We left for Sweden to dec­o­rate a tree with our recently acquired orna­ments from Dullsville and to make and eat tra­di­tional foods. It’s nice here…    Christmas eve was cel­e­brated yes­ter­day - here in Sweden, all the action is on the eve before - presents, Santa (sw:Jultomten), smörgåsbord (called jul­bord this time of year). Christ­mas day is more of a day for church visits, or if you are not too into that which we are not, read­ing and digest­ing the prior day’s fat­fest.  Anyway, we are away until the 6:th of January.

Dullsville are just like us on the second floor - you have to ring the bell and there is no big signs to look for - 143 E 13th St, NY, NY

“The Repub­li­cans sen­a­tors emerged from their meet­ing an hour later having decided they would not agree to a deal. Sev­eral blamed the autowork­ers union.

“It sounds like the U.A.W. blew it up,” said Senator David Vitter, Repub­li­can of Louisiana”

and another tidbit:

“The automak­ers would also have been required to cut wages and ben­e­fits to match the aver­age hourly wage and ben­e­fits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees in the United States.”

Wow, inter­est­ing how the union is get­ting blamed for the fall out, sounds like another cap­i­tal­ist spin on things. Can you really blame the work­ers union for not agree­ing with the notion of their work­ers taking on the cuts to sup­port the bailout? How about if for the next two years each white collar worker in the indus­try takes a big old cut of 30% of their salary and the union­ized work­ers keep their salaries at the same rates for the period, we’d at least see wages coming closer together.

I find this out­ra­geous, just the fact alone the CEO’s first flew in on pri­vate jets and then drove to Wash­ing­ton in their hybrids is stupid enough! Jesus, we can’t get our shit together here. We need a work­ers rev­o­lu­tion. Here you can see, it can work, we can come together! 

One more thing, Bank of Amer­ica received $25 bil­lion in bailout money and just announced today they are cut­ting 35,000 jobs over 3 years “as it digests its acqui­si­tion of Mer­rill Lynch.” Yeah digests the aqui­si­tion deal they did with money from our gov­ern­ment. Bril­liant, get the funds, get even bigger and then dump 35,000 people. What exactly are these com­pa­nies  getting our money for? Each of us needs to start asking. Take time to read the news, busi­ness sec­tion too!

Image caption:

“During the Great Depres­sion, unem­ploy­ment was high. Many employ­ers tried to get as much work as pos­si­ble from their employ­ees for the lowest pos­si­ble wage. Work­ers were upset with the speedup of assem­bly lines, work­ing con­di­tions and the lack of job secu­rity. Seek­ing strength in unity, they formed unions. Auto­mo­bile work­ers orga­nized the U.A.W. (United Auto­mo­bile Work­ers of Amer­ica) in 1935. Gen­eral Motors would not rec­og­nize the U.A.W. as the workers’ bar­gain­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Hear­ing rumors that G.M. was moving work to fac­to­ries where the union was not as strong, work­ers in Flint began a sit-​down strike on Decem­ber 30, 1936. The sit-​down was an effec­tive way to strike. When work­ers walked off the job and pick­eted a plant, man­age­ment could bring in new work­ers to break the strike. If the work­ers stayed in the plant, man­age­ment could not replace them with other work­ers. This pho­to­graph shows the broken win­dows at Gen­eral Motors’ Flint Fisher Body Plant during the Flint sit-​down strike of 1936-37.”

Please note! We are open every day until Decem­ber 24th from 1 - 7!  (Sometimes ear­lier and later too, so just call)

We plan on serv­ing glögg on Saturdays!

Hope to see you at KIOSK!

Happy Hol­i­days! Try to take the time / make the time to enjoy!

“I watched prairie dogs every day, rise before the sun, stand with their paws pressed together facing the rising sun in total still­ness for up to 30 minutes,” says Williams. “And then I watched them at the end of the day take that same ges­ture 30 min­utes before the sun goes down they would press their palms together in per­fect still­ness. I don’t mean to anthro­po­mor­phize, but when you look at a crea­ture that has sur­vived over the mil­len­nium begin and end each day in that kind of stance, it causes one to think about one’s own life and speed and rapid­ity in which we live.”

Exper­i­ments in Dakota Burl? When we sat down and thought about making our own prod­ucts we first thought about who we would like to work with, then we thought about what we feel the world needs and then we called the Swedish design office UGLY­CUTE. We met them in 2003 and have been want­ing to work with them ever since. Can you imag­ine bring­ing together the human­is­tic touch with some­thing so con­tem­po­rary it blows you mind? It’s about open­ing the door and daring to go through it to begin again rather than peek­ing in or touch­ing the handle and going home to com­fort. Some­times you have to go against your own beliefs, what is famil­iar, to find some­thing new. Not because NEW is nec­es­sar­ily a pos­i­tive but because to con­tinue to look at form and to
re-​examine and to create is utterly essen­tial. Human­is­tic + Intrin­sic + Futur­is­tic = UGLY­CUTE = LAMP + A STOOL + A TABLE. Each object requires the user to par­tic­i­pate and be involved in the cre­ative process of making an object. Each object is made with envi­ron­men­tal materials.

These are the first prod­ucts we are pro­duc­ing under the KIOSK name. They are things we feel are needed in a world loaded with objects. We hope to pro­duce 3 - 4 items a year.

From UGLYCUTE:

“Pop­u­lar is what most con­sumers like. They like what they already know and find com­fort in - the old. Con­sumerism becomes syn­ony­mous with con­formism. Pop­u­lar rules - the open market is clos­ing its gates to the dif­fer­ent. Ugly­cute reaches into the unrec­og­niz­able and unfa­mil­iar in order to treat design as a way to visu­al­ize and com­mu­ni­cate some­thing new and dif­fer­ent. The new is vital since this system is in such a bad need for change to cope with the prob­lems our way of life is con­fronting. Ugly­cute believes that new ideas need dif­fer­ent visu­als to make people under­stand this impor­tant change”

Many thanks to the INTER­NA­TIONAL ARTISTS STUDIO PRO­GRAM IN SWEDEN:

With­out them you would not get to see this here in New York!