GQ Best Stuff of the Year is up and some of my inclusions and write-ups are in there:
https://www.gq.com/story/best-stuff-of-the-year-2020
Including a $40,000 Hermès Mahjong set, Bi-Rite mirror, some masks, a bunch of other good stuff.
Included below are a few more which I came across in my research process. No vintage/auction items but what are you going to do. I didn’t include records. I am happy to compile a list of best furniture and/or eBay auctions if readers want. I have been listening to a lot of County Medical Examiners but am not going to write about that.
https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/shop/48-ounce-stainless-steel-container
Silver Vitamix container — this thing is cool, it dropped this year, the first ever Vitamix was metal, and so we return. I like the idea of not being able to see what you’re shaking. What if you put an egg in there by mistake? My Vitamix became mucho cloudy from the acids deposited by my spinach drinks, which are all I drink really, but the Bronner’s Christmas-colored soap cleared it out. Which is wild. The Bronner’s happened by accident. I tried everything else. It would also be funny if a smoothie shop got these and, shielded, put Coke in people’s health shakes.
https://www.georgjensen.com/en-us/home-decor/vases/terra-reversible-planter-large/10017686.html
Georg Jensen terra planter — I wrote a rec. piece for GQ in September about planters, this was in there; I think we’ll remember it in 40 years. Feels like it was cheaper a month ago. Anyways, a design triumph, I didn’t know they made planters this obviously good.
https://www.vitra.com/en-us/living/product/details/eames-elephant-plywood-grey
Eames elephant (grey) — the whole world and its sister seems to be moving away from mid-century furniture, and bully for them. But I don’t know, you don’t need to take a cheese grater to your Superstudio tattoo to fall in love with this thing. One of the five best pieces of mid-century paraphernalia ever made. It’s the eyes — that’s what makes these plywood elephants pop. In a way, these beady-eyed elephants are as anarchic as any furniture made by Pesce. The elephant is old but this color is new. I have a similar elephant, made of leather, which is for sale. (DM)
https://solecollector.com/news/2020/11/thisisneverthat-new-balance-2002-release-date
thisneverthat New Balance 2002 — collaborative sneakers seem like an affront to God; if the universe wanted two companies, and two sets of designers, making a single shoe They’d have fused them together. Still, not bad. The white ones I mean, whose piss-yellow soles look like display models from the old Fulton mall.
Prada slides — I don’t know if these were released or not. They were in the men’s s/s 2021 show, but only on a couple models and not on the website. Maybe they’re samples. But they’re very good. They might be the best gender neutral piece of clothing/footwear available now. Up for debate if they’re available or gender neutral. They are to me. My hope was a write-up would spur a wider release, in mens sizes. That won’t happen. But the world can be a miraculous place. Other things I never thought would happen did.
https://hypebeast.com/2020/6/kanghyuk-reebok-premier-road-modern-jet-black-release
Reebok Road Modern — I think this sneaker (not pictured) is also a collaborative effort, even though it’s only one color. (Black.) Half Cloudbust and half USPS New Balances with the velcro on them, it’s a technical sneaker only trying to be wild in one way. That’s because it’s slimmer than most designer shoes. But more outré than most Nikes. Even with the collaboration it’s just a good shoe.
other clothing:
This Ermenegildo Zegna outfit is good…. hitman sneaking into the movies.
They’re selling the CDG rings again. It’s been a decade since they were available. They are OK.
Prada released a bunch of really good stuff this year…
Here’s some:
It’s all so Baltic.
Books:
I mostly dug up coffee table books. I liked Steve Coll’s Directorate S, which came out in 2018. Reaganland is also excellent; I’m bad with new fiction.
https://store.sakevi.net/products/detail/11
Oppressive Liberation Spirit (Vol 1) by Sakevi Yokohama — Sakevi sang for GISM and did their art; this book is roughly split into two parts, early/band-era and non-. The first half, his punk stuff — collages, photocopies, black and white, flyers — may be the high point of that aesthetic, and taken together it’s as good as anything anyone has produced in any medium in the past fifty years. (No shit.) It jumps off the page, defines the rot of its era and is as scathing a critique to the world we’ve inherited as anyone has expressed. It is infinite, timeless, and brilliant; I can’t overstate how good it is. The second half is also collages and has its moments but is not as good. As if that matters. To put down a decade’s worth of white hot genius is a monumental achievement. May anyone I know accomplish that much. Much of this work is collected together for the first time; I got my copy from Nuclear War Now, who might still be importing them. I don’t know. It’s worth hunting down. One of the greatest monographs ever collected; beyond necessary.
https://www.sessionpress.com/books/we-have-no-place-to-be
We Have No Place to Be (Joji Hashiguchi) — one of the better photo books from Japan or anywhere, sitting between the crazy bodybuilding one that was behind the cash register at Mercer St. Books forever and which never sold, and the one where businessmen in nice suits are passed out next to fire hydrants. A re-release from 1982.
https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847868964/
Gio Ponti in the American West — turns out Ponti has a big body of work down there. So this feels like a must. Rizzoli put out a few good ones this year. The Stone Island one is good if you’re into them, it’s pretty complete. And there’s one on the Bata Museum in Toronto, too.
Photographs: Together & Alone (Karlheinz Weinberger) — one of my favorite photographers, his book on bodybuilders is one of the most artful looks at that side of the world, and there’s the rocker one, too. Weinberger shot his stuff while he was a civil servant. This book is mostly camping photos.
https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/megg-mogg-owl/products/seeds-and-stems
Seeds And Stems (Simon Hanselmann) — sometimes it feels like all the good art is behind or ahead of us and that what comes out today we can ignore, it being a product of our vague, mostly empty age. But if it seems grey now it can’t be a dark age for everyone… today and the last few years have been Simon Hanselmann’s golden age. His comics, which follow his Megg, Mogg and Owl characters that will live forever, come out one after another and are all good. It’s hard to think of anyone as productive. Following what he’s doing right now has to be what it felt like when Morbid Angel started touring. Seeds and Stems collects Hanselmann’s early stuff, much of it independently released. It feels illegal. How did this happen? Where did he come from? How is he keeping it up? What’s different about the way he sees the world and the way we do? How can we be more like him? Nothing else right now gives off the energy his work does. I don’t want to oversell it. These are comics and they are viscerally and consistently funny and beautiful and perfectly and roughly executed. They hit the spot over and over. Hanselmann’s pandemic Instagram comic is also excellent. We should be grateful.
Best movies — I didn’t go to the movies this year because the theaters have been closed owing to the novel coronavirus.
Best records — I don’t know. The new Brendan Perry record is good, so are the new Autechre records and their 14-hour pandemic mixes from earlier this spring. There’s a new Impalers song. Like I said, it’s been a County Medical Examiners couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Other work: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-JLRt0Ec6gZBm50hATYCYmLctnF9GhVijoEbam50JSw/edit