My palace in New York – Anna and Garrett Albury (Coolstuff.NYC)

“Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences – wherever you happened to be”

— Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism

Hello folks, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2023 has been nothing but a wild rollercoaster ride and 2024 is about to be so great for all of us I can just FEEL IT! If you’re reading this I hope you are as excited for what’s to come your way and enjoying everything that is around you — People and space alike, especially your home. Has your space changed since last year? Did it feel more like home to you?

I started My Palace in Dallas during the height of the pandemic, and it was born from pure curiosity: I want to know, I want to see, and, most importantly, I want to document what the people around me have become after these unprecedented years. They can be artists, comedians, or they can also be the people you meet on the street. So, what is it that they do? This project and this spin-off to other cities delve into their stories and, as the name suggests, explore their palace across the nation.

Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Anna and Garrett Albury. I first discovered them in the perfectly imperfect newsletter and have been a fan since then. Fast forward to their apartment therapy feature where I got to peek into their eclectic home, still my favorite episode on there by the way. We talked about their journey as Coolstuff.NYC co-founders, designers, and most importantly, a dynamic duo with impeccable taste. We also sat down and talked about what makes a place home for them, hope you’ll enjoy the piece as much as I did writing it!

Hello Anna and Garrett, it’s an honor to be sitting here with you two after being a fan for so long! Before I bomb you with questions, would you like to tell people a bit about yourself? Who are you and what is it that you do?

**G (Garrett)**: We’re Anna and Garrett, husband and wife and the Co-founders of the newsletter Coolstuff.NYC. We founded Coolstuff.NYC as a newsletter that shares a design-forward perspective of New York City every week directly into your inbox.
**A (Anna)**: We’re both full-time designers in addition to running the newsletter. I’m a textile and rug designer working at a small company in the city called Crosby Street Studios doing custom luxury rug projects.
G: I do graphic and web design in addition to Coolstuff.NYC. Well, it’s almost an addition to what I do, Anna and I wore many hats here *laughs.

As an amazing duo and individuals having such an impressive portfolio, you’ve done so much with so many in the city. Could you tell me what was that journey like for you and how you got to where you are now?

G: We’ve been doing it for about 4 years at this point having just celebrated our 200th entry. We started just before the pandemic started, having around a month's worth of content before everything changed. It’s always been weekly and I don’t think we’ve ever missed a week even when we were getting married we had it scheduled to send out during our honeymoon.

A: As Garrett mentioned, we started right before the pandemic, during that time we quickly switched to writing about things to do in the city that aren’t in person. We got creative with finding fun things to do around the city starting out. It was also when we started doing our Coolfriends interviews, and obviously, at the time, everyone was available so we were lucky enough to get some heavy hitters on right off the bat when we only had around 100 readers.

G: We had a lot of access and it allows us to define different categories as we continue to build out our website where all these articles and interviews can have a permanent home. From there, we’ve been considering what is an angle that is different from what a traditional media outlet would be taking. We all see these big round-up lists of the best restaurants in New York but we try to be a lot more specific with our writing which helps create an interesting community of readers.

It’s been almost 4 years since the first entry, what was running a newsletter that long like? Was there any addition to the content or directional change you made after getting used to it or felt like it was ready?

A: I feel like our newsletter has taken on different lives throughout honestly. We started out sending these emails to friends as a fun thing because nobody was really doing newsletters before, and we thought it would be fun to email people our recommendations because we love discovering new things.

G: I think one of the big moments for us was in the rebranding Anna and I did together at the beginning of last year. We did a whole web redesign and since both of us are designers it was nice to have that resource in-house. We also switched to substack to make our newsletter more interactive for the community like the commenting feature and made our website searchable.

A: I felt the search addition to the website has been a big plus for us, it’s such a small thing and it’s on every website but it was a lot of effort.

G: It took a lot of effort because, at that point, we had three years' worth of content made never intended to be read by the size of the audience we have now. That was a big change for us and really made our content more accessible, that growth and ease of how things are being done now gave us more space to focus on things we started out doing – in-person experiences and events. It was a really cool shift since last year for sure.

Have there been an article you guys did that you never expected would be a part of the newsletter?

G: I think we’re thinking about the same thing, the benches?

A: I was going to say the fact that we have guest-written articles now was something I never expected. People come to us with really specific pitches like what Garrett was going to say, the benches were one of them.

G: There were two guest-written articles. Some young writers had these great pitches and one of them was the best places along a specific bus line in Brooklyn, and the other was the best benches in lower Manhattan. It was really cool and unexpected to be able to collaborate with people we’re meeting through the newsletter who also share the type of content and vision Anna and I had been setting since we started.

A: We have a friend who’s gluten-free writing a gluten-free guide for this week’s newsletter. I think things like this that are very specific to certain people, would make sense to have guest writers who will understand the topic more than we would. We have someone writing our Bed-Stuy guide, a place we haven’t spent that much time in, so we want to make sure we can have the exact representation of the neighborhood.

G: I think that’s often the frustration as a reader of other media shares too, every single place on the list can be identical. I think for us, a part of making sure that our guides are what people would want to do is working with people who live in these places. It’s on our website as neighborhood guides by people who actually live there and I think that is a big emphasis for us making them.

Like how you’d be curious about their letterbox account when you meet a film fanatic, can you tell me what consists of your media outlet and where you usually get your inspiration from?

G: I think I consume a lot more media out of the two of us. I read a lot of legacy media, and the one that instantly comes to mind is The New Yorker, we have a print subscription and we read it whenever it comes out. I really love reading The New Yorker because it’s current events and interesting art angles but it’s really entertaining and I think it’s something we do as well. I read the New York Times headlines every day, kind of always an opened tab in the background. I also listen to How Long Gone, it’s my pop culture intake, my dishwashing podcast.

A: I am more of a visual consumer. I intake visual inspiration more than reading, I look at a lot of design magazines. I love Milk Decor, there’s a lot of travel inspiration in there too where they feature a lot of niche locations to go visit in addition to interior content. I love Cabana magazine too, I just love design magazines.

How about for your own respective works? As rug or graphic designers, what do you keep a lookout for in terms of finding inspiration?

A: Back to magazines, I love tearing out physical inspirations and collecting a lot of paper goods. We both are drawn to printed matter and have collected a lot of physical things, as you can see around our house. *laughs. I think that’s where a lot of our inspirations come from, and walking around in New York.

G: True, Anna and I send each other photos of things we see in the city all the time, and I think that bodes well for writing a New York-based media outlet.

Much like P.I. I am always in awe at how many people made a pivotal decision and dived into their passion during and continued after the pandemic. What did you do to stay centered and sane? Did any of those new habits carry over now that things are back to normal?

G: We were in New York for a while before the pandemic and we started working on Coolstuff.NYC in late 2019 and launched in early February 2020. So we had about a month before the pandemic so it’s funny how we got roped into part of the pandemic project because we were new, but we’d like to think we did it before that instead of a response to the pandemic.

A: We made a lot of little zines, bought a printer, and just made random zines of images we’ve been collecting for years. The newsletter kept us busy for sure.

G: sadly the zine didn’t get carried over, we don’t have that printer anymore. We drank a lot of wine and that helps *laughs.

A: We were in Buschwick at the time and near Henry which is a really good wine store.

G: We moved here in the middle of the pandemic so we never left the city. Our lease was up a few months into the pandemic and we moved into this place. it was still in full lockdown so we were just walking around the city and neighborhood.

A: It was a little blurry on what kept us sane but the zine was a big one, the newsletter and designing the apartment before we moved in.

**What was the first room you started tackling?**

A: The kitchen, because we knew we wanted to paint the walls lilac.
G: We replaced all the lighting in every room by ourselves too. The kitchen was a big room where we worked the most I think.

After spending all these years here building up a place you call home, and curating so many favorite lists, what are your personal favorite parts of New York as a whole?

A: I love the high-low nature of everything in the city, we could be going to fun fancy-ish places like the Bemelmans at the Carlye Hotel and follow up with tacos or pizzas for two dollars. It’s fun to have a balance like that in the city.

G: I completely agree with that. People always say they like the energy of New York, and it is true, but what I like about the city isn’t just the energy but how everyone staying here for the most part had a purpose. You see a lot of people come to the city and leave after a certain period but in my time living here, those are generally who come here without a specific purpose. I don’t mean it in a professional way at all, I think it’s really amazing when you have people coming here aiming to have a good time, to make art, or to live a Bohemian lifestyle. I love that when you look across the city everyone is going somewhere, doing something. You never get tired of it.

First of all I can’t imagine actually sitting in this room, and as I look around, I can see a lot of your taste in a tangible form! I can’t even begin picking out a favorite one so now the hard part is, what would you say is your favorite possession?

A: Welcome to the rest of our home! This is our cozy living room, here are a lot of the print materials and objects collected that we mentioned. There’s always something to add and move around here *laughs

G: The rug here is actually the one that Anna designed

A: Yes! This is the new-ish edition. It’s one of the first designs I’ve worked on for the company that I’m at. I got to order it for our home and custom colored it, and then I became obsessed with matching the colors around our room to it so they are bouncing all around everywhere. This would probably be my favorite thing here, we moved our coffee table to the bedroom because I didn’t want to cover it up or damage it.

G: What I love about it is that every color has this different height, it’s really subtle but some of it is recessed and some is raised. You can really see the difference between the shapes which is awesome.

G: This is my favorite thing that’s a gift from Anna. It’s this antique solid brass box given as a Christmas gift by Princess Mary, it’s called the Princess Mary box as you can see from the letter M and her face on there. It had cigarettes and chocolates, and they were sent out to the British military during World War I. People got jealous because she only had money to send them to the military so they slowly made more and gave them out year after year, this one is rare because it was from the 1914s but it took them 2 years to afford to give them to as many people out there. But originally only people who were active military troopers got to have them, and they had variants too for the Indian troops they had pens instead of cigarettes because smoking was against their religion.

A: We also have a lot of matches and pens from restaurants we’ve been to. It’s funny how they are all the same type of pens and it’s sad to see some places aren’t in business anymore.

G: We also did a lot of our own matchbooks too, this is one we did for our 200th Newsletter celebration.

A: we make a lot of matchbooks like this was from our wedding and some from my birthday or Christmas one year. Oh, this is the smallest matchbook you’ll probably see. It’s fun to find repetition in things like pens or matchbooks and start collecting them.

G: One of the many moments for us when this place felt like home, was when we painted the door cobalt blue.

A: It’s funny our landlady and her sister lived in the building and we were worried if they’d be shocked that the door was blue when she saw it but she didn’t care and loved it.

G: Our bedroom is probably where we had the most art. We try to buy original art from people we know and this room is kind of a reflection of that.

A: This painting is from an artist we had in our newsletter, Gemma Bailey. She’s based in Beacon.NY, we always loved this painting and it became available so we drove to Beacon to pick it up which was pretty cool.

G: This one behind you is a cool one too. The one on top is from Paul Solis, we know him through his wife Julie Vadnal is the deputy editor of Domino Magazine, he had an open studio a few months ago and we just loved this piece so much and it was really cool hanging out with them in the studio.

A: We just got this owl painting by another CoolFriend Carly Beck, it’s cool to have interviewed these people for the newsletter and actually had their work in our home, a full circle moment for us.

G: Same here for this face mirror from Elise McMahon, we had her on our Newsletter years ago, and now that she scaled up and not directly produced by her, it’s cool to have an original one where she hand-cut and hand-painted.

A: Same thing with this Sophie Collé table. Her work is in Areaware now but we commissioned a few tables when we found her during the pandemic when she didn’t even have a website.

A: Oh and these are the woodblocks I’ve chopped from Taekwondo when I practiced.

G: We love our kitchen because we actually have a pretty great view of the city through the window. Since this is a historic neighborhood it’s nice to have that contrast of downtown Manhattan in the view.

A: We have a lot of food-themed artwork and menus in the kitchen.

G: It’s been growing more and more from the butter print which is my favorite artwork to different menus we’ve done for dinner parties. We hang out with our friends here a lot, just sitting around the dining table, we love to cook and cook a lot.

A: I won this Great Jones from an Instagram giveaway. *laughs

G: I actually do use this working typewriter a lot, not as much as I once did but we write mails on this a lot too.

A: This was from an artist named June Upton, who is based in Williamsburg and I think it would be fun to pair it with the actual plant that matched the one in the painting.

Our kitchen dresser is one of my favorite things, it’s an antique piece we got from upstate and added these brass knobs on. We have so many plates and tablecloths and napkins to the point where a dresser is the way to do it.

This rug was the second rug we got because this kitchen was so white from the tiles to the walls when we moved in, so we got a big rug to cover up most of the floor, and this hides stains and because this is a flat weave rug it’s really easy to clean.

A: Another prized possession we have here is our wedding photos and invites, as you can see they are framed accordingly.

G: Anna and I designed all these from scratch together, I did the calligraphy and Anna did the illustrations so there is a lot of handwork poured into these. We had a pretty clear vision going so we didn’t have many versions but this set.

A: There were some things that just couldn’t happen, like we did letterpress for all of these and we wanted lilac color text on a dark paper but it doesn’t exist which was insane.

G: Letterpress ink is kind of transparent unlike calligraphy ink so you need foil, but they don’t make the right shade of lilac foil. We could’ve gone with white or cream but that wasn’t what we wanted. For both of these shaped cards, we had to make our own slicer to get that shape.

A: So we basically did the most difficult form of everything we could *laughs. But once you have a vision it’s hard to let it go and not see it through. Even getting the right shade of orange on the RSVP card was a fun process. We worked with this great letterpress guy to print these, he would text us and ask what we thought about this color on this color so the collaborative process was really fun too.

And we are almost at the bottom of my list of Qs for today! I have one more before wrapping it up! For those who are interested in getting into this business or starting something of their own like you did. What suggestions or advice you would like to give them or is there anything you wish you’d known sooner?

G: We talked about this yesterday too, for newsletters going into it with a great concept or direction on how you want to write. Don’t think about wanting to grow or have this many readers or followers, like we said earlier we started out just wanting to send our recommendations to our friends and have since grown into something much bigger. I think it was because we haven’t been treating it like a business or have a certain goal, we have this habit of looking backward and just being excited that more and more people are continuing to read our work.

A: It’s also about having a specific point of view, whether that's starting a newsletter or an artistic practice, make sure you stay true to your original intent and not sharing or creating things that don’t feel like what you would like to see or produce.

To wrap this interview up, also because I am curious personally, what’s on the horizon for you? Are there any “Big things coming” in the works for y’all? What would you like the world (whichever random soul stumbled upon this article) to know about?

A: We are starting to add traveling to our newsletter. taking our viewpoint of not just neighborhoods but city guides outside of New York, having that New Yorker's guide to different cities or even outside the U.S., right outside the city or upstate. That’s something we are really excited about.

G: In the next couple of weeks we will have Maine and then a few cities in Europe for the upcoming Spring/summer. That’s how we see our newsletter growing in addition to continuing all of the sections that we are already maintaining. We’ve been seeing a lot of desire from our readers and we think those types of pieces are what people are looking for. Just like how we tried to do in New York not doing the typical content, we try to bring that perspective into it too.

A: We wanted to visit these places anyway so it’s fun to create guides out of our trips and look at it through a specific lens, the Coolstuff.NYC eye.