MICKEY MOUSE HEADPHONES: YOU DON’T NEED THEM EVEN IF YOU WANT THEM
Beats made these Mickey Mouse headphones for fans of the iconic Disney mouse. Beats headphones, worn here by a colleague, are pretty damn good. Personally we think Bose makes better headphones, especially their noise-cancelling over-ear Bluetooth “ear goggles,” as late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (a.k.a., MCA) might have called them.Continue Reading
STYLE: VINTAGE JAPANESE MOVIE POSTERS AS GRAPHIC TEES
Our friend, and Brazilian fixture of the Los Angeles coffee scene, Mr. Lu recently has been frequently wearing these super lit graphic tees with prints of vintage Japanese movie posters of American films, from “2001: A Space Odyssey” (above) to “Gremlins,” from “Scanners” (below) to “Little Monsters (also below).” TheContinue Reading
L.A. HEARTS JONATHAN GOLD: HOW THIS MURAL IS A TRIBUTE TO JOURNALISM AND FOOD
This mural across the facade of a small commercial building along Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles is a tribute to the late, great Pulitzer Prize-awarded food writer Jonathan Gold. The mural includes a life-size portrait of Gold as seen from the back and wearing his trademark bowler hat. PaintedContinue Reading
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’: VINTAGE LAND CRUISER FOR SURFERS
If we could choose right here, right now, any car in the world as our go-to surf wagon, it would be this classic Toyota Land Cruiser recently spotted in the parking lot at a beach in Malibu. The vintage car is a sports-utility vehicle (or SUV) from back in theContinue Reading
THE PASSING OF A FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY MASTER: RIP PETER LINDBERG
Peter Lindberg, the German fashion photographer whose work ushered in the era of the “super model,” died this past Tuesday. Lindberg’s worked at the pinnacle of the fashion world, his photography regularly appearing in the major fashion magazines – British and American Vogue, Harpers, etc. — and captured a groupContinue Reading
DARK MATTERS: WHY BMW USED THE BLACKEST BLACK ON ITS NEW CAR
German auto-manufacturer BMW recently unveiled a car painted in the blackest black hue in the color spectrum. This black is called “Vanta’ or “VantaBlack” and it won’t be on any for-sale production model. Vanta was famously exclusively-licensed by artist Anish Kapoor for use in his art (and, as some wouldContinue Reading
DOLLA DOLLA BILLS YO!
Artist Brenna Youngblood’s wry painting titled “3 Dollar Bill (Dirty Money)” is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.
GROUNDBREAKING: ARTIST XU ZHEN’S “IN JUST A BLINK OF AN EYE” WILL MAKE YOU SAY “STUNNING!”
We’re a bit world-weary at times about art. Dare we say, a bit cynical, even. We’ve seen so much and yet still feel like we’re still just scratching the surface of all the of overwhelmingly vast corpus artwork, the good and the bad, the sublime and the bland, the greatContinue Reading
FASCINATING NY TIMES’ REPORT ON DEATH OF “MAN WHO PAINTED MAO”
The recently passed Chinese artist Wang Guodong is not well-known name in the art world. For decades and practically the entirety of his active years as a painter, it was virtually unknown in China. But his paintings, according a fascinating New York Times obituary, rivals Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”Continue Reading
CAFFEINATION: POUR OVER MAGAZINE, AN ARTSY INDIE MAG FOR COFFEE-FUELED TIMES
Coffee is so central to contemporary daily life for millions — if not billions — of people all over the world. More people than ever before in human history drink it. Some form of coffee, be it the regular drip-type served black or a fussy almond-milk cappuccino with an extraContinue Reading
“WHAT’S GOING ON” MAKES US WONDER WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON
Late African-American artist Barkley Hendricks‘s photo-realistic painting titled “What’s Going On” is a beguiling image. The artwork is a group portrait evocative of the time and place — early 1970s America –and brings together a lot of themes and ideas all at once: Race, gender, power, feminism, sex, culture, identity,Continue Reading
THIS WAS LUNCH AND IT WAS FREAKIN’ DELICIOUS
Sage-and-cheddar croissant with a sprinkle of black sesame seeds and paired with an almond-milk cappuccino at The Boy and The Bear Coffee roastery and cafe in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles. It was exceptionally good.
REVISITING THE MESMERIZING AND LANDMARK “METROPOLIS II”
Like an incredible childhood fantasy made real, “Metropolis II” at LACMA comes to life with the sound of whirring and click-clacking, the sounds of model trains and some 1,100 toy cars racing along Teflon-coated tracks that thread through an architectural complex of high-rises, scale-model monuments and buildings comprised of LincolnContinue Reading
TERRIFYING: UN-COMMISSIONED STREET ART APPEARS IN OTHERWISE GRAFFITI-FREE SECTION OF AFFLUENT BEACH TOWN
Ocean Park is a relatively quiet, staid and beautiful neighborhood on the south side of Santa Monica, the iconic beach city and Los Angeles suburb. It’s an affluent part of town that lacks pretension. Showy displays of wealth or heavy glamour are rare. It’s clean and neat and has streetsContinue Reading
SPITEFUL COLORS: HOW ONE ARTIST THUMBED NOSE AT A MAJOR ART MUSEUM’S TRADITION
Artist Yunhee Min’s site-specific floor mural for Hammer Projects takes center stage at the Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Usually artists are commissioned for Hammer Projects to paint the walls along a grand staircase that connects the museum lobby to a mezzanine that leads to a courtyard and galleriesContinue Reading
SEX AND WAR: “UNKNOWN SOLDIER” EVOKES ANONYMOUS GOOD TIMES
Artist Sarah Lucas emerged in the 1990s as a so-called “YBA” (“Young British Artists”), one of a generation of British artists to capture the attention of the global art world. Her installation artwork pictured here is titled “Unknown Soldier” and is currently on view at the Hammer Museum of ArtContinue Reading
FOOD AS DECOR: THE “WALL OF DONUTS” MAKES US “HANGRY”
Do you ever see something really yummy when you’re hungry and get “hangry”? “Yes,” you say? Yes, you do? We knew it! Sometimes we do, too. Often times it’s while we’re hard at work at our office, super busy with barely a moment to spare between meetings to even thinkContinue Reading
GOING BIGGER: “LOVE BERTO” DOMINATES FAUX-URBAN LANDSCAPE IN L.A.
Here’s another one of these abstract, geometric murals by the artist Berto, who usually signs his work “LoveBerto.” His massive street-art works seem to be everywhere in Los Angeles, though his work can be found all over the world, including in New York, Berlin and in Sydney, Australia, where heContinue Reading
D.I.Y. A.F.: WHEN GRAFFITI SERVES THE PUBLIC GOOD
This dumpster at a popular beach in Southern California is covered with graffiti and stickers. The meaning of the graffiti is incomprehensible for most people, but for hardcore surfers familiar with this, it can be read as a signpost identifying a specific surf break amid the string of surf spotsContinue Reading
“OH, GREEN WORLD!”: THE TOWER OF PLANTS SHOCKS CITY DWELLERS WITH VISION OF VERDANT PARADISE
The plant-covered structure pictured here take the term “green building” to another level. The tower is one among several buildings that comprise The Row, a recent mixed-use, commercial urban re-development project that turned the former American Apparel factory and its surrounding area into a contemporary, walkable retail-dining-office complex on theContinue Reading