Luxury fashion has become a huge global business in the past few decades. Several major brands are dominant players. But brands not traditionally associated with luxury have also established themselves. Taken together, these 10 brands are worth a whopping $121.74 billion.
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San Francisco, the capital of the booming internet industry, continues to earn the dubious honor of being the most expensive rental market in the country.
According to the most recent analysis by real-estate marketplace Zumper, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment continues to be about $3,500 a month. This is a record high for San Francisco, the second month in a row that the median rent has soared to such heights.
To give you a better idea of what the median rent will get you, Zumper helped us compile a list of apartments that rent for around $3,500 in various San Francisco neighborhoods.
You'll notice that it varies greatly depending on how desirable the neighborhood is.
SEE ALSO: San Francisco mummy home will sell for over $1 million
Rent: $3,436/month
Neighborhood: Inner Sunset
One-bedroom apartments in this building are about 644 square feet, and they come with a dishwasher and in-unit laundry.
Rent: $3,450/month
The kitchen could use some updating — it doesn't have a dishwasher — but the building itself does have a laundry room.
Rent: $3,445/month
Neighborhood: Noe Valley
There's a large balcony, and the kitchen appliances seem new.
Got the travel bug? Travel + Leisure rated the 10 best cities in the world.
Produced by Emma Fierberg. Original Reporting by Sarah Schmalbruch.
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Fruity and cold, tiki drinks are the perfect summer quaff. And the king of all tiki drinks is the sweet, creamy, rum-based favorite, the Piña Colada.
The tiki classic has made a comeback in recent years, along with other classic cocktails, and bartenders are putting their own twists on the fruity beverage. In celebration of National Piña Colada Day (July 10), here's a quick primer on the original recipe, and our favorite version. Be warned — it provides a serious kick.
Three Puerto Rican bartenders claim ownership of the Piña Colada, which happens to be Puerto Rico’s national beverage. The most famous version of the story credits the drink to bartender Ramon "Monchito" Marrero of the Caribe Hilton back in 1954.
According to the hotel, Monchito spent three months mixing, tasting, and discarding hundreds of combinations until he got the perfect blend.
Monchito made no secret of his original recipe, and today the Caribe Hilton features it proudly on its website: "Pour 2 ounces of light rum, 1 ounce of coconut cream, 1 ounce of heavy cream, and 6 ounces of fresh pineapple into a blender. Add ice. Blend for 15 seconds. Pour into a 12-ounce glass. Add a pineapple wedge and maraschino cherry for garnish."
This is a perfectly acceptable way to make a Piña Colada. Some would even say it’s the best way.
But there's a twist on the original recipe that takes the Piña Colada to the next level. Called the Rocket Fuel and invented by the bartenders of Fire Island, it's a liquored-up version made with Bacardi 151 floater and Amaretto.
The Island Mermaid, a Fire Island staple that has been around for 25 years, shared its own delicious recipe for making the island favorite, which owner Scott Hirsch warns can “sneak up on you.”
Here is the Island Mermaid’s seriously awesome take on the drink, courtesy of Hirsch:
Instead of mixing all the ingredients in the blender, we make the Piña Colada freshly with gold rum (not silver because it affects the flavor). You pour the gold rum over the ice in the blender and add the Piña Colada mix until the ice barely rises. Then blend.
Listen for the ice to disappear. Seriously, listen. It matters a little.
In the glass you are using, pour a shot of 151 rum. Then take the blended colada and pour it over the shot so it runs up through the drink. We recommend a 12-14 ounce pour. Then, gently circle the top of the drink with a floater of amaretto. The first sips are "sweet" getting you ready for the blast down below!
That's it. Garnish with a slice of pineapple. Blast off.
Whether you prefer your Piña Colada classic or with a serious kick, expect to see lots of these tiki drinks this summer.
SEE ALSO: 50 glorious food creations you can eat at the Minnesota State Fair
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There's nothing like spending the afternoon out on the water. But if you don't have your own boat, renting one can be a time-intensive and pricey process.
That's the problem that new iPhone app BoatDay is trying to solve. Boat Day allows you to quickly and easily reserve a spot on a host of boats dedicated to sailing, leisure, fishing, or water sports.
You can sign up for a solo spot or purchase room for your entire group of friends, and the whole process takes minutes — just like Uber.
BoatDay's founder, Kimon Korres, said the initial inspiration for BoatDay came after a frustrating experience trying to rent a boat for the day when his friends were visiting him in Miami.
"Everyone has the same reaction, which is 'There must be something there like that,'" Korres told Business Insider. "And the more we dug, we didn't find anything. So I thought, let's try to take this on and come up with something that addresses the problem, but more importantly, makes boating — which in Miami in particular is something that people want to do — an easier and more affordable process for everyone, rather than a once-in-the-while special event that you do on occasion."
With this goal in mind, Korres teamed up with software developer and security expert Daniel Costa — who is now BoatDay's CTO — to bring the idea to life.
"The biggest thing up front was definitely the affordability," Korres said. "To get a decent boat for a few hours or a whole day, you're going to be running close to $1000. For a small or even a relatively large group, that's a big ask right up front."
BoatDay keeps things simple by offering per-person pricing instead, with the average afternoon cruise, fishing expedition, or sailing experience costing between $45 and $80 per guest.
Hosts, who are screened and insured, can decide which type of boating experience they want to cater to. The host is in charge of driving the boat, so no one in your party has to worry about finding someone with a boating licence. If anything were to happen to go wrong out on the water, the app also includes an emergency button.
"The thing we focused on in putting BoatDay and its features together is the boating experience itself," Korres said. "There's plenty of opportunities to rent a boat, but boating in my opinion is more than just getting a boat on the water — it's about having an experience with the people you're onboard with. So we focused on breaking down the boating event into components that allow the guests to go in and get a full sense up front of the experience they're going to have."
Within the app, people can browse available boats and filter results based on the size of the party, pricing, or the type of boating experience. Boats range in size from small fishing boats to sailboats "exceeding 40 feet," according to Korres.
"The price is set by the hosts themselves, based on the length of the boat experience," Korres said. "Some boats may be a 4-hour cruise in the afternoon, others might be an all-day fishing event. So based on the experience itself, the size of the boat, and what's included — whether it may be fishing rods and bait, or food and drinks — the price is adjusted accordingly."
And like Uber, when the day comes to an end, payment is already taken care of and you'll have the ability to rate your host.
BoatDay is launching first on iOS, and will only be available in Miami for now. Users can log into BoatDay beginning Friday to reserve a spot aboard a boat, but the boating expeditions won't set sail until the following weekend.
Korres says he plans to expand within Florida, and others states are also a possibility as the boating host business model can easily scale. An Android version of BoatDay is also in the works, scheduled for a launch in the coming months.
You can download BoatDay for iPhone by clicking here.
SEE ALSO: The 11 best new iPhone and Android apps you might have missed
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In countries around the world, there are villages and towns that have fascinatingly managed to preserve their original architecture and landscape amid rapid modernization.
The rich historical context they give us has led to their recognition by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites of cultural significance.
From Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia’s oldest mining town, to South Korea's Yangdong and Hahoe villages, whose stunning landscape inspired 17th- and 18th-century poets, here are 14 villages and towns that have managed to maintain their original culture, architecture, and character for hundreds of years.
SEE ALSO: 26 ancient ruins you should visit in your lifetime
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Learn more about the Historic Centre of Český Krumlov.
Learn more about the Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama.
Learn more about the Old Town of Lijiang.
Here's your chance to live a Tuscan dream in the good ol' US.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, "The Big Lebowski" star Jeff Bridges and his wife are asking $29.5 million dollars for their 19.5 acre Montecito, California home. The sprawling property has equal amounts of luxury and quirk.
Sotheby’s International Realty's Suzanne Perkins told the WSJ that listings exceeding three acres of land in Montecito are rare. Keep scrolling for an inside-out tour.
SEE ALSO: Tyler Perry is selling his ridiculously lavish Atlanta mansion for $25 million
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Almost no one actually knows how to fold a fitted sheet properly. Impress your friends and loved ones right away with these easy steps.
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I've always said there are three kinds of Wall Streeters.
Those who worry that their industry can be toxic and try to make it or their world better to compensate. (That can mean raising a great family, giving to charity, making money and then going to another career they love, etc.)
Then there are those who Jamie Dimon-it and take pride in the industry as it is.
And then there are the most dangerous people: The people who know the industry can be toxic and just don't care. These people also happen to be the most rare.
But they're also the ones most immortalized in writing and film.
John LeFevre, the man behind Twitter's hit Goldman Sachs Elevator parody account, was almost in that dangerous third category.
He explains how he got there in his memoir, "Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals."
Our protagonist was ready to go to Wall Street from the tender age of 15. All of the cool dads who visited his New England boarding school were Wall Streeters, and he always had a rebellious, above-the-rules attitude.
So when he made it through the torture of Wall Street recruiting, LeFevre seemed to have found himself at home. He moved to London, spent his entire bonus in one vacation, threw wild parties, and lived paycheck to paycheck in the most luxurious way possible.
His concept of money was quickly distorted, and none of it was ever enough.
Most of "Straight to Hell" is spent in Hong Kong, where LeFevre does things that would make Sen. Elizabeth Warren's hair stand on end. There are prostitutes and cocaine, high-school-cafeteria antics in incredibly high-end restaurants, lots of swearing — basically every debaucherous Wall Street meme you can think of hits the page.
Of course, you expected that from a writer who tweets things like:
#1: Some chick asked me what I would do with 10 million bucks. I told her I'd wonder where the rest of my money went.
— GSElevator (@GSElevator) November 12, 2013What you may not expect from the book (and what would probably most upset Warren, the Massachusetts senator who is one of Wall Street's most vocal critics) is LeFevre's detailed depiction of doing business on Citigroup's bond-syndicate desk in Asia. There's no question that he knows his way around the business, and it's a dirty one. There's collusion, competition, nepotism, and a whole lot of reprehensible stuff going on in the business side, and it's fascinating.
Reading @JohnLeFevre's new book about his bond trading career at Salomon. Here's how he explains the syndicate: pic.twitter.com/0azuvnEGtR
— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) July 8, 2015It's the little things about banking — the code words, the tricks, the threshold for acceptable behavior — that make this book a great read. In one chapter, LeFevre describes what happens when a banker steps away from his desk after telling someone on the phone "let me call you in five minutes from my cellphone."
What follows is definitely not above board.
The thing is, there are consequences for all of this. LeFevre's first night in Hong Kong is spent with his boss, who promptly takes him to a brothel. LeFevre realizes that this wealthy, successful man who is about to move back to the US has a drug problem and a marriage that is falling apart.
His boss is leaving Hong Kong to save his own life.
"It's a good thing I'm not moving here with a wife or a coke problem," LeFevre thinks to himself.
Eight weeks later he's coked out and sweating, locked in a stranger's bathroom doing something I won't share because Business Insider is a family site. If you're into that kind of humor, you'll find it funny. If you're not, you'll find it appalling (and of course, this book may also not be for you).
Either way, what's clear is that LeFevre thought he could have his way with Hong Kong, but Hong Kong (and the life he led there) eventually had its way with him.
You see, living that way is rather exhausting. Luckily, LeFevre can write. He now lives in Texas and is married with two kids. He moved from the third category of Wall Streeters to the first (or something like it). Sure the book may sound unapologetic, but if it were that way entirely we wouldn't ultimately understand why LeFevre's life was unsustainable.
And you get that impression by about the fifth chapter.
There are tons of normal people doing normal things on Wall Street. Talk to LeFevre's friends from that period and they'll tell you that he was, in fact, extra wild, extra extravagant. He partied harder than most. He crashed luxury cars. He pushed the envelope.
So if you should so happen to go to Wall Street after reading "Straight to Hell" expecting to find LeFevre's world, I promise you'll be disappointed. The vast majority of bankers can't hang like that.
The ones who do, though, will need to get out to save their own lives.
Check out the book for yourself >
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Friday morning, I attended the ticker tape parade in honor of the US Women's National Team winning the Women's World Cup last week.
It was awesome.
There's nothing quite like the enthusiasm of tween girls — and this was a parade made up almost entirely of tween and teen girls.
I really recommend spending time with more teens. I went to the parade for work, but I came away from it really happy about life.
This girl in the picture below, Alex Thiessen, was my favorite person I encountered. She came to the parade from New Jersey with her family. "We're pretty big soccer people," she told me. "I'm really excited to be here today because a lot of my role models play on the team."
"Who's your role model?" I asked.
"Alex Morgan."
There were lots of people from out of town, too. Michelle Bernardi and Denise Rogers brought their sons up from Philadelphia. (The boys, Xavier and Jimmy, play for the Philadelphia soccer club, and were really excited to be there as well.)
There were plenty of people from the city, as well. These girls are from Brooklyn:
SEE ALSO: Here's why it's fair that female athletes make less than men
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Talk about a reinvention. Formerly a Victorian Slate mine turned WWII art bunker, the 177 year-old Llechwedd Slate Caverns in Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales, are now a massive, subterranean playground.
Bounce Below is probably the world's largest network of trampolines, considering it features 10,000 square feet of nets. Three huge trampolines are suspended at different levels (between 20 and 180 feet above the cave's floor), and connected by slides, walkways and tunnels.
To get there, visitors will have to hop aboard an old mine train, then slide down 60 feet straight into the first trampoline. Helmets protect visitors from injury, though the whole thing — trampolines, walkways, slides and all — is basically enveloped in netting. Despite the craggy cliffs intimidating from below, walls of net make it impossible to fall off the edges.
There are three levels of trampolines: One is 20 feet above the ground floor of the cave, another 60 feet, and the highest one 180 feet. To get from one trampoline to the next, you can either take a slide (there's one in a corner of every trampoline), or bounce up and down spiral staircases.
Adding to the surreal experience are technicolored LED lights, though the calm cave vibe remains thanks to its quiet, echo-y ambiance.
This year, Bounce Below saw the addition of Junior Bounce, three trampolines meant for the younger set (ages three to six).
They already host bachelor and bachelorette parties, and even the occasional wedding, but there are also plans to build a restaurant and conference rooms for corporate events.
The old mines are also part of Zip World, and feature the world's largest underground zip line course, the longest zipline in Europe, and allegedly the fastest one in the world.
SEE ALSO: 23 pictures that show why travelers voted Kyoto the best city in the world
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I've always hated selfie sticks.
When you are in touristy places, they litter the landscape. As a busy New Yorker, they often almost hit you in the face at the most inopportune times (like when you are trying to get back into your Times or Union Square office after lunch).
But today I changed my mind.
Today I was at the Women's World Cup parade in downtown Manhattan. It was really crowded, and at any time I was five to seven people away from a clear view to the street.
For the most part I was talking to people and taking photos of fans, but as the parade wore on, I decided I wanted a selfie to commemorate the occasion.
So I tried to take a selfie.
It did not go well. The scale was all wrong. I had to bend down to get the float in the background, and even then I only got the players' butts (sorry players).
Finally, FINALLY, I know why people use selfie sticks. They're annoying and a little bit dangerous, but they really help you get the job done when you're arm is just not long enough to get a full parade in the background of your photo.
These ladies, who asked me to throw some ticker tape on top of them as they took a selfie know what's up.
SEE ALSO: I went to the Women's World Cup parade and now I'm really excited about the future of women's soccer
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NOW WATCH: Selfies are evolving beyond the selfie stick
Though coffee is traditionally grown in the equatorial region of the world, farmers have found a way to grow the beans in America. Coffee is now being grown on a five acre plot of land near Santa Barbara, California. Despite the local drought, the farmers have developed a specialized irrigation system to help the beans grow to peak perfection. The beans are in such high demand, they've been sold for $60 per pound.
Produced by Emma Fierberg. Video courtesy of Associated Press.
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Income inequality in America has steadily been growing for decades, and a new study from the Urban Institute looks at inequality at the neighborhood level.
The study identified the most privileged and most distressed neighborhoods by determining a "neighborhood advantage score" based on household income, homeownership rates, housing values, and college attainment and then comparing the top 10% of Census tracts to the bottom 10% across the US and in various metropolitan areas.
It also singled out the two metro areas with the highest and lowest inequality levels between neighborhoods: Dallas, Texas, and Erie, Pennsylvania.
Dallas has the highest neighborhood inequality index in the country. This translates into incomes in the top Census tracts being almost six times higher, housing value more than six times higher, homeownership over two times higher and college completion nine times higher than in the bottom Census tracts.
Erie is at the other end of the spectrum. Income in the top Census tracts is less than three times higher than in the bottom tracts, housing value is barely three times higher, homeownership just about two times higher and college completion just over four times higher than the bottom tracts.
The Urban Institute researchers suggested that the difference between the two cities came from the top: Dallas' top 10% tracts have incomes, housing values, and college attainment rates that are on average two to three times higher than the top 10% in Erie, while the same factors in Dallas' bottom tracts were around the same level as Erie's bottom tracts.
Basically, Dallas' elites are better off than those at the top in Erie, while the bottom 10% of tracts look about the same in both cities.
The local media in Dallas has taken note of the inequality there. In March, the Dallas Observer reported that the income of the top 5% of earners rose 12% between 2012 and 2013 while the earnings for the bottom 20% fell 1%.
"In a rather unsurprising turn of events," the Observer noted, "Dallas' rich are getting richer while its poor are getting poorer."
SEE ALSO: 11 US housing markets where it makes more sense to buy than rent
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The future of architecture is in for some spectacularly cool buildings.
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) recently announced the 338 projects that are on its annual design awards shortlist. In addition to new buildings that went up in the past year, there's a whole category devoted to structures that aren't yet completed: the buildings of the future.
Keep scrolling to see all of the buildings in the running for the WAF's "Best Future Building" award.
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From the residential building category.
From the culture building category.
From the education building category.
After more than five decades, the US and Cuba have formally agreed to restore diplomatic relations later this month. While the stagnant island nation braces for change, Business Insider recently sent three reporters to Havana to experience the surreal time warp of this tropical nation.
We'll have lots of stories about our adventures on the island, which you'll be able to find here.
Scroll down to see our favorite shots and the stories behind them.
SEE ALSO: The 18 most gorgeous classic cars we saw on the streets of Havana
SEE ALL OF OUR ADVENTURES: Business Insider goes to Cuba
On Thursday night, 57-year-old Kevin Doyle finished his trek of over 600 miles from Petaluma, California, to San Diego, in a tribute to his late wife Eileen, who passed away due to pancreatic cancer in November 2012.
Both Kevin and Eileen were huge "Star Wars" fans. According to Kevin's fundraising page for his trek to Comic Con, Eileen loved to draw characters from "Star Wars," and she was "so popular at the Comic Book Shows... appearing as a guest artist, her fans were of all ages and would surround her tables with smiles on their face and full of conversation."
But just over a year after Eileen was diagnosed with metastatic adenocarcinoma in October 2011, Eileen passed away. Kevin says he still attends the comic book shows, "but not so much for myself but rather more to honor Eileen and the art she created and to keep her presence at the shows."
Kevin offered personal details on his fundraising page:
On November 7th of 2012 Eileen lost her battle with cancer. From that day forward the sun does not rise for me, everyday is November the 7th, my candle has burned out. Eileen was the most amazing person I ever knew, she was so beautiful, so thoughtful and she was loved by everyone who knew her. Eileen was the center of so many lives just as she was in my life but while our time together here on earth was so very short my devotion to her is life long and I can't imagine my life without her. So I honor her with every breath I take and I keep her spirit close to my heart as I continue on.
So nearly three years after his wife's death, with a big "Star Wars" movie coming later this year, Kevin set out for Comic Con 2015 in San Diego in true "Star Wars" style: He left Rancho Obi-Wan, a museum totally dedicated to the "Star Wars" franchise, on June 6, and walked roughly 645 miles, pushing a cart filled with camping gear, bandannas, coloring books and extra clothes, in an all-white stormtrooper outfit, while wearing a sign on his back: "I race in memory of Eileen Shige Doyle."
"It's just been one amazing experience," Kevin told Coast News.
During his trek, Kevin has also been raising awareness for "Eileen's Little Angels," a non-profit charity he's creating in honor of his wife. And he's getting plenty of attention: motorists, bicyclists, joggers and walkers have stopped to say hi to the stormtrooper, take a few pictures, and support Kevin on his journey.
"For me, I haven't had my head around it just quite yet," Kevin said. "For me, it's just me walking to honor my wife, but then people are gathering and making it really special. And they're making it personal for them, which I hadn't accounted for that — that people would receive me in that way."
Now that Kevin's arrived safely in San Diego, he will enjoy Comic Con thanks to a generous weekend pass provided by Rancho Obi-Wan CEO and president Steve Sansweet. He's also got a free four-night stay at a local hotel thanks to his friends from the local 501st Legion, a volunteer organization for costume-wearers. And once Comic Con wraps up, Kevin will take an Amtrak train home instead of walking. But he says he hopes to leave time for himself during the return trip and beyond.
"We'll see what happens after this," Kevin told Coast News. "I kind of left this as an open book for me."
SEE ALSO: Why Stormtroopers look different in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'
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One night in June, a woman walked past a McDonald's in the Philippines and saw a little boy studying outside. He was using the light from the McDonald's to see his work.
She felt inspired, snapped a photo, and shared it to Facebook. And now, just a month later, people from all around the world are sending money and supplies to help the boy and family — all thanks to that photo.
Joyce Gilos Torrefranca, a 20-year-old medical technology student in Cebu, captioned the post, "I got inspired by a kid," Mashable reports.
I got inspired by a kid ❤️
Posted by Joyce Gilos Torrefranca on Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The image has since been shared over 7,000 times and prompted a Filipino news station to find out more about the little street scholar.
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