Virtual friends to be precise.. as we’ve just launched our myspace page.

Sticking again with print, I bought back in March the first edition of London Independent, a bubbly collection of independent shops spanning fashion, furniture, food and art. Among the hip design and streetwear outlets featured are Artwords Bookshop in Shoreditch, Magma Books in Clerkenwell, A-non Clothing and Lik Neon off Brick Lane.

Addresses
A-non Clothing: 26 Cheshire St, Liverpool St. Tube, website
Artwords Bookshop: 65A Rivington St, Old St. Tube, website
Lik Neon: 106 Slater Street, Liverpool St. Tube, website
Magma: 117 Clerkenwell Rd, Chancery Lane, website

A magazine junkie, I picked up some groovy reading material in Paris. Clad mostly in Helvetica, Clark hits the funky side of street culture, graphic design and music. The May/June issue features interviews with artist Steven Harrington (who designed the cover) and the boys from Justice, as well as a snippet called Tee-shirt Blog plugging tees from six cool t-shirt labels.

A bilingual magazine out of Paris, Sneaker Marmalade is a visual feast for sneaker addicts. I had no idea that Nike released a Transformers series while Reebok did the same with Voltron. I wonder if Gobots will be next.

Spent Tuesday afternoon touring minimalist and concept shops in Paris. Here are a few that I checked out:

American Apparel
On my way to Pierre Herme, I noticed that AA, our T-shirt supplier, opened its first shop in rive gauche right off rue Bonaparte just south of Saint-Germain-des-Près. As always, the shop brims with colours and apparel made in the US of A.

BHV Homme
Although you can’t see it clearly in this pic, BHV’s flagship shop for men boasts a stock market board listing the prices of its best selling jeans.

GUS
Although it’s been around for about 7 years, this was my first trip to Gus, a cool concept store for men. Tucked behind the Grands Boulevards on the unassuming rue d’Uzes, the shop spans two floors selling books, clothes, accessories, electronics, and homeware. Gus was definitely the highlight of the tour.

Kulte
Stumbled onto this one just to see if the popular watering hole La Perle was busy as usual. I love it when a shop pays attention to details - the door handle is in a shape of a K. Note: the T-shirt on the left actually says “Don’t photograph me“. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

Surface To Air
Another easy shop to miss, considering that the S2A shop in the 3e has no window display and sports only a discreet sign on the door. They sell trainers, magazines, T-shirts, and jeans at prices for the hip and trendy Parisian.

Addresses
American Apparel: 7, rue Gozlin, 6e, M St-Germain-des-Pres, website
BHV Homme: 36, rue de la Verrerie, 4e, M Hotel-de-Ville, website
Gus: 7, rue d’Uzès, 2e, website
Kulte: 76, rue Vieille du Temple, 3e, website
Surface To Air: 68 rue Charlot, 3e, website

I’m back in Europe. Spent last week in Paris meeting friends, scouting, shopping and indulging in fine food. More to come tomorrow, in the meantime here’s some street art that caught my eye in Paris.

Graffiti by Eric O Chet in the Jewish quarters on rue des Rosiers right off rue Vieille du Temple:

On the rue de la Verrerie near rue des Archives:

Mutek was the musical highlight of my three-month stay in Montreal. This five-day celebration of electronic music and visual media showcased great local talents and some of the best underground DJs, such as the boys from Kompakt: Brazilian Gui Boratto, who was sporting either a Merc or Ben Sherman T-shirt, and the label’s co-founder Michael Mayer who played that bad-ass, eery sound that I love.

Our new site, version 1.5, has finally been launched. Among the changes are a shorter domain, a faster server, a minor facelift and a swifter checkout, as credit card payments are now made directly on our site.

Next up: the release of our London T-shirt series, a T-shirt collaboration with some of the hottest DJs of the moment, and… development of version 2.0 of the site. It just never ends!