URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1173 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 18, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

Their House To Yours, Via the Trash
BYLINE: By SUSAN DOMINUS.

E-mail: susan.dominus @nytimes.com

SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; BIG CITY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 795 words
By 9:15 most mornings, Thomas Germain, a ruddy-faced man in a yellow slicker, is pushing his oversize black wheeled suitcase down 12th Street in the direction of the Strand Bookstore on Broadway. Sometimes, the suitcase is stuffed full of books; sometimes the books fill a box or two or three that he balances carefully on top of it, a mass of swaying literature he rolls all the way from Greenwich Village or SoHo or Stuyvesant Town.

By 9:30, he's often sitting outside the Strand, waiting for the store to open, drinking a breakfast of Budweiser with his friend Brian Martin, who's pushed and pulled his own collection of books to the same destination in a large, teetering grocery cart.

The men are regulars at the Strand, book-scavenging semipros who help the city's best-known used-book store keep its shelves stocked. They have no overhead, no employees and no boss. They also have no home. What they have is experience, and a fitful sense of industry.

''Perseverance,'' Mr. Germain said one recent Monday. ''Other people fail at this because they don't persevere.''

For them, that means rising from their street-side slumber around 3 a.m. to start sifting through recycling bins outside people's homes or in front of buildings. (For the record, paperbacks are recyclable; the city requires the covers to be removed from hardcovers before they can be recycled, a request that for booklovers is tantamount to asking 10-year-old girls to rip Barbie's head off before discarding her in the trash.)

The two 50-ish men -- Tommy Books and Leprechaun , they call themselves -- are often the first people waiting on the Strand's bookselling line, a queue also populated by N.Y.U. students, genteel booklovers moving to smaller apartments, frugal cleaner-outers, and a fair number of down-and-out fellow book scavengers, many of whom live on the street.

Hundreds of men and a smaller number of women eke out a living scavenging books in Manhattan, according to Mitchell Duneier, author of ''Sidewalk,'' a book about the subculture of sidewalk book scavengers and vendors. Some of them sell their books on the street; others, the less entrepreneurial, or the more impatient, go for the surefire cash at the Strand.

When the store opened that Monday morning, Tommy Books and Leprechaun each in turn emptied their boxes onto the counter, where Neil Winokur, a Strand employee, quickly sorted them into two piles. An incomplete encyclopedia got rejected, as did Donna Tartt's ''Secret History.'' (Too many on the market.) An hour or two later, another scavenger scored a hit selling the store a supply of children's books, but had no luck with Newt Gingrich's ''Winning the Future'' (''No one buys him here,'' said Mr. Winokur).

Around lunchtime, Neil Harrison, another regular who's lived mostly on the street, showed up with a stash of leather-bound 19th-century books, their marbleized covers aswirl with greens and blues. He said that a building superintendent had allowed him to clear out a storage area used by a man who had died whose family did not want the books. Mr. Harrison didn't know the authors -- Thackeray, Gibbon -- but he knew enough to know that the books had value.

Sure enough, the books went straight to the third floor, where book preservationists would clean them up and eventually offer them for sale. ''Six hundred,'' Mr. Winokur told him (he thought the store could sell the Thackeray volumes for between $1,000 and $1,500). When he heard the number, Mr. Harrison crossed himself, then whooped. He peeled off a $20 to give a clerk as a tip; he left and came back five minutes later to hand Mr. Winokur $20, paying back some money he'd borrowed from the store the week before.

Is there any other industry in which such high-quality goods regularly make their way to consumers via a trash bin? Stand in the bookselling line at the Strand and the store starts to feel less like a dusty bastion of erudition and more like a messy, mulchy place where old ideas struggle to find new life.

Even in better days than these for books, the economy of publishing was bloated, based on guesswork, mercurial taste and the talents of people whose keenest interests rarely included making money. Book recycling in Manhattan is just the opposite, a perfectly efficient system with no fat at all: So many discarded books go from someone's garbage to a scavenger to a bookseller and, often enough, land gently in someone else's home. Feel guilty, if you must, for never finishing Tony Judt's ''Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945''; but don't feel guilty for chucking it. It will most likely live to haunt someone else's bedside table. It will find a new home.

Tommy Books and Leprechaun would like a new home themselves, they said. Also, a van.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BOOKSTORES (90%); RETAILERS (75%); MATERIALS RECOVERY & RECYCLING (72%); USED MERCHANDISE STORES (72%); CHILDREN'S LITERATURE (72%); WOMEN (69%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (90%) NEW YORK, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: January 18, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Strand Bookstore, at Broadway and 12th Street, is known for its selection of used books.(PHOTOGRAPH BY LIBRADO ROMERO/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1174 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 18, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

Edwards Attacks Obama for View of Reagan
BYLINE: By JULIE BOSMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 362 words
DATELINE: HENDERSON, Nev.
The legacy of Ronald Reagan was invoked in the Democratic nominating race on Thursday when John Edwards attacked Senator Barack Obama for remarks he made to a Nevada newspaper suggesting praise for Reagan.

Mr. Obama made the comments in an interview with the editorial board of the newspaper, The Reno Gazette-Journal. He said Reagan had ''changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.''

''He tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, 'We want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing,'<0>'' Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said.

Speaking at an event on Thursday, Mr. Edwards told the crowd that Mr. Obama used Reagan ''as an example of change,'' a description with which Mr. Edwards strongly disagreed.

''When you think about what Ronald Reagan did to the American people, to the middle class, to the working people,'' Mr. Edwards said, adding that Reagan was intolerant of unions and the labor movement, he ''created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day.''

''This president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change,'' Mr. Edwards added, referring to himself.

The remarks were made as Mr. Edwards tried to be heard in a race that has increasingly focused on the winners of the two Democratic contests so far, Mr. Obama in Iowa and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said Mr. Edwards was mischaracterizing Mr. Obama's remarks.

''Obviously, Obama strongly disagreed with a lot of what Ronald Reagan did,'' Mr. Burton said. ''He was simply acknowledging Reagan's ability to change the political landscape.''

Mr. Edwards has been campaigning heavily in Nevada this week, but is not running television commercials as he marshals resources for later contests. The state's caucuses will be held on Saturday.

On Friday, he will depart on a tour to include Oklahoma, Missouri, Georgia and South Carolina, among the next states to vote.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 2008 (90%); US STATE GOVERNMENT (78%); CAUCUSES (78%); POLITICS (78%); INTERVIEWS (78%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (66%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (54%); TAXES & TAXATION (53%)
COMPANY: RENO GAZETTE JOURNAL (58%)
PERSON: RONALD REAGAN (99%); BARACK OBAMA (95%); JOHN EDWARDS (94%); RICHARD NIXON (57%); BILL CLINTON (57%); HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEVADA, USA (95%); ILLINOIS, USA (79%); SOUTH CAROLINA, USA (79%); GEORGIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (95%)
LOAD-DATE: January 18, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1175 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 17, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Putting A Guy In His Place
BYLINE: By GUY TREBAY
SECTION: Section G; Column 0; Style Desk; FASHION REVIEW; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1462 words
DATELINE: Milan
AMONG the many practical elements missing from Miuccia Prada's latest collection of men's wear for winter 2008 were coats, scarves, hats or much of anything else to keep out the cold. This was not the only thing to suggest Ms. Prada has some complex sexual issues to work through.

Speaking after Sunday's show to Suzy Menkes, the fashion critic for The International Herald Tribune, Ms. Prada quipped that the collection was revenge on men for the social and sartorial contortions they impose on women. She laughed when she said it, but she clearly wasn't kidding around.

It is no stretch to suggest that the Prada collection read like the manifesto of a gender revanchist. The man in Ms. Prada's current vision was domesticated and so passive as to be a neuter. One notes this not merely because the models looked abnormally robotic and were given nothing to wear outside the house.

Like a flipped version of the Unwomen in Margaret Atwood's feminist parable ''The Handmaid's Tale,'' the Prada Unman was gotten up in humiliating tutu belts, severe high-collar shirts that buttoned up the back and odd cummerbunds that disappeared in a chevron down the front of trousers conspicuously lacking a fly.

As usual with this designer, there were things to admire: a lean clerical silhouette, the severity of a nearly monochrome palette, the way color and its absence were used to mark out the torso in floating zones. But when designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering. It is one thing to nudge men toward exploring their girly sides and quite another to suggest they sit to urinate.

Still, points to the woman who is without question the most intellectually alert designer to show here for exploiting an idea while most of the competition is content to rummage through a grab bag of shopworn cultural references, slack attitudes and cliches.

There are, in other words, days in the life of a fashion observer when having a nail driven into one's skull seems preferable to sitting through another evocation of the so-called rock 'n' roll style. True, there was a time when rock stars dressed with offhand brio and loony extravagance and actually wore leather pants. But Jim Morrison, for the record, died in 1971. Except for style hounds like Rufus Wainwright and Amy Winehouse, most musicians these days dress for the stage in more or less the same crumpled Levi's corduroy jeans they wear to compose their songs, sitting in a bedroom at a computer screen.

So it seems willfully dated when designers like Frida Giannini at Gucci haul out the paisley scarves, the velvets, the eyeliner, the grommet boots and wraparound Gypsy belts. Her collection was informed by a narrative she titled ''Russian Rock.'' It was styled after a singer from the group Gogol Bordello named Eugene Hutz.

If you happen to have visited Moscow lately, you are aware that Russian rockers are no more likely to dress this way than are their Western counterparts, at least not without a self-conscious wink. Subdued chic is Russia's new order of the day, and this extends even to musicians. The coolest, and in some sense the most fashionable, person I saw on a recent visit was a musician walking in Red Square with his head shaved except for a cascade of dreadlocks and with a wide belt cinching blue workman coveralls.

A look like that might be pushing things at Gucci, a multinational whose challenge is to ''model'' markets -- that is, standardize taste and expectation among luxury goods consumers in markets both established and new.

Yet it would be a lot more credible and refreshing than a Gucci collection that seemed like a momentary pause on a style loop that included, as it often does, other rock-inspired designers like Ennio Capasa at Costume National (Pete Doherty still holds sway at this label), or Roberto Cavalli, whose surprisingly subdued show of suits with peaked shoulders, nipped waists and wide-leg trousers also included his more signature ostentations, like outerwear made of snakeskin or patterned to look like leopard or giraffe or even (this closed the show) a PETA-defiant coat that resembled the pelt of King Kong.

''Designing a collection is like producing a record,'' the rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z said at a private dinner Donatella Versace gave after her show. Wearing a Versace suit, with a tie held in place by an emerald Cartier tie bar (a gift from his girlfriend, Beyonce Knowles), he scooped a bite of creamy lemon mousse from a tuile.

''It's about telling your story, telling your truth,'' said the musician who remains one of the most novelistic artists hip-hop has produced.

He was correct. Narrative drives fashion. Ms. Versace's is a tale of survival, and in the years since she quit a formidable cocaine habit and dedicated herself to reviving the flagging label, she has moved the company's story forward shrewdly and with intelligence. The hiring of Alexandre Plokhov, the award-winning designer of Cloak, to assist with Versace's men's wear business resulted in a collection that not only looked East for design cues but also seemed to take seriously the idea that the future may be chilling in all kinds of ways.

This was made clear not so much by the snug suits as by the somber long coats that looked suitable for a stroll through Gorky Park. Wearing one, a man might experience a feeling opposite that evoked by the Prada collection. He might feel empowered, as Ms. Versace claimed she is whenever she slips on a 31-carat diamond ring given to her by her late brother, Gianni. At any rate, he might feel fortified against the winds of winter and a rapidly cooling economy.

DESPITE an occasional obligatory reference to the failure of the subprime mortgage market, there was little about the shows here to suggest that anyone was suffering the financial jitters. Yet perhaps the sobriety of the Armani show, whose keyword was ''regal,'' was a cue.

Design surprises were few in an Armani collection built on caution and control. Those are values that made the designer one of Italy's wealthiest citizens and his brand among the most recognizable in the world. Those are his creative defaults. Thus his show read as the sartorial equivalent of a stop-loss order. The message was risk-averse.

What every guy needs most in his wardrobe in economic times like these, Mr. Armani seemed to be saying, is a solid interview suit. The fellow wearing the clothes Raf Simons presented at Jil Sander, by contrast, had better have a private income, since it is far from likely that anyone wearing one of Mr. Simons's ingenious suits or coats, needle-punched and printed in a marble pattern with inkjet technology, will ever find a job.

In general, it is considered unchic to bring up gainful employment when the subject is fashion; real-world concerns are not supposed to penetrate this sphere. And while it is exciting to track designers with the kind of scope Mr. Simons has shown in reinventing the Jil Sander brand, sometimes all that ingenuity becomes an end in itself, and the vision goes flat.

And sometimes it seems finely resolved, as in Tomas Maier's show for Bottega Veneta, perhaps the week's most satisfying, in which he recast ordinary work gear for the label's clientele of putative gazillionaires. It is never clear to this observer who the client is for Mr. Maier's phenomenally costly clothing, but he certainly makes one wish one could afford to join their ranks.

''We were looking at functionality,'' the designer explained, as well as the connection between what a man does and what he wears. From the boxy trousers, the taut jackets, the heavy denims and the so-called chore coats, one deduces that Mr. Maier is dressing garage mechanics, albeit those who have hit it big in the lottery.

Mr. Maier's was a beautiful show and as direct as Alexander McQueen's was vagrant, and also lyrical. Inspired by a pilgrimage to India, Mr. McQueen said the show was originally intended to have an Argentine pampas theme. Then he decided to embark on a monthlong journey through Kerala and Rajasthan and the remote and lawless state of Bihar -- where Mr. McQueen, a Buddhist, visited the place in which Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment -- ending up in the isolated mountain kingdom of Bhutan.

The enormous last-minute changes resulted in a collection that wed masterful tailoring to subtle effects created with safety pins and wirework embroidery and that also featured a coat that looked like yeti fur and another that was Mr. McQueen's rendition of the Bhutanese national costume, the go.

''The design assistants were not too thrilled, I can tell you,'' the designer remarked backstage last Saturday evening.

I was.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FASHION & APPAREL (90%); MEN (90%); FASHION DESIGNERS (89%); POP & ROCK (84%); FUR & LEATHER CLOTHING (78%); MEN'S CLOTHING (78%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (66%); MUSIC COMPOSITION (60%); MUSIC (60%); SONG WRITING (60%); SINGERS & MUSICIANS (60%)
PERSON: MIUCCIA PRADA (94%)
LOAD-DATE: January 17, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: CALL OF THE WILD: Outerwear by Versace, above left

Alexander McQueen, above

and Roberto Cavalli, right, were part of the 2008 winter collection. Above right, a patterned suit from Jil Sander. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LUCA BRUNO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALESSANDRO GAROFALO/REUTERS

BAZZI/EUROPEAN PRESS AGENCY

DAMIEN MEYER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

GIULIO DI MAURO/EUROPEAN PRESS AGENCY

ALESSANDRO GAROFALO/REUTERS

GIUSEPPE ARESU/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALESSANDRO GAROFALO/REUTERS) (pg. G5)

ALL GUSSIED UP: At the Milan show, from left: a regal look from Giorgio Armani

a Prada outfit (tutu included)

Gucci's rock theme

a Bottega Veneta close-fitting jacket

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN (PHOTOGRAPH BY GIUSEPPE ARESU/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

COSTUME NATIONAL (PHOTOGRAPH BY KARL PROUSE/CATWALKING/GETTY IMAGES)

BOTTEGA VENETA (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMIEN MEYER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES)

BURBERRY (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMIEN MEYER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES)

BURBERRY ALESSANDRO GAROFALO/REUTERS BURBERRY (PHOTOGRAPH BY ALESSANDRO GAROFALO/REUTERS)

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN (PHOTOGRAPH BY ALESSANDRO GAROFALO/REUTERS) (pg. G5)

TAMED: At the Miuccia Prada's 2008 winter collection, where the vision was domesticated and passive and included high-collar shirts that buttoned up the back and trousers lacking a fly. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMIEN MEYER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES) (pg. G1)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1176 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 17, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Ireland Uses Incentives To Help Start-Ups Flourish
BYLINE: By JAMES FLANIGAN
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 1134 words
DATELINE: DUBLIN
Ireland is now alive with enthusiasm for entrepreneurs, who seemingly rank just below rock stars in popularity.

For evidence, consider the Ernst & Young accounting firm's award for Irish Entrepreneur of the Year. The award show was prime-time television fare in October. (The winner, Liam Casey, runs a business, now based in China, that arranges for products to be manufactured and shipped from China to customers in Europe and the United States.)

Then there are the government-sponsored studies proclaiming that Ireland ranks third in the European Union in early-stage entrepreneurial activity. And Enterprise Ireland, an agency of the Irish government that gives fledgling small companies a helping hand, has even leased space in an office building in Midtown Manhattan to serve as an incubator for businesses hoping to expand into the American market.

The relatively new emphasis on entrepreneurs in Ireland is the culmination of nearly four decades of government policies that have lifted the economy from centuries of poverty to modern prosperity.

The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.

''The change came in the 1990s,'' said James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. ''Taxes and interest rates came down, and all of a sudden we believed in ourselves.''

The new environment also encouraged Ray Nolan, who founded Raven Computing in 1989 to provide software for lawyers to keep track of billable hours. He sold that company and founded another that created software for companies to manage billing and receipts. And in 1999, he founded Web Reservations International to provide booking and property management for hostels that cater to backpackers and economy travelers.

''Hostel owners needed to keep track of people sharing rooms, and bookings for Americans coming to Dublin for three nights,'' said Feargal Mooney, chief operating officer of Web Reservations. ''Hostel accommodations go for 10 to 20 euro a night,'' he said, or $15 to $30 at today's exchange rates, ''so booking reservations in them wasn't profitable for the big travel companies.''

As the business grew -- its 100 employees and banks of computers now handle reservations for some 50,000 hostels in 166 countries -- Web Reservations was offered an equity investment by Enterprise Ireland. ''But we said this is our baby, we didn't want to give up equity,'' Mr. Mooney said.

But the company, which is expanding in the United States and in China, has taken advantage of the agency's help to open operations in Shanghai and New York. ''They've helped us with introductions to government officials in China, and we're in the office space on Park Avenue, expanding our systems in the States,'' Mr. Mooney said.

Government help for Irish entrepreneurs grew out of an overall economic policy devised in 1987 that reduced personal taxes, said Kevin Sherry, a director of Enterprise Ireland who specializes in start-up companies.

Income tax rates in Ireland today are 20 percent on the first $50,000 of income and 41 percent on income above that. But there are value-added taxes of 21 percent levied on all goods and transactions, with the exception of health and medical services, children's clothing and food.

The tax on corporate profits, though, is 12.5 percent, which is an incentive to own a business. And government helps out. ''We have helped over 300 people or groups in the last dozen years or so,'' Mr. Sherry said.

Enterprise Ireland has also put up initial capital for venture investment funds and supports research and development. ''We must support new approaches, nanotechnology, biotechnology and other sciences,'' Mr. Sherry said, ''because we cannot succeed in the future using what got us here in the past.''

Colm O'Gorman, who teaches entrepreneurship in master of business administration courses at Dublin City University, said the government agency is at the heart of several trends. Enterprise Ireland ''supports research and development at Irish companies and universities,'' Professor O'Gorman said, ''and it is encouraging more women to become entrepreneurs, as the role of women has changed in Irish life.''

One reason for many changes in Ireland is its membership in the European Union, which has brought new perspectives and regulations from its governing councils in Brussels.

Elaine Doorly, for example, founded Radiation Safety Ireland three years ago to advise industry on effects of radiation in building materials, scanners and other sources, an evolving field that is driven by regulation from Brussels.

Ms. Doorly runs her consulting company part time while also working as the health officer specializing in radiological protection for the University of Dublin-Trinity College, the institution that is a leading site of Irish scientific research. She has held that post for 10 years.

''I run training courses and consult with companies that are coping with the huge variety of radiation in ordinary objects, including the many screening systems that have been put in place since 9/11,'' said Ms. Doorly, who has a doctorate in physics from Trinity. ''It's a growth field but a niche industry.''

Mr. Murphy, 46, of Lifes2Good is one of the entrepreneurs who has expanded his business beyond Ireland's borders. He qualified as a chartered accountant in the 1980s and worked in several countries in Europe before returning to Ireland in 1991 looking to own a business.

He served as financial officer for the inventor of a device that used electrical current to ease muscle pain and learned how to market such treatments by making infomercials for television stations in Europe.

Mr. Murphy founded Lifes2Good in 1997. Using infomercials to promote micro-current pain relief and health and beauty aids, the business spread throughout Britain and the Continent and grew to 40 employees and $30 million in annual revenue. Now he is trying to expand in the United States.

''When you come to the U.S., you have to be prepared to lose a couple of hundred grand for six months without panicking,'' Mr. Murphy said. His American operation also works out of Enterprise Ireland on Park Avenue.

Mr. Sherry of Enterprise Ireland said the passion behind the efforts to support entrepreneurs comes from a desire to make Ireland a better place. ''We're old enough to remember when times weren't good. We don't want to go back there.''

Download 3.51 Mb.

Share with your friends: