Home Gear: cribcandy.com

Cribcandy is not a shopping site per se, but it is a collection of organized thumbnails that often link to shopping sites for cool furniture and other home gear. Some of the sites that are linked are just the sites of design firms, but usually you get some idea of how to find the products themselves. Take a look at the lamps section you'll find all different shapes and colors by look and you can browse to a design you want. Price tag too high? Click back and pick another. Cribcandy is the perfect site for when you know you need an item, but don't know exactly what you want.

I thought this lamp from Hive Modern was perfect, if pricy. I can't wait to see it in my living room.

Home Gear: TenthousandVillages.com

Today I told the story of the salad dressing server. Well I found the one I was looking for on TenThousandVillages.com. TTV is a site that focuses on bringing gifts made in delevoping countries to you via "fair trade." Fair trade likely sounds like rubbish to me (if someone made it and sold it willingly, isn't that trade fair?) but that doesn't diminish the usefulness of the site.

I got this condiment holder that was hand made in Chile (not exactly a poor country, by the way). It is great and works fantastically for serving the salad dressing. It's just the right size, nicely made and extremely cute. A steal at $14. It won't match my dishes from Rosanna, but it'll match some brown and green dishes I got in Japan.

I also picked up these bookends which I am also happy with, but I don't think were such a good deal. Who's fair trade being fair to when I'm paying $30 for these pieces of rock?

Home Gear: spoonsisters.com

I went to a friend's house to play around with his new blu-ray player, and he had all his appliances' power cords labeled with these little stickers (see below, right). I asked him where he'd bought them and he told me about spoonsisters.com . Max had also picked up this takeout menu organizer because he doesn't cook (in fact, he doesn't have even a stove or an oven in his $2000/month spot in North Beach).


Most of "the Spoon Sisters'" wares are ridiculously kitschy crap, but they have a few really good products. My favorite are these UglyDog dolls, and those who work in cubes will appreciate the rear-view cube mirror.

Tableware: rosannainc.com

Are you still using plates from college? Or, did you buy your plates at target or costco? No good guys, it's time to grow up! Rosanna sells "fashion tableware" which sounds like expensive rubbish but that's not right. These dishes are amazing and not all of them are faux-French annoyances, and all of them are completely functional. The price isn't bad either. I know you think I've lost it, but I am trying to help you out for when you need to actually impress a girl. And you only need two or four sets like this, for you, your date, your buddy and his girlfriend. The whole thing should only set you back about $200 (that's what it cost me anyway) and you'll definitely convince that girl you appreciate the finer things in life. When you do get married, you'll probably want more tradtional dishes, but until then, get something with some style.


Now to really get the full effect of the goods you really need to get to a shop, but you can get much of what you need online and they make absolutely fantastic gifts in these wonderful boxes. These white ones match anything and are dishwasher safe. They are sturdy as far as porcelain goes and Rosanna Inc. has nearly the entire collection online. Highly recommended! If you want a pattern but don't want to be too aggressive I suggest mixing "roses are blue" with Saulsalito (right) or "antique lace".

Home Gear

I've been doing a lot of redecorating (ouch) recently because I decided my apartment was an embarassingly dump: too messy, too badly organize, not enough of the things I actually need, and those things I own and need often I can't find. I had a girl over the other day for dinner and I had nothing to serve the salad dressing I had made (gorgonzola, buttermilk, white wine vinegar and a touch of black pepper, if you think it's too salty, you put too much cheese) and ended up using a soup plate. Bad bad bad.

To improving things I went out and took an inventory on the things I need. Then I set out to find where I could buy them on the internet. Now I'll be sharing this with you. The next few days' posts are going to focus exclusively on buying home-gear on the online, and particularly on buying the sort of home gear that is best bought online, those that you need only see but not touch, feel or measure. Also, their is going to be a distinctly organizational lean to these, because I need to keep things in order.

Camping Gear: remotemedical.com

Remote Medical is a great place to get medical kits and survival packs for going on hunting or camping trips. They've got ultralight medical kits for camping, marine kits for sailing, oxygen kits for mountaineering, and even some semi-surgical gear that only professionals ought to have.

The products that came most recommended to me were the ultralight 9 kit from Adventure Medical Kits the Pocket Survival Pack and the Survival Blankets. Picture to the left is the Medical Kit.

Camping Gear: nemoequipment.com

It's officially summer and camping season is underway! I needed to get some new gear for my upcoming boar hunting trip, so this is the first in a series about sites selling kick-ass camping gear online.

These Nemo Tents are fantastic. They are extremely light weight and remarkably weatherproof. A friend of mine goes camping in Olympic National Park sort of near Seattle and he recommended the hypno and the foot pump to me. Why does that recommendation mean anything? Olympic National Park is in one of the the world's only temperate rainforests, and is the wettest spot in the United States. 'Nuf said.

Random Corny Stuff Site: bimbambanana.com

Bimbanana is mostly for of complete rubbish, but some things are hilarious and somethings might actually help you get laid. This rose suprise explosive might be the thing to impress your drunk, er I mean excited, date. If that doesn't work, well, then get her another drink. And if it gets out of hand, they always sell sudoku toilet paper to clean the mess up with.

Seriously, though, this puzzle alarm clock always works to get me out of bed.

Accessories: urbanoutfitters.com

Okay I know what you're thinking. "Urban Outfitters? I don't want any Jesus is my homeboy t-shirts and the clothes make bustedtees look good." You're right, but the accessories are cool. And anyway, this blog is about online shopping, and you shouldn't be buying normal clothes without trying them on first.



But accessories like handbags, belts and even sunglasses are available at UrbanOuttfiters.com for reasonable prices. To the right are these pretty fly clear mirror aviators for $16. Just take them off when your playing poker! This Lacoste messenger bag is perfect for the beach, and it's only $110, which is a lot cheaper than the Tumi bag I bought last fall (the tumi bag will last longer though). But what's really a steal, and fairly stylish is this canvas weekend bag. Sturdy, large enough for short trips (Vegas anyone?) and stylish enough to match you, this is an absolute steal at $58.

T-Shirts: bustedtees.com

T-Shirts are a good choice for something to buy online because size isn't that important. I like to walk around in shoes before I buy them, but T-shirts? No need to even try them on. Because of this, the web is full of great sites to buy t-shirts.

Busted tees' shirts all basically container a one-liner or a pun, and a often an image without much color. Some of the one liners are obscure. But the best shirts are those that bring nostaligia for my elementary school days. This "blow me" shirt with a picture of a nintendo cartridge is instantly understandable for anyone around my age, as is this "Tom is NOT my friend" shirt (seriously, you haven't deleted your myspace account yet?).

Some shirts are much more obscure. This "speaker city" shirt is only obvious to those who've seen Old School more than, oh, five times (count me in that group). Likewise this "Jesus" shirt and the Big Lebowski. But when they delve into TGIF shows from circa 1990 then even obscure and nostaligic don't accurately describe the sort of feeling the shirts evoke. This "don't talk to strangers" shirt reminded me of a show I hadn't heard of or thought about for over ten years.

The shirts are a bit pricy, $17.99 is expensive for a t-shirt with a monocolor image printed on, but still, I bet you'll buy one after visiting this site.

Random Electronics Site: Woot.com

Woot is a site that sells one item per day, usually at quite a limited quantity (sometimes they sell out before noon), at an incredible price. For example, today, they were selling a Hitachi LCD projector w/screen (!) for $569.99. What a deal.

Woot seems to pretends that it doesn't make money, but I don't believe them. Also, sometimes it isn't the best deal either, a quick search around will find a better price. And it doesn't offer much in the way of service. But sometimes the price is so good that it's worth keeping a bookmark of the page to check on the woot of the day.

Accessories: tokidoki.it

I met Simone Legno (sic?) in Tokyo in 2002 and he seemed like a complete dork at the time. He's Italian, and at the time his sense of style amazed me. I'm from Seattle, though, which has a terrible reputation for style, even as far as the US goes. Anyway, his art was kind of cute Hello Kitty meets Kirby's Dreamland meets Kill Bill sort of way, but I would never guess that would launch him any sort of respectable career, especially considering much of it was quite sexual in nature (see the image below). The tokidoki (which means 'sometimes' in Japanese btw) style does stem from the same root as the Kill Bill/Western, neo-japonesque style, which is hard for me to describe precisely.


Fast forward to 2006, I was walking from Omottesando to Harajuku and lo and behold! I see a massive display on the side of a store showing tokidoki gear! Apparently, Simone has made it and is now designing purses and hand bags for LeSportSac. (Me? I'm writting this blog and working for a clothing company no one's ever heard of.)

Now the gear in the shop really is geared towards teenage girls, asian fetishists and general Japanophiles, which means no man should buy it to wear himself, but some girls like this style, and they have birthdays.

Hats: hatshop.com

Hats are an underappreciated part of a man's wardrobe. Most men who do wear hats either wear baseball caps, which is not a good look for a grown man (basically anyone over 30), or ski caps, which is not a good look for anyone who isn't skiing. Having said that, fedoras (unless you're this guy) are corny as all hell, and won't be cool for a long time. Having said that, some guys can actually pull off these sort of wool caps without looking like old irish farmers...

T-Shirts Site: Threadless.com

Threadless is one of the better sites for well-designed or high concept T-shirts. The shirts there are very colorful which is great, and they are relatively cheap ($10 for a t-shirt is pretty cheap). The artists are from all over (appearantly the dude who's shirt I bought is from Netherlands, which some how makes me like the shirt less).

What makes Threadless such a clever idea is that the designs are submitted by users then judged by them. The designs that are score high enough are sold through the site's store, and then the user that submitted then gets a cash prize. This picture is an image created by some guy name Zach (you can click here to vote for his design).