12ozProphet

Several weeks ago, I took a drive to New Hope, Pennsylvania to visit the sprawling 9-acre workshop/home of George Nakashima. Nakashima, a Japanese-American architect and furniture designer, passed away in 1990. He is survived by his two children, who still work at the compound producing the hand-crafted fine wood furniture that their father made into an American classic.

Some photos from around the internet of Nakashima pieces, including a close-up of his signature butterfly joints.

When someone says a ‘Nakashima piece’ they are usually referring to the natural wood pieces he used, essentially leaving their original uncut shape intact. Heavy slabs cut at the mill often left the original turns and uneven form of the tree rather than cutting the shapes down to more traditional rectangles or squared edges. 60 years later, thanks to Nakashima himself, it seems normal to embrace the ‘nature’ of the wood slabs, but the designs were quite startling at the time. It’s simple to describe the Nakashima aesthetic as ‘natural wood shapes,’ but the legs and bases are the quiet engineering feats that complete the whole. The leg and support pieces use angles that show Nakashima knew a lot more about wood and its strengths than many ever will: many pieces just don’t look like they’d support weight or offer stability, yet they do.

Wood pieces marked for use are all over the place, these are in the entry of the Conoid Studio, one of the several buildings on the compound designed by Nakashima.

Butterfly pieces awaiting use in the workshop.

The warehouse stores hundreds of cuts of wood hand-picked by Nakashima before his death.

Nakashima lived a full life, described to us by his daughter Mira on the tour of the compound: his young adult years spent in 30’s Paris, studies in Tokyo, a short-lived furniture business in Seattle before he and his family were moved into one of the infamous “relocation” camps the US government put its own Japanese-descent citizens in during WWII. After WWII, Nakashima moved to Pennsylvania and started creating the designs that are his legacy, many which are still crafted by a handful of artisans in the buildings on the family compound.

Each Nakashima-designed building (he was also an innovative architect) is dedicated to a different aspect of the process, and the tour takes you through each one, culminating in the amazing art gallery building at the bottom of the low-slung south-facing hillside the entire compound is built into. The tour is a fantastic opportunity to see what goes into furniture of this kind, and it’s great to meet the people who worked with Nakashima and are still working there today. Often hosted by Nakashima’s daughter, the tour is informative and inspiring for anyone with any interest in furniture and American craft.

From NYC, the trip was a quick two-hour drive to New Hope, and on that drive, I was exposed to another classic institute of the Pennsylvania suburbs: Wawa food markets. Whoa. Awesome. Wawa carries the torch of the Automat into the 21st century. It’s like combining an 7/11, a Subway sandwiches, and a self check-in kiosk at the airport.

Wawa Markets: My New Favorite Spot™

You build your sandwich not by describing it to someone, but instead via a thorough set of touch-screen button presses, with buttons for which cold-cut meats you want, which bread, cheese, and condiments you prefer. My favorite was the “More mustard” and “Less mustard” options.

And believe it or not, it’s a good sandwich!

If you didn’t cop Modern Warfare 2 at one of the many small video game shops that broke the date and sold it early, don’t worry - it’s everywhere on Tuesday. And they’re resetting all multiplayer stats on Tuesday, so you won’t be too far behind… OR WILL YOU? Everyone will know the maps better than you! Throw a panic and find a copy, soldier!

Mr. Magic, aka “Oh my God, I think I’m having a RAP ATTACK!” has died from a heart attack. R.I.P. to a true great.

The Nas quote I used in the headline is from this infinitely quotable gem, Halftime. Check out some vintage radio interviews from Mr Magic’s WBLS show, The Rap Attack, here, here, and here.

The Flavor Bin, the podcast that I do with Colby Parker Jr., has some special guests this week, as well as a leaner weigh-in at 25 minutes… Director Evan Bernard talks about DVD commentaries, the Vignelli NYC subway map, with us and tells us what it’s like to have your name checked in a Beastie Boys song. We also talk to Gerhard from the Chinatown Soccer Club and Dj db about his new book project.

“Put it in the Flavor Bin!”

Just finished uploading the first ‘Flavor Bin’, a podcast I’m doing with my friend Colby Parker Jr. Check it out over here if you’re into this sort of thing. We talk about some movies, some hip-hop, some sneakers, and the Intellivision videogame system from the 80s… If we like it, “WE THROW IT IN THE FLAVOR BIN.”

So click on ‘subscribe’, sit back, and take it in while you ride the train home or something. Watch out for that “TH-TH-TH-THROWBACK!” clip in there…

Took the F train out to Brooklyn to hit up to the Superstar DJ Record Fair, not really to buy anything, but just to get a little contact buzz off the whole thing… I already have too many records! Beautiful day, and a lot of enthusiastic people just out copping and hunting.

Rich from Etheria, DB from Breakbeat Science

Saw my man Rich from Etheria Records, one of my favorite record stores over on Avenue A for a decade, sadly now closed. Also saw Breakbeat Science man-about-town DB, and we had a nice chat about variations on international copies of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (he’s a huge collector of their stuff), and a project that’s been consuming his time for the last few years: a book about stickers, called Stuck-up Piece of Crap: A Selected History of Stickers, coming out next year on Rizzoli. It’s shaping up to be pretty definitive: he says he’s scanned over 5000 stickers and has several pieces written for it (including one by me about hip-hop stickers). Looking forward to seeing the finished project!

I’d love to tell you how I found that one great record that I’ve been wanting since I lost it at a party, but buying one would have lead to another one, and so on… So I headed back home (purposefully) empty-handed, with difficulty.

In these final weeks of summer, brace yourselves for buying dranks, being on boats, and shortys blaming it on the al-al-al-cohol… There is an AUTO-TUNE app for the iPhone. The common man can now wild out with the best of them. Use at your own risk.

BAPE kills it with these Eames side chairs with the signature camo on them… Dope. In 1999, I certainly didn’t have the clout to make actual chairs, but I did want an Eames chair with camo, so did what I could - I made a T-shirt design. Tony and I did the shirt with our SwishNYC line way back then. No hate, just sayin’.

Church Street, just below Canal. While heading over to the Westside Coffee Shop for some chicken, rice and beans (the only spot in the area after Brisas Del Caribé got turned into a fake Starbucks), I noticed the block was particularly NOT hot. Seems the little shops across from the post office are shuttered and abandoned - no fake Jordans or Bape this week. Sorry, tourists.

Vastly underrated at the time of its release, John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ was torn apart by the critics and tanked. Although it’s a remake, it’s vintage Carpenter - eerie, inexplicably well-cast with sincere performances from often-overlooked character actors, gross blood-and-guts “practical” effects (i.e. “before computers”), strangely simple and flimsy under too much scrutiny - it’s fucking awesome and gets better every time I watch it, which I did last night at 1AM as I spotted it on cable. It’s available in HD now on Blu Ray and I might just have to pull the trigger.