Kenneth Myers, UncommonGoods Jr. Data Scientist
My hometown is…
Wading River, NY
I’m inspired by…
“When the sun hits that ridge just right”
An uncommon fact about me….
I’ve taken a selfie everyday since August 2012.
The word or phrase that best describes me…
“Pizza” – The Ninja Turtles
My guilty pleasure is…
Listening to anime theme songs.
I’m stubborn about…
Kingdom Hearts is the best video game series ever.
Something that always calms me is…
Taffy
My spirit animal is…
Bison.
Jesse Jacobsen, Purchasing Assistant
My hometown…
That sleepy, forgotten borough of Staten Island, NY just across the water from us.
An uncommon fact about me…
As a musician, I have performed in some of NYC’s premier venues, from Otto’s Shrunken Head to The Delancey (oh, and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center).
The word or phrase that best describes me…
A smile on my face, a song in my heart.
No one can say that 2016 is a year we’ll easily forget. In between the highs and the lows (and the revamped TV shows and movie reunions), our Instagram feeds were full of trends that made us want to de-clutter our homes, dress in head-to-toe athleisure gear, and challenge ourselves to freeze into crazy poses. Here at UncommonGoods, we fell in love with a few of these trends right alongside our customers. We took a look back at some of our favorites from the past 12 months, and provided a preview for the year ahead!
Our beating heart clock combines elements of art and science in a kinegram, a manipulation of still images to convey a sense of repetitive motion.
Remember the simple flip books you made as a kid? A few drawings stacked in sequence, bound, and when flipped, a cartoon hero seemed to run across the page. What was this wizardry that brought crude line drawings to life? It was thanks to an optical phenomenon called the persistence of vision, where the breaks between ‘frames’ go unnoticed because of the inherent lag in how fast our eyes update visual information. On a more grown-up level, the same principle makes the magic of television and movies possible. In fact, films are sometimes called flicks because of the flickering nature of how they work: at least 24 frames per second race before our eyes to make the illusion of continuous motion.
As a business that specializes in one-of-a-kind, handmade merchandise, we don’t typically offer site-wide promotions. Shop ’til you drop deals, such as those advertised on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, are not part of our DNA. (Though that doesn’t mean we don’t offer goods on sale!)
But what is stored within our DNA is a commitment to giving back, an instinct to use business as a force for good.
Fall arrives. Leaves change. The air cools. It feels nice to sit in the sun and soak up the warmth. While some lament the loss of summer, others embrace the crisp autumn air. Many of our blogging friends enjoy kicking up leaves, stoking the fire, settling down with afternoon cocoa and a classic novel. More than a few are energized, developing recipes, aging whiskey, baking, stewing, and prepping for the holidays.
Nothing warms us more than seeing our artists’ wares featured in a great blog post.
See Debbie and Dave’s full post here
As the weather cools high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, bloggers Debbie and Dave at The Mountain Kitchen use our Reclaimed Fire Hose Log Carrier to haul firewood to their rustic mountain retreat.
As an independently owned business, we have the freedom to support causes we believe in and to impact the world in a positive way. With every purchase you make, we donate $1 to one of our nonprofit partners of your choice through our Better to Give program (at no cost to you).
While we’re grateful to have the freedom to support four nonprofit organizations that are doing such important work, we know that the key to truly making a difference through our Better to Give program is up to our customers.
Thanksgiving Day is less than one month away, which means that we are officially entering the eye of the holiday season! (Cue “Eye of the Tiger.”)
Between between hours of travel, days of holiday dinner prep, and months of coordinating reunions with loved ones, it can be hard to take the time to plan anything that doesn’t revolve around your own seasonal traditions.
But there’s no denying that taking the time to give back is invaluable. All year long, we offer our customers the chance to give back through our Better to Give program. With every purchase you make, we’re proud to donate $1 to a Better to Give partner of your choice (at no cost to you). This year, we want to make sure that giving back is part of your holiday planning. So, we turned to our community to spread the word about our Better to Give program.