nifer

agreed. if you're looking for chain cheap stores like that, just stay in philly. there's zara, urban, h&m in center city near rittenhouse.

3 Strike RAVE Offenders Face Life Without Parole Civil liberties campaigners from the Drugs Policy Alliance (DPA) warned this week that US authorities plan to escalate the drug war to a new level of harshness under new laws which could see clubbers being jailed forever. "They want to expand the federal 'three strikes and you're out' law to include new offences, including mandating life imprisonment (with no possibility of parole) for anyone convicted a third time under the RAVE Act," said DPA director Bill Piper this week. "They want a mandatory 2-year prison term for anyone who knows someone is selling marijuana on a college campus and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. They want a mandatory 5-year prison term for someone at a party who passes a marijuana joint to someone who has been enrolled in drug treatment at some point in their life," he added. The new laws are to be introduced in Congressman Sensenbrenner's bill H.R. 1528, entitled 'Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005' which first appeared last year and could soon become law. "We need to keep the heat on members of Congress to kill this bill", Mr Piper stressed. "We're up against the most powerful forces in the federal government. We hope you will continue to stand with us in this massive showdown." http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/051105sensenalert.cfm

Thumping dance music shocks pilots May 03 2005 at 10:58AM London - British police have moved to swiftly shut down a pirate radio station after pilots complained that thumping dance music was drowning out instructions from air traffic controllers as they landed at a nearby airport, a report said on Tuesday. Pilots landing passenger jets at Birmingham airport in central England reported hearing loud bursts of "garage", a cutting-edged form of dance music characterised by frantic beats and prominent, repetitive baselines. Police, along with officers from government communications watchdog Ofcom, traced the rogue signal to a pirate radio station transmitter attached to the top of a city centre tower block, the Guardian newspaper reported. The pirate station's studio and the DJ playing the offending tracks were thought to be based nearby, but had yet to be found. "This is not just some guys having a bit of fun and trying to get their break in radio," an Ofcom spokesperson said. "This has the potential to cause massive problems for essential services." However, a spokesperson for National Air Traffic Services said no flights had ever been put in danger. "These were short bursts of interference which did not upset our operations or instructions to pilots," she said. "It did not threaten safety because we have got safety procedures in place and we can switch to other frequencies if we have to. We did not need to in this case." - Sapa-AFP http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=29&art_id=qw1115096583506B216&set_id=1

May 2, 2005 11:00 pm US/Eastern PHILADELPHIA (KYW) How much do you spend on shampoo, conditioners and hair spray? Depending on where you buy those products you could be washing money down the drain or even putting yourself at risk. The labels say for salon sale only, but 3 On Your Side Consumer Reporter Jim Donovan found them everywhere. Paul Mitchell, Redken, Aveda, and Nexus. You know the names, especially if you're into your hair. "I use a lot of Paul Mitchell," said Lindsay Allison. But Allison admits that when it comes to buying it is all about convenience. "I mainly buy my hair care products at a drug store instead of a salon," said Allison. High-end shampoos and other hair products are meant for salon-sale only, yet you can find them in many stores. 3 On Your Side found many of these high-end shampoos when they went undercover shopping, but they also discovered you may not want to use them. John Paul Dejoria, the C.E.O of Paul Mitchell systems said, "If you find it anywhere other than a salon it is either counterfeit, black or gray market, stolen or extremely old." Dejoria says his company is falling victim to a thriving gray market in professional hair care. "A lot of people don't read the back of the label and they figure that these reputable stores are carrying it," said Dejoria, adding, "It must be real, Paul Mitchell must have sold it them." When Dejorio bought products baring his label at unauthorized stores, his company lab tests revealed they contained bacteria too numerous to count. They were counterfeits similar to those seized by custom agents in Miami and often smuggled in from overseas. The counterfeit product often looks watered down and in many cases there is a noticeable difference in the quality of bottle's cap. How do these items end up on store shelves? 3 On Your Side questioned a few store clerks and they had no idea. "Got me, I don't know," said one clerk of the counterfeit brands. Another clerk described the shipping process saying, "They don't deliver it on our delivery truck, there's a guy that comes in." Others say the products are often legitimate, but are diverted to wholesalers who then make deals with drugstores and supermarkets. Still you may not be getting the deal you expect. New Hope salon owner Sam Burns confirmed what 3 On Your Side found in spot checks. "I think they're also surprised that nine times out of ten that it's more affordable in a salon like mine," said Burns of "Hello Gorgeous" Salon. It is not against the law to sell diverted products. Industry experts have differing opinions as to whether there is a safety risk, but they do acknowledge that the counterfeits may not work as well. Manufacturers say their packaging is clear. They will not guarantee anything sold outside of a salon. http://kyw.com/consumer/local_story_122214944.html

fucking hell, STOP SHITTING ON MY THREAD.

nice!

April 21, 2005 Who Pays $600 for Jeans? By GUY TREBAY COLLETTE LEONARD would probably be the first to tell you that the premium denim thing is a little out of hand. She is aware of how loopy it is to lose one's senses in the quest for a neatly packaged posterior. She knows there is something fundamentally silly in indulging an obsession with foraging obsessively for the best, newest, most underground pair of five-pocket cotton trousers, of hoping to unearth the holy grail, jeans made by a label never yet photographed on Jennifer Aniston. "It's just a pair of jeans, I realize that," said Ms. Leonard, who works for a liquor distributor in Manhattan. "But I wear two pairs every day, and I'd much rather go out and find something unique that you're not going to see on every girl in New York." That is why Ms. Leonard was elated to uncover some import jeans sewn by a London label so obscure it is barely available on these shores. The trousers, by All Saints, had slim straight legs and a stylized leather cross appliquéd just below the hip. Tea-stained lace trim adorned the hems and pockets. Without question there are people who would consider the price, a hefty $375, a deterrent. Ms. Leonard is not one of them. "I don't balk at $500 for a pair of shoes," explained Ms. Leonard, who was shopping last month at Atrium, a boutique on Lower Broadway that is to premium denim what Barney Greengrass is to lox. "Why should I balk at that price for jeans that are special. " Since the advent a half decade ago of the jeans category termed "premium" or "luxury" denim, referring to trousers that cost $75 or more, the price of what were once quaintly known as dungarees has spiked so precipitously it is now in cloud-cuckooland. More curious still, blue jeans have suddenly shed their proud proletarian roots and turned into what retailers call a status buy. "For four years running, luxury denim has been the fastest growing category at the bottom part of the apparel business," said Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst at the NPD Group in Port Washington, N.Y., which tracks clothing sales. Although no figures exist dividing the $14.2 billion denim market according to price, it is Mr. Cohen's qualifier - "bottom part" - that gives one pause. There may have been a time when it was possible to consider oneself stylish in a pair of $100 jeans from, say, 7 For All Mankind, the label widely credited with helping ready the mass market for a new age in blue jeans. In cash register terms, at least, that time is gone. A stroll through the jeans bars that are now a ubiquitous element of the retail landscape has lately become a masochistic exercise in sticker shock. Far from being rarities, jeans with price tags of $200 are now everywhere, the retail equivalent of dandelions after spring rain. And it no exaggeration to say that a pair these days can easily cost as much as an iPod (Tsubi, $319), a Motorola Razr (Levi's vintage, $325), or a desktop computer with the printer thrown in. (Nudie vegetable dye jeans, $428.) As jeans have become an increasingly acceptable component of business and evening wear, a wardrobe staple suitable for any occasion (including board meetings, if one happens to be Steve Jobs), out of place nowhere except, possibly, funerals, the appetite for premium jeans has grown beyond a cowboy's wildest imaginings. "Ten years ago nobody had ever heard of the category," said Robert Burke, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, the longtime supplier to the carriage trade. "Now that premium is a fashion staple, everyone is wondering one thing," Mr. Burke added. "How high is high?" Some other obvious questions follow. What exactly are premium jeans? And why are they different from the millions of ordinary pairs sold all the time? How much of the premium denim phenomenon is hype and how much real value is there in obscure attributes like ring-spun denim, triple-needle stitching, bleach "whiskers," or special treatments that abrade, distress and generally torture a pair of trousers until it has achieved just the right luxuriantly ratty patina of something that has been dragged behind a truck? It is exactly features like these that customers use to justify denim at $200 and up. "Everybody is into a particular brand, and everybody knows exactly what they're looking for," said Jamie Mazur, a founder of Underground Denim, a blue jeans road show that visits 50 campuses in 35 states each year selling Blue Cult, AG, Rock & Republic, Antik and other arcane denims to students who, Mr. Mazur said, "know all the brands" long before the Underground Denim trailer pulls into town. "We just came from Duke University," Mr. Mazur said, "and everyone there was dying for True Religion." True Religion of course is not an evangelical sect but a hot new niche jeans label. And niche, as John Seely Brown, a marketing expert who is a visiting scholar at the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California, recently prophesied, is the future of consumer marketing. Both the surfeit and the numbing sameness of goods on the market have conspired to produce a nascent cult of connoisseurship, experts like Mr. Brown say. In this new marketing sphere, even ordinary objects can be told apart by consumers whose extreme discernment becomes a subtle way of signaling status. Like Luis Buñuel's Tristana, Mr. Brown's new niche consumer can see three peas on a plate and know instantly which is the best. "Every consumer decision now carries with it class and status implications in a way it didn't used to," said Barry Schwartz, the author of "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" (Ecco Books, 2005). "As you add dimensions to goods, you add ways in which people can distinguish themselves." Thus is created a perpetual chase after status and cool. "You can never relax," Mr. Schwartz said. So it makes a perverse sense that a no-nonsense form of cotton work trousers should unexpectedly be transformed into an insider emblem of high style. Designed in 1873 by the Levi Strauss company as "hard-wearing work wear" for California miners, and available universally and cheaply for the next century, jeans in their latest "premium" incarnation are like the punch line to some elaborate Veblenesque joke. What, after all, could be a more glaring example of conspicuous consumption than the stratospherically priced Japanese cult jeans from Evisu, favorites of hip-hop performers like Snoop Dogg and the Game? Founded in 1991 by a Japanese tailor weary of paying outlandish prices for the vintage American jeans he admired, Evisu jeans make so strenuous a fetish of simplicity that they are like the apparel form of heirloom tomatoes, good the way things used to be, but at 10 times the price. To start with, Evisu weaves its cloth on shuttle looms that, unlike the projectile type in widespread industrial use, leave clean edges on the fabric. They are then dyed using what the label's Web site terms "rare and ancient" equipment, meaning machines that are roughly 40 years old. Each Evisu garment is given 16 and sometimes as many as 30 "dips" to achieve the proper rich shade of deep indigo blue. And, because the old looms are narrow, each pair of Evisus requires at least three yards of fabric. The end result, with a stylized gull stitched onto the rear pocket, costs in the vicinity of $635. Not for nothing, it would seem, is Evisu named after the Japanese god of loot. "We sell through everything we get," Joseph Laurenti, the manager of Atrium in New York, said, adding that other brands like Nudie, True Religion, Antik, Slab by Rick Owens and All Saints spend only the briefest time on the shelves before migrating onto some of Manhattan's more fashionable backsides. "We're known for novelty and people willingly pay extra for that," Mr. Laurenti said. Thomas George, who owns E Street Denim in Highland Park, Ill., has watched the various styles enjoy their brief moments of must-have status and then inevitably fade out. "Everybody adds a story, a trick, a gimmick, a hook, a twisted seam, a nontwisted seam, a selvage detail, chasing the next thing out there that is that much better, they think," he said. "But the reality is that there's nothing left to design in a jean." The truth of that observation has proved no deterrent to industry Goliaths like OP or Calvin Klein Jeans, a division of the Warnaco Group, both of which have announced plans to introduce luxury denim to their labels. "It's a relatively small factor in the scheme of things," Tom Murry, the chief operating officer of Calvin Klein, said, referring to the multibillion dollar jeans market dominated by behemoths like Wal-Mart and Sears. "If we're fortunate, it will maybe be a $50 million business for us," Mr. Murry said. "That number may not move our needle corporately, but the consumer is there, it's a growing part of the business for every retailer I talk to, and so it's going to be an important component of Calvin Klein." And wasn't it, after all, Calvin Klein who wrote the recipe for premium jeans in the first place, using some not-so-secret ingredients? It turns out that the "nothing" that famously came between Brooke Shields and her Calvins was the very thing the marketplace was looking for then. It still is. "Right now you could have a pair of jeans that cost $1,000, and people would buy them," Lawrence Scott, the owner of Pittsburgh Jeans Company, said last week. What, Mr. Scott was asked, is the indispensable element in the making of a perfect pair of luxury jeans? "Same as always," he said. "It's going to come down to how your behind looks when you pour yourself into them. No matter how good the wash or the detail or the label, if it doesn't look good on a behind, it won't sell." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/fashion/thursdaystyles/21denim.html?incamp=article_popular_1

as mentioned above, center city will probably be the most convenient esp. if you don't have a car. a lot of people may complain about the buses, but they aren't that bad compared to other cities. i lived around the south street area for nearly 10years and i'm completely glad i got out of there. although it's close to just about everything you'll ever need, the swarms of tourists and hoodrats make it unbearable to live. i currently live near the art museum which is a completely different atmosphere. it's mostly a residential area, mainly populated by families. it's still close enough to downtown that you don't feel like you're in the country, but it's just far enough to not be in the middle of all the chaos. old city, society hill, rittenhouse will be a tad more expensive than other areas since you'll mostly be paying for location. washington square, fitler square, more southern areas of queen village, are generally more affordable. are you looking to buy or rent? there are craploads of condos being built in CC and you can get them for a pretty decent deal - and 10year tax abatement!

the detailing on the pockets makes me think of cowboys.

for females, i don't really like them. the pockets are big and placed pretty low, making your ass look dumpy.

jask

wow, the IMC covering WMC. pretty cooll.

heard his set at Mansion for the Om party. i don't know if it was the crowd, the fact that he followed Sneak who had an AMAZING SET, or if it was just me being in an annoyed mood, but i didn't really get into his set at all. usually, he never disappoints, but that night he did. he played straightup house with little vocals getting a little funky at times. i'd recommend go seeing him at ICE anyway though.

i'll be in sarasota that week on business. this looks like a possibility.

eh, had an *ok* time this year. highlights were soulfuric @ crobar, shipwrecked boat party, and osunlade @ delano.

banana republic

they're both kenneth cole and i think both are right under 200$

anyone hit the ovum party @ pawn shop on saturday? i ended up elsewhere, but am wondering how it went.

my hotel (crescent) was pretty cool. one bedroom suite with a fully equipped kitchen on 14&ocean.

one more