We attended a very special Valentine’s Day party on Saturday, hosted by Housing Works Cafe in NYC and featuring performances by PostSecret, Found Magazine, Mortified, Six-Word Memoirs, Cassette from my ex, and music by Michael Hearst of One Ring Zero. The sold-out show brought together a motley crowd of confessors, voyeurs, and a mix of the two – all interested in spending their Valentine’s Day hearing about other people’s love stories, and in turn reminiscing about their own.
One of the most entertaining bits of the night involved the guitar-accompanied singing of strangers’ ’six-word memoirs’ about their past relationships. Like a haiku encapsulating years of love/heartbreak/loss, the memoirs [...]

Agent Provocateur, the opulent lingerie brand, has ruffled some feathers with their latest promotional escapade.  In a series of events leading up to Valentine’s Day, Agent Provocateur has partnered with the private equity group 3i to host some men-only preview “presentations.”  The hush-hush events are targeted at investment bankers and give the securely wealthy a chance to brush elbows (amongst other body parts) with lingerie models.
The obvious poor timing of targeting bankers during a recession that the financial sector helped produce has caused some backlash, but the real criticism has come from the men-only invitations.  The company defended their policy [...]