One of the things I picked up a while back was this tour of Brooklyn he did in the lead up to the World Basketball Festival. For this Nike wanted to connect the Five Boroughs of New York City in a celebration of hoops, culture, and its iconic Air Force 1 sneaker. Five ambassadors from each of the five boroughs were asked to participate in 1LOVE, an online documentary series amongst other things as they also held a basketball tournament and a Manhattan block party.

First up is Brooklyn-raised rapper, songwriter and producer Theophilus London, who gives a little tour of the Brooklyn neighbourhood he grew up in and uncovers what makes his borough unique.

Besides Theophilus the other borrows got to do their thing also. Have a look as it gives you a great view on different communities & cultures which make p the wonderfull city of New York.

Episode 2 for instance features Harlem-raised rapper and XL Recordings artist Ms. Banks. In his short-film Banks discusses the streets she grew up on and takes a close look at the original stomping ground that inspires and influences her.

Episode 3 features Cory Gunz, a Bronx based rapper and Young Money Entertainment star in the make it seems. He gives us a tour of NYC’s northern borough, and according to Cory “The Birthplace of Hip Hop.”

Episode 4 takes us on a trip through Queens with FORMAT: a lifestyle and BMX shop owned by pro BMX rider Nigel Sylvester.

And last but not least, episode 5 features Emilio Sparks of Staten Island.

This reminds me I have to put “visit NYC” on the TO DO list for the next years. Out.

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Wait a second, there’s two Mickey’s?!

Great picture through Sean Bonner. Out.

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Saw some tweeps already picked up shuffler.fm the passed week. Had a quick look and liked the idea at first sight. Bookmarked it and decided to have a better look later on.

Once you enter the landing page you will bump upon a list of different channels, each representing a different genre and radio channel. There you pick a channel and shuffler will send you to a blog post and start playing one of the songs mentioned in that post. Once the track has ended it sends you on to the next song on a next blog within the genre and so on. Off course you can also always skip forward to a next tune or pick another channel through the so-called shuffler bar at the top of the page.

So shuffler aggregates music from a (more or less) curated list of blogs, sorting it by genre through Last.fm which acts as their necessary filter. Smart idea as every day thousands of bloggers and music tastemakers blog about music somewhere on the web,

Crowdsourcing your music by bloggers so, making them the dj’s, reviewers and tastemakers and Shuffler.fm the player, catalogue, and radio station.

Now I gave you something new with shuffler.fm and I must admit I ain’t totally sold for it as my preferred music channel. In the meantime I will continue to tune in to something old(er) for that reason, namely Laidback Radio and 22tracks. I know it ain’t all the same as Shuffler, but they remain my favourite weapons of choice right now. Big up to all the people behind both projects, you have fine-tuned my life many times. Out.

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Might just have to dig up the old Lego bricks. Also diggin’ the whole transformer table cloth/bed spread theme that’s going on. Memories straight out of the childhood years.

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Who is switching off the city lights at night?

Little piece of street art I (finally) spotted in Ghent the passed weeks. Seen several of these switches. Seems they have been around for a while. Need to get some new glasses guess Out.

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I-dosing is a method of intoxication that is delivered by sound. Kids put on their headphones, drape a hood over their head and drift off into the world of ‘digital highs’. They believe the repetitive drone-like music will give them a ‘high’ that takes them out of reality.

Is it? Or is it just a placebo effect? For as far as I have been able to uncover it must be a combination of several aspects. Now, I am no fancy scientist/researcher but I do know how to read up on things. Most of the stuff I came across suggest that the specific sounds, especially if played with your eyes covered and a relaxed body, can bring one into a state of trance.

As with everything, some people may be more susceptible to the experience than others off course and  I can perfectly grasp the fact that the so-called binaural beats, which researchers have clearly documented, can bring forth temporary changes in peoples brain activity but after listening to several of the recordings I did not feel anything except annoyance really

Annoyance also because I am sick and tired of seeing crap like this being pushed by the press, especially when it concerns young folk. Belgian mainstream media gets the first prize each and every time for pushing foreign hype-able content (news, fait divers, stats, …) and claiming its relevant locally.

If we are to believe our beloved reporters i-dosing is happening all over the world. See that kid in the busstop with the headphones? I-dosing right as we speak

Lets say it as it is: if you had kept your mouth shut, a whole majority of youngsters would never have heard of it and probably would never have gone on to try it out.

All I can say: don’t believe the hype. Out.

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What is this clip you might be wondering? Well, its a naked-eye 3D Display using an iPad and a projector. Cool stuff one must admit Out.

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Captain’s log, Saturday 26th June. Returning from Offf 2010 in Paris. Thalys is on time. Mission accomplished.

Wednesday – Check-in for a day in the Sun

Travelled a day earlier to Paris as I had some spots & shops I had been meaning to visit for a while. This meant an early wake-up call in order to catch the Thalys. The call of sneaker, book, … stores & great street art was loud. I could smell it in the air

Arriving in Paris we first headed to our shelter: Hidden Hotel. One of the people behind this concept lodging was so kind to invite us for a stay in their great little hotel while in Paris. Its located in the heart of Paris, a small side street, just 800m or so from the Arc de Triomphe. I can only recommend a stay as its something I had never seen before. I recon I might right a more indepth review on it one of these days

Once we dropped of our lugage and put on some better clothing (hot as hell in Paris passed days) we were offf for some sightseeing and urban discoveries. You can find some pictures overhere and yes, I took way to little pics this time

Thursday – Queuing for beginners

Two hours! Deux heures! Dos whatever! Yes, the amount of time we spent queuing in the shade/sun that Thursday morning. Boring as hell by the way and the reason we missed the opening note But no worries as we were in!

In order to kick offf in style I suggest you have a look at the great opening credits. It gives you an overview of who we saw come by.

OFFF Paris 2010 Titles from OFFF on Vimeo.

Media Temple Animation from (HKI)™ HelloHikimori™ on Vimeo.

HELLOHIKIMORI was the first to really kick off the cool stuff for us. Warming up I guess as we had to get into the right set of mind for the next few days.

I was also looking forward to seeing the guys from H5, mentioned their Oscar winning Logorama before, but heard they chickened out I think they might just have got stuck in Cannes with the train strike which was going on or something else. Too bad they couldn’t continue. Early lunch so!

Craig Ward drew our attention right from the start after a long break in the sun. I was intrigued by his bizarre and beautiful typeface experiments. Check out his site Words Are Pictures to see and learn more, including some really impressive letterpress illustrations.

In his presentation, Craig demonstrated his continuing education in typography while tracing his evolution from designer to typographer to story teller. Fancy words to state he does cool stuff with lettering

Dixon Baxi followed in what I call a promo talk. Hey lets show another showreel and then will show another one. Followed by ooohs & aaahs! Or not. Mainly different idents they did for some television stations, … But nice work to say the least and great entertainment.

DixonBaxi | Five ‘Food Chain’ from DixonBaxi on Vimeo.

DixonBaxi | Five USA ‘Eye Contact’ from DixonBaxi on Vimeo.

We Walk from Christopher Hewitt on Vimeo.

The guys did end with We Walk, which is a short film that stumbles into the journey of a young girl desperate to leave the city in search of isolation and in turn, sleep. Shot in LA and Palm Springs, the film is based on a new poem by Writer, Brett Darling.

Later on we got to see Marc & Sara from Wooster Collective take the stage. Great talk for a fascinated crowd. A crowd that does not follow their blog/site as I had seen everyting they showed us previously I bet they got a new following after this.

They followed what I like to call one prick & 3 French guys (Neville Brody, the British graphic designer together with the people from Bazooka). Some old school fellas who were going to set us young kids straight. They taught they could shock us with ‘pornoghraphic images’ … #fail & out of luck guys. You all get the figurative ball sack as you sucked monkey balls.

Just headed on out from there so. Enough is enough

Stay tuned though as tomorrow morning part II with some stuff that’s really worth a view & read. My sincere apologies if its all a bit chaotic but there really is too much stuff to share Out.

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Girl Power! It ain’t a reference for the Spice Girls, nor a shout driven by female emancipation. What is it so? Well, the first feature-length documentary film about girls painting graffiti.

The idea behind the Girl Power project was born in Prague in 2008 during the filming of a short video with female graffiti artists. After its completion and success they thought, why not explore this topic a little deeper. Soon the film crew soon found themselves travelling across 15 European countries, crossing the Atlantic to graffiti’s birthplace New York, …

GIRL POWER movie 2011 (teaser vol.1) [Berlin 2009] from Girl Power movie on Vimeo.

Girl Power movie (trailer 2010) from Girl Power movie on Vimeo.

Stay up to date through their facebook page or website.

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Rewind to three weeks back and we find ourselves in London. As promised I still needed to share some more stuff with you all and what follows is a great T-shirt project!

Walking through East End, on our way to Old Street, we happened to cross WeAdmire. A store like no other as what you discover there is no high street American Apparel or Urban Outfitters mainstream junk but real authentic t-shirts. I was even told that they have over 1,500 designs in their collection. What makes it even better is de shop owner Theo, who welcomes everyone to have a look around and gives you the inside story on WeAdmire first-hand. About time we let him tell us his story.

How did it all get started?

The motivation for the company sprang from the dire shortage of t shirts that express anything positive about the wearers of said shirts.  I recently had a conversation with someone about Abercrombie and Fitch.  They had praised A&F as an example of a good brand.  My question to them: what did wearing an A&F shirt say about the person wearing it?  Their reply wasn’t coherent.  For me A&F is just the extreme end of t shirts as nonsense which happened to lead to my question in the conversation I was having.  More generally the lack of shirts I wanted to buy was brought home to me by my purchase of a t shirt in Camden Market some years ago. The design was a simple hand painted detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. It was the first time I had seen a shirt that looked good and had some resonance with me. The fact such a ““get out of my way, that shirt has my name on it”” urge did not repeat for 20 years or so was the source of my motivation to start WeAdmire. Shirts that deliver real self expression are too few and far between.

We sold the first shirt via our website late December 08. It was slow going in the beginning, I think we might have sold our second shirt to the buyer of the first in January 09. From there things picked up. Nearly everyone who has bought a shirt has come back for more. Several of our customers have told us our shirts have changed their love lives. And many have told us our shirts are the only items they have bought for their nearest and dearest.

How does the creation of such shirts start

The brief to designers invites them to put the subject ahead of the aesthetic. This is because in a circumstance of informed and authentic admiration the aesthetic will tend to look after itself. In this regard the brief to designers is well expressed by the quote on our Goethe shirt: ““What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.”” Among other things this makes the point authenticity is interesting, almost irrespective of topic.

Because we produce our shirts on demand we can manage a huge range of subjects. Considerations of what might sell do not have to form the primary design filter. Just as well because picking winners has a well established history of failure.   Quality and authenticity however are always interesting.  A good example of this is our Leica FIII by Yukio Miyamoto.  The Leica FIII is presently our best seller. But if someone suggested an image like this applied to a t shirt might be a best seller I doubt you would believe it until you saw and handled the shirt.  Print on demand allows us to always take the chance.

I think its for that reason (amongst others) that designers enjoy working for us. By definition designers are interested in self expression. Providing expression is a mutually satisfying thing for both expressor and expressed. T shirts have loads to say and many ways of saying it.

Can you tell us a bit more about the printing process? I see its not the usual way.

We print at resolutions of 300 to 800 dpi. The process uses gas dispersion inks. They dye the fabric, they do not sit on the surface of the garment. They are colourfast and because they dye the fabric they will not crack, or otherwise deteriorate to any significant extent. The process does not alter the performance of the fabric and does not affect the feel of the garment. Because of this and because we print digitally we can print to scale. Broadly the area of the design is a consistent proportion of the area of the shirts.

Final question, what are your favourite pieces?

My favourite t shirt admiration stories include that of Hedy Lamarr. Not so much a case as they don’t make them like this anymore as the simple fact that such people come round with a frequency like that of Shakespeare, Muhammad Ali etc, one every few hundred years…

Thanks for all the info.

Needless to say we ended up walking out with a fresh shirt I got myself the Bill Shankly one which states “Some people think football is matter of life and death, I assure youit’s much more important than that”

WeAdmire Ltd

13-15 Great Eastern Street

London, EC2A 3EJ

or find them on facebook

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Landing platform on top of the Thames

Strangest things tend to happen to me lately and last Friday an offer was made which I could not refuse. An offer which saw me return back to London way sooner than expected for a weekend. An offer to experience something once in my lifetime. An offer like no other

Friday morning 10 am

The story starts on my way to the office. I get a call from Imke Dielen, asking if “I would be interested to travel to London for the weekend by helicopter“. Seems there was a flight planned the next day which would be flying empty to London (and back on Sunday) to pick up a regular customer.

Now Imke thought I might be interested as I had stated the week before (upon return from our #youngscum trip) that I’d like to go back as soon as possible. I fell in love with the city, that to say the least. At first I thought she was pulling a good joke on me though, but after having heard the entire story I realised it was true and I had to grab the opportunity. (To be honest it took me an hour before I convinced myself I should drop everything and just go )

As there would be space for 6, a search started and after a couple of tweets, telephone calls, mails and disappointments (as Niel realised he lost his ID card and would not be able to leave the country) our travel party of 6 was formed.

Later that day I got briefed on what was about to happen and was told to  “Forget everything you know about aviation, this is how rich people travel“. No annoying pasport controls, no delays (although we did have like a 15 minute wait upon return proving private airtravel ain’t what it used to be #butdontcryforus), …

Literally flew by the London Eye & Big Ben

Saturday, 10.45 am

Boarding time. First time in a helicoptah and excited as a Catholic priest on Sunday morning we headed out to the heliport of Oostende. There our chariot awaited, a eurocopter AS365. Quick coffee and of we were to cross the channel. Amazing view needless to say (although I got stuck in the middle seat ).

As soon as we touched Britisch soil (or even better asphalt) in Battersea (near the Thames) we got welcomed by to customs officers. “Business or pleasure Sir?” “Pleasure! Felt like having Burger Kind I responded in a sec”. What followed was a hard laugh, yet I still think they believe I meant it

Anyhow, no taxi service or Benson waiting for us. A walk to the nearest overground station is what awaited. Check-in at the Royale Grand Hote, which sounds fancy but nothing more, awaited.

The week-end

What followed was a relaxed 24hour-something visit through London, doing touristy things. Visited the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Notting Hill, Picadilly Circus & other well-know spots. All the stuff I had previously ot been able to do really.

The Mayor of Battersea Heliport checking in

Upon return

After our return I was informed that the guys who made this possible are launching http://jethopper.net/. Have a look as they also want to give other people the experience, but that of flying by private jet at an affordable price.

As every day hundreds of private jets move around Europe with no passengers to pick up their owners or to return to their home bases they want to try and give these seats passengers so they at least become a little bit more “green” as the are scheduled anyway.

On their site they offer an interactive map. Once they know you’re interested in certain flights they’ll contact the private jet company and come back to you with the possibilities & details. Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying a millionaire’s private jet on its way to the end of the world, having a unique experience and this for just a fraction of the real cost.

So, this was our story straight out of the sky. If you ever get the chance to do something as insane as this, grab it with your two hands and run with it. Defre did and now he’s the mayor of Battersea Heliport and officially changed his ringtone to the airwolf theme song Out.

PS: Pics of our trip can be viewed overhere. There are some great shots from the sky!

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Well, we’re back on track & OOTB blog business is booming. The passed weekend/days I spent roaming the streets of London, meeting way to cool & interesting people (you knows who you are and we can’t say enough how much I enjoyed hanging out), dicovering new spots & stuff, …

I will write about a bunch off experiences & discoveries but have decided to do this bit by bit as I do not want to create an overload here. In the meantime you can check some pics I took overhere. Defintely have a look as it features some fine street art near East End, a visit to Tate Modern, …

What’s next you might be wondering? Well, Paris for the OFFF Festival I guess and with a bit of luck I will make it to Amsterdam for a weekend also. So a lot stuff to definitely to keep your eyes open out for. Out.

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Hooray! In one weeks time I will be on a train, destinatination… LDN. Together with some fellow BE tweeps I will be attending #youngscum overthere. The first one to be hosted across the channel and the next step in the further expansion of what once started as #jongtuig, a simple get together of young online minded people who love to drink offline beers here and there. Needless to say world domination will follow pretty soon afterwards.

The exact location in London will follow one of these days, but I heard it will be somewhere in/near Shoreditch.

All sightseeing tips are more than welcome and much appreciated in advance. We will be staying in a hotel near brick lane so my street art eyes will be able to eat their heart out.

Hope to see some of the UK cats up in here turn up at #youngscum btw. Out.

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It reminded me of Slinkachu, who/which once every so often crosses the online paths I dwell and every time I am surprised by the creativity it brings.

The Little People Project, which name you might also know it by, started back in 2006. It was one of the projects Londen-based street artist Slinkachu found himself entangled in. It involves the creation of very small street-based installations of which he then takes pictures from up-close and further away.

In order to do so miniature train set figurines get remodelled and painted over before they are carefully placed and left behind in the most unexpected spots, in real urban situations, capturing them sight-seeing, camping, grocery shopping, fighting and dying. It is therefore both a street art installation project and a photography project.

“The scenes I set up and the titles I give these scenes aim to reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed. But underneath this, there is always some humour. I want people to be able to empathise with the tiny people in my works.”

“In contrast to the propaganda posters of Shepard Fairey or the subversive stencils of Banksy, Slinkachu’s approach to street art is more subtle, more sensitive. You could easily have walk right past one of Slinkachu’s installations and not know it was there. His photographs are key: the close-ups make you feel like a participant, while the far-away shots leave you feeling like a spectator.”

I made a quick selection below, but you can find more overhere and should also definitely keep an eye out of the little people blog. Out.

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New iPad Test – Will It Shred? from FUEL TV on Vimeo.

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What can I say, OOTB loves Star Wars (and with Star Wars we mean episodes 4-6 ).What follows is the original Star Wars saga as told by a kid with one heck of a LEGO collection. try and beat this when it comes to stop motion clips. Out.

(through Nerdcore)

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(through Vandalog)

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Ever driven on a velodrome? I once did, was scared shitless and mainly stuck to the bottom part of the track. Redbull New Zealand brought us their own version, the minidrome. Out.

(through BigUp Blog)

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