Her Aha Moment: Mary Wagstaff has always been captivated by the ocean. As a child, she spent idyllic summer vacations in Ocean City, Maryland, where foamy waves crashed on rocky jetties — and where she rode her first small swell at 17. Still, she’d mostly avoided the chilly waters near her Northern California home until 2004, when friends pestered her to join them for a day of surfing. “I was 55 and very resistant,” recalls Wagstaff, who hadn’t attempted to catch a wave in 35 years. “I figured I was too old, too stiff, and would embarrass myself.” But she agreed to tag along, and after watching her pals fool around on their rented boards, Wagstaff slipped into a wetsuit and paddled out to join them. A wave rolled in, and before she knew it, she was riding it toward the beach. After that, “I was totally hooked,” she says.

Her Learning Curve: Wagstaff and her friends started surfing weekly; since the youngest was 50, they called themselves OBOB, or Old Broads on Boards. Though she never took formal lessons, Wagstaff picked up pointers from more experienced riders and watched surf movies for inspiration. Eventually she invested in a stable longboard at a shop run by a veteran surfer. “He was my age, and he understood where I was coming from,” says Wagstaff with a laugh.

Her Payoff: In addition to giving her increased strength and flexibility, surfing has inspired her painting. A former advertising art director, Wagstaff — whose two children are grown — now spends long hours in her studio creating evocative, almost electrically photorealistic canvases depicting the glassy ocean and rolling waves. The sport has “connected me with a new daily contentedness,” Wagstaff says. “Surfing makes it easy to truly be in the present moment. The ocean is unpredictable, so the challenge is to be as alert and aware as I can be.”

Filmmaker Ian Cheney had the opposite experience. Growing up in rural Maine, he saw the unfiltered night sky as a friend, a familiar, map-like indicator of home. It was only after he’d moved to New York as an adult that he started thinking about his connection to the night sky, and what happens when we as a species lose the reality of night – indeed, of darkness – in our daily lives. In a new documentary that’s making its way across the country, The City Dark,Cheney takes a thought-provoking and lively look at the disappearance of darkness across our planet and the disruption of our natural cycles of light and dark.

Cheney, who won the Peabody Award for his 2007 documentary, King Corn, started pondering the curious loss of darkness in our 24/7 consciousness when he heard that the world population had tipped from being a majority rural population to a majority urban one.

“That got me thinking about the fact that, for the first time in the history of the planet, most people were now growing up in places where they couldn’t see an unpolluted night sky,” says Cheney. That shift from rural to urban mirrored his own shift from childhood to adulthood, and living in New York City. “So what does that mean? The night sky is just one part of what we give up from moving from countryside to city.” It was only on the journey of making the film, he says, that he came to understand all the myriad ways that artificial light affects us humans and the planet we inhabit.

In the film, Cheney consults historians, astronomers, and astronauts – people with rarefied experience with the cosmos – but he also talks with people who are familiar with the effects of artificial light on our ordinary everyday: the owner of a lighting store; a Boy Scout troop leader who brings city kids to the woods; a wildlife veterinarian who deals with disoriented birds; a lighting designer; a criminologist who studies how installing bright lampposts reduces urban crime.

When Matty Holzhacker, the Boy Scout troop leader in New York’s Washington Heights, brings his kids camping, they are astounded. “Oh my God—there’s like a hundred stars,” says one boy. (At one point during the film, Cheney himself counts out measly handfuls of stars at various locations from Battery Park and Times Square to Harlem and Staten Island.) But more profound is the sense of the larger world they get from the view—that there is a lot more out there, and more hours in a day to enjoy it. “Time goes slower,” another boy says, wonderingly.

“Our shift to being an urban population raises a lot of questions about our relation to nature,” says Cheney. “The modern environmental movement took hold only when we started to lose a connection to the natural world. Perhaps so, too, with light pollution. But maybe what matters is what we gain—and what we do—when we do in fact see it.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the prominent astrophysicist, tells Cheney a story about growing up in the Bronx and visiting the Hayden Planetarium for the first time. He remembers thinking that the night sky portrayed in the dome was a hoax. “To this day, I’m on mountaintops, and I look up—and this is a sickeningly urban thing to say—and I say, ‘Reminds me of the Hayden Planetarium.’”

One of the major ideas in The City Dark is that it’s easy to forget the scale of our world in the universe if you never get to see the night sky and all there is in it. Nowadays, Cheney says, you have to go farther and farther to get closer to the universe. He seeks out astronomers on the summit of Haleakala, one of the most isolated spots in the world, thrust up above the cloud cover on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Scientists there are on the lookout for killer asteroids en route to Earth, but they also ponder a deeper loss with the ever-encroaching fog of light from cities below.

“If we lived on a planet that was forever opaque to the universe beyond, science and inquiry would have been terribly distorted and twisted,” says Jeff Kuhn, a University of Hawaii astronomer, in the film. “In my lifetime, we once believed that there weren’t any other planets except for the planets around our sun, and because we could look out into the sky and we could see the universe, we now have a very different picture of a universe that’s filled with planets… to close that door, I think, would change the character of humankind entirely.”

And it’s more than just humans who are losing the night. Nature is, too. Footage of just-hatched sea turtles trying to find their way to the ocean in Florida is one of the more heartbreaking scenes in the movie, when the disoriented hatchlings head toward the bright light of nearby apartment complexes instead of toward the moonlit water.

Light changes habitat just like a bulldozer can. In the film, Cheney says that he sleeps better up in Maine, positing that in New York he misses not just the stars in the night sky, but the dark that comes with it. From talking with leading epidemiologists and cellular biologists, he finds that the health effects of 24/7 light can be severe; studies have found almost double the incidence of breast cancer in night shift workers, and evidence points to disrupted circadian rhythms from exposure to light at night. He discovers that the World Health Organization has identified night shift work as a probable carcinogen.

One of the most gripping sequences in The City Dark involves astronaut Don Pettit taking photos from the space station, of the galaxies of light that we have created on our planet. “I was struck by Pettit’s affection for the night sky – it goes hand in hand with the affection he feels for the cities, and city lights, of the planet when he’s up at the space station looking down, missing home,” Cheney says. The constellations in the sky parallel the constellations we have created here on Earth. And even though it may feel like a lost cause, every star we bring back to the city makes a difference, and it can be done – and indeed, has been done – through more thoughtfully designed urban lighting. Though we might love the light, we also need the dark. In this meditative, illuminating film, Cheney asks, Why can’t we have both?

View a clip from the film.

She should be forgiven for seeming skeptical. The Mid-Market/Western SoMa neighborhood, just south of Market Street between Fifth and 10th Streets, has long been an unpretty, crime-ridden stretch of boarded-up storefronts and run-down flophouses. It declined considerably after its heyday, in the early 20th century, when it was known as San Francisco’s grand theater district.

But despite its appearance, the area has seen a slow but steady revival in the last five years, starting with the opening in 2007 of the San Francisco Federal Building, designed by Morphosis and swathed in perforated steel. It was followed by a spate of upscale restaurants that serve the design geeks and office workers who began to frequent the area. This summer, their clientele will expand even further to include Twitter, which is moving into its new headquarters at the historic Art Deco Market Square building. The area may finally be nearing its tipping point.

AQ, a fairly new arrival to this shifting neighborhood, serves up seasonally driven food (AQ stands for “as quoted”) in the old brick building that once housed the San Francisco Department of Health. Sunlight pours into the high-ceilinged dining room; the enchanting décor changes four times a year to reflect the seasons (“winter” features bare branches, coppery light fixtures and lots of white). The hearty, flavorful dishes — a duck confit hash with eggs over easy, a beer-braised brisket sandwich with pickled red onions, peppers and cabbage — are by Mark Liberman, who has worked in the rarefied company of chefs like Daniel Boulud and Joël Robuchon.

“I’ve been kind of surprised at how quickly the changes have been coming. We’ve seen real estate investors in for dinner, and bigger and bigger names arriving — like Twitter, of course,” said Matt Semmelhack, who manages and owns the restaurant with Mr. Liberman. “It’s exciting that people are being attracted to this neighborhood.” In the spring, AQ will open a whiskey lounge downstairs from the restaurant.

Next door, De la Paz Coffee Roaster (1081 Mission Street; 415-525-4344; delapazcoffee.com) is a small roaster and wholesaler that’s about to open a coffee and espresso bar. The space is still unfinished, but it’s open on Fridays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Drop in to meet a cross-section of neighborhood residents and for a featured cup of Colombian coffee from Finca Buena Vista ($3 to $5 a cup, $2.50 to $3 for espresso drinks).

A half-block down Mission, the Cocktail Bill Boothby Center for the Beverage Arts (1161 Mission Street, Suite 120; 415-967-1891; theboothbycenter.org) is a mashup of community center, conference room, event space and “beverage lab” with a fully functional bar. Named for William T. Boothby, a pioneer San Francisco bartender in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the center made its debut in 2010 during San Francisco Cocktail Week. Every month, it holds classes in Mixology 101 and seasonal cocktails — the latter taught by the well-regarded bartender Scott Beattie.

Other recent additions include Huckleberry Bicycles (1073 Market Street; 415-484-6575; huckleberrybicycles.com), a bright, friendly shop opened by three friends and bike aficionados, Zack Stender, Jonas Jackel and Brian Smith. They made their name by offering free maintenance and repairs to cyclists from a vacant newspaper kiosk on Market Street (and still do, during the morning rush). Ask Mr. Smith about traffic to the neighborhood, and he’ll say that the energy has grown greatly in recent months. “There are so many people and organizations making their way here,” he said. “And 1,000 cyclists passing by every hour doesn’t hurt, either.”

Halpern’s work has always dealt with the character of (and characters in) crumbling industrial cities; he’s a native son of Buffalo and now lives and teaches in Rochester. His photographs are of stark, rough places, but there is rich emotion in the faces and features in the landscape he documents, and glimmers of radiance — what might be called hope.

His first book was Harvard Works Because We Do, a portrait of the university through its service workers. Halpern took some time out to answer a few questions from Cities.

What does A stand for?

I don’t want to totally pin that down. But the original source came from the tattoo on the guy in one of the photographs in the book; the image kind of stuck in my mind. I like the ambiguity of it. A is the beginning: of the alphabet, also America.

In these places where there’s all this death and decay, there are moments of birth and life and renewal: the reflection of light on a piece of glass, a flower growing. I wanted A to be everything and nothing.

The photos are set in cities along the Eastern Rust Belt. Tell us how you came to cover life in those places in particular.

The initial intrigue came from growing up in Buffalo. I was always so fascinated by the landscape. The population of Buffalo today is half of what it was at its peak. So much of it is abandoned, reused, re-purposed, and regrown, and I always found that strange and beautiful.

Most of my photos at one point came from Buffalo, and I got tired of photographing the same neighborhoods, so I started going to other cities and feeling a kinship with places I’d never been. I could tell the story of Buffalo specifically, but then I realized it wasn’t just Buffalo, it was about America, life, death, and renewal, too.

Whether it was Buffalo or Pittsburgh or Detroit, I could find these visual metaphors that could speak to all these things. Half of the photos were taken in summer 2010; the other half are from five years of trips and photo shoots. On the summer trip, I bought a pop-up camper and spent two months driving through the Rust Belt. I would set up shop in a state park outside of a city, and I would drive around these cities all day, then come back to my trailer.

Your images show people and animals as loving, defiant, dreamy, getting lost and getting by – as they are, at home in cities that have been described as ruined or post-apocalyptic. It seems to me that you focus on life in all of its varied, vibrant glory. Is that accurate? What do you want most to evoke in your portraits?

The animals and trees became for me an indirect way to reference a post-Eden life – the garden, after the fall. There’s some element of that, and now that the people and animals are scavengers who have to make do, after this paradise lost. As the book ends, I wanted to end on a hopeful note, and there are two images of houses being repaired, and a magnolia tree exploding, despite its being injured. The last page is of a raccoon up in a tree. He’s found high ground. That’s what life is like: we’re all surviving. In the end, there’s some kind of resilience, and transcendence.

The lively style and constant change converge to create a kind of urban shopping paradise that centers on hip, trendy Mitte and its surrounds, featuring a collection of everything from edgy boutiques and organic cafes to upscale jewelry shops and galleries (like one in a former gas station), all frequented by creative artist types. On a mid-December visit, the crisp winter days made a retail adventure — with brisk walking and frequent stops — even more inviting.

Mitte is also where I found two stylish yet affordable hotels: the year-and-a-half-old Soho House(Torstrasse 1, 011-49-03-0405-0440, www.sohohouseberlin.com, from $224), a 40-room hotel in a historic Bauhaus building that has become the buzzy epicenter of artists, writers, and designers in the city; and Casa Camper (Weinmeisterstrasse 1, 011-49-03-0200-03410, www.casacamper.com/berlin, from $244, including breakfast and round-the-clock buffet), by Camper, the Spanish shoe company. Opened two years ago, Casa Camper has appropriately fabulous design — intimate and cozy, with clean, uncluttered lines — and a terrific Asian-tapas restaurant, Dos Palillos, by Albert Raurich, former chef de cuisine at the celebrated El Bulli.With one (or both) as home base, you are ideally situated to explore. I stayed at Casa Camper, but I started my stroll west on Torstrasse from Soho House, and before long I hit upon a fresh crop of streetwear shops, including Primitive (Torstrasse 102, 011-49-30-2887-3618, primitiveshoes.com), a born-in-Los Angeles skate-fashion label, and the recently opened Superficial (Torstrasse 102, no phone, www.superficial-berlin.com). The latter’s aesthetic is rock ’n’ roll chic, with a punky-pop edge and soft jersey dresses and screen-printed T’s that are perfect for Lady Gaga’s dancers. Not surprisingly, one of the mega-star’s former dancers frequents the establishment (and performed at the shop opening).

Co-owner Tony Vouardoux, a filmmaker originally from Switzerland, curates an ever-changing selection of items, such as his own capsule line of nylon windbreakers printed with the fluorescent palette of the old analog television screen test ($78), a flower-patterned belt with a butterfly buckle ($26), and nail polish bottles with a girl-figurine top ($13). Other tongue-in-cheek items for the season included shiny Christmas tree ornaments shaped like grenades ($25).

Perhaps because Vouardoux is a filmmaker, Superficial is the kind of retail shop that blurs boundaries. The hairdresser for the singer Beth Ditto has crafted accessories that were carried here, but he has also been employed to cut hair as a kind of performance art in the middle of the store. Vouardoux has also had guest painters in from Tokyo sit outside on the street, painting custom T’s for passersby at the bargain price of $20 apiece.

In just the five months he has been open, Vouardoux has been observing rapid change in the neighborhood, with new shops opening seemingly every week. “There are so many things happening on this street, so we really wanted to be here,’’ he told me, watching an eye-candy parade of pedestrians go by. “It’s been in the shadow of Mitte for a long time – it’s still edgy, still with graffiti on the walls, and there are all these young people and creatives. Of course it’s still a shopping area, but it’s a little bit underground.’’

A couple of doors down, A.D. Deertz (Torstrasse 106, 011-49-30-9120-6630, www.addeertz.com) sells relaxed, elegant menswear, including multicolored leather gloves ($37), knit caps ($53), and handwoven overalls ($343). “For a lot of years, nothing ever happened on Torstrasse,’’ said Wibke Deertz, the owner and designer, who opened the shop in December 2010. “Now this is the edgy part, with the credibility that comes along with that. It’s been a good year.’’

A.D. Deertz occupies a long, narrow space that has a minimalist, art-gallery feel: bright blue-and-red-checked scarves are stacked on low wooden stools – as are suede shoes – and canvas bags hang on the wall like pieces of art. In the back, big loft-like windows let in an abundance of natural light.

Artist Anna Hellsgard, whose four-year-old shop Bongoût (Torstrasse 110, 011-49-30-2809-3758, www.bongout.org) specializes in screen-printed artists’ books, shirts, and other works, has been a relative fixture on the booming street. She showed me the silkscreen atelier at the back of her store, and an exhibition by artist Ehren Tool, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War who, since 2001, has created a striking series of more than 6,000 ceramic cups featuring complicated war images of skulls, Tomahawk missiles, and bombs (each cup $72).

Afterward, I peeled off from gritty Torstrasse onto quieter, tucked-away Linienstrasse, a parallel street. The shops here are hidden in a different way, amid pretty brick residences, apartments, and historic buildings. I encountered galleries galore and retail finds of a different sort, such as clothing made from recycled fabrics at pop-up store Upcycling Fashion (Linienstrasse 77, www.upcycling-fashion.de), and high-end jewelry by designer René Talmon l’Armée. After 17 years in Paris, he has just opened Atelier René Talmon l‘Arméein his native city (Linienstrasse 109, 011-49-30-9559-8466, www.renetalmonlarmee.com).

Trained in a traditional goldsmith atelier in Berlin and at the prestigious Hermès workshop in Paris, l’Armée cultivates a look that might be called vintage-inspired: He uses old-fashioned hammers, anvils, and magnifying loupes to create his pieces, and his boutique resides in an 1850s building (obsessed with the history of place, he even showed me a black-and-white print of the building in 1979, from a monograph by photographer Hans Martin Sewcz on Berlin’s Mitte district). But the aesthetic is wholly l’Armée’s, with a rugged, modern edge – the atelier’s interior features custom-built jewelry showcases that recall bell jars, and his new line includes hammered silver cuff bracelets lined with crocodile skin for men (price upon request) and delicate black diamond strand necklaces for women (from $132).

“There are so many great shops here – it could be hairdressers, it could be clothing, but they’re all little places with very good design,’’ l’Armée said. “You just have to walk around and look.’’

Around the corner on Auguststrasse, you will find Marron Interior Studio (Auguststrasse 77, 011-49-30-2809-4878, www.marronberlin.de), owned by Sandra Baumer and her husband. The five-year-old store sells beautiful housewares; near the entrance, I found a nice display of the small and simple, including Sukie travel journals ($16) and coral plaid tea towels ($25 a pair); of particular charm were a set of bone china cat cups (about $18 each) and a larger version decorated with a turquoise owl (about $22). On the far side of the shop were the large and dear, including carved wood bowls and serving trays ($769) and an exclusive selection of furniture from the current collection by German design house Richard Lampert. The latter is more suited for daydreaming, but I took a few photos for inspiration.

After all that shopping, I wanted to recharge. By day, I hit up the recently opened goodQ (Tucholskystrasse 43, 011-49-176-3228-9718), a yogurt and sweet shop owned by Mario Attard. Though there are cookies and other bakery items for sale, a small cup of plain yogurt topped with pomegranate is a perfect and refreshing treat (about $3.40).

By night, I had been told to people-watch on the rooftop bar of the Soho House. But I did that one better, hunting down a craft cocktail at Buck & Breck (Bruinstrasse 177, 011-49-176-3231-5507, buckandbreck.com), a tiny, refined 14-seat cocktail bar that guests enter by ringing a bell marked simply with the word “BAR’’ (look for the faux-gallery window; in mid-December, there was a tongue-in-cheek display of battered men’s shoes). If there is space, one of the owner-bartenders – Gonçalo de Sousa Monteiro and Holger Groll, two of the city’s most respected mixologists – will come down and let you up.

Upstairs, in an intimate, warmly lighted room, impeccably crafted cocktails take center stage: a frothy Ramos gin fizz resembled a pristine white milkshake, and a Manhattan sparkled like a garnet. I found myself sipping a perfectly balanced Talisker Old-Fashioned next to one of the creative neighborhood denizens who sold me the dress I was wearing. Now that’s uber-local.

View the slideshow.

A small hotel with a residential feeling, where rooms start at $240.

BASICS

Opened in August after a long delay, this 55-room property is a nice alternative to those in Midtown. Designed by the New Yorkarchitecture firm Grzywinski+Pons — who also did the Hotel on Rivington — it appeals to an under-35 crowd with its bar, style-conscious rooms and downtown location (though when I stayed, during the holidays, families were also in evidence).

LOCATION

The hotel cultivates a “feel like a local” charm, and its location, at Kenmare and Elizabeth Streets in NoLIta — on a residential block but within easy walking distance of SoHo, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy and the East Village — helps greatly in this regard.

THE ROOM

Thanks to a midwinter promotion, my husband and I upgraded from a standard room to a corner room on the seventh floor for less than the starting price of the standard. The doorman escorted us up, pointing out the cushy king bed (“It’s going to knock you out,” he said) and the lovely views of the Empire State Building. The snack bar was affordable (“half the price of other minibars”). With wood-plank floors, unfinished concrete ceilings, sleek, spare tables and chairs, a carpeted headboard, and a bedside iPod dock that looked like an old-fashioned radio, the aesthetic was a mixed bag of industrial chic and modern design. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the rooms stopped short of exhibitionism with strategically placed frosted panels. The sound insulation on the windows and hallway doors could be improved — coma-inducing bed or not, you’ll want to bring earplugs for a good night’s sleep.

THE BATHROOM

Corner rooms have a stand-alone tub and a glass-enclosed shower, with a separate toilet by the door. Bath products scented with Moroccan rose are from Red Flower, the organic beauty boutique two blocks away.

AMENITIES

An abundance of free rentals is available at the front desk — bicycles and skateboards for getting around town, laptop, iPad and video game systems for in-room entertainment. The in-house restaurant, Ellabess, is just off the lobby lounge, and also furnishes the hotel’s room service. Its menu — with items like pork chop surf and turf, fried mashed potatoes — has a dash of Southern flair. (The hotel recently said that it plans to close the restaurant to the public starting Wednesday so that it can use the space for private events.) Guests have free all-access gym passes to 24 Hour Fitness, a five-minute walk away, and each room has a yoga mat. In warm weather, the rooftop sun deck, with its wraparound views of the Midtown skyline and Williamsburg, is a great place to have a glass of wine.

ROOM SERVICE

I ordered the Be a Nolitan ($22) for breakfast, which arrived in (an apologetically late) 31 minutes. The bacon was crisp and the potatoes savory, though everything — including the eggs — was cold. Avoid the transition time from the kitchen by eating downstairs in the restaurant itself.

BOTTOM LINE

The Nolitan’s friendly staff members make the hotel feel inviting, much like a small apartment building (with a doorman, Felix, who welcomes you back with a smile). A downtown location makes walking around a pleasure.

The Nolitan, 30 Kenmare Street, New York; (212) 925-2555; nolitanhotel.com.

The Star Restaurateur: Kerry Simon

Dubbed the rock n’ roll chef by Rolling Stone magazine, he owns several A-list-friendly restaurants including LA Market

My Oscars: The city really comes to life during the Oscars. They’re held early in the evening, so most people go out to eat afterwards. I love the restaurants at the Hollywood Roosevelt; the food is great and the scene is always lively. It’s a celebrity hotspot, but not chaotic like some other places, plus you never know who might be staying upstairs. I usually stay low-key, but wherever I go to work, someone — like George Clooney — is going to be there. It’s hard to miss that.

Top Tips: When I’m not working, I’m sneaking out to eat. And I love downtown LA right now. R23 is great; it’s a little sushi place in an art gallery by the railroad tracks in Little Tokyo, and serves delicious crab salad and really fresh fish. Church & State has a unique vibe that’s very downtown; a little cool, a little different.

The Architect and Designer: Gulla Jansdottir

The woman behind the new look of LA club the Roxbury, she hangs out with the likes of Mick Jagger and Bjork

My Oscars: Last year, I was in my hard hat planning the after-party at the Writer’s Room, a bar on Hollywood Boulevard opened by James Franco. I designed the space in a 1920s look: very intimate, with an old, Parisian-style metal elevator. This year, I’ll be renovating Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and breaking ground on Oscars day, but hopefully I’ll make it out for a glass of Champagne. I love the Vanity Fair party, and I’m always in awe when I see Daniel Day-Lewis or Sophia Loren.

Top Tips: One of my favorit spots is the Tower Bar. It’s chic, old Hollywood, and serves a wonderful filet mignon. I also love Red O; try the goat-cheese tamales. People in LA don’t use the beach enough; spend an afternoon in Malibu before heading to Nobu Malibu for sushi.

The Fixer: Ludovic Barras

A party organizer for Fig & Olive restaurant, whose client list includes Reese Witherspoon and Leonardo DiCaprio

My Oscars: Fig & Olive opened the week after the Oscars last years, and we’ve been arranging a lot of parties to get ready for this year’s awards. We just did the Emmy after-party for Fox; there were 900 guests, including the cast of Glee, and Seal and Heidi Klum. And we get a lot of regulars including Jennifer Lopez and Zac Efron, and David and Victoria Beckham, who come with the kids.

Top Tips: Chateau Marmont is the most glamorous place in LA and still attracts the celebrities. But I also really like the Edison, an old power plant that has been turned into an amazing bar. They serve you drinks in glasses shaped like lightbulbs. One tip is to avoid driving on Hollywood Boulevard during Oscars weekend — it’s an atrocious place, with so many tourists and buses.

The Video Producer: Jil Hardin

The creative talent responsible for eye-catching music videos including Lady Gaga’s Poker Face and Rihanna’s S&M

My Oscars: Normally I host a dinner party, but I went to an Oscars party last year and it was fun to get dressed up. I also like to head to the Ivy for gimlets before sunset — it’s old-school and traditional, and does great drinks. This time of year is really busy for our industry, so I like hearing about who’s doing what, and what movies to see.

Top Tips: Soho House West Hollywood is always packed with industry people, but it’s fun and you might get to see a few celebs. Since LA is so focused on fashion, appearance, and who’s who, it’s nice to escape. Eaton Canyon in Pasadena is a beautiful nature reserve with hiking trails to a waterfall. It’s unusual to find a place in LA where you can connect with nature.

The original New Haven project came out of McMullan’s longtime affinity for public libraries. “My mother and father both work in public libraries,” says McMullan, a handyman and artist who now lives in Williamsburg. “I love that we have a public institution that is based around the idea of sharing resources equitably with everyone.”

He thinks the concept of the library should be extended to everything, from tools to kitchen gadgets and sports equipment. If sharing with other members of the community was easier, he says, “we wouldn’t feel so compelled to buy and possess so many things for ourselves.”

In New Haven, McMullan worked with a literary advocacy group to re-stock the library throughout the six months it was open. In reality, it functioned more as a book exchange than a library. It didn’t have a fixed collection, and books kept disappearing.

In Brooklyn, McMullan experimented with a handful of models, including a school desk chained to the street and a wooden structure that resembled the ubiquitous urban newspaper distribution box.

He’s now in the process of planning and installing permanent Corner Library branches all over New York City.

“Right now, I’m just working with people I know and trust and making just as many branches as we can handle maintaining,” says McMullan. He manages the Williamsburg branch along with Gabriela Alva, who runs the art project/space EyelevelBQE, and volunteer librarian Kyra Ferber.

The library’s eclectic collection currently includes materials like The Old Farmer’s Almanac, pamphlets on nature preserves in New York City, Popular Mechanics’ The Boy Mechanic: 200 Classic Things to Build, handmade zines and children’s books donated by local artists, and a copy of Goethe’s Faust.

McMullan is working on “opening” locations in the Flatiron/Chelsea area of Manhattan, and in the Prospect Heights/Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The two branches are both slated to launch in the spring. Recently, he discovered Little Free Library, a group that is building a nationwide network of micro-libraries. McMullan eventually intends to merge his efforts with that group.

At the end of the day, McMullan wants to encourage citizen participation in the sharing of public spaces. His new brainstorm involves installing miniature libraries as part of the tree pit structures lining public sidewalks, much the way that cafes and other businesses have done with tree benches to extend their influence onto the street.

“Every city has various restrictions and regulations on the uses of sidewalks — you just have to learn the quirks,” he says. Installing tricked-out tree guards is one area of public space where the city government actively encourages citizen participation and care. Why not get a library out of it, too?