Lastnightstony

Chinesey New Year

Glorious Day in Londontown today. Crystal blue and no wind. Walked up Commercial Road to the Hoxton Urban Lodge to meet up and spend the day with my friends Andrew and Christin. Everytime I leave the house I find something new or see something in a way I have not seen it before. Straight off I saw these great train lofts. Can’t really explain much more than what I am seeing, but it appears these are some really cool places some one has built and turned into flats. Got to figure out how to do this in Portland.I have not made this walk up the hotel in the daylight, but I noticed all of this great street art. There is a Banksy piece across the street as well. This is Andrew Dickson and Christin Spagnoli and they might be doing the coolest thing I have ever heard of. These two fine folks, who both work at WK Portland, are travelling around the globe in an easterly manner visiting each office in the Wieden+Kennedy global Network. New York City, London, Amsterdam, Dehli, Shanghai and Tokyo are the destinations of their course. The objective: to write a book about the global culture of the agency that has been recognized by Adweek as the Global Network of the Year. I can’t even begin to envision the information overload that will ensue. My head spins from just being here in London, let alone trying to grasp all of those other places. It is truly a great gig and something that no one will be able to predict. Hence why you do such things. So while they are here, I have tried to share my experience a bit and go explore some new things of London with them. First stop today, Camden Town.

*check out Christin’s site as they make their way east. http://globtastic.typepad.com Cemden reminds me of Upper Haight in San Francisco. A young and bohemian bunch of people cruising shops that have all kinds of fashion, shoes and all kinds of stuff. The road was shut off only a few blocks from the tube. Apparently an explosion occurred in the wee hours this morning, causing a fire to a store. Debris was all over the street and the Metro PD had the area closed off. Due to this we changed direction and headed over to Oxford Circus.While Christin and Andrew were in Top Shop, I popped next door to NikeTown. Low and behold there was the Mercurial Vapor ad I have worked on the last couple of weeks in the entrance. It appears they took the single page ad and made it into a large size wall poster. As a designer, you always notice little things that have been toiled over that get mangled by someone else. Still a big trip to see the work in person so fast. I will go into more depth about WK work in an upcoming post.We headed over to Picadilly to look around for a bit. Next thing we knew we stumbled right into Chinatown during Chinese New Year.This year is Year of the Rat. Myself being a water rat specifically, I have been feeling quite aligned with things. London has a pulse of it’s own that is really fun to be apart of. All you got to do is step outside.