The online resource for getting lucky.

Out Magazine recently traveled to Milan with up-and-coming male model Travis Hanson to chronicle his adventures during Milan fashion week. Although Travis has appeared in numerous international fashion magazines, he didn’t get booked for any shows in Milan this time around. However, this gave him an opportunity to explore the city and discover one of its luckiest spots — an ornate mosaic of a bull in the middle of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, one of Milan’s most picturesque tourist spots.

According to local custom, you’re supposed to put your heel on the bull’s testicles and spin around three times for good luck. This custom has become so popular with locals and tourists alike that over the decades, a hole has formed over the spot.

Part of the fun is watching the Milanese do it so elegantly–simply twirling their foot on the spot and continuing nonchalantly on their way as if nothing ever happened. Check out the video of Travis’ Milan exploits and lucky spin HERE. Hopefully he will remember to do it on his next trip before trying out for the shows. 

–Kevin

(Photos top to bottom by Daniel D’Ottavio, Mike Bond, and Flamegirl.)

Just in time for spring, we’ve discovered a unique new fragrance from Fragonard Parfumeur, an esteemed perfume company that has been producing scents from its factory in Grasse since 1782.  Their   “Porte-bonheur” scents are a charming box set of 6 solid perfumes that come packaged as individual “lucky charms,” and each box is illustrated with a different charm.  There’s the four-leaf clover, the horseshoe, the ladybug, the elephant, the lily of the valley, and the heart.  We can’t quite figure out what exactly the heart symbol has to do with good luck, but we’re hopeful that if you rub a little bit of this scent on yourself, you might get lucky in love.  To visit their website and order this lucky scent, click HERE.

–Kevin

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, and in the pubs of Ireland (and in pubs all over the world, for that matter), people of Irish ancestry will no doubt be celebrating this occasion with full force. There will be parades, people proudly wearing their lucky green outfits, handing out shamrocks, and much toasting to the “luck of the Irish.”  But wait a minute–have we ever stopped to really consider this popular phrase? Are the Irish really that lucky? Luckier than the rest of us?

As it turns out, the phrase had its origins as an ethnic slur. It was a sarcastic quip, basically implying that the Irish had no luck at all, or that any Irish man or woman who did well had to be lucky rather than smart, hardworking, or talented. In an article by Tara Dooley from the Houston Chronicle, the Irish-American historian Edward T. O’Donnell says, “It is a phrase of derision, a put-down phrase. More than 900 years of domination, oppression, starvation?  I’m kind of hard pressed to understand where it comes from.”  (Read the full story, with more dissections of the phrase HERE.) 

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note that what apparently began as a negative remark has been transformed on this side of the Atlantic into something much more positive. Here, Irish immigrants prospered, and for most Irish-Americans who are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day today, the world is a luckier place than it was for their ancestors. As another Irish saying goes, “If you are lucky enough to be Irish, you are lucky enough.”

–Kevin

(Photo of Carmen and Liam Gray, two lucky kids indeed, by Michael Gray.)

What do Saks Fifth Avenue president Ron Frasch, ABC News Reporter Gigi Stone, and artist Hunt Slonem have in common? According to New York magazine, they are among a surprising number of “high-powered New Yorkers” who have participated in circulating an e-mail chain letter titled “Chinese Proverb,” which promises good luck to all those who pass it on.  The chain letter has apparently been a hit especially amongst the fashion and media elite, where it seems like even within this jaded crowd, no one is taking their chances when it comes to luck.  CNN reporter Alina Cho (pictured above) admitted, “I forwarded it to twenty of my nearest and dearest. In this economy, we need all the luck we can get.”

To read the full article, click HERE.

–Kevin   

(Photo by Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times)

From the 27th floor of my hotel in Hong Kong’s Central District, I had the perfect view of all the New Year’s Eve festivities that were unfolding on December 31st, 2007. At the stroke of midnight, an explosion of fireworks erupted from not one, but six or seven of the gleaming skyscrapers that lined the harbour view. It was a spectacular sight. As all of the friends and relatives that I had invited to share this moment with me responded to the moment with merriment, my aunt commented, “This is going to be a very lucky year…2008, especially with the ‘8,’ which corresponds to prosperity.”  

Well, we all know now how that turned out.

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year. After months of relentless economic disaster around the globe, it seems that even the once unsinkable “economic dragons” of Asia are beginning to falter. The New York Times article published today says it all: “Year of the Ox Is Looking Inauspicious.” (To read the article, click HERE.) The ox, according to the Chinese zodiac, symbolizes calm, hard work, resolve, and tenacity. One could argue that it’s going to take a lot of hard work this year to ensure that good luck and prosperity return again. Perhaps it’s a good thing that America now has a president who was born in the year of the Ox. Yes, Barack Obama was born in the Ox year of August 4, 1961. And five days into his new job, he’s already demonstrating the steadfast, hardworking nature that is associated with the sign.     

For more interpretations on how this year could affect your luck, check out some of these articles:

Vancouver Sun: “Seeking predictions for the Year of the Ox”

Reuters: “Feng Shui masters say Ox year likely full of burden”

Examiner: “It’s the Year of the Ox, Obama-style”

–Kevin

In the annals of aviation history, has there ever been a plane crash as lucky as US Airways Flight 1549? All 155 passengers and crew survived a crash landing into the frigid waters of the Hudson River last Thursday, January 15th, and as the stories of heroism begin to fill the media blogosphere, there’s also been much discussion of how lucky everyone was. Which brings up the issue of how our own lucky beliefs affects us whenever we entrust our fate to a giant piece of metal weighing hundreds of tons that is supposed to stay aloft in the sky.

Ben Sherwood, in a piece entitled “The Great Plane Crash Myth” from The Daily Beast, confesses, “I’m embarrassed to admit that every time I fly, I go through a litany of superstitious rituals. I always tap the right doorjamb of the plane when I step aboard. During takeoff and landing, I mumble a short prayer that I learned long ago in Sunday school.” 

Sherwood’s rituals are not uncommon. Lucky airplane rituals and superstitions seem to abound everywhere when one begins to investigate deeper. Many Italians believe that wearing red underwear when flying will keep them safe. Others believe that carrying a St Christopher’s medal will protect them (He was the patron saint of travelers). Then there is the fixation on numbers. In the airline industry, it is a well documented fact that Friday the 13th is always a slow day.  On airlines like Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, and even Continental, you won’t find a row number 13.  An article in USAToday quotes two airline spokesmen:

“Apparently someone a long time ago (we don’t know when) thought we shouldn’t have a row 13,” says Martin DeLeon, a spokesperson for Continental Airlines. “We have let the row numbering system persist, especially since we don’t want to go through the expense of renumbering rows on about 600 aircraft.”

“Most people wouldn’t want to sit there,” says Judy Graham-Weaver, a spokesperson for AirTran. “Whether we believe in the superstition or not if it’s the perception of the community we need to go by that.”

On Italian airline Alitalia, it’s row number 17 that is missing, since the roman numerals for 17, when rearranged, could spell “VIXI,” which means “I lived” in Italian.  (The numerals also resemble a hangman). Then there is the Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways, which omits row 4 because it sounds like the word for death in their language.

Whatever your ritual or belief, I say it never hurts to have that extra bit of luck on your side when you’re 35,000 feet up in the sky.

–Kevin

(Photo by Gary Hershom/Reuters.)

Feeling Shitty for the Sake of What Might or Might Not Be Luck

It was a Thursday in mid-October, National Boss Day in the U.S., to be exact. But it didn’t matter. I don’t have a boss. And, we were in Moscow, Russia, and hauling ass toward Red Square to see Lenin’s tomb, which closed at 1pm. We needed to see the stuffed and waxed dictator. When we arrived at Resurrection Gate, through which I could see the large expanse (400m x 150m) of Red Square, the high end GUM shopping center on the left and the considerable battlement walls of the Kremlin on the right, it was 12:20, and we had some time to kill.  Just outside the colorful gate, there were people throwing what seemed to be money.  More precisely, there were people taking turns standing on a circular inscribed bronze tablet embedded in the cobbles and tossing the items, most often with a smile and cameras flashing, demurely over their shoulder, as if to say “Not that I believe this works or anything,” or, “Now I can say I’ve done it, on to St. Basil’s,” or “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, but everyone else is doing it, and when in Russia…”

Being curious travelers, my friends and I stopped and watched. One tall woman with long blond hair took to the plaque in jeans and high boots and smiled before throwing something glinty over her shoulder. Before it hit the ground, and in confirmation that this was in fact money, and not say crumpled tinfoil, several babushkas, who had been standing quietly behind her, suddenly broke out in a flurry of activity and fought to catch the item in midair. When they failed, the group bent down in their coats like a crowd of pigeons over breadcrumbs, scrambling wildly for the tossed change. 

This action seemed akin to throwing money in a well, but maybe there was something more beneficent about it than just having a wish granted. Also, there was the problem of the money not hitting the ground sometimes, which, if this had to do with making wishes, would seem instrumental to sealing the deal. If some babushka catches your coin, does the wish not come true? Or, does the bestowing of the wish get reassigned somehow to the babushka who caught your instrument of aspiration, so that she walks off with the tired bookish-looking guy you’ve been eying since you stepped out of Teatralnaya Metro instead of you?

I walked up to Stalin (well a man dressed up like Stalin who was charging to have pictures taken with him) to find some answers. I was wary of getting too close him, afraid that by being in his vicinity, he would charge me for time spent with Stalin, picture or no.  He turned away from Napoleon. I didn’t speak Russian and he didn’t speak English. I spoke to him in Serbo-Croatian (SC), another Slavic language, which I kind of know, and which kind of got me by in some situations in Russia before, barely. We resorted to broken English and what I think are very communicative and effective internationally understood hand gestures.  He said “For love” and lifted his shoulders, eyes and hands upward. “Em…for good…future,” he adlibbed and waved his right hand in front of him as if he were unrolling a scroll. “For luck?” I asked. “Svetno?” (which means luck in SC). He gave me an empty look. I nodded my head as if to say, “I understand, don’t worry,” though I firmly believed that he had either no idea what this tradition that occurred before him every day was about, he simply didn’t care, or he might suddenly become more clear for a few rubles. I almost wondered if someone had made up this tradition as an apparatus, albeit a poorly devised one, for fundraising. But faux Stalin basically confirmed in a vague sort of way the vague notions I had about this tradition: that there’s nothing more interesting to it than tossing salt over your shoulder, except that you can’t make other people move for salt. That’s not altogether uninteresting or unilluminating given that wishing wells that I’m inured to are heavy with neglected coins.

It seemed apropos in a week in which the Dow Jones had its largest and second largest point drop in its history. I wondered whether I should toss money, or join the ersatz numismatists. I decided to toss a kopek, the most worthless unit of money I had on me. It was an utterly joyless moment. I cringed as my friend took a picture of me and had this moment fixed on celluloid. I had no reason for doing it and felt badly about the movement behind me when my kopek sailed through the airspace near Red Square. I didn’t want whatever was the result of this activity.

My friends and I moved on to the tomb. We were nearly turned away at the gate by an officer who told us that Lenin’s tomb was closed, though it was clearly indicated that it was open for another half hour.  Within moments, we were approached by a man who offered to take us on a “private tour” for 700 rubles (roughly $25). This would enable us to get in, even though it was “closed.” I guess this was lucky in a twisted kind of way. Whether or not luck was the result of my flying kopek, I’ll never know. I was divested of my vest at a banya, swindled out of twenty bucks at a small-town bank outside Moscow, and charged $50 dollars more than locals at the Marinsky Theater. But provided that I was also given a ride at night by a strange young girl after being dropped off by a bus in a small town in the black of night, and walked to destinations I was seeking by generous strangers I called our “travel angels,” I was open to whatever odd brand of “fortune” came my way.

–Rozalia Jovanovic

Stefan Wieser from Cologne, Germany, submitted this photograph of Glückstadt, which literally translates to “Lucktown.” He had these thoughts on luck to share with us:

“When I was having dinner with my sister and my parents a couple of weeks ago (honoring my sis having passed her final exam to complete her time as a doctor-in-training; she’s now a full-fledged internist), my Mum wore a Chinese-style dress and carried a handbag I had once brought her from Shanghai Tang. I forget who had told me about this particular habit then, whether it was the vendor at the store or someone else, but I had slipped a $1 bill into the bag’s side pocket for good luck. And it was touching to find out that even now, some five years or so later, my mother still carries the same dollar bill around with her.

Another lucky charm story: The day before I started taking MY final exam, sometime in 2003, a friend came over to my place and gave me a rusty nail. She said that she had actually wanted to bring me the entire horseshoe (which, at least in Germany, is one of the most popular symbols for good luck), but that she didn’t want to add even more weight to the huge volumes of law commentaries I would have to schlepp all the way to the examination’s venue already. So what she gave me instead was one of the nails with which the horseshoe was once affixed to the hoof. Lucky charm worked quite well for me. For her, however, good luck was somewhat scarce since. Although she went on to find her dream job, working with the Organization Committee for the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics, and fell in love with someone, I never got the chance to see her again. When she was diagnoed with kidney cancer, the prognosis was only three to six months. Later, as she had instructed me, I passed on the nail to a friend in Paris, once again for an important exam situation, but - even though the lucky charm worked well in this case, too - received it back afterwards. Obviously the custom of passing on a lucky charm does not exist in France. Well.”

–Kevin

Pictured above is the director Ang Lee leading his traditional on-set “Big Luck Ceremony” to commemorate the start of production on his latest film, Taking Woodstock.

Before a single scene is ever shot on one of his films, Lee, the director of such acclaimed films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain performs a ritualistic blessing. This involves gathering the entire cast and crew around a table where fruit, flowers and incense are displayed as symbolic offerings to the luck gods, as well as the calling for bows to the North, South, East, and West. This ensures that luck will permeate the entire film production from all directions.

Taking Woodstock is an adaptation of the memoir of Elliot Tiber, who played a key role in the historic music festival that too place on his neighbor’s farm in 1969. The movie’s impressive lineup of actors include Emile Hirsch (pictured in the V-neck T-shirt), Jonathan Groff (with the bag slung over his shoulder), Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Live Schreiber, Mamie Gummer, Paul Dano, and Eugene Levy. 

–Kevin