Haus of Klaus

As I mentioned earlier, sweet, adorable Klaus was in town Friday night for a too-brief visit. Klaus used to live in SF, just up the hill from me actually, and moved back to Copenhagen in the summer of 2005 to settle down with his partner Jens. His moving back to Copenhagen marked the first time the two of them have lived in the same city at the same time.

Before Klaus left SF, Jens did the apartment hunting and found a fabulous new flat in one of the first buildings going up in an undeveloped area adjacent to the University. Jens has a very sleek, danish aesthetic, and he designed and decorated the apartment before Klaus returned.

In August of 2005, I took some time off to visit my cousin Clark in Berlin, Jan in Glasgow, and Klaus in Copenhagen. RMJ was on his own Scandinavian tour, hitting pride celebrates in cities across the region. We arranged to meet up in Copenhagen and were guests of Klaus and Jens.

Their apartment is spectacular. It is so coherently and skillfully designed I wound up taking about a hundred shots of various aspects of their home. I said I thought it looked like something that would be featured in Wallpaper*.

For Christmas last year, I thought about putting together a fictional Wallpaper* spread of their flat as a Christmas and thank-you present, but as things always get crazy around November/December, I never got around to designing it. Klaus' impending SF visit gave me a reason to revisit the idea.

RoMo arranged for a Klaus-centric happy hour at Badlands to be followed by Thai food next door, and further messiness at Moby Dick.


On the way there, we stopped at Kinko's to pick up the freshly mounted Wallpaper spreads.


And I was so pleased that Klaus went nuts over it. The pages were very well received.


I did feel bad that Jens' role was so downplayed when he was really the designer, but (1) Klaus was the one visiting; (2) Klaus is my good friend; and (3) "Jens" doesn't rhyme with "house." If he wants to yen for something, write a novel with a pen, or produce a photo spread (through the Lens of Jens), then I've got something to work with. But Klaus tells me Jens is impressed by the pages too. He knows he's the designer. The apartment spread is made more special as it will serve as a reminder of their first place together. They have just found a new flat (their area has now been built up and the designer places are a bit cost-prohibitive) and will be moving shortly to another place nearby.

Also "well" received this night: the Badlands two-for-one cocktail happy hour.

The two-for-one happy hour always a hit, but then one tends to get hammered by dinner. It is not unheard of for folks to go out at 5:30, be drunk before 8:00, go out to a nice dinner in the neighborhood, go out again, sober up, and be home in bed bed by 11:00, feeling like it's the crack of dawn.

Dangerous thing that happy hour.


We were all very happy.


Joining the fray: Barney May, Jeff Javits, Robert Michael Joseph, Klaus Koefed, and Wilson Hardcastle.


As well as the lovely Shilpa and Jeff Baker.

Shilpa and the Jeffs:


I also brought Klaus some Christmas Medley CDs to take home, which are modeled here by with me and Jeff Baker. I am mid-sentence. Big surprise.



After Thai next door, we finished the night at Moby's, as you do. By this point I had switched to ginger ales and sodas and was ready for bed. I was completely exhausted from the week, but alert enough to notice Moby's nativity scene, in the aquarium.





All photos over at Flickr.