Design Within Reach Inc.

What Not to Wear's Clinton Kelly was just now spotted at fancy designer furniture showroom-chain Design Within Reach's Flatiron branch.  read more »

In which your humble Transom editor interrogates—via IM—media editor and Off the Record columnist Tom Scocca regarding the Thursday Styles section of the New York Times. Off the Record It is time to revive an old feature. The Transom Oh is it? Off the Record The frisky new Foer-tified Nuevo Republica is running a takedown of... THIZZURZZDAY STIZZYLEZZ The Transom Oh hell no. Off the Record Oh yes. The Transom WHERE'S MY NEWSPAPER? Off the Record TNR is still behind the curve, since as I reach for Thursday Styles, I am once again distracted by House & Home. The Transom Are you implying that H&H is the new ThurSty? Off the Record I am SAYING it. The Transom WHERE IS MY NEWSPAPER? Off the Record It's not the new ThurSty, it's the new STYLES OF THE TIMES. The Transom I found my newspaper. It was in the trash.  read more »

Those "well-meaning," Dwell-reading San Francisco snobs behind Design Within Reach (the patronizing factor in their "design-news"-minded e-mail updates is not to be missed) have taken over the perfectly respectable middlebrow prefab home storefront that was once Portico, on Broadway and 20th Street.

Trading petit-bourgeois for bourgeois, in fact, seems to be the real-estate maxim of middle-Broadway these days, as delis give way to places with names like "Tisserie" and Tom Colicchio perpetually threatens to turn the strip into his own personal Wylie Dufresne's Clinton Street.

Here's a pic of what happened to the admittedly annoying Portico, as the transformation of Broadway between Union and Madison squares into the Middlebrow Immeubles center of Manhattan continues apace.

Can someone sic Paul Fussell on these people?

Anyway, soon enough Kirstie Allie will be swanning around in soft focus among cleverly concealing palm fronds on DWR television commercials, and then we'll have our quiet revenge without these full-Diesel-ensemble-wearing jerks even knowing it's happening.  read more »

- Tom McGeveran