No traffic, no clients, no emails, no deadlines,
No hotels, no luggage, no phone calls, no television,
No bathrooms, no showers, no computers, no airport,
No pool, no beach, no bar, no restaurant
No walls, no door, no ceiling, no floor
No rent, no deadlines, no neighbors, no bills
When someone asks me what I did this summer, I just say no.
The Big Parade ia a 35 mile, two day stairway hike through Los Angeles.
Many people don’t realize that L.A. has a network of public stairways connecting hillside streets.
The walk is a great opportunity to see a different side of this city.
Before L.A. was saturated with automobiles, there was a robust public transit system consisting mainly of streetcars.
The stairways were built so that riders could reach the streetcars more easily from their homes in the hills.
Some of the houses were (and still are) accessible only by staircase. This is artist Paul Landacre’s cabin, now a historic cultural monument.
In the 1950s the streetcars and tracks were removed to make way for cars and busses. General Motors, Firestone and other car-related companies were involved in the business and subsequent court cases that led to their demise. Nevermind the conspiracy theories, the people of L.A. and every other city in the USA were already hooked on cars.
It’s kind of cool to imagine what L.A. would be like without cars. Looking back on it, the dismantling of a clean, electric-powered railway was probably not the best thing for this city.
Today, ridership on public transportation, bicycles and even walking, are growing. The Department of Transportation will spend record amounts this year on bike lanes and pedestrian zones. The age of the automobile may be over. Are you ready to take the stairs? I am.
See a few more shots from The Big Parade here.
I really enjoyed my recent trip to SF. Only five hours from LA, it’s easy to forget how much this town has to offer.
After checking out Jeff Canham’s Woodshop studio, I headed over to General Store, where I found this terrarium designed by Katie Goldman Macdonald, who was recently featured in a popular New York Times article.
General Store is is the home base for artist Serena Mitnik-Miller. You may recognize Serena’s name from her recent collaboration with Arkitip.
The store features objects made by an incredible group of artists including these skateboards by Two Birds Fly.
Out back there’s a teaming garden with this greenhouse built by Jesse Schlesinger out of recycled window panes. I want to say thanks to Serena for giving me a tour and letting me take a few photos.
After General Store it was on to Blue Bottle Coffee, one of the original laboratory-style coffee shops. If you are a fan of places like Intelligentsia or LAMILL, it all started here.
Blue Bottle is also using the scientific method to make poached eggs. I’ve been drooling over this photo every morning since returning to LA.
Last stop, Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, where I attended the opening of Lending Library, a group show curated by Dena Beard. Adobe Books was a mainstay of the mission-school artists. Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee and others have had shows here.
Having got around town pretty well, I hopped on a street car back to LA. See you soon SF!
We spent a day or two in St. Louis recently for a friend’s wedding.
Due to the recession, poor city planning, or years of people moving elsewhere, downtown St. Louis is like a ghost town.
In better times, this was a thriving industrial metropolis.
Buildings stand empty, and even on a Friday evening, no one is around.
Skateboarding is what was going through my mind, so I wasn’t surprised to see someone taking advantage of the vacant urban landscape later that night.
The following morning I woke up to this view from our hotel window.
The Gateway Arch, designed by Eero Saarinen and constructed in 1968, is one of the most significant achievements by any modernist architect.
The shape is an inverted catenary curve, which is the curve created by holding a piece of string at each end.
A diorama in the museum shows the construction process, which used a simple scaffold to support the two sides until they could be joined in the middle.
The steel panels that make up the structure are all hand-welded together.
Having admired the various building techniques, it was time to go home. It feels good to head west!
My long-time friends the Diamond Bros. were in town a few weeks ago filming a music video for Danko Jones.
I got to help out by driving my car over and letting them film it.
They shot the video in this warehouse downtown where every room is a different fake environment.
The “law office” and “police interrogation room” both make it into the video, along with the “hospital emergency room” and “dusty bar.”
It was fun to see the shoot happening, but there was also a lot of standing around like this.
Here’s Selma Blair hitting one of the band members on the head with a metal club. The poor guy had to be hit like ten times.
These crazy bike dudes were doing their thing under the bridge while we were shooting. I think they were hoping we’d make a documentary about them.
Elijah Wood played the villain. Mustang = villain car.
Chris Holmes is the AD. His job is to yell a lot. Quiet on the set! That’s a cut! Lunch!
Here is Josh directing Selma’s “bend over and look into the car” scene. He demonstrated and we laughed.
Took this one for my files.
With every last minute of sunlight utilized, the day is over.
Here’s the finished product, look for Mike Watt and Lemmy in there too!
We took a walk around the neighborhood and found a few examples of the creative energy that exists in the Silverlake area.
Someone has a talent for improvised lettering.
We found this amazing logo on an Olds ‘88 that was parked on the street. They don’t make them like they used to anymore.
The highlight of our walk was this wheel made of scrap wood hovering above the intersection of Fletcher Dr. and Riverside Dr.
The wheel actually turns and has caused a little outrage from the caretakers of the historic Red Car viaduct on which it is built.
The viaduct no longer exists but on the other side of Fletcher you can climb up a lonely staircase to its abandoned train platform.
As if this day could get any more special, on the way home we spotted what appears to be a new Banksy piece. Remind me to come back here with Jeffrey Deitch and a chainsaw!
My uncle on my dad’s side, Uncle Greg, sent me these photos of himself from the early ’70s. This dune buggy has become a bit of a legend in my family so I was a little surprised to receive the photographic evidence in the mail. The back of the photo reads “My prom ride.”
Greg spent a few of his teenage years in Southern California. Pictured above is the South Bay Club in Sherman Oaks where he lived with his buddy Fred. Apparently this was the place to be in the SF Valley in 1970. The back of the photo has a rough location with “Find this place!”
Here’s Greg and Fred enjoying a few Bud pull-tabs in their pad. Clockwork Orange came out in 1962. I think Fred was a fan!
Things have been very busy.
We decided to force an escape from the current pressures and obligations to explore our immediate surroundings.
Coco’s Variety is a small bikeshop/convienence store/neighborhood emporium in Silverlake.
The store serves a variety of needs to a local clientele that would have to travel further away to find the same items.
From their site: “Coco’s Variety sells flyswatters, glass 5 gallon water bottles, headache remedies, oil cloth by the yard, used bicycles, California souvenir tablecloths, Kit-Cat Klocks, gumballs, Mexican Cokes in glass bottles, squirt guns, tote bags adorned with hula girls, Lodge cast iron frying pans, old American-made tools, baskets for your bicycle, wood matches, reverse osmosis purified drinking water by the gallon and fancy Jadeite cake plates for fancy cakes on fancy occasions.”
It’s a great place to find a used bike or get your ride fixed up.
Once you get all squared away, you can hop onto the L.A. River bike path which is very close by.
A mix of urban and natural phenomenon keeps the ride interesting.
Clear your head and do a few throw ups.
This section of the river, known as the Glendale Narrows, is the only part that is not completely lined with concrete.
The southern part of the path is undergoing a slow renovation and is a bit hard to navigate, but that’s where you’ll find some of the best views
This is home to many bird species, including Great Blue Heron, Snowy Egret, Mallard, Cinnamon Teal, American Coot, Black-necked Stilt and Muscovy Duck. It is also surrounded by a chain link fence.
From there we took a ride through Frogtown, a neighborhood that was isolated from the larger community when the 5 freeway was built.
It’s a quiet place where many artists have taken root.
I even spotted Shepard Fairey’s car parked on the street.
If you can do it, get away from the computer, the TV, the treadmill, the Apple tablet, the Multiplex, the Kindle, the 3D, the satellite navigation system, the Facebook, the Twitter, the Nintendo Wii, the Playstation 3, the Pinkberry or the Blackberry and try instead to get some true variety in your day.
When I was a teenager, instead of playing sports or studying or getting wasted after school, I got on a train, or into a friend’s car and came here.
My mom had no idea I was spending all my time at the Brooklyn Banks, a famous skateboard spot and cultural landmark in lower Manhattan.
The space is a park, of sorts, that lies in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. A depressing folly of city planning that was occupied only by the homeless until skateboarders made the discovery in the 1980’s. It quickly became a meeting spot for skaters, graffiti artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians and whoever else happened to know about it.
On a good day at the banks you might see Larry Clark casting his film Kids, Ari Marcopolis shooting photos with a Polaroid Land camera, or Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite walking her poodle.
Pro skaters from all over the world came here to skate. Here’s a photo of Lance Mountain doing a road sign-to-boneless in 1985, when Stacy Peralta brought the Bones Brigade here to film the New York segment for the Future Primitive video. Photo by C.R. Stecyk
The wall, which is now unskatable, was a dangerous set-up where if you made the trick, you then had to worry about being hit by taxi cabs flying down the BQE offramp.
That didn’t stop anyone. Here’s Jeff Pang going over the wall on the cover of Thrasher from 1993.
The banks are set to close until 2014 for painting of the bridge and renovation of the park, so I went down to pay my respects.
Although local skaters have been fighting to make sure skateboarding has a place in the new park, many are doubtful.
One thing I know is that this place, that to a large degree made me, and more than a few times broke me, will never be the same. Always remember the banks!
Metroplitan Ad shot by Ari Marcopolis. Scans swiped from the Chrome Ball Incident and my personal stash.
