Strange Closets

For the record, I’m a sucker for the Ace Hotel, which makes being uncomfortable feel so cool that I’d very likely stay there again should I ever visit Portland again. Nevertheless, in their IFC comedy series, Portlandia, Fred Armisten and Carrie Brownstein recently put on a hilarious Deuce Hotel sketch that pokes fun at the [...]

Periodically I’ll lament the fact that I’ve never really had a dog. On the other hand, it’s a lot of responsibility. For a short period, I imagined adopting a Jack Russell Terrier and even took an online test to determine if I’m a good candidate to own such a high-energy pet. The first question was [...]

My friends Arthur Swirgon and Wyatt literally live above the store. Their three story West Garfield Park building already had a large ground floor retail space in addition to the upstairs residential apartments when they bought it a few years ago, so Arthur, a dealer of mid-century modern, antiques and African American art, decided to [...]

“It’s a soulful experience to make stuff,” says John Lindsay, who co-owns New Breed Furniture Network with his business partner and mentor Alessandro Paradiso, a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology. “You bond with it.” John and Alessandro design and handcraft furniture using ancient Japanese tools and building techniques that were discarded after World War [...]

MCM Grand owners Andrew Weissmann and Brandon McCleskey suspected I would appreciate this perfectly preserved 70′s-era executive office, and they were right. Tucked away into a nondescript, now abandoned West Town building, the office boasts elaborate custom finishes, including padded paneling along one wall, a cut-panel mirrored ceiling and built-in audio-visual equipment that looks like something out [...]

Architectural Anarchy’s massive showroom opens this Friday, November 12th, and I suspect many of you will want to add it to your bucket list (or at least your weekend one). I walked through the joint three times during my recent pre-opening visit, but I still left with the nagging feeling that I’d missed something special, most [...]

Living just a few blocks from Broadway Antique Market (BAM) can be dangerous. Here’s what caught my eye when I stopped by last Friday. Broadway Antique Market. 6130 N. Broadway Ave., Chicago, IL. 773.743.5444 ↔ ↔ I regret disclosing that the sofa I love so much has a twin, because I have a feeling it’s [...]