Odds and Ends

What’s taking up space in my brain lately

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A quick note to say that I’ve enabled the chat function on Freak Palace, so you can pose any questions you may have about vintage shopping, clothing repair and/or the nature of the universe to me, and your other Freak Friends. (Every subscriber is a Freak Friend!)

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In lieu of a real post this week, I am offering up a selection of odds and ends taking up space in my brain. Please enjoy this visual stream of consciousness until Freak Palace returns to its regular pontificating next weekend.

P.S. - This post is “too long for email” so open it in browser if you want to read the whole thing.

• I did Doors Open Toronto this weekend (a free event where people can explore civic buildings that are normally closed to the public) and fulfilled my lifelong dream of visiting the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plan, which is nicknamed the “Palace of Purification” thanks to its gorgeous art deco design. (It was SOAKING wet outside but I was not deterred.)

• I really felt seen by this hat.

  

• A skirt that cries! Sad but cute.

• Need this SO badly.

• Who else an active member of the Side Wound Appreciation Club?

• Utterly mesmerized by this video of a woman tying her Issey Miyake Madame Stole in a multiplicity of ways. I love the endless creativity that can be applied to this garment, even though I’m way too low-maintenance to ever figure this out.

• A Kate Bush-themed quilt! I repeat, a Kate Bush-themed quilt!

• A filthy old coat covered in pins, coins and ephemera? I’ve never needed anything more in my entire life.

• The McLaughlin Planetarium, a historic landmark of Brutalist architecture that had been sitting dormant for over twenty years, was finally demolished earlier this month. It’ll be replaced by a nice, shiny, new University of Toronto building, which isn’t the worst fate, but it irks me that this city is so bad at preserving (and respecting) its historic treasures.

Here’s what it looked like before:

• This is what happens when you mix a pair of Converse All Stars with vintage shoes. Freaky and wonderful.

• I confess I didn’t really “get” the Batsheva “Hag” sweater the first time around when it came down the F/W2024 runway. But now the whole outfit is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and for whatever reason, I’m all in.

• I have loved everything photographer Liisa Jokinen posts since she started the Hel-Looks street style blog in the early 2000s. Naturally, I can’t get enough of her street style account, NYC Looks, and this look in particular is so good.

• Me when I die.

• “RIP Mary Oliver, you would have loved doomscrolling”

• Approximately 8,000 people have sent me the news about Hooters re-branding to a “family friendly restaurant” (thank you to each and every one of you) and I think that the People magazine interview with the CEO may be one of the funniest things I have ever read. Hooters CEO Neil Kiefer seems convinced that several locations creative adaptations of the menu is at least partially responsible for the chain’s fall from grace.

Kiefer believes that the restaurant’s sexy image is unearned and some restaurants leaned too far into scantily-clad waitresses, which strayed too far from their roots as a relaxed, beach-themed establishment. Don’t worry Hooters, I always saw you for what you were and my love is true. (In this Playboy essay from 2017, I argue—quite convincingly, I may add—Hooters has ALWAYS been family friendly.)