Emerging Fervour

After days of Fashion Week related posts, something lighter to kick start your week (if you had Monday off). Enjoy!

One Minute Puberty from bitteschön.tv on Vimeo.

I met Tres Colacion from We Run Beirut in a pub in Hamra about a month ago, and needed to know more about what Tres and co-founder Tim Winters had planned for WRB, a space documenting events, music, parties, club nights and the local scene in Lebanon. So I met up with Tres in Hamra for a little chat…

So, who are the  guys behind We Run Beirut?

Tres (left): I’m 23 and I grew up in Los Angeles, California. I love music and film. Living in LA I was lucky enough to see some awesome bands (currently kind of dyeing inside that I’m missing Coachella this year) and spent my younger years (much of it illegally) in every club in LA worth getting thrown out of. I love traveling and have spent time across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Central America. I’m a die-hard Arsenal fan…we are definitely winning the EPL this year. You read it here first.

Tim: I’m 22 and I grew up in Poughkeepsie New York. Ever since I was old enough to get in the New York City nightclubs I would take the train there to explore the party scene. That opened my eyes to a plethora of different clubbing experiences, most notably the underground house music scene. During college I DJ’d my life away and took two years of Arabic language class.

I hate to say it, but Tres you guys might have a chance..boooo! So what made you move to Lebanon?

Tres: I first came to Lebanon to fulfill my universities study abroad requirement. I majored in International Relations with an Emphasis in the Middle East, so Beirut was the obvious choice for a number of reasons. I fell in love with the city and knew from day one that this is where I wanted to be. I have met some of my closest friends here and had the opportunity to do things I could never do in the States or Europe. We Run Beirut is the product of all of these feelings. There is nowhere in the world we would rather be right now. Beirut is alive in a way that other city’s just are not.

So what is We Run Beirut all about?

Tres: It’s about the people that make this city what it is. I wish I had a more elaborate answer for you guys, but honestly that is the best way I could ever put it. I have a lengthy opinion on basically everything in life so that should mean a lot.

And where do you see WRB going in 2 years?

Tres: You know stuff has blown up so fast that I really have no idea. We want to really continue bringing new concepts and ideas to the scene. We are working on launching a blog showcasing all the amazing people in our city and really showing the world what Beirut is all about. Touring the region and taking the Beirut party scene international would be amazing. Did someone say Reality TV? I’m just joking…maybe.

Ha! Do it, it’s a good idea! What was your most memorable night here?

Tres: That is such a hard question because there are so many. One of our first parties that we threw was in a huge 300 year old mansion in the mountains overlooking Beirut. We organized the entire thing in like a week and released the parties location via a series of clues as on our facebook page and website.

The party was free and BYOB under the condition you could find the place. Not only did we get a turn out bigger than we could ever imagine, we also got volunteer bar tenders, people cleaning the place up and awesome guest DJ sets from some of the best DJ’s from across the country. The amount of support we got from the scene and from our friends just made it one of the most amazing nights in my life.

Why? Because they would look wicked in any living room and the best bit, art doesn’t go out of fashion!! And as the extra cherry on the cake, it’s sales time!!!

Was £200 Now £100 (12″ x 13″)

Was £200 Now £100 (12″ x 12″)

Was £800 Now £200 (12″ x 16″)

Was £750 Now £500 (16″ x 24″)

Not enough? Check out Facebook for more of his creations.

For more information email: whoisedgE@gmail.com

Hello all you amazing people with good taste in blogs;) Well, another year, another Christmas and it couldn’t have come sooner! I’m off to spend Christmas and New Year in Senegal, whilst Nathalie will be spending her time in beautiful Switzerland. We’ll still be blogging for you beautiful people so make sure you check back.

Have a beautiful Christmas wherever you are. Lots of love, Sara and Nat xx

You know who to call…

Cake Boss: Fashionista Cake

Cake Boss l TLC | Myspace Video

www.carlosbakery.com

There’s a hairdresser on virtually every street corner in Lebanon to cater for the liss, poker-straight hair that most of us are after. No one, and I mean NO ONE leaves their house in Beirut without being fully made up with the hair, the clothes, the nails (God forbid your toe nails are painted a different colour to your finger nails).

I arrived in Beirut at 3am on a Monday morning and by 11am the same day I was whisked away by my sister-in-law to Yehia and Zakaria hair salon to get my hair done. First things first, I need a coffee and a cigarette – that’s not a problem, the smoking ban hasn’t reached us yet.

As I’m getting my hair washed by a 16 year old sweet-talker named Ahmed, I start to blush when he says that he once fell in love with a girl named Sara at school. ONCE? YOU’RE 16!! When was this? Last week? Anyway, I blush a little more when he finishes me off (the hair) and tells me to make sure he washes my hair next time. Oh yes, Sara’s still got it.

Ghassan, my allocated hairdresser starts explaining about the benefits of getting a Brazilian perm – Keratin, blow dried into your hair. Your hair stays glossy and straight for 6 months, even after shampooing and at $300, it aint cheap! I get this done…make me beautiful Ghassan! He does and my hair is amazingly straight and no straighteners in sight. As I’m about to leave, he looks me up and down and tells me that they have a beautician in-house who does eyebrows and nails. Oh okay, not beautiful yet then. I’m taken into the beauty room and greeted by a model-like beautician and as I’m getting plucked, she asks me why I haven’t yet considered Botox and fillers. You need to be thick-skinned here. People are honest and it’s that kind of honesty that would get you punched in the UK – but I prefer it like this. No tip-toeing around the subject….”you’re getting wrinkly and you need to do something about it”. Ok.

As you know there is more to us than the blog and in the background we’re busy making a living from our other passion, which is the digital world.

So we’re proud to announce our first collaboration project has gone live and we’ve launched Bloody Gray PR’s new, content management driven, website. Emerging Fervour moved the un-up-datable site to the open source wordpress platform (our favourite content management system), giving Bloody Gray a system that allows them to update their own media cuttings and clients.

“Emerging Fervour have been an absolute pleasure to work with, efficient, reliable and completely aware of exactly what my company needed to get to the next level.

They went out of their way to assist and have brought Bloody Gray PR massive results. The feedback from clients and industry people has been enormous and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with them. ”

Becc Gray, Founder, Bloody Gray

Bloody Gray is a boutique PR agency representing designer such as:

• Culietta
• Gabriella Marina Gonzales
• Le Cav Du Bon
• Migh-T by Kumiko Watari

I came across Tanya Traboulsi when interviewing musician, Zeid Hamdan (check out the interview here). An amazing photographer, Tanya captures the atmosphere of all her subjects and I just couldn’t resist asking her some big questions…

Tanya, we saw your work when we interviewed Zeid Hamdan and fell in love with it, please tell us a little about you?

I grew up in Beirut and at some point moved to Austria, then came back to Lebanon. Photography was always part of my life, even as a child. I didn’t study it though, I studied fashion design and then later on started working in photography.

Your images really capture atmosphere’s and emotions, what’s your secret?

I think that the most important thing in life is to have a passion for something. Anything you do that you truly love, will succeed. And this passion and love will show in your work, whatever work it is. Also, I think that it’s really important to know (or at least try to know) what you want in / from life, and more importantly what you don’t want. Once you have figured that out, things become much easier.

What was your favourite shoot?

I can’t really think of only one favourite shoot… When I shoot concerts and musicians, I feel really inspired and at ease, because I love and have always loved music, and the musicians that I photograph are wonderful artists that truly inspire me.

Carte Blanche to The Ex ∨

Haussmann Tree ∨

Ben Frost ∨

A-Trio ∨

Charbel Haber | Tony Elieh | Tarek Atoui ∨

All my series are quite personal and have a special meaning to me, like for example my latest series that I shot in Beirut, called “Collection 1983″.

∧ “Collection 1983 was shot in an abandoned wood factory during the Lebanese civil war that was later occupied by militias. The raw concrete walls became a canvas for their hopes and dreams as fighting raged around. Locked away and neglected, these palimpsest images offer a snapshot into the minds of forgotten soldiers” ∨

If you could have chosen to photograph any event of the past 100 years, what event would that be?

Coming from Lebanon, I’m generally pretty patriotic when it comes to the motherland. So it makes me all fuzzy inside when I see things like Shankaboot, emerging from Lebanon’s film scene. Created by Batoota Films in Association the BBC World Service Trust with the support of Zico House and The Welded Tandem Picture Company, it’s a first for Arabic webdrama.

Shankaboot takes us into the beating heart of Beirut street life today, through the eyes of Suleiman, the 15-year old delivery boy. Along for the ride are the beautiful Ruwaida and the mysterious Chadi, along with a host of other characters.

Episode 1

Episode 2

To see episode 3, 4, 5 and 6, check the Shankaboot site. The final 7th episode will be available to view on the 31st March at www.shankaboot.com

Hello, hello – this is Sara, and before you start reading, I’ll give you a quick intro to the newest member of our collective, Fran who I used to work with when I was project managing at Pod1. You see, Fran is actually an actress – with lots of opinions (trust me – I know!). From thoughts on plays to movies, Fran will be delighting us all with her reviews… and here is her first!

Crazy Heart sounds as though it’s going to be the film equivalent of Marmite: you either love the idea of it, with its promise of grass-roots country music and a leading man whom some might call “alternative”, or you can’t think of anything worse than 2 hours of hillbilly music and staring at Jeff Bridges wisened (read: craggy) old face.

I freely admit to falling into the former category: I have long been a fan of Bridges since his early movies, and particularly the legend that is The Big Lebowski (we could all do with a bit more Dude in our lives), and I will also hold my hands up to being a fan of country music. There, I said it. I’m glad that’s out in the open! However, I defy anyone, country music heathen or other, not to love this movie, or at the very least, be affected by the emotional journeys that the film charts. The central one that we are taken on is that of Bridges’ character, Bad Blake, who begins the story as a fallen country music star reduced to spending his nights playing gigs at 2-bit bowling alleys in the middle of nowhere and his mornings waking up in cheap motels, throwing up the entire bottle of Maclure’s Whiskey he has sunk the night before. He puts on a front, but beneath the humour and the wrinkles on his face you can feel a deep pain, the origins of which we don’t yet know.