The Dichotomy of Milan

This is one of my favorite pictures from Milan. The table is made of a rough sawn wood top and twisted up garden hose for the base. There is a matching floor lamp in back. And the two old guys are sitting on a bench made with the same method.

What the F***!?

How would you read this post card?

Disappointed?

Panicked?

Angry?

Informative?

(Obviously, I have no idea.)

Italy is strange.

Bike Porn

In Milan for Design Week I came across the Biomega bike showroom. These bikes are high-design concept commuter bikes typically with shaft drive. And they are SUPER cool. These are from left to right - the Amsterdam, the Copenhagen, and the Boston.

The really cool stuff was inside. 

This is a concept bike from Ross Lovegrove (a superstar designer.) Carbon fiber with a shaft drive.

This one was the most exciting.

It is a bamboo bike. Fully production ready after five years of development. The tubes are real bamboo and there is no reinforcement running from the aluminum joints/lugs. It is like a work of art! And they know it, so they included some features to make it easier to hang on your wall. The pedals "butterfly" so you don't poke a hole in your sheetrock and the handlebars have a keyed quick-release on the stem that allows you to rotate the bars independently of the front wheel. It also works as a security feature - making the bike very difficult to ride.

I think the Amsterdam model is available from Design Within Reach for like $1,600. By no means cheap, but great to look at.

Quick Milan Post

I need to get some paid writing done, but I wanted to write a little more about Milan. I am going to cheat and give you the bullet-pointed version. The more detailed posts will come later.

Things I like about Milan

• Big, old buildings - even though most of the city was flattened in WWII many of the buildings were rebuilt in an authentic style.
• High-density housing - everyone lives in apartments and the buildings are eclectic and a little stereotypical Italian (laundry hanging out on a line outside the window.)
• Narrow, cobblestone streets
• Scooters, bikes, motorcycles and micro-cars - what a great way to get around
• Attractive women on scooters wearing stilettos.
• Attractive women on bikes wearing stilettos.
• COFFEE! Any variety. It is the absolute best.
• Lots of design.
• Cool, attractive scooter helmets.
• Coke and/or Coke Light - the are in these great .33 l cans. Tall, skinny, sexy and both varieties taste WAAAY better than in the US.
• Really good food - if you are lucky.
• The Metro - not the cleanest, but really easy to get around (even though we did get lost once.)
• Mass at the Duomo. I lucked into this one, but there is something about being a Catholic boy (even an admittedly bad one) and going to church at the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. It was impressive all the way around.
• The Ferrari store - who doesn't like Ferraris?
• The street sweepers. After the most trash ridden street party night after night, the streets are cleaned by about 8 AM.
• Anti-government rally at Palazzo del Duomo. The large square in front of the Duomo was crowded with an anti-government rally. It was pretty entertaining - they were selling t-shirts, refreshments, had DJ's and video screens. Italians are crazy.

Things I Don't Like About Milan

• Solid metal security gates. Every night the shop keepers pull down these solid metal security gates and it makes the streets feel a little like a war zone.
• Graffiti - it is everywhere. And it's not the kind of cool stuff that takes some time and talent. It's just endless tagging on any vertical surface. 
• My language barrier - I need to learn some Italian before I go back.
• Lack of Internet. At least in the apartments we were in.
• Anxiety about my phone bill. Data transmission is super expensive. I can only imagine what my bill is going to be.
• Staying out way later than I am used to. I will definitely try to get to bed earlier next time. Those late nights just destroy me for the next day.
• Eating too little and too far between. I need to eat more regular meals - it made for really long days.
• Not drinking enough water. Goes hand in hand with the eating issue - good thing I don't drink or I would have been in a world of hurt.
• Bad food - much easier to find than you would imagine. And not just because it's not "American Italian" it would be considered bad food here, too.
• Difficulty finding cabs - it was really hit and miss.
• The Italian propensity to litter. The streets were a mess with beer bottles and crap during the crazy street parties. It was kind of disgusting.

There is the down and dirty list of what I liked and what I didn't in Milan.

Milan Report

What a fast and crazy trip. I guess I will start at the beginning and leave out all the businessy stuff for a separate post. ("Businessy" refers to the really cool modern furniture design I saw.) I am traveling with a friend/rep/furniture importer who only lives about a block away. I have known him and his wife for a few years so when he invited me I jumped at the chance. He goes to this shoes every year so he has most of the details down.

We left Thursday afternoon for the marathon flight to Milan. As ranted before, I hate air travel. Well, due to karmic payback for all the complaining I have been doing, I got one of the worst seats on the plane. On a Delta Airbus 330 they have video monitors in the back of the seats - that's good. I requested a window seat thinking I could then have something to lean against to sleep (who am I kidding, I NEVER sleep on a plane.) Turns out that they stick the hardware for the video monitors under the window seats, cutting your foot room in half. I couldn't stretch out which made me miserable and crabby.

Here - let me do this in a bullet pointed format and then I will get to the good stuff.

Things I hate about air travel (I actually wrote a list to keep from going insane or on a murderous rampage at 60,000 feet):

• A330 window seat has video hardware under seat = no leg room
• The guy in the seat in front of me eating beef jerky (maybe this would have been worse)
• US security measures getting out of Amsterdam are ridiculous and redundant
• Sitting next to huge people who hog the armrest
• Terrible Food! (That I eat anyway and then feel horrible, gross, sick, bloated and gassy)
• The stupid Delta preflight video
• The world's most dis-gusting bathrooms (I am afraid to touch any surface in one of those stand up petri dishes)
• Surly flight attendants (Northworst and Delta) and the fact that the KLM flight attendants are more attractive and friendly
• Drunk Germans
• The woman behind me who sprayed hairspray ("Lady, this is an enclosed aluminum tube with no air circulation!")

So that is that.

On to Milan.

We grabbed the train into the city from Malpensa Airport. It was cheap and easy and took us right where we needed to go. Why couldn't things be this easy in the US? We were meeting a couple of other designers who had flown in from Doha, Qatar and we were staying in two different apartments. The original apartment we were supposed to be staying at was right in the middle of a satellite design fair - we gave that one to these folks out of courtesy. Our apartment was "further away." That is the only way I can describe it because I really have no idea where it was. Their apartment was kick ass - our apartment was ass.

Their apartment:

Our apartment:

 

Their view:

Our view:

Thursday night the four of us wandered around the Zona Tortona - the design fair in the neighborhood we stayed in. There are so many great pictures I will post a few here and provide a link to a web album after them. 

One of my favorite things about Milan - great coffee! I never had a bad cup. Here is a very pretty cup that I had just down the street from the KAA (Kick Ass Apartment.)

People watching was also very fun. There were lots of them around. 

These next pics are a cool party we crashed. 

This was the entry.

This was a three story wall of plates.

Many, many more cool pictures here.

We decided to find a place for dinner and ended up having about a three hour meal with lots and lots of laughs. Bed time by the time we got back to Apt. A (Apartment Ass) was about 12:30 AM. I never stay out that late, especially with jet lag, but endless cups of coffee certainly help. 

Friday was show day. I had 10 buildings and 250,000 square meters of contemporary furniture to see. I had my walking shoes on. 

We ate dinner at MIDNIGHT. But it was a FANTASTIC meal. We totally stumbled upon this steak house in the middle of Milan. I couldn't have been happier as I had eaten only one small meal the entire day. 

We had to get home. We walked the Doha designers to their KAA and then walked up a few blocks to catch a cab. Apparently, at 2:30 AM in a particular neighborhood in Milan, if you you stand on a certain street corner and try to hale a cab and you look, oh, pretty much like ME, you get propositioned by male prostitutes. Like three times. Needless to say, I was a little freaked out, not because men find me attractive (who doesn't, right?) but because macho Italian guys aren't huge fans of gay men. Combine that with the high-vis white shirt I made the mistake of wearing and a large number or extremely drunk and rowdy men milling around and I wanted out of there in the worst way. My traveling companion - who apparently is not at all attractive to male prostitutes - found all this incredibly hilarious, like laugh until he cried hilarious, which made me want to kill him. 

We started walking in the direction of Apt. A and after about a half hour or 45 minutes we finally got a cab. Bedtime 3:30 AM. One hell of a long day. 

Saturday was my day on my own. I will report on that next.

Buona Sera

I am too tired to post anything in great detail right now. So here is a Twitterfied post with subjects I will expand on over the coming days. I also have tons of pictures. It was a good trip.

"I'm back & exhausted. Here's what I learned/saw: I hate air travel, I love & hate Milan, the furniture show was great, went to mass at Duomo"

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Pretty sure I'll be back again. 

I rocked a 3k swim workout today - the only one I'll get this week. Now, it's just rush around like crazy until it's time to head to the airport. Flight leaves at about 3:00. I will post again as soon as I get time. For mostly constant and inane updates, keep an eye on the Tweets on the right side. 

(TinyTwitter is my new best Blackberry friend - I'll let you know how long that lasts.)

Ciao! (For now.)