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thisguyatthemovies · 5 years ago

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If you ain’t first ...

Title: “Ford v Ferrari”

Release date: Nov. 15, 2019

Starring: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Caitriona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon, J.J. Feild

Directed by: James Mangold

Run time: 2 hours, 32 minutes

Rated: PG-13

What it’s about: Based on a true story, car builder Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles get the backing of Ford to challenge the auto racing dominance of Ferrari in the 1960s.

How I saw it: “Ford v Ferrari,” a big, testosterone-fueled, engrossing and fun drama that seems a bit of a throwback to a different Hollywood era, has more than one “v” in it.

Yes, it is about “Ford v Ferrari.” In the 1960s, Enzo Ferrari’s cars were setting records and dominating races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ford, which was in a market-share battle with GM in the U.S. and churning out largely unexciting vehicles, wanted to merge with Ferrari and have the final say-so on his racing program. When that offer did not go over well and Ferrari insulted Henry Ford II and his cars, the automaker enlisted the help of Texan-turned-Californian car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and his favorite driver/mechanical mastermind, British-born Ken Miles (Christian Bale). The goal: Beat Ferrari at its own game. And they did.

But the film also is about “Renegade Car Guys v Corporate Suits.” Shelby was a shrewd businessman first and foremost, a man with a way with words, and an independent sportscar builder. He also was all about being the best and could be as abrasive as he was relentless. Miles was gifted in the ways of the automobile, but he was even more off-putting than Shelby, was too honest for his own good and, of the most concern to Ford, not a team player or people person. Ford (Tracy Letts) and his yes men were more concerned with Ford’s image and bottom line, and the car builder sought most of the credit for whatever Shelby and Miles accomplished. Shelby and Miles often locked horns with Ford executives, especially Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas), who is the heavy here, and they did so right to the end, the final laps of Ford’s conquering of Le Mans.

As Miles, Bale spends much of the movie inside the Ford-powered cars, and with much of the focus on him, “Ford v Ferrari” becomes “Miles v the World” and “Miles v Himself.” Miles was a brilliant driver, one that Shelby fought hard for when Ford wanted to replace him with more marketable men (Ford won out for a while, until Shelby made a bet with Ford that hinged on Miles winning the 24 Hours of Daytona). But Miles could not get along with anyone (he rubbed Beebe the wrong way the moment they met), and that hurt him as a businessman (the IRS seizes his auto repair shop) and nearly cost him his opportunity with Shelby. Then, in the climactic scene as the finish is nearing at Le Mans, Miles realizes he has vanquished the competition, but that he can’t vanquish himself. One of the best moments in “Ford v Ferrari” is when Miles is in his racecar and must decide between being stubborn and selfish in the name of personal victory or proving he can be part of a winning team and share in the credit. He was an unhappy man who thought victory would bring him happiness, but it didn’t, at least not right away.

“Ford v. Ferrari” also can be viewed as “Men in the 1960s v Men Today.” The film is unabashedly a throwback story about men, the friendship between two men (Shelby and Miles), men and their love of machines, men and competition (on the track and in corporate boardrooms), and men and money (Ford has a lot of it but obviously wants more). The only significant woman in “Ford v Ferrari” is Miles’ wife, Mollie (Caitriona Balfe), and though her relationship with her husband is the best side story of the movie, she is typical of wives in the 1960s – supportive, understanding, remarkably patient and mostly in the background. Young viewers might not recognize the old-fashioned kind of masculinity on display in “Ford v Ferrari,” and if they do, they might not like it. This is men being men, or at least men being men the way men used to be men.

Bale is, of course, outstanding as Miles, though the film probably could have used a few less in-car shots of him and his running dialogue with himself (“Ford v Ferrari” checks in at just over 2-1/2 hours). He and Damon make for a good team even when their characters are clashing. Ray McKinnon stands out among the supporting cast as Phil Remington, an engineer who worked for Shelby. Balfe and Noah Jupe as the Miles’ young son provide nice breathers from all the machismo. Director James Mangold (“Walk the Line,” “Logan,” “Girl, Interrupted”) keeps the action and drama moving, and the racing scenes are high-impact visually and sonically.

Is “Ford v Ferrari” a bit of a formulaic underdog story? Yes. Is it difficult to embrace the lead characters, Shelby and Miles? Yes. Does it go on a little too long? Yes.

Is it an outstanding film, one that many different types of moviegoers will find entertaining and at times cheer-worthy and moving? An emphatic yes.

My score: 91 out of 100

Should you see it? Yes. Even those who are not car buffs should enjoy the drama and action.

#movies #movie review #movie recommendation #ford v ferrari #auto racing #motorsports #christian bale #matt damon #james mangold #oscars

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franeridart · 6 years ago

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Me: *has notifications on for when you post something* Also me: *checks your blog every day in case I missed something*

Ahhhhhh thank you!!! I’m sorry lately I’ve been less active, haven’t I orz a mixture of being busy and uninspired #rip I’ll try to do better!!

Anon said:I love how you draw kiri in casual clothes he looks so cool and cute! Eventhough it's canon he's a fashion disaster haha

Thank you!!! But actually I base my designs for Kirishima’s casual clothes completely on his official casual clothes (which is to say, his shifuku) and the stuff he’s worn in canon already ( x x x x x ) - people consider him a fashion disaster for the crocs, mostly, and I guess the patterns of his shirts? Ah, personally I don’t dislike either so I guess he doesn’t come off as a disaster in my doodles hahaha

Anon said:Idk why, but theres one panel of that one comic where bakugou and kirishima are little kids in the fantasy au and bakugou takes kirishima home and Mitsui is just like "..... " but her expression says "well shit" just makes me laugh. It brings me great joy. Idk why I'm telling you this, but have a great day! Ily and your art!

Thank you so so much!!!!! Mitsuki was so much fun to draw there, I’m really glad the expression came out right hahaha

Anon said:Dopo aver letto le FAQ, ripeto tutti i complimenti in italiano, visto che meriti decisamente un elogio multilingue :-P E tra parentesi, inglese eccellente! Mai avrei sospettato che non fosse la tua lingua madre.

AHHHHHHHHHH GRAZIE MILLE!!!!!!! Anche per il complimento sull’inglese hahaha scrivere fic in inglese mi ha probabilmente aiutata un bel po’ in quel senso lmao

Anon said:Another abuse of the "ask" function, but boy, your Kiribaku art makes me feel so happy and fluffy and giddy and they are even in-character!! Thank you so much.

THANK YOU !!!!! it always makes me so incredibly happy to know my characterization is okay!!! ;^;

Anon said:i finally got to the bottom of your bakushima tag and lemme tell you: it was totally worth all of the time spent.

MAN that must have taken way longer than it deserved hahaha but I’m glad you enjoyed it!!!! Even if I’m sure the further back you went the worse everything was..... rip lmao

Anon said:THAT RED SHIRT BAKUGOU S L A Y E D ME!!! GOTTA LOVE BAKUGOU IN HIS BF'S COLORS!!!!!

I dunno which one this is about but hell yes the more red Bakugou wears the happier my heart is!!!!!

Anon said:i can’t believe i’ve been following you since haikyuu!! era. like,,,, ily a lot bro

Knowing that you’ve been following me that long I gotta say I love you a whole damn lot too??? thank you so much seriously !!!! ;^;

Anon said:I found the mug from one of your Kiribaku dad comics! (The one that says "Welcome to the Gun Show")

I genuinely hope you didn’t make the ill decision of buying it, anon lmao

Anon said:Todomomobaku gives me life aaakskglh

It was absolutely not meant as romantic but thank you for liking it!!!!!!!!!!! That specific doodle got so much love and I’m so glad for it cause that friend group makes probably little sense by canon but I love it so much? Drawing it made me super happy so I’m happy you liked it!!

Anon said:I just came back from watching the Incredibles and no matter which AU you are, you'll always find politics messing with the job of the heroes. BNHA heroes and TI heroes need a coffee break to chat tohether 9_9.

I still haven’t watched TI2 but hell yes I feel this ask ;-;

Anon said:(Bakushima kids thing) did mako get into UA? If so did she make some new friends right away and/or fall head over heels for a scary/angry looking girl in the new class(fallowing in Pappa’s footsteps)? In either case, what were Bakugou and Kirishima’s first impression on them/her?

Mako’s seven lmao she barely started elementary school, she definitely didn’t get into UA just yet hahaha

Anon said:Awh Sero looks so lonely in that pic

He isn’t! He’s waiting for Ashido, they’re going on a date he doesn’t know it’s a date but it’s definitely a Date™, Ashido will make sure he realizes by the end of it *thumb up*

Anon said:Do you have any ideas for gender-bend Bakugou and Kirishima? Like what they would look like, how to their personalities would change, stuff like that. Sorry if I’m bothering you

I’d lie if I said I don’t have a couple of doodles saved somewhere in my art folder, but to be fair my gb Baku and Kiri are... exactly like Baku and Kiri, I wouldn’t really change them all that much, so I never find it much worth it to talk about it? I think Bakugou might have been a bit different in backstory since being a girl would have made people less, uh, sure he was destined to beat All Might or whatever, but in general he’d stay the same imho. Kiri too, he wouldn’t change all that much either. Their designs also, their quirks require them to be buff after all. I dunno man I just don’t think them being girls would change all that much about them so my ideas on this specific aus are always a bit eh, sorry!

Anon said:Fran! Don't read if you didn't see episode 11! How do you interpret that Kirishima try to hold the hand of Bakugou aroud the end of the ep? I mean: objectively?

That was actually a small variation of a scene already present in the manga (central panel here) so being as objective as I can be I’d say it was just bones playing on how much fans love the ship - that said, it’s still canon to the manga that Kirishima didn’t trust Bakugou where he couldn’t keep his hands on him and make sure he was there and safe? That’s adorable and I’ve been crying over that for two years now ;^;

Anon said:During a time I've been too depressed to make it to my counseling appointments or to my follow up appointments to get back on my meds, your art, quite especially your doodle comics, makes me smile. It's not really worth much, and I wish I could support you more, your sketches and doodles and full pieces and everything you draw, just really helps. You don't have to respond. Just please don't stop creating.

Thank you so so so much for this ask, anon ;-; and I’m really sorry you’re going through a hard time right now, but let’s be strong together okay? *holds*

Anon said:I’m so happy to see that you don’t draw noses because I can’t draw them and I never add them to my art and it makes me feel better knowing that I’m not the only one😭😂

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! noses are hard to draw aren’t they? they’re so hard!!! so incredibly hard!!!! I keep on trying to find a way to go about them I’m satisfied with but it just isn’t working!!!! Until I find one it’s noseless art for me hahaha

Anon said:Your art made me realize I’m bisexual so........ thanks bro ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

I don’t know how that happened but this is the best ask I’ve ever gotten ever?? you’re very very welcom my friend !!!!!!!

Anon said:Your art makes me so happy whenever I see it. The style is just so soft and sweet and comforting and I love it a lot. I have no money rn but soon I would love to buy some of the stuff you have for sale 😄💖💖

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much both for the compliments and the nice feeling, anon!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#fran answers #look at me staying on top of this whole asks deal like someone with their life put together #go me #!!!#talking about fashion disaster kiri #i think whether he is or not is too tied to personal tastes for it to be canon or not #unless someone in canon told him he doesn't know how to dress i guess?#anyway what i mean is my answer up there wasn't meant to say people are inherently wrong when calling him a disaster #i mostly just meant i don't share the opinion lmao #i actually really really like his style it fits him so nicely!#anonymous

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lourdesquick362-blog · 6 years ago

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fantroll-purgatory · 6 years ago

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@theo-theleo

Your name is PRAXIS AUTEUR and you have quite the interest in OLD TIMEY MOVIES your favorite being those that are SILENT. You have a large disdain for LOUD NOISES and would much rather keep things QUIET. If you aren’t watching movies you can be found in your INDOOR GARDEN caring for your various plants, your favorite of which contain powerful POISONS and SEDATIVES. You are very LETHARGIC and are tired more often then not, you’d much rather keep to yourself and drink a nice warm glass of HOMEMADE TEA. While you try to keep the peace and are fairly polite, loud noises set off you ANGER ISSUES, and you can get quite VIOLENT. Your weapon of choice if a lovely pair of HEDGE CLIPPERS from your garden, but you’d much rather not get them dirty. You have a QUIET way of speaking almost as if you where WHISPERING you never ever use caps and your sentences tend to TRAIL OFF…

——————————————————————

This guy is probably an alterian troll but I don’t think I’ve ever decided 100% (this takes place in an au without sburb but I will happily include sburb info!)

It’s all good! At this point we mostly ask for aspect/moon to assign an extended zodiac sign. At this point we’re not totally sold on only using Extended Zodiac symbols, but it’s fun to “type” a troll and try to modify their existing symbols to include elements of their sign.

Name- Praxis (derived from Zoopraxiscope an early device for playing moving pictures)

Auteur (straight up a word that means “a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie” )

I think I’m gonna change both of these names because both “praxis” and “auteur” are words you hear in the English language, but I wanna keep the spirit of both names!

My suggestion is Monpon Andret, and I’ll explain my reasoning:

The zoopraxiscope was invented by Eadweard Muybridge, who definitely wins prizes for having the weirdest (weardeast?) goddamn spelling of Edward I’ve ever seen. Last name pronounced like “my bridge.” The oldest surviving silent film is Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by French inventor Louis Le Prince. So I took the phrase “my bridge” and translated it to French: mon pont.

Auteurism was popular with 40s French critics, based on the theories of Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, and was dubbed “auteur theory” by Andrew Sarris. That’s a lot of Andres surrounding one theory! Seems like an appropriate way to reference it.

Age- 9 sweeps

Strife Specibus- Hedge Clippers

I like this! How would you feel about making his specibus clipperKind, especially to maintain the reference to early film editing that used literal clippers?

Fetch Modus- ‘Movie Titles’ a Modus in which every item is given a title similar in length based around their use and purpose, to withdraw an item one must flawlessly recite it’s title

example- the title ‘A small cylindrical utensil in which our protagonist or antagonist may use to transfer ink to a sheet of pressed plant mater to convey a written message or picture’ may be used to describe a pen

gfdlksjlsgj;h I fucking forgot troll movie titles were that long. Since he does silent films, what about this concept exactly but in a Charades modus? Like a solid 5 minutes of wild gesticulation just to get a fucking pen?

Blood color- Indigo Blood

Symbol and meaning- Stylized Film Reel (this character was designed before the extended zodiac and I’m 100% will to take feedback that would give him one of those symbols)

I gotcha! I think it’s a good symbol and I remember there’s a canon indigo sign that’s just a circle with an arrow, so this should be a simple adjustment!

Trolltag- animorphicLarkspur (animorphic being a film term talking about the purposeful distortion of film to make it fit the screen, a reference to how Praxis hides his anger issues to fit a calm picture. Larkspur being a blue flower that is poisonous a reference to Praxis’ work with deadly plants and his own toxic ways.)

Yeah, I’m a fan!

Quirk- All sentences trail off, no capitals (ex. i am quite positive that you are a major thorn in my side…)

I like it as a simple quirk. If I may suggest an alternate, maybe something based stylistically off intertitles? Only using brief descriptive bits to “set up” a scene, then enclosing stuff he actually wants to say in quotes. Mostly reacting to others’ actions? And keeping all messages brief, but in full sentences.

Example: On a dark and stormy night…

“Goodness! Did you see that fox jump over that dog?”

The mystery deepens…

Special Abilities (if any)- Praxis has no special abilities other than distain for loud noises

Lusus- An oversized praying mantis, Deadly but unassuming

So far we have seen two canon indigoblood lusii, and they are Arthour and Zebruh’s lusus which is…guess what: a zebra. A sample size of two means nothing, but it may be fun to play with the idea that all indigoblood lusii are horselike. Which is a perfect tie-back to your theme, actually, considering that Eadweard Muybridge’s first go with the zoopraxiscope was an animated horse. Maybe we can go a horse with like, way too many legs, like how it would look if you layered all the frames one atop the other?

Personality- Praxis tries to come off as a quiet calm and unassuming individual in a society full of violence. He very much keeps to himself and craves constant solitude, he is a film buff but even the sound of those can get to him at times, hence his overwhelming interest in silent films. He feels they fill the hole that the avoidance of others bring. He’s very slow moving and sleepy taking everything at his own gruelingly slow pace, he likes plants because they don’t go anywhere and are just as unmoving as him. He has anger issues and agressive outbursts that are often triggered by loud noises, he doesn’t want to be seen as ‘uncivil’ hence the avoidance of sound and those outbursts. He hates being seen as a ruthless high blood.

Ooooh I like it! Interesting angle to take, especially since he’s avoiding the broader highblood stereotype of violence while collapsing into the indigoblood stereotype of being like…WAY too into his hobbies.

Interests- Film, Gardening, Tea, Homemade remedies, and peace and quiet

Title: I haven’t picked one out and am 100% open to suggestions

I kind of think he might be a Knight of Hope? Like he’s drowning in his aspect in the sense that he keeps retreating to the limitless potential of film, but he’s also being a shut-in and reducing his own ability to get out there and live his life! Also ghosting Rage in the form of being a film critic. But he has the potential to step out of his house and bring his vision to others, to inspire!

Also, Hope players are known for their “black and white” thinking, which tickles me.

Land: again no idea

If he doesn’t play SBURB it’s not super relevant, but I like the idea of a Land of Slate and Bells. Full of greys and also he *needs* to make noise to progress through the planet. While the bells give off a nice, round, assonant tone, they also attract nearby monsters.

Dream Planet: Derse

Yep, I agree with that.

I think that makes him Sagirius, sign of the Bardic! I’ll see what I can do to incorporate that into your symbol!

So this gent didn’t need *too* much tweaking; as is the case sometimes, I mostly just wanted to sprite him for fun and for sport

Credits:

fan-troll for the horn base, the suspenders, and the shoes

naphal for the pants and initial bow tie

llemonlum for the glasses

you for the hair

Glasses - I don’t know what it is but a pair of glasses seems to be the difference between me conceiving this guy as a composer vs. a critic. llemonlum has a nice set that looks suitably Ebert-like, which I felt was a good tie-in.

Symbol - since Sagirius is just a horizontally bisected circle with an arrow coming off the top, it was pretty easy to incorporate into your existing symbol! I made my own stylized film reel, cut it in half, and slapped an arrow on. I also like the bisected reel because critics often come under fire for “tearing a movie apart.”

Color scheme - we’ve seen from existing trolls that indigobloods rep their color quite readily, so I changed them all to the canon indigoblood color. I also adjusted the shirt color because it’s a little too neon a blood color to work well with mid-tone greys.

And that’s it! I like this dude.

#theo-theleo #praxis auteur #praxis #auteur #monpon andret #monpon #andret #indigoblood #review #redesign #tr review #submission

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rogerdscotts · 5 years ago

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Looking For A New Fragrance? We Tried Out These 8 Picks

from He Spoke Style - Men's Style, Fashion, Grooming, Tips and Advice

8 Classic and Modern Men’s Fragrances Tested

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Choosing the right fragrance is arguably one of the trickier parts when defining your own style. You want something that works with your personality and matches your look, but also something that just smells, really, really good. These aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but it is hard to choose because there are 1) lots of options and 2) different body and skin chemistry factors to consider. Let’s talk about the latter a bit.

Fragrances are a really personal choice because people have different body (specifically, skin) chemistries that can affect how scents interact once you’ve actually applied them. So what might smell great on one person may not necessarily work for the other.

That’s why choosing the right fragrance is a bit of trial and error, so this sample of eight is a good one to start with for some quick first impressions. Some of these are recommendations from you guys, others are ones that looked interesting and were worth a try. With each of the choices, I’ve tried each of these out at least five times just to get a sense of the fragrance, see what I like or don’t like about it, and how it performs on my skin.

1. Guerlain Habit Rouge

This one is a classic fragrance for a reason. It’s unique, easy to recognize and easy to adapt as a signature scent. It was created by Guerlain himself in 1965 originally, but re-orchestrated in 2003. Inspired by male perfumers, this was the very first fragrance just for them – the Habit Rouge name refers to the famous red jackets these male perfumers donned. With that audience in mind, it’s easy to see why this is more of an elegant masculine scent that works across day and night.

The citrus is the first sniff, but it does unfold into this subtle floral and almost powderiness type scent as time goes on. It’s a small part of the scent, for those not a fan of floral and powdery scents, you might want to skip this one. In terms of staying power, it’s not amazing – it lasted about four hours on my skin but it is definitely worth trying if you like classic scents.

Top notes: bergamot, lemon, rosewood, basil, pimento Heart notes: sandalwood, carnation, patchouli, cedar, rose, cinnamon Base notes: vanilla, amber, moss, leather, benzoin, labdanum

SHOP HERE: Guerlain Habit Rouge, $45

2. Floris Elite

This your everyday scent, for sure. Floris has a lot of great scents (the No. 89, in particular) and Elite is no different. A British brand, Floris goes back to the 1730s, their clientele has included famous figures from history like Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and Florence Nightingale. Floris Elite was introduced in 1979 and named after Lotion Elite, which was an aftershave cream that was first featured in the catalog in 1851.

It’s a fresh green scent, with some mellow woody notes to help round it out. This is one of those classic gentleman’s scent with a little bit of an edge thanks to the grapefruit, lavender, juniper berry, and fir balsam notes. The other bonus? It has really good staying power, lasting about eight hours on my skin, making it a great contender for an everyday scent,

Top notes: bergamot, cedar leaf, grapefruit, juniper berry, lemon, petitgrain Heart notes: bay, fir balsam, lavender Base notes: amber, cedarwood, leather, moss, musk, patchouli, vetiver

SHOP HERE: Floris Elite, $80

3. Brooks Brothers Classic

Brooks Brother Classic is what that quintessential smell is that every Brooks Brother store has when you walk in. It’s a simple, classic scent that really fits with the brand’s classic aesthetic. It starts with some citrus notes and transitions to jasmine and herbal notes. A classic and refined scent, it’s one of those staples in your collection that you find yourself reaching for a lot. Plus, it’s got longevity, lasting for about eight hours on the skin. Coupled with a reasonable price tag at $42, it’s incredible value for money when looking for your next signature scent.

Top notes: citrus Heart notes: jasmine, herbal notes Base notes: patchouli, sandalwood, vetiver

SHOP HERE: Brooks Brothers Classic, $42

4. Brooks Brothers New York Gentleman

A floral green scent released in 2008, Brooks Brothers New York Gentleman was developed by perfumer Richard Herpin. When interviewed about his inspiration for the perfume, he stated:

“When they approached me, they said, ‘We want to create a great classic for Brooks Brothers. Something without trend,’” […] “The idea was to create a tension between the fresh top and the base of mystery and comfort,”

This is one of those scents that’s moved into legend status, almost the holy grail of Brooks Brothers fragrances for many. With citrus and vetiver note, there definitely is some push and pull between mystery and comfort as Herpin puts it, but it’s just not quite at the mythical level that New York Gentleman is considered to be. It’s a clean scent, not super powerful and it fades away quite quickly comparatively so making it a weaker choice amongst the others.

Top notes: bergamot, verbena, petitgrain, mandarin Heart notes: carnation, iris root, cumin Base notes: oakmoss, vetiver, musk

SHOP HERE: Brooks Brothers New York Gentleman, $35

5. Aramis

Aramis has been a fan favorite and considered to be a classic male fragrance. It was introduced by Estee Lauder in New York in 1964 and then made available in the UK exclusively at Harrods in 1965. Apparently named after a Turkish root that is renowned for its aphrodisiac qualities (or so says Estee Lauder), it really is a distinctive fragrance.

Scent-wise, it’s super-strong and almost pungent for some, so it’s a bit more of a decisive choice than some of the other more neutral scents we’ve covered. The heavy herbal notes and patchouli give it a retro, older feel. Honestly, it sort of feels like you’re reliving the 70s and early 80s with this one, especially since it’s a long-lasting scent too. While it has its fans, it’s a bit more a statement fragrance rather than an everyday choice.

Top notes: bergamot oil, artemisia, gardenia, galbanum, cumin Heart notes: sage, myrtle oil, clove bud oil, jasmine, patchouli, orris Base notes: patchouli, sandalwood, vetiver, tree moss, leather, castoreum, amber, musk

SHOP HERE: Aramis, $35

6. Arquiste Misfit

A niche fragrance company, Arquiste is a personal favorite brand. Inspired by 19th-century bohemians, this scent is all about the evolution of patchouli across the ages and an interpretation of its essence. It has a lot of unique notes that help balance the patchouli and make it a clean and elegant scent. An incredibly rich, complex fragrance, it balances out its strength with a softness that makes it so sexy and intriguing.

And for history buffs out there, each Arquiste perfume, including Misfit, has a short history alongside its description to help contextualize the scent and its inspiration- in this case, patchouli. It’s clear that a lot of thought and detail goes into how the scent is designed and what notes are incorporated, and it really shines through in the way the scent unfolds.

Top notes: Calabrian bergamot, carrot seed, angelica root, French lavender Heart notes: Bulgarian rose, ambrette seed, akigalawood, styrax Base notes: patchouli, Spanish cistus concrete, Venezualean tonka bean, tolu balsam

SHOP HERE: Arquiste Misfit, $195

7. Les Élixirs Oud

Les Elixirs is a new fragrance company, describing themselves as an experimental olfactive design and development studio. Their scent Oud is highly concentrated at 20% or higher pure perfume, depending on the scent’s characteristics. This scent in particular, Oud, is absolutely amazing. Strong without being overwhelming, it’s incredibly elegant and sophisticated.

You can really get a sense of the oud and woody characteristics, but it has this light satin feel that keeps it from becoming too much. A great evening fragrance, Oud is one of those that could be used year-round because of the way it balances deep and subtle notes.

Top notes: Blood orange (Italy), cypress (France) Heart notes: Cardamom (Cylon), timur pepper (India) Base notes: Oud wood, vanilla bean extract (Mexico), patchouli “Cœur” (Indonesia)

SHOP HERE: Les Élixirs Oud, $185

8. Brut Classic Scent After Shave

Brut is one of those brands that has been around forever, and has amassed a lot of fame over the years. It’s often cited as one of the most classic fougeres and has been associated with the likes of Roger Moore and Elvis Presley, among others. One of the reasons why Brut’s popularity has endured is that it’s a classic scent that’s actually affordable.

It’s an incredibly masculine, old-school scent that takes you back a few decades. With notes like sandalwood and basil, it’s one of those timeless scents that might remind you of grandpa – but in a good way! It’s a classic for a reason, and it’s great to use after shaving.

Top notes: Lavender, Anise, Lemon, Basil, Bergamot Heart notes: Geranium, Ylang-ylang, Jasmine Base notes: Sandalwood, Vetiver, Patchouli, Oakmoss, Vanilla, Tonka bean

SHOP HERE: Brut Classic Scent After Shave, $11

If you’ve tried any of these fragrances, drop us a line in the comments and let us know what you think – and of course, chime in with your favorites!

Stylishly Yours,

Brian Sacawa He Spoke Style

The post Looking For A New Fragrance? We Tried Out These 8 Picks first appeared on the men's style blog He Spoke Style - Men's Style, Fashion, Grooming, Tips and Advice

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tripstations · 5 years ago

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Episode 2: Top five Paris must-dos

Bonjour, fellow travelers! Finding Alexx here. On my quest to visit 52 countries in 52 weeks based on the cheapest flight every Tuesday, my first stop took me to the City of Lights – Paris.

From bread and cheese all day every day, to sparkling monuments around almost every corner, it’s just one of those cities that is impressive in every way. Here are my tips and tricks for what to eat, what to see and how to get around – and how to do it on a backpacker budget if you have to.

The Eiffel Tower

Let’s start with the obvious, the Eiffel Tower! This iconic metal triangle was actually hated by Parisians when it was first opened back in 1889 but has since become one of the most famous buildings in the world. Going up to the top with the lift will set you back €25.50, and you might be waiting a while for your turn, but you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful view of the Champs de Mars and Trocadero on the other side of the Seine.

If you’re really tight for money and don’t want to pay to go up, there are plenty of stunning viewpoints to get a glimpse (and a great shot) of the tower. Visit Trocadero to get a straight-on view from right across the river. Have a picnic dinner in the Champs de Mars and see the tower sparkle every hour from sunset, or take the perfect Instagram shot from Pont Alexandre III or Pont de Bir-Hakeim bridge with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Take a history or art lesson

Culture, art or history buffs will LOVE this city, with museums and galleries of all different types dotted around the city. Say bonjour to the Mona Lisa and thousands of other works of art at the Louvre, dive into Europe’s largest collection of modern art at Le Centre Pompidou, visit Musée des Arts et Métiers to wander around exquisite buildings filled with scientific treasures, or head to Musée Picasso to see some masterpieces from Picasso himself as well as his fellow artists.

Looking for something a bit more obscure? Be sure to check out the Catacombs, a 3000km network of tunnels running under the city, home to the bones of over 6 million Parisians. In the 1700s the city’s cemeteries were getting full, so a bit of ingenuity kicked off the movement from graves to the tunnels underground. Insane? Yes. Incredible to see? Also yes. Not for the faint-hearted, for obvious reasons!

Shop up a storm

Whether you’re into fancy designers, chic boutiques or vintage threads, Paris is guaranteed to satisfy any shopaholic’s needs… But maybe at the detriment of their wallet! If you’re looking to treat yourself to a special purchase you’ll need to check out the Faubourg Saint-Honoré district, you can find flagship stores of all different brands and budgets down the Champs-Elysées, and Le Marais neighborhood is home to some of the trendiest boutiques around.

If your budget doesn’t stretch past window shopping then I’d still recommend paying a visit to the gigantic Galeries Lafayette flagship department store on Boulevard Hausmann in the 9th arrondissement, just to see the exquisite stained-glass dome ceiling. It’s absolutely stunning!

A cabaret show

I haven’t been to Moulin Rouge so I can’t speak for that one specifically, but I can say that it was way out of my budget (at least €100 per person not including food or drink). This was a shame because I was super keen to see one of Paris’ famous cabaret shows!

Then a friend of mine told me about La Nouvelle Eve, a smaller cabaret just down the road from the Moulin Rouge with fantastic reviews and much lower prices. We paid €59 each which included half a bottle of champagne too, plus the venue was smaller and less people than the ‘main’ shows so it felt a lot more intimate. There were the usual cabaret dancers plus some acrobats and other performers, and some hilarious audience participation. If you’re looking for a cabaret show on a budget, La Nouvelle Eve should be on your list!

Seine

The lifeline of Paris is the River Seine, which snakes its way through the middle of the city, separating the Right Bank from the Left Bank. The river brings some calmness to the craziness of the capital, and its banks are hang out spots for locals throughout summer, spring and autumn.

Take a wander along the river banks, grab a drink at one of the many riverside bars, or hop on a Bateaux Parisiens (that’s what the river boats are called) and cruise past all the major landmarks. If you can afford an evening cruise then that’d be even better, as most of the city’s main monuments light up after dark.

Neighborhoods

Paris is made up of 20 different arrondisements, numbered from 1 to 20, which are administritave districts (kind of like boroughs). Then there’s suburbs within the arrondissements. Slightly confusing! Here are some of my favorite Paris suburbs.

Latin Quarter

Located right by the river on the Left Bank, the Latin Quarter is a youthful suburb packed with loads of cheap eats. The Latin Quarter is home to restaurants of all different ethnicities, and most of them offer fixed price menus that will give you a two or three course meal from only €10, sometimes even including the drink. That’s a win! I’d recommend Mobster Diner for a casual dinner, Chez le Libanais for a takeaway shawarma, or L’Époque for classic French fare, and you can’t miss the panini, crepe and soft drink deal for €5 at Crêperie Genia.

There are plenty of delicious eateries that fit a backpacker budget in this part of town, so I’d suggest heading there for lunch to wander the streets and find a menu that tickles your fancy.

Champs-Elysées

More of a main road than a neighborhood, this stretch in the central city is 1.2 miles long and leads from the Place de la Concorde all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. It’s the most touristy part of the city for sure but the wide footpaths make it not too difficult to get around, despite the thousands of shoppers and visitors. You can shop ‘til you drop, refuel with a sugar hit with macarons from Ladurée or Pierre Hermé, then wrap up your day with a walk up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for a gorgeous view over the city.

Montmartre

This hillside neighborhood has got to be one of the most arty places in Paris, with local sketchers and painters lining the side streets surrounding the beautiful Sacré-Coeur sitting on top of the hill. Pick up a piece for your wall, opt to sit for a caricature if you’ve got the time and funds, or simply wander around admiring the artists’ skills.

Visiting the Sacré-Coeur is free and it’s open from 6am. It’s a fantastic place to go for sunset too, with an unmissable view of the sprawling city and loads of spots for a picnic dinner. Be sure to stop into Crêperie Brocéliande for a Nutella and banana crepe for dessert!

Le Marais

Hands down the trendiest suburb in the city, Le Marais is home to the most stylish boutiques, cafés, bars, restaurants, hotels and even offices! This place is best discovered by strolling the streets with no particular end point in mind, and I guarantee you’ll stumble across something special. It’s also the heart of Paris’ LGBT scene, with rainbow installations scattered throughout the neighborhood during pride month each year.

For a true Parisian experience, dress up in something nice, head to Le Marais in the early evening and grab a patio table and a glass of wine and people watch the night away. Les Philosophes is a local favorite!

How to get around

One of the best things about Paris is that it’s super easy to walk between loads of the key spots, and on the way you’ll definitely come across some gorgeous corner cafés, funky gift shops and ultra-cool boutiques. If you have the time and energy, I’d really suggest challenging yourself to a no-transport day, and see what you discover.

If you’re in a hurry or want to give your feet a break, Paris has a decent public transport system with buses, RER trains and the Metropolitain (underground). You can buy single tickets, packs of ten, or multi-day passes from most train and Metro stations. A single ticket costs €1.90, a pack of ten costs €14.90 and a 5 day pass costs €38.35.

Paris also has loads of bike (JUMP is the main one) and e-scooters (like Lime, Dott and Bird) available for rental, but note that you can only ride in bike lanes or on the road or you could be stung with a €100+ fine.

Taxis can be expensive but there are Ubers available all over the city which are more affordable.

Where to stay

Paris is huge, and with that comes thousands of accommodation choices! The city on a whole is pretty expensive, but there are plenty of hostels that will suit a wallet-friendly budget, as well as some decent cheap hotels.

Generator Paris is one of my faves, right across the road from Colonel Fabien Metro station which means easy transport into the central city. They’ve got modern, functional hostel rooms plus a sweet rooftop bar with views of the Sacré-Coeur. They don’t have a kitchen though and you can’t take food or drink into the hostel, which means you’ve got to spend money on meals out or at the hostel bar.

St Christopher’s also has two hostels in Paris, I stayed at the one next to Gare du Nord (a major train station and the arrival point for the Eurostar) and there’s another one next to St Martin’s Canal, a quieter, more residential area.

The Gare du Nord hostel was an ideal location for me as I was catching a train to Beauvais airport, but the area around the train station was kind of seedy and I didn’t feel particularly safe walking around by myself at night. If you’re in a group or pair, if you’re a guy, or if you’re only planning on going out during the day then this spot is probably fine, but for solo female travelers who might be out and about after the sun’s gone down then it’s not ideal.

How much to budget for Paris

My week in Paris was the first week of a year-long trip, and I blew through my budget more than I should have. If you stay at a hostel with a full kitchen and cook your own meals then it’s definitely doable on a budget, but unfortunately for me (and my bank account) I just LOVE French food and want to eat at all the best cafés and restaurants!

Hostels will set you back anywhere from €15 to €30 for a dorm bed depending on the time of year you go, and cheap hotels will start at around €60 per room (but that’s truly no frills and probably no breakfast included).

Breakfast at a café will be between €5 for a coffee, juice and croissant through to €14-ish for a full cooked breakfast in the fancier parts of the city, and a sit down dinner is likely to cost at least €15 unless you get a fixed price menu in the Latin Quarter.

Picnics are a great choice for Paris on a budget, and you can get bread, cheese and deli meats as well as a bottle of wine to share for between €10 and €15.

Expect to spend around €4-6 per day on transport if you’re taking two or three trips, and you’ll need to budget extra if you’re planning on visiting museums and galleries.

Some extra tips for your Paris trip

If you ever have the chance to visit Paris for Bastille Day, you HAVE to go. The fireworks are the most incredible display I’ve ever seen! They start at 11.30pm and go for half an hour, and they’re set to an epic soundtrack too. You can see them from any high vantage point in the city but I recommend getting a spot in the Champs de Mars (the park right under the Eiffel Tower) for free. The gates this year opened at 4pm and there’s a security check, but if you get there early you’ll be sure to get a decent spot pretty quickly. You can bring food and drink but no glass bottles, so pour your wine into a Dopper bottle, an eco-friendly drink bottle that comes with a makeshift wine cup! Paris has some of the best parks in Europe, so if you need a break from sightseeing during the day then you probably won’t be far from somewhere to rest your legs. Jardin du Luxembourg is on the Left bank and is home to a stunning palace and gardens, definitely one of my favorites. To get photos away from the masses you’ll probably need to wake up early, I was there in summer and took all my photos at the key tourist spots between 6am and 8am. Some of my favorite photo spots in the city are Pigalle basketball court, the columns at Palais Royal, and the view of the Eiffel Tower from Pont Alexandre III. If you want to explore outside of Paris for the day, consider a day trip to the Palace of Versailles, Monet’s Garden in Giverny, or the castles in the Loire Valley You’re never too old for roller coasters! If you’re keen to visit Disneyland Paris I’d suggest trying to visit on a weekday outside of school holidays, for obvious reasons.

And after all that, now I want to go back! I hope this Paris travel guide has helped you plan your upcoming trip, and if you’re keen to follow all my adventures over the next year you can see.

The post Episode 2: Top five Paris must-dos appeared first on Tripstations.

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itsworn · 6 years ago

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NorCal Mopar Collection Includes 4 Hemi Cars, 2 of Which Were Bought New

Godfather of Soul James Brown was known for crooning, “It’s a man’s world.” That’s generally true in the world of muscle cars, but then again, he never met Janice Sutherland. She’s a lady with four Hemi-powered Mopars: a 1970 Superbird, 1969 Road Runner, 1966 Satellite, and an exacting 1969 Charger Daytona “re-creation.” There’s a 440-powered Superbird in her collection, too. And she has owned two of them, the Hemi Superbird and Satellite, since brand new. That’s far more muscle than we can pack into one feature, so we’ll highlight the Hemi Superbird and Road Runner here, along with a few words about the Daytona, and peel out from there to bring you the other cars in a later issue.

Janice’s muscle car saga began back in 1966, when she and her then-husband Les, a Dodge mechanic by trade, bought the yellow Satellite for racing. They tore up the tracks around Ukiah, California, but that wasn’t enough for her. Lightning struck when Janice saw a 1970 newspaper article about Buddy Baker busting the 200-mph barrier in an outrageously antisocial, winged Daytona.

“That’s the kind of car I wanted,” Janice recalls. “It was my forever car.” Truth be told, she actually mistook the Charger Daytona for a Superbird. The two are somewhat similar, with a few differences in the nosecone, body, and rear sail panels, so her confusion was somewhat understandable.

Mopar history buffs already know that the 1970 Plymouth Superbird was a follow-up to the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, the first American car with a body developed in a wind tunnel and by computer analysis. (Prior to that, automotive aerodynamics were analyzed by taping tufts of yarn to the body and filming the car at speed.)

The Superbird took this digital design approach to even greater lengths. The nose on both models added 19 inches to the base car’s overall dimension, but the rear sections were not the same. While the Charger had a flat window covering over the rear tunnel, on the Superbird the rear sail panels (C-pillars) were extended for better airflow. This modification resulted in all Superbirds having a vinyl top to cover up the rough, improvised metalwork (due to production being done at furious clip, 2,000 units in only two months).

The tall aluminum rear wing, mounted on struts on the trunk, increased downforce. Reportedly it really only needed to be about a foot in height to serve its purpose, but one retired Mopar engineer claimed that it was elevated 23 inches to allow the trunk lid to open all the way. Supposedly Richard Petty liked the extra height solely for the intimidation factor.

Smitten by the winged monster she saw in the newspaper, Janice promptly made a beeline for the Ukiah Mopar dealership to put in an order. But the sales manager emphatically refused, fearing any warranty claims. Little did he know just how well Janice would take care of her much beloved Hemis in the coming decades.

Loaded and Then Some Fortunately, a dealer further south, in Pittsburg, California, was far more accommodating, and she was able to grab the last Hemi Superbird in the state. The car came fully loaded, with every possible option and then some. Besides the automatic transmission and Rim-Blo steering wheel (just squeeze the edge to sound the purple beep-beep horn), it also had an eight-track player, plus a center console and a six-way adjustable driver’s bucket seat (most came with a bench seat). At the time, all of these items would be surprising to find on a Road Runner given its reputation as a stripped-down muscle car (as you will see in the B5 Blue companion car).

One more odd thing popped up on the build sheet: a rear speaker. Although technically not available as an option, with no box to check on the order form, it somehow made it onto the car from the factory.

Janice says she did a bit of street racing in her Limelight Green Superbird against her husband in the yellow Satellite, mostly the usual stoplight drags and Saturday night antics. But right after the Interstate 5 freeway opened up, she hit the fresh pavement to run her Superbird up to 150 mph. (The street gearing was too low, however, to duplicate Buddy Baker’s 200-mph feat.)

She also used the Superbird as a daily driver to take her kids to school and run errands. What a sight that must’ve been, seeing such a colorful car tooling around town, and her getting groceries in a NASCAR-derived ride. She even occasionally used it to tow a horse trailer, and also a flat-bottom drag boat from Ukiah to Lake Shasta! (More about what happened to the Hemi in that boat later.) It was like putting a thoroughbred to the plow.

Eventually the kids grew tired of being teased about their Mom’s “upside-down Hula Hoe garden tool,” and they asked her to drop them off a block away from their schoolmates. As they grew older, though, they came around and asked if they could drive the Superbird to high school. How cool was that?! Was she worried about putting a Hemi in the hands of a hormonal teenager? Not really.

“We all have lead feet,” she laughs. “We were not the kind of parents that most parents would like to see their kids with.” Usually the cops would pull over her son Les because they just wanted to check out the car, and he’d get away with only a warning and a knowing smile. (On the other hand, Janice admits that she’s always one ticket away from losing her driver’s license.)

Over the next 15 years of regular use, Janice’s Superbird went through three restorations. The original Hemi engine never required more than a mild refresh (new gaskets and seals). Larry Snow, who oversees her collection to a remarkably meticulous degree, and has an impressive knowledge of Mopar technical details, works with Dan Laughlin Customs. Dan has worked on all of Janice’s cars, and corrected a number of factory defects in the body, ranging from orange-peel paint to uneven panel gaps.

“We never could paint it black,” Janice admits. “The body was too crooked.” That was later fixed, and even though the body is now smooth as glass, they stuck with the original Limelight Green hue, updated from the factory lacquer and acrylic enamel to a base/clear coat.

Not surprisingly, when the car is displayed at shows, it typically takes home a Best of Show trophy (about 15 in all, thus far). And both Janice and Larry get quite a few insistent offers to buy it, not to mention a few snide remarks from the testosterone-fueled side of the muscle car aisle about how it is that a woman owns a Hemi-powered Superbird. But she takes it all in stride and just says it’s her forever car.

Healing a Broken-Down Road Runner

The background of Janice’s B5 Blue bomber is far more troubled than any of her other Mopars. It all started innocently enough, when a man approached her at a local car show. Knowing about her collection, he asked, “You want to buy another Ukiah Hemi car?” Her immediate reply: “You could twist my arm.”

Well, it might have taken a lot more than arm-twisting when she first saw the 1969 Road Runner. “It was in just rotten condition from the headlights down,” she relates. How did such a valuable car get so neglected?

There’s a sad tale behind it all, but basically the owner parked it in a field after suffering a personal tragedy. Larry, with the skills of a forensic investigator, took a careful look at the VIN and realized what a find it was, since the engine markings all matched up. Clearly this lost treasure was worth recovering. “That car was saved by its numbers,” he says.

Larry took the decaying mess to their trusty restorer, Dan Laughlin, who had quite a bit of surgery to perform. He repaired the front and rear fenders, which had been cut out for racing tires, by fabricating new sheetmetal using patterns off a 1969 Satellite as a guide. The doors and inner fender wells also had to be replaced. The only metal worth saving on the body were the trunk, the roof, and the rear window area, which is unusual for an old Mopar. In all, it took 10 months to smooth out the Road Runner’s ruffled feathers.

Looking at Janice’s collection overall raises the question: Why so many Hemis? Partly because she wants to leave a car to each of her eight grandchildren. (No, she’s not looking to adopt, in case you were wondering.) But more important, “If every one of my cars had a Hemi,” she muses, “I’d be happy.” Now that’s a lady with some wings.

At a Glance 1970 Superbird

Owned by: Janice Sutherland, Red Bluff, CA

Restored by: Dan Laughlin, Anderson, CA

Engine: 1970 426ci/425hp Hemi V-8

Transmission: 727 TorqueFlite 3-speed automatic

Rearend: 8 3/4 with 3.54 gears and Sure Grip

Interior: Black vinyl bucket seat with center console

Wheels: 15×7 Rallye

Tires: F60-15 Goodyear Polyglas GT

With a 19-inch nosecone and Coronet front end grafted onto a Road Runner body, Janice Sutherland’s Superbird is so long she can barely fit it in her garage.

While the overly tall wing increased downforce, it was not to everyone’s taste when Superbirds were sold in 1970. It’s been said that some dealers actually converted some of them to regular Road Runners to make a sale. For Superbird fans, that’s tantamount to sacrilege.

While the 426 Hemi was rated at 425 hp by the factory, actual output was likely about 100 horses more. The Hemi in Janice’s Superbird never needed more than mild freshening over the years.

Most Superbirds came with a bench seat rather than the buckets seen here, in keeping with the Road Runner’s stripped-down nature.

Janice’s granddaughter Alyssa squeezed the Rim-Blo steering wheel to demonstrate how to sound the famous beep-beep horn.

At a Glance 1969 Road Runner

Owned by: Janice Sutherland, Red Bluff, CA

Restored by: Dan Laughlin, Anderson, CA

Engine: 1969 426ci/425hp Hemi V-8

Transmission: 727 TorqueFlite 3-speed automatic

Rearend: 8 3/4 with 3.55 gears and Sure Grip

Interior: Black vinyl bench seat

Wheels: 15×6 steel with hubcaps

Tires: G70-15 Firestone

For the 1969 model year, the Road Runner was lightly face-lifted with a restyle grille. The cartoon bird decals were finally in color, too.

The Road Runner’s taillights were also revised for 1969.

When the Road Runner was introduced in 1968, the list price for a base model with a 383 was less than $2,900. The extra charge for a 426 Hemi was only $715, a screaming deal in hindsight.

Bare-bones Road Runner was all business. Well, except for the grinning bird on the horn emblem.

The Air Grabber option first appeared on the 1969 model. The Carb Air lever under the dash actuated a pair of rectangular vents in the hood, ducting air directly into the engine bay.

Duplicating a Daytona While Muscle Car Review generally covers all-original rides, we make an exception here because this Hemi-powered Charger Daytona is virtually identical to the authentic item in every possible sense.

In August of 2013, Janice Sutherland came across this makings of this project in Reno, Nevada, at Hot August Nights. It had already been poorly converted from a Charger 500 into a Daytona with a steel nose and solid aluminum rear wing. Looking at the car’s salt damage, Larry Snow, who oversees Janice’s collection, commented that the restorer “should have been a gardener, not a body man.”

Even so, Janice forged ahead. Once she got the car back home, strange things started to fall in place. A local resident approached her at a tire shop and said, “You’re the Superbird lady.”

She nodded, somewhat warily, until the local revealed a surprising tidbit. Turns out he had an original, hollow aluminum wing in his pump shed, salvaged from his wrecked Daytona. Now it could go to a better home.

Larry proceeded to go to extreme lengths to ensure that no aftermarket conversion parts would be used on the car, be they cables, wiring, power steering unit, or brackets. Even the trunk has an extra bottle jack, since a conventional one won’t fit under the long nose. He claims that if he taped over the VIN tag, nobody could tell it’s not an original Charger Daytona.

But what about the engine? It had a 440 in it when Janice acquired the car, so Larry suggested pulling the Hemi out of the drag boat she used to tow around with her Superbird. He figured that, “if it’s going to have the wrong engine, it might as well be the right wrong engine.”

All that was required was some detuning from the drag specs to street duty, so it now delivers about 460 horses at 5,800 rpm. The buildup turned out so well that some very particular judges at a Mopar show created a special class for it as a “Restified Wing Car.”

Preview of Coming Attractions What makes Janice Sutherland’s collection all the more spectacular is that she’s owned two of her Hemi cars since new! Her 1966 Satellite was modified for competition, and later driven on the street, sometimes against her Hemi Superbird. We’ll bring you more coverage on the rest of her collection in an upcoming issue.

The post NorCal Mopar Collection Includes 4 Hemi Cars, 2 of Which Were Bought New appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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nancygduarteus · 6 years ago

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The Viral Video Star Behind the Fitness Fad That May Replace CrossFit

“Bro, what kind of muscles you have?” asks Ido Portal in a short video introducing his philosophy. He’s barefoot and shirtless, his long hair pulled back as he tumbles across the frame and does handstand push-ups in the rain. “No—bro, what kind of patterns you have? Can you flip? Can you invert? Can you crawl?”

The 48-year-old Ido Portal has spent the past three decades honing a physical credo and method that’s now practiced by thousands of people all over the world—from office workers, to former CrossFitters, to NBA players, to the ever-controversial UFC titan Conor McGregor. Known as The Ido Portal Method, or simply “movement,” his approach purports to take the “most potent” parts from a range of physical disciplines by shedding the dogmas that often accompany them. As he puts it: “I want the contents, not the container.”

Videos of Portal in motion began circulating in certain physical circles in the mid-2000s—entrancing clips in which he flows along the floor like liquid, playfully combining capoeira-inspired flips, hand-balancing, and animalistic movements. But it’s only in the past few years (in no small part thanks to McGregor’s influence) that his profile has exploded, his following has expanded, and his business has revved up.

Star athletes reportedly pay Portal six-figure sums for two weeks of in-person training. He spent chunks of the past year doing “movement design” (something akin to choreography) for a multi-million dollar Bollywood film, and is set to star in a mini-series in which he works with elite athletes in sports ranging from surfing to fighting. (Some of his closest students have landed similarly glitzy gigs, with two recently serving as advisers to the current season of Israeli Ninja Warrior.) Portal has been called a “guru” and a “movement master” more times than I can count; one interviewer even called him “the smartest man in the world.” But the question—hotly debated on Reddit and on MMA blogs—endures: Is there value in the movement, or is Portal simply slinging snake oil?

“Most people don’t have the user manual to their own machinery,” Portal told me emphatically when we connected over Skype. “Your being is a physical being. You brush your teeth everyday, you need to move everyday. It doesn’t take five minutes, and it does take a certain education.”

Portal seems like the the right guy to be dispensing such an education. He appears in control of every vertebrae and muscle fiber, he’s charismatic, and he looks the part. (“Why do all these movement teachers look like Jesus?” comedian, MMA commentator, and member of the Intellectual Dark Web Joe Rogan once joked.) For years, Portal tied his hair in a topknot and was so jacked he says he was once asked to shed muscle for a photoshoot. These days he’s ponytail-less and a bit less buff—he told me his muscles were getting in the way of evolving his movement practice in certain directions—but his body-fat percentage still hovers in the single digits and he can bust out a one-arm handstand or helicopter at will. The only clear sign he’s aging are the flecks of grey in his dark-brown beard.

And he is, fittingly, always on the move. Born and raised in Haifa, Israel, for the past decade he’s been effectively nomadic, carrying his possessions on his back as he brings his method across the globe. A few weeks before we spoke, he’d been leading a movement camp in Phuket. The week before it was Seoul. Next up: Cyprus. In between camps, he works with elite athletes—from Olympic swimmers, to MLB players, to professional mixed martial artists—applying his broad perspective to their sport to try to give them that extra edge. That might mean focusing on spinal articulation for a swimmer, or developing a baseball pitcher’s shoulder mobility through oft-neglected hanging work. Portal described himself as an ��information-and-systems broker, mobilizing knowledge from one discipline to another.”

In Tel Aviv, much of this work takes place in what looks like a CrossFit box, but with more free floor space. The walls of the Ido Portal movement school are covered in handprints, scuff marks, and phrases like isolation → integration → improvisation and Let them DIRTY the walls, motherfucker! The equipment scattered about is basic: gymnastics rings, monkey bars, wooden sticks, tennis balls. As Portal—who tends to be either barefoot or in basic canvas shoes—puts it: “The more expensive the toys, the cheaper the mover.”

Some 700 people have joined the school since it opened in late 2014, he said. Throughout the day, you’ll find muscular men and women bouncing a tennis ball against a wall with their fists, working on inversions, experimenting with different kinds of squats, or slowly swinging a dowel while a partner evades it using spinal waves and soft acrobatics. Or, to hear Portal tell it, in each session students “step into the cloud of movement and attack a subject” by doing drills or challenges, “maybe it’s coordination, or speed ... ” Training in “movement” might look or sound frivolous to outsiders, but Portal and his tribe are nothing if not serious about it. “It’s not some hippie concept as many people make it out to be,” he said. “I am a radical person, for the good and the bad.” He and his “inner tribe” train from six to ten hours a day.

“How many movements did you learn today? This week?” he challenged me. “A contemporary dancer might learn hundreds of new movements in one class ... and the neurological connections being made, the type of brain that is being developed ... ” Portal has long preached that learning new, complex movements betters the brain in ways straightforward cardio or weights do not—and some recent research supports this. One 2015 study found that adults who undertook a regime loosely based on freestyle wrestling performed better in cognitive tasks than people who spent the same amount of time performing tiresome brain-training tasks or gutting it out on a stationary bike. Similar benefits have been seen in those who practiced Tai Chi as compared with brisk walking. But Portal believes his method is superior to other forms of training. “It makes you smarter, I know it, I feel it,” he told me. “There is no more potent tool to make people sharper, more complex, more ethical, more realistic.”

Portal presents his approach as a sort of atavistic antidote to our lifestyles—a bent that aligns him with the recent “evolutionary fitness” movement. Chief among the movement is Erwan Le Corre, the former parkourist and founder of the popular “MovNat” (a portmanteau of the French term for “natural movement”). Supposedly modeled after the challenges faced by our hunter-gatherer forebears, Le Corre’s wilderness workouts involve vaulting across rivers, heaving boulders, and climbing trees. Though Portal’s approach is perhaps more palatable for the urban set, the men lament similar things: Our 9-to-5 cubicle jobs, smartphone addiction, hyperspecialization in sports, and the rising obsession with fitness for aesthetic purposes have robbed us of our capacity to truly move, leaving us empty.

At the heart of movement culture is an emphasis on play. Animals and kids play as they navigate the world, Portal often says, but as adults we channel this instinct in futile or destructive directions. “That workmate of yours who’s always clicking his pen? That’s his body screaming, ‘Let’s play! Let’s play!’” he said in a recent interview. Portal frequently cites a Dutch text from the 1930s called Homo Ludens or “Man the Player,” which argues that play preceded mankind and is central to thriving societies.“ Most people think play is juvenile” he told me, “but it’s actually a training tool of all animals and must be undertaken with utmost seriousness.” Which explains why he’s as inspired by monkeys as he is by guys who break orbital bones for a living.

Portal lizard-crawled into the popular consciousness in 2015, when he was recruited as the “movement coach” of soon-to-be UFC “champ champ” Conor McGregor. The brash Dubliner was just beginning his rapid rise from little-known fighter to the UFC’s most-bankable star when, in 2013, he tore his ACL. While recovering, he started to look at training through a new lens: He discarded his more-conventional workouts, he studied footage of predators hunting their prey (and he got the ink to match—his sprawling chest tattoo depicts a crowned gorilla devouring a human heart). “I learned a lot more about how important balance is, how important control of the body is," he told Esquire. McGregor came across videos of Portal in motion and, fascinated, sought out the Israeli.

Numerous UFC fighters had dabbled in broader training before Portal appeared on the scene, aiming to improve not just their conditioning, but those qualities that sit somewhere between striking and the ground game. Carlos Condit had been frolicking outdoors with Le Corre since 2014, and Georges St-Pierre had been training gymnastics for years. Back in 1999, jiu-jitsu-legend-turned-MMA-star Rickson Gracie showcased his own discipline-melding workouts in the documentary Choke. But Portal’s approach—thanks to his loud-mouthed star student and his own habit of calling out doubters on social media—was immediately much more polarizing.

When videos emerged of the Israeli brandishing a pool noodle to test McGregor’s reflexes, the fighter Nate Diaz taunted McGregor for “playing touch-butt with that dork in the park” and criticized Portal, “that goofball with the ponytail,” for using the exposure to promote his own schtick. (McGregor would soon suffer his first UFC loss at Diaz’s hands, by second-round rear-naked choke, before winning a bloody rematch months later.) Sports writers and keyboard warriors mocked the seriousness with which Portal spoke about silly-looking drills. “Using the chaotic trajectory of a flying card to keep [Conor McGregor] sharp” reads Portal’s caption for a video of him flinging playing cards at the Irishman in preparation for his boxing bout against all-time great Floyd Mayweather. Here’s McGregor “risking a severe paper cut as he gets ready for his megafight,” one sports blogger rejoined. McGregor’s cartoonishly loose-armed warm-up, a product of his work with Portal, was memed to no end.

Some MMA commentators have suggested that any gains Portal provides might be mental. But McGregor credits movement training with his ability to ”fight in many stances, from many different angles,” with feeling “loose but connected at the same time.”(“I’m more a squeeze of the lime at the end of the dish,” Portal said about his own influence.)

As McGregor racked up wins with Portal in his corner—most memorably knocking out longtime champ Jose Aldo in a record 13 seconds—Portal says he was inundated with coaching requests. “I got some NBA players, some NFL players reaching out,” he told SBNation. “Tony Robbins reached out.”

“Whatever you do, don’t call him a guru or a master of movement,” a couple of his students told me seriously. “He hates that.” When we spoke, Portal emphasized that movement can’t be mastered—it’s too encompassing. “When people say ‘I’ve got it,’ I think, you’ve got nothing; you didn’t get shit,” he once put it, ”That only shows me how much they didn’t get it.”

Portal may shun the “movement guru” title, but his narrative about how movement culture came to be only bolsters this image. As he tells it, his method was born of a personal quest of sorts. Growing up in the beachy city of Haifa, he was an active kid, practicing kung fu. At 15, he took up the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira. Skeptical of the dance and drumming aspects of the discipline, he was dragged to his first class by a friend but quickly became hooked. “I was living it, training night and day,” he told me—not just mastering the techniques, but dressing the part and learning Portuguese. Within a couple of years, he’d earned himself the nickname “The Missionary” for his radical dedication, and had started an academy in the basement of his family home.

Feeling constrained by the limits of the martial art, Portal soon began experimenting with other disciplines. While dabbling, he came to the “epiphany” that he wasn’t satisfied with any one realm, but was obsessed with movement as a whole. So, Portal says, he embarked on a years-long journey to find a movement teacher. “After countless searches, I could not find anyone who HONESTLY could represent that title,” he writes on his website. He decided he would become the movement teacher the world lacked, by continuing his travels and curating knowledge from experts in an array of fields.

Portal’s old blog recounts stints training with former U.S. junior national gymnastics team coach Christopher Sommer, balance expert Claude Victoria, and circus performer Yuval Ayalon, as well as a “crazy year” spent working as a physical theater performer in Bangkok and Berlin. He has cited as influences “strength sensei” Charles Poliquin and paleo patriarch Robb Wolf (who, Portal told me, sent him money to keep his capoeira school afloat when funds were tight). Over the years, he’s practiced boxing, jiu jitsu, and yoga; learned from parkourists, dancers, and osteopaths. All the while, he read voraciously—about speed, coordination, “the riddle of the fight”—and documented his evolving method on a blog and, later, on Facebook and Instagram.

In the mid-2000s, Portal founded a new training space in Haifa where he and his devoted capoeira students began experimenting with movement outside of the martial art. He built a “special-ops unit” of movers, he told me, doubling the gym fees and “eliminating all the unnecessary ... the people who weren’t willing to train many hours a day, six or seven days a week.” When he began traveling frequently to teach hand-balancing workshops and perform physical theater, he closed the school. But his students weren’t content to stop training; one of his closest students, Odelia Goldschmidt, started a small training group in a local park called “The Freaks.” Shortly thereafter, her brother Roye opened the movement facility in Tel Aviv and helped start a mentorship program to pass on Portal’s methods. (Each of the 40 mentees check in with Portal regularly, receive personalized programming, and attend a couple week-long camps each year.)

Critics in the MMa sphere often attribute attribute Portal’s fame to McGregor’s star power or the Israeli’s cult of personality, rather than the substance of his ideas. But the rise of movement culture maps onto a broader shift toward more-functional approaches to fitness. Beginning in the 1970s, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Nautilus machine helped usher in an approach to training that privileged form over function. By the 2000s, the fitness pendulum had swung so far in this direction that even kids’ figurines were more jacked—scale up a GI Joe Extreme doll from that era to the height of 5ft 10 and his chest would’ve been just three inches smaller than Schwarzenegger’s at his steroid-inflated peak. In 2003, the word “bigorexia” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary, and a decade later, a condition called muscle dysmorphia—anorexia’s brawnier counterpart—abruptly entered the DSM.

A forceful countercurrent to this image mania emerged in the 2000s, led by CrossFit. Within a decade, thousands of mirrorless “boxes” had spread across the country, whose trainers touted “functional fitness” through daily workout challenges drawing from gymnastics, Olympic lifting, and sprinting. Soon, freerunning and parkour gyms began cropping up, and a number of more-traditional gyms traded machines for floor space and some battle ropes, to allow for more bodyweight work. Tough Mudders, Spartan Races, and their ilk made a take on Le Corre’s favored training format—the outdoor obstacle course—more accessible, and continued an emphasis on a more versatile body.

Then, in 2013, David Epstein’s best-selling The Sports Gene prompted fevered discussion about the “epidemic of hyperspecialization” in sports. Epstein pointed to a spate of studies showing greater rates of injury and burnout among high-school students who honed in on a single sport before their teenage years. Even more compelling, his book debunked the so-called “10,000 hours rule” to mastery, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers in 2008. Epstein cited research showing that those who entered the topmost rung of their field tended to dabble across disciplines further into their teen years than those who topped out at a sub-elite level. Kids who played a range of sports for longer tended to develop “physical literacy,” Epstein explained, which meant they were quicker to pick up the skills of the sport they ultimately settled on quicker than peers with a narrower sporting background. Epstein advocated that kids and teens do the very things Portal preaches for adults: experiment with a range of disciplines, play in unstructured ways.

In Just Move, a 2017 documentary about movement culture, one of Portal’s students says the community aims “to bring movement and life and everything we do out there to as many people as possible.” And in the past couple of years, his inner tribe has begun to fulfill this prophecy. Movement schools have cropped up around the world—in Boulder, New York City, Miami; in Europe, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Australia—mostly started by the students of the Ido Portal mentorship program.

Matt Bernstein and Zack Finer were both heavily involved in CrossFit when friends sent them YouTube videos of Portal in motion. Intrigued, they reached out to him, attended camps and workshops, and quickly became hooked on his method. They started introducing elements of Portal’s method to their personal-training clients and, after a few years, left their respective jobs and cities to start a movement school together in Boulder, Colorado. They told me more than thirty people uprooted their lives so they could regularly train with them, and talked at length about the various ways Portal’s approach had impacted their lives for the better. “Ido’s nickname for me was ‘the refrigerator,’ because I had the build and athletic prowess of one,” said Finer. “The stuff I can do now, I would never have dreamed about doing years ago.” (Their Instagram profiles feature videos of them nailing inversions, working on acrobatic maneuvers, and learning to balance a soccer ball on their head for a minute, among other things.)

Bernstein added: “CrossFit is physically hard, but [Portal’s method] is physically challenging, it’s intellectually challenging, it challenges your ego ... a lot.” (This, too maps onto a larger trend: A 2015 study by students at the Harvard Divinity School noted that as feelings of loneliness have risen and young Americans have become less religiously affiliated than ever before, “spaces traditionally meant for exercise have become the locations of shared, transformative experience.”)

But such personal transformations aren’t accessible to just anyone. Portal makes no bones about the fact that involvement in the community requires a significant investment of both time and money. In a 2013 Facebook post, he wrote that his movement camps were for the “got money and a ton of motivation and willing to travel kind of person” (for the “no-money, little motivation, want to fuck around kind of person” he recommended Zumba). In 2015, he lost fans in the parkour world and beyond when he announced he wouldn’t train vegans, saying they wouldn’t be able to keep up with his meat-eating “tribe.” The dozen or so movement schools that have cropped up in these past few years have made Portal’s methods more readily available. But even now, those wishing to take part in one of his camps are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and fork over between $600 and $1000 for two to three days.

“I’m willing to elevate the crowd by providing them with some of the things I’ve found to be useful. But I’m not willing to be pulled down by them into some watered-down thing—some P90X, some CrossFit-certification weekend event,” Portal told me, when I asked if he seeks to spread his method further. “If [the public] come with me, that’s fine, but I’m not going to them.” He added: “Sometimes I think, let’s let the trend die already for God’s sake, and have only the really hardcore practitioner group.”

When we spoke, Portal kept emphasizing that his approach has to be experienced, not just described. “It sounds very vague because there is nothing that I can say beyond these descriptive words,” he said. Maybe Portal’s elusiveness is just a way to convince outsiders he’s offering something new and revolutionary, as some have argued. Maybe its just another cultish fitness fad with a short shelf life. Maybe you could achieve similar results, and the promised “paradigm shift,” training some other discipline multiple hours per day—like dance or martial arts.

All of these “maybes” are good for business: How will you know, Portal and his followers insist, unless you try it?

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/ido-portal-the-player/566687/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 6 years ago

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The Viral Video Star Behind the Fitness Fad That May Replace CrossFit

And he is, fittingly, always on the move. Born and raised in Haifa, Israel, for the past decade he’s been effectively nomadic, carrying his possessions on his back as he brings his method across the globe. A few weeks before we spoke, he’d been leading a movement camp in Phuket. The week before it was Seoul. Next up: Cyprus. In between camps, he works with elite athletes—from Olympic swimmers, to MLB players, to professional mixed martial artists—applying his broad perspective to their sport to try to give them that extra edge. That might mean focusing on spinal articulation for a swimmer, or developing a baseball pitcher’s shoulder mobility through oft-neglected hanging work. Portal described himself as an “information-and-systems broker, mobilizing knowledge from one discipline to another.”

All of these “maybes” are good for business: How will you know, Portal and his followers insist, unless you try it?

Article source here:The Atlantic

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yolandadsims · 6 years ago

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WELLNESS ESCAPE TO BORDEAUX WITH CAUDALIE

Les Sources de Caudalie is one of those rare hotels to enjoy the mysterious ‘Palace’ designation – a hyper-prestigious mark of distinction bestowed upon just 24 hotels, all of which are in France. Unclear as to what it officially means, to me it represents an endorsement that an operation has proven itself a practitioner of the finest haut hospitalité that the French call their Art de Vivre. Whilst the hotel itself is really quite special, there were two other major components to the site which rendered my stay here totally memorable and unique; the world-class ‘Grand Cru appellation’ vineyard on site, and the shrine to the French beauty house Caudalie, itself stemming from the vines. When choosing a place to stay, one must select the appropriate property for the geography; Les Sources de Caudalie masterfully bottles the essence of this region into one exceptional package. For a wellness escape to Bordeaux, it is a sublime choice, and this post reveals the magical experience I found there!

You might be a bit confused at this point? Perhaps you’ve encountered the beauty brand, Caudalie and noticed it featuring prominently in the name of this hotel? Caudalie beauty’s existence is entwined in a sort of symbiotic triumvirate of the vineyard, the hotel and the beauty brand. The family who own Château Smith Haut Lafitte (the reputed Bordeaux institution decorated with 100 points by Robert Parker for their 2009 opus major vintage – wine buffs will know this to be a big deal) started Caudalie beauty some 20 years ago, as a corollary of scientific research into the very grapes which bestow life-preserving properties to their wines. The findings postulated that the chemical substances called ‘polyphenols’ contained within the grapes’ pips were rich in specific amino acids and antioxidants, which are known to have beneficial applications in skincare.

Blessed with hundreds of hectares of vineyards occupying the favourable south side of the Garonne river, an ultra fertile clay/limestone soil, an aspect benefitting from lashings of sunshine, gentle winds and cool nights, plus plenty of natural irrigation, the Château has a surplus of polyphenols (i.e. grapes) some of which following the harvest, will never make it into their finest bottles. They have other uses of these premium products of natural origin (no pesticides or additives are permitted by the domaine, so everything is organic); hence the birth of the beauty products!

From this natural background, the hotel has sprung up, partly as a way to further commercialise the activities of the vineyard, but also to encourage and cater for the truly fascinating category of wine tourism (we’ll touch upon that a bit later!) and to provide a shrine, by way of a spa, at which to exhibit Caudalie’s essence. Unsurprisingly, those are the products you find in your room, along with a bottle of Les Hauts de Smith to welcome you.

My preference is always to approach a trip from a wellness perspective and this Bordeaux excursion was indeed no different. So, straight in then…

THE SPA!

As mentioned, the Caudalie brand was created at family owned Château Smith Haut Lafitte, from the discovery of a method by which to use active polyphenol components found in grape pips.

Their spa harnasses the naturally warm spring water which comes from 540 meters down, and is rich in minerals and oligo-elements. You can either take a swim in the indoor or outdoor pool, rest in the traditional hot tub, or sweat it out in the hamam. A cycle of all 3 is favourable!

Stepping into the 1,500 square meter spa you’ll be greeted by an airy space, high vaulted ceilings decorated by restored old wooden beams. It’s a wonderfully restorative yet energising atmosphere. With windows on every wall you’ll always have a view looking out onto either the endless vineyards, the outdoor pool, the organic farm or Chateau Smith Haut Lafite. It’s incredible looking out onto the vineyards knowing that the products you’re using in the spa contain natural ingredients which come directly from those fields.

Treatments-wise, there’s a generous menu from which to choose. I opted for the signature Honey & Wine Wrap and the signature facial, using only Caudalie products. The Caudalie products use grape, red wine and essential oil extracts in their treatments, and these ingredients are said to help reduce tissue swelling by draining and boost circulation.

I’d never had a simultaneous ‘scrub and massage’ before and I absolutely loved it. The therapists used the Crushed Cabernet scrub, which included all natural ingredients such as olive oil, sugar and grapes. After scrubbing both the front and the back of the body for a good 10 minutes you’re wrapped up in a cocoon for five minutes in order for the oils to really soak into your body. Once that’s done you jump into a quick shower (no soap allowed) and are laid back down for a massage. I can’t tell you how incredibly soft, supple and hydrated my skin was afterwards; it was quite remarkable. I would highly recommend this treatment and scrub if you get the chance to visit.

Product-wise, Cauadalie say ‘no’ to parabens and stay committed to using the highest proportion of natural ingredients as possible, which is a preference I respect and associate with. The brand is environmentally conscious too, as they’re part of the ‘1% for the planet’, movement which donates 1% of its global sales to NPOs that work to protect the environment. So by 2020 6 million trees will be planted around the world

ORGANIC VEGETABLE GARDEN & FARM

The vegetable garden was one of my favourite parts of Les Sources de Caudalie. You’ll find most things you’d expect in a vegetable shop – lettuce, artichokes, spinach, herbs, edible flowers – all used on a daily basis in the kitchens of the property. There are also fifteen hens producing eggs that you may have for breakfast the following morning. Theres also an adorable dwarf goat family who help protect the hens from foxes. Not to mention the rich ecosystem of bird families that call this sanctuary their home too. Nature and an appreciation of the natural world is so closely intertwined with respectful wine production that it is an integral component of this hotel too, which I loved.

FITNESS

There’s a small but high-spec gym on site with a set of dumbbells a couple of Technogym Personal-line machines and treadmills and of course you can always go for a few laps in any of the pools, indoors or outdoors. There are also personal trainers on site. If you let the staff know they’ll make sure to book one in for you. The gym is small but enough for an indoor workout when you need to lift something heavy

There’s also a tennis court to burn off any extra wine-based caloric energy you may have consumed…

BICYCLE, OR GO FOR A RUN

If you don’t fancy going for a swim or running on the treadmill, the hotel has an array of bikes along with routes through the beautiful forests and vineyards for you to venture on. I went cycling and running on a few of the routes and they provide some serious fitness motivation, as well as some stunning scenes and scents. The spring air of an awakening forest is quite intoxicating, and hugely invigorating.

THEIR VINEYARDS

There are hundreds of acres of vines, in their seasonal infancy at my time of visiting and which are constantly ploughed, tilled and cultivated by donkeys and ground staff alike. These eventually bear a fruit which will go on to constitute the 2018 vintage of Château Smith Haut Lafitte. Just 100m away from the hotel, the vineyard runs tours, which I only too happily joined for an immersion into the world of great growths. The impression I took away is one of dedicated and skilled craftsmanship, and significant hidden toil that goes into bringing superior bottles to the tables of oenophiles the world over. You tour the cooperage where 6-year aged French Oak is hewn and tied into the barrels which will eventually age their grapes, visit the fermentation vats, the harvest zones, the deep underground production facilities and barrel storage hanger (an obscenely serene and cavernous underground space where I felt quite at peace), the vines, and a tasting extravaganza of some of the reputed vintages.

THE GASTRONOMIC RESTAURANT

La Grand’Vigne is the hotel’s gastronomic destination of some considerable repute, having earned two coveted Michelin Stars – a rating which deems it to have excellent cooking that is ‘worth a detour’. They note that “in this 18C orangery, the dishes have the taste and the colours of nature: they are the work of an inspired chef, Nicolas Masse, a master in the art of associating flavours and textures with remarkable precision to appeal to the senses.” As the days passed, I observed that many of the ingredients are sourced fresh from the multiple gardens that the kitchen staff cultivate around the vineyard (along with a hen house and beehives), rendering the produce unusually fresh, and benefitting from the same terroir that gives life to some of the worlds finest vines. This is a light, gentle journey of a meal which eschews the heavy, butter-dependent grandstanding of many ‘gourmet’ destinations. It is about freshness and nature, from ocean to vine, and therefore mirrors the region itself, given its economic interdependence with the lands. N.B, the lemon tart is quite exceptional in its inventive re-imagination!

I would add that the hotel’s non-gourmet restaurant, La Table du Lavoir, is supreme, being bathed in golden light which streams in through the french windows, and enjoying a homely, cottage-like feel. Once an 18th Century washroom, there is still a huge period fireplace and a stunning vaulted old ceiling wrought from reclaimed Medoc timber. Oak barrels, once used for ageing wine, make for storage tables, and the wall of noise is punctuated by the chirping of birdsong with sparrows dancing about in the eaves above you (this is never threatening, and they are quite house-trained!). You have the feeling of being in someone’s country kitchen, and a peaceful, authentic tranquility. It might perhaps sound somewhat of a gimmick but it’s not; this is a gem of authentic Bordeaux history!

ROOMS

Depending on where you stay within the property, the rooms are housed as cottages, scattered around the hotel complex; I was in the Fisherman’s Village, which is a collection of 12 suites, though there are a further 9 suites and 40 rooms. They’re appointed in country-chic fashion, and of a quality commensurate with the Palace rating,. There’s vine detailing on the wallpaper and you find a bottle of their ‘Les Hats de Smith’ awaiting you on the table. The cosmetics are all, unsurprisingly, Caudalie, and the space homely, comforting, and a good, secluded space into which to withdraw at the end of each day. I found no trouble switching off and sleeping deeply and uninterruptedly here.

OTHER EPIC THINGS TO DO?

Go Visit Cognac! The region lies just north of Bordeaux, and is world-renowned for the production of superior brandy, known under the controlled appellation of ‘Cognac’. I had booked a tour at the historic Château of Remy Martin, where I undertook the remarkable Louis XIII tour over 3 hours. My exceptional guide led me through several hundreds of years of history, from the origins of the Baccarat crystal decanter to the distilling chambers, and culminating at the 200-year-old barrels housing thousands of eaux-de-vie, which I sampled with awe (I couldn’t photograph that room, the air is filled with explosive alcohol vapour!). This was an educational and cultural indulgence, and I loved every minute of it.

Visit the Wine Museum! In Bordeaux, there exists the most well-invested, high-tech exhibition space I’ve ever encountered, called La Cite du Vin. The sole topic for this vast multi-storey shrine, is wine; it’s history, it’s significance in culture and civilisations both ancient and current, its development, its regional differences, its cultivation, its future and its economic significance. Simply fascinating. I spent 3 hours here, but could have easily managed double that, were I to have planned the time in accordingly. That may sound crazy, but this is an exceptional space, with so much depth if you’ve a curious mind!

Dessert! As an advocate of balance and occasional indulgence, there is a permanent place in my heart for dessert. Dessert wine, too, has a place. In the Sauternes classification (and in fact, beyond), there is no peer to Château D’Yquem. Now owned by LVMH, I visited their historic castle grounds and walked through the production process, inspected the vines and storage vaults, learned some detail about the Noble Rot rendering their precious semillion grape sweet and mould-gnarled, and of course, imbibed some of the heavenly nectar itself; pure mead.

THE CONCLUSION…

Upon returning to London I felt a real calm, one I think you only get from having spent time in the countryside, with less frenetic ‘city’ energy weighing down your consciousness, and therefore able to truly ‘switch off’. But what rendered Les Sources de Caudalie unique, I believe, came from a most remarkable mixture of the cuisine, the wellness, the fresh air, the stillness and what you could legitimately call ‘joie de vivre’, which makes it the perfect place to reset, feel inspired, and return home more motivated than before, having experienced some of the most idiosyncratically French culture that the country can expouse. I absolutely loved it and would recommend it with vigor!

Ran into my friend, the beautiful @Studio4Lara

The post WELLNESS ESCAPE TO BORDEAUX WITH CAUDALIE appeared first on Fitness on Toast.

from Health And Fitness Updates http://fitnessontoast.com/2018/05/21/wellness-escape-bordeaux-caudalie-travel/

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rebeccaflaneus · 6 years ago

Text

WELLNESS ESCAPE TO BORDEAUX WITH CAUDALIE

My preference is always to approach a trip from a wellness perspective and this Bordeaux excursion was indeed no different. So, straight in then…

THE SPA!

As mentioned, the Caudalie brand was created at family owned Château Smith Haut Lafitte, from the discovery of a method by which to use active polyphenol components found in grape pips.

ORGANIC VEGETABLE GARDEN & FARM

FITNESS

There’s also a tennis court to burn off any extra wine-based caloric energy you may have consumed…

BICYCLE, OR GO FOR A RUN

THEIR VINEYARDS

THE GASTRONOMIC RESTAURANT

ROOMS

OTHER EPIC THINGS TO DO?

THE CONCLUSION…

Ran into my friend, the beautiful @Studio4Lara

The post WELLNESS ESCAPE TO BORDEAUX WITH CAUDALIE appeared first on Fitness on Toast.

from Donald Fitness Tips http://fitnessontoast.com/2018/05/21/wellness-escape-bordeaux-caudalie-travel/

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muscledemandsrespect · 6 years ago

Text

WELLNESS ESCAPE TO BORDEAUX WITH CAUDALIE

My preference is always to approach a trip from a wellness perspective and this Bordeaux excursion was indeed no different. So, straight in then…

THE SPA!

As mentioned, the Caudalie brand was created at family owned Château Smith Haut Lafitte, from the discovery of a method by which to use active polyphenol components found in grape pips.

ORGANIC VEGETABLE GARDEN & FARM

FITNESS

There’s also a tennis court to burn off any extra wine-based caloric energy you may have consumed…

BICYCLE, OR GO FOR A RUN

THEIR VINEYARDS

THE GASTRONOMIC RESTAURANT

ROOMS

OTHER EPIC THINGS TO DO?

THE CONCLUSION…

Ran into my friend, the beautiful @Studio4Lara

The post WELLNESS ESCAPE TO BORDEAUX WITH CAUDALIE appeared first on Fitness on Toast.

from Fitness on Toast https://ift.tt/2x0tRCl via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Fitness on Toast

0 notes