Posts from — March 2010

"The whole project was bootlegged," the late Donald Frey once told USA Today, describing how the legendary Mustang was developed at Ford, reports Douglas Martin in the New York Times (3/29/10). "There was no official approval of this thing," said Don, who died March 5th at 86. "We had to do it on a shoestring." The reason was that "Ford’s new Edsel had just failed so spectacularly" and Henry Ford II was nervous about taking more risks. He turned down the project four times.

That didn’t stop Don, who, in collaboration with Ford’s then general-manager Lee Iacocca, set up Mustang planning sessions with a design and engineering team "in a motel at night and in a storage room by day." They "borrowed from other Ford vehicles, including a Falcon chassis," but "developed an identity all its own for a younger generation in search of new looks and experiences. It was designed to appeal to both men and women, had a dash of elegance copied from European sports cars, and featured a galloping steed in the middle of its grille (image) that buyers thought was, well, really cool."

Don was once quoted saying that he was inspired to design the Mustang after watching Chevy put bucket seats in its Corvair, re-badging it as the Monza and improving sales. But in another account, he said his inspiration was his children, who told him, "Dad, your cars stink. There’s no pizzazz." Henry Ford finally approved the Mustang, but told Don he’d be fired if it failed, and deleted no expletives to make his point. When introduced at the New York’s Worlds Fair on April 17, 1964, Ford thought it "would sell 80,000 Mustangs in its first year. It sold more than a million in its first two years."

In a delicious turn of events, the tanking economy made possible the resurrection of the late, great Polaroid instant camera, reports Eric Felton in the Wall Street Journal (3/26/10). The last plant making Polaroid instant film — outside Amsterdam of all places — was set to be demolished, and its machinery dismantled. But because of the economy, plans to bulldoze the factory and construct a new building were cancelled. And, as fate would have it, Florian Kaps, a Polaroid enthusiast, happened to catch wind of this, um, development, the day before workers were to begin destroying the machinery.

Florian, who had been selling remaining stock of Polaroid film online, managed to delay the destruction for a week while he raised enough funds "to lease the factory, acquire the equipment and get to work." Even though Florian had the equipment, he still didn’t have the requisite chemicals for that very special Polaroid process. However, working with former Polaroid engineers, a new formulation was developed using readily available ingredients and "a sepia-tinted black-and-white film usable in the standard old Polaroid cameras" is now available online, at theimpossibleproject dot-com. Color film is promised this summer.

The remaining question is whether there’s a sufficient market for Polaroid film, which once commanded the instant-pictures category, but fell on hard times with the advent of digital cameras. Still, some people — artists largely — have remained enchanted by "the film’s otherworldly effects and quirky unpredictability." Some hobbyists meanwhile "were hooked on the strange, ethereal lull as the image seeps into existence before one’s eyes." It’s not likely that Polaroid’s revival will put a "dent in the digital juggernaut," but, as Eric Felton notes, it’s a happy moment "when the market increases our choices instead of narrowing them."

The double-whammy of the great recession and health-care reform could turn America into a nation of metrosexual wimps, suggests Jena Pincott in the Wall Street Journal (3/27/10). That possibility is suggested by a study of "nearly 4,800 women … from 30 countries including Argentina, Sweden, Russia, Australia and the United States." In the study, conducted by Faceresearch dot-org, the women were asked to evaluate pairs of nearly identical male faces — one digitally altered to look relatively more masculine and the other more feminine.

Faceresearch.org found a correlation between the women’s preferences and "their country of origin and that country’s national health index … They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation’s World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease. In countries where poor health is particularly a threat to survival, women leaned toward ‘manlier’ men." The United States, whose health index ranks 20th out of the 30 countries studied, came in fifth in the masculinity study. Bingo.

Meanwhile, "the recession in America has been a tremendous blow to men in traditionally masculine jobs such as construction and manufacturing; 82 percent of job losses affect men." So, if they’re not "as reliant on men’s genes or jobs to ensure the health and wealth of their children, women may come to value other qualities in a mate. It may become evolutionarily adaptive to prefer men who are cooperative, communicative, caring and better parents over traditional ‘manly men.’" On the other hand, another study "finds that as women’s level of ‘resource control’ increases … their preference for good-looking men increases."

Louann Brizendine is out with a book that claims to overturn "the stereotypes about men and boys," reports Emily Bazelon in the New York Times (3/28/10). The Male Brain is a follow-up to Louann’s 2006 best-selling book, The Female Brain, which created a stir with its claim that women talk faster ("250 versus 125 words per minute") and use more words than men ("20,000 compared with 7,000"). You probably remember this story, but maybe not the follow-up paper in Science magazine that debunked it. As it turns out, women and men both use "about 16,000 words during the course of a day."

And, according to Emily, Louann’s new book is just another "breezy, incautious account of how the brain, urged on by hormones, makes men and women act completely differently." Emily’s complaint is not that Louann’s points are necessarily false, just that so far the scientific proof that male and female brains are significantly different doesn’t exist. Emily also thinks that many of LouAnn’s claims are something short of surprising.

For example, in one chapter she presents a scientific treatment of "a classic complaint: Men accuse women of being too emotional, and women accuse men of not being emotional enough." As evidence, she uses "a single 2008 brain-scan study, of 14 women and 12 men, which found a gender difference in part of a lab experiment that tried to simulate empathy." The study’s authors acknowledge that supporting data is scarce. In any case, says Emily, "it’s hardly daring to say that there are momentous innate (gender) differences in the brain. It’s just dubious."

Putting the shopper at the center of retail assortment decisions.  By Paul Thompson. (more)

Beriah Wall hasn’t hit it as a big-time artist yet, but he reckons his small works of art have been enjoyed by millions of people, reports David Gonzalez in the New York Times (3/17/10). Beriah’s art is handmade, ceramic coins, about an inch wide, "painted in iridescent colors," each stamped "with a short, cryptic message, a year" and his initials. Beriah’s been turning out these coins since 1977 and they’ve "shown up all over the world … from California to Africa and from the Caribbean to Tibet."

He sees to this by routinely dropping the coins in public places, handing them to strangers, and giving them to friends to disburse on their travels. Some coins are stamped, "Income" on one side and "Outcome" on the flipside. Others say Real/Good and To Have/To Hold (images). "It’s a little free object that sort of floats around," says Beriah. "It’s about small endeavors, the edge of meaning or significance." Beriah got the idea while "manning the parking lot at a crafts fair, charging $2 per car."

When customers complained about the fee, says Beriah, he "sliced out little pieces of clay squares and gave them to people. And they all liked it. They smiled. It was immediate. So, bada-bing, I ran with it." At the time, "people were doing big stuff on a grand scale," he says. "The only way to compete was to go the other way. Think of the intimacy. You can go to a gallery to look at a piece of art. Here, you have a little gallery in your palm." Beriah’s latest coin, inspired by his lack of financial success as a conventional artist, is stamped: Stuck in/Brkln.

Everything changed for Magda Sayeg when she decided to knit a colorful cover for the door handle of her "struggling clothing shop in Houston," reports Chelsea Conaboy in the Philadelphia Inquirer (3/25/10). She says it made both her and her customers happy, and so she decided to knit covers for "stop-sign poles and watched with glee as drivers paused to take photos." That was five years ago, and it started a trend in graffiti art now known as yarnbombing.

"I was just responding to my environment, which was a lot of steel, a lot of parking lots, a lot that was not pretty," says Magda. Since then, Magda "founded a knitting collective, called Knitta Please, that yarnbombed New York City and was mentioned on Saturday Night Live." Magda "has traveled the world with her knitting, covering a rock on the Great Wall of China, bike racks in Paris, a gondolier’s oar in Venice and the handset of a London pay phone. She’s "working on a book and preparing for her first solo exhibit, at a Rome gallery in May."

She’s also inspired others, including Jessie Hemmons, 23, a student in Philadelphia, who, among other things, "gave the Rocky statue a scarf." Jessie actually picked up on the idea from a book, Yarn Bombing, whose authors came up with the term and also have a site, yarnbombing dot-com, where they post patterns and advice. Yarnbombing does have its critics, who see it as just another way to deface property. But its followers say it is temporary and harmless. "If it’s a nuisance, if it’s dirty, cut it off," says Jessie, who recently finished wrapping a magnolia tree "in a whimsical sweater of pinks, blues, purples and oranges (image)."

No hard numbers quantify it, but it appears that more and more men are becoming hegans — that is, male vegans, reports Kathleen Pierce in the Boston Globe (3/24/10). In typical male fashion, the guys wouldn’t necessarily identify themselves as hegans, though. "I’ve never been called one," says Bob Bouley, owner of The Pulse Cafe, a vegan restaurant in Boston. "Being a vegan is not something I flaunt, it’s just something I believe in." What Bob and his hegan brothers believe in is a diet devoid of "meat, dairy, eggs, chicken and fish."

Just don’t call it a "diet." Joe McCain, a police detective, says he used to eat "like an American" (i.e., pepperoni pizza, steak-bomb subs and everything fried) and weighed 257 pounds. But even though he’s dropped 60 pounds in eight months since becoming a hegan he says, "It’s the farthest thing from a diet. I don’t feel limited at all. If anything, what I eat has expanded not contracted … I will never diet again." For Eric Faulkner, being a hegan mainly means "healthy remakes of meaty standbys."

His favorites include "a great avocado Reuben sandwich, a faux meat loaf, roasted butternut squash soup and lots of pasta." Jay Atkinson, an athlete and writer, makes do with soy cheese, and has learned to make "spicy black bean chipotle stew and potato and asparagus soup with fresh dill." Joe McCain, who also added vinyasa yoga to his lifestyle, says the smell of barbecue sometimes gets to him, but it never gets the best of him. "When you start to feel the way I do and see the results from eating right and working out, it’s hard to think about changing," he says.

Older folks — that would be 55 and up — are "the fastest growing segment of the health-club population, reports John Hanc in the New York Times (3/4/10). "You go back several years, people had the image of a muscular young guy flexing in the mirrors," says Joe Moore, president of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association (link). "That’s just not the culture in most clubs today." Instead of "halter tops and skin-tight spandex" it’s more like "loose, comfortable pants and blouses."

Rather than the Black Eyed Peas for music, it’s more like the Beach Boys. At one club, Island Fitness in Coronado, Calif., a member of the men’s stretching class brought in his Stan Getz collection, and the club agreed to play it. The focus is perhaps less on strength and aerobics than it is on agility and balance training. "For the first time we have a cohort of people who are just getting ready to retire and have an expectation of being physically active," says Wojtek J. Chodzko-Zajko, an exercise scientist.

The conversations change too, with more chatter about vintage cars and old television shows, for instance. "Your typical 20- 30-year-old wouldn’t know what we’re talking about," says Dolores Forsythe, 63. "This is just a more familiar, comfortable, social group," says Sharon Sherman, 58. But Leigh Anne Richards, manager of MetroFitness in Montgomery, Ala., says they’re not all happy campers: "They’re hard to please," she says. "Some want to basically lie on the floor, while others want to really move." Of course, they’re mostly gone by late afternoon, when the younger set arrives, and the music changes along with the everything else.

"We’re Linda’s people," says Phil Beader, a regular at Linda’s Place, as if he knows Linda personally, reports Sam Dolnick in the New York Times (3/21/10). But Phil has never met Linda, nor have any of the other people bellying up at the bar, which is "crammed inside a strip mall next to a Chinese take-out and a 99-cent store." Linda used to own the place, along with her husband. But they left back in 1996, and Eddie Maloney, one of its current owners, has little idea where she is now.

But her spirit lives on, and to patrons, her name is shorthand for "people who dislike pretension almost as much as they dislike fancy drinks." As Jen DeRose, a bartender, explains: "A lot of bars on Tremont, they try to be really trendy … The drinks are way overpriced. You get a martini for $15 — it’s like, ‘Where are you?’ You’re in the Bronx." Jen says she has a running joke with one of her customers who orders a pina colada, and she pours him a beer. "I don’t do blender drinks," she says.

She doesn’t serve food, either — at Linda’s Place it’s just "beers and shots, Black Sabbath on the jukebox, and off-duty cops and bikers mixing at the pool table." Friday is karaoke night. "We all know each other," says Phil. "No matter how different our worlds might be, we’re all still here on a Friday night." And yet Eddie thinks the place needs a new name and is running a contest to pick one. But Jen thinks a new name would break the spell. "Linda’s Place is Linda’s Place," she says. "Don’t change the name. Don’t change anything."