Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab produces perfume oils unlike anything else on the market. Aiming for a "dark, romantic Gothic tone" the Alchemy Lab carries scents inspired by religions, literature, cities of the world, fairy tales and inside jokes. The general catalog contains hundreds of different perfumes, and limited edition scents are frequently provided. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is referred to as
BPAL or the Lab by customers. These perfumes are unlike any other commercially produced scents.
The sheer volume can be overwhelming for a new customer. Fortunately
BPAL offers Imp's Ears, samples of most general catalog scents. Samples are not available for limited editions and a few general catalog scents. Imps are standard 1/32oz perfume vials. They are $3 individually, and $16 for a half dozen.
BPAL oils are packaged in small glass bottles with screw tops. These bottles are usually cobalt blue, though sometimes amber bottles are used. General catalog scents have simple black and white labels, but the limited edition labels are often elaborate and colorful. 5ml and 10ml bottles of scents cost from $12.50 to $25. Considering the perfume oil content of each blend is 85 to 100%, these prices make
BPAL one of the most affordable perfume lines around.
BPAL oils are 85 to 100% perfume oil, as compared to straight perfume (15-25%),
eaudeparfum (8-15%) or
eaude cologne (2-5%). No animal products are used in any
BPAL fragrances. Elements such as civet are composites created from carefully mixed bouquets.
The general catalog is broken down into the following categories: Bewitching Brews, Funeral Oils, Dark Elements, Sin & Salvation, Love potions,
Diabolus, Mad Tea Party,
Illyria, Wanderlust,
ArsDraconis,
Rappaccini's Garden, The Salon,
Excolo, Voodoo Blends, Tarot Oils,
Sephiroth, The
Chakras, Panacea, and
Somnium. Some categories, such as the Tarot and
Chakras are straightforward.
ArsDraconis includes several scents using dragon's blood as a base.
Illyria contains scents inspired by Shakespeare, and Mad Tea Party is a line influenced by Lewis Carroll's work. Wanderlust showcases perfumes named for cities and places both real and legendary. Many scents in the catalog are inspired by famous and obscure works of fiction or art. Dorian is a hugely popular scent named after Wilde's famous dandy. There's a scent named for Wilde as well. Many scents reference poetry, legends and religious myth. There are scents for gluttony, wrath, envy, sloth, greed, lust and pride in the Sin & Salvation category. It is often surprising to experience how well the perfumes suit their names and descriptions.
Limited edition scents are usually just placed in the Limited category.
BPAL has a limited edition series titled "A Little Lunacy" that appears each month on the full moon. Lunacy scents are created around various names for full moons, such as Harvest Moon, Flower Moon, Snow Moon, Hungry Ghost Moon, and Honey Moon. Lunacy scents are only available for 24 hours on the day of the full moon. Other limited scents are often created for the season, such as the Halloween and Yule creations. Sometimes the Lab creates an entire line of limited edition scents available for a few months at a time. One of the first was Springtime in
Arkham, a tribute to HP Lovecraft. The second was
CarnavalNoir, an intriguing line of scents inspired by a suggestion regarding summer carnival food on the customer forum. one of BPAL's most popular scents ever was Midway, a sugary tribute to fried and sweet foods. Other limited edition lines A Demon in My View and Maelstrom. These limited edition lines allowed the Lab to create complex olfactory tributes to Edgar Allen Poe's short stories and poems.
An enormously popular limited edition offering was Chaos Theory. Each bottle of Chaos Theory was unique and untitled except for a roman numeral. Every single bottle was a different blend. The only rule to the edition was that there was no way to choose which bottle arrived. Chaos Theory was so popular it is now in its third round. in the third round, oils containing common allergens such as nuts were removed so that no bottles would cause any unexpected reactions.
Because scents are not transmitted through the
internet, the
BPAL customer forum is an essential tool for a shopper when selecting a scent. Most perfumes have a brief description o the major notes or inspiration for the oil. Because
BPAL oils are mostly perfume oil and complex, they often react in different ways to the skin chemistry of different people. What smells like a bounty of lily and musk to one person may turn plastic and sour on another. The forum contains reviews written by customers about the oils. It is an excellent resource to use while learning which scents work best with one's personal preferences and body chemistry. Customers of the Lab learn to train a discriminating nose, and many reviews are elaborate affairs with complex analysis of the stages of the perfumes.
When
BPAL scents don't work out, there is a lively secondhand market for imps and bottles. The customer forum has a subsection devoted to swapping and selling scents that just didn't work out. this softens the blow for any customer disappointed with their purchase, as it is quite easy to trade and sell on the forum. Moderators make an effort to address any issues with members who don't follow through with swaps, a practice known as "swap-lifting." There are also limits on the forum to prevent the prices of discontinued oils from spiking too high. eBay is another source for secondhand
BPAL scents, with more freedom for pricing. However bidding wars for discontinued or limited edition scents can push the price up dramatically.
The Black Phoenix Trading Post (
BPTP) is also affiliated with the Lab. Here one finds shirts, scent lockets and statues inspired by and for
BPAL. Each month the Trading Post offers a shirt to correspond with the Lunacy update. Unlike the Lunacy blends,
BPTP shirts usually stay up for sale for one week. There are several regular catalog shirts, as well as several heavy silver scent lockets designed by the Lab.
BPTP plans to continue expanding their offerings over the coming year. Orders for
BPTP products cannot be combined with orders from
BPAL because they are separate entities.
BPAL is a small business, and has experienced a number of growing pains over the past few years. The wait time for shipments climbed dramatically, sometimes topping out at six to eight weeks. In 2006, shipping times have shortened and are now only a few weeks. On the customer forum, one of the most heavily trafficked threads chronicles the shipping notices received by customers. The Lab prides itself on excellent customer service and works quickly correct any problems. Because they are a small business, Lab staff have an unusually personal and friendly relationship with large chunks of their fan base. Lab staff are frequent contributors to the customer forum. Some offhand jokes in the forum have mushroomed into inspiration for
BPAL blends, most notably the
CarnavalNoir line in 2005, and the limited edition Enraged Orangutan Musk.
For scents to compliment lifestyles from the
gothic to the geeky, the Black Phoenix Alchemy lab supplies quality perfumes. Few other companies can provide such nuanced and beautiful creations for such an inexpensive price. With a reasonable price for samples and an active secondhand market, it is easy to become hooked on
BPAL oils.
The main characters in the film Better Luck Tomorrow all have different relationships with the "model minority myth" afforded them as a result of being Asian in a predominantly white school. Throughout the film, we see that each character deals with their model minority status in a different way. These different approaches lead to drastically different outcomes—some of them good, some irreparably bad.
Stephanie, practically the only female character in the film, more or less goes about her daily life without actively using the model minority myth to benefit her. She is academically ambitious, hangs out mostly with others who could potentially benefit from the myth, and also has a boyfriend who is Korean American. During one scene where she is studying on the computer in her room, we see a bamboo plant briefly in the background, but beyond that her identity seems almost entirely unimportant to her for most of the film.
Daric embraces the model minority myth in a big way, however, and uses it whenever he feels it will benefit him. He climbs quickly to the top of the school newspaper's editorial team and champions himself as a "defender" of Asian-American representation in sports and elsewhere. He is the one who writes an article purporting that Ben is the "token Asian" on the basketball team—Daric also rallies Asian-American students behind Ben, getting them to protest on his behalf at basketball games. Daric also leads an Asian-American "gang" of cheat sheet distributors and, over time, a group of cocaine peddlers. Despite his image as a defender of Asian-Americans, he causes undoubtedly more damage to his own clique than anyone else. He feeds into Virgil's need for social status and also preys on Ben's romantic interest in Stephanie (and resentment toward Steve). He is arguably the most criminal character we encounter in the film, yet he is never suspected of any wrongdoing—he knows the power of the model minority myth. He also uses this power when a white student mocks him at a party; the student is perhaps expecting Daric to do nothing, but instead he lashes out and the group gives the white kid a fairly serious beating.
Ben himself tries to distance himself from his Asian-American identity and does not at first manipulate the myth: he is outraged when Daric publishes the article, which I think is equal parts embarrassment and disbelief—he doesn't believe that the coach would be in any way racially motivated. And yet, clearly the coach is, because it takes the article and a throng of protesters for him to give Ben time on the court, even in the final quarter of the game. Ben's denial of his previous habits—he abandons his intelligence, academic tenacity, and discipline for nights of cocaine-snorting and cavorting—leads to a bottle-up of emotions. He also refuses to acknowledge to himself how much he resents Steve, who is affluent, has Stephanie, and occasionally opines that he is bored of winning in life. Instead, he goes through the motions of being Steve's friend, even though he despises him.
Perhaps not surprisingly, then, it is Ben—repressed, confused, and led astray—who gives Steve his final "wake up call". Early on in the film, Ben is made out to be the voice of reason in the gang, keeping Daric's plans in check. But as his obsession with Stephanie grows, he cares less about the well-being of the others in his clique—to such an extent that he is willing to be the outlook as they beat up Steve.
Alternately, I was thinking that maybe Ben's brutal attack on Steve (and his silence as Daric and Virgil finish him off), actually arises from a deep sense of belonging to the group. He walked into the garage somewhat disoriented, after hearing a gunshot, and maybe he thought that Steve had injured one of his friends. So it is possible that Ben's over-association with his group of friends is responsible for his violent act. It is also possible that his outburst is a result of typical male competition taken to the extreme: two guys, but only one girl. I think, though, that Ben would not have become as "off the beaten path" as he does in the film if he had not been able to hide his criminal activities behind the veil of the model minority myth. He frequently comes to class worn out from coke, and he accepts a gun as a gift, yet his white teachers seem not to notice. (Of course, rumors about his outlaw status eventually sweep through the school—but a rumor is hardly the same as being called into the principal's office, or questioned by the police.)
Virgil, as the group's underdog and a subject of frequent ridicule, seems to have ambiguous feelings about his place in the group. On the one hand, he is the lowest-ranking member of the clique, but on the other hand he eventually takes a leadership role. Of course, he gets his friend suspended by bragging too often about the group's exploits. This bragging, along with his aggressive behavior, seems to be a way of compensating for his low rank. Interestingly, Virgil seems the least capable at manipulating the model minority myth to his advantage—rather than hiding behind it, Virgil seems hell-bent on breaking it down and always appearing as a "thug" or "tough guy" to others, even to a white prostitute he knows he will never see again.
Although Better Luck Tomorrow does not always approach the model minority myth in a direct way, it is definitely there, right under the surface for all to see. The ways in which the main characters embrace and exploit their identity leads to problems, and tragedy. Even though it is not explicitly stated, we are led to believe that the "gang" would not have gotten as out of hand if they had not been able to successfully use their "model minority" status as a cover. Daric is the perfect example of this; he uses a model minority archetype to mask deeply troubling and sociopathic tendencies. No one action in the film can be attributed solely to "Asian-American identity"—but the gang's rise and fall is clearly, in part, due to successful use of the model minority myth.
One of the NYPD cops who took part in a botched million dollar perfume factory heist last month pleaded guilty today to conspiracy in connection with the armed robbery. Brian Checo, 24, of the 34th precinct in Washington Heights, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in June.
At Newark Federal Court today, he admitted that he and three other cops, one of whom was retired, staged the heist at the In Style USA Inc. factory in Carlstadt, NJ, busting in the room brandishing guns and badges, yelling "NYPD! Hands up!" They held 11 employees hostage while loading $1 million worth of perfume onto rented trucks. One of the hostages was able to call 911, and police tracked down the trucks quickly.
Checo tried to cover his tracks by reporting that his ID had been stolen, sources tell the Post . Charges are still pending on the other cops involved, including Officer Richard LeBlanca of the 34th Precinct, and Officer Kelvin Jones of the 46th Precinct in the Bronx, who went on the lam for three days after the heist.
What Makes Beyonce Rich: Japanese Water, Perfume That Looks Like Lube
In a single hour, Macy's sold 72,000 bottles of Beyonce's new perfume yesterday. If you think that's impressive, check out all the other stuff she uses her famous face to sell. A portrait of the artist as a commodity.
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Julian Rouas ParisJulian RouasRelaxation Drinks
