The Kiosk has unloaded another haul of simple, sweet souvenirs from its adventures around the world – this time from an extended journey to Portugal.

If you’ve been wishing your degreaser, floor wax, and vanilla sugar came in prettier packages, today’s totally your day!

Load up at KioskKiosk.com.

On white and off-white. Alright?

Guess who walks down the aisle of the fanciest grocery market in town and choses their weekly cereal not based on how much they enjoy the contents inside the box, but whether or not said box has been branded in vintage edition packaging?

Me, that’s who. (This week at least.)

There were Grape Nuts a la retro too, but I’ll save them for next time.

In the room directly below me rests a large cardboard box crammed with all my old He-Man and She-Ra action figures. Before I was old enough to fawn over fashion, I marveled over the plastic couture and haute, blue brush-able hair of my Zodak and Teela and Trap-Jaw and MerMista toys.

Pastimes of my past and present join forces in the galactic-fashion illustrations of Adrian Riemann in which Evil-Lyn armors up in American Apparel leggings with a Cheap Monday clad Tri-Clops to battle in style their foes Man-At-Arms (in Common Projects sneakers) and She-Ra (sporting April 77 denim).

The artist is considering printing the entire collection on fluorescent paper for a gallery exhibition. Personally, I want full color treatments, a runway show, and a fashed-up animated re-make.

Elements of my domain’s design, present and future…

Curated junk that’s been sitting real still atop a wooden plank on my stairway radiator. A tablescape but minus the table.

And a new (but old) photograph of the ZR1/US Shenandoah drifting above the Lakehurst Hangar, December 1923. Currently awaiting a wall to land on. Probably in my office or the larger one across the hall.

After fifteen years I finally went to a drive-in movie again this weekend and loved every second of it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of my enjoyment came courtesy of the adorably dated signage hanging around my old haunt.

What a good old obsolete logo, sans serif font, or product shot of cola chilling in an icy forest scene won’t do for a guy’s soul.

The world may as well have stopped designing itself entirely after 1986, and I’d have been just fine.

To escape the intense weekend heat, I retreated to the 18th floor of the Foshay Tower – the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi.

Modeled after the Washington Monument and completed just before the stock market crash of 1929, the historical building is now the first W hotel in the Twin Cities.

The W furnishings and lighting are all nouveau nightclub glam – Carrie and Samantha chic, I guess. But the buildings original detailings remain as they were eighty years ago and were the true signals of style at the hotel.

The elevator doors, the ceiling, the original mail slot…why is nothing today fashioned with such detail and dignity?

Another retro rush of the Foshay tower is its observation deck above the thirty-second floor. To this day the tower remains one of the tallest concrete skyscrapers, second only to the Empire State Building.

Wandering around the Foshay’s narrow decks from way up above in the warm August winds was supremely cinematic.

A gigantic gorilla, second in size only to King Kong, might as well have crawled on up to paw down propellor planes.

It’s good to look at your world from a new vantage point, and to look at your world the way it once was. My hometown W was pretty perfect for doing both.

1. Good-looking lip balms.
2. Slick and wicked wallets.
3. Nifty little notebooks.

These are things I tend to covet, consume, but then never use.

So I can’t reconcile purchasing any of these deadly, deadstock notebooks from Present & Correct but maybe someone else out there would make good or great use of them.

I love material goods obviously, but I equally loathe wasting them.

UK conceptual artist Daniel Eatock’s website showcases his stark and simplistic works. Its easy to eye-roll at the capital A approach to “Art” in this modern style, but something about Eatock’s experiments is strangely soothing and satisfying. They make me smile. And think. My head just gets too busy for any eye rolling.

Tops.
29 coloured plastic tops and lids arranged and rearranged.

Everything Heinz.
An edition of 57 sealed cans each containing a composite mix of 57 Heinz canned foods. Commissioned by the Design Museum London.

Up & Down.
One coloured balloon (filled with helium) touching the ceiling connected by a white ribbon to a second balloon (of a different colour) filled with breath (exhaled by a member of the gallery staff) resting on the floor.

You’re smiling or thinking now too, no?

My tolerance for graphic Ts is probably at an all-time low. I liken them to the fast-food of the men’s fashion industry – cheap, empty, typically synthetic.

Something about this pelican T from Rogues Gallery charms me, however. Perhaps it’s that I can’t envision Perez Hilton or Pete Wentz wearing it. The T seems like a perfectly patina-ed page from an old Audubon Society publication, with sleeves stitched onto it.

Now on the menu (in Small) at Blackbird.

Early 1900s German book covers.

Vintage transistor radio.

I’d find ways and reasons to use it – if I had one that pretty.