Exotics at Redmond Town Center

Every Saturday morning, fickle Pacific Northwest weather allowing, spectators from all over the greater Seattle area (and sometimes beyond) converge on Redmond Town Center for a masterfully organized exotic car event. While some dealerships bring in display cars, for the most part the point of Exotics @ RTC, as it’s known, is for ordinary people to bring in own their recently detailed, show-ready, rare cars for other enthusiasts to see.

I’m not a car person, but I’d like to be. I’m working on it. It’s been something of a drawn-out, slow-burn awakening for me, from the days I drove a 143 horsepower Honda Civic in Houston to the present, landing in a niche coupe and more than tripling my power since.

And I’ve discovered I love hearing people talk about their car passions almost as much as I love being behind the wheel of a V8: their favorite roads, their modifications, their brand loyalties, the driving experience they seek, and most of all what design elements make their hearts skip a beat. I’m drawn to a squat, swoopy, mean-as-fuck silhouette, and lucky me — there are just so many cars at RTC that fit the bill.

What Remains of Edith Finch

I’m not a gamer by any measure of the word—I can’t aim in a first-person-shooter to save my life, and I regularly run my character into walls in any given genre—but I would enthusiastically become one for a particular type of gaming experience.

Specifically, I’d like to relive journeys like What Remains of Edith Finch, released in 2017 by Annapurna Interactive, over and over again. My partner and I bought this game for Xbox on the Microsoft store at the beginning of spring pandemic quarantine, figuring that we had so much time on our hands, we could take it slow and puzzle through the story at a leisurely pace. Instead, we finished it in two nights. The below is why.

Edith Finch unfolds like a drama miniseries or episodic novel, following the titular young woman to Washington’s San Juan Islands years after an incident of familial trauma as-yet unrevealed. We learn that Edith’s mother is gone, and Edith has journeyed back to her family’s ancestral home, a sprawling, rickety, Tim Burton-esque dwelling that has swelled over the centuries to tower over a stretch of rugged coastline. The original structure was ferried across the ocean by historical patriarch Odin Finch, who drowned in the effort and became the first ancestor to be interred in the family graveyard in the shadow of the growing house—thus the Norway-transplanted Finches begin their Washingtonian genealogy with death.

Edith carries nothing with her but a key and a journal, and via first-person exploration of the richly appointed and now abandoned Finch house environment, we help her fill in the blanks of her family tree.

The atmospheric great room of the sprawling Finch house

Generational tragedy clings to the family home like dust. We learn right off the bat that the Finches believe themselves cursed since before Odin, each member bound to perish in ways ranging from the ordinary to the supernatural, sometimes by accident and sometimes by their own hand or a stranger’s. Edith’s grandmother has sealed and memorialized each room like shrines to each vanished family member, and vanished herself as well. As Edith, we unseal these rooms and towers to open music boxes, read diaries, and peer at photos…all the while piecing together the mystery of why she and her mother abruptly fled the house years ago, as well as the more distant mystery of each Finch’s untimely death.

There are lots of opportunities for interaction with the environment

Months later, I still think about this gaming experience regularly. It’s like no other game I’ve read about or attempted before. It lingers for a few reasons, chief among which is the game’s insanely high production value. A wealth of personal details fills each room, from a grandmother’s unfinished painting to local takeout menus to tins upon tins of fish brought home by a brother who worked, for a time, at a nearby cannery. Not a single detail is extraneous—it all serves to gently elegize the Finches who lived and died before Edith, their presences still keenly felt in their eerily preserved rooms.

Just as the strange, sad twists of each Finch demise keep us guessing from unlocked room to unlocked room, the gameplay also keeps us on our toes. No two scenes are alike, and at each transition, there is a period of trial and adjustment while we figure out what exactly the newly unfolding story is asking of us. (SPOILERS FOLLOW) In “reliving” each death, we get to creep along branches as a hungry cat, guide an aunt through a comic book thriller, fly a kite in a storm, and find our way out of a nuclear bunker, among other things, experiencing a staggering variety of gameplay and storytelling modes that are all still elegantly and coherently linked. What’s more, it’s worth noting that in Edith Finch we do not merely decode the details of an untimely Finch death; we literally push the buttons that precipitate each demise, swinging a child off a cliff and putting a man in the path of industrial chopping machinery. (SPOILERS END)

But why so much death? Isn’t Edith Finch then just a gratuitously and exhaustingly macabre exercise in tumbling from sad story to sad story at breakneck speed? Not at all—and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I probably won’t grasp the full extent of the game’s poetry of pain, acceptance, grief and trauma for years to come.

Each episode is deeply moving and rendered with such loving sensitivity and dreamlike serenity, as though in the process of dying, each family member finds a kind of peace and wonder in the way they are leaving the world. Often the Finches are killed by the things they love doing, or by unexpected, freak consequences of a decision they stood steadfastly behind. In other words, each manner of death embodies the essence of the person who passed, as much as the contents of their memorial bedroom do. As a result, the arc of each episode peaks with a player realization of “oh, of course this is how it happens, of course this is how it had to happen”—a clever audience replication of the sense of fatedness that the Finches feel about their bloodline, as well as an affirmation of the deceased’s unique personhood.

We (and Edith) aren’t exploring the house to solve the problem of the Finches, exactly, but to process, understand and accept the cyclical, sprawling tragedy endured by the family. It sounds grim…but in real life, isn’t that often all we can do when faced with private heartbreak?

What Remains of Edith Finch is available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

From the Holiday Stockpile

I have a weak spot for things. Namely, I have an inexplicable predilection for scrolling through grid after grid of meticulously curated products halfway between meaningless objet d'art and handy daily necessities with a look of rapt appreciation on my face. As such, I can be a lot of fun during the holidays.

It's not that I'm an expert gifter - no, I have spectacularly misjudged friends in the past and gifted them anything from basic Neutrogena toiletries to high end fragrances that stayed sealed in their boxes for years afterwards. 

My usefulness, instead, is in mentioning the right label to the right person and helping them look like they really know what they're doing when they shop for their Xmas lists online. Like they spend their downtime perusing hyper-modern lifestyle magazines filled with more empty space than text. Like they lurk around Brooklyn and the West Village, trying out gastropubs and tea ateliers wearing Oxfords and oversized knits. Like they have 100k Instagram followers and an apartment in Portland where they lovingly house the world's largest collection of artisan mugs. Like they've traveled a lot and have developed such specific taste that mainstream department stores just don't cut it anymore. For that, I'm here to help.

Below: 15 brands and / or retailers that are doing something so very right:

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15 // Scandinavian Designs

Skrive desk $500, Spotlight table lamp $140, Klemens chair $900

Next time you find yourself in a posh furniture store like this one, asking, "What moron would consider a fucking $140 lamp," just know that it's me. Hi, I'm the dummy. Mind you, I would never actually shell out the cash, but I like knowing that a lamp of the perfect angularity is out there and buyable for less than an entire paycheck.

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14 // Mullein & Sparrow

Facial steam $22, bath salts $29, body oil $18 

I'm a big believer in personal care products that are almost too pretty to use up, because they add to your living space in a subtly soothing way. I mean, bathrooms are ugly enough to begin with. 

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13 // Are You Am I

Lilia top $179

Most were understandably skeptical when fashion blogger Rumi Neely debuted a line of luxury clothing, because the initial offerings were a set of perhaps poorly chosen loose tees. But in the months that followed, aggressively Californian blouses and crop tops and slip dresses were rolled out, and now I'm not convinced that Kendall Jenner shops anywhere else anymore.

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12 // Poketo

Cory bifold wallet $68, journal $16, wall vessel and planter set $28

If anything on this page is at all useful, it's probably sold by Poketo, a retailer of cute odds and ends for the home and office. They remind me vaguely of being in a toy store, surrounded by bright colors and eye-popping textures and adorable packaging.

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11 / Mast Chocolate

Most flavors about $20 for 7 oz.

This Brooklyn-based chocolatier's products are not typically stocked where one would buy food, and that just tickles me. It's like they've already admitted to themselves that chocolate is secondary, and branding comes first. That's cool. Why give out Ferrero pyramids when you can give out these babies & look super stylish by association?

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10 // Larsson and Jennings

Lugano $295; Lugano $315; Saxon $1395

I like a timepiece that is as likely to belong to a man as it is to a woman, and Larsson and Jennings' Swiss-made watches have so few few embellishments that they fit that niche. In the watch world, these sit on the other end of the swinging pendulum from the chunky, glitzy pieces we're more used to.

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09 // Hem

Key side table $175

This photo by Hem is great because 1) I would never think to market tables by arranging them like War of the Worlds alien pods coming to exterminate us all, and 2) there is nothing happening here. Three lines and a disc and that's supposed to be a table. All it takes is one of these beauties to make you look like the kind of person who goes to the MoMA and knows what's going on.

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08 // Sort of Coal

Hand soap $10; bincho $93; char oil cream $33; binchotan sculpture $396

Did I read the 14-paragraph "about" page on this label's website? No. Did I need to read it to know that this oak charcoal bath product venture is mostly BS? No. But do I love the stark minimalism of their packaging and the unabashedly self-important feel of the whole thing, bordering dangerously on the absurd? Yes. 

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07 // Anna Sheffield

Hazeline ceremonial stacking suite, $8300

The holiday season is engagement season, which means I know what I'll be doing: scrolling through Instagram crying inside at all the jewelry posts flying past. One profile I follow is that of New York based designer Anna Sheffield, who offers the perfect antidote to all the tired, staid styles we're too used to seeing on our grandmothers' fingers. Sheffield's signature concept is a striking burst of ray-like stones that are meant to sit atop a solitaire like a crown.

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06 // Ode to Things

Cinqpoints Archiblocks $70, Kami wood cups from $70, Ancap Verona cappuccino cup $36

I'm not entirely clear on what Ode to Things really is. It's part museum, part curio cabinet, part IKEA on steroids, and part actual, functioning home goods shop. Here there be everyday objects barely recognizable as what they are, pared down and Designed within an inch of their lives.

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05 // The Reformation

Aurelia top $128, Gemma dress $278

As label names go, I don't think there's one more striking than this. I always love telling friends about this eco-friendly clothing line: Reformation - gawd, that name. Even before you show people the plunging necklines, drapey silhouettes and 90s influence, it already sounds great. 

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04 // Le Labo

Santal 26 home fragrance, $125 for 100 ml

By now it's inescapably clear that I like my objets pretentious to the point of humorous absurdity, and near the top of the hierarchy is the unisex fragrance line by Le Labo of NYC. They have a "manifesto." There's a section of their website titled "oddities." They sell a diffuser made from reclaimed wood & vintage style bulbs. It's fantastic. Pair responsibly with craft beer & Restoration Hardware furniture.

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03 // Leibal

Lift coasters $69 for 4, Bang and Olufsen Beoplay H7 $449, marble wall clock $269

Like Ode to Things, Leibal is a curated collection of aesthetically pleasing odds and ends that seem to exist simply for curation's sake. Browsing the site, I'm left with a lot of questions. Who has nearly 300 bucks for a marble wall clock? And more importantly, what wall would support the sheer weight of said clock?

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02 // Article Magazine

Issues range from $14 to $17

Often I have trouble finding man-gifts, but soon I may just start ordering copies of London-based Article magazine for the more sartorially-inclined men in my life. They're printed on thick paper - coffee table-worthy - and feature moody, intense photography of everything from modern art and architecture to a star du jour.  

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01 // Artifact Uprising

Envelopes for $1.40 Save the Dates, wood calendar $30, soft cover photo book from $18

And finally, nothing inspires me creatively to the point of full-blown anger like the online print shop Artifact Uprising. Neutral paper tones, crisp serif fonts, generous white spacing - this place ticks all my aesthetic boxes re: how I want my photos of the Pacific Northwest to be presented. A gorgeous, unexpected photo gift source if you ever want to distance yourself from Shutterfly and Tinyprints.