llantera

mappa

2012-01-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

Lourdes

2011-11-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

Dusts Rose Bowls

2011-10-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

Nowhere near as fast as even one lap with the summer peloton. But it's always a revelation (fun) to ride my 25 year old 50 dollar craigslist rust pile from france, pull up on a pack of new-biked fully leotarded enthusiasts, pass them, and wonder what they're thinking as a large-mustached paper-clips-on-trousers (to keep them off the chain), long-sleeve button-downed and bespectacled guy passes them, and then pulls away and just fully dusts them...(and they're probably thinking: I've just ridden 40 miles and this dope thinks he's fast because he's passing me on his one and only 3-mile lap...)

Cards

2011-10-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

Watt Econo

2011-09-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

Mike Watt Jammed Econo in a place where I used to live...Aqui vivia yo...!

I just lowered my cholesterol!

2011-08-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

"I just lowered my cholesterol!"

Hear it.

Coop 9

2011-08-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

bulby

2011-07-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

Trinity skate

2011-07-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

villanm

2011-07-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

Bolts Tydes Stix

2011-07-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

PAS

2011-07-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sea Lions in Highland Park

2011-06-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

Slumberland in Highland Park.
Four bands played in the neighborhood I grew up in yesterday and three of them are Slumberland Records, and this was a crossing of aesthetics that signified a convergence of identities. For the life of me I couldn't have predicted there would ever be a Slumberland-heavy rock-show house-party in Highland Park, much less in my immediate neighborhood.

Oxnard has produced the Hernandez Bros (Love and Rockets) and Michele Serros and now Sea Lions. Look them up and hear them.

Day Skateboarding Go

2011-06-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

I went skateboarding today at the "Wild In The Streets" streets event in Los Angeles. I was late but I skated from J-town to Lafayette park and it was one of the FUNNEST, most worthwhile things I've ever done on a skateboard.

It's difficult to describe the communally euphoric feeling of camaraderie and mission with these sterile words, but everyone was your friend and everyone could skate and everyone was having fun getting across the city on a bright sunny day, deftly avoiding rocks, pebbles, people, pot-holes, twigs, cracks, curbs and cops. Although there were plenty of oldsters in the crowd, we were rare enough to attract bemused looks from the cops and command respectful (disdainful?) distance from the youngsters, our fellow skaters.

As we neared the park, the police presence became thick with bikes, motorcycles, cars and a helicopter (!what were the cops afraid of?) but there we all were, peaceful, happy and having fun. We bought ice cream and watched skaters do their stuff. We sat around and spotted pro skaters we only see on the web, or in magazines but almost never in person.

When I left I skated to the vermont red line station to take the subway home. In short order about fifteen skaters arrived on the platform to wait for the train and all of them started to ollie spontaneously in place like rabid frogs, and then began paddling around on their stomachs like homesick surfers. They were all kids ranging from 8 year olds to 18 year olds, all looking out for each other and I was happy for them that they were all together having a great time.

Hey to Emerica for fomenting community among skaters, for making it happen in the public spaces, for helping reclaim some of that space from cars, for helping prove to the cops and the community at large that skateboarders are essentially harmless...

Post Script: Sole Technology is the Conglomerate that includes Es, Etnies, Emerica, Altamont and others. Question: Why weren't each and every one of those companies (which are the same corporate company)...why weren't each and every one of those companies repping in a big way? I can understand how the other apparel distribution/lifestyle aesthetic peddler-groups ("skateboard companies") wouldn't participate because it would be like pepsi showing up for a coke rally, but if you're all the same conglomerate, wtf?

2011-06-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

Spirit

2011-05-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

For Wheel

2011-05-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

Overheard at "Art in the Streets"

2011-05-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

Overheard at the "Art in the Streets" museum show in Los Angeles.

"No no no! Tony Hawk is the Miss America of Skateboarding; Mark Gonzales is the Adriana Lima..."

Indeed. Cheers to you, baseball-cap-and-below-butt-jeans-clad youngster with mightily adroit powers of perception.

Young Ladies Skateboarding on the Freeway

2011-05-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

During rush hour!

_

2011-05-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

Skateboarding Quote of the Skateboarding Century

2011-05-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

"You know kick flip shuv it backside 5.0 front side shuv it out. That’s a combo. You know what I mean. That’s a heavy duty combo. I don’t think I could do that now. I mean maybe if I practiced and really wanted to do it, I could do it but that stuff will make you feel like WHY THE HELL AM I SKATEBOARDING."

- Mark Gonzales

You mean it really has been about HAVING FUN all along?.........(I knew it!) Thanks Mark.

Eero

2011-04-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Keef

2011-04-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

Noguchi Aalto or Church?

2011-04-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

Leeper Making the City Count

2011-03-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

There is the concept of the "stroller," Le Flaneur, that person who bestows meaning on the place, the city block, through the profit-less act of walking. Strolling. Exactly as a musician who holds a hunk of wood, which is transformed when it becomes a cello, at that moment when it is played. Exactly as the skater who plays the city as if it were a cello, with his skateboard as the bow. Steps aren't just steps, cracks in the road are no longer just cracks. Curbs are not just curbs. Instantly they are heavy with a meaning and value that an architect (or a street-repairer) never imagined. Kyle Leeper and Mike Manzoori, inadvertently or not, have embodied this construct directly.
Go Leeper, Go Manzoori.

Lincoln It Up

2011-03-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

Lincoln Park Skatepark: Are the design elements finally in the air? Read the Picture: Trees, SHADE, Terrain for all comers. Landscape-Oriented Design. NO FENCE. Goodbye to the "open-frying pan" philosophy of skatepark design? Hope so. Kudos to P-Rod and his Skate Foundation, the LA84 Foundation, Lance Mountain, Los Angeles Parks and Recreation for stepping up in a huge way.

Europa

2011-01-31T22:40:00.000-08:00

Apparently, there are skate scenes in Europe. I guess it's cool to have communal identity, history, and reverence for it all. Where are all the self indulgent "pros" with their private skate warehouses? Why is it about "we"? You mean the municipal governments in Sweden recognize the power that skating has over large swaths of youth and have chosen to support and complement the phenomenon instead of suppress and criminalize? Skateboard high school? Fucken socialists. Paying skaters to design build and maintain public skateparks? What dookie.
Sweden

España

Thanks vbs. Skip the commercials.

Skaterdater

2011-01-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Before the PowellPeralta/BonesBrigade videos, before Spike Jonze or the Six Stair crew, there was this short film about skateboarding. Emerging from the first national skateboard boom of the 1960s, the film subtly preserves language that we can recognize as foundational to what skateboarding would become, while also featuring elements that have become foreign to our contemporary understanding of skateboarding: namely rock-like wheels, empty streets, bare feet, the vernacular of then-current skate tricks and, perhaps, multiple layers of innocence.

Given its production date in the sixties, one would expect Skaterdater to be a rough, undeveloped skateboarding film. The seventies produced virtually unwatchable, horribly scored films that prime the viewer to expect bad film making in anything earlier, and to confirm the origins of the crap-aesthetic present in later films. Their sole value now is the inadvertent documentation of skateboard moves, hair/clothing fashion, and the pre-starbucked american urban landscape.

When I came upon Skaterdater, I had the lowest of expectations, given the supposed "progress" of those seventies and eighties films that are better watched, if at all, with the sound turned off. Certainly the equipment and the body-english is by current standards, primitive, but the film itself is high cinema in any context. With a listenable, insistent surf-guitar score, it's a silent film that tells its story, by definition, through its pictures. When you compare it to current skate videos, it's the difference between between a perfect short story and a page full of coherent, but pasted-together tweets.

With the exception of Greg Hunt, French Fred Montaigne, Mike Manzoori, and from a more oblique angle, Spike Jonze, who look to give skateboard films a cinematic grace, most skate videos ignore the power of designed shots and directed action in favor of the rudimentary, the improvised, and a sense of the raw to communicate emotionally. The sense of narrative and its emotional power is forfeited, though sometimes accidentally present, as if it were a byproduct, a capitulation to a reality that demands that one switch a camera on, film something, and then turn the camera off, in that order.

Skaterdater is revered in the realms of skate-lore. I'd seen snippets of it for years, bigger chunks in black and white, and now, finally the whole thing in color. The transfer to video is old, as evidenced by its softness and over-modulated sound, but it's all there and very watchable. Let's hope someone will find Skaterdater's original elements to make a new transfer. It deserves it: Skaterdater won the Palm d'or for short films at Cannes in 1966.

2011-01-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

Texturized Emergence

2010-12-18T18:17:00.000-08:00

Jodie Foster's Army in Kabul

2010-12-15T04:14:00.000-08:00

killing it

2010-12-09T04:48:00.000-08:00

Girls. Killing it! An increasingly, refreshingly, less-rare sight.

Fred French...at it again

2010-11-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

If architects could deliberately design "vibe" or "feel" then they'd do well to watch this video by French Fred. Skateparks should "feel" like this video. (Creative. Free. Out in the Real World.) Most don't. (Some do.) Other elements for skatepark design: Shade (lots of it). Color-designed Concrete. Plants (lots of them).

BenjiGalloway's

2010-11-28T00:19:00.001-08:00

Emergent Wild Potatoe

2010-11-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Skates Girls

2010-10-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

What is it about the communal power that women/girls/female humans can harness and bring to bear? What is it about female humans/women/girls that they can harness and bring to bear a communal spirit in a fun and productive endeavor, while we males of the species seem especially good at destruction. Hmm?Last week I finally got around to attending a banked track Roller Derby "bout" at L.A. Derby Dolls. And besides the expertly designed drama (pageantry, athleticism, perfectly timed rounds, violence...) there was an overwhelmingly warm communal spirit that I did not expect! All that is to say it was a good time with good people giving off good vibes. I even ran into an old friend who is in training to become a derby doll!
What if girls had fallen in love with skateboarding and had brought the same energy and spirit, the communal power, that they bring to roller skates? Would it look like this maybe?

Bustin
Homage

Work

2010-10-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

A Couple of Skateboarders

2010-09-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Driving down Colorado Boulevard, I spied a team of skaters, holding hands no less! And I tried to take a picture, but I didn't get the focus right (through my spotty windshield).

Mansard

2010-09-15T16:57:00.000-07:00

So you're building a mansard roof?
Build two.

Don't Skate Here

2010-08-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

Just dream about it...

Illegal Alien Skateboarder...;)

2010-08-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

Rethinking Skatepark Design - Sofia Maldonado

2010-08-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

Artist Sofia Maldonado who specializes in hip-hop oriented, Amy-Davis-resonant, mural type beauty has also been "drawn" to redraw skate spaces. Skatepark Builder Designers would do well to enlist Maldonado and her aesthetic to re-inspire now and future skateparks. Imagine all of those swirly waves and perfect clouds as permanent, colored (and concave and convex), concrete...

Light Graf Skate Park

2010-08-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

El Spooky.

Skateistan Alive

2010-08-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Skateistan

Mark Gonzales at the Stadtisches Museum

2010-08-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Gonz Freewheeler

Gonz Le Flaneur
Gonz Soul Skater

skatePax

2010-07-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Sleep Skater

2010-07-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Imagine walking into a skatepark at seven in the morning. As difficult as it may be, imagine it. Now imagine finding a person sleeping soundly in a sleeping bag, in the (empty) pool. Imagine the quick succession of internal reactions: surprise, wonder, disgust, wonder, welcome. Wonder. Imagine prescribing a personality to the slumberer, based on his face, clothes and skate. Imagine him awakening. Imagine expecting to hear a voice: youthful, vagrant, drunk, american.Imagine him waking up, groggy but very sober and upon hearing his heavy French accent, feeling the world slip out from under your feet. Imagine wonder replacing the world. Matthieu, it was good to meet you today in Highland Park. Good luck and have fun on your adventure. I hope Venice and the rest of California continue to live up to, and surpass, your expectations.

We Love You So...RIP

2010-06-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

Goodbye WeLoveYouSo (.com). You're a heavy busy beauty and I hope you'll float in webland forever and ever.

...I'll use the occasion to say goodbye to my crusty old cast.

Someone's Dad...

2010-06-01T20:01:00.000-07:00

...Skating behind LACMA at the La Brea Tar Pits.
(Thanks TruckBolts. 'Hope you don't mind.)

2010-05-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

Peeled

2010-05-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Overheard (because they were yelling) at the corner of Townsend and Yosemite today at about 3pm: "Your sister hit me in the eye with an orange peel! It still hurts!"

Sister Mary Corita

2010-05-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

If you missed the seven month long exhibition of Corita Kent's work at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles...

...then you missed out.

Just Like You Know Where

2010-04-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

Today
Temperature: mid sixties
Sun: Bright, but softened by high altitude cirrus clouds.
Breeze: Crisp and Steady
Song in Earphones: Ease Your Feet in the Sea by Belle & Sebastian
Skateboarding: West, down Aldama St. toward Ave 56, no cars, big swerves, giant slalom, every turn taking up the width of the street on a downhill stretch that I haven't skated since I was in grade school.
Speed: Swift - almost scary!
Shirt: Flapping in the wind.
Effect: Heaven...

Don't Skate On This

2010-03-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Prescient. Inspirational. 1948 Buick.

annoying at the start

2010-03-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

Branches

2010-03-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, a natively indigenous looking woman, short and round with dark chocolate skin walked along the sidewalk in front of my house. She was carrying a long but sustainable branch that looked like it had broken and fallen off its mother trunk and she was singing out loud as she gripped the hand of her toddler girl who herself carried a doll. Suddenly the woman stopped and took in the lawn where wildflowers are in bloom. Her face was as delightedly surprised as anyone who sings out loud as they walk along in public could be. She reached out and picked one little flower and handed it to her little girl, and then resumed her walk and her song.

arcrockflipdj

2009-12-10T19:20:00.000-08:00

Gold Line Family Spike

2009-11-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

Today I rode the Gold Line to the new end-of-the-line in East L.A. It was crowded, but that was the whole point, to be out there among the willing people of the city (and to take advantage of the fare: free). Once there, at the end of the line, I rode my Mark Gonzales cruiser to belvedere skatepark, knowing full well that it (the cruiser) was not set up for a skatepark. But skating through the ELA Civic Center was awesome. Go on a Sunday. The paved shady trails around the pond (next to the sheriff station) are what skateparks should be. The fountains and plazas are a tactile experience just to push around on. (The floor-tile work provides all the theatrical click clack click response a skater could want!)

Tonight I met Spike at the Family Bookstore on Fairfax! I was one of the last persons in line, and when it was my turn, we shook hands and we looked at each other as if we were long lost friends. There was the warmth of brothers. He asked me where I was from. And then he signed his new book to me and my niece "Para Tio L... y V......." (My niece V... and I had gone to see WTWTA on opening day, and then we went to buy a large Max doll at urban outfits. I plan on giving her this book for Christmas or her birthday.) And then when I asked him, he signed my Gonz cruiser "I (heart) mark." (picture of the Gonz Cruiser here, just scroll down to see my cast and cat posing with it). I can't describe the subtlety of the feeling. Comfort and joy, like meeting a tribe or family member... Recognition!

FrendFriedFrance

2009-11-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

French Fred is a photographer who depicts skateboarding in a manner commensurate with the other-world that is skateboarding. Click here to See.

Lucas Puig_novembre 2009_

Eames Themes

2009-10-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

The Eames House

The site for the home seemed most interesting, a bluff overlooking the beach, surrounded by mature Eucalyptus trees. The dichotomies were evocative: contrasts between the bucolic and the machine-manufactured, the simplicity versus the implied wealth of living on the shore, as well as historical contrasts; did the Eames (and the case study houses) "hippify" or make trendy the Pacific Palisades area to wealthy art-types and therefore help to bring about the continuing demise of the once wild coastline north of Santa Monica? In the time after the war, coastlines and waterfronts were still environments were the unwealthy could struggle to survive in a niche ignored by development, as the rich still thought to build in "safe" areas, away from the threats of ocean and weather. It must have had a small town feel, as opposed to the continuous traffic jam it is today.

Because of the continuous buzz of traffic, the nest-like site of the house offers sudden respite and reward, a hidden jungle garden in which to hide from the entitled classes milling about in their cars on PCH. Other than the welcoming park-like setting, I expected a typical dry museum experience but was pleasantly surprised by psychological triggers. The Eames House in Pacific Palisades reminded me of Mexico. It's an emotional memory, I suppose. During childhood-visits to Mexico City and Guadalajara, I inevitably ended up visiting or staying in modernist-style homes, boxes with steel and glass in the corners, flat roofs, and flying staircases. These homes were built after World War II and probably after the Eames House was installed in Pacific Palisades, but because I was exposed to craftsman style home-building in the United States (never to the modernist style in the U.S.) and to the International style in Mexico, I made emotional associations that do not hold up to historical scrutiny.

My point is the Eames House, while deemed new and even radical for its place and time, felt tried, true and very familiar to me. (Of course, that it is as Charles and Ray Eames left it, adds to that lived-in feeling, replete with the wear one would expect in a real home.) The docent made sure to inform us that even though we were "outside," we were in fact "inside" the house, as the Eameses had designed the outdoor space as a contiguous part of the "house." I guess this was supposed to be something of a shock to the normal passerby, but to me it felt like a requisite motif. In Mexico, stepping through open, uncovered spaces to get to other parts of house is not irregular.

What I brought back from the visit is the sense of the spirit of the Eames couple. Ray and Charles were apparently lively, skilled and busy innovators. They designed and assembled a house from pre-manufactured parts, in a way, to prove its livability. It was one of their many successes, as they then lived in their experiment for the remainder of their lives.

For Molly Dallas Graham and Spike

2009-07-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

A picture from the paper and a picture from my patio floor.

Skateistan. Women and girls riding skateboards, flying scarves, holding hands, smiling, colors swirling, midkickturn. This front-page photo by Rick Loomis of the Los Angeles Times is easily among the most beautiful images of skateboarding I've ever seen. Click it to see a large uncropped version in the photo-essay for full impact.

Meanwhile, here's MAXimo...the pointy-eared, over-whiskered, claw-footed, black-tailed cat, that my mother named before ever having heard of WTWTA...and my cast and my Gonz Cruiser.

Dinosaur Juniors

2009-06-09T22:17:00.000-07:00

Cine Italiano

2009-04-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

Dreams

Dreamed

2009-02-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

Hawks went to Glendora.
He built and drove his own race cars.
He built and flew his own airplanes.
Eye level and simple.

APPALOOSA - The Day (We Fell In Love) from Patrick O'Dell on Vimeo.

This song is almost pretty. It possesses the elements of a beautiful song. The video suggests the song's aspiration to its buried beauty.

Don't Forget Pain

2009-01-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Oslo Skate Opera

2008-11-26T18:45:00.000-08:00

They begin to admit the relationship

WIRED: New Oslo Opera House Is Really A Stealth Skatepark

Foreign Office Architects Skate in Barcelona

Zaha Hadid comes out In Favor.

simple architecture

2008-11-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

at last

2008-11-15T11:57:00.001-08:00

Thinking about skateboarding

2008-10-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Skating and Architects?

Architecture and Skateboarders?

Church

Backyard

Les Halles

2008-10-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Public Sculpture Doubling As Skate Space.

Most of these from PO'D's Epics

econo jam

2008-10-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

2008-10-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

suits hills skateboards

2008-10-15T15:35:00.001-07:00

The point starts at 2:25.....

WHAT ELSE - MOUNTAIN LANCE

2008-10-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

island med

2008-10-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

A plaza on Mallorca.

Lotti Melch

2008-10-13T00:08:00.000-07:00

Leaf Sun Bear

2008-07-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

Rest.In.Peace

Centering

2008-05-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

Some might describe this as "over-thinking." I wouldn't.Radial Acceleration. Et Al.