An Interview: Jonathan Safran Foer

“There comes a point when we have to decide what’s right and wrong.” -Jonathan Safran Foer

Photography by Gianluca Gentilini

Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, I took a deep breath and called my mother and sister in successive order to tell them that I would not be eating turkey for the holiday. “Or any other meat for that matter,” I declared. “Ever.” I had just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, Eating Animals, and it cinched my decision to go veggie.

My sister’s first reaction was to say that she could not cheat her 3-year old son out of the tradition of having a roast beast on the table. My mother, playing Switzerland, announced that everyone was entitled to their own opinion. I think my announcement surprised them. My subsequent conversations with family, friends, and co-workers certainly surprised me. With so much cultural attention paid over the past several years to slow food and eating locally, I could not get over how little most people knew (myself included) about the factory farm system in the United States.

Choosing not to eat meat is a surprisingly impactful decision. Before reading Foer’s book — his first nonfiction work since writing the novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — I’d been a self-proclaimed “part-time vegetarian,” mostly because of stomach issues. I was unaware of the facts that factory-farmed meat is the leading cause of global warming in the world and that these places are incubators for some of the planet’s most potent and potentially disastrous diseases, such as the H1N1 virus. I did not realize that small family farms, the self-sustaining kind with chickens and goats and pigs and tractors‚ are nearly extinct. I certainly did not consider how horribly the animals are treated.

For me, and many people like me, I believed those concerns were reserved for the fringes of society. I was wrong, and the facts prove it out. There is no greater mainstream issue than what we eat and where our food comes from. Right now, our current system is an environmental, biological, and ethical disaster. I recently asked Foer what, if anything, we can do about it.

SAM MARTIN: Not everyone is going to pick up a book called Eating Animals. What’s the best way to let people know about the damaging effects of factory farms without scaring them off?

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: It’s difficult. We’re so used to thinking of this as a divisive, accusatory, fight-inspiring conversation. And it’s a shame. Because I really do think that, if we had full access to what’s going on in factory farms, everyone would agree — and by agree, I don’t mean that we all become vegetarians — that factory farming is a broken system that doesn’t reflect our values. Who would want a farm system that is the leading cause of global warming? Or one of the two or three most damaging things to the environment? And who would want to treat animals in this way?

So the problem has been that it’s all been framed as this divisive, black-and-white issue. You’re either a vegetarian or you’re not. You either care or don’t. And that can put people who care in an exasperating place. I hope this book will allow us to think about food in the way we think about the environment. We can do things better than we’ve done them in the past.

MARTIN: After reading about how entrenched, widespread, and damaging U.S. factory farming is — to the health of humans, animals, and the planet — changing the system seems like an insurmountable goal. Is it?

FOER: No. First of all, there are a number of things to remember. One is, it’s new. It’s only 50 years old. People have been farming in a different way for the past 10,000 years. The fact that it rose this quickly almost holds the promise that it can be dismantled just as quickly. Consumers have so much power in this situation. It’s rare that consumers have this much power. Farmers grow and produce what people ask for. As we ask for different things, they will farm different things. Finally, the demographics are compelling and promising in terms of who cares and who doesn’t. Eighteen percent of university students are now vegetarian. When that 18 percent starts to become the next generation of writers and doctors and farmers and other professionals, the conversation will feel very different than it might feel now.

MARTIN: Eating locally farmed meat seems to be attracting a growing number of people. Is this a good alternative to eating factory farmed animals, or is it still a questionable practice?

FOER: I think there are two questions: “Is it good?” and “Is it perfect?” Local farming isn’t perfect, but it is so much better than what’s available in the mainstream. And it’s better in every single way — for humans, animals, the environment, global warming, and so on. Is it the answer? It’s part of the answer. Personally, I don’t get terribly excited about [locally farmed meat]. And I don’t eat it. I don’t believe it can be scaled. So to endorse it would be for personal reasons only. But most Americans fundamentally agree on the goals, which is to have farms that are better for human health. Some people have this belief that people are never going to move away from meat so they say, “Let’s have a decent farm system.” Other people say, “Let’s stop eating meat because we’re never going to have a good farming system.” I’m more in the second category. I think there are things we ought to agree on. We have to stop giving antibiotics to farm animals. We have to stop fishing the way we’re fishing. It won’t last. And I think we can all agree we shouldn’t keep pregnant pigs in cages so small they can’t turn around in them. That’s wrong. You don’t have to like pigs at all to know that. There comes a point when we have to decide what’s right and wrong.

MARTIN: Even using the most humane animal slaughtering practices, farmers are still, in the end, killing. Can you explain why we ought to consider animal welfare in this debate?

FOER: I think we can’t help but consider it. If you saw someone kicking a dog, you might not intervene, but can you say you would be indifferent to it? Caring is a human instinct, and it goes against our nature not to care. I don’t love animals. I don’t think they should be treated as humans. There are irrational places that one can take one’s concern for animals, and I won’t go there. But it defies our human instincts to treat them as if they had no feeling‚ or as if that feeling had no effect. Killing animals is, in a way, the least bad thing that we do to them. If you ask the American public if it’s okay to kill animals for food, most would say yes. But if you ask them if it’s okay to remove appendages from an animal while it’s still alive or keep a pregnant pig in a cage that it can’t turn around in — are there really people who think that’s okay?

MARTIN: One recurring subject in Eating Animals is the notion that people are nostalgic for food traditions (the Thanksgiving turkey is the most obvious example). This seems to be a big reason why many people are reluctant to give these foods up, even to the detriment of their health and the health of the planet. Why is it that virtually everything about storybook farms and the production of traditional foods has changed, yet the sentiment attached in consuming these foods has remained, even when people are educated about the horrors of modern animal agriculture? Why is there a disconnect?

FOER: I don’t think it’s a disconnect. Let’s give people the benefit of the doubt. They’re making a rational decision. They’re saying, “I know the process is not good, but I don’t care.” I would say, “Fine. Keep your barbecue on the Fourth of July, your Christmas ham, and your Thanksgiving turkey. But get rid of the meat that you don’t care about — the fast-food hamburger or the Chinese restaurant chicken.” Nine-tenths of meat consumed is meat we don’t care about. What happens is that people take the exceptions to get them off the hook for the everyday. That’s where these conversations get skewed. When people talk about these exceptional uses of food, that’s right. They are exceptions. Let’s talk about the normal.

MARTIN: You write a lot about traditions surrounding food in your own family. Since simultaneously becoming a father and a vegetarian, are there any new or modified food traditions you have started?

FOER: The only tradition we’ve started, I would say, is having a conversation around food. We hadn’t been doing that. We hadn’t been thinking about it. The fact that food now has a story served with it is different and good. It enhances the cultural value of food. All the good things we would miss [by not eating meat], we more than make up for with stories about why and what we don’t eat.

MARTIN: For someone just being introduced to the factory-farm system in the U.S., it can be hard to feel any hope that things will change. What are you excited about, and where do you find hope? What keeps you going?

FOER: I just read a recent poll that 70 percent of Americans are willing to spend more money for more ethically produced food. This isn’t San Francisco or New York; it’s the whole country. That’s an amazing number. People care about this stuff. Even if you don’t care, you have to care, because you have these annoying instincts. I think as our lines of sight are opened up, more people will think, “Hey, this is something we really want to know about.” And behavior changes will follow. And the 18 percent [in college right now] are tastemakers. As they get older, we will see vegetarianism in a new light..

Sam Martin is the senior editor at frog design and the editor-in-chief of design mind. He’s based in frog’s Austin studio.

*Via Frog Design

An Interview: Andy Spade

“I think the myth in marketing is that consistency is the answer”  –Andy Spade

Michael Williams, the force behind one of my new favorite blogs, A Continuous Lean, has recently collaborated with David Coggins to create the series, At the Bar.  At the Bar features interviews with people that have a stake in the design world.  His most recent interview features Andy Spade, one of my favorite creatives.  There is a practicality in the way that Andy Spade sees the world that I admire and appreciate.  We need more people that are as thoughtful about their impact and contribution as this man is.   Enjoy!

Andy Spade’s arc of success is well-documented and yet it remains a cause for satisfaction. The simple, utilitarian design exemplified by Jack Spade seems straightforward, but like a good bistro or garage band, the key is the execution. It turns out that’s not so easy after all. Jack Spade also worked because it was at home in any neighborhood, dressed up or down. And yet it never took itself so seriously it couldn’t release a frog dissection kit.  The case of Andy Spade is a reminder that just because something feels inevitable doesn’t mean it isn’t visionary.

We met at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle Hotel.

David Coggins: You live up here by Bemelman’s?

Andy Spade: Right, just around the corner.

DC: And you’re drinking a Vodka Southside.

AS: Right.  It’s a southern summer drink with vodka, simple syrup, a little lime juice and soda water.  Usually it’s made with gin.  That’s my favorite light drink.  This is what I order in a bar, at home we drink wine.  We spend our summers in California, so we drink a lot of wine, mostly red.  I love this Alexis cabernet is by the Swanson family, who are friends of ours.

DC: This is a great bar to have down the street.

AS: When my wife and I first moved to New York it was our treat to come up here and listen to music.  I’d lived downtown my whole time in New York.  When I moved up here 10 years ago people said, ‘You’re selling out.’  I said ‘New York’s a mile long, if you go up 50 blocks you haven’t changed your entire life.’  I want to have a tree on my block.  Andy Warhol lived on the Upper East Side, Woody Allen lives up here.

DC: You’re associated with Greene Street and Warren Street.

AS: Now Great Jones.  I love good New York City streets.  We started out on Renwick Street and then to Prince and then to Crosby—this is all in the 80’s and early 90’s.  Then we moved to Warren Street.  Our building, like a lot of buildings in Tribeca, was sold.

DC: Were those raw spaces?

AS: Totally raw.  We had a top floor and the roof.  And a lot of degenerates sleeping in the hall.  Then finally my wife said ‘You’ve dragged me around downtown for 15 years, it’s my turn.’  So we found this cool old place up here.

DC: Partners & Spade does a lot of different projects—it’s everything under one roof.

AS: There are two parts to it: there’s the storefront part which we wanted because we loved the idea of being on street level and being in touch with the city.  We wanted to have a space that allowed us to put together all the things we love: advertising, art, design, films, writing, objects. And the back of the space is the studio—all we need is two turntables and a microphone.  We can work the Bowery Hotel if we need more room.  We’re open by appointment or if you knock really loudly.  And I like putting together shows and giving people a chance to show their work.

DC: It seems like you’re attracted to objects that have a some function that isn’t necessarily related to art—something designed with a primary purpose that still looks great.

AS: Exactly.  So much depends on the context and if something is presented in the right way.  The first person we hired at Jack Spade was Mike Abelson who now owns Postal Co.  He came out of Art Center in LA and he studied fine art and industrial design.  I was introduced by to him by my friend James Spindler who I knew from advertising.  He was offered a job designing cars, I said why don’t we create this thing together—he’s like a scientist.  He looks at bridges and how they’re supported when he’s designing a bag.  I wanted him to provide the technical expertise.  And the challenge was just to make a great bag.

You can read the interview in its entirety here

An Interview: Alex Calderwood

PSFK recently sat down with Alex Calderwood, founder of the Ace Hotel chain to talk about collaboration, inspiration and intuition.

Piers Fawkes: Alex, I wonder if you can talk to about the collaborations you do. It seems like there’s a kind of fantastic leverage which seems to be very on the pulse of what’s going on in terms of the culture and everything else. Why do you do these collaborations? What’s in it for you?

Alex: It’s a good question. I think in general that the company’s very much rooted in a very collaborative spirit in just the way we work. So in terms of how we create the properties, we try to involve amazing artisans or craftsman or design professionals as much as possible in their respective sort of expertise or art. And so it’s kind of in the DNA at the plan in a sense.

Piers: Why is that?

Alex: I think I’ve always been drawn to the sense of community that develops around the project. So, for example, if you come to a new city. We started in Seattle and then we went to Portland and a couple of other cities, New York and Palm Springs.

But you’re coming to a new city and so you want to create a sense of kind of emotional involvement and creative involvement from different people who are in the community. For example, like we went to New York, we felt it was very important for us to collaborate with a New York firm or New York entity that would help us develop the hotel or design the hotel for a couple of different reasons.

One, that the scale of it, it was a large scale. We just needed to have that, without us having to recreate a whole staff in New York and create a whole design office here. We felt it was more beneficial to collaborate with a firm here as well as just from a timing and logistic standpoint it made more sense just to not recreate the wheel ourselves.

And so we teamed up with this firm, Roman and Williams, and it was a very, very synergistic and very satisfying working relationship with those guys. And we felt like they really were rooted in New York and really represented what our take would be on this particular building we were working with and in this particular context.

And in the same way, when we went out to California, we chose some friends of ours and some people in Los Angeles who we felt really represented that sort of California experience.

And so anyway, to get back to your original question, for me I think that it really engenders this sense of community and kind of, again, emotional investment or emotional involvement in the project. I think that’s kind of where it starts.

And then I think that also a lot of good ideas come from various places. We’re very much a company based on the value that good ideas can come from really anybody.

Piers: Could you tell me a little more about the generation of good ideas in your company? How do you know that the relationship with Stumptown or Opening Ceremony or an artist is a good idea? What gives you that sort of sense?

Alex: Oh, sure. That. Well I think two things. For us, A) it comes down to a little bit of instinct. We’re big believers if something feels right, you at least pursue the conversation and see if it fits. And a lot of times in these things when something feels right the kind of pieces to the puzzle will start to fall into place.

Like for example, Opening Ceremony or Project No. eight or Stumptown. First of all we have a space. We reach out to them. They know what we’re doing. We know what they’re doing. You can start a dialogue. You can kind of get a sense in the beginning of the dialogue if a lot of the positive buttons are starting to kind of be pushed or starting to respond.

So part of it is interesting. But I think the more important part of it is it really comes down to people. So, really getting a sense of all of those examples, as I just mentioned, it really was the kind of direct action between our crew and them and getting the sense that the people felt right. You get a sense of where someone’s intention is coming from.

For us, if it feels like there’s a very genuine intention behind what they’re doing, and a genuine intention for us to work together, then usually kind of all the right answers will show up to have a sense, does the puzzle fall into place.

Piers: I do want to get a sense of where did you focus before that conversation happens? How do you even get the sense of who the right people are to talk to?

Alex: Right. That actually comes through a variety of different channels. Sometimes people reach out to us, and they’ll just say like, “Hey, we heard you’re doing a project, and we’re interested to be involved.”

I think, for example, with Stumptown, when we started the hotel project in Portland, kind of word got out on the street. And I can’t remember if Duane called us first — Duane’s the owner of Stumptown — or whether we called him. But basically, Stumptown is very much kind of hometown favorite in Portland, and we knew we had space, and we liked the idea of a coffee shop. So I believe in that particular instance, he had kind of contacted us first.

Sometimes it comes through other channels. For example, with Project No. eight and Opening Ceremony, there is a gentleman who’s involved in our company, named Michael Bisordi, and he also happens to own a retail brokerage firm.

So he and his staff did a really, really good job of kind of scouring through a lot of different possibilities in Manhattan that could be candidates for the various retail spaces that we had, and distilled it down to kind of like the ones that we thought were the most aligned and sort of the best fit, and really shepherded those conversations through to open up a dialog. So I, in those particular two cases, have to really try to even do a great, great job.

It’s not an easy challenge. So he and his staff did a great job of kind of going through and just really sort of handpicking various different candidates that would be good possibilities.

Piers: I imagine, you don’t suddenly then go into a round of market research to make sure it’s the right sort of company. You use some of that intuition…

Alex: Yeah, for us… I mean, let’s see here. I don’t know if we do, necessarily, a lot of deep analysis or market research, per se. We certainly do a certain level of research. But again, it is so nuanced and comes back to having your ear to the ground, and having a sense of kind of the ebb and flow of what’s going on out there, at least in terms of retail or restaurants or coffee, or whatever the particular area is. So it’s kind of a combination of, like I said, having your ear to the ground, instinct, and a certain level of research.

So it’s not like we went to a traditional retail-marketing firm and said like, “This is our demographic, and please come up with a list of [laughs] candidates that fit that.” It’s really so much more of a psychographic. It’s more nuanced than that.

Where the Wild Things Are