free + flea
Ever since we discovered radio station WKCR’s annual Bach Festival years ago, we’ve can’t get through the holiday season without a big dose of the great composer. The festival features music of Johann Sebastian Bach exclusively from 3pm on Thursday 12/22 till midnight on Saturday 12/31, streamable live at the top right of their site…full of fat joy for a week, whenever you want it…
like….right….NOW!
If you are a serious Bach-o-holic, you can also download James Kibbie’s recordings of Johann Sebastian Bachs complete organ works, organized into 13 different groups for download, free.
Related posts: pates’ tapes: hours of terrific music – free
wishing you: joy!
ode to joy
pates’ tapes: hours of terrific music – free
12.23.11 |
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in celebrations, free + flea, music, resources, resources blogs + sites |
photo: todd selby
We have a fondness for rusted and/or corroded bits of steel, aged into a patina that no artist could produce (well…maybe Richard Serra). We find them lying in the street, along railroad trestles, near construction sites. They are sculptures unto themselves that often have great uses, like this stunning vintage nail – a railroad tie perhaps – used as a paperweight, spotted in a from recent photo-story from the Selby.
Our favorite rusted treasure is a three-sided box we found in the street (below, left); read more…
11.29.11 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, elements, free + flea, inside, outside, resources, resources blogs + sites |
photo: arctic plank
We never cease to be amazed at the uses people have come up for shipping pallets. Their boxy form naturally allows for building block type constructions of all kinds. DE-constructed, they afford an unpredictable variety of rustic, often beat-up woods, in roughly 2 or 3-foot lengths. The chicest application we’ve seen lately are these floors made by Arctic Plank.
Arctic Plank “upcycles” the salvaged wood boards, though doesn’t say exactly what that process entails. It looks to us like they sand, stain and finish the boards to create a unique patina. To deal with the short lengths of wood, they smartly cut the planks to make in zigzag, herringbone or parquet patterns. These look much more finished than aligning boards vertically, which makes for a rag-tag look that has a completely different kind of charm. Arctic Plank‘s floors got us thinking about just what the possibilities for shipping pallet floors might be… read more…
11.03.11 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, floors, free + flea, hard, how-to, inside, repurpose, resources |
photo: david saltman
“People want to make a million dollars from my books,” Mark Givre says in the pause between rumbles from the elevated subway trains passing over his head. “They’re looking for rare first editions. But I just want to get people to read.”
Givre says he’s on his second life now, and it’s an improvised one. For the past three years he has outlasted Borders, Barnes & Noble and other bricks-and-mortar bookstores with his low-overhead alfresco nook on the corner of 231st Street and Broadway in New York City. read more…
09.19.11 |
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in free + flea, identity, outside, paths + processes, people, reclaim, resources, sightings, stores |
Studio 360
Driving around the web recently, we found two swell free diversions for this weekend.
Meanwhile, the Library of Congress has created a digital National Jukebox from their archives of songs released by the Victor Talking Machine Company (between 1901 and 1925 (with the promise of more to come). Genres range widely 0pera, blues, yodeling, jazz, and include some extremely rare recordings, like Enrico Caruso singing Serenata (below), one of many from the great singer. read more…
06.10.11 |
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in cheap + great, family + friends, free + flea, inspiration blogs + sites, music, projects + play, resources |
We’ve just gotten lost….in the Yale Digital Commons, the wondrous archive that they’ve recently started making available online, for anyone to browse and USE without limits. We’re talking seriously amazing images here, from Brassai’s famous images of Paris and artists in their studio to obscure, rarely-seen snapshots and children’s book drawings by Andy Warhol. So far, 250,000 images have been uploaded to their new collection catalog, with more on the way.
The Yale treasures that are now accessible under the new policy are as wide-ranging as the collections themselves and include such diverse items as a small limestone stela with hieroglyphic inscription from the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a Mozart sonata in the composer’s own hand from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a 15th-century Javanese gold kris handle from the Indo-Pacific collection of Yale University Art Gallery and a watercolor by William Blake from the collection of prints and drawings in the Yale Center for British Art.
We instantly fell into their photography archive, wandering by Matisse Drawing a Nude Model at Villa d’Alésia read more…
05.26.11 |
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in free + flea, resources, resources blogs + sites |
We found this compelling image on one of Tara Mann’s blogs, and followed it to photographer Jeanie Choi’s Tumblr. Don’t know what the story is but IMAGINED what a funny thing it would be to have a party and offer guests their choice of glasses (sans lenses, perhaps) as an instant change of identity plus conversation starter. (With lenses, they’d give guests a change of view.) You can find cheap vintage glasses at flea markets and thrift stores.
03.01.11 |
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in celebrations, free + flea, resources |
Map Envelope is a free online app that allows you to print paper envelopes lined with a Google Maps location of your choice, tagged with your message. You print the envelope, cut it out, fold and send; and whomever you send it to gets to open a lovely surprise.
We thought Map Envelope would be perfect for invitations or announcements of events…and our friend Leslie Koch, the visionary director of The Trust for Governors Island came to mind. Over several years, she’s led the development of the 172 acre island in New York Harbor into a unique public space, with bicycles and hammocks, stupendous views, an organic farm, and mind-expanding interactive events and art happenings. Since the island was a naval base and off-limits to the public for many years, a lot of people STILL don’t know about it. We’d love to do a giant mailing of this Governors Island map-envelope to spread the word.
BTW: Governors Island’s 2010 season ends of October 10th (it will re-open for visitors next June). There’s a free ferry…
You can watch a video about it here.
09.12.10 |
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in community, free + flea, outside, projects + play, resources, resources blogs + sites |
Leonarda Da Vinci
We’ve lost track of the inventions and products we’ve designed in our heads, or drawn, or even rigged a rough version of for our own use. We are, at heart, secret inventors, plotting ways to make the things we’ve looked for and can’t seem to find in stores or online. We love stories of ordinary souls, untrained designers, who actually brought their brilliant imaginings to fruition – making a prototype, figuring out the steps to having something fabricated, and then selling it – and wondered what the process is…the steps along the way.
Today, we found a free online guide for inventors – modeled on a FAC – from International Design Consultancy, a UK design consultancy, that runs through each step of the process from Assessing and Protecting Your Idea to patenting it to funding it. Even though it’s meant to be a subtle promotion for IDC, we found that the little guide has an amazing amount of good information, and helped to clarify our thinking.
via Core 77
09.12.10 |
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in free + flea, how-to, paths + processes, resources |
We were walking through Prospect Park in Brooklyn one twilight evening when we heard the mellow sound of saxaphones reverberating “a capella” through the trees. We came upon two men standing in a leafy clearing. We stopped to listen, then asked where they were from. The confident man strolling slowly with his alto soprano sax had been a professional musician in Africa and was teaching his friend to play, in the park, where no neighbors would be disturbed. His friend tentatively played notes scribbled on a religious pamphlet propped on the side of his case; the title of his tune “Music in the Air”… read more…
06.15.10 |
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in art, community, free + flea, outside, paths + processes, resources, sightings |
Ellen Silverman
If you start with the idea that the holidays are about really giving a part of yourself rather than STUFF, and spreading joy, and celebrating what we have, you instantly start to eliminate the nonessential and stressful. These are the things that are more obligation than fun – too exhausting, too expensive, or just TOO MUCH – like shopping for the perfect gift for too many people, or giving the perfect party with a million homemade hors d’oeuvres. Where do we get these notions of how the holidays are supposed to be?
I’m all for deconstructing any part of the holidays that drives you crazy, to strip it down to its heart. read more…
11.30.09 |
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in cheap + great, family + friends, free + flea, gifts, materials, strategies |
Phil Mansfield for the N.Y. Times
The N.Y.Times recently ran a story about a couple who bought a house in Upstate New York for $95,000 and fixed it up, beautifully, for $10,000, using pure elbow grease and a eye for scavenged and second-hand stuff.
The best nugget of info, to me, was about how to score serious finds on Craigslist: “Using Craigslist successfully means scrolling through the listings every day, not once a month,” read more…
07.21.09 |
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in buildings, cool spaces, free + flea, reimagine, solutions |
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