Łódź's today and Holyoke's tomorrow?

Łódź: It's David Lynch's favorite city.

This weekend I will be taking a day trip to the Polish city of Łódź. Having done a thorough scan of it's architectural and cultural treasures... I came across a very interesting development: a converted mill complex taken to a whole new level by Jestico + Whiles.

The project(s): Centrum Manufaktura and Andels Hotel Lodz look absolutely stunning, stylish, and very modern. Although they aren't pushing the envelope too far, it's still impressive from a design standpoint.

This type of brick factory structure is an abundant commodity in the city of Holyoke. Should this be the interior design standard for future mill conversions in downtown Holyoke? How great would that be!

As for Holyoke, in the meantime, Open Square is carrying the torch and has a similar mixed-use vision. As the market heats up we can all hope that there will be many rad converted factories.

How about that data-center?

LA Weekly Web Awards

I was recently informed that LA weekly awarded Slash a Golden Floppy-disk for "Best MySpace Page" at the LA Web Awards.



Here at Ten Minute Media, we are super stoked when a project we carefully handcrafted gets recognized in such a way! You can see the award-winning profile here, http://www.myspace.com/slash

Increase Efficiency, Reduce Paper, and Travel!

This year I want to become as organized, efficient, and as digital/mobile as humanly possible. On top of that goal, in a few weeks I'll be leaving for Warsaw, where I'll be living for a few months, so I decided to jump full-speed into some useful, innovative, and entrepreneurial-focused services. Here's the list...

Increase Organization / Reduce Paper.

• EarthClassMail - Imagine being able to access your postal mail in the same fashion you check your e-mail, all while you're free to travel around the world. Sounds far-fetched, but it's all possible. If that's your cut of tea... check out EarthClassMail.
  
  
• Pixily - With Pixily, you can send all your existing paper documents and within a few days have a living/breathing, search-able archive of your papers. The only challenge is what to do with that ugly file cabinet now that it's obsolete. This start-up is based in the innovative state of Massachusetts. On another note, if you just want to focus on your receipts and business cards, Shoeboxed might be more your match.
  

Organize and Track Expenses.

• Expensify - Import your expenses/receipts, and generate IRS-friendly expense reports.
  

Access your data from anywhere.

• JungleDisk - Local storage is so two years ago. With JungleDisk you can store, sync, back-up and access all of your data on the cloud. It's a must-have!
  
  
• Google Apps - Online applications such as Gmail for Business and Google Docs are genius.
  

Manage Invoices.

• Harvest - Being able to quickly invoice clients, monitor time, and track month-to-month performance is a piece of cake with Harvest, an easy-to-use online invoicing system.
  

Voice-related Services.

• Google Voice - Check your voice-mail just like your e-mail, have a single number forward to all of your lines, send/receive/store your voice-mails and texts... and many other features.
  
  
• Grasshopper - Press "1" for Sales... Press "2" for Tech Support... Grasshopper is a smart virtual phone system with a major focus on entrepreneurs and small business. Another great start-up from MA.

If this is what we have available today, just imagine what will be possible a decade from now.

Another small Renaissance City: Telč

On the same cue as Zamość, I came across another small Renaissance City in Eastern Europe by the name of Telč in the southern regions of the Czech Republic.



Telč's street scape is enhanced by dynamic gables, continuous arcades, and impressive sgraffito façades. It's a much deserving World Heritage site.




I'm eager to get over there this spring when I'm living in Warsaw.

Zamość?

On an after-work research spree, I came across a beautiful aerial view of Zamość and was excited to find a dense, miniature city plan. I never knew much about this small town in Poland, but this picture along with images of the market colorful Armenian merchant houses that line the market square, inspired to me to find out more.



According to UNESCO, Zamość is a "perfect example of a late-16th-century Renaissance town", not only in terms of Poland but for the entire of world! It's supposedly one of the only untouched Renaissance cities on the planet. It has an interesting story too: Jan Zamoyski, an extremely wealthy Polish magnate, had tremendous sums of money to burn so he hired a reknown architect to create what they considered to be an "ideal city" and a capital to bypass paying certain trade tariffs. Clever. When all was said and done: the outcome was vivid, unique and awe-inspiring.


Zamość... it might even be more adorable than Cieszyn. Hopefully on my next trip, I'll have the opportunity to explore Zamość.

Holyoksterdam!

Welcome to a City of beautiful canals, elegrant architecture, cobblestone street(s), and loads of history. Let your imagination get to work as to what Holyoksterdam could be. It's cool being a "fossil Venice" but it's damn cool being a Holyoksterdam.


Just some rambling... maybe I'll put my somewhat facetious proposal sometime.

Story in Boston Magazine

Young Gun: Would You Let This Kid Save Your Town? Brendan Ciecko made his name—and a boatload of money—as the music industry's go-to website designer. Now that he's finally old enough to buy beer, he's decided to take on a slightly less sexy project: remaking his hardscrabble hometown.

The story hits newsstands today but you can read it online at BostonMagazine.com. I hope you enjoy.

Innovate Holyoke

Last Wednesday, Governor Deval Patrick unveiled the next steps for the massive high-performance computing center planned for downtown Holyoke. I'm glad to say that things are moving forward, and quickly at that. The HPCC should be completed by 2011. At the press conference, I had the honor of speaking at the podium to share my enthusiasm and walk everyone through the project's online presence. The event and various details are outlined here and all the latest news can be found at InnovateHolyoke.com, which was launched by my company, Ten Minute Media. With the computing center, Victory Theatre, CanalWalk, Mountain Park, and a few other new developments, noticeable progress is definitely being made.

P.S: Holyoke has a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France...

The Wodka Wars

"Vice Scandinavia correspondent Ivar Berglin travels to the front lines of the Vodka/Wodka Wars – and discovers that the tortured history of Russian-Polish relations can be saved in a bottle."



At first glance, I thought this would be a comedic piece about vodka, but as the documentary played on it revealed a powerful story of Polish nationalism, identity, history - and of course, the rightful origin of wodka. I was very impressed by this video.

Note: When I was in Kraków a few years ago, there were no people walking around in giant beer costumes. Maybe next time?

Jim Jefferies in Boston

Last Friday, Elizabeth and I headed to Boston to see emerging comedian Jim Jefferies. He has been the talk of the Edinburgh Fringe / Comedy Festival, regarded as the UK's most offensive comic, and he's also a client - I was very excited to see him live and say hello.

Before the show we had dinner at Gaslight Brasserie, a French bistro in the South End. The decor was very similar to that of Pastis in NYC (very, very similar menu) and Kingston Station in Boston - covered in shiney white subway tile, a floor of mosiac tile, antique lighting fixtures. After dinner, we walked over towards the BCA to pick up our tickets and meet with some friends at the Beehive, which was right next to the theatre.

After that, we went over the theatre to see Jim Jefferies.

I've seen lots of his older material, and recent HBO Special... I must say, his current stand-up routine tops any I've seen or heard so far. Witty punchlines, intense stories, dirty and clever, no boundries. You must hear it for yourself.

He'll be back on the East Coast in September at Carolines in NYC. I might need to experience his live show once again, it's worth it.

Turks Head Building

Although, I haven't been to Providence in a few months... I feel it's important to confess my admiration for the iconic Turks Head Building. Designed by Howells & Stokes and constructed in 1913, the Turks Head Building is one of New England's coolest buildings. It has classical touches, beautiful proportions, and it's one of the only V-shaped (not flatiron, but V!) structures around. My note to aspiring architects: if you want win people over (or just me) just carve up a block of granite into an Ottoman Turk sultan's head and attach it to the façade.

Eccentric Architecture

Here is a small round-up of my favorite examples of eccentric architecture. I decided to consciously avoid including obvious buildings, anything by Gaudí, and items covered by other sources. I haven't been to Belgium yet, but have personally explored out in and around the "Crooked House" in the beautiful city of Sopot on the Baltic coast and also checked out Otto Wagner's floral ceramic covered Majolika Haus while in Vienna. As you can see, I'm largely drawn to art nouveau / jugendstil.


't Bootje
Architect: Frans Smet-Verhas
Location: Antwerp, Belgium



Krzywy Domek
Architect: Szotynscy Zaleski
Location: Sopot, Poland



Maison Saint-Cyr
Architect: Gustave Strauven
Location: Bruxelles, Belgium



Majolika Haus
Architect: Otto Wagner
Location: Vienna, Austria

Esser - "Satisfied"

This is an incredible song by English musician Esser. The video takes inspiration from Georges Méliès's early film masterpiece "Le Mélomane". Great song, great video.

"High Tech for a Historic City" Op-Ed on Xconomy

"High Tech for a Historic City—A 21-Year-Old Web Entrepreneur’s View of the Big Computing Center Planned for His Home Town" - Read More at Xconomy.com

Day Trip to Albany

Yesterday, Elizabeth and I took a day trip to Albany, the capital of New York. We haven't been there in ages, so we decided it would be a nice place to explore on a nice sunny day. They have an incredibly beautiful State Capitol building. charming housing stock, and a fascinating history. We started in downtown to examine the city's civic buildings and skyscrapers, all top-notch. We more or less had the entire district to ourselves - we saw maybe 2 or 3 people over the course of the first hour. We talked to a nicely-dressed older gentleman who has lived in Albany since 1954 and he said it's always like this; empty. Either way, we were very impressed with the architecture, public spaces, walkability, and surprises around every corner. We took a quick tour of the Albany Institute of History and Art to learn some more about how the city, it's history, culture and to also see some mummies.

After a quick stroll through one of the city's many urban parks, we made our way up to Lark Street. There were a handful of people walking around up this way. We stopped at Crisan Bakery & Edible Art Gallery for some tea and pastries - the cafe had a clean modern interior with some touches of Romanian folk art. After that, we walked a few miles up and down the residential streets of that district. I must say, this city has some of the most beautiful, vivid, historic housing stock out of any Northeast city I've been too, especially for it's small population. Endless blocks of lovely rowhouses. Most of the buildings are the same turn of the century townhouses you'd find in NYC - brownstone, stoops and elegant cornices galore!

We also stopped in Troy, a neighboring city. From the highway, the city looks like your ordinary run-down industrial city, but once you get downtown it's a completely different story. I was completely blown away with the townhouses that surrounded Washington Park. There are tons of eclectic buildings throughout the historic district. Just ask the New York Times, they claim that Troy has "one of the most perfectly preserved 19th-century downtowns in the US" - and to that, from what I've seen, I strongly agree. Although, we saw many vacant storefronts, it seems that many new businesses were opening up. Similar to Albany, we only saw a handful of people walking around the city. Where was everyone on this sunny Saturday afternoon? Hopefully next time we visit, we'll see more life on the streets.

Urban Waterslides

I stumbled upon a great commercial for some credit card company in UK that involves water slides winding through the urban scape. I'd love to connect my office to my residence, which are a less than half-a-mile away from each other, via a water slide. Hopefully Holyoke's building commissioner would grant me a permit.



When the super rad Northampton/Amherst Subway gets built out... maybe they'll create a special hub that connects the underground rails to my water slide system.