Archive | April, 2009

Smash Labs

21 Apr
Smash Labs is located at 1714 Albion street, a very isolated strip of industrial downtown Los Angeles. Tonight I’m here to check out several garage bands and a make-shift artist’s gallery.  Think your loser boyfriend’s fledging rock band – corner table stocked with vodka, beer and wine with amateur bartender shuffling $2 dollar drinks and a crowd touting conspiracy theories, chief among them that Facebook is owned by the CIA.
So here I am…
The Bands Start to Play
You Can Imagine…
14 Stations of the cross..

It’s Starting to Get Weird..

Outside on the patio..

The Smoker’s Backyard…
Leaving Las Vegas..

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Home Depot…Look It Up

16 Apr

You know what else you can find at Home Depot?


Day laborers. A phenomenon I hadn’t encountered until I moved here.

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On The Equator

15 Apr
Back in Santa Monica…we visit the Equator Bookstore off of Abbot Kinney Boulevard. If there was a street you’d describe as ‘tucked away’ this would be it. A small strip of boutiques, with nary a Starbucks in sight, a childrens international school nearby and enough beach town vibe to want to make you hop on a bike in a bikini. Here’s where I meet for a book swap.





What’s important about this particular bookstore is that it sells rare and collectible tomes, signed pieces, artwork and vinyls (if you remember what those are). Autographed books can vary on cost and value, but when you find your favorite book, signed by your favorite author, it can be very sweet. The only objection I have to this experience is the artwork sold in the store. $150 to $300 for a piece of paper that says ‘Bestsellher’ is asking a little too much.

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Pooch Cruise

15 Apr

There must be a skating dog in every city across America. Well, here’s ours…..3rd St., Santa Monica.

p.s. That is not my giggle in the background.

Rick Owens Slaps L.A.

14 Apr
L.A. is great at making sitcoms. So L.A. fashion week is really just another turn on The Hills.

Thank you Mr. Rick Owens

Though he used to be based in LA, he finds designers there “arrogant and demanding.”

“LA is great at making sitcoms. Paris isn’t as good as LA is at making sitcoms; every place has their specialty. And then they do LA Fashion Week, which is incredibly arrogant and demanding. I mean, these editors have been all over the globe for a couple of weeks [for Fashion Month] and then LA is saying ‘Okay, now you have to come here.’ Please, I mean, get off your ass and go to Europe. I mean, that’s what I did and you just have to go where you have to go. They just don’t have the tradition, and they do other things really good, so why do they have to be a fashion capital? They’re the movie capital of the world and they’ve always been that, can’t they just be satisfied with that?”

There’s something wrong when even Andre Leon Talley is bored with fashion.
L.A. fashion week 2008

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