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Every June, more than 50,000 conservative suits descend on Chicago for NeoCon (National Exposition of Contract Furnishings). There are so many of them, I feel like I never left my lovely hometown of DC, where Capitol Hill politicos run rampant and style still runs short. (Sorry, DC, you’re trying!) NeoCon is the most important show in the American contract furniture industry, with $25B in sales even during an economic slump. Your office chair, desk, and file cabinet were probably first scouted here. You haven’t given them a second thought once you were situated, and why would you (*yawn)? Fortunately, someone else is paid to do so and that person goes to NeoCon.

Established in 1969, NeoCon is always held at Merchandise Mart, a historic structure built by Marshall Field & Company in the 1920s. Once the largest building in the world at 4 million square feet, it has its own zip code and is a monument to architecture, design, and merchandising. It’s quite fitting that NeoCon is here: a pillar of a traditional American industry inside an American landmark. Merchandise Mart is now home to high-end designer showrooms, ad agencies, tech firms, and government agencies.

What you may not realize is that NeoCon is also a huge meat market.

Here’s what I thought about Coachella this year, broken down into convenient list form:

TOP 5 ACTS AT COACHELLA 2011

1. Arcade Fire
2. Mumford & Sons
3. Cage the Elephant
4. Elbow
5. Ms. Lauryn Hill

Are you disappointed in your lack of photo-posing skills? Do you have frands with arm-squishing issues? Do you want to see Denuologists photoshopped with scary smize eyes? Then DenuoU is back with our latest educational SlideShare, Smize: More Than Just Smiling.

This issue features the following items:

* Bureaucrats: A Global Portrait in Red Tape: These images remind us of the universality of many experiences and the uncanny ability of photographs to express both the similarities and differences.

* What we see/What kids see: Then we look at the deeper message behind lava floor. Need we say more?

* Emails from your Inlaws: If you thought you had a difficult family member or in-law, then you need to read these emails. You’ll either feel a lot better about your lot, or submit your own note and top what’s already there. Either way, you win.

* The Strange & Telling Case of the Illiterate Novelist: Finally, a great example of how the fight between grammar snobs and … everyone else. Though, in this case, we think their response is warranted.

Download Issue 82 of Reflecteur here.

Quick, you’re late to Paris in 1906 and your go-to corset is still at the cleaners:  what do you do? It is precisely occasions like these that I regret anchoring the bulk of my wardrobe in the Muppets heyday circa 1979. So I get over it and go. After all, this is the meal that’s a solid year in the making.

It’s my trip to Next, Grant Achatz’s restaurant masterpiece. Achatz is Michael Jordan in the kitchen, augmented by a Shakespearean bout with tongue cancer, a story coming soon to theaters. He continues to floor diners with Alinea, consistently ranked one of the best restaurants in the world, and is now upping the ante with Next and it’s impending neighbor Aviary, a ballsy reimagination of the cocktail lounge.