Transportation

My dreams of roman­tic, retro get-aways always include a fly­ing boat. I thought I was SOL for this life­time. I am not. Dornier is bring­ing the fly­ing boat back into production.

Wood on a bicy­cle. Very nice set of han­dle­bars.

South­east Asia and tiny bikes. The new world order in cus­toms. So many of the bikes fea­tured here begin with CB, but they rarely go on to fin­ish up with 100.

Or Glo­ry: 21st Cen­tu­ry Rock­ers” a book of pho­tographs by Horst A. Friedrichs of mod­ern Rock­ers. (Pub­lish­es in Sep­tem­ber; avail­able for pre-order on Ama­zon now)

Science

Tidal tur­bines. Like wind­mills for gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty from the con­tin­u­ous motion of water. I’m sor­ry for link­ing to the NYT; the com­ments are so dull.

Culture

In 1974, Philippe Petit and a few com­pa­tri­ots slung a wire between the World Trade Cen­ters and M. Petit walked it.  That sort of bal­ance and focus is unimag­in­able to most of us. Or is it? You can sign up for a work­shop to learn to walk on wire from the mas­ter. Details on your next oppor­tu­ni­ty when I can find them.

Art, Images, and Design

From Retro Age Vin­tage Fab­rics. Uphol­stery fab­ric fea­tur­ing a design by Picas­so of a lady on a horse. I can’t quite see­ing doing my sofa in this print… or maybe I can.

BTW if you like the aes­thet­ic of the pho­to­graph of the wood­en han­dle­bars on the bicy­cle there’s an entire tum­bler full of sim­i­lar­ly airy images.  Is this the pho­tog­ra­ph­er him/herself? Or some­one with a very good eye for a style curat­ing the net for us?

Chas Labor­de was a French illus­tra­tor of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The blog Adven­tures in the Print Trade takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a new book about him to show a few of his illus­tra­tions of every­day life. I keep think­ing that I want to see a graph­ic nov­el of some­thing by Fitzger­ald done this way.