Critical Mass in SM was last night, which was really fun. I’m happy to have fixed my bike up this week, so that I could begin riding it extensively. Me and Taka had our first adventure, riding with the pack from the SM Pier all the way to Marina Del Ray, via Venice.
It was slightly less organized that some critical masses i’ve been in, but no less fun. The group got broken up and reformed several times and we lost one or two to the police along the way… Highlights included: reaching a roundabout and having the mass encircle the roundabout for several minutes. Bike racing in a Ralphs parking lot. The ride back along the beach bike path by night.
Link.
This update will cover several unrelated things because, as you can see, i’m already beginning to slip in terms of update-consistency.
Most recently, I took a mini-road trip to San Fransisco. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a ride. I got dropped of in San Jose, where my friend Nate lives, and we ventured there Saturday morning, stopping for a small tour of the Stanford campus on the way. In the end, I only spent about 24 hours in San Fran, but it was still really fun and I got to hang out with two of my best friends from college and their friends/significant others. I mostly hung around the Mission area and played catchup while getting exposed to a bit of local flavor.
The Mission district — an area of town that is quickly getting more popular — contains a ton of really interesting antique stores and specialty shops. It’s also full of beautiful murals. Most importantly though, it contains Philz Coffee, which made my weekend. Plus Dolores park is there, and there are enough beautiful hipsters around to feed a small country. I’ve got to say, it was a real breath of fresh air to visit a city where people actually walk around. Don’t take pedestrians for granted: They have a way of making a neighborhood feel loved that is often missing in LA.
On the way home, my friend and I found the most remote In-N-Out Burger in the world. It felt a bit like perching on the edge of the earth and eating your last meal. And that meal is a double-double, animal style (no spread).
In other news:
+ I bought a Nintendo DS. I’ve never owned a video game system in my entire life until now. Why did I make the jump? Most likely because a) I’m so impressed with Nintendo’s embrace of gesture based interfaces as the new direction of gameplay and b) It’s cheaper than a Wii. Plus, you can get wireless on it, and if you buy this guy you can load mp3’s, videos, home-made applications, (etc) onto your DS. I think that’s pretty rad.
+ I got a work study position in my department as a Masters Student Assistant to the Head of our dep’t, who is now Casey Reas. I’ll start when school begins, later next week.
+ LA Greekfest? Slightly unimpressive. There wasn’t too much to do for a couple of 20something males. And while the food was, in fact, delicious, something about having to pay to get in, only to pay again for food tasted a bit sour. It was great to hear to some Greek being spoken, however. And, I scored some Greek coffee, which I was out of and looking for!
That’s all for now kids. For interesting website links, check my del.icio.us and for more San Fran photos, check my flickr (on the left menu).
Sorry about the brief hiatus everyone. After Tammy’s departure, I decided to busy myself with bureaucratic and domestic type busy-work, in an attempt to ease the inevitable boredom and loneliness that trails the end of highly anticipated events. Now that a few productive days have gone by, it’s time to get back on the saddle.
I’ll focus on some of the more interesting things that happened and try not to get too mushy or overly-personal. For one thing, having a car made life much easier, and yet the experience of being an LA driver for one week really opened my eyes to just how enervating car-ownership can be. It made me relieved, in a small way, that it’s not something I have to deal with at the moment. You know what I’m talking about: “I’ve got to get in that lane in about 10 seconds or I’ll miss the exit! Oh, but this guy’s not letting me go! Holy crap, somebody’s merging in front of me! GYAAH!!” Days often felt long and full but then we realized we had only really done 2 or 3 things. We just spent so much time driving around or looking for parking!
In terms of local interests, we checked out the Santa Monica Farmers market (the wednesday one on 2nd and Arizona), which was very nice, went to the pier and walked along the beach. Ate some good food in Little Tokyo, Silver Lake, and in Arcadia/Alhambra where Tammy’s relatives live (I’m talking real Chinese restaurants, where you open up the menu and see duck beaks and other crazy stuff. Oh yeah, baby). We did quite a bit of karaoke, saw some jazz at LACMA, and also got to catch up with a good handful of college friends from Tammy’s department.
In terms of cultural interests, we visited the house and studio of Charles and Ray Eames. The tours are self guided and exterior only. The place is not that large, so it didn’t take long. It was a really pleasant experience, but semi creepy how the counter arrangements and furniture in the house are basically left unmoved since when the last one died. Still, the house itself is really neat looking and full of Eames furniture. And the area it’s in (around Santa Monica, off the Pacific Coast Highway), is quiet and secluded.
We visited many of the galleries in Culver City along Washington/La Cienega, but a good bunch of them were on vacation or in between shows. There are several big openings tomorrow night and next week (9/15) in that area. We took another trip back to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, also.
I’ve got some photos up on my flickr page, but Tammy camera saw most of that action, so if you are thirsting for documentation, you may be able to quench said thirst on her facebook page eventually.
Last night, north of Silver Lake was the annual Frogtown Artwalk, which is where a bunch of artists who live in loft spaces by the LA river opened up their studios. One of my new classmates was DJ’ing there so I went meet him and see the studios. The work was okay, mostly photography and 2D work. And there was the occasional sculptor and steel worker. For me though, the highlight of the night was hanging out at Brand Name Label, a group of fabricators/artists who seemed to work mostly with steel and other industrial materials.
They had built this incredibly fun “swing” that is counterweighted at the top so that the participant makes smooth 360 degree rotations. The seat also rotates 360. Riding it was like living that childhood fantasy of swinging so high you go over the top bar. This was excactly that sensation but on a much larger scale (and with a more secure harness). It was really great fun. Check out the video:
This weekend also marked the beginning of Nisei Week, Little Tokyo’s annual summer festival as well as the LA Tofu Festival (self explanatory).
The tofu festival was pretty fun; full of food tasting and tofu related events. We missed some of the main events like the tofu eating contest, but to be honest, I was mostly in it for the food anyway! And food I did achieve. The area was lined with local vendors peddling their tofu delicacies: everything from traditional dishes to tofu margaritas (not the best idea). There were tofu t-shirts, tofu cookbooks, somebody in a tofu suit… And there was a beer garden outdoors, which was an unexpected surprise!
So after an afternoon of tofu gorging and beer drinking, there was an official Nisei Week parade. People were camped out on the sidewalks in traditional parade-watching fashion. And what ensued was a proper Japanese summer festival: drumming, singing, dancing, yukata, veterans and officials, beauty queens and a big spectacular float at the end. It was really enjoyable but boy were we pooped from all that standing around! It was really worthwhile and wonderful, however, to see how happy everybody was when the float went by. I could really feel the positive energy amongst the whole crowd.
I was thinking about something my friend Ko reminded me of: Around here, a lot of the older Japanese people are first generation American; raised here, maybe even born here. At my age i’m used thinking of older people as having emigrated in their younger years, having accents, etc. But many Asians have been on the west coast for much longer than that. Because of that, these kinds of festivals have a bit of a unique flavor. They’re not trying too hard to exactly emulate a traditional Japanese festival, but rather, it’s kind of its own thing and much nicer because of it.
After the parade died down, we had some excellent sushi at a nice sushi bar in the Little Tokyo plaza. How could we resist?
Among the many things happening in LA this weekend was the Sunset Junction: A big outdoor music festival that occupies a stretch of Sunset Blvd. in SilverLake. Me and some friends went on Saturday evening in particular, to see Blonde Redhead. We were hoping to catch Autolux and Seawolf too, but the parking situation was outrageous (we should have guessed…). It was complicated by all the blocked off streets, as well. The interesting thing about Silver Lake’s residential area is that its surprisingly hilly. Much like Polish Hill in Pgh. there is an area full of steep rolling hills and really cute houses/neighborhoods. Some of the streets got extremely narrow. We found parking up in such a neighborhood and thanks to the help of some locals, located a long staircase that went all the way down the side of the hill, cutting through the neighborhoods. It was quite interesting.
The festival was very diverse in the crowd it attracted, which I was happy about. It was really crowded though, and a bit stressful to navigate and find people (as these types of events usually are). Blonde Redhead’s performance was excellent. So charismatic and professional, and they sounded great. It was a bit like drinking Baily’s. Smooooth. They were just as good as the recordings with just enough variation to keep things interesting. After them, Ben Harper played. They’re a good band, but not my favorite kind of music; good outdoor festival music, though.
Earlier in the day, I finally got to see Culver City, which is a nice area of town to walk around in. There’s a lot of galleries around Washington Blvd. but we didn’t make it down that far. The main draw to Culver on Saturday, was to check out The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a local gem. This place is fascinating; a bit like a crazy person’s mansion. Really, after just writing that I’ve been sitting for several blank minutes trying to figure out how to describe it. My conclusion is that you have to see it for yourself. It’s a dimly lit house where each room is choc full of oddball exhibits ranging from failed attempts at manufacturing dice, to dogs of the Soviet Space program, to microscopic mosaics, to various collections of eccentric scientific research. There’s a tea room upstairs where you can have a tea and relax while enjoying the holographic religious icons on the wall. And despite how weird I’m making it sound, it’s actually quite classy. Really.
Well, Nina B got into town the other day, so we went out for a spot of mid-day adventuring. We took a stroll around Echo Park and saw the lake there, which is really pleasant with a nice view of downtown. Then we walked around Little Tokyo, which was cool, but a small let-down for me. I’m not sure why, but I was expecting it to be a bit bigger and more authentic looking. Maybe more fish markets and ramen stalls… Took a walk around the arts district too, which is where, to my understanding, a lot of loft housing for artists is opening up. There’s a small artist colony there called the Brewery, that people live in. They have open studio walks a couple times a year. Also SCIArc is there too.
I haven’t been doing as much exploring these past few days because i’ve been cooped up inside working on my new website. It’s a major summer goal that I had been delaying until settling in here; Mostly because I knew it would require a self taught refresher course on html and css. That’s what the past few days have been, honestly. I’m finding the whole process quite frustrating because I can’t help but mixing the designing and coding process, which most people agree should remain oil-and-water-ish.
A lot of artists think that because they have some kind of aesthetic sensibility, that automatically qualifies them to be good designers too. PAUSE. I learned two years ago when I first put up a website, that this is a gross misunderstanding. Design is hard. It’s easy to spot good design, but sitting in front of illustrator dragging around text can be…well, humbling. And furthermore, it’s counter-intuitive but “simple” design is (in my opinion) the hardest! That’s the challenge I’m facing right now. I took my last website down because
I felt it had too much. And there were too many sections that I wasn’t updating (or that I never even finished, really) which is a clear indicator that they’re not needed. My new website is going to be bare-bones: 8 or 10 Projects, Some info, A statement. Clean and simple, but easier said than done.
I think it’s going to be another action-packed weekend. Among some the the things i’m hoping to check out are Little Tokyo’s annual Tofu Festival, and the beginning of Nisei Week, LA’s big Japanese festival. Check out the Tofu Festival website — there’s a cartoon of a soy sauce bottle saying “don’t forget to use a condiment”. Well alright.
I’m on a quest to find a good bicycle. I’ve been stalking craigslist for a fixer-upper — a strategy that has worked well for me in the past — but that process takes a long time because it’s tough to find the combination of the correct height, decent price, and not too far away (and rad looking if possible).
Today I was reading about this place called Orange 20 bikes, which is right across from the LA Bike Kitchen (yes, there is one!). Through the Orange 20 website, I found a link to a really great monthly radio segment on KCRW called Design and Architecture. The first half of the program was devoted to Los Angeles bike culture, and featured an interview with an Orange 20 founder, as well as the founder of RideArc: a monthly, architecture themed bike ride (basically, critical mass with a cultural agenda). I already missed the August ride, but I think Critical Mass is at the end of the month. Hopefully I’ll have a bike by then! If the mighty tree that is craigslist yields no fruit for me, than I might have to mosey over to Orange 20 or Bike Kitchen. The irony is…I need a car to get there.
After a short period of hibernation, I had a pretty eventful weekend.
Oddly enough, Thursday and Friday were punctuated by two monkey-related events. The first being
Gorilla Thursdays at ghettogloss, a small gallery in Silver Lake. I saw some local art, watched a bit of planet of the apes, had my picture taken with a girl in a gorilla suit. What really sealed the deal though, was stumbling across the Red Lion, just up the street: a proper, campy, German beer garden. As soon as Doug and I walked in I thought to myself “oh hell yes.” The walls were wood-paneled, there were Germany decorations everywhere and a guy was playing jazz piano. Plus the waitresses were all wearing cute German dresses. Friday night found me at the third happy hour worldwide at the El Portal Theater in north Hollywood, which also featured some monkey shenanigans. It was basically a party in a movie theater that revolved around an hour-long screening of independent and commercial short films and videos of all shapes and sizes. The screening finished with a live clarinet/accordion/tuba band playing the Star Wars theme song while beach balls started flying everywhere. Believe it. We left around 11:30 which luckily left just enough time to speed over to this next gem:
At midnight, the Nuart Theater in Santa Monica screened, to a sold out crowd that we barely got into, Troll 2. This film is notoriously one of the worst-made, worst-acted and most preposterous B-horror movies of all time. All the funny reviews and second-hand accounts of it are dwarfed by the asphyxiating hilariousness of actually seeing it for ones self. To put things in further perspective, the neighboring artsy-video store has it listed in its “Holy f*cking sh*t!” section. Apparently, eighteen or so years after being made, Troll 2 is experiencing a camp renaissance. It’s got this huge cult following that became apparent to me when practically the entire theater recited all the funny lines and scenes (every line and scene). So its on a screening tour with the cast and director, who were there for an equally side-splitting Q&A afterwards. The child that played the protagonist of the film (now much older) is making a documentary about it called The Best Worst Movie.
Tonight was more laid back. I got to the MOMA downtown to see a performance from Saul Williams, the celebrated spoken word poet, singer/rapper, writer. I don’t usually go to see spoken word being performed, so in fairness, I don’t know how to judge it. But it was certainly enlightening and entertaining to watch. It’s always a pleasure to witness a really great orator and performer at work. Plus it’s just cool, in general, to see a bunch of hip, well-dressed people come out to watch poetry on a Saturday night in LA.
I went to bed early last night after a big dinner, a cold Sapporo, and a few episodes of the Mighty Boosh. Then, at some point, around 1am I was roused from a deep sleep by sound and movement. My initial inclination was to think that the characters from Mighty Boosh, who I had conjured up in a recent dream, were now in my room shaking my bed and continuing the conversation from my dream undisturbed. It didn’t take me more than a split-second to realize this was untrue, but I still thought there was somebody in my room and I was really frightened. It became obvious after one or two more split-seconds that I was alone in my room, with the gentle sound of my belongings shimmying back and forth, in the middle of my first earthquake. It was a wee-little one, so don’t worry. Nothing even fell over.
I guess that’s something I’ll have to get used to around here, like tornadoes in the mid-west or tsunami’s in Asia. I hopped online this morning to make sure I didn’t imagine it, and yes, according to blogging.la, there was a “magnitude 4.5 event” around Chatsworth, CA (about 25 miles north).
I’m gonna pretend that was the powers that be, grabbing me by the mattress and giving me a good shake, as thought to say: “Get off your ass and do something!” True, I’ve been slightly inert since I returned from San Diego, mostly tending to domestic things and other errands, watching Art:21 on DVD and napping regularly. I’m feeling the urge to re-enter an exploratory state of mind. Though, to be quite honest, i’m beginning to feel the limits of where buses can take me around here. I wonder how long it will be until I hit a standstill? Hopefully by that point I’ll have met more people with cars.. :/
