ALISON AND ADAM NELSON'S Chelsea apartment is largely chocolate-colored: dark chocolate-stained walnut and oak furniture; a mocha-y ultrasuede couch; living room walls the color of one of Ms. Nelson's best-selling chocolate bars, Café Con Leche, which she offers in her stylish West Village store, Chocolate Bar; and a bedroom whose walls remind her of a red-wine-infused truffle called Chocolate Lush she will be selling rafts of this weekend for Valentine's Day. These walls, painted a dark, deep, blood red, Ms. Nelson said, "are the color of the ganache at the moment you add the red wine.
"In the hall is a David LaChapelle portrait of the model Naomi Campbell digitally miniaturized and set astride a very, very large chocolate bunny. (Mr. Nelson, who is also an actor, owns a public relations company called WORKHOUSE (www.workhousepr.com); Mr. LaChapelle is a former client.) Lulu, the Nelsons' 1½-year-old daughter, sometimes refers to Ms. Campbell as "Momma." "What does it mean to live a chocolate lifestyle?" Ms. Nelson asked rhetorically the other day, in explanation of a life philosophy and business plan, and then answered: "It means having lots of fun, not taking yourself too seriously and using the best ingredients. Oh, and eating more chocolate." Lulu laughed uproariously, and Spot, a 7-year-old Lab mix (black, not chocolate) eviscerated a stuffed duck (his, not Lulu's) onto the living-room floor. Mr. Nelson deftly removed its remains with a pink Hello Kitty vacuum cleaner. Mr. Nelson, 35, and Ms. Nelson, 31, have been living in this one-bedroom in the London Terrace apartments since July 2001, when a friend's dot-com tanked and the friend couldn't pay the rent. When they signed their sublease, the wait for primary leases was about five years. (The complex, on 23rd and 24th Streets between 9th and 10th Avenues, is so big - when built, it had 1,665 apartments - it feels like its own neighborhood.) When the sublease ran out, after 9/11, Mr. Nelson said, the waiting list had vanished. Chocolate Bar's brown and orange palette - retro-reconfigured, as Mr. Nelson likes to say - is distinctly of its moment. The Nelsons' apartment, with its vintage television set, collection of double-lens reflex cameras and 40's-style telephone, is more like a sepia print of a much earlier moment sometime in the last century. "I have this thing that when someone takes a picture of me," Ms. Nelson said, "I don't want anyone to know what year it is. I have this notion of being timeless." They've been married since November 2001. A few weeks after the wedding, Ms. Nelson bonded with Mr. Nelson's college roommate's boyfriend over dinner - and a chocolate layer cake baked by the boyfriend that was devoured by Ms. Nelson. Intuitively gauging the appetites of a city starving for sin and sugar, the two sketched the outlines of Chocolate Bar, which they saw as a neighborhood hangout and candy store for grown-ups. (South Beach dieters, Ms. Nelson said with some amusement, now eat her dark chocolate bar with peanut butter spread upon it.) The store opened the following May. Monica Lewinsky was their first customer, an occurrence Ms. Nelson took to be a very good omen. Ms. Nelson is a chocolate lobbyist of the most modern sort, and Mr. Nelson is her most ardent supporter. Thinner than she has any right to be, given a daily chocolate consumption that includes two cups of Chocolate Bar's smoky-tasting hot chocolate, a spiced brownie and at least two truffles, the lovely, lanky and tattooed Ms. Nelson, have aimed to make chocolate seem urgently cool, the opposite of frou-frou. Indeed, with its ironic, 70's-era styling and deadpan candy names, Chocolate Bar is an anti-bonbon. "When the store first opened," Mr. Nelson said, "people would come in and complain about the price of its $1.35 truffles. Now, they're asking about the cacao content." Ms. Nelson talked about chocolate varietals, and about savory applications like shaving a dark bar onto French bread with olive oil and sea salt. Nelson's book, "Chocolate Bar: Recipes and Entertaining Ideas for Living the Sweet Life" (Running Press; $24.95), makes a case for a chocolate lifestyle, with recipes for spiced cocoa meatballs, a chocolate malted and a chocolate body scrub. For photographs, it uses not the usual chocolate vernacular -pastry bags or chunks of crumbled bittersweet chocolate - but portraits by Brian Kennedy of urban hipsters brandishing chocolate martinis or huge bars of chocolate, models heavily accessorized with tattoos, gym-pumped arms and ironic upraised eyebrows. At home a few weeks ago, Ms. and Mr. Nelson seemed the calmest of entrepreneurs, despite a marriage running on two companies. They met in the summer of 1998, when Mr. Nelson was doing a one-man show about Lenny Bruce called "How to Talk Dirty & Influence People: The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce." Ms. Nelson stage-managed the production and brought Mr. Nelson lunch each day from her other job, waitressing at Once Upon a Tart on Sullivan Street in SoHo. "She walked in the first day, nearly bald, wearing a tiny rock 'n' roll T-shirt and tattoos and this smile," Mr. Nelson said. "I had to hire her." Ms. Nelson said she took one look at Mr. Nelson and thought, "Uh oh." She had dreamed of opening a bakery; he had pretty much run through his dream of acting. "That was for my disposable 20's," he said. "I just wanted to make a living." He'd been house-, plant- and pet- sitting for five years, he said, sleeping in theaters or on the couches of friends. His longest run was six months in an apartment on Waverly Place, the home of a celebrity with a sudden hit television show and lots of plants. Mr. Nelson's public relations company's name is taken from a now defunct local theater company, which both Mr. Nelson and that unnamed celebrity belonged to. "It's kind of an homage," Mr. and Ms. Nelson said at exactly the same time, and in exactly the same spooky, Anne Baxter, "All About Eve" voice. "Er, sorry," they both said at once. "That happens all the time," Ms. Nelson said. At first, Mr. and Ms. Nelson worked together at Workhouse. Clients called Ms. Nelson "the Clotter," Mr. Nelson said, "for her ability to stop the bleeding." Ms. Nelson said, "I just fed them." They found an empty storefront on Eighth Avenue between Jane and Horatio Streets and renovated it themselves in four months. It had been a mom-and-pop mailbox store, she said, and one night the mom and pop vanished. "The mail kept coming for a while," she said. "As we were making the store, the landlord would be outside surrounded by a crowd of people, his arms full of mail, yelling out names." Ms. Nelson is waving the chocolate banner alone, with a little help this weekend. From 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday and Monday (the store opens at 10 a.m.), Ms. Nelson will be in Chocolate Bar, flanked by six or seven recruits, ringing up her Booty Boxes (tag line: Give some, Get some) and Love Boxes. Last year during the same period, the store made as much money in two days as it did during the entire month of September. On Monday, Valentine's Day, Ms. Nelson will send Mr. Nelson flowers, and a box of her truffles. "He won't be seeing me," she said, "till late Monday night." Adam and Alison Nelson's apartment in London Terrace in Chelsea features much chocolate-colored furniture - Ms. Nelson owns New York's award-winning Chocolate Bar, a stylish West Village store. In this multimedia presentation she talks about her apartment in New York City. View the slideshow here: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/realestate/20050213_HABITATS_AUDIOSS/blocker.html
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PAGE SIX MAGAZINE: SIX LIFE: THE ULTIMATE IN REAL ESTATE VOYEURISM
ALISON NELSON: FOUNDER/ CHOCOLATE BAR [WWW.CHOCOLATEBARNYC.COM] & HUSBAND ADAM NELSON, CEO WORKHOUSE [WWW.WORKHOUSEPR.COM] One husband, two kids and a dog called Spot. To keep harmony in their one-bedroom apartment, chocolate diva Alison Nelson has to be an ergonomics expert. When we moved in, before the kids came along, we thought we had a big house,” laughs Alison Nelson, 34, as she walks ìnto the open plan living room, prewar apartment she shares with her husband, Adam Nelson, CEO of WORKHOUSE (www.workhousepr.com), and their children, Lulu 4 1/2, and Sailor, 18 months. These days the three-seater couch has been replaced by a dark leather two-seater from ABC Carpet and Home, and a sleek blond wood desk from West Elm stands in for a dining room table. "We wanted to make as much space as possible for the kids to run around" Says Alison, founding owner of Chocolate Bar (www.chocolatebarnyc.com). The Nelson's have rented a one-bedroom in London Terrace for the past six years--- a long time by New York standards, especially for a family of four. We know we'll have to move when Sailor needs his own room. The building doesn't have two-bedroom apartments," she says. (Sailor currently occupies a white white Offi crib filled with Ugly dolls in a corner of his parents’ bedroom; Lulu sleeps in a converted walk-in closet.) “Each year we look at what’s out there, but we can’t find another building with as much charm, not to mention a beautiful, Olympic-size covered courtyard and roof deck.” Often referred to as “the downtown Dakota,” London Terrace Gardens takes up an entire city block, between 9th and 10th Avenues and 23rd and 24th Streets. it’s resplendent with Art Deco flxtures and has played home to Nicole Kidman,Terì Hatcher and Annie Leibovitz. “Nicole would swim in the pool every morning when she here,” says Adam. Alison and Adam were married in January 2002. Five months later Alison opened her first Chocolate Bar, a coffee Shop offering retro-style chocolate for grown-ups, in the West Village. There was the sophisticated uptown Chocolate Bar cafe’ inside Henri Bendel, and a third store in New Jersey which gives Alison an excuse to go to the beach. Chocolate Bar has become a hit in the Middle East, too: She has opened seven stores in Dubai and Qatar in partnership with a Dubai-based company. “I'm currently working on recipes with dates and figs to appeal to a Middle Eastern palate,” she says. “And it’s a very real possibility that we'll have to be in Qatar for the summer." At home, meanwhile, the Nelson's don't live like renters. They’ve covered one wall in the living room with Cole & Son wallpaper, and in December 2005 they renovated. “The large walk-in closet made a perfect bedroom for Lulu once we built the wall out,” says Alison. In Lulu's room, tulle and sequins spill out of a dress-up box and the doors of an old armoire have been removed so that Lulu can get to her outfits more easily (“She loves to play dress up,” says Alison. “Shes a bit of performer.") Purple and green Blik vinyls adorn the pink walls. “Vinyls are so great, especially with kids, because you can take them off if you hate them,” Alison says. Fluffy toys are lined up on the bed and an impressive Barbie coliection is stored in an over the-door shoe rack. “We were are having a Barbie explosion,” she explains. And above the made-to-meausre twin bed is a photograph of Lulu the performer in action. “Our photographer friend Brian Kennedy did a crying baby series,” she heard heard us talking about it and immediateIy made her best crying face for him.” Alison and Adam's aesthetic is a mix of modern and nostalgic. In their bedroom, a French Deco chandelier hangs over the white linen-covered antique iron bed that Adam found in a flea market long before he met Alison. “We agreed it was a keeper,” She says. “You just don't find heavy pieces like that these days.” lt’s hard to imagine the kids jumping on the pristine bed, but they do. “I need things to be too prim and proper,” says Alison. “Thats how I live my life.” Spot, a black lab mix, is also welcome on the furniture. As Alison takes a seat on the leather couch, he walks across the old wood floors and climbs up next to her. Alison crosses one slim leg over another (shes blessed with an enviable metabolism for someone who claims to gorge on chocolate|ate every night). “I found Spot in the East Village two days before I met my husband,” she says, affectionately scratching the dog behind his ears. Their living room-presided over by a David LaChapelle photograph of Milla Jovovich standing in front oŕ Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood holding a giant Oscar--- is the family's favorite room in the house. After dinner, there is usually some sort of concert. “Adam will put on a record and Lulu will get her microphone out. Sailor strums on his guitar,” says Alison` “I have two New York City kids who don't go to bed until 10 pm., no matter how hard I try.” Written by: Nadine Rubin PHOTOGRAPHY: KARIN KOHLBERG FOR PAGESÍXMAGAZINE; PROP STYLING: JAMES MASSENBURG FOR OLIVER PIRO HAIR AND MAKEUP: NAOMI VVARDEN PHOTO: Alison and her daughter, Lulu, share a moment with Mr. Warhol; Chocolate Bar chocolates; and in the bedroom, a polka-dot chair adds personality. Adam Nelson's Art Pimp Book was successfully funded on Kickstarter on Wednesday, 22 May 2013 reaching it's goal of $10K. To see the campaign on KICKSTARTER visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/763274779/art-pimp-the-book
KICKSTARTER Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Kickstarter is full of ambitious, innovative, and imaginative projects that are brought to life through the direct support of others. Since its launch on April 28, 2009, over $500 million has been pledged by more than 3 million people, funding more than 35,000 creative projects. Thousands of creative projects are funding on Kickstarter at any given moment. Each project is independently created and crafted by the person behind it. The filmmakers, musicians, artists, and designers you see on Kickstarter have complete control and responsibility over their projects. They spend weeks building their project pages, shooting their videos, and brainstorming what rewards to offer backers. When they're ready, creators launch their project and share it with their community.Every project creator sets their project's funding goal and deadline. If people like the project, they can pledge money to make it happen. If the project succeeds in reaching its funding goal, all backers' credit cards are charged when time expires. If the project falls short, no one is charged. Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler.The New York Times called Kickstarter "the people's NEA". Time named it one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and "Best Websites of 2011".Kickstarter reportedly raised $10 million funding from backers including NYC-based venture firm Union Square Ventures and angel investors such as Jack Dorsey, Zach Klein and Caterina Fake. The company is based in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Andy Baio served as the site's CTO until November 2010, when he joined Expert Labs. Lance Ivy has been Lead Developer since the website launched.On February 14, 2013, Kickstarter released an iOS app called Kickstarter for iPhone. The app is aimed at users who create and back projects and is the first time Kickstarter has had an official mobile presence. Several creative works have gone on to receive critical acclaim and accolades after being funded on Kickstarter. The documentary short "Sun Come Up" and documentary short "Incident in New Baghdad" were each nominated for an Academy Award; contemporary art projects "EyeWriter" and "Hip-Hop Word Count" were both chosen to exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in 2011; filmmaker Matt Porterfield was selected to screen his film Putty Hill at the Whitney Biennial In 2012; author Rob Walker's Hypothetical Futures project exhibited at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale; musician Amanda Palmer's album "Theatre is Evil" debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200; designer Scott Wilson won a National Design Award from Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum following the success of his TikTok + LunaTik project; and approximately 10% of the films accepted into the Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca Film Festivals are projects funded on Kickstarter. Numerous well-known creators have used Kickstarter to produce their work, including: musicians Amanda Palmer, Daniel Johnston, Stuart Murdoch and Tom Rush; filmmakers and actors Bret Easton Ellis, Colin Hanks, Ed Begley, Jr., Gary Hustwit, Hal Hartley, Jennie Livingston, Mark Duplass, Matthew Modine, Paul Schrader, Ricki Lake, Whoopi Goldberg and Zana Briski; authors and writers Dan Harmon, Kevin Kelly, Neal Stephenson, and Seth Godin; photographers Spencer Tunick and Gerd Ludwig; game developers Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo; designer Stefan Sagmeister; animator John Kricfalusi; Star Trek actor John de Lancie and comedian Eugene Mirman. ADAM NELSON CEO OF WORKHOUSE IS AN ART PIMP | WWW.WORKHOUSEPR.COM
“In a world of con men there is nothing lower than a publicist,” The New Yorker wrote in 1944, harkening back to the days when the Fourth Estate was populated by flacks and hacks. But the more things change, the more they remain the same, particularly now, when the artist as brand has been unwittingly elevated to the international stage. Adam Nelson, Founder of WORKHOUSE, an arts-based publicity firm operating in New York City that was instituted in 1999. Workhouse has represented photographers David LaChapelle, Albert Watson, Roxanne Lowitt, Nigel Parry, Pamela Hanson, David Drebin, Oberto Gili, Billy Name, Bob Gruen, Jean Paul Goude, Patrick McMullan, and the Horst P. Horst estate; galleries including Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Staley Wise Gallery, Photographers Limited Editions, Symbolic Gallery, and Rubin Museum of Art; and publishing houses Rizzoli, teNeues, Random House, Skira, Universe, and Assouline Editions to name a few. In each case, the agency was tasked with putting the fine art images or photographic books in the forefront of public consciousness. How is it done? The publicist’s trick is to make it appear effortless, as though waving a wand and—POOF—a New York Times feature magically materializes above the fold. But the hard truth is, publicity is a thankless job. In a world of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, the publicist must continuously produce news and innovative results. Nelson reveals the tricks of the trade in his new book, Art Pimp: Tales of FlimFlam, Fixes, and Fornication, which has just launched on Kickstarter. The book is one part personal history, one part primer centered upon the art of the fix. It details the way in which publicists work to engineer iconography for the media and the public alike. As Nelson notes, “Art Pimp is a minimalist manifesto for the disenfranchised lay-offs among us. It preaches jailbreak. Read it and you’ll discover why desperation gets things done, why you should unsubscribe, friend your mentors, look for loopholes, cop an attitude and work for free. Let the uptown crowd stuff themselves into cubicles. This is a new playbook for modern age entrepreneurs who never want to have a boss again or give into the old Flim Flam. Traditional media is dying. So how do you get the goods across today when people aren’t buying? Learn how to be more industrious, how to establish brands with celebrity craftsmanship, and a slew of revolutionary concepts that will both rouse and rally you.” Nelson recounts his days with LaChapelle who created experiences that could only be described as “Warholesque.” Those brush strokes helped him understand the mechanics of spin, the power of illusion, and why millions continue to travel to the heart of New York City with absolute desperation to craft cultural moments of meaning. Nelson observes, “We bring a bit of attitude to the table. A brandalist to me is nothing more than a PR punk. Character’s such as Banksy who hit the wall with stencil art. There is a resonance to the way in which brandalist’s define themselves. Consider Richard Branson, Anthony Bourdain, Johnny Rotten. Each are serious thumb nosers who possess the spit and polish to get it done. Fire starters who feed off commitment with cold confidence. They are willing to bet the ranch and woe be he who stands in the way.” This is what sets a brandalist apart from an every day publicist. It’s the chartable difference between one who’s finely focused on achieving media placements for the clip books of yesterday, and the other who’s bricklaying towards the future in hopes of constructing a larger cultural mythology around their client. This is even more evident today, at a time where media transforms before our very eyes. Nelson likens this period to the time between radio and television when things were still in flux. “We don’t know where we sit. The splintering of media has greatly affected the ability to see our own names in newsprint. People have become more desperate with great hopes of being prominently placed. The idea of being ‘Newsworthy’ has rising to exponential heights. Here on the tipping point how many can cram into the phone booth or stand on the pin of the needle? The celebration of fame is so short lived today we must ask ourselves - is the mad, sad dash really worth it?” Art Pimp offers a reflective look at the way one mad hatter has created a vital relationship between the artist, the media, and the public. A tall tale told from a brandalist understands that the message is always traced back to the messenger. Today, in a time when media morphs before our very eyes, where we are all charged with the mission to self-create a public identity, Nelson’s declaration preaches jailbreak so that we can reinvent ourselves in our own image. This is what publicity does best—and why The New Yorker loathed it so much—is it a con? Is it a truth? Or is it, just maybe, a little bit of both? Miss Rosen LINKS http://www.artpimpbook.com http://www.workhousepr.com http://missrosen.wordpress.com CONTRIBUTORS Miss Rosen LOU REED | MICK ROCK |
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