i can't stop staring at this gif

Mapping the US by property value instead of land area http://t.co/v3eeHv32Mg via @CityLab pic.twitter.com/bYucQwrWJg

— Guardian Cities (@guardiancities) July 8, 2015

i would go back in time to Lagos in the 60s

Half of a Yellow Sun's Urbane Outfitter on Nowness.com

i clicked on this for the photo alone, but was rewarded with a pretty good article about the man behind the infamous levittown development.

i recommend it to you personally. if you're into old timey new york glamour, the beginnings of suburban development strategies, or falls from grace type stories. CLICK.

harry and peter brant at a punk met ball afterparty

just in case you were wondering

should you feel bad about trying to get into the Met for free?

No. They are rich, you are not.

gay power couple

Mark Zuckerberg's college roommate and current owner of The New Republic, Chris Hughes and his butch boytoy Sean Eldridge have a huge loft in Soho they use for parties, but live upstate on a former Vanderbilt estate. They are rich and powerful and married and I am jealous. nymag nytimes 

jay-z took the subway to his show last night

people behaved in exactly the way that you would expect.

grizzly bears are just like you and me

they live in williamsburg, think about their bills all the time, and are secretly jealous of middle class peers that don't have to rent for the rest of their lives and can afford things like children. one thing is different though, they play concerts at radio city music hall, and we pay to see them play concerts at rcmh. still, i'd bone ed droste. read all about it here.

marie antoinette's private theater

@thecoolhunter

the brant boys interviewed by interview

two of peter brant's sons were profiled in one of the magazines that he owns. interview.

did you know that peter 2 is going to bard? he wants to take acting classes. i almost made a list of all the 2pz favorites that went to bard, but then it got too long and too many of them don't like being talked about on the internet. harry, the little one, is still in high school but he lurves furniture and the court of kyoto.

who is Robert Pera?

The question on the minds of Grizzlies fans tonight, just who is this young self made billionaire who just bought our beloved team?

Well, let's start with the obvious: he is 34 years old, rich, and moderately attractive (the rich part makes him more so). He is the founder/ CEO of Ubiquiti Networks, a wireless technology company. He has a blog that looks like it is just starting out, and there is an unused twitter handle that may or may not actually be him. I read somewhere that he loves basketball, and plays 5 times a week. He was a hardware engineer at apple, and quit when he was 25 to start his own company, see how that turned out.

He was born in St. Louis, but grew up in the Bay Area, and splits time between Taiwan and Silicon Valley. Two quotes that give me hope for his chances of improving an already vastly improved team:

“I quit my job because I wanted to have more success faster”

 “I am excited about the opportunity to build on the work that has made the Memphis Grizzlies a highly competitive NBA team,” Pera said. “I look forward to getting to know the Memphis community and to continuing the team’s success in Memphis.”

big Grizzlies news

After two consecutive trips to the playoffs and a return to respectability in the Western Conference, Michael Heisley has found a buyer to purchase the Memphis Grizzlies, according to sources with knowledge of the owner's plans.

Sources told ESPN.com that Heisley has an agreement in principle to sell the team to communications technology magnate Robert Pera, who at 34 has a spot on Forbes' list of the 10 youngest billionaries in the world.

 The purchase price is in the $350 million range, sources said. A formal announcement to publicize the agreement between the parties is expected this week, possibly as soon as later Monday, with NBA Board of Governors approval then required before Pera can be officially installed as successor to Heisley, who recently turned 75.

Sources say that Pera intends to keep the team in Memphis. The Grizzlies' lease at the FedExForum, furthermore, ties the team to the city until the year 2021, with steep financial penalties attached to breaking that lease.
thanks charlie

a feel good memphis sports story

hometown hero and ex-Tiger / ex-NBA star Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway coached a poor kids basketball team to (spoiler alert) victory. Along the way he taught them how to make their beds, and encouraged them that if they follow their dreams, they too may one day end up in a rich suburb of Memphis. Good luck little boys!

sick!

"Some people have lovers in every port; I have horses in every port."

-Ann Romney



yuck.

tired of bribed concierges giving bad recommendations?

so am i. and so is gwyneth paltrow. so she created and i downloaded goop city. now i will always know where the goopiest places are (only in new york).

nashville i bet youre next.

  #GOOP

click here!

this is getting fun!

the 1 percent who stand with the 99 percent.

warren buffett op-ed

in today's new york times, you'll find an op-ed piece written by warren buffett, wondering why the government doesn't tax him more. an excerpt:

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot. (via)