Friday Top Five:: 02.18.22
Each week our ‘Friday Top Five’ segment, we feature five things we thought were interesting, notable, or culturally significant. This week we are showcasing stories on men’s fashion, watches, travel, food spots, and how to automate your life to get the first four things on the list on the books and planned. Trust me, it is cool.
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Story-1:: Mashburn On the Road
Overview: Let me start this post off by saying, I am frustrated like hell that the other posts I have created on Sid and his team got cleared out thanks to GoDaddy, some much good stuff……. Alright, enough of me being sad for myself, time to give you the ten thousand foot view of Sid and the Mashburn brand, then we can jump into the On the Road.
Sid started off in fashion back in the ’90s in NYC working with brands like Lands End, Jcrew, Jcrew, and Ralph Lauren. After helping launch these brands, he moved back south with his wife Ann where they now live, and operated their Respective brands, Sid and Ann Mashburn. While living in ATL, there was one rockstar guy at work who had these killer “AUTUMN BROWN CALFSKIN” and when I asked him about them, he just smiled and said Sid Mashburn, it is on the West Side of town, go check them out. Well, this was back in maybe 2009 and men’s fashion isn’t what it is today I couldn’t track down a ton of information on the store and I didn’t know the West Side of ATL that well, so I just got in my car one Saturday morning and drove around looking for the place. After about an hour or so, I finally figured out where the store was and when I walked in, I was like, yeah, this is my North Star. Now at the time, I was broke as all get out, making crap money, and saving up for my first condo. So I walked through the store, checked out all the gear, the clothes, and you know me, the shoes. Fast forward a few years, I ended up buying one of their suits for my wedding, have bought countless shirts, blazers, and gear from them over the years. More recently, I purchased their Chelsa Boots and some Tabacco Suede Loafers, I am just waiting for the dang snow and salt to go away to break them out.
So let’s jump into why I am writing about this now, and why the hell you should care. More recently the team from Sid has launched their On the Road series, which I suppose if you break it down is sort of like a trunk sale event, but OTR sounds and looks cooler. About once a quarter, the team hits the road and lands in such cities as NYC, Boston, San Fran, and Chicago. They typically are in town for a couple of days and you can make an appointment, check out a few select items from this season’s launch, and get measured for shirts, suits, pants, etc.
“We started doing this to bring the in-store experience to guys who can't just walk into one of our shops. When you make an appointment, you can come to get fitted for a custom-tailored suit or shirt, but you can also just browse and get a sense of the offerings. You can touch and feel and try on our product in person (as much as we like shopping online, it can be hard to buy something sight unseen.) You can begin a relationship with one of our associates. You can get your measurements taken — we'll keep them on file, and from then on out, you can shop with us from anywhere in the world. And since we bring our lead tailor and team, you can get our expert opinion on fit. You can also just come in, take a look around, and see what we're all”
More times than not it is Taylor, Alex, a tailor, and some of the team members who join depending on the time of year. Living in the Chicago land area, I have had the opportunity to connect with them a couple of times this year, where I was about to get some clothes made and tailored. The process is dead-easy and if you have ever wanted to check out elevated South X Italian Fashion, then look no further.
Link: SidMashburn.com | Booking | IG - Sid Mashburn
Story-2:: The GodFather of Modern Watches
Overview: Jean-Claude Biver has been lauded as the savior of the Swiss watch industry. Working with brands like Blancpain, AP, and Tag. More recently he sat at the helm of the LVMH watch portfolio as the Chairman of Hublot & Zenith Watches. In support of him launching his own limited brand under his own name he is running some press and meeting with others to talk about his brand, but to talk about his brand you must talk about the passion which, you will quickly see/hear that this guy has a massive amount of passion for life.
“Find a way to convert your passion into your job, or your job into your passion. ”
If you want to check out a bit more on JCB, I have embedded a few videos of his that I really enjoyed over the years thanks to the fine watch people over at Hoodinkee.
Check out this video about 5-Minutes in to see just the passion this guy has for life.
Story-3:: Let’s Talk Travel
Overview: Explore the world. From home. Live, interactive streams with incredible people in unbelievable places. This is their tagline. In a similar fashion to what we have seen in other travel-related companies, they rely on guides. This was a very similar approach that we saw with Localeur a few years back. The only difference here is that you can actually book events with the tour guide and follow the guide. These features were not available on other services. You also can sort of become a guide by live streaming through the app. Now sure how valuable that is with all the other streamlined platforms out there, but it is a cool idea. So for a guy who lives in Chicago but isn’t from there, I am going to check out
Link: Heygo.com | Chicago Tours
Story-4:: Don’t Screw This Up
Overview: The Most Romantic Restaurants in Chicago have been mapped out by the good people over at Chicago’s Eater. A while, you might have missed the exact 14th date for a boring dinner on a Monday night, figured I would hit you with a few spots to check out In Chicago that I have now put on my list thanks to the fine folks over at Eater.
Top Hitters; yeah, we are skipping websites and going right to the IG!
Link: chicago.eater.com
Story-5:: Automate Everything
Overview: Apple released shortcuts a few years ago and thanks to some more recent software updates, it has become increasingly more interesting to leverage their Shortcuts functions on both the iPad/iPhone and the Mac. Some background on Shortcuts. Shortcuts is a first-party Apple app that was first introduced in iOS 12. This extraordinarily capable app has finally made it to the Mac, through the macOS 12 Monterey update; basically making it useful.
Gallery
The Gallery is a great place to start exploring Shortcuts as a newcomer, thus being the first section in the app. It’s a collection of shortcuts, grouped based on their different functionalities and categories. These groups include:
Starter Shortcuts: very basic — but handy
Shortcuts for Accessibility: mainly health and emergency focused
Great with Siri: shortcuts that may come in handy hands-free, through Siri. Finally makes Siri Useful
Wonderful Widget Shortcuts: convenient to access through the Shortcuts app widget, such as a “play entire current album” shortcut.
Share Sheet Shortcuts: these shortcuts are focused on saving, sharing, or editing content you’re viewing.
Shortcuts for Sharing: from Mail to Twitter and Instagram.
Why It Matters: Let’s start with I saw shortcuts a while back and said, pass…. Well, now that it is on my Mac and works across my devices, I am more interested. Let’s also highlight the fact that I finally had a second to figure out some basic concepts and thought to myself, this is pretty cool.
Shortcuts I have created:
Siri Short Cut: I say “Family Dinner” and Siri pulls up a drafted text message to my wife and I hit send
Siri Short Cut: I say “End of Day Sync” and Siri pulls up my daily end of the daily to-do list to close out my day
While it takes a second to sort out the If-This-Then-That framework, it isn’t crazy hard. Would love to see Apple publish more suggestions or do a deeper look at your current apps and provide suggestions on flow.
Link: ShortCuts Guide | Youtube.com
