Join the Brewniversity craft beer loyalty club to gain access to this modern-day speakeasy in the basement of the Taco Mac, which puts a large emphasis on craft beer. The Chapter Room maintains no fewer than 18 different kinds on draft at a time, as well as many others in bottles. Cozy up to Bobb, the bar's "overseer," and you may also have access to the rare and limited edition beers in his secret stash.
Midnight Cowboy was formerly a massage parlor, and it still sports the original "Midnight Cowboy Modeling Oriental Massage" sign out front. Reservations are required, and when you get there you're free to enjoy classic and creative cocktails, as long as you leave all your mobile devices behind — they have no place at this lounge.
The historic Hotel Belvedere is the resting place of the Owl Bar, which has been serving fancy mixed drinks, beer, and wine for more than 100 years. The bar served as the stomping grounds for numerous famous and non-famous Baltimore natives and remained unnamed until after Prohibition. The Owl Bar also has an exquisite food menu, including weekend brunch.
When the holidays roll around, you might want to show appreciation — in the form of a little cash — to the service people who make your year easier, from housekeeper to hairstylist.
If you haven't considered who you'll be tipping this year, and how much, you'll probably want to give it some thought. According to a survey from Care.com, nearly 70% of people give holiday tips.
And we're not talking a few extra dollars. Almost half of respondents said they tip $150 or more during the holiday season.
The most popular people to tip are those in child care (babysitters, nannies, and daycare workers), home care (housekeepers, landscapers, and handymen), and personal care (hairstylists, manicurists, and personal trainers).
And better get thinking, because according to the survey, nearly half of your fellow tippers are handing over cash in early December.
Take a look at the infographic below to see how people feel about holiday tipping, why they do it, and when they do it.
Starbucks is delving into the high-end coffee market with a new kind of store that looks nothing like the coffee chain we know.
The first Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room opened Friday in Seattle, and the company has plans to build another 100 locations in the coming years.
"Everything we’ve ever done has led us to this point," Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in a statement. "This is the moment of the next generation of Starbucks."
The store's designer, Liz Muller, likens the 15,000-square-foot roastery to the fictional Willy Wonka chocolate factory.
The New York Times has called it "part retail store, part manufacturing facility and part theater."
There are coffee bars throughout the store. Overhead, pneumatic tubes transfer beans to roasters and coffee silos.
"A 32-foot-high Copper Cast, where beans rest after roasting, shines like a newly minted penny," writes USAToday's Bruce Horowitz.
Muller told Horowitz that the store is meant be the "theater of coffee."
"We wanted to create a space to reinvent retail for the 21st century," she said.
The roastery is expected to produce 1.4 million pounds of small-batch coffee within the first year, according to the company.
An eight-ounce package of the high-end coffee beans sell for between $13 and $50. They will be available in more than 1,500 of Starbucks' existing stores, as well as future Reserve-only locations.
"We’re going to take the customer on a journey, immersing them in an interactive environment where they’ll be introduced to handcrafted, small-batch coffees within feet of where they’re being roasted," Schultz told The Times.
In addition to coffee, the roastery will also offer a food menu prepared by James Beard Award-winning chef Tom Douglas. The menu includes seasonal pizzas from a Serious Pie restaurant located inside the building, as well as pastries, sandwiches, salads, and sweets.
Instead of carrying Starbucks' logo, the bags of coffee for sale inside the store are marked with the letter "R," which stands for "Reserve" — the name of the chain's new line of high-end coffee.
In fact, you won't find the familiar Starbucks logo anywhere inside the store, which will serve as a flagship for the new chain of cafés.
The coffee beans available for sale include Colombia Montebonito and Sumatra Peaberry Lake Toba.
Starbucks is expected to open future Reserve cafés in urban areas like New York City and Washington, D.C.
Liven up work happy hours with Cards Against Humanity.
This popular game is very fun and a great ice breaker. The idea is simple: match two cards to make the funniest combination of bizarre verbs and nouns.
The politically incorrect game will spice up after work happy hours, dinner parties, or game nights.
We wanted to find the next big idea for an app, so we rounded up several kids between the ages of 9 and 13 and asked them to describe an app that was guaranteed to make a billion dollars.
Silicon Valley had better take notice, because these ideas are gold.
Located in a garage in the West Village, Barbuto offers both a private dining room and a chef's table in the kitchen, where guests can watch their 3- or 4-course meals prepared before their eyes.
The seasonal menu changes often, but it's always top-notch Italian cuisine.
At Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, the whole restaurant is a chef's counter. It seats 18, and is connected to the Brooklyn Fare market. Meals, according to our friends at Infatuation, are just shy of TWENTY courses, including multiple amuse-bouches, four entrees, and two desserts.
Of course, at $255 a person (excluding beverages), you need to have a fat wallet or fat expense account to pick up the tab at this Michelin three-star restaurant.
Kyo Ya
94 E. 7th St., Manhattan
Kyo Ya isn't just any Japanese restaurant — it's an underground culinary mecca for those in the know, specializing in kaiseke meals (served during traditional tea ceremonies). Tasting menus range from $95-$150, but you can also choose to order à la carte.
The best spot in the house is the "amazing share table" in the middle of the restaurant, according to the Infatuation's Andrew Steinthal.
Airlines that offer great deals and customer perks have a competitive edge in the marketplace.
AirlineRatings.com recently released its list of the World's Top 10 Airlines, including the best low-cost airlines. The site looked at four regions — the Americas, Asia/Pacific, Middle East/Africa, and Europe — and named the best budget airline in each.
“These airlines may not always offer the lowest fare, but what they always do is deliver the best value,” said AirlineRatings.com Editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas.
Americas: jetBlue
Primarily connecting big cities around the United States, Caribbean, and Central America, jetBlue regularly features new, low fares online, and all passengers have access to personal TVs and free Wi-Fi on every flight. JetBlue has "brought a touch of class to the US domestic airline market while delivering fares that are amongst the lowest," said an AirlineRatings.com editor.
Asia/Pacific: Scoot
Scoot launched in 2011 and operates dozens of flights to 13 different locations in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. Scoot is known for providing better-than-average leg room and its flexible flight change policy. The Singapore-based airline is owned by one of the world's best airlines: Singapore Airlines. An editor at AirlineRatings.com noted, "Travelers tell us — and we have found — that Scoot is full of value surprises that turn low cost travel into a pleasure."
Middle East/Africa: Kulula
Flying in and around South Africa, Kulula's flights are almost entirely direct and non-stop. When booking other travel accommodations like hotels and car rentals through Kulula, travelers can save up to 15% on the total package. "Kulula is a breath of fresh air in the African market," said an AirlineRatings.com editor, "combining safety, technology and humor."
Europe: Norwegian
Norwegian is the third largest low-cost airline in Europe, but it ranked No. 1 in the region by AirlineRatings.com for the other benefits it offers. Norwegian offers high-speed, in-flight Wi-Fi and on-demand video that passengers can stream directly to their own personal devices. "Norwegian is a breath of fresh of air in the airline industry combining excellent staff/management relations, technology, and a passion for passengers," said one editor at AirlineRatings.com
We’ve told you shampooing daily is for rookies. It strips your natural oils, dries out hair, etc.
But there’s a growing number of hippies naturalists out there promoting the no ’poo movement, or the belief that you don’t need to wash hair at all.
Like, ever. Is this foul? Yes, but it won’t kill you.
To the no ’poo-er’s credit, shampoo can contain some questionable ingredients (like formaldehyde, a potential carcinogen, and sulfates, those foaming agents that can dry out hair and skin).
It’s a fairly modern invention, too, considering the first commercially available shampoos hit shelves around the turn of the twentieth century. (This is when people started dabbling with things like deodorant and toothpaste, too, thanks to the introduction of modern advertising.)
But dermatologists warn that opting out of shampoo altogether could make your scalp a breeding ground for bacteria and lead to dandruff.
Look for a happy medium and shampoo a few times a week, but don’t give it up entirely, says hairstylist Ken Paves, who’s tended to the strands of celebrities like Tom Brady and David Beckham. And if the thought of your mane going a week unwashed gives you hives, consider some of Paves tips for adjusting to a life less clean.
Avoid Greasy Hair Culprits
Skip heavy, hydrating hair products (look for the word silicone) because they’ll make hair feel oily and flat. Same goes for constantly running your fingers through it, or letting the wind whip locks around. (Both of these spread the oil that’s sitting at roots throughout your head, so keep your hands off and throw on a hat during super blustery days.)
Push Through the Feeling
“Hair definitely adapts to not washing it,” says Paves. When you remove oil from your hair, your sebaceous glands compensate by producing more oil. So the less often you shampoo, the less oil your hair will produce. The first few weeks of cutting back might feel a bit gnarly, but your hair should acclimate about a month in.
Rinse With Water
“Rain has eroded mountains. Water alone will get rid of some sweat and styling products,” says Paves. “Rinse your hair really good with warm water, massaging your scalp to lift any oils and product, then rinse.” You can follow with conditioner if that clean smell triggers happy thoughts.
Discover Dry Shampoo
For a quick pick-me-up between washes, try rubbing a dry shampoo into your roots. (If you haven’t tried the stuff or seen it in your girlfriend’s bathroom, dry shampoo is usually a mix of absorbing agents and fragrance that sucks up grease from your hair and scalp). “It’s a great way to freshen hair, absorb oil and create volume,” says Paves. Baby powder or cocoa powder (for dark hair) do the job well, too.
There's a fine line between festive and completely inappropriate.
But don't worry — we've come up with a quick guide so that you don't embarrass yourself in front of your boss.
You're welcome.
Jackets
Stick with a navy jacket for holiday shindigs. They're classic and professional — and can be re-worn for practically any occasion. We recommend that you avoid black — it's too harsh.
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently attended our own Ignition 2014 event in New York. After his stage chat he sat down with Business Insider Video to talk about strategy, success and more.
We asked Cuban: if it were possible to travel back in time, what advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
"The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts," he said.
Jobs' lifelong interest in the humanities gave Apple a human touch.
By combining tech and the liberal arts, Jobs said that Apple was able to "to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy-to-use, fun-to-use, so that they really fit the users."
Jobs really began his literary bent in the last two years of high school.
"I started to listen to music a whole lot," he tells Isaacson, "and I started to read more outside of just science and technology — Shakespeare, Plato. I loved 'King Lear.'"
The tragedy may have provided a cautionary tale to a young Jobs, since it's the story of an aged monarch going crazy trying to divide up his kingdom.
"'King Lear' offers a vivid depiction of what can go wrong if you lose your grip on your empire, a story surely fascinating to any aspiring CEO," says Daniel Smith, author of "How to Think Like Steve Jobs."
Another epic story colored Jobs' outlook in his adolescence: "Moby Dick," the deeply American novel by Herman Melville.
Isaacson draws a connection between Captain Ahab, who's one of the most driven and willful characters in literature, and Jobs.
Ahab, like Jobs, did lots of his learning from direct experience, rather than relying on institutions.
"I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling," the captain writes early in the story, "for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."
'The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas' by Dylan Thomas
But the intellectual flowering that Jobs had in late high school wasn't confined to hard-charging megalomaniacs — he also discovered a love for verse, particularly Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
"How To Think Like Steve Jobs" author Daniel Smith says that Thomas' poems "drew him in with its striking new forms and unerringly popular touch."
Traveling great distances by plane can be arduous, but some airlines are better than other for long-haul flights — that is, trips of at least six hours.
According to aviation consumer website AirlineRatings.com, some are certainly more pleasant than others for those long intercontinental journeys.
The Australian website named the best long-haul airline in various regions of the globe.
Here they are:
Etihad Airways (Middle East/Africa)
The Abu Dhabi-based carrier is 11 years old, and yet it has managed to build a sterling reputation for world-class service and excellence. With fellow Gulf-based carriers like Emirates and Qatar both trying to become the best in the world, Etihad has its work cut out.
But the editorial team at AirlineRatings.com doesn't seem worried:
"Etihad’s commitment to excellence appears to know no bounds. The airline’s new First Class and Business Class offerings are breathtaking and have set a new benchmark in luxury travel."
And what a benchmark it is. The airline's new first-class suites — called "The Residence" — have over 100 square feet of space and include a living room, bedroom, shower, and butler. Etihad's long-haul fleet consists of new Airbus A330, A340, A380, and Boeing 777 wide-body airliners.
EVA Air (Asia/Pacific)
Taiwan's EVA Air (pronounced /ee-vee-ay/) was founded in 1989 and is an offshoot of global container-shipping giant Evergreen Group. The Taipei-based carrier has grown immensely in the past two decades and now operates a large fleet of Airbus and Boeing wide-body jets. The airline is credited with pioneering the "premium economy" cabin.
"EVA Air is the quiet achiever and trendsetter and was one of the first airlines to introduce premium economy class," AirlineRatings.com said. "EVA Air has a perfect safety record and was one of the first airline’s to order the 777-300ER the backbone of international air fleets.”
The Airline's most recent claim to fame is a fleet of Hello Kitty jets. The planes are not just painted with the cartoon feline's likeness — they also feature Hello Kitty-themed food, interior decor, and crew uniforms.
LAN Chile (The Americas)
LAN Chile finished as the top long-haul carrier is all of the Americas. AirlineRatings.com selected the Santiago-based company ahead of larger and better publicized American and Canadian heavyweights like American, United, Delta, and Air Canada. According to the website's editorial team, this should not have come as a surprise.
“In South America and beyond the name Lan Chile is a byword for excellence in service and safety,” the editors said. "The airline has become a catalyst for huge growth in air travel in South America with a focus on safety and passenger service."
As one half of the LATAM Airlines Group, LAN, together with Brazil's TAM Airlines and their subsidiaries, have joined to form one of the most powerful airline companies in the world. LAN Chile was also one of the first airlines in the world to get a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Lufthansa (Europe)
Germany's Lufthansa beat out European stalwarts such as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Swiss International, and Air France. Although the company has been plagued by labor disputes, its sterling service and safety record are unblemished.
“For decades Lufthansa has been a pillar of dependability, safety, in-flight service and environmental leadership," AirlineRatings.com said. "AirlineRatings’ editors were unanimous in their praise for Lufthansa’s leadership in the industry in aircraft selection, product innovation and dependability.”
Operating out of its mega-hub at Frankfurt Airport, Lufthansa's long-haul duties are carried out by a fleet of Airbus A330, A340, and A380 aircraft, along with Boeing 747s. In fact, it is the only airline to operate both the Boeing 747-8I Jumbo jet and the Airbus A380 super jumbo.
The Xhibitionist is a superyacht inspired by the shape of an automobile and the brainchild of renown Swedish-based designer, Eduard Gray.
The inner spaces of the yacht can be rearranged into a car showroom, a retail space or a luxury lounge. The hood of the yacht opens to release solar panels that can provide power to the vessel. The panels are also sturdy enough to act as helipad, or a performance space. The yacht also comes with a custom supercar known as the Xhibit-G.
When YouTube was first getting started, all you really needed was a webcam and an Internet connection to create videos and build an audience.
But now there's a lot that YouTube creators can do to improve the quality of their channels. YouTube itself has invested in its creators in a number of ways, launching national ad campaigns and providing venture capital to top channels.
The company has also opened YouTube Spaces in Los Angeles, New York City, London, and Tokyo, where YouTube creators with at least 10,000 subscribers can use sound stages, editing bays, and camera equipment for free.
"We invest in our creators in a myriad of ways, and the Space is a tangible resource that can help creators towards their goal of building a business on YouTube," Liam Collins, head of the YouTube Space LA, said to Business Insider.
We visited the YouTube Space in Los Angeles to see those resources firsthand. The studio, which was designed by architecture and design firm HLW, had plenty of fun features to explore.
The YouTube Space Los Angeles, located in the city's Playa Vista neighborhood, officially opened in January 2013.
The studio is part of a cluster of buildings that were once a hub for Howard Hughes' aircraft company. A helicopter in the courtyard pays homage to the area's aviation roots.
Totaling 41,000 square feet of space, the building has production stages, green screens, cameras, and electrical and grip equipment. This stage can accommodate audiences of between 100 and 150 people and has hosted a number of interesting setups. One Direction recently did a seven-hour livestream event from this stage, and Legendary Pictures brought massive sets from "Godzilla" for YouTube creators to play around with.
Cathay Pacific Airways was just named the world's best business class airline for 2015 by AirlineRatings.com.
And no wonder.Each business class flight comes with incredible amenities, from noise-canceling headphones and chairs that transform into fully flat beds to on-demand movies and restaurant-quality meals.
The Hong Kong-based airline also has great business class lounges all over the world.
Many travelers start at the Hong Kong International Airport, a Cathay Pacific hub. Here, business class passengers get access to the airline's exclusive lounge.
The lounge offers plenty of space to spread out and relax before a long flight.
There are also several options if you want to grab a bite to eat.
Though Silicon Valley is home to some of the wealthiest people in the world, the area also has one of the worst levels of income disparity in the country. According to the latest data from the US Department of Housing, Santa Clara County has the highest percentage of homelessness in all of America.
"The Jungle" is a 68-acre encampment where as many as 200 homeless people have lived in makeshift structures not far from the headquarters of major tech companies like Google and Apple.
This week, the city of San Jose began the process of dismantling the camp and evicting its residents, a third of whom have not been promised a place in a shelter.
Reuters photographer Beck Diefenbach captured the scene as people were forced to collect their belongings and leave.
The Jungle isn't far from the headquarters of tech giants like Apple, Adobe, and Google, and wealthy executives own mansions nearby. Some locals call the gap between the tech industry and the homeless population the "Great Divide."
The city warned residents that they would be evicted just three days before it happened. "It was a change in approach," Ray Bramson, San Jose's homelessness response manager, said to Reuters. "Historically we'd come in and clean the site and people would come back and repopulate it. We realized that we needed to deal with the underlying issue creating the encampment, which is homelessness."
Dismantling the camp was the second part of a $4 million project by the city, who had spent the last 18 months finding shelters where the homeless could be placed.
A New York appeals court threw out investor Ron Perelman's lawsuit against his art dealer, Larry Gagosian, this week.
The suit — which accused Gagosian of tricking Perelman into spending $4 million on a Popeye sculpture — was billed as "the feud that's shaking gallery walls" in The New York Times. In reality, the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court found that Perelman didn't have much of an argument. Here's the background:
First, you have to know that it's really hard to buy art at a high level without the help of dealers. Sure, you can buy at auction, but what you want doesn't always pop up. A dealer's job is to do the looking for you. They also do about as much secondary-market selling as the auction houses, behind the scenes and without any advertising. Often the only way to get the good stuff is to be a client.
This is a relationship business, but it's also an asymmetrical information business. The market is unregulated and operates on backroom handshakes. The whole thing perpetuates itself because the dealer knows more than either the buyer or the seller (usually). That's how they earn their hefty fees.
And because works of art are generally unique and purchased by uber-wealthy people who aren't super price sensitive, it's really hard to compare data on even the stuff that gets sold publicly. What someone is willing to pay for a Picasso today isn't necessarily even close to what someone is going to be willing to pay next year. Even the auction houses, which have hundreds of years of data, are pretty bad at predicting sale prices.
So knowing this, let's get back to Perelman. His suit involves a bunch of different transactions, in addition to the one accusing Gagosian of tricking him into buying a $4 million Jeff Koons sculpture of Popeye.
In another, Perelman says that Gagosian quoted him a price of $8 million for a Cy Twombly painting “Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves.” Perelman thought about it for a bit, then finally decided he wanted it. By that time, Gagosian said it had already been sold to someone else, according to the lawsuit. Sorry dude.
A little while later, Gagosian allegedly came back and said this person would sell the Twombly to Perelman, but now for $11.5 million. Eventually they settled on $10.5 million. Perelman says he got ripped off. Gagosian says he actually lost money on the transaction (because Perelman traded in a bunch of works instead of paying straight cash).
The court found that, whatever this was, it wasn't fraud. From the decision:
As a matter of law, these sophisticated plaintiffs cannot demonstrate reasonable reliance because they conducted no due diligence; for example, they did not ask defendants, 'Show us your market data' ... As to the claim that defendants misrepresented the value of certain art works, statements about the value of art constitute 'nonactionable opinion that provide[s] no basis for a fraud claim.'
The thing about this case is it proves it's probably pointless to sue your art dealer unless there's some fundamental change in the transparency requirements for selling art (although I'm sure it won't stop a handful of overly litigious collectors from doing it anyway).
In art, the price is what you are willing to pay. A dealer's only responsibility is to try to maximize that price, in almost whatever way he wants. In other words, a price quoted by a dealer is not a fact. It's just, like, his opinion, man.
"The nurses and the doctors there would bring a teen back for her prenatal visit and they would say, 'Hey! Aren't you Maria's younger sister?'" she recalls.
"And the young woman would say, 'Yeah, I am!' And they would say to another patient, 'You know, haven't I seen you before?' And she would say, 'Yes, I was here for my older sister when she was pregnant.'"
As a good scientist does, East decided to verify her observation, and she followed pairs of sisters in a study.
The results were astounding: A woman whose older sister got pregnant was five times more likely to get pregnant than one who didn't.
And just as your parents told you, siblings can provide positive role models as well. Other research has found that support from older siblings can drive academic achievement. Academics call it "the sibling spillover effect," and there are at least three possible drivers — the older sibling helps with homework, the younger sibling imitates their work style, or the older sibling tips the young one to which classes and teachers to take.
This is all part of a growing body of knowledge around how our sibling relationships affect not only how we behaved as kids, but how we act as adults.
It's a new science. While psychologists have been investigating how family relationships affect our identities since the 19th century, it's mostly been focused on the mother-father-child triad, rather than relationships we have with siblings.
But if you think of a family as a tiny society, it makes sense that we would first learn to socialize through relationships with sisters and brothers.
In the formative 1995 book "Sibling Relationships Across The Life Span," psychologist Victor Cicirelli says that "the older sibling gains in social skills in interacting with the younger" and "the younger sibling gains cognitively by imitating the older." In this way, siblings are "agents of socialization." In other words, they provide the foundation of how we learn to deal with people.
As we've discussed before, siblings are constantly competing for their parents' attention, and that tendency toward competition is handed down through evolution.
The logic goes that the more a child of any species receives the energy of their parents, the more likely the child is to survive — thus the reason first children tend to be achievers, while second or third children jump at separate activities like athletics, music, or arts. Just like Darwin's finches, each sibling is trying to find his or her niche.
But as NPR reporter Alix Spiegel argues, it's good for them.
"[Siblings] learn from the friction between them ... as they fight for their parents' attention," she writes. "Mild conflict between brothers and sisters teaches them how to interact with peers, coworkers, and friends for the rest of their lives."
If siblings manage to get into adulthood without overwhelming resentment, then they tend to become BFFs. A survey of 7,730 Americans found that 30% of respondents would call a sibling in an emergency, and over 60% said their brother or sister was one of their best friends.
It lasts late into life: A Swedish study of people over 80 years old found that having closeness with friends or even children did little to increase total life satisfaction — but feeling close contact with a sibling did.
We often think about how happy we are as individuals in a given moment, but rarely look at the bigger picture.
The website MoveHub.com is a resource for people looking to move abroad, and they recently put together a fantastic and eye-opening infographic that measures the happiness levels of every part of the world.
The results are very interesting. The US and Russia rate pretty low on the happiness scale, while a glance at South America paints the exact opposite picture.
It's based on the HPI or "Happy Planet Index," Which MoveHub says puts a focus on living long lives with a "high experience of well-being within the environmental limits of the planet."
A look around this graphic will tell you a lot about how people in different parts of the world view their lives, take a look: