It’s our less <$20 tote bag of the week, and we found it on Etsy, which we like to much often think of as a wild-y, overgrown ... er, garage, or something. Meaning that sometimes we find it hard to navigate. Whatever. Cute secretary graphic! And only $8! You can just not beat $8. Really. Unless it is one of those things where you forgot you bought it, and then found it in your closet. That is really exciting, and free. Otherwise, we feel confident with the $8 purchase.

Secretary tote, $8

Because we 31-year-old women are so disconnected from, you know, philosophy, economics, and all the, like, “issues of the day,” we thought we would share some Belgian graffiti \ poetry \ etc. We hesitate after our splash \ frog problem earlier this week, but we think this means something like:

Finally one sees fewer and fewer people that one truly meets.

Okay, we have no idea what that means. Anyone who did better in French than we did?

Really we are putting this up because last night we were walking home from yoga, just like always, and the guy in front of suddenly stops walking, drops his pants, and pisses on the sidewalk, just close enough so that our feet are in the pee-splash circle. Seriously: How much soap do you need until you are over that? We don’t have the answer, because we don’t have enough soap. Oh, San Francisco. Love it or leave it, etc.

From Mediabistro:

Us Weekly editor Janice Min expressed the trouble she and other women in her magazine’s demographic — 31-year-olds, on average — are having in keeping up with news that doesn’t involve Jessica Simpson:

These are women who are probably not engaged with the prominent issues of the day, Iraq, terrorism — they are tuned out. News is not being presented to them in interesting ways … Believe it or not, I am actually quite interested in Iraq and politics, and I find CNN or most evening news broadcasts unwatchable.

We are so confused. Really? We just don’t get it. We are, we will say, 31. We are shrugging, and frowning: Seriously? We’re tuned out? Seriously? Because really, we feel quite tuned in. Like, re: the war. We are totally baffled by the “interesting ways” part. What is the goal there? We are thinking that by “interesting” she means “incisive, clear, accurate, and unbiased.” Yes! That must be it. Okay, so we understand that her main point is that TV news sucks, and believe us, we agree, and we’ll get to that in second. But: We find ourselves very engaged with the prominent issues of the day, like when we get probed at the airport, or when we are in a foreign country and people start rolling their eyes as soon as they hear our accent.

Now, let’s be clear, we were talking to this brilliant young artist the other day (read! about it! in Nylon! in about four months!), feeling very inadequate and unproductive, and he was talking about how TV news is such a black hole, and he was like, “You know, the Crocodile Hunter dies, and it’s all you hear about on TV. And we’re at war.” And his point was that this is one person and there’s this media uproar, and three dozen people were blown up trying to get to the gas station in Baghdad and nobody makes much fuss about it. And well, we disagree with the specifics of his point—Crocodile Hunter! love the Crocodile Hunter and the Wildlife Warriors! the man was an icon!—but: We live in a major metropolitan area, and our local TV station is dedicating a nice chunk of time tonight to—we shit you not, we swear to God: “Squirrels attack parkgoers.” Squirrel attacks parkgoers. Thirty-one-year women are not tuning out the media. The media, at least this local TV news media in a major metropolitan area, is treating 31-year-old women like dipshits.

We are going to wake up in the middle of the night screaming “Not engaged in the prominent issues of the day? Really? Seriously? Are you for real?”

It’s always whine, whine, whine here. Recently we were complaining about how it was “annoying” that a particular pair of boots (by Twenty Two shoes) cost more than another pair of boots.

To illustrate where we are going with this, we were recently sitting in a film workshop, and the teacher was talking about a film we had made with three other people. Like always, the parts we shot were overexposed and unfocused. So then our teacher says to the class, “I really loved the part that was overexposed—” And we’re all overjoyed and actually yell out, “[We] shot that!” And then he’s like, “Really? The part with [something we actually did not shoot]?” And the guy sitting next to us is like, “Oh, yeah, I did that.” And we felt like the biggest assholes on the planet. And we wanted to be like, “It was only because of the thing about it being totally overexposed, not because we thought we did well….” But of course, we could not, so we just sat there and waited for class to end.

So: We read a comment left by one of the Twenty Two designers, defending his boots’ price point, which we had labeled as “annoying.” And we realized it probably sounded like we were saying they were annoying, or that they were trying to overcharge people, which was not at all what we intended, because we do not think that either of those things are true at all. What we meant was that it was annoying that we are not rich, and in possession of thousands of pairs of boots. Okay, not thousands. Two, for example. And then we read his comment and felt like assholes all over again. We are becoming tragically accustomed to this.

As a deserved mea culpa, we thought we would just run a few more of their pieces, because they are all gorgeous, and we wish we owned all of them. In order of the ones we would buy immediately:

These are without a doubt our dream wedge boots. Why is it so hard to find your dream wedge boots? It sort of reminds us of that Capital One ad where the guy’s looking for the pot of gold and the leprechaun’s there with a Capital One card. Really. Is nothing sacred? Er, we are straining the analogy, but the boots are sort of the pot of gold here. Warsaw boot, $390

Look at that lovely heel. These are the ones we would like to wear with our exciting new gray wool tights. Verona shoes, $285. Also in a green we like just as much.

These are the boots we would wear to our salon every single day if it were not for the bleach-mopping problem. Oooh, foldover boots. Lovely. Sigh. Nice boots, $395

Honestly, we can barely express how badly we want a pair of white boots. Samara boots, $375

Speaking of cheap bags: lovely hobo! They describe it as “gorgeous faux leather,” three words we are not accustomed to seeing strung along like that, but fair enough: We’re just not grumpy bitches enough to care if someone’s bag is cheap. More like, we’re thinking, they probably have money to spend on things like food and linens. It is quite hard to find bags under $20, especially if we try to look outside corporate means, which is difficult. (If anyone is making these at home, let us know + we would be happy to feature some indie people.) This one just makes the $$ limit, anyway.

Fantasia Hobo, $19.80

This week, in FU: ToWWWPI: T-shirts advertising bail bonds firms. This must mean they also have pens and note-pads advertising 1-800-BAIL-OUT. What does it mean in your life, when you have a bail bond company’s marketing efforts in your handbag? Nothing good, we are thinking.

Er, don’t mind the glare, and pls note the perfectly reasonable wedge boots ruined by bizarr-o world buckles. Why would they do that? Mystifying, no? The Durrific, $160

Maybe we will get these Kenneth Coles instead:

KC Reaction wedge boots, $225

Or maybe we will forget the wedge issue entirely, and get these in cream and also in the un-shown blue. Honestly, these are amazing.

Rock Dove Boots, $388

Shorts! We made it through the summer having completely avoided them, except in their American Apparel form, but now that it’s fall, we find ourselves strangely drawn to them, like pumpkin patches, cider, and those apples in plastic packaging covered in caramel and nuts. (Mmm: fall. Particularly delicious, among the seasons. Except at Starbucks (which we normally avoid but needed desperately the other day, as we cured our murderous, almost-thought-we-might-die caffeine-withdrawal headache): pumpkin latte? Blergh.

Anyway: shorts. We like shorts in the fall, particularly when they are worn with big woolen sweaters. We are going to avoid pairing them with tights, because we prefer not to look like Oompa-Loompas in public, but to the models in our reading audience, we say: Go for it! Enjoy that. We will not be doing that. We will be fine on our own.

So anyway again: shorts. We like them short. Is that a pun? Possibly yes, and possibly it is still effective, because there are also so many versions of the knee-length "short," which we really think more of as a fabric-challenged pant. Oooh, you know what we mean. All we’re saying is: It’s fall, we want out shorts, our tweeds, and quite possibly a nice little lunch packed in a brown paper bag. It all goes together, is what we’re saying.

These are quite long, no? We’re not convinced we like how they’re styled, especially with those shoe-boots, but … and that belt, we don’t like the belt either. We do, however, enjoy the plaid. 3.1 Phillip Lim cuffed shorts, $195

Love these tweed shorts, hate those sheer stockings. Pantyhose. Whatever. But love the plaid. Alice + Olivia shorts, $198

And these are quite short. That’s a two-inch inseam. That is not a lot of fabric. These are the kinds of shorts we’ll wear on the subway and be all, "And what are we supposed to sit on here? Surely not … the plastic seat?" NB In San Francisco we would just stand, the better to avoid the saliva. American Eagle plaid shorts, on sale for $29.95

Also quite short. Quite like that brown plaid. Old Navy women’s plaid shorts, on sale for $20

"Jet black wool shorts" from Johnson. Those are really maybe too short for us. Johnson Hijiki shorts, $220

We believe, hope, and expect this was done with love.

So this is our official post on the Painted Bird, officially our very favorite store west of the Mississippi. Vintage dresses, around $14. $14! We don’t mind the bleach-mopping when we’re wearing a dress that costs less than a cab ride. A fairly expensive cab ride, mind, but still: a cab ride.

The best thing about this store was that we tried on five dresses: two we bought. For some reason we only have pictures of the ones we did not buy, but they were excellent in their way. Like the vintage DVF dress, which we would have skipped all the way home with if it wasn’t the completely wrong size. It was pretty awesome. And $16.99. That is amazing.

Then there was this Celine-y shirtdress, but for some reason it was closer to the price we would have expected to pay for the DVF dress, $49.99. That, unfortunately, was more than our budget would allow, and we were quite glad to find a small rip in it, or we would have probably talked ourselves into buying it instead of paying our student loan bill on time.

And this, we actually wish we’d bought this one, because honestly, terry sunset-print summer cover-up? Fuck. Maybe we will go back and look for it. That’s hysterical.

And here is the outside, in case you were wondering what it looks like. Honestly, we are going back this weekend.

Details:
Painted Bird
1201A Guerrero @ 24th
(415) 401-7027
“Open 7 days a week from 11-8″