Hasta La Gadget!

Plants are a great way to add dimension and color to a space. They freshen up the room and offer health benefits as well! Many plants feature air-cleaning qualities and studies have shown they have calming effects on the body. We’ve put together a list of the most beautiful low-maintenance plants that you can bring into your own space!

Fiddle leaf fig tree

This is definitely Laurel & Wolf’s favorite indoor plant. We have one in our office and we always suggest them to anyone looking for some greenery. It is also very low maintenance and only requires watering once it has completely dried.

Succulents

Succulents have become quite popular in recent years, and it’s not hard to imagine why. They actually prefer dry soil and room temperature, so keeping them alive is pretty easy. They look beautiful in both clusters or singles.

Aloe

Aloe not only looks great, but has health and healing benefits too. Plants comes in all sizes, from a few inches to a few feet wide, so you’ll definitely find one appropriate for your space.

Rubber Tree

Rubber trees are great if you have tall ceilings because they can grow 8+ feet tall! If you’re looking for a smaller plant, you can simply trim it to shape. Rubber trees have shiny emerald leaves that reflect light beautifully.

Snake Plant

The vertical sword-shaped leaves sport a unique pattern reminiscent of Ikat textiles. Snake plants sit well in corners and look appropriate both on the floor or elevated on a table.

Asparagus fern

A light and whimsical plant, asparagus ferns work well in hanging baskets. Just be careful nobody (including pets) eat the poisonous berries that occasionally grow!

Areca Palm

This palm instantly makes any space feel more tropical. If you’re looking to warm up a cold or bare-looking room, this is the plant for the job!

Here’s to living green!

xo,

Laurel & Wolf

What color is it?

That question had just about everyone with a social media account scratching their heads on Thursday, when 21-year-old Scottish folk singer Caitlin McNeill posted a photo of a dress on Tumblr.

“Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the f*ck out,” McNeil wrote in the photo’s caption–and they weren’t the only ones who couldn’t. Some people saw the dress as white and gold, while others say it as blue and black.

The dress really is blue and black, so why do some perfectly sane people see it as white and gold? Here comes the science.

(Story continues below image.)

In the middle, the original photo of the dress. The photo on the left has been color-corrected as if the dress were white. The photo on the right has been color-corrected to blue-black.

“It’s a phenomenon known as color constancy,” Mitchell Moffitt, co-creator of the YouTube series ASAPScience, says in a new video (above). “People who picture the dress as white have brains who may be interpreting the dress in a blue-lit room for example… It makes perfect sense then that the white dress would be tinted blue and that the gold color wouldn’t really change.”

In other words, our brains automatically adjust our color perception depending on the context in which something is viewed.

Mystery solved.

As my writing is wont to do, this will likely get me into trouble and incur the proverbial side-eye here and there, but it is time that the truth emerged. There are many wonderful things about being a modern American homosexual. The whole “having to fight for basic rights and constitutional protections” part notwithstanding, the gay community — and here, again, my experience pertains to the male portion of the community — is the beneficiary of a degree of affirmation unlike anything that’s occurred previously.

I’m not just speaking of marriage equality.

The nation’s attitude toward the gay community has undergone a paradigm shift at a breathtakingly fast clip. (And yes, this President saying what he said when he said it has a great deal to do with it. If you don’t understand the significance of his action, or question it — regardless of party — see me after class). We’re at a point of near coexistence. Though work remains — looking at you Georgia, North Carolina and Arkansas — by and large we’re in an astounding place. So, regrettably (not really) I’m going to have to break the hard news to you: The time has come for the gay best friend (or perhaps you prefer “GBF”) to, once and for all, experience a quick, clean and unequivocal death.

He’s become a staple of our collective zeitgeist. Who can forget the near ubiquitous web series that hastened us to “look at our lives and look at our choices?” I credit the onset of such lovable and decidedly pointed characters as Will Truman, the undeniably handsome Elijah, the ever whimsical Kurt and of course the inimitable Stanford Blatch with moving the needle on how mainstream Americans view the community. It’s a powerful testament to the sign of the times when most new primetime television shows either feature a prominent gay subplot, garner criticism for lack of one or some combination thereof. It means something when the chattering class questions the lack of diversity on the television. This has been the medium by which we as Americans see ourselves. When there’s a perception that the image we see is incomplete, without a piece of the LGBTQ community, that’s a potent assertion about who we are as a people.

That said, the GBF is a narrow interpretation of the beautiful array of personalities that comprise the LGBTQ community. It’s the unfair distilling of gay men to just one of the many things that makes him the guy who you want to be around because of his wit, sparkling personality or great taste in music. You limit his full agency when you do this. More succinctly: Don’t put baby in a corner.

Particularly odious is the act of referring to an out gay man or men as “my gay,” or “my gays.” It’s an understood rule of societal thumb that you don’t compare things to ownership. I will capitulate here. However, the triteness that is inherent in referring to ANYONE — sexual orientation aside — as “my” anything cannot be overstated. What’s next? My straights? My blacks? My GOD! For more on this, we turn to our field reporters Bette, Goldie and Diane.

The notion of the “gay best friend” works to calcify the idea of gay as other. It may seem to be a minor issue of nomenclature, but what you call something has meaning, in my most humble opinion. I don’t want to be limited by my sexual orientation. Nor do I wish to have undue expectations placed on me because of aforementioned orientation.

No dear, I don’t know why the guy you’re into won’t text you back. (I still haven’t figured that out for my own purposes.) Apologies, but I don’t have an opinion on everything you wear. (Unless, of course, it’s particularly heinous, at which point, all bets are off.) Nope, I don’t care to join you for pilates. (We banned torture… ish.) And, for the love of all that is good and HOLY: I am not — repeat, NOT — an honorary girl. I am proud to announce that after 24 years, my penis insists on staying around, and I’m ok with that.

We are entering a new era in this country’s discourse. The arc of the moral universe, long as it may be, is truly bending toward a more just, enlightened and connected collective conscious. Stale monikers, such as the GBF, function as constructs of a hetero-normative and insensitive past that have no place in where we’re going together. It may seem harmless, and I suspect that it did not originate from a place of malice — perhaps it even arose from a place of genuine respect and good intentions. I get that. The same thing can be said of the initial launch of healthcare.gov, Mondale for President and ARTPOP.

It does not mean that we’re in a rush to replicate any of those things anytime soon. I want my children to grow up in a country where they don’t have two gay dads, but just two fathers who love and care for them dearly. Once I’ve met that special guy and make the decision to commit my life to his, I won’t be gay married. I’ll be married. When we see the election of some qualified, stylish and proudly out individual as commander-in-chief in our lifetime, he won’t be the gay president. He’ll be the president. I don’t want to be your gay best friend. I just want to be your friend (we can iron out the “best” piece at a later date).

The words that we choose and the way we identify one another mean things. They have to, lest all communication cease to be meaningful. So yes, comrades. The time has come. Take him off life support. Turn off the Cher. Put the rainbow paraphernalia away. The GBF needs a sunset. He’s served valiantly and has many other gifts to offer beyond his predilection for other men. It’ll be difficult at first, but I’m confident we can get through this transition together. If not, no sweat. Global warming will take us all out soon enough anyway.

Class dismissed.

I don’t think of myself as a punctual person — I’m constantly pulling into movie theater parking garages just as they start to roll the trailers. So when I meet people at a restaurant for dinner, I’m rarely the first to arrive.

But a couple months ago, I was meeting my mom for dinner at a sushi bar called Hiko in LA’s Sawtelle neighborhood, and I happened to beat her there. When I walked in, I found it deserted. Although it was 7 p.m., there were literally no diners in any of the seats. The only other souls in the restaurant were a waitress and a sushi chef. I walked up to the waitress and asked for a table for two. Her expression darkened.

“Has your dining partner arrived yet?” she asked.

“No,” I responded warily, “But I was just texting with her and she’s only a few minutes away.”

“I’m sorry, but we only seat complete parties,” she said.

“Even though there’s literally no one else here?” I asked, confused.

“It’s the policy,” she said, clearly embarrassed. She gestured toward a row of stools in the hallway. “Would you mind sitting here while you wait for your companion?”

I did mind. The restaurant was empty! And I just wanted to relax, order a beer and peruse the menu while I waited. I didn’t want to perch on some uncomfortable stool in a drafty hallway for who knows how long. But I’d heard that the owner of Hiko was known for strictly enforcing a host of specific rules in his restaurant; he’s known for kicking diners out mid-meal. So instead of complaining, I sat down at a stool and waited five minutes, until my mom walked in and we were allowed to sit. Our food, for the record, ended up being superb — but when I’ve thought about the meal since that night, I’ve found myself focusing more on the restaurant’s lack of hospitality than its deft handling of blue crab.

This was an extreme example. Few restaurants would refuse to seat an incomplete table if there were literally no one else in the dining room. But it speaks to a troubling trend in the restaurant world: Maitre d’s hatred of seating incomplete parties.

Intellectually, I understand why a restaurant wouldn’t want to seat someone before the rest of their party arrives. Since a party is unlikely to order food until everyone arrives, seating an incomplete table wastes space that could otherwise go to people who are ready to order. It’s an inefficient allocation of limited seating. That’s why I’m fine with a very popular restaurant refusing to seat incomplete parties during prime times — 8 o’clock on Friday night, say, or in the middle of the Sunday brunch rush.

But in my experience, this policy extends far beyond that. It’s ubiquitous. Restaurants everywhere insist on only seating complete parties, at all times of day and on all the days of the week. And it’s a major turnoff.

After all, the host is the first person you encounter when you walk through a restaurant’s doors. When they tell you that you can’t sit down, even though there are empty tables, it immediately signals that the restaurant’s owners are more interested in maximizing profits than in making their guests feel welcome and comfortable. It can be hard for a restaurant to recover from that foul first impression. Especially since someone who arrives before their dining companions might already feel vulnerable and awkward. Who hasn’t been the first one to show up for a date and worried that the other person will stand them up?

Plus, even if diners aren’t likely to order their main courses before their companions arrive, they’re very likely to start ordering little appetizers to share and, especially, drinks, which are the main profit centers for restaurants in any case. So it’s not a total waste. At restaurants with bars, hosts will often encourage early arrivers to wait for the rest of their table at the bar and order a drink in the meantime — and I’m generally A-OK with that.

But if the bar’s full, or the restaurant has no bar, and there are open tables, I really wish hosts would seat incomplete tables. Not if it’s just one person in a group of eight, I suppose, and not if the restaurant’s slammed. I wouldn’t want to replace one kind of rigidity with another. I’m just asking for hosts to be flexible and hospitable rather than blindly obeying ironclad policies.

I witnessed a stellar example of a smart attitude toward incomplete parties a few weeks after my meal at Hiko, when I was meeting a friend for dinner at Ludo Lefebvre’s hotspot Petit Trois. I walked in at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday and found it just as empty as Hiko had been. This was more surprising, as it’s a tiny restaurant that’s attracted a ton of buzz. Most of the time, it’s packed; it’s the rare LA restaurant that regularly has a wait for a table. So even though I was the only diner there, I felt sure that I would be asked to hover outside until my friend arrived.

But much to my delight, the waitress who greeted me at the door encouraged me to sit right down. She poured me a glass of water and asked if I wanted a cocktail while I waited. My friend soon texted to say that he’d mixed up his schedule, and wouldn’t get there for 20 minutes — but at no point did anyone in the restaurant flinch. Indeed, they were friendly and solicitous even as the restaurant started to fill up a bit and my companion still hadn’t arrived.

When he finally showed up, I had worked up an appetite while waiting and drinking, so we ordered a great deal of food and drink, racking up a larger bill than I had intended. But because the restaurant had welcomed me enthusiastically from the minute I walked in, I left eager to return. That’s what a good restaurant meal should always do.

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