thesmithian:

Rohde calls for the United States to scale back its military ambitions and focus instead on supporting moderates and an impatient rising generation of Arabs and Muslims eager to engage with the world. Rohde characterizes his book as “an effort to describe a new, more pragmatic, and more effective American approach to the Islamic world.” Such an approach is sorely needed. But he struggles to carve out a unique set of recommendations on how to do so.

more.

tattr:

JULIA REHME

Berlin, Germany

juliarehme.com

Julia Rehme Tätowierungen Facebook

Email: design@juliarehme.com

(via inkah)

guardian:

Amazing Grace Coddington: inside the world of US Vogue’s creative director

As her memoirs are published, the woman whose sense of style has shaped fashion for decades talks about race, weight, cats, and how to stand up to Anna Wintour

Photograph: Danielle Levitt for the Observer

youmightfindyourself:

Dave Eggers’s Favorite Bookstore: Green Apple Books, San Francisco

By: Dave Eggers

My brother Toph and I lived in the Laurel Village/Richmond area for a few years, and when we did, the bookstore we went to was Green Apple. Like a lot of great bookstores, on the outside, Green Apple is deceptively simple, humble, even misleading. At first glance, you’d think it was actually a fruit market. There’s the store’s name, of course. Then there’s the green awning, the global symbol for produce. There are even a few bins outside, where fruit would normally go. The first of many times I passed by, driving or walking on the other side of the street, I thought, huh, another fruit market, and moved on. But it’s a bookstore, and it’s a world-class bookstore, and people love it deeply, and I love it deeply. 

It was started by a former soldier named Richard Savoy, who in 1967 borrowed a few hundred dollars from a credit union to rent a storefront on Clement Street in San Francisco’s Richmond District—a wonderfully diverse, predominantly Chinese and Russian neighborhood also known as the Avenues. The store originally carried used paperbacks and comics and magazines, but it was successful from the start and grew steadily over the years, into new books, and collectors’ books, and every genre available, while always expanding physically, too. Into the second floor, and over into some of the neighboring storefronts; it’s gone from 700 square feet to 8,500. Not bad for an independently owned store opened by a guy with no experience in the business. 

Mr. Savoy ran the store for 42 years, until 2009, when he handed the reins over to three longtime staff members—Kevin Hunsanger, Kevin Ryan, and Pete Mulvihill—who own the store and run it together. I’ve known these guys for about 15 years now, and I have to say there are no purer book people in the world. They know their store, they know their customers, and of course they know books. They know everything Green Apple carries, which is more or less everything—new books, used books, antiquarian rarities, humor oddities, coffee-
table masterpieces, paperback thrillers. The crazy thing about Green Apple is that everything, even a cat calendar, seems far more interesting and wantable in their hands.

This is the beauty of atmosphere and careful, inspired curation. First, a few words about atmosphere. Green Apple’s floors, most of which are over a hundred years old, creak wherever you go, and when you walk upstairs, there will be small clouds of dust. The place is old, and smells old, in the best sense; it smells like paperbacks and sun and paperbacks faded in the sun. It smells of 1904, when the building was erected, and it smells of every decade and era in between. It smells of ink and leather shoes. The shelves occasionally bend in the middle. The hallways are narrow and the upstairs rooms are often small. It is a warren. It is a labyrinth. It has the feeling of the Winchester Mystery House, a building that seems to go on forever and into impossible directions and illogical spaces. But it never feels cramped. Instead, there is the feeling you get when walking into a house of worship with 50-foot ceilings and stories told in stained glass, a feeling of grandeur and possibility. 

There have been marriage proposals proffered in the store. Former employees have married each other. People, or at least one person, has died in the store (he had a heart attack, and, for the first time anyone could remember, just afterward, a bird flew in, alighted briefly, and left through the window). The store is frequented by children, by tourists, by older women seeking Patricia Highsmith, by students, by sellers of used books (the store has six full-time buyers), by passionate young readers, by last-minute holiday shoppers, and by Robin Williams. 

(Editor’s note: It too, is my favorite bookstore.)

oldfilmsflicker:

Happy Birthday John Birks ”Dizzy“ Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993)

(via braiker)

(via buzzfeed)

Source:

thehonestpalate:

Dinners of various vegetarian ingredients are a staple in my house.  Tonight’s arrangement:

• Roasted broccolini
• Sweet potato
• Black beans cooked with garlic and cilantro
• Quinoa
• Fried egg

Perfect fall dinner.  (Even though it was 79 degrees today).

(via health-heaven)

thedailywhat:

Magazine Cover of the Day: Barry Blitt, on his latest New Yorker cover: “This image seemed like a proper response to the first Presidential debate, but I’m not sure I realized how hard it is to caricature furniture.”

Could have been worse, he could have had to actually talk to the chair.

[dailybeast]

(via brooklynmutt)

watanafghanistan:

Skiing in the Hindu Kush — in Afghanistan.