l’hotel particulier: the quite paris i love

just back from paris and really enjoyed my stay at this little hotel which was originally owned by the hermes family. l’hotel particulier montmartre is a secluded and peaceful little hotel in montmartre designed by morgane rousseau, just off the beautiful rue junot. it feels more like a country house than a hotel, the amenities are minimal, no restaurant, minibar, etc. (at least at the time I stayed, but we are told there is now), but if you are used to living in the city, it’s great to be able to come home at the end of the day and have cocktails in its quiet garden. they also serve a lovely breakfast. the hotel is accessed via a passageway off of rue junot, just a couple doors down from a house adolph loos built for tristan tzara, and if i’m not mistaken there is a robert mallet stevens house on the same street. a five minute walk up the street leads you to tourist crazy sacre coeur, but the area around the hotel is quiet and residential and the streets are lined with beautiful homes. highly recommended. by kc

summer selecta at 675 hudson

675 has been known in some circles, for over a decade, for a series of wild and unexpected pop-up shindigs. new york times once made the error of writing it up in 2008 causing repeated raids by new york’s finest. the digs stopped, but once in a while the doors open to a certain “friends and family”… transient dj’s, the ceft coalition, known to have frequented the premises was once again present this summer. not quite sure what was more impressive the music selection or the horse they came on. vintage norton courtesy of shadi and company. by xy

$6,000 iphone 4 by gresso


you have to love the new term “luxury” which roughly translates into “how to sell crap to the nouveau rich who cant tell the difference”. gresso a company that materialized from vapor in 2005 specializes in stealing a brilliance piece of technology (created by some one else, in this case apple), and sticking their crap on the back in order to offer it to “no idea whom”. in this particular case they claim to offer mechanical time pieces embedded in the back of the iphone 4. i mean first off the phone itself will be dated technology in less than a year and second what kind of a true horological connoisseur would actually go for that? you think you’ll invest in a patek that remotely looks like this? and for that matter costs so little considering there are 6 movements? unfortunately there is no saying how many idiots walk this earth as there is no twit counter on gresso’s site, but the locations they sell at will hint at the migration of such idiots perhaps: they apparently reside or frequent miami, vietnam, arminia, iran (looks like the sanctions are working as planned), ukraine, and of course moscow and 19 other cities in russia. if you already happen to have one, we highly advise you to use it at home and ideally at night time…. preferably in the basement. if you don’t, for good measures, be sure to ask your russian boyfriend to stick to depleted caviar. by dd