Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Alana Champion to share a taste of her taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Alana Champion is a NYC-based model signed to IMG Worldwide that’s worked with huge fashion houses like YSL and Gucci. Her friendship with Lana Del Rey has given us some Pinterest mood board classics as well as Champion’s co-written Blue Banisters track "Sweet Carolina" and the song’s music video that stars her, Del Rey, and Lana’s sister Chuck Grant. She’s even directed music videos herself such as this one for Dummy’s 2021 cut, “Sighs”. And some people might not know this, but Alana is a self described “NBA watching junkie addict” who’s been called the “prophet of doom” by the Cookies Pod (big shouts to Andrew Kou and Ben Detrik) after she jinx’d the Lakers season. Few people have taste as defined as Champion’s, and lucky for us, she’s here to tell us what she’s been into.

Without further ado

Alana Champion (instagram)

🇵🇱 LITTLE POLAND 

I like little Poland not just because I'm primarily from the Podkarpackie voivodeship, but also because it's one of the least jammed up diners downtown. I’m a big diner head, and have been living uptown as of recent where there are many more (even chiller) ones per square mile, but I’m not gonna give away any of those >:)  Also, I like the graphic design on the menu at Little Poland. (menu pic)

🧼 SILVER GEL

I know nothing about skincare, but lately I’ve been acting like an absolute menace to my body. Between dribbling my head on a door, and burning my chin on a cast iron pot of boiling water, I’ve had to talk to trusted sources to learn a thing or 2 about healing. ‘Specially cus my face is how I make money. The coolest facialest ever Andrea Amez suggested this magic potion called Silver Gel. She told me to ”slap it on like it's my job.” If you’re in the market to treat a wound, use this stuff to expedite the healing process, lol.

🏀 REDDIT NBA STREAMS: crackstreams, rnbastreams, world streams 

It’s my favorite time of year…Weather’s getting good and it's the glorious NBA postseason, where winning and losing matters a lot. Storylines are all unpredictable, lotsa surprises, upsets, script changes…Always some old reputations tarnished (Chris Paul?) new legacies born (Ja Morant). Right now we’re watching The Championship Finals and I'm still not really over the Heat loss, but decided that the only way I'm gonna have fun this series is if I get into my little Warriors Mode. This decision is in-part due to my hatred for the Celtics: their dumb, whiny attitude, ruthless media-chokehold, and basically all that the Bostonian culture represents...though I also tend to enjoy watching the Warriors win (in more ways than one) with Steph Curry being a unique points-machine wizard, and the team having motion offense brilliance with a little bit of awesome zone defense sprinkled in too. Speaking of fuckin Cool defense, special shouts-out to the tenacious Draymond Green for making Game 2 special to watch. His energy is super contagious when he's all charged up, talkin shit, startin shit, able to both guard his guy while also being everywhere else at once... that's what I call fun basketball!!! But enough about that, the point of this is to say it's not always easy figuring out where to watch games (blackout broadcasting, league Pass scams, Hulu glitching) so look to NBA reddit streams as an easy way to throw on any game for free. 

🎧 TECHNO RUNNING

I run a lot, and I like running to techno music because I feel like I am in a video game.  My friends know when I’m on “one of my little techno runs,” what is going down. Nowadays I just kinda freestyle it, might throw on a Giorgio Moroder mix, but when I started technorunning I used this podcast called PodRunner. It's like this DJ that makes a mix where the BPM changes according to how fast you should go. Some real endorphin blasters.

🎬 THE MOVIE SORCERER (my sorcerer poster)

Haha, I just saw this movie again. It’s so fuckin epic, maybe the best white-knuckle roadtrip thriller. The movie was a commercial failure of the 70s but lives on to be a severely underrated cinematic GEM! The Tangerine Dream score is awesome, the hyperrealistic, on-location filmmaking approach is treacherous and suspenseful, the man v. nature metaphor/moral through-lines of the film are always relevant… a true showcase of what elemental mayhem and slow psychological deterioration does to a group of crooks and criminals!  

Follow Alana on Instagram.

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