So, my digital camera was stolen a few months ago and that kind of put a damper on this blog. However, i dug my scanner out of my closet and have been scanning some film photos. So here’s some Los Angelesness.

Shopping in Tokyo

This is out of sequence. I went to the opening of this like a month ago, but anyway. UCLA Architecture did a few of these interesting projects for their Technology Seminar. The tech seminar deals with fabricating out of plastic, and ends up with some pretty great sculptural/architectural objects. They end up installing one of these projects as a storefront at LACE gallery. Anyway, this is from the opening of that at LACE which interestingly enough was concurrent with the opening of an art show including a number of my friends..LA25HALFLIFE

Last Friday I was doing my usual drive home from UCLA on Sunset Blvd. and happened to see a crowd outside this new Paper-Mag storefront. I called up my friend Danielle in WeHo and made her walk over there with me. I thought that the store had something to do with magazines/books/printed matter b/c one of my colleagues had told me it was a trendy mag store from nyc. I was like, oh someone’s going to get into it with Book Soup. Anyway, we show up at the storefront and it’s a sort of LA hipster flea market/swap meet. It was kind of weird and I wasn’t very impressed. I thought there were going to be like magazines and drinks or something, instead it was just some shitty booths of stores I could go to ordinarily i.e. Supreme, Welcome Hunters, Opening Ceremony. I kind of wanted to stop at a booth with some shitty boxes of vinyl and some cassette tapes but I’m anti-social and swap meets require a certain amount of confrontation with the vendors which I wasn’t prepared for. Anyway, turns out the space was designed by one of my professors, Mark Lee and it was all chain link fences and stuff. It kind of felt like when you actually go to a warehouse party, I’m thinking Diplo/CSS a couple years back at the Cooper Building? downtown, they always use chain link fences to keep people off the stage etc. I don’t know. Here’s some pix.

It rained last week.

This was from a while ago. I just forgot to post it.

I just wanted to repost some of Obama’s acceptance speech.

“Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”

I thought maybe I had a photo of my trip to the Lincoln Memorial, but I guess I didn’t take any pictures b/c it felt too blasphemous. Standing up there with a bunch of foreign tourists with kids running around playing on the steps of it. Wonder if it’s like that at the Vatican…more LA things when I find my camera cord.

It’s been unusually warm this time of year I think. This week it finally started raining a little bit and being cloudy. Not so much blinding sunlight for a change. But I guess I can’t find my camera cable to upload the photos. Voted today at the LA Free Clinic on Sunset-expected more youthful hipsters and more Latino neighbors. I guess my neighborhood is pretty gentrified after all.

Grant Park

It would have been pretty cool to be in Chicago last night. Nothing like this in LA. There was some party in Culver City, lame.

I’ve had other posts about Southern California beaches and why those alone make LA the ultimate city. I have a special attachment to Orange County whose beaches include Laguna, Newport and Huntington among others. As a teenager during probably the last heavy dose of punk rock happenings that crested into indie which left us with dance rock and all other kinds of random scenes, I was infatuated with OC culture, straight edge youths, tattooed boys with died black hair, compulsive vegetarians and vegans, heavy beer drinkers etc. While this culture seems to be disappearing to some extent (it seems all the OC punk scenesters or hardcore scenesters migrated to brooklyn or got a job as an insurance broker and are raising 2 kids now) there are still residues of the vegetarian health craze that California is criticized so heavily for, great beaches, random dive bars. and… There also appear to still be a few weirdos hanging around down there. Here’s one. awesome.

I had to pretend I was taking a picture of my friends’ baby Clu.

this dude was prancing all over the place and he even skipped. also, if you can’t tell he has the most amazing and ridiculous mullet i’ve ever seen. his hair goes down to his butt

So my friend Peggy organized a performance at Rental Gallery as part of the Summer smockshop festivities. Pictures speak louder than words, so…

Rental Gallery

DJ Justine Silverlake