FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Showing posts with label fashion blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fashion blogs. Show all posts

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Trending -with style!- at Hallandale Beach Blog: Maria Sharapova and her knowing, nuanced and amusing tweets about sports, food, fashion, travel and the unusual under-the-microscope life she leads; @MariaSharapova, #Sugarpova, #Stockholm: ABC News Nightline video of her 2010 trip to Chernobyl







Trending -with style!- at Hallandale Beach Blog: Maria Sharapova and her knowing, nuanced and amusing tweets about sports, food, fashion, travel and the unusual under-the-microscope life she leads; @MariaSharapova, #Sugarpova, #Stockholm: ABC News Nightline video of her 2010 trip to Chernobyl
Here at the blog we love her because she's STILL so remarkably level-headed and thoughtful despite all her great success, on and off the court! 
If @MariaSharapova is NOT playing in the finals of a Women's Grand Slam, like this morning's Wimbledon finals, chances are high that we won't watch it for more than 15-20 minutes at a time.

 The other crazy thing is that for reasons not worth getting fully into here, because of Maria Sharapova's upbringing via her parents, despite her being born in Russia, she's demonstrably more pro-American and down-to-earth -and better informed- than most members of the current U.S. (and European) Mainstream Media that's covering Wimbledon on TV/cable and which you'll be reading online over this Fourth of July weekend, especially the jaded and  blasé under-40 women
Some of us really appreciate that aspect of her winning personality.
My last blog post on Maria Sharapova featured a very good ABC News Nightline segment that originally aired on August 17, 2010.called Out of the Ashes: Maria Sharapova .
It dealt with her visiting the general area near where she might've been born, about 100 miles from Chernobyl -correct, THAT Chernobyl- where her parents lived UNTIL AFTER the 1986 nuclear accident that led them to western SIberia, due to radiation fallout and concern with birth defects.
Maria was born about 51 weeks after the disaster.
The second part of the video focuses on her first yisit there since she was 13 years old.

That November 28th, 2010 blog post was titled, Anna Poslavska, 2010 Miss Ukraine, has a doppelgänger who frequently hits the Panera in Hallandale Beach; Maria Sharapova in The Ukraine
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/anna-poslavska-2010-miss-ukraine-has.html
E:60 Maria Sharapova From Russia With Love Chernobyl, 2010.
Narrated by then-ESPN correspondent Rachel Nichols. 






 which is more interesting when you remember that three months ago, she tweeted about fictional Swedish literary icon, Pippi Longstocking...




































The thought that popped into my head while writing this:
Longest legs, Maria Sharapova vs. Stacey Keibler? 
Hmm-m...
I think we might need a Tale of the Tape to figure that one out for sure.

 http://www.mariasharapova.com/
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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Turkish House of Cards finally coming apart? Istanbul - Come for the peaceful protests, but stay for the tear gas and the water cannons! Turkey continues to screw-up over-and-over, play the 'heavy,' and cause reasonable Western observers to shake their heads and wonder whether it can now be trusted in the future; blogger Dani Karlsson is right in the middle of the action!


bakshow1 YouTube Channel video: Overview of Gezi Park protests in Istanbul and government's clumsy and heavy-handed response, as seen via Al Jazeera News' English-language service. Uploaded May 31, 2013. http://youtu.be/-MZpzPeeKOk
Taksim Istanbul
by Its me, your Dani June 1st, 2013 15:57

Well, as so often seems to be the case, Swedish model and blogger Dani Karlsson, of "It's me, your Danni" fame, recently in Miami, has found herself in the middle of everything yet again.
I mean really in the right place at the right time.

 This week, in the middle of the mass protests by Turkish citizens, chiefly in Istanbul, who don't want the government to chop down some much-needed shade trees and level parts of Gezi Park,  a spot of green amongst acres and acres of concrete, merely to indulge their edifice complex instincts and do some redevelopment in a place where it's both inappropriate and unpopular, though there's no accounting for taste among visiting tourists.

 Tens of thousands of regular citizens participated there and eslewhere in Turkey.
And in the case of the former, received complimentary tear gas and water cannons for their troubles.

 Dani, who appears on the popular Metromode blogging platform, has lots of photos of her
protest experience at http://dani.metromode.se/2013/06/01/occupy-taksim/

 The BBC's take on the government's heavy-handed reaction and the police over-reaction, is interesting:
Correspondents say that what was initially a local issue has spiralled into widespread anti-government unrest and anger over the perceived "Islamisation" of Turkey.
One woman told Agence France-Presse: "They want to turn this country into an Islamist state, they want to impose their vision all the while pretending to respect democracy."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22741644

 Meanwhile, Channel 4 News has their own take here.

Channel 4 News video: Turkey protests: police fire tear gas on demonstrators
Turkish police fire tear gas and pressurised water at demonstrators on a second day of anti-government action, which was sparked by a protest to protect a park from redevelopment. 
SATURDAY 01 JUNE 2013
http://www.channel4.com/news/turkey-protest-police-tear-gas-taksim-square-istanbul-ankara  They're chanting, among other things, "shoulder to shoulder against fascism"

 In their dispatch from there today, Reuters deals a lot more with the increasingly-seen authoritarian side of the current Turkish Prime Minister and the grave concerns among secular Turks that he is increasingly willing-accomplice in undoing what modern Turkey had become -a small-case democracy with a majority Muslim population within NATO.

 If Erdogan keeps it up, he will be initiating the brain drain that's long been feared.
Once that happens, that country will quickly lose its dynamism and become the land of misfits as companies bolt. leaving the dummies behind.

Reuters
Turkish PM Erdogan calls for end to protests as clashes flare
By Nick Tattersall and Humeyra Pamuk
ISTANBUL/ANKARA | Sat Jun 1, 2013 4:23pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/01/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130601

 American Thinker
Are the Turkish people finally waking up to 'creeping Islamization'?
By Rick Moran
June 1, 2013
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/are_the_turkish_people_finally_waking_up_to_creeping_islamization.html

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Saturday, May 4, 2013

While Miami Dolphins stadium renovation deal was going south in Tallahassee, rather bravely, in between all this week's downpours, DJ Boris and his friends managed to party at the Surfcomber Hotel in South Beach, as part of Winter Music Conference 2013.; @MiamiDolphins Stephen Ross, his media flacks & pols at #MiamiFirst lost the battle and the war -both FL House Speaker and FL Senate President were against it; Time for Ross to open his own checkbook or sell the team; South Florida pols who supported Ross will find that comes with a downside that voters won't forget!; @willweatherford, @PhinPhanatic


fashiontv YouTube Channel video: DJ Boris and Friends Party at Surfcomber Hotel in Miami, Winter Music Conference 2013, FashionTV, Uploaded May 3, 2013. http://youtu.be/ahr0QNQKFPw

 I wasn't there myself, but I hear that... afterwards, they gathered around in small groups and talked amongst themselves about: the reluctance of the Obama Administration to arm the rebels in Syria, the death-spiral trajectory of the Gang of Eight's pro-amnesty immigration reform legislation in Congress, and what they liked the most about their favorite U.S. and foreign fashion bloggers.

But when they were finished talking about global issues, the got local and while the beer was still cold, they got together in and around the pool, threw the beach balls out, and argued over why billionaire Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, one of the world's richest men, won't pay for the stadium improvements himself that he claims that HIS stadium needs to host another Super Bowl, or, at least get a loan for the improvements for HIS stadium from a reputable bank in Miami. But he doesn't want to do that, does he?

Is it because Ross didn't think any banks in Miami are reputable, or because he just preferred to avoid the paperwork and fees and instead get an interest free loan from taxpayers?

 Field of Schemes blog
Dolphins are proposing to turn the $120 million public subsidy into a $120 million 30-year interest-free loan
By Neil deMause:
March 26, 2013
http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2013/03/26/4792/dolphins-reportedly-offer-to-trim-subsidy-demands-to-136m/








Or, as I wrote in the subject hearder of an email the day I came across this very curious bit of news from Tallahassee -news that not a single Miami TV station mentioned on-air that day or the next- and which none of the Dolphin "experts" and media types said anything at all about, "And boom goes the Dolphins charade" 

Palm Beach Post
Why the Senate president voted against the stadium deal
By Dara Kam
April 29th, 2013
http://www.postonpolitics.com/2013/04/why-the-senate-president-voted-against-the-stadium-deal/

 Hmm-m.. do they not want to make permanent enemies of both Gaetz and Weatherford, only Weatherford?

 In the next few days, if everything works out, I'll be posting the most egregious example of the dozens seen by South Florida residents in recent weeks of the Miami news media's sycophancy disguised as journalism during the Dolphins Stadium PR debate.

 The debate that had support for the question in Miami-Dade County at 22% according to a poll I read about this week, much lower than even the paltry 30% I thought it might get, which would've been a landslide defeat for Ross.
Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford saved him from that embarrassment.

 That post will include what I personally believe to be THE worst example of all, which came from an unexpected source -a usually-reliable person with a great voice.

 Though it may be hard for younger Dolphin fans or people who have moved to South Florida since the 1990's to believe... Once Upon a Time, the Miami Herald had a Dolphins beat guy who was not only a a great writer who penned pieces with genuine insight and nuance, but who was also scrupulously fair and could almost always back up what he said with solid facts and reason. 
His name was Michael Janofsky.

 He was so good and so fair-minded and insightful -yet opinionated- that he left the Herald for the N.Y. Times and was one of their best correspondents for 24 years.

 Anyone thinking that current Herald Dolphin beat reporter Armando Salguero @Armando Salguero was ever going to report on the stadium renovation fight either accurately or without bias, has clearly been proven wrong over the past few weeks. 
How many mistakes can you make in one column or a single Tweet?

 Me, I don't think Salguero will be going to the N.Y. Times in the future.
Just saying...  

-----
FashionTV YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fashiontv

 PhinPhanatic @PhinPhanatic  https://twitter.com/PhinPhanatic
http://phinphanatic.com/ 
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Friday, December 14, 2012

Dynamic Swedish fashion forward retailer H&M opens store at Aventura Mall today - Finally! Store near me is located near Bloomingdale's on far south side of Aventura Mall; @hm, @iamdwerbowy

H&M Finally! November 14, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Despite the fact that it's been known since mid-July that the Aventura Mall less than two miles south of me would be opening a large 25,000 square foot Hennes and Mauritz -H&M's- the Mall's official website hasn't been updated as you might expect it would be to accurately reflect the store's grand opening today, and show customers where it is on either a stationary or interactive map. http://www.aventuramall.com/ Nice going!
Way to embrace the technology!
says that the H&M is on... "Level: upper level."



Some of H&M's in-mall promotion. November 14, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

But located next to what? Near what major anchor store? On what side of the Mall???
Such obvious questions, yes?
Good thing I'm here to answer those questions in an intelligent fashion.

Late afternoon, looking east at Bloomingdale's, Aventura Mall, Aventura, FL. November 14, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Actually, the truth is that H&M will be located on levels 2 and 3, near Bloomingdale’s, above, on the far south side of the Mall. 

If you're heading over there for the High Noon opening today, like I am, be smart.
Whatever you do, DON'T park near the Bloomingdale's or you will be circling forever.
Instead, park closer to near the Sear's and come into the Mall near the entrance to the AMC 24 Theatres and the Starbucks, and save yourself some time and aggravation. 
You're welcome!



If you see this when you walk into the Mall, you successfully followed my directions!
November 14, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

 Daria Werbowy, @iamdwerbowy,  https://twitter.com/hm

 H&M's Holiday 2012 ad campaign featuring Daria Werbowy, on location in Zermatt, via Wendy Lam at her fashion blog, Nitrolicious: http://www.nitrolicious.com/blog/2012/12/11/hm-holiday-2012-ad-campaign-featuring-daria-werbowy/

View Larger Map
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Google does it again! Now mapping the great Indoors!; LA Weekly's Informer blog: "Google Maps to go Indoors, Cover Macy's in L.A. And Other Malls"

Google video: Take Google Maps Indoors. November 28, 2011

Just when you might've thought that Google has no new worlds to conquer, no new source of hand-over-fist advertising revenue from something that's standing right in front of us that we all take for granted, they show their business savvy and smarts.

Yesterday I got word from them that "Google Maps is entering a new frontier: mapping the indoors."

They've even chosen to make a humorous example of their new feature, writ large, using our old friends at Ikea...

Google video: Take Google Maps inside Ikea

As usual, Google will have the last laugh as they will now get ad dollars from other retailers, esp. smaller shops, who previously didn't cough up money for their Google Ads or sidebar ads, targeting consumers who will be more likely to be visiting the mall.

It's equally true that restaurants, bars, night clubs, book stores or other smaller owner-managed retail outlets near popular destination malls would now consider using Google Ads targeting those same consumers heading to the mall, paying to have their ads come up when someone goes to Google Maps to use this new feature to check out a specific mall's particulars.

And who might now consider using their ads as well, who wouldn't normally be thought of as a likely client for Google Ads?
Popular fashion, home decor and lifestyle bloggers who want to increase the eyeballs coming over to their sites.

Yes, that's why they're Google -they're always looking at the big picture.


------

LA Weekly
Informer blog
Google Maps to go Indoors, Cover Macy's in L.A. And Other Malls
posted by Dennis Romero at The Informer
November 29, 2011

If you're a thoroughly modern 'tard who can't take two steps without consulting your smartphone for directions (guilty), then Google has a new update that should help you with the finest detail...
Read the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/11/google_maps_malls_shopping_retail_angeles.php

-----

Peter Coffin video: The Lost Civilization of IKEA


My last post on Ikea was from earlier this year, January 24th, titled, Daily Mail succeeds in solving riddle as old as time: "Ikea design stores 'as mazes' to stop shoppers leaving so you end up buying more..."


2012 Ikea catalog, USA: http://info.ikea-usa.com/Catalog/

2012 Ikea catalog, Sweden:

Ikea - Bättre skilsmässa åt alla -Better divorce for everyone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjrGmFapS4

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Monday, February 21, 2011

Some thoughts on the frustrating South Florida blogging scene in 2011 that compares so unfavorably to the innovative one in Sweden; Observations re NY Times' article on growing cleavage between using blogs and Twitter to disseminate original content: "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter"; On comparing the blog portals at the Miami Herald to the ones used by savvy Swedish news media that makes young women like Blondinbella, Tess Montgomery and Josefina Boston influential voices on so many issues; The whole blogging scene in Sweden is not just different from the U.S. -it's better. Meanwhile, here, MSM and "Usual Suspects' try to dominate the conversation

South Florida blogging scene in 2011; Observations re NY Times' article on growing cleavage between using blogs and Twitter to disseminate original content: "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter"; On comparing the blog portals at the Miami Herald to the ones used by savvy Swedish news media that makes young women like Blondinbella, Tess Montgomery and Josefina Boston influential voices on so many issues; The whole blogging scene in Sweden is not just different from the U.S. -it's better. Meanwhile, here, MSM and "Usual Suspects' try to dominate the conversation
* Updated in January of 2016

 I'm still laughing and bemused after reading this New York Times article, below, with my emphasis in red.

This fascinating-yet-revealing quote is what really hit me: “It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” she said.“ With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.”

Yes, putting those pesky words together in sentences and paragraphs sure is hard work! 
These kids are all thumbs.

New York Times
Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter
By Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Published: February 20, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills.
“I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/internet/21blog.html

Meanwhile, in Europe, media companies that create a stable of popular and blogs stressing text and visuals, esp. those written by popular teens and twenty/thirty-somethings about fashion, design and pop culture, are making money. Why?
Because they offer something that readers always want: interesting unique content.

The hugely-popular blog, The Blond Salad, http://www.theblondesalad.com/ created by a very 
savvy and resourceful Italian twenty-something named Chiara Ferragni @ChiaraFerragni today had this exclusive: Burberry fashionshow in real time on Theblondesalad!

 Yes, timeliness and genuine relevancy for her readers, just two of the things that concerned residents like me perpetually complain that we have far too little of in South Florida for local politics and government, in part because in the year 2011, we also STILL lack an All-News local cable channel that can fill that gap. 
To match the All-News radio station that South Florida also still lacks.






Above, the colorful header used by model Tess Montgomery for her popular blog, TessM.se.

*2016 Update to below: In 2013 Tess was one of the featured bloggers on the very popular Stureplan.se platform at http://stureplan.se/bloggar/tess but in 2016 Tess is now blogging at http://tessm.metromode.se/  

Spotlife.se with two London-based blogs, Josefina Boston's Absolute Boston, http://absolutboston.se/  and Tess Montgomery's, http://tessm.se/, both of which I have mentioned here very positively in this space previously, have multi-national advertisers, and that's even more the case at Isabella Löwengrip's Blondinbella blog -also at Spotlife- who has become a well-known celebrity/author throughout Scandinavia and Europe.

She's also not only a frequent presence on national TV in Sweden, but is more influential than most veteran reporters and correspondents at well-known European newspapers, magazines and wire services covering fashion or pop culture.
And everyone knows it, too.

In Sweden, there's even a nationally-televised awards show for blogs on Channel 4, for the best blogs in about a dozen different subject and age categories, and it's promoted on both TV and in print, even to the point where they have TV ads featuring the various candidates in the weeks leading up to the telecast. I've even placed those some of promos here on the blog in the past to give you an idea of how differently blogs are viewed.
Here's the video they produced for the Blog Awards 2010 show in the category of Best Newcomer - Årets nykomling

Blog%20awards:%20%C3%85rets%20nykomling
http://www.tv4play.se/noje_och_humor/blog_awards?videoId=1.1773279

 See some more recent clips at: https://www.tv4play.se/program/blog-awards

Let me tell you something -there is no station promo for local Miami TV newscasts or Dolphins or Hurricanes shows that is as well-produced as that one.
Yes, genuine effort and vision still counts for something with readers and viewers.
And the numbers show it.

Here's the list and video of the 2010 winners:
http://www.tv4.se/1.1831566/2010/09/27/vi_vann_blog_awards_2010

 Meanwhile, the Miami Herald's blog network such as it is, is featured in the bottom-third of the website's first page, and has no identifiable icon or graphic next to it, just boring black text saying South Florida Blogs.

Above, a screenshot I took Monday night of the location on the Miami Herald's website where their blogs and collection of South Flordia blogs are located, with, as you can see, no icon to attract your attention or differentiate them -just text in black.
Boring!

I'll leave to another time the question of why a media company like McClatchy that prints both English and Spanish language newspapers in Miami insists on placing Spanish language blogs on an English language website, and even worse, confuses people by having a Spanish language blog with an icon being the first one that people actually see on the English language website.
And it's also the only one.

Why are there blogs listed in the South Florida blogs section that are actually written by Herald staffers, and why aren't they listed in the Herald's own section?
That's real genius!
And nervy!

Lots of online Herald readers no doubt see that and say, "Why even bother?"

And when you get there, you aren't exactly wowed visually by what you see!
http://yourblogs.miamiherald.com/

Compare that frumpy-dumpy scene of the Herald blog page to not only Spotlife's colorful blog home, http://spotlife.se/ but also the very popular Stureplan blogs, which are very much about Stockholm's exciting nightlife and entertainment scene which puts Miami/South Beach's to shame for genuine fun for non-millionaires, http://stureplan.se/

Could there be more of a contrast between the integration of color and design?
And there are other differences, too.

For reasons that were never explained to me, my own blog -yes, this one- was listed on the Herald's blog page when it first launched, but since I was never asked about it or received any info from the Herald about their plans prior to its launch, I only found out about it a few weeks after it started, thru an email from a friend who'd seen my blog on it and was puzzled why it was there without my ever having mentioned it to her.

She wanted to know who I got there to put in a good word for me.
Nobody -it was a complete surprise to me, too.
That's NOT exactly a strategy to win well-informed hearts and minds -or readers and eyeballs.

And now that the Herald's link for their hodgepodge collection of blogs has migrated from near the top of the website to some dubious real estate with no promotion, graphics or icon, it's not at all clear that readers even realize it's STILL there.
I don't even think about it anymore, even though I'm on it.

Since this article is about a downward trend among some sub-set of bloggers, let's call them the never-reads, let me leave you with a more encouraging stone-cold fact about one who gives people facts and context they are looking for.

Isabella Löwengrip at Blondinbella has more people following her on Facebook than the Miami 
Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel and ALL their reporters, columnists or subject blogs combined.
She's... actually recognized in Stockholm at the airport when she flies home into Arlanda.


Interesting and unique content -it's why I read the blogs I've mentioned here and why so many other people do, too.

Just saying...
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Saturday, December 25, 2010

The Nordiska Kompaniet Dept. Store in downtown Stockholm has a surprise guest in its Christmas window display: a small squatter!


Råttan mitt bland NK:s mjukisdjur
http://www.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/nyheter/inrikes/article8291800.ab

NK is Nordiska Kompaniet, the larger-than-life Swedish department store company with hugely popular locations in downtown Stockholm and Göteborg, that is, in ways that are hard to fathom for many Western consumers under the age of forty who never knew that era, both a mythical and magical name in the world of consumer retailing, and an aspirational lifestyle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordiska_Kompaniet
In Swedish: http://www.nk.se/
In English: http://www.nk.se/en/nk-stockholm/


NK Vintersaga - 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4r7gvi96kU

Much more than almost any other current department store I can think of, NK is like the old-fashioned dept. stores that, in the United States, used to populate large northern cities, as well as Atlanta, large cities in California and a handful of other larger cities, where the promotional activities within the store as well as the print/TV/radio advertising campaigns were a staple of both everyday amusement and general conversation among the local citizenry.

Personal evaluations were made not only on the quality and service of the stores, but also of their ad campaigns, not unlike frank discussions of sports teams or favorite players, whether in a hot-streak or in a slump, and if the latter, what would be needed to change the dynamic?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/christianmontone/4338039892/

My sense of things from reading about that era and talking to people very involved in top-tier advertising agencies from the 1950's thru the late '80's, is that people then had a much stronger sense of loyalty to some dept. stores and an equally strong animus or aversion towards patronizing others, often built over personal slights years before, or in some cases, longstanding racial prejudice not easily forgotten.

Now, it's largely about the cost of an item and where you can it cheapest, NOT the retail experience, and I'm as guilty as anyone else, even though I wish it weren't so.

Until the mid-1960's, when the upwardly mobile suburbs and their growing affluence beckoned them, especially in the growing Sunbelt states -until the notion of a large downtown department store without a large nearby parking garage seemed patently absurd on its face- they often played a larger role in a city's commerce and business image than you might think because of the variety of professionals who worked there and who were available to pitch-in and lend their expertise to community groups like the Junior League, United Way, et al.
These professionals were the key to the dept. stores protecting and preserving their upscale image.

For most of the 1970's, I lived four blocks south of the 163rd Street Shopping Center in North Miami Beach, when it was an open-air mall, long before it had a fabric roof erected over it as part of a massive renovation in 1979.

Everyday for years, I walked thru it twice a day on my way to and from JFK Jr, High and NMBHS, so I knew every single inch of it, as did my friends, especially the Burdine's,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdines where I worked part-time while in high school and while back from IU in the summer a few years later.

http://mall-hall-of-fame.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mall_at_163rd_Street
http://www.pbase.com/donboyd/memories_shopping

See this amazing JFK speech -delivered at 163rd Street!- on, of all things, Castro's Cuba
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/JFK+Pre-Pres/1960/002PREPRES12SPEECHES_60OCT18a.htm

http://www.labelscar.com/



Katie Couric, circa 1984, reporting from the former 163rd Street Shopping Center in North Miami Beach on the subject of shopping mall crime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbpHgMvM918


The sorts of dept. stores that I'm thinking of, and which applies to NK's now, are the sort of place that would have been the go-to store for not only visiting tourists, but the local smart-set as well, especially twenty-somethings finally coming into some money and eager to spend a little of it on themselves for an emotional pick me-up, a suit for a man an evening dress for a woman.
Or a new electronic device that promised to change your life, like a VCR.

That sort of dept. store, regardless of where it was located, were also where many of our common sense notions of contemporary consumer behavior first came into play, and in the case of women's fashion, were often deliberately reversed just to catch the attention of influential young would-be fashionistas of the time, whose word-of-mouth was golden in that pre-cell phone and Internet era.

Quite sensibly, some upscale dept. stores created a group of female teen 'insiders,' a talkative and opinionated bunch whose minds and imaginations they plumbed and mined for insight into teen tastes and aspirations, as a sort of in-house focus group.

For instance, the Burdines Teen Board, which when I was still at NMB, had some of my friends on it.
If only those girls had blogs back then, they'd be mini-media moguls!

 http://absolutboston.se/
http://www.labelscar.com/
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/fashion/

FYI, circa 2007, the Top 100 Fashion Blogs may've looked like this:
http://www.customizedgirl.com/blog/?p=9

A newer perspective on the most popular fashion blogs, especially those in Europe, can be found at the updated list at popular blogging network Bloglovin.
http://www.bloglovin.com/

There's some pretty amazing things there by some very creative and perceptive people.

There have been so many movies and TV shows made about the inter-relationships of people working at dept. stores that even if you lived in a small town in the '50's that was bereft of that sort of upscale and sophisticated operation, you knew what it was like by cinema osmosis, so you knew EXACTLY what you were missing out on.
Which is part of why you wanted to leave Dodge, pronto!

For me, growing-up in South Florida, far from a traditional hotbed of holiday window displays like what you saw in films or TV, the closest to anything like it that I had any first-hand experience came with the Marshall Field's stores in Chicagoland in the mid-'80's, when I lived in Evanston and Wilmette.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Field%27s

On a slightly smaller scale compared to the huge flagship State Street store in downtown Chicago, the Loop, where my talented fashion-forward friend Madeleine Moulton worked, that included the Marshall Field's in Evanston that was located not far from where I lived.

In 1986, that was where I first bought a favorite red Lacoste sweater before catching an early holiday flight to Miami -a sweater that populated many Christmas photos for years- in order to be down here when my nephew Mario was born a week before Christmas.

That was not unlike an earlier red one I bought at the-then L.S. Ayres at the College Mall in Bloomington, that populated many photos of me and various friends at IU and several memorable dates from 1979-'84.

You might want to read my May 26, 2007 post at South Beach Hoosier titled
South Florida's epidemic apathy shows itself once again.

It was about the Macy's store -the old Burdines store- in downtown Miami on Flagler Street, and the shabby conditions of downtown Miami, and Macy's purchase of Marshall Field's and its effect on Chicago area consumers.
That was a follow-up on something that Transit Miami founder Gabriel Lopez-Bernal had written on the subject on his popular blog.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/05/while-marshall-fields-loyalists-fight.html

http://www.transitmiami.com/

http://bobmiami.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/bob-prediction-macys-downtown-will-get-revamped/

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?s=1f53638a57498918e3b9f1e1ca54bdd5&f=513

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http://www.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/

http://www.youtube.com/user/NordiskaKompanietTV

Sorry this reads so blah but my original post here on NK's and the role of department stores vanished when my computer crashed this morning, so I will try to re-post it later if I can.
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