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Miami Life Insider’s Guide: Art Gallery, Flea Market, Trivia Night, South Pointe – The Three Tomatoes
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Photos From Our Condo By Eliot Hess
I just love sharing stories
Over a Jack-and-ginger, the serial character actor and star of Season 2 of SundanceTV’s “State of the Union,” chats about her crush on her co-star Brendan Gleeson, a childhood spent tooling around in a VW bus, and her habit of playing mothers and wives.
By Sarah Larson February 7, 2022
On a recent Monday afternoon, in a corner banquette in the Greenwich Village bistro Bar Six, Patricia Clarkson greeted a waiter with “Hi, darling!” and happily accepted his suggestion of a drink. “I’ve been up for forty-seven hours,” she said, looking slyly pleased. “I’ll have my usual—a Jack-and-ginger, no ice, lemon.” Clarkson, sixty-two, sat beneath a wall mirror painted with prix-fixe dinner offerings, wearing an elegant midnight-blue blouse (“This is faux silk”) and an antique-style watch (“It was given to me when I won my first Emmy for ‘Six Feet Under’ ”), amused and languorously glamorous. “I’ve been up since five-fifteen—hence my ‘Today’-show hair,” she said. She leaned back, happy to relax. This month, the second season of “State of the Union,” a SundanceTV series in which she co-stars (written by Nick Hornby and directed by Stephen Frears), débuts; she recently finished filming “She Said,” playing the Times editor Rebecca Corbett during the Harvey Weinstein reporting; she was heading to Atlanta to shoot “Lilly,” in which she portrays the fair-pay hero Lilly Ledbetter. (“She danced with Barack Obama at his Inauguration!”) Before that, she’d spend the weekend in New Orleans, her home town, “to hang with my parents and see all my sisters,” including at a ladies’ brunch at Commander’s Palace, “the best restaurant in town.” (“The great Ella Brennan—I narrated a documentary about her.”)
Bar Six is French-Moroccan, with tagines and frites, but it also happens that it offers a French 75, and that early Louis Armstrong was playing in the background. “This is my home away from home,” Clarkson said. (She lives nearby and doesn’t cook.) Staffers smiled as they passed. “Oh, take care, darling!” she called to one. To another: “Hey, Noel, how are you?” Her character in “State of the Union,” Ellen, has a similar vibe with Jay (Esco Jouléy), a barista at the sunny Connecticut café in which the series takes place. It consists of ten short episodes, each set just before a marriage-counselling session. The first season took place in a London pub, with Rosamund Pike as a wife looking to communicate and a gamely beleaguered Chris O’Dowd looking to comply; Clarkson and Brendan Gleeson play empty nesters in a similar mode, whose easy rapport obscures the fact that they have little in common. Ellen is wry and self-possessed; Scott, the husband, barrels along in amiable befuddlement, flummoxed by, for starters, Jay’s pronouns and, reasonably, the name of the café. “What the hell is Mouthfeel?” he asks Jay. “Sounds like a sex club.”
The series filmed in London, a year ago, amid covid anxieties—“I only saw London from my little Mary Poppins balcony”—and professional joys. “I think for the rest of my life I’ll have a crush on Brendan Gleeson,” Clarkson said. “You know when your heroes don’t disappoint? He’s truly, he’s achy-breaky heart, this lovely, soulful, witty man.” Frears is “a gentle soul, does not let actors indulge,” she said. The series unfolds in real time—long, seemingly casual conversations, carefully scripted by Hornby, meticulously undeviated from. Clarkson has worked more improvisationally before (“In ‘Easy A,’ I don’t know that Stanley Tucci and I ever said a word that was on the page”), but here the goal was to do it “in the right and proper way, and we will not wane and we will not slack.”
Frears, Hornby, and Gleeson are all married, and Clarkson—who has played dozens of wives and mothers, from her film début, in “The Untouchables” (as Eliot Ness’s wife) to, more recently, parts in HBO’s “Sharp Objects” and “S.N.L.” ’s “Motherlover” short—is not: “I was the single girl in a sea of marriage floating on a bamboo raft.” She gave a throaty laugh. “People say, ‘You’ve never been married!’ I say, ‘No, I’ve never been divorced, darling.’ ” As Ellen, she’s patient and knowing, and says things like “Your untrammelled heterosexuality is a blessing and a curse.” She’s fond, but she’d like to be free.
“ ‘State of the Union’ is about the sacrifices you make to be married, to have children,” she said. “I knew at fourteen that I would not be good at it.” Clarkson, the youngest of five daughters, grew up in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans. Her parents, high-school sweethearts, are still married. “We were very close—the seven of us with our two dogs. I just watched ‘King Richard,’ with Will Smith, as Venus and Serena’s father. He’s got five daughters, and he drives a Volkswagen bus.” Her dad did, too. “Theirs was burgundy, ours was white and mint green. Watching Will Smith, I had so many beautiful memories of my father driving us around. We drove everywhere: Niagara Falls, camping at Pearl River, or just to get ice cream.” She blinked. “We would set up a camp, cook on the fire, wrap up a meat patty and some sliced potato—oh, how we lived!”
Clarkson went to the Yale School of Drama, by way of Fordham, the Lincoln Center campus. As an undergrad, she lived in a cheap apartment and worked at a Greek restaurant. “I was struggling. My mother called: ‘Patty, how are you doing? Are you drinking orange juice?’ I said, ‘Mom, I really can’t afford orange juice.’ And I hear, ‘Jesus Christ, Buzz, she doesn’t have the money for orange juice!’ ” Does she keep it on hand now? “I don’t really care for orange juice,” she said, laughing. “Unless there’s champagne in it.
When I saw this article in Architectural Digest, I knew I wanted to copy it for DigiDame. For the first eight years of my career I worked for Home Furnishings Daily. All the famous interior designers, Albert Hadley, Sister Parish, Edith Wharton, Mario Buatta, and David Hicks, used to show up at our news room all the time. I was so young and so in awe. I can see feel the thrill of seeing them. I got the same tickle when I saw this list even though most of these folks weren’t born when I first went to work. I wanted to share them with you. Now you can be a name dropper.
These famous interior designers are known for their celebrity clients, best-selling product lines, and popular TV shows
Overnight success is rare in the design industry. Most famous interior designers have spent years working with clients, developing product lines, and building their brands. Becoming a household name requires hustle—and lots and lots of media savvy. Today’s best-known designers took a variety of roads to the top, but now can often be spotted gracing the covers of magazines with buzzy commissions and clients, or landing regular gigs on TV. Once they made it, they figured out how to capitalize on their success and expand their reach worldwide. While they each have specific specialties and styles, these designers and architects have certainly left their mark on the industry, and continue to influence the way people live and decorate.
In just six years, Joanna Gaines—with help from her contractor husband, Chip—has created a design empire. Since Fixer Upper premiered on HGTV in 2013, the designer and TV star has launched collaborations with mega brands like Target and Anthropologie, started a magazine, published books, and made shiplap and farmhouse-style design ubiquitous. The couple has also turned the town of Waco, Texas, into a tourist destination with the Magnolia Market at the Silos, a 4.9-acre shopping and dining complex that draws an estimated 30,000 people per week. While Fixer Upper ended its run in 2018, the Gaineses are continuing their path to design domination. Next up is a hotel in downtown Waco and their own cable television network.
In 2002, Nate Berkus made his debut on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and he quickly became one of America’s favorite design talents, landing TV shows, book deals, and collaborations galore. His eponymous firm, which he founded in 1995 at the age of 24, attracts an array of high-profile clients, including Ricky Martin, and Berkus has partnered on product lines with Target, Kravet, the Shade Store, and Framebridge. He and husband Jeremiah Brent star in TLC’s Nate & Jeremiah by Design and the couple recently unveiled their latest collection for Living Spaces.
In 2009, The New Yorker declared Kelly Wearstler“the presiding grande dame of West Coast interior design,” and since then her reach and influence have grown far beyond California. The trendsetter has shaped the hospitality industry with her designs for the Viceroy Hotels and Residences, Four Seasons Anguilla, and, most recently, Proper Hotels in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. On the residential side, her client list includes Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller, and Gwen Stefani, and she’s designed lines for Ann Sacks, Lee Jofa, the Rug Company, Georg Jensen, and Visual Comfort, as well as her own collection of furniture and accessories.
There are celebrity interior designers, and then there’s Martyn Lawrence Bullard, the go-to decorator for superstars like Elton John, Cher, Kylie Jenner, and Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian. He’s also a favorite collaborator for brands and has designed a dozen licensed lines that include tile for Ann Sacks, mattresses for Custom Comfort, and silver crowns for Christofle. When he’s not designing for the stars, Bullard is making his mark on the hospitality scene with interiors for Casa Laguna in Laguna Beach and the upcoming The Prospect in Los Angeles.
The past two years have been beyond big for Missouri native Bobby Berk. In 2018, he debuted as Queer Eye’s design expert and quickly became a fan favorite for his impactful home makeovers. The industry veteran launched his retail business back in 2006 and his eponymous design firm in 2015, but Queer Eye has brought his modern, livable style to a massive audience (as his 2.6 million Instagram followers attest). In October, Berk launched a furniture collection with A.R.T. Furniture at High Point Market featuring 44 pieces, several of which quickly sold out.
Fashion’s favorite architect is Peter Marino. The design legend, who founded his firm in 1978 after working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; George Nelson; and I.M. Pei/Cossutta & Ponte, has designed stores for a who’s who of luxury fashion and jewelry brands including Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Bulgari, Hublot, Dior, Fendi, and Graff. His boutiques, like his residential projects, are known for their luxe materials and impressive art displays. He recently released a new textile line for Rubelli and unveiled Louis Vuitton stores in London and Seoul.
L.A. designer Justina Blakeney turned her eclectic, plant-filled style into a hot trend and a booming business with 1.2 million Instagram followers. She started her design blog, Jungalow, in 2009, and since then she’s written a New York Times bestseller, The New Bohemians; launched an online store; and embarked on a number of collaborations with brands such as Anthropologie, Band-Aid, Target, and Loloi Rugs. Her latest endeavor is a limited-edition, size-inclusive line of apparel, We Wild by Justina Blakeney, and she plans on opening a brick-and-mortar outpost in the near future.
Designer Emily Henderson made America up its styling game and helped transform bookshelves, cocktail tables, and mantels across the country. Her big break was winning season five of HGTV Design Star, and her subsequent show on the network, Secrets From a Stylist, ran for two seasons. She shares design know-how with dedicated fans on her popular blog and her Instagram feed, where she has more than 835,000 followers. Her 2015 book, Styled: Secrets for Arranging Rooms, From Tabletops to Bookshelves, was a New York Times bestseller. In addition to running her interior design practice and content operation, Henderson serves as Target’s home style expert.
Ever since his cheeky pottery debuted at Barneys in 1993, Jonathan Adler has been infusing homes with color and humor. He quickly expanded his business beyond ceramics, designing everything from pillows and furnishings to lighting and rugs. Adler’s design studio has created the interiors of the Parker Palm Springs and Eau Palm Beach, as well as private residences and model apartments. He has licensed lines galore, including his Now House brand on Amazon; a collection with cannabis lifestyle company Higher Standards; and partnerships with Kravet, H&M Home, and the Shade Store.
Based in San Francisco and New York, Ken Fulk has become the designer of choice for innovators such as Sean Parker, Veronica Beard, Kevin Systrom, and Pharrell Williams, all of whom appreciate his vibrant, cinematic style. (The Bay Area home he designed for tech couple Michael and Xochi Birch is currently on the market for a potentially record-setting $35 million.) Fulk is also responsible for the designs of some of the country’s buzziest (and most Instagrammable) hot spots, including Leo’s Oyster Bar, Felix Roasting Co., and Saint Joseph’s Arts Society—Fulk’s members’ club and cultural center set in a restored Catholic church. Up next is the renovation of San Francisco’s three Michelin–star restaurant Saison and the design for the rooftop eatery at The Newbury Boston hotel.
Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch transitioned from production design to interior design, bringing some of Hollywood’s biggest stars—including Ben Stiller, Kate Hudson, and Gwyneth Paltrow—along as clients. The innovative designers behind Roman and Williams are responsible for some of the buzziest restaurant and hotel designs of the century so far, such as the Ace Hotel New York, the Chicago Athletic Association, and Le Coucou. In December 2017, the duo opened Roman and Williams Guild, a retail concept that includes a café, La Mercerie, and an outpost of Emily Thompson Flowers. Standefer and Alesch recently released a collection for e-commerce site Mr. Porter, and their redesign of the British galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is set to be unveiled this year.
Chicago-based designer Tiffany Brooks started her career in high-end residential property management and staging, but went all in on interior design in 2007. In 2013, she won season eight of HGTV Design Star, and she has been a fixture on the network ever since. She was named to the Black Interior Designers Network’s African American Top 20 Interior Designers list, and when she’s not designing network-affiliated projects like the HGTV 2019 Smart Home, she’s working with her own slew of high-profile clients.
Described by The New Yorker as a “virtuoso of color” and “a possessor of perfect chromatic pitch,” architect and designer India Mahdavi has become renowned for her wondrous, saturated spaces, from her whimsical designs for Ladurée outposts in Los Angeles, Japan, and Geneva to her perfectly pink interior for London’s The Gallery at Sketch—the most Instagrammed restaurant in the world. Mahdavi opened her design studio in 1999, debuted her furniture collection and showroom a few years later, and opened her Petits Objets store, which features vivid ceramics, lighting, and accessories, in 2011. She’s collaborated with brands from Bisazza to Louis Vuiton to Nespresso, and is highly sought-after by private residential clients.
Belgian designer and dealer Axel Vervoordt took on his first design project, the restoration of 11 medieval houses in Antwerp, 50 years ago, and since then he’s become known for his minimalist interiors and expert eye for art and antiques. His timeless yet modern style has attracted a number of famous clients, including Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Robert De Niro, and Calvin Klein. His company’s Antwerp headquarters and gallery is in a former distillery and malting complex on the Albert Canal, which was also developed to include apartments, gardens, and a restaurant. A Hong Kong gallery opened in 2014. The designer recently completed the interiors of the Purs hotel in Germany and published his fifth book.
British-born Kathryn M. Ireland started out as an actress, a fashion designer, and a filmmaker. But her most successful role by far has been that of interior and fabric designer. Her globally inspired fabrics are found in showrooms around the world, and her client list includes Steve Martin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and David Mamet. The Los Angeles–based designer has also penned six books and appeared on Bravo’s Million Dollar Decorators. In 2018, she launched The Perfect Room, an online design platform featuring shoppable rooms by Ireland and other top designers, such as Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Suzanne Kasler, and Jeffrey Bilhuber.Thom Filicia
Thom Filicia became a household name as the design expert on Queer Eye for the Straight Guyin the aughts. Since then he’s continued to bring his polished style to the masses through his books; collaborations with brands such as Delta Airlines, American Express, and Radio City Music Hall; and his latest Bravo TV show costarring Carson Kressley, Get a Room with Carson & Thom. The designer, who cut his teeth at Parish-Hadley and other top firms, has worked with clients such as Tina Fey and Jennifer Lopez. He also has his own line of furnishings, fabrics, and accessories, which can be found at Sedgwick & Brattle, his to-the-trade showroom in the New York Design Center.
Distinguished French interior designer Jacques Grange has been crafting memorable spaces since the 1970s. Throughout the years he has designed for a powerful cross-section of influencers including Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Princess Caroline of Monaco, and François Pinault. On the the commercial side, he’s crafted the elegant interiors of hotels such as the Mark in New York, Francis Ford Coppola’s Palazzo Margherita in southern Italy, Hotel Mamá in Majorca, and, most recently, Cheval Blanc in St. Barts.
When he founded his design studio and store, Aero, in 1992, Thomas O’Brien helped bring warmth to the stark modern style of the day. His shop, which moved from its longtime home in SoHo to the New York Design Center in 2016, is a favorite of tasteful shoppers, including fellow designers. In 2005, he debuted his Vintage Modern line for Target, which brought his name and classic style to a massive audience. The author of three books, O’Brien is a prolific product designer with collections at Century Furniture, Waterworks, Visual Comfort, Patterson Flynn Martin, Reed and Barton, and Groundworks.
After spending 20 years shaping the aesthetic of Soho House, designer Vicky Charles struck out on her own in 2016, founding Charles & Co. with partner Julia Corden. In just three years, the firm has already developed a client list of power couples from both sides of the Atlantic, including David and Victoria Beckham, George and Amal Clooney, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, and Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys.
Michael S. Smith’s sophisticated projects have been gracing the covers of design magazines for nearly three decades. With a client list that includes power players in every realm, from politics (the Obamas) to media (Rupert Murdoch) to entertainment (Shonda Rhimes), the California native and author of five books blends classic and modern in his interiors and product lines. His Jasper collection, which is featured in showrooms around the world, includes wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, and lighting. The designer’s own Jasper showroom in West Hollywood is a mainstay in the L.A. design scene, with a curated collection of more than 30 vendors.
I was just about to sit down to do some work when this article in the New York Times caught my eye. Guess what I decided to do? I am so happy that we decided to buy a treadmill just before Covid-19 started. Eliot and I are on it a few times a week. Now I have to aim for every day. Then I have to stop noshing. Here I go with two new disciplines.
Ten minutes of moderate exercise daily would prevent more than 111,000 premature deaths a year, a new analysis found.
If almost all of us started walking for an extra 10 minutes a day, we could, collectively, prevent more than 111,000 deaths every year, according to an enlightening new study of movement and mortality. Published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study used data about physical activity and death rates for thousands of American adults to estimate how many deaths every year might be averted if everyone exercised more. The results indicate that even a little extra physical activity by each of us could potentially stave off hundreds of thousands of premature deaths over the coming years.
Already, science offers plenty of evidence that how much we exercise influences how long we live. In a telling 2019 studypublished by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 8 percent of all deaths in the United States were attributed to “inadequate levels of activity.” A British study from 2015 likewise found that men and women who exercised for at least 150 minutes per week — the standard recommendation in Britain, Europe and the United States — reduced their risk of premature death by at least 25 percent compared to people who exercised less. More dramatically, a 2020 examination of the lifestyles and death risks of about 44,000 adults in the United States and Europe concluded that the most sedentary men and women in the study, who sat almost all day, were as much as 260 percent more likely to die prematurely as the most highly active people studied, who exercised for at least 30 minutes most days.
But much of this past research relied on people’s often unreliable memories of their exercise and sitting habits. In addition, many of the studies that delved into the broader, population-level impacts of exercise on longevity tended to use formal exercise guidelines as their goal. In those studies, researchers modeled what would happen if everyone started working out for at least 150 minutes a week, an ambitious and perhaps unachievable goal for the many people who previously have exercised rarely, if at all.
In the new study, researchers at the National Cancer Institute and the C.D.C. decided instead to explore what might happen to death rates if people started moving around more, even if they did not necessarily meet the formal exercise guidelines. But, first, the researchers needed to establish a baseline of how many deaths might be related to too-little movement. So, they began gathering data from the ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, which periodically asks a representative sample of the population about their lives and health. It also provides some of them with activity trackers, to objectively measure how much they move.
The researchers now pulled information from 4,840 participants of different ethnicities, male and female, who ranged in age from 40 to 85. All had joined the survey between 2003 and 2006 and worn an activity monitor for a week. Based on that data, the researchers grouped people according to how many minutes they walked or otherwise moved most days. They also checked people’s names against a national death registry to establish mortality risks for the various activity levels.
Using those results, they began creating a series of statistical what-if’s. Suppose, the researchers asked, everyone who was capable of exercising began exercising moderately, such as by walking briskly, for an extra 10 minutes per day, on top of how much or little they currently worked out? How many deaths might not happen?
The researchers made adjustments to account statistically for those people who were too frail or otherwise unable to walk or easily move around. They also considered age, education, smoking status, diet, body mass index and other health factors in their calculations.
Then, the researchers ran the same statistical scenario with everyone working out for an extra 20 minutes a day and, finally, for an extra 30 minutes a day and checked the mortality outcomes.
Quite a few people would live longer in any of those scenarios, they found. According to the modeling, if every capable adult walked briskly or otherwise exercised for an additional 10 minutes a day, 111,174 deaths annually across the country — or about 7 percent of all deaths in a typical year — might be avoided.
When they doubled the imagined exercise time to an extra 20 minutes a day, the number of potentially averted deaths rose to 209,459. Tripling the exercise to 30 extra minutes a day averted 272,297 deaths, or almost 17 percent of typical annual totals. (The data was gathered before the pandemic, which has skewed mortality numbers.)
Those figures might seem abstract, but, in practice, those hundreds of thousands of deaths forestalled could turn out to be deeply personal. They could mean avoiding the early death of a spouse, parent, friend, grown child, co-worker or, of course, us, said Pedro Saint-Maurice, an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute, who led the new study. “There is a message in this data for public health entities” about the importance of promoting physical activity to reduce premature deaths, he said. And the message applies equally to each of us.
So get up and walk or engage in some kind of moderate physical activity for an extra 10 minutes today. Invite your friends, colleagues and aging parents to do the same. “In this context, a little additional physical activity can have a huge impact,” Dr. Saint-Maurice said
Pauline and Alex Shender, formerly of Riverside Drive in Manhattan, went all out to celebrate their duo birthdays last Saturday night in Boca. Their party was held at the couple’s country club which they lit up with all kinds of electric decorations, You could feel the party energy the minute you left your car in the parking area. Pauline is a member of Fountainhead Arts. From left to right: Dan Mikesell, co-founder of Fountainhead Arts, Alex Shender, me, Pauline, Eliot, and Kathryn Mikesell, co-founder of Fountainhead Arts.
Many of us don’t realize that we are suffering from some sort of a mild depression due to the trauma of the Covid virus. A few of us have it real bad. If you think to yourself, “I just don’t feel like my old self,” or if family and friends tell you “You seem different,”’ you should listen to this podcast.
Post Covid Malaise? It’s A Real Thing
I teamed up my long time girlfriend, Debbie Nigro, a radio personality, with my client, Dr.Arthur Bregman, to discuss this topic after I heard family, friends, and business associates tell me they feel that they lost some of their enthusiasm and spirit during the last two years.
Maybe this podcast will help,
https://debbienigro.com/post-covid-malaise-its-a-real-thing/
Dr. Arthur Bregman, MD, a Psychiatry Specialist in Coral Gables, FL, with over 47 years of expertise treating illnesses including ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and various other problems reports…
“Nine out of ten Covid patients who see me on a telemedicine call report a lingering sense of what I like to call ‘Covid dysphoria’ “.
He went on to explain, “After a bout with coronavirus a lot of my patients are not just suffering mild depressive symptoms – they have a more complete personality change. They don’t lose memories and become completely different people, but they say things like ‘My friends tell me I’m not like myself’ or ‘I’m usually such a cheerful person! What happened?’
Whatever happened won’t last forever thank goodness! Luckily for sufferers of ‘Covid dysphoria’, there are a few pointers that Dr. Bregman can share to help folks feel less hopeless and more confident that they’ll overcome this bump in the psychological road. It does tend to go away on its own and with relaxation techniques and a bit of talk therapy people can usually get on the other side of it quicker.
Franklin Karp, the very well known audio executive at Harvey’s and Audio Video Systems, was the guy Howard Stern wanted to be for many years. If you know Franklin, you know how modest he is about all of his accomplishments. He doesn’t boast about anything. I have been friendly with Franklin for decades. I only learned about the Howard situation recently. After you listen to the 8 minute recording that took place in 1994, you’ll understand why I want to challenge Robin to a do over.
https://hwhpr.com/karp-on-stern/
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By John R. Quain – February 1, 2022
Whether it’s due to a genuine fitness craze or primarily a gym-avoidance craze, sales of home fitness products continue their upward trend. And carried along with that trend are intelligent apps and gear aimed at the home gym. Even dumbbells are getting smarter. Bowflex’s established SelectTech system is emblematic of the trend. Improved health notwithstanding, the Bowflex SelectTech 552 Dumbbells, for example, offer several benefits over traditional free weights.
A pair of the Bowflex SelectTech 552 hand weights costs $399 and can be adjusted from just five pounds each to 52.5 pounds each. That’s plenty of range for most of us. The lower weights are ideal for repairing a muscle tear or doing some rotator cuff strengthening, while the higher weights can be used by more experienced lifters to do bench presses and preacher curls.
To select different weights, each dumbbell has a dial on each end. This, in turn, determines how many discs get locked onto the hand weight. And with all the selections, it’s the equivalent of getting a set of 30 individual free weights in just two dumbbells. In testing, we found them also safer to use. A home vertical rack of traditional dumbbells can be awkward to manage, and it’s easy to drop or misalign a heavy weight in the rack (watch your fingers!). The Bowflex weights, by comparison, are simple and easy to store without needing a rack or cramped positioning.
Most of our shoulder and arm strength routines were easily accommodated by the SelectTech weights. It takes just a second or two to spin dials and change the weights for rapid supersets, for example. And you can’t mismatch or dangerously imbalance them by, say, selecting 25 pounds on one end and 40 pounds on the other end of a hand weight; they won’t let you lift them out of the stands if you do that. Nice safety feature.
However, some people may find the size of the weights a little tricky to manage. The SelectTech 552 Dumbbells are about 7.5 inches in diameter and 17 inches wide, side to side. Compare that to our old-fashioned fixed 40-pound dumbbell at home, which is 6 inches in diameter and about 12.5 inches wide.
But the real smarts of the SelectTech system — like so many other fitness devices today — are really in its supporting custom apps. Designed to be used in conjunction with its weights, stationary bikes, and treadmills, Bowflex’s JRNY app for phones and tablets is $19.99 a month or $149 for the year for the software with video training sessions. Each is geared toward your level of fitness and particular goals (weight loss, improved strength, etc.) with tailored workouts to help keep you motivated and progressing. The video includes weight training sessions, as well as cardio classes for those with the very popular Bowflex C6 Bike ($999) or Bowflex Treadmill 10 ($1,999). And if you get bored with trim trainers urging you on, you can switch to streaming Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video while your individualized progress data continues along the bottom of the screen.
Nonetheless, we still found the best feature of the Bowflex SelectTech 552 was the overall compactness of the free weight set compared to a large rack of traditional weights. It makes the SelectTech 552 perfect for cliff-dwellers, or those in smaller homes who don’t have the space for a dedicated workout room. If you do have a bit of extra space, there’s also a $179 SelectTech Dumbbell Stand with Media Rack, where you can also set a tablet for some of those streaming training sessions. All in all, for the equivalent of a few months’ gym membership, it’s a permanent solution on how to avoid going to the gym.
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Three New Additions To Our Foyer. Art Work And Wallpaper By The Great Jayda Knight
https://historichamptonhouse.org/
The Historic Hampton House is one of Miami’s greatest gems even though many residents and tourists never heard of it. Perhaps this story in The Three Tomatoes will change all that. The hotel became famous in the 1960s because that was the place were big name Black entertainers opted to stay. The hotels on the beach would not accept them. Guests included Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Robinson, Aretha Franklin, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., plus so many others who went there to get a peaceful night’s sleep. What a horrific time.
In fact, the movie “One Night In Miami, the 2020 American drama film directed by Regina King (in her feature film directorial debut) all took place in the Hampton House. The film is a fictionalized account of a February 1964 meeting of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a room at the Hampton House, celebrating Ali’s surprise title win over Sonny Liston.
In 1961, Harry and Florence Markowitz, a white Jewish couple, opened the remodeled Hampton House as an upscale motel with a jazz club, swimming pool and late-night restaurant in the all-Black Brownsville neighborhood. Architect Robert Karl Frese designed the 50-room motel in the Miami Modern style, similar to that of Eden Roc and The Deauville on Miami Beach. After the $6 million restoration in 2015, thanks to the work of preservationist Dr. Enid Pinkney, the real-life Historic Hampton House became a nonprofit organization and cultural center. Today, guests can tour both Dr. King’s and Muhammad Ali’s suites, and rent public areas for private events.
A group of us, Gail Williams, Jayda Knight, Alex Nuñez, Eliot Hess, and yours truly, went to the Hampton House this week to help celebrate Ray Elman’s exhibition of 40 x 60 inch, mixed-media portraits of people who were patrons or performers at this amazing establishment. Ray, a good friend, is an extraordinary artist who is also the founding manager/editor of Inspicio, an arts publication platform sponsored by Florida International University’s College of Communication Architecture + The Arts.
Elman has made over 200 paintings in portrait series of notable talents such as Norman Mailer, Robert Motherwell, Douglas Huebler, Justin Kaplan, Joel Meyerowitz, Annie Dillard, Mark Strand, Sebastian Junger, Alec Wilkinson, E.J. Kahn, Jr., Varujan Boghosian, Al Jaffee, Lee Falk, Elise Asher, Anne Bernays, and Ruth Reichl. His work is in several public and corporate collections around the world including the embassies of Madrid, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Brazilia, Brussels, and the Museum of African American HIstory, Proctor & Gamble, Fidelity Mutual Fund Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Alexander Grant.
Ray maintains a strong relationship with the Hampton House because of its rich culture. You can’t stop an accomplished artist from getting emotional about the soul of a place like this. The Hampton House has a loyal and best friend in Ray. It’s very heart warming.
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Donated By Michael Sommer. Thank you
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