“They’re the ones that are really the true masters of hooking consumers on this 24/7 cycle of buying clothes and buying new trends and coming back to the store to see what’s new. I think that they’re really the ones that really changed our relationship to clothes and made us think of it as a sort of single-serving disposable item.”
“I’ve truly seen it all in this town, everything from being shot at from pointblank range to witnessing the birth of my two beautiful children. I can’t really see myself living any place else, and I never get bored roaming the streets with a camera. I understand this city and its inhabitants — people from all walks of life, and they understand me. Every now and again I’ll have someone question what I’m doing to which I simply reply, “That’s what I do, I take pictures of people…””
“We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?”
“Demo Day has become a biannual milestone, Silicon Valley’s version of the N.F.L. Scouting Combine, where investors size up the new talent. It also serves as the industry’s State of the Union, a chance to learn about the most-recent developments in technology and gauge the buoyancy of the market. Are prices increasing, or are there murmurings, sotto voce, of a “cooling off”? Although the word “bubble” is blasphemous in Santa Clara County, even Graham admits that valuations for start-ups became “frothy” (adj.: “full of bubbles”) a couple of years ago. Still, a gold-rush mentality reigns. According to the research institute Wealth-X, there is now a higher per-capita concentration of “ultrahigh-net-worth individuals” (assets worth at least $30 million) in the San Francisco Bay Area than anywhere in the country — more than that of the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. An unspoken question on Demo Day is, How long can this possibly last? Y.C.’s job is to assure investors that it is here to stay.”
“To cook for the pleasure of it, devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption.” — Michael Pollan, Cooked
“Last month, 360 people traveled to Ventura, Calif., for the second annual Craftcation Conference, a four-day DIY-bacchanal at which attendees learn to market and promote their macramé and kombucha.”
“Trader Joe’s offers many fewer products than other supermarkets (about 4,000 items instead of 40,000, according to Peter Sealey of the Sausalito Group). Limiting variety doesn’t mean bland selections, however; the company does extensive research on its customer base to make smart choices on behalf of the people who shop there, mixing in some exotic food choices and using playful, quirky packaging. Shoppers are thus spared the aggravation of having to sort through dozens of options for jam or mustard or frozen foods.
Does it work? The chain, which has about 350 stores in the U.S., sells an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, according to Fortune magazine in 2010, more than double the sales generated per square foot by Whole Foods Market.”
“These characters represent more than just the original characters of an iconic brand—their archiving represents a lost sensibility about teaching girls to understand thorny historical controversies and build political consciousness.”
“Since the 1930s, with the introduction of Social Security, the United States has constructed—slowly, haphazardly, often painfully—a welfare state. Pensions, public housing, health care—piece by piece, the government created protections for citizens that the market doesn’t always provide. Child care is the major unfinished part of that project. The lack of quality, affordable day care is arguably the most significant barrier to full equality for women in the workplace. It makes it more likely that children born in poverty will remain there. That’s why other developed countries made child care a collective responsibility long ago.”
