Arrive Magazine - November/December, 2008

First Class
WHAT A
QUEER IDEA!

If reruns of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy aren’t enough for you and you’re missing Thom Filicia’s excellent taste in home décor and furnishings, you’re in luck. His new book, Thom Filicia Style: Inspired Ideas for Creating Rooms You’ll Love (Atria, $35), will give you your Filicia Fix while helping you find your own personal style. The book includes the back story on Filicia’s own rise to fame and the roots of his personal philosophy for design; step-by-step strategies for analyzing your living space and getting out of it what you need; and voyeur-licious photos and stories from the homes of the winners of Filicia’s nationwide family room makeover contest. In full color with lush photography and helpful workbook-like charts, the book is great for beginning designers and veteran design junkies alike.

On the Mark

It’s the sport that everyone is just now raving about, yet it’s been around since the time of the Vikings: telemark skiing. In telemark, also known as free-heel skiing, the skis have a binding that only connects the boot to the ski at the toes, just as in cross-country skiing. This allows the free heel to flex up from turn to turn. The telemark turn is led with the heel flat on the downhill ski, while the uphill ski is pulled beneath the skier’s body with a raised heel.

Sound complicated? If you’re an alpine skier, you’ll be able to pick up this style in no time with the right equipment and a lesson or two. And while you certainly don’t have to leave the comfort of your favorite resort, telemarking allows you the freedom of taking your sport to the backcountry.

If you’re more interested in being a spectator, a don’t-miss highlight each

season is the NE T International Telemark Film Festival. On Nov. 21 at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, this amateur film festival shows short films of everything from telemark skiers’ backcountry adventures to footage of their comedic stunts, such as telemarking on grass in the summer or on sand dunes in the desert.