Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FAMILY (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (71%); BIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE (71%); SKIN CARE PRODUCTS (56%); COSMETICS & TOILETRIES COMPANIES (56%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (52%)
GEOGRAPHIC: ALPS (65%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: April 13, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: WALLS OF WINDOWS: The former sun porch of the family home in Bronxville serves as a bedroom and office for Francesco Clark. (PHOTOGRAPH BY NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg.RE4)

MULTIGENERATIONS: Francesco Clark, who has started a skin care line and written a memoir since an accident left him a quadriplegic, has the support of an extended family, below. The garage was turned into a gym, where he does physical therapy every day with his sister, Charloette Clark. His Italian grandmother, Enza Spaggiari, helps cook. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

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867 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 13, 2008 Sunday

Correction Appended

Late Edition - Final
Munich Redux
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS KULISH.

NICHOLAS KULISH is Berlin bureau chief for The Times.

SECTION: Section TR; Column 0; Travel Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 3045 words
AT the trendy vegan restaurant Saf im Zerwirk, nothing washes down the lasagna layered with cashew ricotta quite like a tarragon and tonic. The staff infuses the gin for this organic highball in-house with pear and citrus as well as tarragon.

Follow the stairs down one flight to the performance space and see if the evening offers a reading, a concert or a D.J. spinning dance music late into the night. Take one more flight down to street level and that's when things start to get a little strange. Not quite Alice in Wonderland strange, but it's up there.

This all-vegan, part raw-food establishment sits in a house more than 700 years old where wild game used to be skinned and butchered, just around the corner from the world-famous beer palace the Hofbrauhaus, in the heart of Munich.

Quaint, grandfatherly, Munich -- long considered about as cool as polka music on cassette -- is Germany's hot spot of the moment. And, like Saf im Zerwirk, it is offering more than weisswurst and weissbier to those willing to explore it anew.

For plenty of Germans, especially up north, the contention that Munich is the place to be could verge on sacrilege. This city polarizes, riles people up like nowhere else in a country of long-established regional rivalries. Its premier soccer team, Bayern Munich, is the dominant Yankees-style club people love to hate. Something about Munich's affluence, its self-satisfaction, its strong Bavarian identity and its Catholicism seems to rub the rest of the country the wrong way.

Yet some see those attributes as an advantage. ''Really, because it's so conservative, you can do what you want,'' said Sophie Lloyd, an Englishwoman who works at the restaurant and has lived in Munich for 12 years. ''You don't have to be cool and hip in a certain way.''

The certain way, of course, refers to Germany's heavyweight champion of cool, Berlin. For years now Munich has been overshadowed by Berlin, the capital city with the anarchic attitude and magnetic club scene. Berlin is hip and cutting-edge, Munich pleasant but stodgy, goes the stereotype.

I should know. I've been peddling that stereotype since I first moved to Berlin as a college student in 1995. Now for my confession, some might even say betrayal: I find myself thrilled whenever I see that my schedule as a correspondent for The New York Times in Germany will draw me down to the Bavarian capital on the Isar River.

Then I begin to salivate over the thought of rich food and exceptional beer, with a helping of the city's famed Gemutlichkeit. In the final stage, I begin to ponder furtively whether I might just be able to squeeze in a quick jaunt to an Austrian ski resort for the day.

If this is an illness, it's getting worse.

At least I'm not alone. Those still sleeping on Munich's resurgence were awakened with a jolt when the influential cosmopolitan magazine Monocle last summer named Munich the best city to live in the entire world, much less in Germany. Its historic advantages both as a home base or a vacation destination are ample.

In all the simple things that make a place livable, Munich excels. It is clean. The public transportation system is exceptionally efficient. There is the traditional cuisine, German comfort food, which unlike Saf im Zerwirk, is usually of the heavy and highly carnivorous variety, with pork and dumplings as staples. But there are also challenging restaurants like Essneun and G-Munich forging ahead with culinary innovations.

G-Munich is the kind of place that reminds you how far restaurants have come in seizing the ground once held by theater for live performance and staging. Entering you see candles hovering over each table, appearing to be suspended in midair like something out of Hogwarts. (Spoiler: they are set on glass discs, which are, in fact, strung on slender lines from the ceiling.)

The selection of breads, delivered in labeled paper bags, comes with a carousel of three salts and three olive oils, eyedroppers provided for the precision deployment of the olive oil, including one pressed on the premises, according to the waiter. From the tandoori tuna tartar to the curry ice cream there are surprises, including the friendliness and helpfulness of the people serving the food, a rarity in the kind of expensive establishment that usually delights in the diners' awe and helplessness.

The oldest of old saws is that Catholic Munich is the northernmost Italian city. But such saws age well for a reason. There is truth in them. Locals will wax endlessly poetic about the flattering southern light, but when it strikes the city's Baroque and Rococo architecture, or its stunning parks, I start to realize that they may have a point. A visit to Schloss Nymphenburg, summer palace of the rulers of Bavaria, manages to combine both, a favored place for tourists and locals alike to stroll.

Munich eschews Berlin's ''poor but sexy'' mantra. Fur-clad ladies of leisure still climb out of prowling Ferraris and into the grand dame of the city's hotels, the Bayerischer Hof, during the old-fashioned ball season.

Yet across town in the younger Glockenbachviertel, a night crawler can drain cocktails at the hip, Portuguese-themed bar Maroto and sing away the final hours of the evening at the glorious German dive Fraunhofer Schoppenstube, a 10-euro cab ride from the Bayerischer Hof and a world away.

It's the kind of town where this fall I caught Wyclef Jean rapping and singing into the early morning at the after-party for MTV's last European awards show, then found the artist Matthew Barney at the opening of an exhibition of his work, including the ''Cremaster Cycle'' of films, at the privately owned Goetz Collection the very next night.

Munich has not exactly reinvented itself; that would mean a break with the past. The beauty, tradition and healthy dose of kitsch are all right where you left them on that unforgettable yet somehow hazy trip to Oktoberfest back in college. Instead Munich has succeeded in winning me over by blending tradition with a new feel -- epitomized by the city's strengths in art and design.

In contrast, Berlin's thrift-store, '80s-inspired counterculture can feel a little flat, monochromatic, even uniform at times. Some days it feels like a textbook case of ''we're all different in exactly the same way.''

Munich's latest Digital, Life, Design conference in January, organized by the local media mogul Hubert Burda, brought together everyone from technology entrepreneurs to artists, from the American inventor Chuck Hoberman to the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani to the British environmental adventurer David de Rothschild, of the famous banking family.

After a long opening day, guests headed to the city's leading tony watering hole, Schumann's, on the historic Odeonplatz, with the ornate yellow Theatinerkirche and the enormous Residenz palace. The wise rubbed the bronze noses of the lion statues at the Residenz on the way for good luck in deserving a choice table. At Schumann's the high two-story ceilings and the towering wall of Italian serpentine, its green set off by a long row of molten-red Campari bottles, dispel immediately any concerns that corner-bar coziness will be the order of the day.

Any remaining questions are answered by the distinguished waiters in white jackets and long white aprons who serve as judge and jury over the best tables. The serious older gentleman serving us that evening exuded a quiet authority, more dignified than the buzzing mass of his clientele.

Business cards were brandished like rapiers before a duel, and the networking chatter escalated in competition. A good Berliner revolutionary might have lighted a Molotov cocktail instead of reaching for a single malt. But it was not a scene likely to be repeated there. One table away from the chief executive of General Electric for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Georg Knoth, the design superstar and local resident Konstantin Grcic was chatting late into the night with Ambra Medda, the fashionable young co-founder of Design Miami.

Like Milan, Munich's marriage of commerce and aesthetics make it a natural for the field of design. In December, the German art and culture magazine Monopol ran the headline on its cover that translated read, ''Bitter for Berlin: The future of German design emerges on the Isar.''

In no small part that's because money draws talent, like the Pritzker-winning architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who built the interconnected shopping passageways and courtyards of the Funf Hofe, which opened in 2003. Or Wolf Prix of the Vienna-based architectural firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, who designed the new BMW Welt flagship delivery center.

The building just opened in January, prompting Nicolai Ouroussoff to write in The Times that it ''immediately rekindled my faith in architecture's future.'' He continued, ''Its undulating steel forms, suggesting the magical qualities of liquid mercury, may be the closest yet that architecture has come to alchemy.''

In addition to being home to big companies like BMW and Siemens, Munich also has encouraged the kind of entrepreneurial culture that has helped nurture a flourishing high-tech economy. According to city figures, there are also close to 90,000 young minds studying at its universities and technical schools, the second most in Germany. Conveniently for the creative business minds, the headquarters of the European Patent Office sits in Munich.

The successful young industrial designer Stefan Diez, 36, one of the city's up-and-coming stars and a former employee of Mr. Grcic, considered setting up shop in Berlin, but decided against it. With its cheap rents and huge spaces, ''Berlin seemed to be the ideal place for artists,'' Mr. Diez said on a recent afternoon in his office. But he found the city a little insular. ''Berlin is looking within Berlin,'' he said. ''Artists cannot forget that, first of all, we generate our stories from real life.''

Because of its roaring economy, Munich is expensive for a budding small business. Indeed, the city has the highest rents in Germany, but Mr. Diez found an old, rundown woodworking factory in the Glockenbachviertel where he said, you could see through the walls when he began working on it. Mr. Diez rebuilt the space with help from his father, a carpenter, and some contractors. Now, light floods his studio through the new polycarbonate roof, as he and members of his staff work on their latest plans for new furniture and household goods.

When he has time, Mr. Diez enjoys meeting friends for a steak at Tabacco. It's a small bar and restaurant downtown that places ambience over theatrics -- with its simple wood paneling, monochrome yellow ceiling and two matching dark-brass chandeliers. The music is low, and the sophisticated crowd seems to appreciate it as a relaxed conversation locale, nothing like the beer halls for which the city is famous.

It is, of course, impossible to overlook the world's largest beer festival. At Oktoberfest, revelers pack tents to consume liter-size beers, stand on benches and shout themselves hoarse singing ''Ein Prosit,'' often with distinctive Italian, Japanese or even Boston accents.

It ranks up there with Mardi Gras and Carnival among the world's top parties. Organizers said 6.2 million people attended in 2007, drinking 6.7 million liters of beer. As you tiptoe through the besotted stragglers after the tents close, it appears that a few are partaking in far heavier doses than the moderate majority. There will be blood, but quite a bit more vomit.

Yet Munich is equally well-known for its refinement. It is an oasis for opera lovers year-round, and each summer the city holds an opera festival, this year from June 26 until July 31. ''This is a city where people are confident enough in their knowledge to boo at the opera,'' my old friend, Thomas Girst, a German who moved to Munich for the first time after many years in New York, told me as we stood in front of the National Theater, home of the Bayerische Staatsoper.

And a trip to Munich could be devoted to nothing but the city's exceptional Pinakothek art museums. A visit to the Alte Pinakothek, the architect Leo von Klenze's 19th-century brick cathedral to painting, is a dizzying pinball between old masterpieces, from staring back at the intense gaze of Durer's famous ''Self Portrait'' of 1500 to craning your neck to absorb the enormous canvas of ''The Great Last Judgment'' by Rubens.

Across from the Alte, find Goya and Renoir at the Neue Pinakothek and then on to Beuys and Richter at the Pinakothek der Moderne, opened in 2002. Though situated right next to one another, a day for each would begin to do them justice.

Not to be overlooked by any means is Munich's enviable position barely over an hour's drive from the Alps. A city is different when framed by high snow-capped mountains. It isn't just scenery. It changes a place's entire attitude when skiing at a World Cup venue like Garmisch-Partenkirchen, or across the Austrian border at Kitzbuhel, isn't something to do with a week or even a weekend, but for the day.

THE mountains in the distance from the city center swiftly become the obstacles that set the track of the curving road to Austria. The popping in my ears tells me something good about the snow-friendly altitudes ahead. Indeed, the views from the gondolas compare to the Flemish old master landscapes in the Alte Pinakothek. Some of the mountains are toothy and jagged, others smoothed with the coating of snow. On one of those now-common unsettlingly warm January days, I am happy to trade the heavier consistency of the snow for the sun on my face.

In fact, the city has been tipped as one of the front-runners for the 2018 Winter Olympics. That would give Munich the distinction of being the only city ever chosen for both the winter and summer games.

Of course, when Munich was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics, the event was marred by the horrifying murders of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by Palestinian terrorists. That is just one tragic episode in a city with a significant dark side in its past, most notably the shameful distinction as the ''Capital of the Movement'' when the Nazis were in power.

Many tourists still make the somber but important pilgrimage to the concentration camp at Dachau just outside the city limits, which marks but does not celebrate its 75th anniversary this year. One Nazi monument in Munich -- the Haus der Kunst, or as it was known when it was completed in 1937, the House of German Art -- stands as a kind of living conduit from the country's past, the art of the present and the dialogue in between.

The museum was intended as a showplace for Nazi art. Now some of the most challenging contemporary exhibitions can be found there, as the Haus der Kunst presents shows that upend the comic-book ideals of muscular nudes that defined Nazi preferences.

''We're constantly working with the meaning of the building and the past of the building,'' said Chris Dercon, the museum's director, as he led a whirlwind tour. Energetic enthusiast that he is, it included everything down to the archive room and the control room for the heating and the water in the basement. ''The building is a constant form of irritation and inspiration.''

In a recent installation built just for the Haus der Kunst, the Turner Prize-winning sculptor Anish Kapoor created an enormous blood-red block out of Vaseline, wax and paint. The imposing mass moves slowly on a set of tracks through large holes cut like wounds through the walls of the museum. As it passes through the wall it leaves behind a gory residue.

Just down the Prinzregentenstrasse from the Haus der Kunst, there is year-round downtown surfing on the manmade river called the Eisbach, which runs through the Englischer Garten, something like the city's Central Park. The water is shallow and pounds out fast. The local hard-core surfers try to discourage beginners, an easier task in the chill of winter than the peak of summer.

It is soothing to watch them carving away at the permanent wave as traffic roars by incongruously overhead. Taking a stroll from the surfers to the Chinese Tower deeper into the park, I think I might stay a little bit longer this time, and wonder when I can book a flight for my next visit. I am not ready to abandon Berlin entirely, but without question I am doing it more consistently.

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE

Lufthansa flies to Munich from several American cities. From New York, fares start at about $850 round trip in April and May on a nonstop flight (a codeshare with United) from Kennedy Airport.

WHERE TO STAY

The luxury mainstay of Munich -- and the place to see the famed Frauenkirche from the exercise machines in the top-floor gym -- is the Bayerischer Hof (Promenadeplatz 2-6; 49-89-2120-0). Doubles start at 320 euros, about $515 at $1.61 to the euro. The Cortiina (Ledererstrasse 8; 49-89-24-2249-0) offers style as well as a central location a hop and a skip from Marienplatz, with doubles from 226 euros. Situated in a stately former post office next to the central train station, the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost (Bayerstrasse 12; 49-89-599-480) is sleek and cool on the inside, with doubles starting at 149 euros.

WHERE TO EAT

For the enterprising eater looking to try goose liver creme brulee at 22 euros, stop by G-Munich (Geyerstrasse 52; 49-89-7474-7999). Or if you're ready to indulge in a raw vegan sushi plate for 17 euros, Saf im Zerwirk (Ledererstrasse 3; 49-89-2323-9195) is your place. Cena Lounge (Blumenstrasse 1A; 49-89-260-118-50) makes the hearty manageable with Bavarian tapas, snack-size dumpling with goulash, for a mere 4.90 euros.

WHAT TO DO

A stroll through the Englischer Garten with a refreshment at the Chinese Tower beer garden is a must. Hang a left at the urban surfers on your way out of the park and end your walk by taking in the latest exhibition at the Haus der Kunst (Prinzregentenstrasse 1; 49-89-21127-113). Then go nose-to-nose with Durer at the Alte Pinakothek (Barer Strasse 27; 49-89-23805-216) and check out the design collection at the Pinakothek der Moderne (Barer Strasse 40; 49-89-23805-360), from automobiles to furniture.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RESTAURANTS (89%); MUSIC GENRES (76%); MUSIC (76%); SOCCER (65%); RELIGION (65%); CHRISTIANS & CHRISTIANITY (54%); MEAT FREE DIETS (90%); CATHOLICS & CATHOLICISM (50%)
ORGANIZATION: NEW YORK YANKEES (54%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BERLIN, GERMANY (92%) BAVARIA, GERMANY (92%) GERMANY (92%); CENTRAL EUROPE (55%)
LOAD-DATE: April 13, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: April 20, 2008

CORRECTION: An article on April 13 about Munich's resurgence as a cultural center incorrectly stated when the BMW Welt building, a notable example of recent architecture, opened. It was in October, not January.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: OPPOSITE PAGE: Design is a significant component of the Pinakothek der Moderne. ABOVE FROM TOP: Saf im Zerwirk and the Maroto bar offer departures from the traditional wurst-and-beer menu, and the BMW Welt building is a new addition to the cityscape. RIGHT: The innovative G-Munich is lighted by candles that seem to float. (pg. TR8)

The many sides of the new Munich are on parade outside the town hall on Marienplatz. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY OLIVER HARTUNG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. TR1) MAP (pg. TR8) Map showing Munich and its surrounding points of interest.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

868 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 13, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission
BYLINE: By JOHN MARKOFF
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; SLIPSTREAM; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1004 words
DATELINE: Palo Alto, Calif.
STEVE WOZNIAK built the original Apple I to share with his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club, but it was his business partner Steve Jobs who had the insight that there might be a market for such a contraption. Indeed, for decades, Silicon Valley has been defined by the tension between the technologist's urge to share information and the industrialist's incentive to profit.

Now a new style of ''hybrid'' technology organization is emerging that is trying to define a path between the nonprofit world and traditional for-profit ventures.

They're often referred to as ''social enterprises'' because they pursue social missions instead of profits. But unlike most nonprofit groups, these organizations generate a sustainable source of revenue and do not rely on philanthropy. Earnings are retained and reinvested rather than being distributed to shareholders.

The new companies, like thousands of Silicon Valley start-ups before them, typically begin as small groups of intensely motivated people dedicated to the goal of building a product or service.

The best-known examples are efforts like the Mozilla Corporation, which maintains and develops the Firefox Web browser, and TechSoup, an organization that was started two decades ago to connect technology experts with nonprofit groups. It now distributes commercial software to nonprofit groups in 14 countries. (Mozilla's mission is to preserve choice and innovation on the Internet, which it considers a social good.)

By most measures both companies, with hundreds of employees, qualify as vibrant businesses. Each has revenue in excess of $50 million annually.

Moreover, there is also a range of smaller organizations, like the Internet Archive in San Francisco, with smaller but sustainable revenue streams. Significantly, an ecosystem is emerging that involves support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provides legal services, and the Internet Systems Consortium, which plays the role of an independent Internet service provider for the community.

''There is a lot of discussion taking place right now about a whole new organization form around social enterprise,'' said James Fruchterman, president of Benetech, a social enterprise incubator based in Palo Alto. ''Many of these efforts can make money; they will just never make enough to provide venture capital rates of return.''

Brewster Kahle, who has founded a number of successful Internet companies, as well as the nonprofit Internet Archive, said: ''If we do this right, I think there is momentum here. The next major operating systems company might be a nonprofit.''

The Internet Archive, which runs Web crawlers -- programs that index information stored on the Internet -- and offers the popular Wayback Machine, which allows surfers to find previous versions of Web sites, now has two self-sustaining projects. The first is digitizing books and the second is creating and maintaining Web repositories for national libraries.

Mr. Kahle says he is developing a set of principles that he hopes will help formalize his idea that there is a middle ground between the technologists and the capitalists. He ticks off operating guidelines like transparency, staying out of debt, giving away information and refusing to hoard.

TechSoup stumbled upon its business eight years ago after it began sending a truck around San Francisco to pick up donated commercial software to distribute to nonprofit groups. Today, the organization distributes products from 32 commercial companies, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Symantec, to roughly 50,000 organizations annually, for a small administrative fee.

''We were just trying to meet the needs of nonprofits,'' said Rebecca Masisak, co-chief executive of TechSoup.

Nonprofits with revenue are not new or restricted to Silicon Valley, and there is a great deal of debate over whether they offer a sustainable approach.

The new stream of technology-centric and successful nonprofits, however, appears to be driven in part by a set of microelectronics technology trends that have sent shock waves through many industries, from publishing to music and movies.

''Computer technology and the Internet are lowering the cost of doing business,'' said John Lilly, the chief executive of Mozilla, the Web browser developer that is being subsidized by advertising revenue from the search engine business.

That blends with the strong sense of social purpose held by a number of the best and brightest in Silicon Valley.

''We went through all these decades where we had nonprofits that thought business was evil and sustainability was irrelevant,'' said Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford who advises social entrepreneurs. ''Now there has been an influx of business thought. People are saying, 'I have enough money and I care.'''

STILL, most technology-oriented social entrepreneurs acknowledge that the hybrid model is by no means a one-size-fits-all approach, and there is significant debate about how far it can reach. Moreover, the approach hasn't always worked.

For example, beginning in 2002, the Lotus Development founder Mitchell Kapor invested more than $5 million in the Open Source Applications Foundation, with the intent of finding a sustainable business. The group had a number of strategies for obtaining revenue from the distribution of free software, but it was unable to get far enough along to begin the experiment. The project never got to the point where the calendar program Chandler could be widely distributed, and Mr. Kapor has since scaled back the project.

The experience, however, has not dulled his optimism.

''You can use a lot of the methods of business, specifically entrepreneurial start-ups, in ways that are directed at having a positive social impact,'' Mr. Kapor said. ''Mozilla and the Archive are cases where we are harnessing powerful techniques of value creation that were originally forged in the Valley and putting them to use.''