sweetriot blog - cacao | culture | cool!

The Auburn Cornfest!

I thought it would be nice to go back to my roots this weekend and visit the Annual Auburn Cornfest.  (My hometown of Auburn, Michigan has 2,000 residents and my township has 500.)  Needless to say, the Cornfest is one of the major events of the year with the Parade as the highlight of the weekend.

My mom and I planned to go, and unbenounced to me, she decided we should riot a bit there too.  (Notice the signs above).  She waved the sweetriot sign at the floats through out the parade and even ran up to the Grand Marshal car driving Don and Gin and handed them sweetriot.  Towards the end of the parade, we decided to join in and drove the entire parade route waving signs!  (Imagine:  my mom and I driving a normal car in the parade with large signs hanging out the window and waving.  I'm not kidding.) :)  We could hear the Auburnites saying to each other, "What is sweetriot?"

While drinking slurpees, we saw firetrucks, beauty queens (Corn Queen, Potato Queen, Pickle Queen & Bavarian Queen), the high school band, tractors, and more.  Ironically, the theme this year seemed to be 'Auburn Goes Global' as there were flags and globes on every float.  Being an avid globe collector, I was quite excited to see this in my tiny hometown including the hand-molded globe from the local Boy Scouts.  Of course there was also my human corn friend and the moving hand-crafted corn cob.

Thanks to my mom for rioting in true Auburn style.  If you want to join next year, let me know.  There's room for a few more on Main Street.

Greek Tapas in D.C.

I had my very first Greek Tapas last night in DC.   My cool friends, Brandon and Tim (see above), from Whole Foods P Street took me on a delicious food outing. 

If you're in DC, I recommend a stop at the great P Street store (map here for your convenience) and the yummy restaurant, Zaytinya, which is also an Editor's Pick from the Washington Post.   We especially enjoyed the "Pipe Dream," Fried Calamari, and Tzatziki (and an unnamed soul at our table also loved the very large tequila shots).   :)

One minute on a Saturday Evening it was 7 p.m. - and the next we knew - it was after midnight in the restaurant, and we were still going - a true test of high quality company!  Have you found a great restaurant lately?  Please let me know...especially in NYC, Boston, DC, LA, San Francisco, and Chicago where I end up traveling most. 

Happy 4th of July!

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays.  I suppose this is because it is summertime, often on the water, and the holiday has a jovial and carefree spirit.  There is no stressful gift giving...it's really just good, casual, down-to-earth fun. 

In case you were across the country, I thought I would bring you some live shots of the 4th from my view on a balcony on Wall Street.  Thanks to Macy's, these fireworks are an annual tradition for NYC.  If you want to learn more, the NY Times has coverage here. Happy 4th!

West Hollywood Bingo?

When in West Hollywood, play bingo.  Well, I'm not sure this is what people would say but I must admit - I did and it was a whole lot of fun!  (Did I mention LA is a new favorite place for me to visit? - bingo could be part of it!) 

Hamburger Mary's hosts bingo on Wednesday's and all proceeds go to charity.  The crowd is a cool mix of W. Hollywood folks goofing off on a work night.  Supposedly, it is legendary although some of my LA friends had never heard of it.  Hmmm...does that make it legendary?!

Pictured here is my crazy friend, Tami, and a new cacao lover, Erin Cahill, from the cast of Power Rangers.  As you can see above, there is always room for a cacao display among the bingo cards. 

More Boston rioting.

I was in Boston again this past weekend for a reunion.  Whew, there were lots of rioters there.  Boston can be a conservative town, but when given the chance, everyone is open to trying something new and different.  It's fun to see sweetriot in the daylight and after hours too -- it seems to trascend any special 'time of day' barrier.

I met some old friends there many of whom have been involved in sweetriot since I started working on it about 2 years ago -- this was before the company was even named.  Special shout out to Faraz, Cindy, Molly, Masha, Dave, Farouk, Ann, all pictured.  As you can see from the photos above, it was a friendly group of rioters.

Amazing lights.

In celebration of Memorial Day, I wanted to talk about a beautiful artist of lights.  During ICFF, I didn't mean to stop by this event but the illumination drew me in. Ingo Maurer simply warrants a blog to himself.

His work is absolutely stunning.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  I only wish you had been there live with me.  The exhibit is called, "One Thousand and One Lights and Other Fairy Tales."  I believe you can still stop by if you're in the Soho area. 

Little reminder, our next deadline for sweetriot's Featured Artist is June 15 - do you know an amazing artist?  Send them our way.

Wow. Peter, Paul, & Mary.

I had a special evening last night.  Sometimes I feel like all of this is a dream and yesterday was one of those times.   I went to the launch of an exciting new venture, which is focused on investing in sustainable, world changing organizations.  Of course we had cacao standing by at the launch for all to enjoy!  :)  Watch out for Atlas Capital Partners in the coming years - it is led by a great team - Travis Bradford, Murat Armbruster and Alex Lewin.

Luckily, this lovely event was held at the home of Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary.  There is a quote on the Peter, Paul, and Mary website, "No American folk group has lasted longer and amassed a more loyal following than Peter, Paul and Mary."

When you meet Peter, you realize why his group is so beloved.  He is giving and loving and committed to making the world a better place.  Peter was not only at the event, but he also sang with his beautiful daughter and a lone guitar.  He also happened to become a full-fledged sweetriot lover (see photo above).  This of course tickles my heart.  :)

I only wish you could hear the live music I heard last night....what began at 7 p.m. and was supposed to finish at 930 p.m. of course carried on to past 1 a.m.   Ah, the life of a rioter.  I wouldn't have it any other way.

In a New York Minute.

I celebrated my birthday this past weekend with a very fun night at Automatic Slims (an unpretentious bar in the West Village, which happens to play all sorts of danceable music.) 

The evening including lots of dancing and friends from all parts of my life -- college, sweetriot, aiesec, grad school, etc.  The photos will speak much louder than words, so here are a few to brighten your Monday.  Thanks to everyone who came out to play!

GEL & great thinking.

I mentioned the GEL conference yesterday.  You know you're at a great conference when NOONE is sitting on their computers and everyone is instead listening to the presentations.

Here are a few of the great people that were there.  I could write separate blogs on each of these individuals but realize that would take 2 weeks!  Instead, here is a quick summary.

Seth Godin - always forward thinking

Marc Salem - mentalist

Jason Fried - less is less - elegant small business applications

Linda Stone - continuous partial attention

Danny Brown's video - check out his artistry

Ji Lee - creativity hits the ad world!

Erin McKean - what's in a word and a dress

Lastly, the hosts of GEL, Mark Hurst and Dawn Barber, with Phil Terry from Creative Good are amazing people!   In fact their entire team - Laurea, Julie, Kat, Anne, Deena are so committed to their work.  Thank you to each of them for a great few days.

GEL's Thursday after-party

I mainly want to tell you about the GEL after party on Thursday due to its Chelsea venue - Exit Art.  Cool open venue with a wide range of exhibits from fish (yes) to water to bottles...it goes much deeper than that but you really have to go there to see for yourself.

I tried to take some photos but none of them seem to do it justice-- thus, I thought I would share anyway.  Here are some fun folks...Katie and Michael from Apple, Jason and David from 37 signals, Chris from Netflix, Tracy from Intuit, and a few more revellers like Zimran and Tai.  I've thrown in a few photos from the late night stop at a Cuban restaurant (a sleeper in NYC so don't tell anyone.)  :)