A Dude's Perspective: Matt Haughey from Metafilter

2008-05-29T16:08:00-05:00

We invited popular webby guy and founder of MetaFilter, Matt Haughey, to join us on the Storque for a peek into his male shopping behavior. He graciously agreed to be part of our A Dude's Perspective series.

MetaFilter is a popular weblog written by many people. The idea is elegant: get a community of reliable people contributing posts and comments, and you have a better source for the latest news and interesting links on the internet. It's called crowdsourcing and Matt and his crew are best known for the Ask MetaFilter function, where real people answer your random, important — or not so important, depending on which sticky situation you are in — questions. ("What's the best way to look for a house-boat in London?" or "Can my batch of buttercream frosting be saved?") Seems like Matt would be a guy who knows a little bit about everything and it turns out he's got some great finds on Etsy.

As an old hand in blogging (nine years ago I started MetaFilter), I spend half the day obsessing over geek things like retro arcade games, t-shirts, and everything else you can find online. The rest of my life revolves around my family (especially my three-year-old daughter) and my bicycles. I'm a huge fan of handmade items and have followed the crafting movement for years (close friends are prolific knitters). I've even been to a few trunk shows in Portland and bought my share of wood prints, photographs, and scarves.

I've been following Etsy from the beginning because I could tell from my first visit that the site and stores had something to offer everyone. My passions (and past purchases) include t-shirts, geek stuff, cycling goods, photography, modern architecture, modern furniture, and cool stuff for my daughter that you can't find in any store. I want my daughter to live a life beyond the world of pink Disney princess stuff that most kids get and Etsy is the perfect venue for that.

I've chosen a bunch of my favorite things along several themes: cycling, kid stuff, the ultimate father's day gift ever, and a tip.

Cycling stuff
My current favorite t-shirt is this blue and brown track bike shirt from bicyclepaintings' shop. Nice simple design, good print, and on a super soft snug tee:

It's my lucky shirt whenever I'm off my bike.

As I've started training and racing on my bikes, I've also started doing charity rides, and if you've ever done a charity run or ride you know you have to ask your friends to pitch in and help out. That's why I love SkeeseGreets' appropriately themed thank you cards that are the perfect way to thank your friends for chipping in:

One of my other passions is photography, and there's no shortage of great stuff I'd like to add to hallways in my house. I especially like the bike-themed prints from ScarletBeautiful2 and ClayGiraffe:

Kid stuff
I have a hard time finding cool prints, interesting colors, and hip stuff for my daughter without having to go to the high end baby shops of Portland, and mainstream stores are usually boring and predictable.

It doesn't take too much digging to find unique things on Etsy. Last year we got a great wood-block print alphabet from girlvsworld:

I love her illustration style and there are lots of kid-friendly works that will match any decor.

If you're looking for nice screenprinted onesies and shirts for kids, Jackapotamus has a ton of options in all sorts of colors and sizes. I can't get enough of these:

Combining my love of all things modern and iconic with my search for interesting things for my daugher, I've found tinymodernist doesn't disappoint. All sorts of famous design silhouettes for your kids await:

Ultimate Father's Day Gift
My most expensive purchase on Etsy to date also happens to be my favorite bag, the Raymond Chandler. Made from vintage London Fog trenchcoats, this laptop/diaper bag offers a sleek, modern design that doesn't look in any way recycled. I get asked about it all the time and everyone loves the story behind it:

The ouno store has lots of other unique items based on various vintage pieces reworked into new items worth looking at.

Get local with Etsy
Lastly, I've always loved the wide variety of ways you can find something at Etsy, be it tags, colors, materials, or category. Usually I just search with keywords and dig around, but I recently stumbled across the "Shop Local" option and plugged in my town, Portland.

The wonderful thing is that I found half a dozen stores from local people, including a photographer taking shots of places familiar to me, but through a different set of eyes.

You can find Matt at MetaFilter www.metafilter.com and his blog, a.wholelottanothing.org

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A Dude's Perspective: Matt Haughey from Metafilter