I had my hair cut today. My barnet is now so reduced that I’ve eschewed my hairdresser in favour of a barber whose services are a third of the price. Soon clippers will suffice and I’ll be able to skip the chair once and for all.

It’s a thought that leaves me sad.

I can remember my grandfather taking my cousin and I to get haircuts when we were young boys, five or six or so. He took us to a place called Don and Dario’s, Italian brothers whose trade was decimated when the local Marconi’s factory was closed. I was young. The memories are hazy. I remember looking at the newspapers and periodicals, feeling overawed. I also remember Paul Hardcastle’s 19 playing on the radio one time.

As the years passed, we got too old for our grandfather to take us. I went to a place in the town centre called Cutmore’s. A smoky little room at the top of a flight of stairs off an alleyway.

I went there the last time I went back to England. I think I wanted to see if I could remember. Much was familiar: the dated pictures of men’s hairstyles, the linoleum, worn and discoloured around the chairs from the barbers’ gentle tread, the haphazard formation of combs and scissors on the counter. Dax wax in blue tins, neck brushes, Wahl clippers and tissue boxes. My hair on the floor.

Pure Ecstasy - Voices [part 3 of 3] from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

This is a wonderful record store recording of Pure Ecstasy performing the beautiful track, Voices. The band come from Austin, Texas, and have already been listed as one of Pitchfork’s ‘Rising‘ acts.

The film itself comes from Yours Truly, a creative collective from San Francisco.

YouTube comments never let me down. In this case, the dude might be right. Marvellous ad from a couple of years ago by Butler Shine:

Copenhagen’s one and only shop dedicated to fixed gear riding moved into new premises on Saturday and I popped along to say hi. Here’s a few pics:

Henceforth you can find them in Nørrebro at Rantzausgade 2.

I work in advertising, possibly the only industry where the overwhelming majority of the output is utter cack. That said, good work does occasionally get through. Work that makes you think a little harder, that maybe even moves you and that communicates its message persuasively and effectively.

Here are two of my favourite commercials of recent years:

The angle at which the stork inclines its head in the Monster ad is heartbreaking. It’s just an ad for a recruitment site but it’s artful in its own right.

Mr Smoliansky’s work is new to me. The compendium ‘One Picture at a Time‘ contains his most accomplished photographs, many of which feel rather underwhelming initially but gradually draw you in.

Leafing through this book was a hypnotic experience. Even where there is movement in his images, one’s overall impression is of a world in slow-motion, shuffling toward oblivion.

Work took me to California for a brief trip last week. We were out in Desert Springs and spending our days at the tennis in Indian Wells.

It’s a strange, dislocating area. The towns bleed into each other, indistinguishable and featureless. Big box stores and country clubs. A life of odd artifice facilitated by Mexicans.

There’s a couple more pics here.

A friend in London sends word of an unbeatable deal at his local Shoe Zone.

I left England four years ago today. Like most things in my life, my memories of the months immediately before and after I moved to Copenhagen feel like fragments of a bigger picture I can’t yet make out.

I remember resigning from my reporter’s job. A bland meeting room in an inconsequential building in an industrial estate at the arse-end of town where I went through the motions with the deputy editor, an officious jobsworth only a year or two older than me. She accepted my resignation with dead eyes and we went back to preparing that week’s edition.

I had wanted it to feel like a withering condemnation of the publisher and its inconsiderate treatment of editorial staff. Ultimately it was irrelevant. But it was a beginning of sorts, at a time when I was more accustomed to endings. I was 27.

Now I am 31. I am an advertising copywriter and I have recently bought my first apartment with my girlfriend. But the story of these past four years is less to do with achievements and acquisitions than with the sensory awakening that’s come from simply being here. Copenhagen has given me purpose. There are still unkind days, but they are fewer, and beginnings outnumber endings.

The pictures that follow are a kind of photo-essay to try and give an impression of my life here. Friends, strangers, girlfriends, places, streets and buildings. Thanks for sticking with me!

Don’t know so much about these. The first one here is so wonderful; Murray is cast to perfection. I don’t know if they were especially effective commercials, but as art, they’re things of beauty: