When we feel bad about buying Made in China, we buy it anyway. When the kids at Peppermint Mag feel the guilt, they buy American Apparel. These cats have shown that it’s easy to be cute and stylish while being environmentally conscious. Enviro-friendly is no longer the domain of long-haired hippies and tie-dyed shirts. Welcome to the era of reuse, recycle and the revision of our tomorrow, one little pom pom hat at a time.

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Oscar Diaz’s Ink Calendar has taken the month by storm — one ink blot at a time. After its initial display at the Diseño con alma de agua (Design of Water with a Soul) exhibition at Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes, the Ink Calendar’s unusual technique of using capillary action to ‘stain’ each day of the month has reignited the design world’s senses. That humidity may render the ‘calendar’ inaccurate, but this should be ignored since it’s brilliant and utterly beautiful.

The allusions are endless. Sydney’s Pocket Bar is tiny, bursting at the seams with people wanting to get at the never-ending supply of stuff (namely the tasty nibbles and a raft of fine vino) and we’re pretty sure that they would have an offering of rubber bands and string if you asked politely. While these are indeed defining attributes in any establishment, we feel that what really makes this inner city Sydney café bar more than just another inner city Sydney café bar is the fact that it offers savoury crepes after 6, wine by the half bottle and National Geographic magazines. Now that’s my idea of heaven. [photo via Anik In The Pacific]

Crochet, lamps and crockery. The Finders Keepers Independent Design and Art Markets sounds like a party for the geriatrics, but, in reality, it’s a place where all the cool cats of Sydney (and everywhere else) are this weekend. This little indie mish-mash of fresh young things is one of Sydney’s biggest design markets. Perspex lamps bespoke by lanky geeks sit on one stand, while corrugated cardboard bowls grace the stall of the next.

All around are newspaper whales, leaping from the sea and onto a bed of the finest fairy-like rings and neck adornments, all welded by the gruffest silversmith in the land. The vibe is throbbing, the people are animated and their designs are what they are excited about. If you love design or you simply need to get a great birthday present, this is the best way to support the small fry and to look cool while doing it. Score!

As a non-coffee drinker, I’m not going to rant about the coffee. I’ve heard, though, that the coffee is damn good. But I am going to talk about something else: food. Oh. My. God. Sydney’s Single Origin cafe have this awesome meatloaf sandwich and a raft of sourdoughs and prosciutto and roast lamb and chevre and chunky steak pies and yogurt with compote and four-cheese toasties and baked beans and … oh! Don’t forget Karlie’s special homemade lemonade! Karlie is always in the house so you know that it doesn’t come from a can and arrives at your table with that sour tang that reminds you of the annual Royal Easter Show. Everything they serve is created ethically and organically. Add the constant grinding aroma of coffee beans wafting through the air and, well, is there any other place to be? [photo by Daniel Boud]

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Schmidt, Hammer and Lassen’s design for the Copenhagen national library is a celebrated structure in the already glittering design portfolio of northern Europe. The marble and glass façade of The Black Diamond (yes, that is what their national library is called) is an example of architectural brilliance, with even the angled walls designed to best mirror the city’s beautiful canals.

A young female once said, ‘if I were into hot bikie guys, I would always hang out at Deus’. Translation: Guys on bikes like to hang out at Deus Ex Machina because they love the quality custom bike and all the quality trimmings. And, seriously, even the most Toyota Corolla driving of women will be entranced by the beauty of the custom work done by this place. Men and women alike fill the humid, tin-roofed showroom, running their fingers from the rough leather seat thing to the glossy front cover thing to the shiny metal handlebar things. Of course, if you really don’t care, or don’t know how to appreciate a thing of beauty, then, surely, you will love the Deus café. Truffle oil drizzled field mushrooms appear on the breakfast menu. If that doesn’t make you bow at the Altar of Deus, then you can go to hell.

You know that man on the stairs of the local town hall? The one bellowing Mr Tambourine Man at the top of his lungs with rag doll in hand and wearing a lilac jumper, pungent with the aroma of week-old sandwich? Most of us would call him a beggar, a tramp, a hobo; Bob Dylan would say that he had just stepped out of a folk ballad. He would tell us that he knew that this man had a story, a history and possessed bravery. And we all know that bravery is what makes a folk hero. In Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan guides us through the rumble tumble world that is his New York. It is a place that is teetering on the brink of reinvention, only to be held back by the dark confusing days of the 1950s.

It’s not a really nice place, but I found myself wandering in and revelling in it. The way that Dylan leads us, prods us, lures us into this mean crazy world is through the pentamater of his tone and the timbre of his voice. He writes his books like he writes his songs; he is only concerned by the beat of the story and how he is going to tell it to the world.

Factually, this story is not complete, but it becomes irrelevant when you consider why we are there; like how Woodie Guthrie drew Robert Allen Zimmerman from the backwaters of Minnesota to the bright lights of New York, we are drawn to Chronicles by Bob Dylan. We are there to find out who he is, what makes him tick and the journey he took to discover it.

He gives us that.

It doesn’t always make sense, but who cares – it’s his life, it’s his story and it’s a whacking good read.

I almost had a heart attack the first time I entered Published Art. And I’m not even an architecture and design nut. This place is the shiz. As the name of the store suggests, Published Art is art published in book form. Their spectacular array of art, design and architecture books will bring a tear to the eye of any admirer of beauty. For Published Art, less is more. They make sure that they only keep the latest titles in stock so that every single one of their gorgeous hardcover books can be viewed from any part of the store.

This not only enables you to browse without needing to bother a shopgirl about your fave artist, designer or architect, but also enables you to have a hearty perve while you’re hiding in the corner smelling the fresh pages of the book from across the room. What? You don’t do that? Well … err … no. What do you take me for? Of course, I don’t either.

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There are two types of adorable: Pre-Wall-e, and Post-Wall-e. Pre-Wall-e adorable is the type of adorable that Suri Cruise and palm-sized furry creatures inspire. Wall-E takes this definition of adorable to a-whole-nother new level. So sweet is Pixar’s new offering that my eyes started to secrete this saline substance that is commonly referred to as tears. I had to bow my head and start pretending that the child next to me had set off my hayfever. Again.

I don’t know why I was surprised about this though. Pixar’s last offering – the highly successful French rat in the kitchen — also inspired similar moisture around the eyes. In fact, all their cinema release features have such a tear-jerking quality that, maybe, Pixar should be officially welcomed into the onion family. Except no one is ever truly fine about hanging with the onions.

But enough of the tissues; what we’re really all here for is one of those super cute, highly enjoyable, well-made feature films that Pixar is so good at making. Their track record should be enough to bring hoards of screaming children swarming in to fill seats with their booster-seated bums and, frankly, Wall-e doesn’t disappoint on all counts.

What we have is not only a sickly sweet film that is well-written and well-produced, but it is a feature that even touches on some contemporary issues that will leave about 20 per cent of said screaming children looking at their chocolate smeared fist, wondering whether they should go eat a carrot stick instead. For me, anything that has that kind of result equals good times ahead.

I first met Postsecret lying in a Mexican hammock hung approximately a hundred metres away from a smelly dank dodgy hallway. ‘I wish I had lung cancer so my mom would quit smoking’, it told me. I was surprised. You don’t ever really expect to hear (or read) such a deep dark and tabooed secret, even from your nearest and dearest. But I guess if your nearest and dearest is the one who is the cause of that pain, you aren’t exactly going to share that with them. Right?

That is the problem of secrets and the beauty of Postsecret – we all (and don’t tell me that you don’t) like to tell strangers secrets deeper and darker than what we would tell those who know us best; it’s simply about who we are willing to hurt by our information. There is a certain anonymity in telling your deep dark to a stranger; there is no incriminating evidence.

Which is probably why, in late 2004, Frank Warren started receiving a steady stream of dank secrets in the form of postcards. You see, he had welcomed the country of the United States of America to anonymously paint their stories of pain, type their happiness in courier sans, collage their anger onto a six-by-four-and-a-quarter inch piece of cardboard and, basically, send all their confusion and mess away. At least for a little while.

Warren had given perfect strangers a perfect reprieve, however momentary, from the secret pain that they dragged around with them, and then put it all in a book. It’s dark and somewhat depressing, but I found it quite addictive. Like reading someone’s diary …what? You’ve never done that before?

Of course, it could just be me and I could be talking crap, but just remember what the smart (hatin’) Postsecret correspondent said: ‘When most people talk to me, I am thinking ‘what an idiot!’

Fresh fruit? Yes please! Never mind that I had just finished a cottage pie as big as my face. I was going to have a punnet of those raspberries. I couldn’t help myself. Really. They were just sitting so pretty alongside the luscious apples and pears lining the rickety stalls of London’s Soho Fruit Markets, I just couldn’t restrain myself. And it seemed that I wasn’t the only one.

A short walk from Piccadilly Circus (and a street away from questionable stores pawning ‘girls girls girls’) meant that an eclectic bunch of people could be found at these stalls. Tourists, flaneurs, perverts — we were all there for one thing: raspberries. Or apples. Or pears. Or those gigantic strawberries that the Brits are so good at growing. Whatever you chose, it was all agreed that these handful of stalls were a refreshing change from the meat and questionable fats that the Brits are also very good at serving.

As an American said as he fumbled for an apple: ‘Gawd, I’ve never loved fruit so much in my life’.

Calvi epitomises the reason why the expensive people of France like to escape to Corse for a short break away from the stressful life of long weekends and days spent with a lover in one hand and vanilla-scented cigarette in the other. That being said, I personally vouch for this little port town as the perfect getaway for anyone. And I’m not French. See, never have I had my breath taken away in such a manner as when I was standing on the top of the town’s citadel, looking down onto the sweeping beaches and the crashing waves with the rushing wind from the rugged mountains above billowing around me. Ignoring the poetic waxing of the lyrical: it was just damn spectacular.

On heading down from the heavens, you will find yourself in a quaint little port town – French style. Cobblestone streets guide you through a jumble of family run cafes, stinky boulangeries (the French believe that the stinkier the cheese, the better — the Corsicans take it to another level) and a lovely marina full of expensive yachts. And this tour can almost be guaranteed to eventuate in the arrival of you at Christopher Columbus’ alleged place of birth. You can’t avoid it. If you are a foreigner, the locals will not let you leave without paying your respects to their great explorer. But then again, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me — paradise or Columbus? The choice is yours. [photo via Lonely Planet Hometown Flickr]

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A Melbourne native once said to me: to find the good bars, you have to look for the bins in alleyways. Section 8 totally fits that quota. It is a bar that is a. in an alleyway, and b. filled with trash. As enticing as that sounds, I must make it clear that the alleyway is actually an old carpark in Chinatown and the trash is not exactly trash. But don’t let that stop you. Section 8 is pumping. Filled with forklift pallets for your seating pleasure, this little bar-that-could (also known as the Container Bar) makes a refreshing beverage and plays super cool beats all night.

To add to the cool urban trash, the stripped shipping container has been decked out with old metal cylinders, Chinese paper lanterns and one of those take away trailers that you find at the Easter Show. Don’t mock it! It dispenses not Dagwood Dogs, but a mean drink.

In a city famed for it’s alleyway bars, Section 8 takes the cake by keeping to its trashy roots. The untouched urban feel and the easy vibes are a refreshing change to the kitschy watering holes that you find elsewhere in the city. To put it quite simply, rubbish has never been so cool.

Hot damn. Canvas Magazine makes the Brisbane design community look seriously sexy. It not only focuses on beautiful, innovative, simply spectacular design and the talent behind it, but also explores issues that many presume that don’t really concern the very pretty design world. It is basically a really hot girl with brains. Now, who doesn’t want to check that out? This little biannual comes as a PDF and their fifth issue — The Black Issue — is out now for your free downloading pleasure.

I love Copenhagen’s Meyers Deli. I don’t know if it’s the giant plates of organic food or the super cool and warm environment. Like yogurt with apricot compote? Got that. Prefer eggs and bratwurst teamed with homemade relish? Sure. Enjoy organic marmalade with a whole freaking plate full of croissants and rolls of dark rye, brown, wholegrain, whatever rolls and slices of bread? Done. Want all that on one plate? Go to Meyers. [photo by Illustir]