Happy new year!! First off, a big thank you to everyone who read Perfectly Imperfect and subscribed in 2022. You helped this newsletter transform from an obscure side project into…whatever it is now.

We also have some exciting news! We made a zine with our friends at Forever Magazine that features Perfectly Imperfect guests and their New Year’s resolutions. It includes writing from Chloe Cherry, Brad Phillips, Willa Bennett, Annie Hamilton, Caveh Zahedi, and Angel Prost, to name a few.

It’s available now on Forever Mag’s website!

Oh, and save January 13th on your calendar. You’ll find out why tomorrow :)

Without further ado

Tyler Bainbridge (instagram, newsletter, twitter, website)

🦖 “T-Recs” Newsletter

I’m challenging myself to share a short recommendation every since day this year on a newsletter called “T-Recs”.

This is partially inspired by Caveh Zahedi’s experiments such as “365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die”, his bare-all public journal newsletter, and his latest, “365 Days Or However Long It Takes Before It Destroys All My Relationships”.

Will this experiment drive me insane? Can I actually make a worthwhile rec every day? Will I make it the whole year? Is this going to reveal too much about me? I’m not sure, but we’ll find out I guess.

Being inspired by Caveh seems dangerous. Hopefully it doesn’t ruin my life.

🎵 Paisley Underground

I was searching for music similar to Mazzy Star and ended up falling into the "Paisley Underground" rabbit hole. This genre is more or less 1980s LA's garage-y psychedelic answer to Velvet Underground. There are a ton of great bands to check out here like The Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock, Green on Red, and Game Theory. None of them sound much like Mazzy Star, which was my original goal, but they're all insanely sick. I've been playing The Dream Syndicate album The Days of Wine and Roses basically non-stop.

🎳 Bowling

Bowling is IN for 2023. Mad many movies from 1970 - 1990 seem to include a scene with some cool characters sharing a pitcher of ice cold beer, ripping cigs inside, and occasionally throwing a ball down the lane. Unfortunately most bowling alleys these days are drenched in neon and insist on serving me an entire meal while I play. I yearn for the simple days of charming, warmly lit, no bullshit, bowling alleys being embedded in American Culture. Don’t even get me started on String Setters…

📕 ”Essays and Fictions” by Brad Phillips

When we had Brad Phillips on the newsletter I still hadn’t read this book. Shame on me. Essays and Fictions is an incredibly sincere collection of essays on addiction and trauma,that lands somewhere between fiction and autobiography. I was glued to it front to back. This book breathed new life into my reading habits and I’ve since read Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and I’m halfway through Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.

📸 Take More Photos

Without sounding like a bitter luddite, I miss the days of people capturing moments for the sake of remembering, not sharing with strangers. We all have childhood VHS footage and disposable photos of seemingly mundane moments at family BBQs, birthday parties, vacations, etc, but in the iPhone age most of our photos are taken with the intention of posting. This is a crucial difference, for me at least, so I recommend getting a camera not because it takes better photos than your phone, but because it'll remind you to capture more regular slices of life.

🧥 Barbour 

I've owned a Barbour jacket for nearly 10 years now, dating back to my #menswear raw denim Red Wing Iron Ranger days, but unfortunately I had developed an allergic reaction to it. I guess I was just scared of looking like a finance guy or something. My opinion changed a few months ago when Blake and I were talking, in the rain, about how they can actually be pretty cool depending on how worn it is and how it's worn. I've since breathed new life into my jacket by rewaxing it myself (for the first time ever) so now it’s a darker color and the wax has revealed a lovely patina.

📕 Buffalo Zine

This Zine should be way more popular. It’s most recent (AW22) issue is a beautiful fabric-bound hardcover book featuring legends such as Chloë Sevigny, John Waters, Paloma Elsesser, Richard Kern, Dasha Nekrashova, John Wilson, Eartheater, Caveh Zahedi, and Patti Smith. The list goes on and on, but you get the idea, it's a Zine that’s chock full of cool people being interviewed and photographed in or around the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York City. What's not to love?

😅 90s Russell Athletics Zip-Ups

Billy Jones already talked up Zip-Up hoodies on Perfectly Imperfect, so I'll keep it short, but I've been loving this specific zip-up. It's soft, not too long, and the overall fit is very flattering. Wear it fully zipped, unzipped, or partially zipped. That's freedom baby. 

Alex Cushing (instagram, moodboard)

🛠️ Hardware

For Christmas this year, Nicole bought me a beautiful woodworking bench (for those interested - Rockler beech wood bench), and I’ve been working to set that space up perfectly. That process for me began with acquiring the missing “basic” tools and giving them a home that keeps them easy to get but also out of the way. I found that, as someone who often prioritizes form and beauty, I’m drawn to a lot of used, vintage, and curated supplies. As an example, I use one of the old Stanley Powerlocks as a tape measure, and my go-to screwdriver is an old Wilde one kind of like this. For more of a “curated but new” feel I often find myself browsing Yuns, a cool little hardware shop that has a very focused small collection of reliable and high-value products. And finally — to provide the arsenal a resting place, I took my classic yellow dewalt hammer drill to the concrete and mounted a pegboard.

🪵 Building Something

Ok now that we’ve established my workbench setup lets get into what its for. Nothing beats making things yourself, when you literally have your hands in the creation of something, you feel pride as you watch it get used and develop a patina over time. That being said, my first project was a little stool built for my daughter’s 2nd birthday, and I can’t wait to see her start to use it.

🚩 William Ellery

I heard of William Ellery through a Van Neistat youtube video (which honestly sub-rec, I’ve been pretty into his youtube recently, as someone trying to get better at being “handy”). According to William Ellery’s brand info page, a main goal is to advance the ideal that “it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore”. This comes through in a manner of really creative and interesting ways. There are “keepsake hats” with nylon mesh strapped over the logo (using a fisherman’s knot) providing a little strap-in area for keepsakes, “seatpack chairs “ fashioned out of what seems to be an inflatable dinghy, and of course the legendary wool socks, to be worn year-round. The design feels like an evolution beyond Tom Sachs, where the founder worked as a lead designer, with an oft hand-drawn logo and utilitarian materials everywhere. Each item feels very imaginitive and super cohesive, like they’re all a prop in some sequel to moonrise kingdom.

📹 Mandy Patinkin tiktok

I’m somehow still not tiktok pilled, but this is the most I’ve spent on a channel. Mandy Patinkin and his wife, Kathryn, just film the everyday stuff from their life, filtering little to nothing out, and there’s just something infectious about them as the “characters”. The way Kathryn browses a magazine calling out chairs they may buy while Mandy tries to reason on specific table heights and they somehow end up bickering about a jar that was opened and not refrigerated only to veer right back into chairs (it’s a swivel glider!) This is a next generation reality tv show and it’s great.

📕 A Month in the Country - J.L. Carr

Tom Birkin, a WWI vet, moves to an idyllic northern English small town to restore an uncovered mural at the town’s old chapel. This short and focused poetic little story is subtle but great, and basically a 1 day read for anyone.

🎵 Eiafuawn – Birds In The Ground

Eiafuawn is a little solo project from Clay Parton of Duster, where he delivers 12 super lo-fi songs collected into the abum birds in the ground. It’s emotional, personal, instrumentally atmospheric and a little floaty, and very slowcore - everything you might expect from an album that draws comparisons to Elliott Smith’s Either/Or. While it may not be as legendary and influential as the latter, it certainly earns it’s cult-favorite status.

Follow Tyler and Alex on Instagram

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