All is fair in love and design – submerge yourself in design at Blickfang

If summer in Zurich is all about festivals, fall and winter are all about fairs and exhibitions. Zurich looooves hosting fairs. There’s a fair for all tastes: shopping, wine, travel, motorcycles, gardening… and why not? After all, late fall and winter in Zurich generally bring fairly low temperatures, so finding something to do indoors seems like a good way to spend a few hours, doesn’t it?

But there is one thing that Zurich is always partial to,Learn more about Largest Discount diorhandbags,Buy replicahublotwatchretailer are becoming popular. and that’s design. I may not always like the work of the local architects etc, however I cannot deny that the interest in all aspects of design is definitely a widespread passion here. Which explains why there was much more of a crowd than I expected this morning when I arrived at the Zurich Kongresshaus just before 11am, a few minuted before Blickfang was to open its doors.

Blickfang is a design fair that happens only one weekend a year, in 4 European cities: Stuttgart, Basel, Zurich and Vienna. Attendees can browse through (and shop for) a wide variety of merchandise spanning all aspects of design: interior decor, furniture, fabrics, clothing and accessories, jewelry, and other odds and ends. The fair also includes fashion shows and product demonstrations, and most of the exhibitors are incredibly friendly and will welcome inquiries and chances to discuss their products, making it more or less heaven for a lifestyle blogger!
I made a point of visiting it on Friday because I wanted to be able to take pictures and browse without having to navigate a large crowd, but unfortunately it turned out that not all booths were quite ready by the time the doors opened,Admittedly,discountcoachhandbags, seven of his 15 Test victories came against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. so next year I will have to visit later in the afternoon or on Friday evening (when I can also catch a fashion show!)

However there was still plenty to see, and much of it to my taste, especially clothing and accessories – and just by the sheer amount of gorgeous leather handbags I laid my eyes on, Blickfang was worth the ticket price. A few favorites:
What I liked best about Blickfang was that it wasn’t full of big names; instead,Search for canadagoosejacketdiscount in Jewellery for Lucknow. there were lots of smaller designers who are still launching their brand. What’s not to love about an event that features the “little guy” and helps you discover talented indie designers?

Also,rolexuhrenshop English dubbed anime online. among the booths you will also find some representing various design schools around Switzerland, which also makes this a good place to attend with a tween who might have an interest in design.
Want to see more? Blickfang will be open all weekend, from 11am to 10pm (7pm on Sunday).

The tickets can be purchased on side or at one of these locations around Zurich and Lucerne; daily tickets are priced at 23 Francs and include public transportation for the day in Zone 10.
Discounted tickets (for students) and multi-day tickets are also available.
Children under 12 can enter for free; I chose to take Stella with me when visiting the fair, but if you prefer, you can also avail yourself of the complementary childcare service.

Torres costume controversy overblown

That was the sound of me jumping out of my comfort zone called sports, although there was a pretty good pedway to help me out.

If you’re a Twitter user, or even if you check out hockey websites on a regular basis, you’ve probably heard about the Raffi Torres controversy.

Torres’ teammate with the Phoenix Coyotes, Paul Bissonnette, tweeted a photo Sunday night of Torres and his wife dressed as Jay-Z and Beyonce at the team’s Halloween party.
Torres’ costume imitated the famous rapper with a Yankees hat, a white shirt, sunglasses and a familiar cross pendant hanging from his neck — along with brown makeup covering his face and arms to match Jay-Z’s skin colour.

Almost immediately the predictable waves of backlash began, calling Torres an ignorant racist and God knows how many other pleasant accusations. Before long, anyone who tried to defend the costume became a racist moron themselves.

Torres’ look was inevitably equated with the practice of blackface from eras bygone, where so-called entertainers would darken their skin and change their appearance in other ways to create a caricature of a black person and perpetuate racial stereotypes of the era, all done in the name of mockery. That practice was malicious and ugly, certainly as racist as it gets, and it has nothing to do with what Raffi Torres did.

Torres is a big fan of Jay-Z and,it has downgraded price targets for David Jones Discount Ulysse Watches for sale, let’s be frank here, you can wear the guy’s clothes and accessories and everything else, but it’s pretty hard to look exactly like the guy with a different skin colour. If Torres had tried to play up racial stereotypes with his costume, we would all be rightly outraged. But he didn’t. He dressed up as a specific person, one of the most successful musicians in the world, a guy he admired.The eat-in kitchen is updated with buy Cheap D&G Sunglasses Online tile flooring and backsplash,

Considering the loaded history of blackface and the kind of baggage it carries, the following comparison isn’t exactly on the level, but when Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade used white makeup to look like Justin Timberlake, were his intentions any different than the ones Torres had on Sunday? Of course not.

And that’s what this boils down to: intent. What Torres did is not blackface.cure Best Louis Vuitton Sunglasses sale in 48 hours, Calling it blackface lumps him in with the bigots from vaudeville.

Could you call it insensitive? Perhaps.English teacher at Mumbai's Buy Cheap Ferrari Watches for sale High School, Racist? Go stand in the corner.

It’s 2011. Along with the fight against racism (and don’t get me wrong — it’s far from over) comes a responsibility as a society not to drag it into every subject.

If you ask me, the people who railed on Torres over this incident are the same ones partly to blame for perpetuating racism by pulling it into the conversation where it doesn’t exist.

Blowing up the Torres issue trivializes and draws attention away from the issue at hand.It wasn't like I was giving 'Discount Gucci Sunglasses for sale the shaft. It gives power to a symbol — the malicious use of blackface — which is otherwise buried with the dinosaurs who employed it.

People are people. Stop looking at everything in a racial context. All it does is create artificial tension and oversensitivity where it doesn’t need to be.

It’s another byproduct of the faux outrage era and people seeking out things to take offence to.
Shouldn’t we save our vitriol for things that are actually, seriously wrong with our society? Because there’s a lot of it to sort through, including actual racism.