intellectual properties

get your love on: “LovingYou” and “LoveSick3″ this weekend in SF

wo hand-crafted, heartfelt and artfelt events this valentine’s weekend in SF that i will be at and if you’re looking to ignore the traditional Vday hoopla and get out - coupled or alone - for some beauty, art and love, you should too:

SATURDAY 2/13

Missing Piece Presents:

LOVING YOU: a gallery art party

LOVING YOU is a gallery art party featuring love-inspired artists, designers, and performers celebrating that crazy thing called love.

While it is true that our photo booth has been known to cause makeout sessions with attractive strangers, that’s not the only reason you should come to LOVING YOU. We also have the best last-minute valentine’s shopping for you or your boo, including locally made gifts like lingerie, jewelry, hats, belt buckles, stuffed animals, mini flower vases, and even white lace MC hammer pants!

Come for the original artwork valentine you will get at the door, stay for the super cute performers, drink ’till your bold, get your tarot cards read and hey, while your at it, get your hair done! Then go home happy at midnight with someone on your arm and VOILA! it’s a wonderful start to your Valentine’s Day.

LOVING YOU features love-inspired artists and designers:

BeesandBears http://www.beesandbears.com
Breality Designs http://www.brealityrox.com
Danielle Deroberts http://www.onerary.com
Heather G. Arcega http://www.gingerbreadclothing.com
Ivana Ristic http://www.missingpieceproductions.com/ivana
Jeremy S. Eaton http://www.germsspread.com
Kristen Holden http://www.missingpieceproductions.com/holden
Liz Mamorsky http://www.lizland.com
MonTree http://www.montreedesigns.com
Native Intelligence http://www.rockitscienceSF.com
O’Lover Hats http://www.oloverhats.com
Roland Blandy http://www.rolandblandy.co.uk
Ron Goldin http://moonlid.com
Sea Pony
Sid Gabriel
Sugarpuss http://www.sugarpussclothing.com
Tamo Design http://www.tamodesign.com
Tidal Ware http://www.tidalwarejewelry.com
WilloToons http://www.willotoons.com

PLUS:
Glamarama Instant Makeovers http://www.glamarama.com
Magnolia Photo Booth http://www.magbooth.com
Mary Kay’s Tarot Readings http://www.marykaymitchell.com
Mobile Libations Bar http://www.mobilelibations.com
Ploom Tasting Lounge http://www.ploom.com

Special Guest Performance by Ricochet http://www.ricochet.name

MUSIC PROVIDED BY:
8-9pm Michael Musika http://www.myspace.com/michaelmusika
“Valentines Day is love linked to commerce and some sort of catholic innuendo. I sing lots of songs about whores and ghosts.”

9-10pm Model Student http://www.modelstudent.us/
Performing an all-acoustic set of “Songs of Love & Lust”, a repertoire of songs spanning several continents and languages.

10-11pm DJ Benchun http://benchun.net
“When you’re the dj you have one job. Your job is to make everyone go home and f*ck.”

$7 admission .::. 8-11pm

@ Glamarama, Van Ness Avenue, 417 S Van Ness @ 15th, SF

<3.:.:.::.:.::.:.:::.::…:::..:::…:::…::::…:::::…::::….:::::…::::::<3

SUNDAY, 2/14

The third annual LoveSick fashion show

(you should click there and watch the video…)

If you can’t cure the sickness, treat the symptoms this February 14th at Mighty.  You won’t find a cure for your broken heart, however, if you drag yourself over to 119 Utah Street at 7p.m. you will find a plethora of palliative pleasantries.

LoveSick 3 will have a live musical performance by The Goldenhearts, DJs Irene Hernandez & Martin Collins, special performance by Bad Unkl Sista, trunk show, art exhibition, kissing/photobooth, and a raffle - all supporting the main event:

A smoldering fashion show of the latest in lingerie and fashion from amazing SF designers such as Alexandria von Bromssen, Miss Velvet Cream, My Dirty Dishes, Medium Reality, Richard Hallmarq, Miranda Caroligne, Kayo, Invisible Hero,  Ghetto Goldilocks, Tamo Design, Gelareh Designs, Jasmin Zorlu & more. There will be a special performance by Bad Unkl Sista & Collaboration Project with Alexandria von Bromssen.

come get your love on.

stellar: full of stars

especially now that this thing publishes to facebook i’m finding it extremely difficult to say anything more personal about the SF Fashion Awards.  part of the problem with proliferating your blog is that people read it.

i do not want to detract from the fact that i fully appreciate and respect what Del Geronimo is doing with this now-annual event: giving props and recognition to designers who create amazing things and get little in return in the way of media or coverage.  and let’s face it:  fashion is a business, and getting public recognition is IMPORTANT — if you want to run it as a business. anyway, please consider everything here constructive criticism. i have a whole mind full of other caveats but i’ll just get on with it:

my personal conflicts around the event, and the award i was nominated for (which i somewhat discussed here), were more or less two-fold:  1. the name of the event implies that all of SF fashion is represented, and 2. because it is done by popular vote, it feels like somewhat of a popularity contest amongst those who do end up represented, instead of some sort of independent panel giving awards based on merit.

the first thing:  to call it “THE SAN FRANCISCO FASHION AWARDS” suggests that the event producer has gone to some length to create an inclusive event that pulls from all the fashion scenes in SF.  it is true that during the nomination phase, ANYONE can be nominated (i think). the problem is that the circles in which the nomination forms and such are distributed are overlapping and insular - i don’t think this is by design, just by lack of coordination and effort. for this event to REALLY encompass all of SF fashion, there would need to be a huge push and a team dedicated to reaching out as far as possible, spreading the word, getting people “on board”. i honestly have no idea how hard Del tries to do this - maybe he does as much as he can, but i’m sorry to say that if that’s true it’s not getting very far.

so what emerges is a list of people nominated of which i pretty much personally know almost everyone (except the models, although i’ve been in shows with most of them too).   even if this were called the “The San Francisco INDEPENDENT Fashion Awards”, this wouldn’t be representative. i read SFINDIEFASHION.COM daily (which is awesome and you should too if you love SF indie fashion), and there are tons and tons of independent fashion designers in SF.  most of designers in the events and fashion shows listed on that site i’ve never heard of.  so the question is are people just not interested, or are they not getting reached? i have no idea. (btw, remember last year? i was in the running for things that made no sense, and said pretty much these same things then.)

on a more personal level:  i am deeply honored and humbled by receiving the award for Best Blogger (especially since i STUDIED WRITING in college and have never had a job as a writer so getting an award for writing somehow makes me feel like that degree in English wasn’t a complete waste of 4 years), but honestly: this blog isn’t about fashion. this is a lifestyle blog. this blog is about my life. fashion has, in recent years, played a larger role in my life, MANY THANKS to all of the people who’ve encouraged me to develop my participation and roles in the fashion scene. if it weren’t for the likes of Danielle@Missing Piece and Miranda Caroligne and Scatha@Miss Velvet Cream and Staz@BadUnklSista encouraging me to push my love of dressing up into something more, a huge part of my life would be so much different than it is, and i am extremely and eternally grateful for that. and while i could argue, if i wanted to, that “fashion” IS a lifestyle, and therefore it makes sense for a lifestyle blog to win a fashion award, still: there are bloggers/writers out there who focus all of their content on fashion, and even some who focus specifically on SF fashion, like sfindiefashion.COM or Fashion Smashion, a snarky blog who thinks they should’ve been nominated for best blog.

so while i am totally humbled and fully appreciate the recognition, i find it a little uncomfortable to stand up proud and say “YES! ME! I’M THE BEST FASHION BLOGGER IN SAN FRANCISCO!” because i honestly don’t believe it’s true. (reagan insists that the award i REALLY won was “most fashionable blogger”, and that i would gladly accept an award for. :=)

on the second point, during the voting period, one of the nominees wrote that she wasn’t going to participate because she felt it was all just a popularity contest. she is an ARTIST (in the truest sense i have ever met in human form) and was not into the idea of “winners” and “losers” in art, or having to “promote yourself” in order to win, instead of just winning on merit. still, she was nominated, and so many of us voted for her because if anyone was going to “WIN” she deserved to win.

i empathized with her feeling, but at the same time - it is what it is and so why not run with it? and so i decided to try to shelve these conflicts and just promote and support what the INTENTION of the event is, despite all the caveats and misgivings. but then when we were there, the day of, i did not see her and felt some guilt/shame that she was standing her ground as an artist and not a player in the scene and to be honest i felt a lot of weirdness around her not being there because i agreed with her, but there i was all dressed up in my fancy dress participating like i didn’t have any conflict. (it turns out, she was there too, i just didn’t see her).

i am not a huge fan of competition myself - it brings out the worst, not the best in me - and i can totally see how as an artist to get into the realm of “winning” - who can “win” art? - feels like a violation of principles. but fine line here was at what point are you being too much of an art snob to accept an award from people who love you as an artist? at what point are you “too cool” to promote yourself, say thank you, open up and accept appreciation, and instead snub those trying to lift you up? i felt like it would be totally and utterly disrespectful to not show up to receive an award given to you out of love, no matter how many issues the implementation might have had.  the intention is about RESPECT, and getting the nominations and votes of your peers is a sign of respect, a sign of love, a sign of recognition, and i think respect is deserved going both directions.

hopefully, as the SF Fashion Awards evolves, the net will be wider cast, the participants will be representative, and maybe the voting system won’t be as janky (or non-existent) and people will respect it more and more cred will be given to the event and the scene and the artists, which is the whole point to begin with. SF fashion gets put down a lot and there’s not a lot of attention for designers who are brilliant and hard working in this city, so i think the event should continue because i think it’s important. it just needs to grow, and there needs to be a diligent effort on the part of the producers and organizers to make it grow in a direction that reaches further than it currently does.

as for the actual fashion SHOW at the fashion awards, the only thing i have to say is: KITTINHAWK: i want you in my closet.

shameless plug: vote for me : SF fashion awards

i know i’ve been slacking on the blog posts lately, but please forgive me long enough to VOTE FOR ME in the SF Fashion Awards for Best Blogger. note that when you fill out the poll, you have to hit EACH ORANGE BUTTON. then it shows you the current results!

i also want to plug my dear friends Miranda Caroligne (fashion), Miss Velvet Cream (fashion), Bad Unkl Sista (costumes), Kyle Hailey (photog), Sequoia&Gita (fashion/photog), Missing Piece (fashion show/event producer), Jodie Adele (jewelry), K.Holden (blogger@sflovestory) and most especially, DEL GERONIMO (event producer/photog), who produces this event and i can only assume added my name to the list.

SF Fashion Awards, originally uploaded by wetribe.

saturday night

@alchemy with my twin, kamileon

double conjoined-at-the-waist corset by antiseptic fashion

earrings by kiyumi jewelry

airbrush by Icarus

alchemy v3.0

please come:

On Saturday April 25, False Profit, LLC and Missing Piece will present ALCHEMY, a live and interactive art and fashion event that turns the elements of your imagination to gold. Returning for its third year, Alchemy is packed with interactive art installations built to engage and amaze you: a collaborative live art event of carnivalesque proportions! Refashioning notions of standard art, the artists and participants will toy with and combine different mediums for unlikely results. Get there in time for the fashion show at 10pm, before the space fills up!

Interactive art installations include:
* Perceptron Project, your movements create the music

* Spontaneous Combustamotion, a reactive video installation

* Mr. Potato Friend, movable body part portraiture

* The Painted Lady, add to her beauty or add to yours

* Kinetic Sculptures, to crank and turn

* Phosphor Essence, multi-controller video feedback game

* Split Personality Reorder, add your thoughts into its head

* Live Painting, Balloon Games, Shrinky Dinks, Creative Writing, a Photo Booth, Face Painting, Prizes, Cotton Candy, and more!

* Don’t miss the “Solid Gold” fashion show by Missing Piece @ 10pm
The show features performance and alchemy-inspired fashion from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Europe. Participants include: Mandeep Sethi, Laura Stokes, Bodhi Cole, Montree, Ivana Ristic, Fou Fou Ha!, Miranda Caroligne, Callibug Designs, Invisible Hero, Antiseptic Fashion, Chrystie Cappelli, and Missfortune Designs

Saturday, April 25th @ California Modern Art Gallery
1035 Market Street, SF
9pm-2am
$15-20 at the door
Cash Bar
www.false-profit.com/alchemy

i will certainly be in attendance, if not on the runway.

tonight:

[above: gown by Steven Lai; photo by Warren diFranco Hsu @ after5media.com]

DIVIDEND
Thursday, July 26
@ Poleng Lounge. 1751 Fulton Street @ Masonic, SF.
Ekphrasis Fashion Show Begins at 10:30pm SHARP
$5-$15 donation

This Thursday night, Missing Piece presents “Ekphrasis” : a poetry-inspired fashion show at False Profit’s monthly DIVIDEND.

DIVIDEND has a track record of being packed and jumpin’ the past two months at Poleng Lounge, with live art, fashion designers, and hiphop groups… now this month, with 3 False Profit DJs, 3 Missing Piece fashion designers and 3 spoken word poets, you won’t want to miss it.

Designers:
*Miranda Caroligne with designs inspired by t.s. elliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”
*KAYO with designs inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Forest Reverie”
*Steven Lai with designs inspired by Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow”

Spoken Word Poets:
*Jennifer Fox Bennett
*David Behnken
*Mandeep Sethi

DJs:
*benchun (false profit)
*neptune (beat church)
*f’kir (elderfae.net)

come EARLY to catch the fashion show, then join us for a drink at the bar and get down on the dance floor!

live to tell

sometimes i feel like all i do is go to work, go home, eat, sleep, and party on the weekends, rinse, repeat. but it’s not, i do a lot of other stuff too. perhaps because they are short and non-repeating, they seem to take up less of my life than the things that i do over, and over, and over again. anyway….

tuesday, we went to see Wanderlust @ The Marsh, a 90-minute monologue by Martin Dockery (not a lot on the web about that guy, so no good link), who is an old friend of Reagan’s, and, as it turns out, one hell of a storyteller.

the story started with a meditation on his 10-year non-career as a temp, including a very long temp position at the NYSE. similar to the “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” vonnegut quote i posted a few weeks ago, if you’re at a temp job for several years, isn’t that your job? isn’t that what you do, even if you are temporary? he had a blunt realization that he wasn’t just pretending to work in a cubicle at the NYSE; he WAS working in a cubicle at the NYSE. holy shit.

so that combined with inability to commit in love (”wanderLUST” does not only apply to travel) prompted him to take off for West Africa in search of his Big Meaning, the experience of which was not unlike our first attempt at doing the same in Thailand : the world is the world no matter where you go, and, it’s true, as they say: no matter where you go, there you are. attempting to run away for yourself never works, and expecting the other side of the world to somehow be more mystical and magic than the part of the world you live in is a high bar to reach. as it turns out, life is life all over. the end result was a realization that what you experience along the way is the magic: constantly searching for the Big Awakening while being bored with the “pony ride” you’re on just leads to never ending search: unquenchable wanderlust.

so obviously i identified with this very much, both because of the EXTREME travel-related wanderlust i’ve been experiencing for…years….which is now coming to a head with the “big plans” we have for 2008, and also because of general feelings of ennui with my current idiom as a whole. learning to be happy with what one has/where one is at…. that’s the greatest challenge of life. it does not mean i think we should not seek, but seeking endlessly despite the magic around you is just plain tragic.

wednesday we went to a benefit/celebration for my friend jayeesha’s budding NGO, mind power collective, an organization for “progressive educators” who believe teaching is a social justice action and that teachers have a responsibility to a) fight for justice in the educational system and b) teach their children about social justice issues and how to fight against inequality. good hip hop, good times.

and then last night, miranda and i went to the 48 hour film project - san francisco screenings to see the film produced by my friend danielle of missing piece SF. the 48 hour film project works as such: each crew is given 1. a prop (in this case, a jar of coins) 2. a line of dialogue (”Call me when you hear anything.“) and 3. a genre (horror, action, romance, etc.). everyone then has 48 hours to a)write script b)shoot footage c)edit d)submit. i’m sure many of them write generic scripts ahead of time that they then just try to adapt to the genre (which was VERY obvious in a couple of cases), but it’s still a hell of a challenge. many of them were decent, and i hate to think that i’m biased, but i do think Missing Piece’s film was the best. hopefully she’ll post it online soon and you can watch. it was great to see so many inspired and creative people in the theatre, all totally geeking out on the 48 hour film idea and supporting their friends in these ridiculous artistic endeavors.

so back to my wanderlust: i fully recognize that i live in an amazing city and am surrounded by this constantly-inspiring community of writers, artists, designers, singers, dancers, and all that a true bohemian wants and needs to keep body, mind and soul nourished. yet, still, there’s a big wide world out there i’ve never seen. will i, like martin dockery and The Alchemist, wander in the Sahara only to find that what i’m searching for is here? probably. but the trip will still be worth it, if nothing else, for the stories.