Comments on: savile row sewers

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 19:15:28 +0000

You know, Hamish, I think I know that girl.
“I may not look bovine, but boy, am I cattle.”

By: Hamish

Hamish — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:33:18 +0000

Like the cartoon.
I didn’t spend that much time in New York, but I do remember sitting in a couple of bars waiting for people. Sitting at the bar nursing a beer, waiting for people to finish work or whatever, inevitably within a few minutes some girl, usually good looking in that skinny unfed stressed New York kinda way would “happen” to be ordering a drink next to me, and the following conversation would take place.
“Hi, how are you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, how ’bout you?”
“Yeah, things are goin’ good, I’ve just been down in SoHo looking at a really good art exhibition/working at my ad agency/writing some stuff (this was mid-town, all the bankers were downtown, and still working). So what about you? (i.e. what do you do?)”
“I’m a business consultant.” (neglecting the difficult to understand and uncool fact that it is IT systems for banks, but making it clear I am middle class and solvent.)
“OK. So, waiting for friends?”
“Sure, my date, and a couple of friends as well.)
THUNDERCLAP!
*She thinks* ” “Ohmigod, a STRAIGHT guy in NEW YORK. Might be single.”
Then, her drink arrives and she sits there for a couple of seconds, I say nothing, and she gets up and goes.
Jesus, if I wanted to get laid a lot a lot a lot, then I would have moved to New York when I was thirty. It would have been too much though.

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 06:14:59 +0000

I dunno if it was so much a clear need to get out of advertising, Roy. It just all kinda happened by accident.
I think once The Hughtrain was pretty much written and explained, it was time to dig the teeth into something else.

By: Roy Blumenthal

Roy Blumenthal — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:45:36 +0000

Hey Hugh…
I love the way you stumbled into this, and have embraced it fully. One of the secrets to success is being able to recognise and then evaluate the myriad opportunities flinging themselves at one every day.
To most of us, helping a tailor out with some advice on his blog is as far as it would go. For a small percentage of us, we’d even go so far as to offer said tailor some amazingly insightful marketing advice.
Only one of us — you, Hugh — actually thought, “Hmmm… here’s an opportunity to get OUT of this damned advertising world I’ve been badmouthing of late. What do I need to do to take this opportunity by the collars????”
You’re into conversation, Hugh. Have you read THE REPUBLIC OF TEA? It’s one of those business books that IS conversation in your sense of the word, but that predates the concept by at least a decade. Well worth the read.
Blue skies
love
Roy

By: Simon Law

Simon Law — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 05:17:11 +0000

Why should you be stunned?
People are sick of buying from faceless corporate hegemonies. It’s easy to care about people. It’s something humans are wired to do.
You just have a lot of people who want to help you because they like you.
Humans are strange. But wonderful.