew, growing and raising their children on years of city harvests before anyone else had the cahones to do it. The menagerie home of gardener/artist/chef/animal lover Molly Motor a few doors down who might be cooking, tiling or tilling at any given moment. Murals on houses and small gardens have sprung up down and around the corner. Sprouted and nurtured, Farnsworth is a living, growing community. When Richard Florida (Carnegie Professor and author of the highly acclaimed Rise of the Creative Class) talks about what makes today's cities successful, these are the sorts of people and places making it happen. I know that Detroit has been at the bottom of this list and that I sound like Pollyanna predicting yet another renaissance for Detroit, but if you had been at this party and talked to these people, you'd be as energized (and sleepless) as me. Look for more happenings like this, check out www.greeningofdetroit.com. If you wanna know what's else is going on, head down to the Eastern Market on Saturdays, check the bulletin boards at places like Supino's Pizzeria and Avalon Bakery. Or hey, come by and see me…well if you can catch me that is….o.k. well then call.

Hey Ho Where To Go Ohio

2010-08-26T00:37:00.003-04:00

Now that I am of a "certain age", I allow myself a few breaks here and there. Like why hammer the return home from Pittsburgh in a day when I can invite myself over to the modernist museum in Cleveland that is Michael and Debbie Edwards home? I love the old traditional neighborhood, turn of the century vernacular homes with ordered lawns and of course theirs is extra special because these are people of taste and substance. It's the oldest house, the original dairy farm sitting way back from the street on a huge lot, landscaped, sculptures, how lovely for the interloper's overnight? Of course the story inside is something else. In their hands, the spaces are clean white gallery rooms, hardwood floors, original doors and woodwork. Beautiful bones as they say in the architectural parlance. But, how they've designed it, selected edited, selected, tis a modernists' dream. Everywhere you look is a statement piece of the masters, reminding you of the powerful voice post war America had in the world. I sip the prosecco they hand me and study exceptional examples of the applied arts: sculptures in wood, clay, paintings, textiles, ceramic vessels, furniture by the cognoscenti of the day mixed in with simple primitives, Michael's own ephemeral photographs and pieces of other eras that balance the collection and make it a handsome place. We compare our rustbelt cities. They say Ohio struggles like detroit but is more complacent and defeated compared to what they describe as a still fighting the fight, not backing down, scrappy Detroit. I had never heard Ohio described this way, but I sure recognized Detroit and sighed a quiet sigh of relief. I couldn't exist in that environment. I'd have built a compound around myself too, and then travelled every minute I could afford. They've closed their store which only drained resources and are working the surplus into their living museum and mostly selling it on line. I give them a lot of credit for their ability to adapt to the new paradigm in our beaten economies. I personally don't work well in that solitary business model. I've dropped in on them unexpectedly, the veritable Cat in the Hat to their Sally and I. I'm bouncing with tales of a business reinvigorated by a new movie making industry in town, design projects and art installations for better-supported cultural institutions. This has resulted in new found energy to brand my business as proudly Detroit and market it to better markets on the East Coast and beyond. I know I would not be in this expansive place if not for the positive feedback of a newly emerged buying public. So you know what this cat is thinking: I am going to New York and Debbie and Mike are on my way, couldn't I design them into the act? Wouldn't this stunning collection, their sophisticated mid century classicism make my industrial modern steampunk sparkle and dance? Forget that tired worry of…."but it's competition!…won't it steal your thunder?" Look I've been going on about this for like 20 blogs already. Huge paradigm shift, get it into your head, we can't just keep on going in this same myopic direction where it's every man for himself and you're on your own. The well is mighty dry, and either we all get just what we need or we're gonna watch people all around us drop like flies. I really believe these times were tailor-made for a middle child, a born collaborator who lives to work together with other like-minded, smart and talented people. Can you really argue with a little success? Can you really tell the Cat who is clearly having a ball up their juggling it all that it's not any fun to play with others? No my friends, you cannot.Throw caution to the wind, toss a ball in the air. Get in on this act before mother finds out what a mess you made of it all.

Coincidence and Connectivity? What a Trip

2010-08-24T18:30:00.004-04:00

Anyone that thinks they don't need to pay attention to connections or have all the ones they need, should have been in the van with me today. I travelled to Pittsburgh to pick up some foundry molds for Richard Gage Design studio's sculpture for the Detroit Science Center. I'm traveling alone so it's the perfect opportunity to catch up on all the phone calls I didn't get to. I am organizing an open house at my shop next Monday for some photographer/dealer friends of mine from New York who have just been cross country buying up a storm of vintage photos, equipment and god knows what all else. I am hooking up with them in New York in two weeks time and we are going to Brimfield together. During the series of conversations, I get to talking with one of them about why they should come and photograph Detroit. It inevitably gets political and we debate universal rights the feds should govern/mandate vs. state's making up their own as they see fit and how widely it varies place to place. We agreed there was just a huge issue of migration with people flocking to the state's with the desired health care insurance, tax policy, gun rights, gay marriage, cheap cigarettes, whatever etc. And it went on from there. Here's how things got weird and wired up together. It's as if everybody encountered today had listened in and had something to add. The photographer calls me back, he had a phone call right after we hung up from a magazine customer who might have a shoot in Pontiac, Michigan of all places. Seems they have a story to tell of some former drug addict turned activist/local saviour (a beautiful Pontiac begins..?). Suddenly an opportunity to get paid to come take pictures in Pontiac and Detroit next month is tangible. An hour later I'm paying the guy at the toll booth who tells me I've entered a blue state from a red state and they can't come up with a joint policy and that's why I'm confused about having to pay two tolls 50 feet apart. I then get lost and pulled over for doing 80 in a 55 and the cop tells me Michigan is one of 5 states Pennsylvania doesn't have a reciprocal agreement with and he can't ticket me. Instead he has to take me to downtown Pittsburgh and I have to go before the magistrate and pay the fine directly or they'll put me in jail…He decides to let me go with directions to take it easy, like nobody ever let's me go. Now it's rush hour and I'm starved. I'm a picky eater and some chain factory food won't cut it. I park the car on a side street and ask the professional looking guy walking by my car if he's a foodie, cause i'm from Detroit and I want a recommendation for really good eats. Just so happens of all the guys walking around Pittsburgh today I stop the one from Detroit. In fact he just got back from vacationing yesterday in Lexington Heights, community of 400 where I have a cottage and just spent the weekend 8 houses away from him and his family. We exchanged cards in case I have more problems with cops or he needs a place to rent on the lake next summer. He sent me to the best Thai restaurant where I am writing this in a beautiful garden setting. Dude take my word for it, we are connected. You got to get out of your box and get on the universal wave length. You have inspired conversation to look forward to, trips to beautiful places, a get out of jail free pass, homeboys with restaurant recommendations, amazing business opportunities in a crap economy, happiness and fulfillment. When the hard times come, you'll have faith, good memories and real friendships to sustain you. Don't delay, dialogue today.

DIFFA Installation by The Heritage Co.2 and Richard Gage Design Studio

2010-08-22T20:29:00.005-04:00

In Detroit for the very first time August 12-14, DIFFA (Design Industry Foundation FIghting Aids www.diffa.org) invites local designers to design dining table vignettes as part of their big nationwide fundraiser. The first big event to be hosted at the top floor of the new Taubman Center at the Center for Creative Studies, The Heritage Co.2 and Richard Gage Design Studio took the opportunity to showcase current work Rick is doing for the revamped museum store at the Detroit Science Center and the material I continue to mine from Detroit's rich industrial heritage and offer for sale and rent at my store.

Our table featured wood foundry molds (which will be part of two sculptural front entrances for the remodeled store), steel factory table from a now defunct Detroit tubing fabrication shop, Detroit Public Works stencil "A beautiful Detroit begins with you" c. 1950, "Joe the Tinner" commercial advertisement from a sheet metal fabricator that had been on Grand Blvd in the 1940's, assortment of letters reclaimed from local commercial signage, vintage theater spot lights on surveyors stands, vintage lunch boxes.

Not done until it's over done, I stubbornly insisted on creating a "costume" to go with our installation. Much as I imagine all of those clothing designers do before a big runway event, I feverishly spent 2 hours before the opening event decorating my sister Alyssa's destroyed 1970's Levis with reclaimed workmen's badges I have in droves at the store. To think of all the talented designers and artists who have lost their lives to AIDS, it seems only fitting that at the ninth hour I should become a slave to fashion as well.

NPR's Three things project...community connectedness

2010-08-18T06:24:00.004-04:00

By the sounds of the comments I got from my experience at Starlite Lanes, the second topic I spoke to NPR about: Community Connectedness, couldn't be more important or appropriate. Quite honestly, isn't it the bedrock of civilization? Aren't we suppose to stick together to fight the wild beasts in the wilderness? Reeling it in to Detroit and its environs present day, it appears to me that to improve the conditions for living well in this area and the state, we need to pay a whole lot more attention to the people we meet in our communities everyday. When I started on this topic I had called it "community networking" and talked about taking the "shop local" thing to the next level, but it's so much more than a business skill and the state and this region need more than economic improvements if we are going to have a great place to live and work. I think the current economic crisis sure put the spotlight on that. When we never felt more successful, more flush, were we really and did it make us healthier or happier? You can blame Washington, Lansing, General Motors, the banks, this president or the last one all you want, but all you can really change is you. Why not start there? I had a horrible winter at The Heritage Co.2, maybe the worst ever. How did I get back on track? Making connections. I don't mean cold-calling. I mean having conversations with everyone I came into contact with. People kept me going: my mail carrier Barry who routinely asks me how I am doing and genuinely cares about my answer. My neighbors, Tom Natocci and all the lovely men at Cloverleaf wine, who always had a glass of wine to share, and helped me out when we needed affordable wine for two tastings. My neighbor Jerry who covers for me on Saturdays and looks out for me the rest of the week. Rick Johnson at Billings, whether its a forklift I need, or mediation on a touchy real estate deal, snow-plowing, help finding an off-season Christmas gift, a place for a movie crew to park a truck...Can you imagine all that kindness and support is out your door? If you know me, you might say how easy it is for me because I'm so outgoing and of course you'd be right. You also should know I use to be shy and got over it practicing social skills one person at a time. Now don't for a minute think this is all about being really friendly so you can get a job or some help for yourself. You got to pay into the karmic bank if you are going to make withdrawals. My friend Roland told me something very valuable he learned in AA . When I told him what a hard time I was having, this is what he said: do something for somebody else. We become myopic when we are stressed. It always feels like we're alone, unable, an innocent victim, whatever. There's always someone worse off than you and you come across them everyday. Darrel from the South Oakland County Shelter is definitely in a much harder place than I am. He came into the store last Saturday asking for a job. He told me he needed $25 for a bus pass. He had a new job starting Monday and he was really trying to get himself out of the shelter. You know I know what a lot of you are thinking and I have often felt the same way. Bus fare? New job? I've heard that one. He's lying, he's probably going to buy crack, booze, etc. Does how he spends his own money have anything to do with me? No. He didn't ask for a handout he asked for a job. I have a whole lot full of weeds. It's 90 degrees. Darrel suggests he could take care of my weeds for me. I should wait for someone "better" to stop in and ask if he can weed for me? He did what he said he'd do and I paid him the $25 we agreed on. A lot of us got some pretty sweet loan deals , did we all spend it like we said we would or should ? Did we honor our obligations? Who's a crack addict? You get my drift. The lot looks much better and I have a new able-bodied man I know I can call on for help when I need it. More importantly I was not feeling too good when I went in on Saturday, but I felt a whole lot better after I got to talking to Darrel. Sort of reminds me of 'ol what's his name showing up with no money looking for a place to stay with his pregnant wife...Make connections, be yourself, be kind, make your home a better place to live.

Compulsive Salvaging

2010-08-13T18:38:00.005-04:00

I had 10 other things I was suppose to do today and atleast 4 topics ahead of this blog to write about (like last nights DIFFA event and my get up). But then Jon called me about Starlite Lanes being torn down and I had to go see. I tried to get out of it, I couldn't help myself. I get there, it made me ill. I forgot why I can't do too much salvage anymore. The physical labor/danger angle not withstanding, it makes me ill. Like how animals in cages at the zoo make me ill and I can't go there either. By the time I arrive, they have the marquis clean off the otherwise nothing building. It's 11 a.m. and over 90 degrees. The crew consists of two pairs of brothers and a fifth guy, all nice men, all working at this dirty, hard job. They humor the salvage lady in her new "a beautiful detroit begins with you" tank top. I tell them I save things and make things out of them. They stop the slaughter and start helping me sift through the debris. Despite the fall, there's still plenty of useable beautiful stuff, I'm feeling better. New people come and go, mostly scrap salvagers. I go get cold drinks. I ask about the boss showing up. No one seems too worried. Then the boss shows up along with some official looking man carrying his mac. They look at me. The frontend loader operator says I'm his girlfriend. The functionary proceeds to recite state clean air standards and regulations and what they, who are in violation, need to do to continue this demolition job. He talks like he's teaching a college course they've signed up for. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say these guys have had all the education they never wanted and will ever need. The upshot is that it will cost, in his estimate, $180 each to have a physical to see if they qualify for the right to do this job, to buy a special respirator and a few more items. Which, he goes on to say, they may not need at all because the air quality in the building may not be an issue. Now, he doesn't say the state is going to test this first. No, they just gotta pay this money, see if they make the cut and also fill out a 5-page questionnaire. If they don't do these things? Well, should the state come by this site, on 8 mile Road, they could be fined or put in jail. Now you might argue, the boss oughta pay for this. And maybe he should or would, except it looks like a nothing building. I really don't think he's making a big dollar on this with the fees, equipment and labor costs (and by the way, he tells me he lets then keep whatever scrap money they make). Maybe you're thinking, well what about safety? Sure, once you get past survival, safety would be next on my list. The functionary leaves. The boss says in effect, get this cleaned up and lets get out of here. Everyone gets busy, the boss turns to me, "so who are you (really?)" I tell him as I watch them crush all the stuff I wanted to save. He asks me twice if I'm a spy for the state. I tell him what I think about what I just heard. He tells me I should have told him I wanted the stuff sooner. He stops the crew, tells them to help me load whatever I want. This is so not how this goes. I tell him so. He laughs, says people like me follow him from job to job like this. He invites me to go with him to see if there's anything inside "the contaminated" building. It's empty, as clean as a whistle. I load, ask him what I owe him. He smiles, says "friendship." Girl scout's honor, he says friendship. Do you believe that? We exchange cards, I leave. In the end, seems they weren't actually suppose to take that beautiful marquis down yet. More than one party asked to purchase it. The boss doesn't act too upset about it, seems he takes a lot in stride. It's hot, these men got the call to work, they showed up ready, able and willing to do the work. This is how business is getting done in Detroit my friends. You got a better idea? I'd say run for office, but by the sound of things, I'm not convinced better ideas would survive the quality of the air in there.

Exercising Thrift

2010-08-08T23:12:00.002-04:00

Would you believe I am curled up inside my sweater right now? I am bracing myself from the wind blowing hard from the east off lake huron. The water is deeply blue and the front is driving the waves pounding into the break walls. My god it is beautiful here. I can't tear myself away. Somewhere my 3 young charges are building a fort on the beach out of brush and twigs. This is the sweet life, what a legacy. Keeping my footprint light, in every way I can, impressing this idea upon these 3 children feels like a moral imperative. Take only what you need. Waste nothing. Leave no trace of your passing so that this beauty survives you. Each of us, in this bountiful country, need to be good stewards. At Wyatt's school Japhet, their curriculum emphasizes character qualities based on the golden rule. I feel strongly about the one that says, "exercise thrift." By the looks of things in our state, in every state, we need a refresher course. Our lifestyle and values have hit critical mass and we are at the lowest point I have ever lived through. It is painfully evident that our insatiable appetites threaten our bodies, our relationships with each other and the places where we live. I am overwhelmed by the task I am asking of myself and you, so deeply entrenched our wicked ways, turning the tide so tall an order. I try to focus on breaking it down into smaller bites. Like just picking up garbage lying on the ground in front of me and teaching Wyatt to do the same. Examining what we define as "garbage" and taking the time together to sort through it, recycling everything we can. I make my living selling reclaimed materials: from building parts, to factory parts, decorative and utilitarian items to undefinable found things that intrigue me. Teaching Wyatt the idea that he doesn't need another new thing has been a real challenge. I spend a lot of time talking Wyatt out of his wants. I feel defeated when I finally just have to say the "no because I say so" line and often guilty when I give in. Surely one more thing won't matter? I"m uneasy. I try to divert attention, make up some adventure, go treasure hunting. It's a fun, creative, job and inspirational. While I'm looking for useable stuff to sell, he carries a bag to collect up scraps to make art out of, bones and things of interest to study. We wonder where it came from, it's history, it's purpose, the possibilities. A found item might entertain him for an entire afternoon, maybe more, then guiltlessly recycled the next. I can't imagine channel surfing or mall shopping offering similar satisfaction. Clearly it doesn't. The activity need cost nothing, you start out the door, never putting a key into an ignition. We find all kinds of useful things that maybe need a little cleaning or small repair. We all have natural ingenuity, if we tune into it. The skills may be dormant, but I am sure they are there, having been passed down for generations by ancestors who had to do everything themselves with what was at hand. We just got out of practice. There's plenty of help on the internet, at the library, maybe next door at your handy neighbors. Just ask, pay attention, be appreciative. If you have useable items you no longer need or want, donate them to your church or a service organization, sometimes they'll even pick it up. I know you are busier than ever. Enlist your family, work together, make it habit-forming. Try to make it fun. While your at it, pay attention to what is happening with the resources shared by your community: your water, your infrastructure, the parks and downtowns. Say and Do something about waste and contamination when you see it happening, we'll all have less work and expense later. Then stop right where you are. Take this minute to witness the natural beauty around you. Do it again tomorrow. You are making connections, you won't want to let your fellow planet dwellers down. Listen to your mother, make good choices.

Pit Bull in a Princess Dress takes to the Airwaves

2010-08-05T04:14:00.003-04:00

I started the day in what I call the "princess" dress. I thought it would make me feel more professional at the NPR studios in Ann Arbor. I had a serious message prepared. As I pounded this keyboard afterwards at the sweet cafe around the corner from the studio (Jefferson Market), the dress could hardly contain the rough talking, dirty jean-wearing salvage slave too enraged to drive home yet. As my grandmother Eugenia, liked to say to us girls, "you all are so pretty, you ought to look pretty!'" translation: comb your hair, put something decent on and behave like young ladies. I got special "manners" lessons, that's paid off. I had spent hours thinking about the topic NPR asked me to speak about: three things to make Michigan a better place to live. I live near and work in one of the hardest places, but also the coolest. I now realize I didn't pay very close attention to the examples they sent me. I knew the segments were short, but I felt so strongly about my three things I just thought and wrote what I believe to be true. They promised it would edit down and sound fine. I didn't get to say what I wanted to. So I pounded away with righteous indignation, I'm calling up my army. NPR wanted to give people some simple ideas of things they can do, I want them to take to the streets. My friend Peter reminds me that expectations will only cause pain and suffering. I'm not interested in letting myself or anyone else off the hook that easily. I know what's causing pain and suffering, and the cure for it isn't something simple. We need to do more. On the lead topic exercise thrift, I spit out, "If you want to save Michigan, quit buying cheap new crap at Target" and predictably, "recycle, repurpose, reuse." I had a more erudite repackaging of this heavily trafficked mantra, but the host's question instead elicited, "yes you can repaint that table you already have and use that." At 4 in the morning I'm capitulating, it's probably better than I think, yesterday at 11am I was disappointed. They are talking about demolishing thousands of homes and buildings in Detroit. I'm thinking reusing that end table comes up short. I can't even imagine what Detroit will look like after we wipe half of it out, not to mention where is all that stuff going? Am I crazy to want to keep the ruins? roofless and gaping with trees growing through? This is the Detroit I grew up with and love. This princess still believes there's a real possibility that a fairy tale ending is in store for places like our train station. I drive back home through Detroit, Transformer 3's set needs signs and animal rescue Jon has me routed to a sign grave yard. The pit bull Tom greets me at the gate. The owner Michael and his helper Eugene go out of there way to help me look through the pile of signs, nervously holding the ladder I insist on climbing up to get a decent shot on my camera phone. "Maybe you should keep a change of clothes in your car." Tom doesn't look worried at all and flops down in the heat. The sweat is making a stain on my back. I keep climbing. I call the set buyer who's appreciative, I'll be back there tomorrow to see the other warehouse...in jeans. The other two things, community networking and cook at home go a little better, I get my point across that we have become disconnected and its causing joblessness, hopelessness and illness. I hope they don't edit the story about how the lawn mower purchased from my neighbors at Billings instead of from the "discounter" actually ended up being a gift that paid me (years of snow removal, forklift borrowing, real estate mediation and free popcorn from the owner Rick Johnson) nor the shout out to my octogenarian sales help Jerry who lives across from the shop. I didn't get to talk about foraging for the food growing wild and delicious in our city, but I sure "weighed in" on my concern about what we've been feeding ourselves and what people are forced to eat in a city bereft of fresh food sources. I hope I conveyed how important it is to me to share the gift of good food with everyone at my table and that taking an interest in knowing, helping and caring for each other is all Michigan and anyone else out there needs. Rest assured the pit bull in the princess dress isn't done chewing on this bone.

Help a Brother, Help Yourself Out

2010-08-01T18:34:00.005-04:00

This is the money left on our porch today to pay the rent. It's a stunning amount of bills, mostly 1's, and they represent the tips from all the drinks our tenant poured. It's right on time. Waiting on people is really hard work, I know I've done it. I am reminded that I'm not the only one working hard and I am chastened. We have for so long been working hard, for ourselves, our needs, our wants, all the things that money can and cannot buy, and I think we have lost sight of the importance of connectedness. It's been an intense week. Even with help, I still do most everything myself and have for so long that to delegate, to ask for the help I really need, feels like more not less work. There's something wrong with this thinking. It's taken a toll, and not just on me. I tell my son Wyatt that his parent's focus is on living a good life. That doesn't mean easy, it means satisfying. Satisfaction comes from positive experiences, not possessions. He just got to spend a month in Italy, I think he's getting the idea. I know this sounds hypocritical coming from someone who sells things for a living, but there's a lot more to what we do and how we do it and that makes all the difference. We all have to make our living doing something, hopefully that something is honest and meaningful to you, ours is. I spent the morning shopping for the store at the local flea market. This is a little market in the town where we live. Most everything comes from around here. It's used stuff and pays other hard-working local dealers their living. We socialize a lot, ask about each other's businesses, health, families, laugh, sometimes cry and often hug each other. I have been shopping here for 18 years and yet today I met a dealer I knew of, but didn't know. We made a nice connection. My shop is 4 blocks away and he followed me over to see it. He said out loud what I have been thinking (even more serendipitous, it's exactly the topic I've been working on for an NPR interview I'm doing this week) about this idea that working together is what we need to do more of to live better. I followed him to his house to see his collection. Oh my god, it was a museum, in a beautiful federal revival house with two lots and a garden. It's next to an abandoned building in Detroit, he says it's safe, there are no bars on his windows and no problems. I think this says a lot about him and the energy he puts forth. I see lots of ways to help him with his business, including recommending this house for movies to rent. I'll put the word out. He makes us blt's. We brainstorm about hosting fellow dealers for a salon, a party, something fun and useful in this beautiful big old house. I confessed I'd had a really hard week, he said he had too. We agreed today helped us both out. I hope saying this to you helps you out. Maybe you can help someone else out. Remember the mantra: May a beautiful where ever you live begin with you.

A Beautiful Detroit Begins With You

2010-07-28T00:00:00.008-04:00

The design installation we (www.heritageco2. com and www.richardgagedesignstudio.com) are working on for the DIFFA fundraiser in Detroit is turning out to be a fun collaborative project. I love collaborative projects, especially with smart, creative people. I feel like I'm pushing that old playground merry-go-round and with each person that grabs a bar and starts running and pushing with me, we get that thing going faster and faster and then everybody jumps on and you get that incredible rush from the centrifugal force everyone's created. So first Rick and I start it spinning with the 'ole what-can-we-make-with-what- we've-got at our two shops for this project? We just got all those gears from Brimfield, colorful and Detroitish. Will the client we bought them for, Detroit Science Center (www.detroitsciencecenter.org) help push? Yes? We've got it going now. We need a big table for the center, Charles (www.dunlapdesigngroup.com) bought this great big steel one from me, I know he'll be game to loan it. It's picking up speed. I have been looking for an opportunity to use one of David King's reclaimed lumber assemblages large scale, he'll play for sure. I'm breaking a sweat. Wait! I've got that old Detroit Public Works stencil c. 1950 Jon Teschendorf found for me. I have been talking about that dang stencil for years, how it's the perfect message for some business venture or other, how we should make lots of signs with it on found lumber, old doors, whatever and create this buzz with that great message! We are running all out. And, now I have the perfect place to use it. The perfect audience to share the message. The timing has never been more right. So much momentum building from the urban gardening phenomenon and what it's done for so many struggling neighborhoods, the river improvements and the Dequindre Cut, recent renovations of beloved landmarks like the Eastern Market, the DIA and the Book Cadillac. Jump on everybody! From that still fresh shame of a crashing automotive industry and every news agency making us the poster child of the national economic crisis..could it have been any bleaker than that image of the man frozen in an abandoned elevator shaft on the front page? And yet, here we are movies everywhere, car companies with profits, beautiful summer days! I was reminded (thanks John Jessmon) of those incredible Leonard Cohen lyrics today, "There is a crack, a crack in everything...that's how the light gets in!" Well, we sure know where the cracks are, how about looking for the light now.

Oh yeah, about that DPW stencil. I'm sure it was developed for some renewal campaign Detroit launched. It has been hanging in my studio for many years now. It says, "A Beautiful Detroit Begins With You." I created a domain for it, just beginning to think about what I might do with it. So far I've got John Jessmon (www.logo27.com) making t-shirts to give to each donor who sits at our table and more to sell at the upcoming Arts Beats and Eats festival in Royal Oak. That's where I am beginning, where can, no, where will, you begin? Give it some thought. Meanwhile, I'm on this super fun, spinning ride, with all these great people and it's making me really happy right now, so I'm gonna keep it going while you're thinking about it, and hanging on for all I've got.

2010-07-24T13:42:00.004-04:00

There's nothing more romantic in the antique business than a country auction. The drive out to the country, the rolling hills of southeastern Michigan lush with rain and heat, the pleasant crackle of gravel under your tires and the prospect of treasure as yet exposed to the public spotlight. This auction however, held more emotional significance to me for this estate was that of a dealer I, and the rest of our antique community deeply respected and recently lost . Exceptionally bright, with exquisite modern and esoteric taste, Greg researched everything and had a collection I aspired to. Greg's interests and expertise were vast, from minerals to outsider art, from americana to modernism. And this auction was just the stuff they found in his basement! The more valuable items had already been whisked off to more serious markets. With not much money to spend on the heels of Brimfield Shows, I had to focus my energy on the folky, off-beat things of his that I truly loved. His business partner and long-time dealer friend of mine, Bob Ketelhut told me about this apple he had, a large "Claus Oldenberg" thing he knew I'd want, with the words "New York, NY" on it, delicious. I prayed I wouldn't be outbid by some of the heavier hitters I knew were in the house. I was also keen on a pair of spectacularly spooky pair of hand-carved sandstone gargoyles, a beautiful pencil drawing of a cowboy from the 30's and a whimsical articulated doll that would be a nice remembrance of Greg. At the risk of sounding really out there, I have to tell you a couple of things that happened last night that gave me pause and made me consider our proximity to those who have passed over to the other side. When I lined up to get my bidding number, the number that should have been mine was 63. As the auction staff was filling out the paperwork, I actually considered asking for the next place in line because 64 is the year I was born. Just a little superstitiousness on my part, but I let the silly thought go. What's in a number really? The attendant looked a bit befuddled just then, looked at the "63" card and inexplicably took the next card and handed me "64." I got a little jolt I tell you. Then, just as the auction was about to get underway, the sky grew black and a spectacular thunderstorm cracked over our heads with rain coming down so hard it was hard to hear in the barn. I miraculously got everything I wanted and at prices well below what I know Greg had paid for them. I think he would appreciate that I cared so much about his things. (I also know he would have been slightly miffed that they didn't go for more money-that being the measure of our craft) But, what I'd really like to believe is that he had some hand in the proceedings and meant for these things to come to me.

Meet My New Family

2010-07-24T04:37:00.007-04:00

Running around all week to pick up the Brimfield load in Bay City from Rick Klass (ever helpful, generous and strong as heck), getting it unloaded, the long process of introducing the new adoptions to the existing foster family of someone else's cast-offs and finding for each of them, another who would bring out the best in them. That I'm bringing all these very different things together and making them work together feels very much like making a family where there wasn't one before. It's an ungodly amount of work to rearrange it all, and during a heat wave, with the lousy air-conditioning, and still I'm saying to my intern Erika (a saint to help me) that this is my favorite part of the job!? I realize as I write this that it's the natural calling for this middle child. I want to bring people and things together, watch new connections being made, have a ball. And, selfishly, surrounding myself with people and things feels like love to me. It's also a bit of self-styled therapy, a natural response to the much more challenging effort of maintaining connectedness with my colorful and strong-willed blood-bound family. I know you know what I mean. I think it's not unusual for one's calling to be somewhat born of a desire as yet unfulfilled from this most primal of experiences. So why are we being subjected to her personal issues when all we wanted to know was what's new at The Heritage Co.2? Look it's 5am people, I had a few things on my mind, it's a labor of love and I simply cannot separate me from it or vice versa. Permit this hard-driving, middle-aged woman a bit of ego; for all the bumps in the road, it looks pretty damn cool in there. It surely looks like no other and it means a lot to me that you stop by from time to time and let me share it with you.

No pill for a virus

2010-07-20T08:44:00.004-04:00

Consummate marketer that I am, I wasn't surprised to learn its now considered a good virus. I'll add this condition to the list of my many charms. Logged in a complete night of sleep for a change and got my mojo back. My ace intern Erika did all that legwork for me while I was in Brimfield and we got organized for the two design projects going into construction. Love it when I get to put my construction team to work. Like the fast-talkin, easy ridin' Bob Tourtillot from Royal Oak Plumbing who starts tomorrow on Ed Kelly's bathroom. Bob gets my design aesthetic, engineers any old thing I think should be plumbable and makes all the shit run down hill, if you know what I mean. His instructions have the carpenter and electrician hanging on for dear life while in the background we can hear Ed practice his lines in some loud European accent, am I in some sitcom? Remind me to put that in one of my show's episodes. The construction schedule for Dave Mancini's kitchen is complex, how delighted am I to throw that job to Erika. She got to make some tile selections while I was gone and made us look good when Dave showed up unexpectedly yesterday. On his project I have the pleasure of employing one Molly Motor, chef, Detroit garden organizer and tile artisan who's currently working on a public art installation in Southwest Detroit, a mural of Caesar Chavez. She looks like she could pin a sizable contender to the mat, the tile will obey and we'll be tossin back some cold ones in a hurry. Keepin track of all these connections? It's like building a big molecule of people. So I'm riding from one appointment to another and pass the new location for Valentine Vodka, a couple of young entrepreneurs distilling our favorite elixir in Ferndale. They are renovating a sweet old building in Ferndale owned by one of Rick's buddies where they will also have a tasting room. Some Trucks are out front, I make a quick stop, pinning Erika to the passenger door. She thinks I'm crazy, but I can tell she's having fun in the big top. I tell her you gotta ask for the job and make it clear you are the only one to do it, if you want the job. Couple of guys are swinging sledge hammers at the concrete. I know it's the owners, been there done that. Even through the dust, can you say..hot hot hot? This condition will be good for their business. We take in the scenery, pitch the salvage slave's program to cool cost-effective design-solving. Maybe it sounds scary to pay a designer, but I tell them to call Dave Mancini. It's common to make mistakes when you think you an do it all yourself, and just a few of those costly mistakes pays my tab and then some. Plus, you don't have to do all that work? And you get ringside seats to the show! People, the salvage slave is in it for the win-win. Next up, I gotta pick up the load from Brimfield and I don't shop light. Beers are on me, should you decide you need a work out.

Design for DIFFA fundraiser

2010-07-18T20:47:00.004-04:00

Mania offers no rest breaks. I wake up to watch the sun rise on Lake Huron at 6:30am then start sweeping the walk at 7:30am. I stop short of a full-on landscaping effort. Rick wakes up and starts the coffee. It's not 15 minutes before we have the sketch pad out and get right into a design for the DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation FIghting Aids www.diffa.org) fundraising event at the Center for Creative Studies new Taubman Center (www.centerforcreativestudies.edu). GM gave CCS the old Argonaut building for a dollar or something. It was part of their original headquarters, which the Taubman family restored for the school. The DIFFA event is to be held on the top floor which sports a vaulted ceiling and views of the city. It's gonna be awesome. This is the beauty of adaptive reuse (which should be going on in earnest in Detroit..you know my schtick.) We're sending our son to the new middle school there next year, but I digress.

Hour Magazine (www.hourdetroit.com) is sponsoring the DIFFA event which is a first for Detroit. It usually happens in places like New York and San Francisco, so this is a big deal for our design community, the effort to fight aids and the community at large. Basically designers team up with sponsors to design "fantasy" table settings and then donors get to eat dinner on them. Of course we've known about it since spring, but we've both been too busy to really do anything with it until the deadline is upon us. I get the call from the organizers on Friday as I'm just returning from Brimfield that,"hey, we need to get your design going" ..yikes!! Like the MOCAD fundraiser, we work best under pressure (mania at it's finest) and we sit at the cottage kitchen table this morning to work it out. Then it hits Rick: materials I just bought in Brimfield for a new project he's designing for another local cultural institution would be great for a table setting. If those donors agree, DIFFA benefits while creating a secondary benefit to this other institution! We high-five each other, what GENIUSES!! Just goes to show you how small a big city can be and how crucial building this kind of community is to resuscitating the life force of our beleaguered, beloved Detroit.

Gypsies tramps and thieves-Brimfield in July

2010-07-16T11:38:00.005-04:00

Stuck on the highway near Scranton, PA. Found Aerosmith on the dial and a few contraband comforts in the car. Benefits of making the long ride home with Rick F. Tailights ahead just went off, Yeah! We sing along to "Pinball Wizard." Doesn't take much to make me happy. Don't miss the scenic overlook as you get on 80 from 81. Dang! sure is pretty out here. The segue from carnival life, the four days of hot and sweaty endless shopping, might be improved if there was a good rehab to check into after. The people at home know to give me a wide berth for a few days. Any possible pleasure to be had from the quick weight loss got smacked down when the face in the mirror reported the theft of all remaining collagen. F… it. I loved every ridiculous minute. Ran into those pals I told you about 20 blogs ago that I met at the Chelsea Garage Flea in the NYC. There's an aspect of corporate convention to these shows, combined with dirt, weather, and an absence of any facilities and respectable attendees. A front of lawlessness is in the forecast. I secretly hope I'll be voted queen of this convention. I force myself to focus on the real job in between song and dance numbers. I love everything I bought (this will pass, more about that later) and don't want to sell anything. I had more fun than anyone has a right to. Went a little crazy buying some weird stuff. My friend Jim would say, "signs of mania, quick get the lithium darts." A banner that says something like "watch a baby being born, Original Sin in action!" I'd love over my bed. Oops, too much information? A surgical table with "tools," will make people so happy when they see it, I guess I won't put it in the living room. Giant chunky puke green letters spelling "Rodney" would look cool on my…ceiling?A 6" model of an eyeball will make the brain and ear I have so happy. I lie and promise to adopt them out together. Fingers crossed the commercial-sized chemistry glassware makes it back on Rick K's truck whole, I have a fantasy about distilling liquor in it. 20 minutes before my ride is honking to take me home, I score a series of copper vases that look like intestines. Part of love is letting go. I hope the memories will sustain me. Come January I will need it. How incredible the end-of-the-day corona felt sliding down my throat. Sneaking a nap when the rain came, under the tarp and the radar on Adam's lounger. Some delicious eavesdropping there. I stopped in my tracks to listen to the guy playing a french horn seated on the ground in his crowded booth. Signs of enlightenment abound, if you are looking. Too hot to eat, little sleep, I gorge on the running gags in our gypsy encampment. Part street urchins part geniuses, I marvel at how this business draws fascinating personalities. They could be professors or composers monday through friday, but you can't always tell from the dirty t-shirt. The man selling all that lab equipment wrote a brilliant song called the Antique Dealer Blues and sang all ten+ stanzas for me. I take a break on the recliner in front of a big fan and sing the refrain while his philosopher friend tells me the true meaning of life. I stay for a 50 minute session. Finding the Messiah felt more important somehow than being first when Mays (show) opened. I tell everyone about this "church" in John N's booth (and jot Joel the philosopher's number down for any call-in questions I will later have). I believe all this powerful energy is now in every item I bought and I will continue to get to do this weird and wonderful job that wants to kill me. I probably won't score that big money-maker ever nor have my own reality show, but man do I have fun. Maybe it all sounds like bs, but be a little curious and stop by the store and then tell me it doesn't look like a good time.

"Three things" (you can do to make Michigan Great)

2010-07-10T08:08:00.004-04:00

A local intern for National Public Radio saw the article in Hour Detroit about me and heritage co. 2's involvement in supplying props to to the film industry. I'm invited to participate in their project

"Three things" Michiganders can do to make Michigan a better place to live.

I come up with:

take shopping local to the next level-community networking
exercise thrift and
cook at home.

I own www.heritageco2.com in Royal Oak and I live there, so maybe your saying "of course she's pushing shop local." But maybe you need a job, maybe you're lonely, maybe you're just stuck in a rut. It wouldn't hurt to start getting out a little and no, not with your bff or sister doing the same ole same place routine. My friend Roland says, "feeling down? Do something for someone else!" You'll relieve your self-consciousness, promise. Rick and I signed our kid up to go to peace camp (Childrens International Summer Village www.cisv.org) in Italy and now we have a whole new community of people right here with a shared agenda. We jumped at the chance last night to see a local camp in action and what Wyatt might be doing in Italy, plus maybe we can help out. 60 11 year-olds from around the world singing John Lennon's "Imagine" in the auditorium at River Rouge High School is a powerful motivator. We talk about hosting a kid next time and meet some people from Cranbrook, the Detroit Free Press and the Marshall Fredericks museum. Wait, these look like good prospects. Hey! we've got small businesses, you might need a job, remember?Whatever. You gotta think like that! No, we didn't shove biz cards in their hands. It's about relationship-building, community-building. We move on down the river. I might as well be in a foreign country, this is a town I've never been to. I call my antiques dealer-pal Peggy Madden who just so happens to live and work here. We meet in Wyandotte. What a town! There's a street fair going on. It's rockin'. All that historic architecture, a beautiful preserved town right on the sparkling Detroit River. Sorry I'm gonna have to testify: you can't beat the soul of a thriving downtown and you can't make a new one by tearing all those old structures down! This is how you build community. I'm smitten. We catch up at the Dotte Pub. We're hungry. It's fish fry night at the Speedboat bar in Ecorse. I love perch. (Yeah, Bennigan's ain't here and I doubt they got local perch, ok 'nuf said). The Tigers are up on the Twins, it's karaoke night, oh man, it's a home run! Guys with beer belly in t-shirts are lined up to sing. This is a cake walk, I'm fired up. We get the song book...Yeah no, it's American Idol here at the Speedboat. Like regular Joe is belting out some love song. They got singers in the Ecorse, we're eatin' crow. Rick orders more beer, he's gonna find us "the sure thing." That's "Quando Quando Quando," some 60-70's tune. Peggy and I say we can't drink enough to make this look good. She's getting the eye from Frank Sinatra over there in the curly toupe. We've gotta prepare. I'll be back, with a posse. What a great place! What a state! Get your ass out there!

Crackerjack Team

2010-07-06T19:49:00.002-04:00

In the new paradigm I no longer try to do everything myself. Times were tough in the D and I had to save myself some money by not having parttime help….you can imagine how much fun I was. Starting out afresh with new people is always hard. I'm terrible at delegating, too busy multi-tasking to explain things AND not especially detail-oriented or organized. The most important thing I needed was someone who can sell, a closer. Someone with the confidence to sell a thing, even though they may not know much about it. I needed Jerry Meresky. He conveniently lives across the street, he's a closer. He used to have a furniture store in Detroit and offered to help me out. He's doesn't really need the money as much as something to do. He's free on the precious weekends and old school for real. Jerry is my 82 year-old sales associate. OK so the phone connection thing is too tiny for his fingers to plug it in and out of the fax machine. Forget it! he's a deal maker and knows how to move a heavy thing. He likes to work the crowd, smooth with the ladies (whooo-ahhhh). At the other end of the spectrum is my Sunday fill-in Jenna Zerbo. She's 22, cute as they come, and in-love with the stuff. OK she can't lift the 100# concrete Madonna. Hey, the men are falling over themselves to do it before she even thinks to ask. She works at Inn Season, our favorite vegetarian restaurant around the corner, and is use to waiting on customers. That two-page, neatly printed receipt with all the zeros she collected on a Sunday made my heart sing. Jenna it turns out, is also a closer. Plus she wants to work in exchange for stuff. You know I'm all about the barter!! My serious saving grace is behind the scenes. David King, who actually rents studio space from me, paints for me, runs interference with Hollywood (he use to work out there, he gets it), opens the store for customers that come off-hours, moves heavy stuff AND helps with the weeds…He listens to my rants, he's cerebral, intelligent AND easy on the eye. Down kitty. Last but certainly not least is Amy Nolfo Wheeler, the upstairs dealer that covers the store on Thursday and Friday. She's the other mom with muscle, thinks nothing of schlepping an oak entry door down the stairs by herself, NEVER misses a good garage sale, makes it all look like a million bucks upstairs AND drives in from Indiana every week. Are you feeling the love? how lucky am I? At the risk of sounding like I'm all that, here's what I think this is guys. You gotta make a nice place for luck to live in your life. I tell my kid this all the time, take an interest in other people, BE OF SERVICE. Sounds like a religious thing alright I can live with that. I learned it from my parents, I practice it everyday. I think if you work hard and try to help other people whenever you can, it will come back to you. When I made that early Saturday am call to David and said, "gee I messed up can you help me RIGHT NOW…I'm grateful that he wants to and will. Same for Jerry, Jenna and Amy. So when you get the call to help, I'm just saying that you ought-a should take it.

Middle Aged Wisdom

2010-07-06T19:44:00.003-04:00

The very thing that makes you good at something will inevitably catch you up short somewhere else. It takes awhile to learn patience with your weaknesses and how to work around them. The other thing that comes with time is truly getting that things are rarely as "dire" as they may initially appear and to expect change. So you might as well calm the *&#!? down and ride it out. I remind myself of this about 100x a day.

For instance, I just get to chillaxin at the cottage on a beautiful holiday weekend when the call comes in (barely, poor cel service). I forgot 3 things "Real Steel" needed for the scene they are shooting shortly. They expect it to be delivered stat. I've got an 82 year-old man running the shop. He's not running anywhere else. Being ultra reactive, I am good at the quick response, but what comes with it is a tendency to panic. It's not that your failings will ever go away. It's more like the company that won't leave. You learn to acknowledge the feeling without getting dragged down by it. "Oh, you're still here. Well, if you want to hang out, cool, but I'm going to bed." You have to be a problem solver. I'm good at working the network. I've got good help in spades. I take a calming breath and text message David King (and thank you jesus for david king) . It goes through and he's on his way. Problem solved

People it's all in the details. It's all about service. It's all about smiling when you might rather scream. I could have started this blog out with that. Oh yeah, there's like a billion books I could have read on this already. Which reminds me of another of my failings, I'm stubborn, I gotta learn everything the hard way.

Baby Jesus Out of the Manger

2010-07-06T19:37:00.000-04:00

I watched as my baby jesus (aka my 11-year-old Wyatt) loaded his own bags in the bins and walked through security…from the other side of the gate…on his way to Italy for a month. He never looked back. I've said this 10 times already and it's still shocking to me. Oh I know, "whatever! another madonna and child melodrama" and "it's different when it's your own!" blah blah blah. I'm just saying! Proud mother teared (big surprise) with pride to see that young man looking forward to his bright future. "He's gonna be a senator or an ambassador!" my friend Danielle said, so there. He's off with 3 other American messiahs to an international peace camp where they will hook up with kids from 10 other nations. Some genius, a woman naturally, came up with the idea in the late 40's that if kids came together at this tender age, they'd make lasting friendships and wouldn't shoot at each other later. I think Dickie Cheney missed his flight. These people are so enlightened. His mother is crossing his fingers that he will actually write and collect interesting stuff in his new journal (and floss and brush everyday…) Everyone's checking to see how the parents are doing post departure. Shoot Rick and I are so busy I'm glad he's got something more interesting to do than traipse around with his nintendo while we work. We left the airport and proceeded to work until late into the night. More movies and a t.v. show added to the line up. Stay tuned for tales from "Machine Gun Preacher" and "Detroit 187." "Transformers" will be here in a few weeks and I just got word that Sean Penn is doing a whole movie here and we will be busy with productions until May of next year. With any luck I'll actually make a decent living this year.

Everyone's a movie maker

2010-06-20T10:30:00.002-04:00

I was told that 18 movies are being made in Detroit this summer and 2 in Hollywood. Who knew? Here on the ground we are scrambling to pull it together. I'm supplying 5 or 6 right now, looking for stuff, keeping design projects on track, running the store with my crackshot team, lots of deadlines. I tell my sister, the chef, that it's like constantly being on the line preparing Saturday night dinner. I learned from my set decorator pal Selina, you get up early to get things done. I could script a documentary about my last two weeks. Here's how my shot list might begin. 1. 6-6-10. Late night, darkened bedroom, see me throwing clothes in a bag, barking orders to rick and wyatt. I was suppose to organize props for Monday when I got the call. Not good. I gotta drop everything and head across the state. My brother-in-law, kingpin of the Heritage enterprise, is having bypass surgery on his leg. My sister Lia is exhausted and worried. The $90mil thriller breathing down my back and casual apparel's new salvage look at Saks 5th Ave will have to be managed from the road, see cel and laptop go into briefcase 2. 6-7-10 camera looking over driver's shoulder: it's me on the phone. I drive a short distance and park, race through my grocery store(shout out to www.holidaymarket.com) grabbing gourmet items. Rule #1: where there's a crisis, a Gaggino is cooking. 3. see me fill a cooler, jump back in van 3. car drives short distance to library. Rule#2: Gaggino women are either talking and laughing or they're crying. I get a Sedaris book on CD for inspiration: 3 hour surgery+ 2 hour recovery, I'll need a few hours of material to entertain Lia 4. trauma waiting room hectic with people, shot of clock 4:00pm. pan to me, Lia, her bff Reggie, her daughter Elyse, table is set, everyone's eating, talking and laughing loudly 6. dark windows, trauma care empty except one guy asleep in a chair, pan to clock: 11:30pm. It's not going well. There in a heap, the three Gagginos. see rule #2. 7. surgeon walks slowly out double doors towards us, face tired, serious. 8. shot of clock 1:00am. Crap everywhere, Gaggino's wasted. Surgeon in scrubs, walks with vigor, Lia is up. Good news! They save Rodger's leg. Lia gets her sanity. I'd be happy with 6 hours of sleep 9. Me and Lia in her bed, clock says 4:30am, still stuck on rule #2. It's the let down after the stress...a Gaggino response, I get it, pet her hair and shhsh her. 10. Daytime in trauma care room, cooler is restocked, Rodger in bed joking, we talk shop. 11. Nap time, Lia comes willingly. 12. One stop before I gotta go home. 13. Inside The Heritage Co., flagship store. I'm hauling stuff for my store out to the van. 12. cut to van clock, 7:00pm, 2 more hours until I'm home.. now that's raw footage.

Smooth Sailing

2010-05-31T20:35:00.007-04:00

Three days off in a row, just in the nick of time. I'm on fumes. Thank god I don't have far to go. We have a little cottage near Lake Huron and it's a blessing that the cellular service is bad. It takes a while for me to stop flitting from activity to activity and worrying about what might be happening at the shop. I have an inner junk mogul that thinks we could be wildly successful if I could just control that bum who wants to have fun and relax, all that mamby pamby talk about balance, whatta wimp! It's when I start to lose everything, or break things and just plain fall apart from exhaustion that I will finally stop and take a break. Truth is I'm more effective if I would quit acting like everything is a crisis to solve immediately. That cottage was the best thing we ever invested in and it has saved my life. Instead of two new cars in the driveway, we have a small, old-fashioned stone cottage. Of course it's furnished with everything found, recycled and reclaimed and it couldn't be more charming, if I don't say so myself. I've learned to live with a certain amount of disrepair in the interest of a better family life. Our son runs free like we did as kids and Rick putters around on assorted ongoing projects. It's the first weekend we've been able to get away and since it's only a summer place, we have to open it up after the long winter. The weather is absolutely gorgeous and rather than embark on a major cleaning project, we unpack, turn the water on and I head out to round up manpower to get my little sailboat in the water. As the salvage slave is always trying to prove, you don't have to have a lot of money to live well. I bought that Sunfish knock-off years ago for $100 and it was rough looking then. I leave it on the beach all summer long and when it cracks somewhere, it gets the only fiberglass patch I have patience for i.e. full of sand from the get-it-back-in-the-water-now beach repair. It should have a paint job but I couldn't care less and it shows. I can carry my sail, rudder and centerboard down to the beach myself, drag it into the water and I'm sailing on Lake Huron like the big guys. I was absolutely thrilled to learn this weekend that I could sail lying on my back, feet steering the rudder and catching some rays. The lake is so big, there was no risk of running into anyone even on a holiday weekend, damn I shoulda' brought beer! Sheer heaven. To think we waste so much time and money on things that just don't matter. Neither Disneyland nor Club Med can hold a candle to the vacation we have every weekend and it costs nothing extra to share it with friends and family. Everyone pitches in and with the talented chefs in our social network, we have 5 star meals prepared in our 1940's kitchen complete with a 70 year-old stove. We pull an old 8' folding table out of the shed, some flea market bought bistro chairs and set the table with vintage enamelware, tablecloth and napkins and mismatched silverware and glasses. If I'm really feeling it, I light candles and cut some flowers from the yard or the wild ones growing on the lake bluff and make an arrangement. Save yourself an expensive trip, you can live like Europeans always have. Afterwords, we might head down to the beach to watch a spectacular moon rise off the lake, light some fireworks or throw a sheet over the clothesline, pop some popcorn and have an 8mm film festival from Rick's vast collection of old movies. It all packs up in an hour and we're home in 90 minutes. I slept more this weekend than I have in 2 months and I'm actually looking forward to an action-packed week with movies to supply, interiors to design and new ideas of stuff to make with the treasures I found at the country flea market this morning. You'll be happy and "get rich" real quick if you quit equating it with the pursuit of more money and start enjoying life's simpler pleasures.

Chasarai Continued

2010-05-21T19:01:00.020-04:00

Having elevated the chasarai (Yiddish for juuk, say the ch like you got something lodged deep in your throat kah-zer-eye) to a higher purpose, I speed-dialed those 20-something men Sunday and sent them to wrap the installation from yesterday's MOCAD (www.mocadetroit.org) fundraiser and shove it back into the store. It's like those jeans you saved from high school... as if you'd be wearing them again. And I haven't picked up the load from Brimfield yet! I pick up first thing Monday up in Bay City. I manage to wedge everything into the van still leaving a nice nest for Trooper my trusty Scottie dog. Can't unload until Tuesday, I am meeting my new intern as soon as I return and our first job together is to look at a new interiors project. She has no idea what kinda meshuggeneh (don't you love Yiddish?) she's gonna be working with all summer. If you aren't crazy when you start your own business, you'll surely be there soon enough. My designer pal (www.dunlapdesigngroup.com) Charles Dunlap's assistant Emily saved my life hooking me up with CMU's (central michigan university) interior design program and I soon learn my intern Erika Shrauger can roll with the punches. She has to drive since my van had become a storage pod and off we go to see the loft of Supino Pizzeria owner Dave Mancini. I don't care what you say, the suburban wannabes don't hold a candle to a real urban loft. Dave inherited the last owner's taste however and furniture from his family. This won't do for the reigning pizza king (www.supinopizza.com). Our bachelor needs to chillax, he needs a kitchen for a serious chef who entertains and if I may speak frankly, a bed that fits his 6'5" frame. It's a long way up to those green eyes, but I looked deeply into them and it comes to me: "Austin Powers, " ...with a motor city back drop. Erika measures, dave and I drink wine and I say, you know this intern thing is workin for me....3 hours later, she sure was...can you say designated driver? One wants an intern with absolute discretion, a valid driver's license and street smarts. She's on time the next morning (youngsters this is critical to job security) and ready (well except for the flip flops, she'll learn). The chasarai is everywhere. Designing with a few hundred objects lying around requires a special skill ( A.D.D.) and the willingness to move something until it feels right (O.C.D). I will move things so many times that I will lose them (and my mind), but it's key to the sale. It's a series of stage sets. This round we have Louis XIV in the industrial age, 60's boudoir gone to seed, Medieval dungeon and the madonna, 50's modern and Americana. And that's just the front room. I send Erika home with drawings to do and I prep for Wednesday shopping. We have tile selection for our actor client Ed Kelly, the voice of Lincoln Mercury and he's found an antique English washstand he wants to feature in a tiny bathroom. Lynne Moran at Virginia Tile (www.virginiatile.com) is my go-to girl and she and her staff help us nail a fantastic design, including a dead-on match to this unique blue tile in the c.1900's piece. We also score a deal on tile for Dave's kitchen and eyeball some beautiful tiles for a little bath in our Grosse Pointe Park project. A quick trip to order window treatments and pick up drapes takes longer than expected. I gotta reschedule the graphic design meeting for later. We get some extra time and since it will be a longer day, I decide we deserve a little treat. Bath products at Lush, make-up at Macy's....you gotta set a good example, work hard, play hard and then pamper, pamper, pamper!

When it rains it pours, I need an ark

2010-05-16T05:46:00.005-04:00

Remember that cult movie Afterhours, when all the guy wanted to do was go home but kept getting pulled into weird situations? He's taken over my body or I fell into his movie and I can't get out. Slave that I am, of course I scheduled to work all weekend, naturally I signed up for the wine stroll so I'd have 700 people to entertain. I'll just really take that Friday off and catch up on my sleep....right after I follow up with that producer and our long shot on some american pickers show. She's waiting for the lisa/marisa blog and it has to be perfect. I'll spend all morning obsessing over it. Gee how much money did I just spend? I owe people, they know I'm home. A few rounds of the shell game, I cover it barely. I'll just pop into the shop to make sure we're ready for the onslaught of wine drinkers. I'm only moving furniture...2 hours later. I'm so grateful for that solid 3 1/2 hours of sleep. Then I get the call. You know that big break to do something completely creative of my choosing for a prominent client and their fundraiser for the MOCAD (www.mocadetroit.org museum contemporary art detroit)? Only it's 6pm and it's a 30' space and we have 21 hours to conceive, hire, amass, transport, design and install it at said community leader's home. I'm on fumes, I call in the big guns (my husband and his 20 year olds www.richardgagedesignstudio.com) We spend that relaxing evening together wracking our brains, mentally inventorying what's lying around at our shops and what kind of magic we can make. Would have been handy if those goods from Brimfield were in but noooo... I start with this chicken wire man, and those bed springs. Rick has a burn basket, the 12' grain auger. I bank 5 more hours of sleep and we head to our shops. Oh yeah wyatt, what are we doing with him? It's peasant day care, you know pickin' potatoes with the baby on your back? Wyatt's been on the crew since he was born. At 4 months he was in the sling while I set up a show in Ann Arbor, so packed was my van I had to thread him through the window. He's good for 2 hours of running small jobs. Luckily the client has kids. Wyatt's like the pied piper with the kids, the nannies want his number, he's better than nintendo. Moving right along, we start the artistic process...you know stand around and argue over minutiae, assemble this, make the crew break it down and assemble that...Wait!! I have a new brilliant idea. We do that 50 more times. We're having a blast but I'm gonna pass out if I don't eat something. We get food from "the chef" but no silverware and we are filthy. The 20 year olds don't care if they eat with dirty hands, the perfectly plated tenderloin on a bed of bitter greens with a feta and herb pesto. These guys are into this 5 star plate. "I thought we smelled hamburgers. What's arugula? It tastes weird. The "steak" isn't cooked and what's that stuff all over it?" I'm punchy now. I gotta come up with an invoice and get to the wine stroll. I'm two hours late and my phone is ringing off the hook this whole time cause nothing is priced. I follow the designer to find out how to get the check...nothing more nerve wracking than the money part. I mean how much is a junk sculpture of wire and scrap? The clients come outside to see our work, they love it!! She wants us to come back tonight for the festivities, I'm gonna say no? We have dinner plans (...one of the calls that came in, of course I can cram that in) We settle up and I race back to the shop. David King is my hero, running interference at the shop. I grease his palm, send him for more wine, start the shuck and jive for my 700 new prospects. Out at 5:30pm, a good day of business, I lie down for 10 minutes, shower and get into costume. This crowd will be dressed to the nines. I pull out the vintage lace number from the opera singer's estate, my pawn indian jewelry, a leather jacket, cowboy boots, war paint, we're off for dinner. Dinner is at Ross Yedinak's house. His cooking is the real deal, there's always room in the schedule for a Ross meal (www.walnutonline.net --he's also an artist). The food is like that off the chart stuff we ate in Brooklyn. Wyatt is having no part of it, well except the dessert. He wants to play badminton outside. He's been good all day, I'm diving for the shots, lace dress and all. We head out for the event. Oh my god, what you can do with an unlimited budget and imagination. They have guys on dirt bikes creating "art" on their front lawn (it gets re-sodded on Monday). They have a live death goth band in full regalia and a smoke machine going, it's ear-splitting. All the big name Detroit art supporters are on hand, it's like fashion week. The people watching is superlative. Wyatt is sneaking around snagging cookies off the tables. We are seen by some of our best clients, this was a good move. Rick carries a sleepy wyatt to the car, I'm in bed by 11:30. I've got until noon to rest and then I have to open the shop....So heads I getta call at 6:00am, tails I sleep in, wanna call it?

Double Feature: Road Warriors followed by Thelma and Louise

2010-05-14T10:05:00.006-04:00

I’m on the homeward stretch from Brimfield and lounging on the bit of floor not packed with antiques in the back of Brandon’s van. I’m down to about 2 dollars and completely worn out. I won't be in bed until 3am. My husband's a saint to drive an hour to come get my sorry ass. This life is scarily like that of a carnie or a drug dealer cross bred with truck drivers. The people drawn to this business are some of the smartest and craziest people I've ever met. Oh the stories I could tell, the book I should write! We are all road warriors. In fact I quite literally built my business buying stuff on the side of a highway and I am compelled to tell you about the best friend and sidekick I made in the process. I found Lisa McQueen 16 years ago at the Ann Arbor show selling this outrageous architectural stuff, a baby at her breast. She lives in Indiana 7 1/2 hours from me and agreed to meet halfway on I-69 whenever there were goods to be had. For years we’d meet at some exit or other, park at a random lot and proceed to unload her packed truck of wares. I figured any woman that no nonsense that thinks nothing of unloading 10 times her weight in iron is my kinda woman. We’ve been best friends ever since. Despite our many similarities, it’s our differences that crack us up. I’m the shop girl who hates to do shows, she’s the show girl who won't have a shop. And yet I’m the one who talks like a truck driver and she’s the one with hair and makeup done. She shakes her head at the dirty industrial stuff I lug in, I roll my eyes at the crystals and bows. The tie that binds is our unrelenting energy and drive, a raunchy sense of humor and the ability and desire to stir up dangerous trouble. Dealing in antiques is a physical business. Doin' a show can mean 14 hour days starting before sunrise and schlepping heavy stuff until sunset, selling to people all the while. You gotta be on your game, ready to wheel and deal in a fast gambler's game involving a lot of cash. We do it because we think being adrenalin junkies in love with stuff is a good way to make a living (hmmmmmm). Well it sure can be a lot of fun. It's easy to have fun when you do what you love, but there's fun and then there's Lisa and Marisa's idea of fun... We think we're Thelma and Louise. We think we are hilariously funny. (It get's worse)We think we're 25...(ok now that we are collectively 50, make that 30ish). Got the picture? Start cringing; it's been known to draw a crowd. I know you know what this crowd looks like. Any sensible adult knows to step away. Sooo not how we roll. All it takes for us is a pocket full of money and a decent night's sleep and we are ready to start the party. Take that one night in Atlanta, a town Lisa knows well, well sort of. We step out dress to kill and to hear this healthy lookin' African American woman belt out some seriously get down and dirty blues. Can we help it if the 25 year old cuties want to dance with the two shameless middle-aged broads? Hell no! Here's where you should really look away. Now it's 2am and we've been asked nicely to leave. This round I'm Louise and I gotta pull Brad PItt off Thelma. We dump the drunk baby Brad and his car at his house and now we gotta find our hotel, "I know exactly where we are..." Thelma can't find her you know what with both hands and guess what? We are out of gas and I got the surprise "visitor" and no provisions. Naturally it's 3am and of course our trusty navigator has managed to find the only gas station open with 2 squad cars at the pump. While, we're no liquor boxes, we're sure not looking like angels. Is Lisa worried? Heck no! She's laughing her head off cause I'm the one who has to stare down the cops all standing inside at the counter. Are the unmentionables on the shelf like any other convenience store? Nooooooo...they've got 'em like playboys behind the bullet proof glass and I get to ask for them... I swear to God, you can't make this shit up. No we did not drive over a cliff, like a couple of movie stars. No, this is the movie where we'd wish you'd leave now. These stars are gonna have to get up in 3 hours and face another day of selling and as usual, neither one of them can find their sunglasses...

The Grand Daddy Show, Not for Wimps

2010-05-11T22:51:00.006-04:00

With the burst of Spring energy in the shop, I finally have some money in my pocket. The grand daddy of all shows is on the horizon, I wanna go. That's slave not master, I don't have enough money to take my own rig or fly in and send for the goods. Last minute as usual, I start working the phones. First my pal Lisa for the hotel room. I'm scrappy, but sleeping in the back of a truck when it's 30 at night? (you'd be surprised how many people actually do it) Every room within 50 miles is booked; Lisa graciously invites me to bunk.. in the tiny double bed...we're like sisters, we think nothing of this. Then there's hauling the bootie. Rick Klass, my dealer buddy from Saginaw is driving the big truck. Big truck, big gas tank, he's only too happy to haul my things plus those of my clients, I'm lookin' like a hero. Now the hard part, the ride in. I talk to everybody in a 100 mile radius, everyone is travelling with someone. I shamelessly beg to ride in the back of Brandon Nelson's van coming in from West Michigan Of course he travels an hour south of me, so I gotta meet him at I-75 and 80-90. He's like the nicest, easiest going guy, just don't be late. We roll into Tim Horton's like it's a professional heist. Slave yes, martyr no, that's me in a folding chair for a 12 hour ride. As soon we arrive and I return to a fully upright position, I book a massage for when I get home. I wake Lisa up at 9:30pm. We gotta 4am call, we can't shut up. It's gonna be a long day. The first group of shows opens at 6am, then over to the 9am shows, then the 11am and finally the 1pm. It's fast and furious and you are on foot. 5,000+ dealers on acres of field, all on a two lane country road. A million people on the shoulders, semis and cars, bikes and carts. It's a zoo. Rick loans me his bike...bonus!! I cover twice the ground. The shopping is killer, a million objects. I gotta good load by 2:30pm. I call in for reinforcements (honey, can you put more money in my account?) Then the pick up...NIGHTMARE...I got stuff in 10 locations, everything is giant and heavy...3 hours later.... feelin' the glamour? It's like an iron man event, I'm spent but on high. Despite all that hard work, I laugh and kibbitz all day. Ran into dealers I haven't seen in ages, everybody helps each other out...and oh the merchandise here...after 18 years it still blows my mind....gotta crash wait til I get pics of the goods uploaded!

Back to School

2010-05-07T11:39:00.005-04:00

For my 46th birthday bought myself a mac laptop. For a woman who has driven used vans for decades, it's like I bought myself a Maserati. Man she's fast!! Just had my guru Jim over (I promised him anonymity for now, but the entrepreneur in me couldn't resist pitching an idea of having in-home project sessions with all my friends who use macs and need help launching their business/personal projects). I'm going to the Apple store (FYI: before it opens, miss A.D.D. cannot do the zoo in there) to have lessons because at this age, let's face it, I'm obsolete (but of course with an in-home guru, that having to go to the store nuisance, embarrassment of ignorance and sharing with strangers ick will be eliminated...I know you are saying sign me up, who doesn't want this? Help me badger him) Once we get www.heritageco2@gmail.com, www.heritageco2.com , www.facebook.com/heritagecoii , www.twitter.com/salvageslave and this blog all jiving together, it's just a matter of time before you can actually shop on www.heritageco2.com . With all this linking, syncing and time saving, it's just quite possible that the fledgling "Found in Detroit" kind of "American Pickers" show I envisioned 5 years ago could be a reality. Now aren't you ready to watch the salvage slaves of Detroit, diggin' into some really outrageous finds? I mean that show, enough with the good 'ole boys and the farmers already. You wanna see some weird urban locales and gorilla action...

Salvage Slave Agin', Keeps on ragin'

2010-04-25T19:37:00.007-04:00

Can't deny I'm seriously middle-aged now, but rather than face it. I just tried to outrun it(mixed results). Started the week out playing/shopping in NYC, then it was home to work on a new design project with all those fresh ideas brimming, my regular Detroit scavenger hunts, opening show at TANK and gala fundraiser for Waldorf School/Gleaners, run the shop. I need an assistant and a nap. Anyhoo, it's movies, movies, movies in Michigan. They're getting ready to roll film on Sucker, Salvation Boulevard and SWAT. Love this group of set decorators and buyers, Taryn, Danika, Nancy and my bff Selina...I thought I worked hard! Thanks to the Michigan Film Office for that nice bit of press, the film people manage to find my offbeat place http://www.michiganfilmoffice.org/The-Film-Office/Success-Stories/Testimonials/Detail.aspx?id=2824.

I can't sleep for thinking about this cool couple's house in Grosse Pointe Park and all the possibilities. Just love the aesthetic, very serene old south of France and the house is one of those stately brick tudors, yum! Have these gorgeous 1800s doors I want to use, maybe as an unexpected window covering; a little Detroit industrial repurposed as furniture; build out a closet with salvaged lumber; keep and just refresh grandma's chair and dress up all those incredible arched windows with velvet, linen and silk coverings.

TANK opening Friday night http://www.tank425.com/ at my husband's Richard Gage Design Studio was a big success!! Lulu was the perfect artist to open the season with. Her work is so fresh and accessible. Even though I was beat, I couldn't resist jumping in with the kids to do her collage workshop this morning. Show's up for two weeks, mon-fri, check in for hours. Very affordable, and from a designer's and collector's standpoint, adaptable to modern or eclectic interiors. Even though she's living in Missouri, she's local to us (and promising to move back, thank god).

The Gleaners (http://www.gcfb.org/) and Waldorf School (http://www.detroitwaldorf.com/) fundraiser Saturday night served up the best tasting soups in the city. What a collective of the brightest, most generous and interesting Detroiters. All that energy translated to much needed funds for the institutions that keep Detroit vibrant. So proud of my husband who made this beautiful award, a spoon that wasn't (i.e. a big hole in it), to symbolize the undone work of educating children in Detroit and feeding the hungry. My gal pal Jackie Victor was on hand in that vintage Oscar de la Renta dress (worn as her designer insisted with cowboy boots and a jean jacket..I love it when they listen to me) representing sponsor Avalon Bakery. Left in time to have that all important Spanish coffee at Roast http://www.roastdetroit.com/ with artists Clinton Snider http://www.clintonsnider.com/ and Yuen Hom http://www.yuenadvertising.com/. All this talent in one town....I'm getting a little ferklempt, talk amongst yourselves....

Bitin' the Big Apple

2010-04-22T09:55:00.004-04:00

It's pure flow when I get cruisin on a good tack and nothin but me the boat, water and wind. It can happen anytime you are doing what you love. This, my friend and client Jackie Victor tells me is what we were experiencing on our whirlwind weekend to New York City. She ruled on all things to eat, owner of Avalon Bakery and voice of food in Detroit. I took over when it came time to shop. Spring has brought in new business for the shop ( http://www.heritageco2.com/) and that's all the excuse I need to shop. We hit the Brooklyn flea. Yelp http://www.yelp.com/ was right, yummy spot for street food. We scored a few items, but my favorite is still the Chelsea garage flea market. Apparently it, or we, were infectious. I spied some decidely disturbing items in a back booth and made a beeline to them. You know I'm obssessed with creepy, and vintage negatives of crime scenes just sent me into orbit. As if we needed it, these three dealers just fueled the fire. Oh, was I smitten with Adam, Andrea and Peter. Obviously sent from central casting, Adam is a bold buyer and the ringmaster who whips up the crowd. All he needs is a sparring partner; I volunteered my services. Andrea is the laid back wife who quietly keeps the train on the rails, knows her town and graciously let us in on the secret. Peter is the sidekick, photographer and artist, who directed my eye to the tragic beauty of the 1940's crimes and their victims trapped in the images. These people need their own t.v. show. I Couldn't get enough of them, we make plans for dinner. Moving right along, Jackie and I swoop in and out of booths, snapping up things that reminded me of the Paris flea markets, elegant deco decoratives you can never find in the Midwest, sumptuous velvet runner all trimmed and tasselly, sassy prints. Made Jackie buy a slinky embroidered vintage Oscar de la Renta dress and Gaulthier tattoo blouse, because I'm the designer and I said so! We all met up at the very cool Ace Hotel www.acehotel.com/newyork (if the heritage company was a hotel it would look like this) turns out Adam and Andrea know their food and we headed uptown to Bukhara Grill. We eat like sultans. Refusing to get off the ride, we send the men to bed and Andrea takes us girls to http://www.marlowandsons/ in Brooklyn. Come on, the server is hot the mood is sultry, I can't keep out of the desserts and I sure couldn't stop drinking the cocktail. We tear ourselves away for one more stop at Otto's Shrunken Head on the lower eastside. Gritty blues is playing, I got room for one more set. Everybody looks like Keith Richard's family member, the singer is older than dirt and sounds like Wolfman Jack. I fall into bed like a three year old. This Eve has bitten the apple and she won't rest until she gets some more, gonna have to score those $9 spirit fares and head back stat.

Shuffled off to Buffalo

2010-04-11T22:26:00.006-04:00

Spring break...in Buffalo? Hey the slave goes where the salvage is and it just so happens that Buffalo is a beautiful old city (Detroit could take a page out of this book on the saving of old buildings and reusing them, so that I don't have to keep seeing the wreckage in the new york times please!!) and the weather was spectacular. We took off on Monday and hit Toronto for a quick refresher on how a really creative city pulls it together. Check out the new bohemian hotspot on west queen. The artists took over a couple of old hotels and tweaked them, each room a different artist. Kept the old as found look, added a few bits, mostly salvaged and voila. You sooo wanna stay there, all the beautiful people were there http://www.thedrakehotel.ca/. My favorite store, commute home always wows me with curated salvage, the things they make from found objects, and the healthy price tags. Then onto Buffalo, my peeps here are crusty characters uber smart, artistic and their eye is lethal. Loaded up on early letterpress, not just letters, whole words! carved wood and stained delicious, 8' theater light super mod, 3 kinds of industrial lights you will want over your kitchen island, 3 kinds letters 2 of which you've never seen I promise, an early dress form, a 50's deco dresser (I'm so flirting with the upcoming modernism show) and the piece de resistance: the giant longhorn head (flocked plaster a must have). I cannot do that commute home display cause I am packed to the rafters...threw it in and hung out back in the sun drinkin beer.

Carpe Diem

2010-04-02T11:52:00.009-04:00

Whatta great day, I'm on my bike first thing, head over to my new pool at LA fitness, windows lookin out at the Zoo's water tower, this rocks! The weather is fantastic and it’s my junkin’ day. I set out for Hamtramck. I describe it as Detroit’s version of Brooklyn. Do you know they speak 27 different languages there? The houses are practically touching and right up on the street so people can actually have conversations with their neighbors, walk in to town for a bite, a drink, do a little shopping. I dig that old Polish sausage shop with all the plants in the windows and weird items for sale from the old country, not to mention the best sausage and prices. My friend Michele has a yoga studio on the main drag, The Yoga Suite (www.theyogasuite.com), which she shares with her partner Mark’s law office with only a curtain separating them. The space is a 100 year-old store front and she has fabulous taste, perfect chillin’ vibe for getting down into some relaxation posture. She’s got stuff to peddle and I know this will be a good junkin’ day. A HOT I mean HOT pair of matching burgundy mohair velvet settees, metal cabinets, blackboards, wire basket, planters, industrial shelves, carts, tables, chairs… I gotta make trips! We hit Maria’s up the street for some yummy Mexican food and swing by a building that she is currently designing a BBQ restaurant in. We talk about using some lab tables I have for seating, stools, lights etc. I pitch a fit cause they don’t want to expose the full 20’ ceilings with original tin. People, you gotta know it just don’t feel right eating under fluorescent lights and drop ceilings, no! Design matters to a restaurant’s success, success anywhere. I say we’ll save them money on a cool salvage look, so spring for the extra utilities already. I gotta split, I’m back downtown later for a really rockin concert. It’s the kind where you know all the words to the songs, and you and 1000 other fans are all dancing and belting out the tune together, well that’s how I roll anyway. My buddy Tim who owns Zumbas Mexican Grille www.zumbagrille.com (coupons online) down the street from me is always my date of choice. I kill two birds, have a good time and get a little gorilla marketing, Detroit style, in. I don’t have to do anything: Tim knows everybody and is introducing me while bragging on my store. The Stone Temple Pilots is a band I love live and it’s at the Fillmore, a gorgeous old theater in one of my favorite blocks. Around the corner is Cliff Bell’s, which mixes a killer martini and hosts cool events, my favorite being “The Moth” the open-mike story telling thing. We make last call at the Bosco in Ferndale to hear Crowned Heads, some swanky live duo and I fall into bed at midnight. Carpe Diem Dude!

Sunday at Market

2010-03-28T10:20:00.004-04:00

I lie there every sunday, warm in my bed at 7:30am and have that argument about why I deserve to stay there, mostly losing the argument, putting on yesterday's clothes and a ballcap over my head and head to the flea market. It's my job and if I'm lucky I'm not saying why did I bother? at 9:00am. This morning my favorite dealer (who's always worth the trip, even if I find nothing) the pawnshop savant and guitar-playing MarkyD had the most beautiful bass fiddle for sale. I want it in the worst way, it's got everything I love in an item: size, sensual form, and timeless beauty. And then he played it... Well best I can do is find a loving home for it, and maybe Mark will let me host it for a while. Meanwhile, now that I'm at the shop every day it's open, I'm constantly looking for new items, new ways to use those items and designing sets. This week one of my inner city pickers brought in the most gorgeous 60's flocked wallpaper which we promptly hung side by each across an entire wall. Instantly, we had a photographers dream backdrop, just add model. I want someone to wallpaper a room, even a single wall as I have, using several patterns side by each. I have them priced per roll at $95 ea. but am I ever reluctant to sell them....that's the funny thing about this business, we are in it to sell the very thing we can't part with.