PRINTED MATTER EXHIBIT.

Last Friday’s trip to NYC kicked off a fantastic weekend. The unseasonably warm evening played host to a new exhibit at Printed Matter, one of the city’s best bookstores. Megawords Magazine partnered with the well known shop for a show entitled, Hi, We Made A Magazine for You. Good friends and great atmosphere blended seamlessly with the Magazine’s authentically inspiring ephemera which was layered on walls, stacked in piles and captured in glass displays. We’re long time fans of the publication and highly recommend visiting the exhibit if you’re in NYC.

As Megawords describes: “Our mission is simple: to document our surroundings, experience, to have a voice free from the noise of commercialization and competing novelties, and to create an open and active dialogue between Megawords and the community at large. We have self-published twelve free issues, broadcast a weekly internet radio show, and organized multiple events and performances under the banner of Megawords. With time came positive feedback from a diverse audience and a strong realization that this project had a profound impact.” Click Read More for additional information, photos and video.

Check out Megawords at Printed Matter – on display until April 3, 2010.

Location Details

Printed Matter
195 10th Ave
New York, NY 10011

Credits

Shot & Edited by Taj Reid
Music by MF DOOM

MEGAWORDS MAGAZINE
PRINTED MATTER

INFECTING THE CITY
TIM BURTON AT MOMA NYC
INSITU

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TRAVEL CHRONICLES.

We’re excited to present our latest effort within the Travel Chronicles Series. In the past we highlighted how travel shapes the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative people worldwide. And now we’re expanding our editorial direction to include the stories behind the creative spaces people visit when traveling.

First up is our favorite shopping destination in Philadelphia – Sugarcube. Curating a timeless mix of vintage and contemporary clothing seems impossible, but founders Elisa Burrato and Edward Dormer do it with sophistication and ease. Through a casual conversation they discuss their history, their commitment to Philadelphia, and a few other intangible ingredients that make their retail operation special. Whether it’s the interior build-out constructed entirely from reclaimed wood, or their amazing customer service – you quickly realize that a visit to Sugarcube isn’t just about shopping, it’s much more experiential. Click Read More to watch the video and view additional photos.

Credits:

Interview by Taj Reid
Photography by Anthony Smyrski
Video Editing by Jesse Olanday

Location Details

124 North 3rd Street, Olde City
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106 USA
Telephone 215–238–0825
Visit Sugarcube Online

Open:
Monday–Saturday 12–7 pm
Sunday 12–5 pm | EST

SPRING IN MONTREAL
SOUND & ENERGY
NEXT AMERICAN CITY

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. In this edition we follow Anthony Smyrski as he visits Montreal.

Anthony is an art director, filmmaker, and independent book/magazine publisher, collaborating with an international clientele in both the cultural and commercial sectors. He is the art director for Next American City magazine, and has worked with publishers such as Thames and Hudson, DAP, powerhouse and Gingko Press. More recently Anthony’s firm has worked with us on City Notes and Travel Chronicles. We’re excited to present his latest excursion to Montreal as our Travel Correspondent. Click play to view.

Travel Chronicles: Troy Herion on Sound & Energy
Travel Chronicles: Diana Lind on American Cities
Travel Chronicles: Refreshing Objectivity with Eric Weiss

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Troy Herion.

Based in Philadelphia, Troy works as a composer, performer, improviser, musical director and sound designer. His music brings together interests in fields relating to biology, metaphysics, traditional cultures, drama, and improvisation. Troy’s compositions include two Italian operas premiered in Italy, symphonic and chamber works, and improvised scores. His theater collaborations have also included music for Pig Iron Theatre, The Wilma Theater, The Arden Theatre, and Azuka Theater. Most recently he accepted the Roger Sessions Fellowship to attend Princeton University where he will earn a Ph.D. in music composition. We recently caught up with Troy in his home in South Philadelphia to discuss sound, energy and his travels. Click Read More for the full article.

I graduated from college with a degree in composition. So I’m a musician. It’s one of those strange things because there aren’t a lot of people my age who are getting degrees in classical music or composition. But I should say that I’m not a freak; it’s not like I listen to Mozart and that’s the only thing, I listen to all sorts of stuff. I grew up with rock bands and played in rock bands, so a lot of these elements that are common to all of us are in music that I write today and a lot of other modern composers’ music. Anything from electronic music to dance music to hip hop to all sorts of things, all sorts of influences.

When you work in something like classical music that has such a long history, you’re answering to all these great masterpieces that have been done in the past. You know, I love Beethoven or whatever but what am I going to do? Write a symphony and are people going to actually listen to it instead of listening to Beethoven? Is an orchestra going to practice my piece instead of practicing Beethoven? So there’s this kind of search that people go through to find relevant parts of your culture that you want to express that’s not necessarily in the form of a symphony or something like that. I guess this is what ties into travel for me.

In college I took a world music class and I’ll admit to being really skeptical of it. I wasn’t that interested in traditional African music or traditional Japanese music but after I heard it I think I sensed the sincerity of the music that we miss out on. Growing up in suburban United States of America, everything kind of has a corporate tinge to it. It’s pared down to three minutes and only all the catchy stuff. So listening to traditional music that goes back hundreds of years, sometimes thousands of years, caught my interest. I would study music like that and it is influencing the music I write. I’m trying to find clear and honest representations or expressions.

I have friends that’ll say music sucks now, you can’t find good stuff anywhere. I think that it’s more the case that the stuff that’s easy to come by is obviously supported by corporations and mainstream culture tends to be the stuff that’s formulaic. But there is so much diversity even in the United States. And I think that even though it’s strange to say this, taking a world music class in college and opening my ears to things that I really wrote off – I even consider myself an open minded listener, I listened to Bach when I thought Bach was all the same – I finally figured it out that it had something to offer me.

I think that’s the same thing in the Untied States, so when I travel you know you do see the same thing but I think because of not being able to speak the language – for instance when I went to Bali I barely spoke Balinese. Because I didn’t understand what the signs said and I didn’t listen to the radio, I was very much tuned into the stuff that is folk. So it’s not to say that they don’t have that mainstream culture that’s formulaic, they do. I learned about that especially in Bali – it threatens their traditions – but you know it might be that because you are witnessing it as a traveler and are not tied into mainstream culture, they haven’t found a way to plug you in yet because you’re a temporary visitor. You’re a little bit more open to those folk elements and the real diversity. That diversity is present in the United States. Right on the street, I’m sure that there are plenty of people doing crazy things in their basement on synthesizers that would never make it on the radio but might be really cool.

When I went to college I wanted to be a physics major, and the reason I wanted to be a physics major is because I looked at college as a magical place. I just go there and tell them what I want them to teach me and I’m going to come out knowing it. It’s just a matter of time. I did the same thing when I transferred from physics to composition, I thought “I’m going to be able to write for an entire orchestra by spending four years doing this. And they’re gonna teach me how to do it.” It’s an ideal, obviously. You strengthen your muscles, your ear muscles, and you can start to hear two things at a time, three things at at a time and maybe four but it’s not as though a composer is able to calculate far more than the average person. It’s still matter of technique. That’s how you create complex things. You do it little by little and you figure out how to combine the elements and after a while, probably as in almost any other profession, you can learn by osmosis. I just listened and listened and listened and listened as much as I could to the point that yeah, it would play back completely.

As a kid I’d be at the playground or something, maybe waiting for my mom to pick me up, and I’d be bored and I’d be thinking about music. A thought would go through my head; “How accurately can I replicate the song that I’m listening to?” In elementary school I remember thinking that I could only hear part of songs, I couldn’t fully hear how the drums and the bass sounded. After studying music for a long time you can hear more detail and sometimes you can hear the whole thing at once, depending on how complicated it is.

In Bali there was a cremation that I saw of the old world king. The last time they had a cremation, which is the biggest ceremony you can have in Bali, was in the 60s. People from all over Indonesia came to see this and of course tourists and it was the biggest spectacle that I’ve ever seen but it had that element of folksy-ness to it. It had an honesty and an element of danger. They didn’t know anything about crowd control, it was just some guy with a whistle and a million people running down the street. And you basically had to jump in, it was like running with the bulls. Anyway, it was a pretty intense experience. It was a connection with people that I’ve never really felt before. And a spectacle. They have these wooden towers built with the body of the King inside, they burn these towers at the end of the ceremony. You see these 80 or 90 foot towers tear down a village street with tens of thousands of people running in front of them trying not to be trampled and you’re in the middle of the whole thing. That sticks with you.

Travel Chronicles: Diana Lind on American Cities
Travel Chronicles: Refreshing Objectivity with Eric Weiss
Travel Chronicles: Expanding Perceptions with Jessica Gueco

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Diana Lind.

Diana is editor and publisher of Next American City, a Philadelphia-based national magazine about urban sustainability. Prior to working at the magazine she was a freelance writer for
Architectural Record and authored the book Brooklyn Modern: Architecture, Interiors & Design. We visited the offices of Next American City to talk with Diana about her work, travel in America and what makes a city great.

The focus of Next American City is essentially promoting environmentally, economically and socially sustainable cities. So we’re looking at responsible planning, good public policy, interesting arts and culture, ways of keeping people in cities and making cities more prosperous. I started about a year ago working on just the content and then this year I’ve really been working on improving our foundational support. We’re a non-profit organization and so in addition to publishing the magazine we have a lot of events around the country and we’re trying to connect people in different cities around the country who are grassroots activists. People who are interested in improving their city, whether they’re working on transportation ideas or they’re trying to improve job opportunities. And so we have these events to bring people out to discuss pressing issues in their city. Next American City is trying to serve as a hub for that. Increasingly I’m wearing a couple different hats, working on the editorial which is growing a lot more from just the magazine and going on the website, and also trying to grow this networking aspect of the organization.

I think it’s the critical mass of cultural institutions that are the tipping point for changing a city. I can say from having lived in Brooklyn for awhile, there’s a very similar phenomenon that happened there. What was the tipping point for Brooklyn was when people started to prefer Brooklyn to Manhattan. That was when it became ‘Brooklyn has arrived’ as a cultural center. I think that when people start living in Philadelphia by choice- not because they’re in school here or they grew up here- but it’s really the choice to live in that city- that’s the tipping point. And I think a lot of it has to do with bringing in a lot of institutions whether it’s cultural or government think tanks proving that Philadelphia is a place where all these things can happen.

One of the most unforgettable travel experiences was when I went on assignment to a house in Chile. It was this coastal house just north of Concepción which is the second largest city in Chile. It was a house on a beautiful spot facing the Pacific ocean and you couldn’t see any other houses around. I was there with a close friend of mine and two architects who were a young married couple. They invited us in for a weekend just to spend time at the house and there was nothing really to do other than look out on the Pacific ocean and be among the wild vegetation that grew on the rocks.  We would just kind of go sit on a rock and stare out and I think that was really unique in that it’s not the kind of vacation that you can actually buy.  It was something created by these people for our entertainment for the weekend. It was really beautiful.

Travel Chronicles: Refreshing Objectivity with Eric Weiss
Travel Chronicles: Expanding Perceptions with Jessica Gueco
Travel Chronicles: A Conversation with Brittany Kleinman

Next American City
About Diana

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Eric Weiss.

Filmmaker and designer, Eric Weiss has had the following job titles: designer, art director, writer, creative director, editor-at-large, production designer, filmmaker, and director. He spent a couple years in advertising and editorial, a couple years touring with and filming different bands, and is now making short and feature length films, videos, and commercials. These intriguing assignments have allowed him to travel the world and see things and places that, as he bluntly puts it, “slowly polished away the anger of my youth.” We sat down with him at the studio of Smyrski Creative to talk about how travel has changed his perspective as a designer and filmmaker. Click Read More for the full interview.

Design in general is all interrelated. It’s communication. I kind of see everything as a layout to begin with. I used to work in magazines, you are doing a layout and it was this progression of a story. As I moved into film I saw it as the same thing, just trying to get a point across, to get a story. That became the objective, instead of one photo it became twenty-four frames of photos. I’ve always felt like an observer anyway. I don’t know if that’s just a way of saying I’m passive aggressive but I’ve always felt like I’ve just been looking at things. I’ve been really fortunate to find myself in a lot of situations throughout the years. I’ve gotten to travel a ton and witness things firsthand that border on ludicrous I would think. For example, ending up in Bahrain and a day later I’m having dinner with Michael Jackson on a private jet. Those kinds of things are a little weird. Weird no matter where you are.

I did what a lot of kids do. I went to college and got the grab bag education of a Liberal Arts degree. Looking back, I probably could have used a little more direction. I think it’s like when you get a six-pack of assorted beers and you just have one of each and you’re like “ah, that was good, maybe I should keep going.” But by then you’re $40,000 in the hole. I was set out to do this kind of middle-management life. I was fortunate enough to get stopped in my tracks and realized that I’d always liked painting and I’d always liked drawing.

I took an internship with a design firm for five bucks an hour and it just blew my mind that you could do all this stuff . This was the early nineties when the Mac was really taking control of design and everyone was going from pasteups and stencil to desktop publishing and design. I was so amazed by this world. My first design job was designing credit cards and my first project was a cat enthusiast credit card. It was awesome. I worked with a photographer and I had to do a photo shoot with kittens. I learned all about the different types of cats; we had different yarns, it was really amazing. I had to cast the cats. The people from the bank, they were giving me the demographics, the people they were trying to target market, saying “We are aiming for cat enthusiasts. Be careful, don’t confuse that with cat fanciers”. We had some trouble with tabby cats but all in all it was good. You’ll talk to some designers and the first thing they ever designed was a flier for some obscure punk band who went on to be well known. My first job was a cat enthusiast credit card! I just saw what I could do. I saw the power of an image. And the fact that that thought derived from doing a cat credit card is amazing.

When I had my own design company I was my own boss. But I still had a mug that said ‘My boss is a prick’. When you’re your own boss it kind of sucks, you get no one to complain to. You’re at fault all the time. It ran me ragged but it was a learning experience.

Everything I did was another step towards film. I always thought film was magical and movies were amazing in what they could do and where they could take you. You sat there and you watched these things and I was always amazed at how someone could think like that. How someone could put their dreams and stories on film because it’s such a process and it’s so amazing. You don’t just walk in with a camera and that’s it, it’s years of your life and I was just so amazed by that. And that attracted to me to go from design into film. I said “I could do this.”

I’ve been to Ghana three times on different jobs. The first time I went there I went to an arts market. I always had seen these movie posters that are really famous in Ghana, they’re hand painted movie posters. People take rice sacks and they sew them together and paint these lavish, amazing movie posters. For the smaller villages that don’t have a movie theater they play movies on a VCR instead, and it’s usually a movie that’s been out ten years or something, an action movie. The artists probably have never seen the movie so they just take what they can from the box cover or what they’ve heard to make the poster, so there are these amazing interpretations of what these movies are. They’re pretty violent and pretty awesome. I purchased a couple of posters from this guy in a market. One of them I think was Jean Claude Van Damme with an explosion and tanks and stuff. It’s in my living room.

I went back to Ghana three years later and I’m walking in the market and the same guy sees me and says “Eric I have more posters!”. “Cool” I said, “I’m staying at this hotel and instead of me standing looking at all this stuff come to the hotel and I’ll check them out.” I figure he’s not going to come. That night in the hotel, the front desk rings and says there’s a man there for me. I come downstairs and the movie poster guy is there and he says “I brought you some posters”. We go outside and he has hundreds of these posters all out in the courtyard. They’re not small, they’re roughly three feet by six feet. So the entire courtyard of the hotel is covered in this amazing blanket of amazingly painted movie posters for movies that I would probably never admit I’ve seen. Like Child’s Play 3 and Phantasm 2. They’re awesome and it blew my mind but then it scared the crap out of me because I didn’t have any money. I felt so bad. I borrowed some cash and I bought a couple posters. Child’s Play, some Indian flick and King Kong. It was cool.

Travel Chronicles: Expanding Perceptions with Jessica Gueco
Travel Chronicles: A Conversation with Brittany Kleinman
Travel Chronicles: Impressions from a Writer, Matt Schwartz

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Jessica Gueco.

Jessica is a master multi-tasker. While balancing an insatiable hunger for expression, she’s found a way to get things done. A quick run down of her bio reveals that she’s the store buyer for Fatlace, project manager for an interactive design firm, manages 5 blogs and keeps a keen sense of fashion while juggling endeavors. We’ve been following her work and influence for some time now. Today we’re excited to feature her in this edition of travel chronicles. Watch the video above and click Read More for additional info from the conversation.

My parents really wanted me to travel to as many places as possible. I didn’t quite get it, why they wanted to go to all these random places when we were young. But now, after I was able to travel, I understood the importance. My mother often said, “You need to travel before you graduate, or before you work.” It’s good to see that the world is big, but small at the same time.

When I got into college an opportunity arose for me to study abroad in Budapest and people ask me, “Why Budapest, Hungary?” I studied politics because that was my major. And then I lived there for like a semester and some change… It was the best experience of my life.

Fashion for all the countries I visited in Europe is nothing like how it is here in the States. No one was involved in the hype. It’s just who they were, it’s the culture they were in. If they were hip-hop, they really expressed hip-hop. If they were skaters, they really expressed that. They didn’t care about what other people thought, it was just who they were. They didn’t care if Kanye was wearing something—it was what they felt like they should be wearing. I think that really awed me.

In Amsterdam they had this style and this grace, and I don’t think it could be matched anywhere. Barcelona as well… I was there during the summer, and their style is just flawless without any effort.

I think it has come around full circle though, because when I first witnessed that in prior years, I thought, “Okay, this is who they are, they don’t care about what’s around them.” And then, back here in the States, it’s like your style is addressed by whoever the celebrities are wearing. Now I see that in Europe, they’re starting to pick up on it, and even in Japan, they’re starting to pick up on it. I think it’s really changed because I don’t think they’re even aware that their fashion has really molded the way we dress here in the States. Now they’re hopping onto the whole internet fiasco, and so I think it’s come around full circle… it’s pretty crazy.

Fatlace Store
Jessica on Fatlace
Jessica on it’s design related
Jessica and Twilight
C to the JL
The Adventures of Yoshi
Jessica’s Lookbook.nu

Travel Chronicles: A Conversation with Brittany Kleinman
Travel Chronicles: Impressions from a Writer, Matt Schwartz
Travel Chronicles: Experiencing Photography with Aiko

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Brittany Kleinman.

Brittany Kleinman is a practicing designer and avid traveler whose passion lies in responding to the world around her by creating designs that find a balance between object and experience. Brit is currently a designer at Jack Spade and has worked with companies such as Aid to Artisans, Samsonite, and Timberland. She is the co-founder of Grain Design and also runs AVO:Market, a website dedicated to street markets around the world. Brit also regularly contributor to our online magazine on the topic of market culture. We were excited to catch up with Brittany to discuss work, life and how travel has influenced both. Click Read More for the interview and to view the video.

I got into the fabric world of design though a trip I did to Guatemala. I went there and worked with artisans and their textile traditions to create bags that they could make to export, so that they could have sustainable income. They wouldn’t have to go work at a hotel or something like that. They could keep traditions working in textile arts. I just love the idea of weaving, making material that is so versatile. From that point on, I kind of became known as the bag lady. Not the best of nicknames!

When I graduated, I got a job offer from Samsonite to design bags. It made a lot of sense to me to work there because travel was my passion as much as design was. And Samsonite is travel, design and bags all mixed into one, so it seemed perfect for me. With Samsonite, I got to go to St. Petersburg. All of the designers from the company went, and we got to do sort of an inspiration trip… sort of meandered around St. Petersburg and got to see the culture and then come back and use the inspiration for design. I also got to go to China for about three weeks on my own and work. I went to the factories and worked with the people there and altered designs on the spot. That was by far the most eye-opening work experience I’ve ever had, especially coming from our culture, and what we think about manufacturing and then being able to go to this place that we have so many preconceived notions about. I was able to see their culture and see how it all comes together.

I think how I ended up at Jack Spade is directly related to travel and to school. I came into industrial design with a different background and in the end, it made me more successful. I don’t come from a fashion background but instead with a functional industrial design background, and I think that’s sort of why I got the job. I bring something different, a different outlook. And I think because of my travel experiences, I have a different outlook on design. I look at design as a cultural thing. When you design something for you or for me, it’s within our own setting, it’s within our own culture. But if I go to China and I’m designing the same products, maybe it’s used differently, maybe they carry something differently. In Guatemala, they carry things on their head. So as a bag designer, you really have to think about bags as tools, and how people use those tools differently. That is in the essence of why I am a bag designer. If you look at any culture over the world throughout time, there’s always bags. When I travel, that’s one of the biggest things I look at… is how people use everyday objects differently.

In exactly the same way that I see bags as this universal object that can tie cultures around the world together, no matter how different they are, markets are sort of the same way. Whether you’re in New York City, in Brooklyn, in Guatemala or in Morocco… You go to a street market and what they sell might be different, who’s selling it might be different, how they sell it is different… But in essence, the experience and the people’s interactions are the same. And that’s why I love markets. It’s a great way to get a glimpse of the culture and to compare them easily.

AVO:Market
Grain Design
Jack Spade

Travel Chronicles: Impressions from a Writer, Matt Schwartz
Travel Chronicles: Experiencing Photography with Aiko
Travel Chronicles: Surrendering with Steve Powers

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Mattathias Schwartz.

Mattathias Schwartz is a writer. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Good Magazine, Megawords and other publications, specializing in long-form articles in which fundamental philosophical questions arise in conversation. In late 2001, he founded the Philadelphia Independent, a monthly broadsheet newspaper. We spent a few moments with him to talk about his recent trip to China and being a writer. Click Read More for the interview and to watch the video.

People speak freely in China. I think they’re willing to be critical of the government in conversation. I think people write fairly freely. You don’t see any public protests, or even the beginning of public protests, because that stuff gets shut down pretty quickly. The kind of general state of law in China is that everyone’s always breaking some law but it doesn’t really matter. But the moment you start to infringe on the interests of the Communist party or the government— then it will matter.

I think almost everyone in China is incredibly psyched about the country and the government, and the renminbi which is growing, and the number of people who have been brought out of poverty. And to the extent that this society isn’t free by Western standards— I heard very few people complaining about that at all. Even people who you would expect to complain about it, like people who hold passports from other countries and have gotten Western educations at American universities or at Oxford or Cambridge. Even they’re very sympathetic to the Chinese government. They respect what they’ve done to bring millions of people out of poverty. They see these restrictions of freedom as a form of social engineering that are necessary to keep such a huge country stable and moving forward.

The extent to which we enshrined the idea of individual rebellion in the United States is amazing. The amount of pro-rebellion propaganda that we all kind of thoughtlessly ingest. Everything from The Catcher in the Rye to The Matrix to Star Wars to Jesus Christ. Every single story we have is about some sacred, knighted individual who overthrows the system. And I think a lot of people grew up with individualist fantasies residing in their heart that they’ll be the person to do this. The sort of cliché, Thomas Freedman theory of Chinese culture is that it’s more communal and spread out among family and community. But I think I really did see some of that—they just haven’t ingested so much propaganda telling them to rebel. I think that Western media model expects there to be some form of controversy around a great public work like the Olympics, you have to set up some sort of oppositional relationship between the government and the people. But I didn’t see any of that. At the same time I really do believe in basic First Amendment rights as fundamental human rights, and those are not rights that people in China enjoy.

People were excited that China got to show off the country to the rest of the world, and they were excited about the opening ceremony. I talked to someone who was a stringer for the New York Times — a Chinese kid who was maybe nineteen, he was very, very bright— who had interviewed some of the people whose homes had been reclaimed and bulldozed to make way for one of the stadiums in Beijing. And he said that even they were like, “Oh man, it’s bad that I had to lose my home and I’m not happy about this, but nevertheless I understand that this is a great, significant event for my country, to the world. I understand that this is necessary…” and it’s like happy and sad at the same time. So, I think sort of Western media models that are around, and the great public work like the Olympics, there has to be some form of controversy or you have to set up some sort of oppositional relationship between the government and the people, but I didn’t see any of it.

Please note WEJETSET nor Mr. Schwartz in any way condone the practice of animal fighting. The story told in this video is a honest account of an actual experience Mr. Schwartz had while with his native host in Ecuador. The story’s sole intention is to recount the particular and specific events he witnessed, and should not be taken as an endorsement, sanctioning of, or approval of such actions in general.

Travel Chronicles: Experiencing Photography with Aiko
Travel Chronicles: Surrendering with Steve Powers
Travel Chronicles: Commuting through NYC with Suzette Lee

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Aiko Ishikawa.

Aiko is a japanese translator and talented photographer. On a snowy day in January we caught up with her to discuss work and travel. With all of her demanding assignments, we were interested in hearing about how she stays in the moment and appreciates the places she visits while capturing them by pen and camera. Click Read More for the interview and additional photos.

I came to New York at a really crucial point in my life – at fifteen years old. For me pop culture was blossoming and there was so much going on. When I first came to New York, Japanese culture wasn’t as cool just yet. Maybe if you were into Japanimation you knew about it, you knew all the characters from Dragon BallZ. Then as I got older, and New York caught on, I realized “Oh, I guess I’m cool for being Japanese.” Instant credibility type of thing. Now, if people realize I’m Japanese, they feel immediately curious about what I know. And sometimes I don’t know everything! I feel that even more being bilingual and being bi-cultural.

Because I started as a writer, a journalist, I ended up traveling to different places for press events and there were a lot of British journalists that gave me jobs for UK magazines, writing about Japanese culture. And through that, I met people from labels who were looking for translators, so now I work as a translator. I try to be accurate in translating people’s feelings, more than exactly the words that they use.

I love cities, period. Cities in any place bring people from different backgrounds, different nationalities, different races, different financial backgrounds, what have you… and that dynamic has always been my inspiration.

I also have an appreciation for different types of travel, but I definitely enjoy going to places where I know people. I don’t believe in going to a place for less than seven days, so I try to stay at least a week, and if there’s a time difference, I try to calculate that so I can make sure that I actually spend seven full days, from Sunday to Saturday night. I think that every day has a different face in each place.

I decided that whenever I have to go on an assignment and write about it and also take pictures, I’m only giving myself the first ten minutes of being there to take pictures, and the rest, I just try to experience it. I give myself time limits… things happen during the course of an event but at some point you have to give up and focus on how you feel about it. When you take a picture, you want to make sure it’s good, and that’s a different way of experiencing an environment. I’ve realized I’m more focused in that ten minutes or five minutes because I know that’s all I got, so I have to get at least one image that’s banging in that ten minutes.

Travel Chronicles: Surrendering with Steve Powers
Travel Chronicles: Commuting through NYC with Suzette Lee
Travel Chronicles: Notes & Photos from Canterbury

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Steve Powers.

Steve aka ESPO is a Philadelphia native now living in New York City. Known for his thought provoking imagery, his art has taken him to all corners of the globe. As the NY Times once noted, “A love of grafitti has gained Steve Powers notoriety on the streets, fame in the art world and a long arrest sheet. It has also earned him a Fulbright Scholarship.” His resume of adventurous and varying experiences have contributed significantly to the richness of his work. We recently caught up with Steve in his studio to discuss art’s universal language and how traveling over 120,000 miles last year shaped his perspective. Watch the video above and click Read More for the rest of the interview.

I think I flew 120,000 miles last year and I think that’s probably in the upper echelon of business travelers. I know personally of people that travel cross-country or over the Atlantic like every two weeks or every week for all 52 weeks of the year, so by no means is my experience unique. And I think we’re at a very interesting point right now, where a lot more artists are flying places and there’s a circuit of galleries that are opening up worldwide that a lot of my contemporaries are traveling to more frequently. People come out to these galleries and I’ll get to interact with them in a really great way, whereas as a tourist and even as a businessperson your experiences are much more limited. And although I love the open-endedness of just straight tourism—you get to really invent the city any way you want- typically, when I travel as an artist, people are really striving to put on the best face and show me something really unique about their city.

Traveling is about not necessarily going in and being the ugly American and just being as ignorant as you are back home but going to a place and really meeting them on their terms, and appreciating the city that you go to for what it is. And it’s great to just surrender— I think that’s the best thing about traveling, it’s surrendering to the experience of travel and just… going.

My work is complicated enough without the language barrier being involved, but I think when people don’t know the language, they have to rely on just the form and the beauty of it—if it’s beautiful— and the form of it, if it has an interesting form for them to engage with. And then, what’s kinda cool about that it definitely does set up a tension where they want to know, and its frustrating to them that they don’t fully understand what I’m getting at. But I think most people that understand English 100% don’t fully understand what I’m getting at anyway, so they’re not in a unique position.

Dublin, but Ireland in general—is really known for its cultural exports much more than its known for its cultural imports. So to go there and be able to create for example, was great because this is a community, this is a civilization of people that understand poetry, that understand art in a more instinctive way than any other place I’ve been to. But what struck me about Ireland was that they have just an intuitive sense, they understood what I was doing… way more than when I’m talking to people in Philadelphia and New York… and in a lot of America. In the United States there’s a certain amount of insulation that people have from art in their everyday life, and I have to cut through that, I have to cut through their non-understanding of art and non-appreciation of art, and find some connection between what I do and the life they’re currently leading right now.

Because you’re in a new place and because it’s a brand new experience for you, all your senses are opened up and you’re open again in a way that when you’re home and you’re dealing with the things at home, you close yourself down because you’re just stressed out from your bills and everything else that you’ve got on your plate. But when you’re traveling, you’re creating in a new environment, all that stuff is suppressed for a week or ten days and you get to just purely be exactly the embodiment of what you want to be. A free liberator, you know, a creator that’s just making it happen. And then you drag your ass back home because none of your paintings sold because nobody’s buying art in this terrible economy!

NY Times on Steve Powers
Steve Power’s Website

Travel Chronicles: Commuting through NYC with Suzette Lee
Travel Chronicles: Notes & Photos from Canterbury
Travel Chronicles: Matt W. Moore On the Move 2008

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Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Suzette Lee.

Suzette is a 23 year old native of San Francisco, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She believes that combining the three elements of culture, travel, and art can produce a serious storm of goodness. She enjoys being mobile and rides her bike almost everywhere. Suzette is also a photographer, but does not like to limit her creativity and often translates her ideas across many different, yet cohesive, mediums. We spoke with her about her spontaneous move to New York City, her photographic process, and a recent accident she endured while biking on one of New York’s busiest thoroughfares. Click Read More for the interview.

I moved to New York when I was nineteen or twenty on a whim. I moved with $300 in my pocket, no stable place to live, two suitcases, four boxes of photos and all of my camera equipment, and I had my bike. That was it.

I decided to just come out here and try it. I fell in love, came back a week later, then a month later, and then finally the third time I stayed. It made me happy, and the fast paced city was very inspiring to me… the idea of motion and movement and constantly doing something was what I really needed in my life at the time.

I started shooting photographs when my grandpa passed away. He handed his old Minolta camera down to me. Once I was given that, I looked at it as a way of seeing life from a whole different perspective. 

Recently I’ve been using the concept of being grounded versus motion and movement to inspire my work. I recently made an installation for an art show at the Puffin Room Gallery, and the concept was leaving your inner childhood and emerging into your adulthood. I used photographs of movement, transportation, and a tee-pee sculpture. It is six feet wide by eight feet tall, and each panel has an inverted black and white photograph of a method of transportation. It’s symbolic of me moving to New York, not having a place to live, making my own home and grounding it all somehow—even though I’m still moving with it.

I was in an accident this past Labor Day weekend. I hit a pothole while coming home from an art show. I didn’t see the pothole and my face slammed on the stem of my bike—splitting my tongue open and knocking teeth out.

I don’t know why but I felt like I needed to get back on that bike. I don’t know what was the driving force but I felt like it would make me feel a lot better. There’s something that I was told when I was younger, and it was to always have perseverance. If you love something, go with it, because passion is the best thing that can keep you going. I felt like I couldn’t fear something that I really love, and if I feared it, then I would never get back to it. And I wouldn’t want to see myself step out of something that I love so much because of one pitfall, you know?

Small Medium Lee
Suzette’s Blog
Suzette’s Flickr

Travel Chronicles: Notes & Photos from Canterbury
Travel Chronicles: Matt W. Moore On the Move 2008
Travel Chronicles: Randy Bloomfield’s Journey to Mt. Everest

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Travel Correspondent, Anthony Smyrski presents the third installation to our wejetset video series. In this episode Anthony documents cross-country train travel on the Southwest Chief. A three-day journey on Amtrak’s Superliner offers fantastic and otherwise unaccessible views of the United States. It also provides an opportunity to interact with and interview fellow rail travelers and enthusiasts.

Credits: By Anthony Smyrski & Video Production by Jesse Olanday

Smyrski Creative
About the Southwest Chief
Amtrak Route from Chicago to LA

wejetset video: Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia
wejetset video: A look at St. Petersburg Russia
Art & Culture: A Photographic Journey to the End of the Line

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Travel Correspondent, Anthony Smyrski presents the second installation from our wejetset video series. In this episode Anthony takes you through Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market – a must see destination in Center City. Watch as this video demonstrates the atmosphere and energy of the legendary market place.

Location: 12th and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hours: M-Sat: 8am-6pm; Sun: 9am-4pm

Download this video for your ipod

wejetset video: A look at St. Petersburg Russia
Travel Chronicles: Randy Bloomfield’s Journey to Mt. Everest
Places to Eat: The Crosby in Santa Ana

Shop at wejetset – your modern travel store.

wejetset Travel Correspondent, Anthony Smyrski, presents our first travel vidcast – a narrated slide-show documenting his journey to St. Petersburg, Russia. His inviting description of train travel, museum visits and quaint cafes provides useful insight into one of Russia’s most historical cities.

/// Download wejetset’s iPod ready vidcast [Here]

/// Related Links from around the web

The Hermitage Museum
Lonely Planet on St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg

[Credits: Photos by Roman Bejnar and Anthony Smyrski. Video Production: Jesse Olanday]