smurf

Your question is a little vague. Do you want to have somebody build you a piece of furniture based on your design, or do you want to know how to mass produce something?

If you want to come up with a design for factory production, you're going to have to take several steps between the idea in your head and a boxed up chair in Ikea. For example, you'll need a complete design spec, including dimensions, materials, fasteners, etc. You'll also want a prototype.

If you don't know exactly how to spec your product, or cannot build a prototype yourself, you'll need to work closely with somebody who can. This may be a woodworker or cabinet maker or metal smith of some sort. Basically, somebody who understands the fabrication process you're interested in. You can then prototype from the spec or spec from the prototype.

Of course budget is an issue for either approach, but this is getting way ahead of the game. Build one first, then see if your idea still holds water. Make adjustments accordingly.

Good luck!

check out www.nau.com

I've bought a hoody and a lightweight winter jacket there. The cut of most of their outerwear is slim, with slightly longer sleeves, which is great if it's cold or you're on a bike. The coat that I have and some of the others that I tried on have cuffs that are cut at an angle - a little shorter by the thumb and a little longer by the pinky.

Took a quick look at their spring stuff and saw one windbreaker I'd like to try on.

Good luck!

I'm not going to get into the whole pay-by-the-pound arguement, but if that's the case, everybody needs to get on a scale with their bags to tax the heaving packers as much as the heavy eaters!

My thing is I don't want to be touched! I paid for the seat and the space above it and whether an arm or ass or anything else crosses into my seat, you've violated the space I paid for. The armrest is sort of my DMZ. When I fly, I just want to sleep and be left alone. Having some massive thigh heating up the left side of my body does not help!

Check out craigslist for vacation rentals.

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/vac/

Your major problem is going to be you budget. You're going to have difficulties finding a place for $1200 a week, let alone $1200 a month. You may also want to check out craigslist's rooms/shared section. Maybe there are some other Scandinavian surfer dudes looking for a couple of roomates!?

Good luck!

Hotel Lucia or the Ace Hotel. Both are right downtown a couple of blocks apart. Both are artsy, nice and fairly affordable.

My girlfriend thinks the Lucia's rooms are more comfortable, but I think the rooms at the Ace have more character. Ace also has free WiFi and is dog friendly. Cody liked the Ace!

The Ace has Stumptown Coffee and Clyde Commons for food and drink, while the Lucia has Peet's Coffee, Typhoon (Asian chain) and Bo Restobar. Ace wins hands down here.

I'd stay at both again and have never stayed at the Jupiter, since I always find it to be a bit out of the way.

I'm a big fan of classic cocktails, so here's one that's a polar opposite of Slight's recipes:

Toronto Cocktail

* 2¼ ounces rye whiskey (I use Rittenhouse 100-proof)

* ¾ ounce Fernet Branca

* 1 teaspoon sugar

* 1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, garnish with orange twist, or flame a disc of orange zest for full effect.

Oh and Sean....

I might agree that a cocktail consisting of various fruit juices, vodka, rum, an umbrella and a Hello Kitty straw might seem to have some vaginal qualities, but that doesn't have to be the case. There are plenty of cocktails out there that are anything but sissy-drinks. Find a good bartender, drink brown and avoid straws.

cheers!

To land back on earth for a minute, I'm guessing that when westkoastanostra said "painting" he really meant "art." He's looking for a limited run print authorized by the artist, which is still going to be rare, collectible and valuable.

I was just at the Murakami show at MOCA in LA a couple of weeks ago. They had a few prints you could buy for around $300, I think. Even if he made prints of the blue mushrooms for the same price a few years ago, as somebody else said, they're likely going for ten times as much today. Maybe a little less. Maybe a little more.

With an artist like Murakami, it's too late to find any deals, so don't hold your breath. If I had $3000 that I really needed to use on art, I'd much rather buy paintings, prints and photos of young, local artist I like. Everybody's got to start someplace and Murakami doesn't need your money now anyhow!

Like someone said earlier, this is really subjective.

Regardless of where you go, my advice is always to see less places and spend more time in the places you do visit. Europe in two weeks is bullshit! Spain in two weeks is a bit more reasonable.

That said, Tokyo and New York are cities you can go to over and over again and never get bored. Barcelona was very cool too (although my girlfriend swears by Madrid.)

I'd really like to go to London, Paris, Hong Kong and Saigon though.

Somebody early on said something about "state of mind" and I agree that any place can be great of a piece of shit depending on what's going on and who you're with.

On paper, I hate Los Angeles and everything about it. But, I've also had some fun time and met some great people there. Terrible moments, sure, but I'd be hard pressed to call any of them disappointing.

I also think that people sometimes let there expectation get way out of control. What the guy from London was saying about his city not being that great for tourist is more often true than not. Just think of the place that you go on a daily basis and how they're not in any Lonely Traveller book or even on this site.

There are a couple of just-add-water cities like Vegas where "fun" is almost guaranteed, but either knowing somebody where you're going or having some sufu or other info in you head is going to make any trip better than going there blind.

I'd check out First Hill too. There are some cool apartments in that area and it's close to both downtown and cap hill. Parking also isn't quite as bad as Capitol Hill. I'd also consider the east side of Capitol Hill and anything around Union out to 23rd or so. Queen Anne isn't all that fun and parking there can suck sometimes too.

Can anybody suggest a good restaurant/drinking place to celebrate your birthday with 20 other people? I'm considering booking Purple, downtown.

It sort of depends on what day of the week and whether your focus is more on eating or on drinking. I've only been to Purple once, so no real comment there. You might also consider la Spiga on 12th between Pike and Madison. They have some really big tables upstairs. Also lots of small plates italian food and such, so you can make a meal from a bunch of little things.

I did a work dinner with around 15 or 20 people at the Palace Kitchen's private dining room. Really any place with a private dining room would be good. But my guess is that 20 is even too big for that. Same size limitations with a tatame room at a japanese place.

Do you want to keep everyone close, or just be in the same building?

Good luck!

The best craft breweries in the country are near here. Weed kills it, if you smoke, no questions asked.

You haven't spent much time in the Northwest, have you? What do you think we're doing when it's raining outside!?

I'm a Seattle native (mostly) and my girlfriend grew up in LA and lived in San Francisco for 4 years before moving back to LA, then up to Seattle. In the last couple of years, we've been down to both LA and San Francisco a couple of times. We talk about this a lot...

We both dislike LA for different reasons. She doesn't like the people very much and I don't like the fact that there is no center to the place and you drive for freakin' ever just to see friends, get a drink, etc.

We both like San Francisco. It is a very dirty city though and I actually think it's worse than NYC in that regard. It's expensive, but it's small and easy to get around, even without a car. The homeless situation there can be depressing, even compared to other metro areas. I'd say the weather is basically a push with Seattle.

I like Seattle, but my girlfriend still sometimes has issues with the people here. There's something called the "Seattle freeze" which supposedly describes how we're slow to warm up to strangers. Whatever. It's also getting increasingly expensive here as cost of living continues to rise faster than income. It's an affluent city, though and the job market is good.

I'm not really outdoorsy, but if you're into skiing, sailing, hiking, etc, Seattle wins hands down. Yes it rains here, but the weather is quite mild and unlike LA, we actually have seasons. It rarely gets above 90 or below 30 here.

There's all sorts of info out there on music, bars, food, art, etc, but obviously all of these cities have that stuff. Shopping in Seattle is only decent, but there are some really good places. Seattle also has the best radio station on earth!

Good luck!

Fushimi Inari Shrine and Kiyomizudera were our favorites.

If you can, rent a bike. With a map and a day, you can easily see all of the shrines, temples and castles in central Kyoto. The city is pretty flat, so you can cover a lot of ground without a lot of effort. We rented from the hotel we stayed at, but I also remember reading about a bike shop or something somewhere online.

Have fun!

Romantic dinner?

Place Pigalle in the market. Call ahead and ask for a window. Views of the market and Elliott Bay.

http://seattle.citysearch.com/profile/10767452/seattle_wa/place_pigalle_restaurant_and_bar.html

Before or after have a drink at the Zig Zag. Classy... No better bar is town. It's just below Western on the Hillclimb.

After that your on your own! But at least you're downtown and not in a 600 ft UFO parked on lower Queen Anne!

Nirvana was a really good band. Maybe even a great band. During the late 80's and early 90's there were a ton of great bands in the northwest. Nirvana was certainly one of them, but bands like Mudhoney, Screaming Trees and Love Battery were just as fun to see and just as influential to the whole Seattle sound.

What I miss isn't so much a band or a bar or a group of friends or even my youth! What I really miss is the sense of place music used to have. There used to be bands that sounded like they were from Seattle or Austin or Minneapolis. Different cities were into different sounds - some overlapping with other cities and some not.

With the internet and near instant transmission of ideas around the globe, it's very difficult for a city to really develop an individual sound these days. You have indie bands, which are sort of like alternative bands, which were kinda like regular rock band that never had record deals and were broke all the time.

When you peel away all of the MTV and the "grunge" and the Kurt and Courtney drama and the teen angst bullshit, Nirvana was just a damn good band to get your ear-drums permanently damaged by. The fact that any band (or any artist for that matter) is important or influential is really only important to note if they have had some sort of impact on you.

Also, not Frites. They closed it.

I am so tremendously disappointed.(0)

They closed!? That kinda sucks....

Anyway, if you have a need for fries, check out Cafe Presse on 12th near Madison. They've got booze too, so everybody's happy....

nishino in madison park, saito or shiro in belltown for real sushi.

wasabi for white people sushi.

all are delish.

Mashiko is West Seattle is also one of my favorites.

Nijo on Post Alley has the best sushi happy hour. Everything is cheap and their gaijin rolls are all pretty good.

Hey chucklebean....

I'm not a huge rum fan, so I haven't been, but the new Pan Pacific hotel at Westlake and Denny has a place called "Rhum bar at Marazul." A buddy of mine was impressed, so if you're looking to sample a ton of different rums, that might be a good start.

The best stocked bar in the city (if not anywhere) is the Zig Zag. They're dedicated to classic cocktails more than anything, but they'll definitely have some rum you've never seen in the liquor store.

barbiturates and grain alcohol....

I'd stay at the Claska if you can. It's the only hotel I've stayed at in Tokyo that I really love. I've stayed there for between 11,000 and 19,000 yen/night depending on the room.

This is just a side note lamscott....

Your problem with the Narita Express was trying to catch the only one from Shibuya station. I always take the subway or Yamanote line to Tokyo station and then catch the express. They seem to leave almost hourly from there.

Glad you had a good trip!

To echo mizanation and other...

MasterCard debit cards do definitely work in post office ATMs. My guess is your problem stems from you bank and not MC. My ATM card (MC) doesn't has Cirrus as a choice on the back, but it does have 7 others.

Granted, it does suck to arrive at one of the few ATMs in the city that accept foriegn credit cards only to find out your personal card doesn't happen to be the right kind of foreign!

For general goings-on, check out the Stranger, Weekly and KEXP for starters:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home

http://www.seattleweekly.com/

http://www.kexp.org/

There are lots of places to eat and drink that are covered in the "where to go in seattle" thread:

http://www.superfuture.com/supertalk/showthread.php?t=21179

As for apartments, I personally wouldn't look on Queen Anne, unless you found something really nice. It's a little too cookie-cutter, white-bread for me and it generally isn't as convenient as Capitol Hill and the surounding neighborhoods, especially when it comes to drinking, shopping, music, etc. First Hill (just south of Cap Hill) and the Central Area (just east of the hill) are both going to be much more dynamic areas than Queen Anne.

Good luck!

Hey Miz...

Cool, sexy crowd, live music AND no cover is hard to come by in any town! But! Here are some recommendations all in the Pike/Pine area:

The Hideout on Boren at Madison is a cool, art bar kinda place. Free live shows on certain Sunday's, but otherwise just a free jukebox. Cool art and Archer is a good bartender.

Havana at 10th and Pike is right on the corner, but good luck finding the front door. Live dj some/most nights. Typical Cap Hill hipsters. Cuban theme drinks.

Barca on 11th between Pike and Pine is another place to consider. DJ sets, hipsters and a separate vodka bar upstairs. The "c" in Barca is pronounces like as "s" as in Barcelona.

Head down Pine and you'll run into the Capitol Club, just before you get to Bellevue. More beautiful people and drinks, but they also have pretty good Mediterranean food and outdoor seating off the second story bar.

For live music in the neighborhood, check out Nuemo's, Chop Suey or the Baltic Room to start.