March Against Climate Change (absent)

So I wanted to really attend and give support and experience this protest, but how am I supposed to turn down premiere tickets to Macaframa? Quite the dilemma. Well over 10,000 people attended this march, just one of many around many other countries around the globe. I was curious to check how it turned out and thought some of you might find these interesting:

not my photos

not my photos

I missed the march, but this was definitely worth it

Attended a screening of Macaframa and the Fixed magazine launch party. Words don't say much, so just look i guess. Can't believe I forgot to bring the camera.

not my photos

the bike racks were overflowing by noon.


no bike polo, but a charity race


"bike room" on the 4th floor


tricks


contests

not my photos

thank you to everyone who made this possible

Discovered another gem here in the UK: TK Maxx -- the English equivalent of TJ Maxx in the States. Found these for a low 25 pounds, and i think they're kinda retro cus the original laces were yellowed and I cant find them online.

backyard view

Friendly Looney Tunes Graffiti

on the Day Care center behind my house

You're Jealous, I Know.

this is what my food looks like BEFORE I eat it. Yes, that's right, the chicken isn't eaten yet, although it may look like it, I simply pull out the meat over the head of the drumstick so that it cooks faster and gets rid of more grease. The cheese was my special way of treating myself to having a job and celebrating thanksgiving simultaneously.
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the best place in london

Cool group of people always -- Saturdays seems to bring in the older crowd, and some tourists (its on a very popular streetcorner for crying out loud). Upstairs seemed to be more of the young hipsters, a lot of drunkeness, socializing, sitting to techno/electro. Downstairs in the basement however, is much more arty, experimental, and underground. There's live performance art, experimental film projects, sound-mashing dj's and eclectic bands. Tonight, you have a dimly lit area with a dark curtain separator, a few dozen stools, film projector and in the middle of the room, a rotating steel disc embedded in the concrete floor -- brown and rusted and squeaky, this merry go-round serves as the dance floor for the energetic and enthusiastic who writhe to the tunes of modern jazz-indie fusions. Onlookers on the outside, those tired of dancing or a notch too timid to get into the action themselves, contribute to the energy and vibe by pushing the disc round and round while the dancers bust headstands and just do whatever natural improv movements they feel during the 6, 7 and 8 minute songs played.

The Entire basement hallway is covered in graffiti - and the bathroom is where you'll find a more intense concentration. Not wanting to look like a pervert or just weird, BUT wanting to get some real graffiti samples for some projects I'm working on, I locked myself in a stall and snapped away. It's really crazy how its everywhere, and it's actually promoted. There's even a documentary on bathroom graffiti featuring this place.

Getty Images Gallery

So apparently theres a physical gallery for the famous Getty Images, the leader and behemoth of stock images online. While it was cool to see an intersting selection of photos from london's history, it was basically like they combed through the online archives under the tag "London" and just boiled it down. I mean, the framed pieces were available as instant print reproductions and there were supplemental photos in binders...which, basically were, literally, printouts of the webpage with the photo on it.

I mean, the digitizing of the archival and databasing process is magnificent, theres no doubt about it. But it really turns something that WOULD and, in theory, still is somewhat epic/intense/tedious (searching for ancient photos from a mass of books and collections to put together an exhibit), into a showcase that might have been purely clicked, saved, and printed without ever touching, visiting or filing through archives. Yes, its not that these collections and databases aren't comprehensive, I'm sure they are,and they make the process way more efficient. But call me old-fashioned, but it just FEELS different although the end product, or at least the selections, might have been more or less the same either way.


Above is the Whitechapel riots, taken place on the street I bike almost dailiy to get groceries in the early 1900s, when working-class men blockaded the street to prevent a labor strike from marching through. You see the suits fleeing for their lives as the police decide that they're not playing nice with the blue-collars.

oh....bros, bros, everywhere

even when i travel to the other side of the world, theyre still here

for those of you nonbelievers who thought my shoes didnt look bad...

Hercules and Love Affair

Not much to say really...A very eclectic ensemble with 2 (sometimes 3) vocalists, keyboard/electronics guy, trumpet, trombone, and all the usual pieces of regular bands -- kinda reminiscent of a modern big-band era thing. Very jazzy, wonderful pieces.



Also, Watch the guy in the audience in the bottom left of the video...the guy in the white shirt. You're welcome.


And...the most hilarious bassist...EVER

Tate Modern

So this is the THING that everyone is seeing right now in London, this huge installation in a sporting arena/theatre sized room, with a huge red alien structure, alien spider, and huge cat skeleton next to a huge bitten apple....not sure the significance, but with the bunkbeds it's supposed to signify the fear people experience with the apocalypse. People are allowed to touch, sit and lie down on the beds to look at the space or watch the odd film playing, or even read the books lying around some of the beds (all with the theme of fear and the end of the world: War of the worlds, 1984, etc).






A gruesome, zombie-like portrayal of rich people eating lobsters at expensive restaurants.

Each color is a different message. I thought yellow was interesting:

Tate Britain

Not exactly what I expected, but there's a few good things in there.
This piece above is titled something along the lines of "Angels and Demons," a depiction of the battlefield between Heaven's guardians and the infantry from Hell. Interesting idea, and I like the caricature style, as well as the colour palette, but unfortunately couldn't exactly convey that here. What was odd to me, though, is the fact that the angels are fighting...not so fiendish-looking devils. So I might have the title mixed up on that one.


I love the facial expressions in this piece, especially in the center portion that I've posted above. The devilish face of anticipation of the greedy, fat monk (stab at the Catholic regime, possibly) compares nicely to the grotesque face of the guard to the right of him, who looks kinda like Disney's Goofy. Sounds like a pretty good art project. To get disney characters to look like real people, whether it be because of physical deformation or plastic surgery. Donald Duck should be intesting. Wow so on that topic it could be a book cover for "The Island of Dr. Monreau" (took me a while to search for the title of this book that I read in 7th grade, only armed with the keywords "animal, ""people," "surgery", and "doctor")

meet MR RECYCLE

aparently this was in my neighborhood this week. words fail me.

So I have this weird thing for closed market streets and shops at night...

Not much to say, so I'll include an entry from October, one of my first few nights out in the area:

Saw a bunch of Yellow-Jacketed Ambulance workers and Policemen surrounding a body in the middle of the road on my bike ride home from Brick Lane. As I slowed by, the paramedics were zipping up a bag over his chest; no car, no bike; looks like a drunken pedestrian struck by a hit-and-run. Before I could catch a glimpse of his face, I heard screaming and saw a group of 7-8 kids running on the opposite end of the sidewalk, mostly african-english, sprinting down away from me, turning into the street right before my flat, in front of the police station. The pack of kids were being chased by a guy in his late-20s, lugging his coat and office bag, screaming that he's been robbed and pleading for someone to call the police, running but stumbling behind the youngsters. It was daylight savings by the time I got home - receiving a gift of an hour at 2:00am.

the picture doesnt match the story

Walking around Brick Lane around 2am, most bars and venues of inebriation are shutting down, early -- but supposedly typical of the city. Drunken trios, double-dates and dude-couples are staggering through the streets, announcing their presence with two noticeable medical symptoms: lack of voice control or alcoholic voice amplification syndrome, and Tourettes, given the slurring and swearing. You can hear the soft echoes of the clumsy tapping of impaired footsteps down the Lane's recently rained stone-mosaic sidewalks, neon-lit by Mediterranean restaurant signs.

About two blocks from the designated terminating-end of this alley of carelessness and enjoyment, I almost run into someone turning onto Brick Lane at the streetcorner. If it was an aggressive bum or a mugger, I would have surely been in a less than opportune position. But the stranger isn't intimidating, it's not even at shoulder-height: it’s a child. A young girl, no more than 14 years old, her round head draped in a pink hibjab, eyeballs tethered to the kaleidoscopic screen of her Gameboy DS. She's completely shut off from the world about her, a manifestation of purity and innocence in this dark, dirty, drunken landscape lurking with jolly drunks as well as typical sketchy night owls.

While she's got digital blinders on, she's not oblivious, as she turned around the street corner, she was able to navigate and whizzed around me without moving her head or eyeballs; maybe she gets her autopilot sense from a cab-driving father. I wanted to somehow tell her to go home, or ask her where her parents were, but she was walking quite fast for someone with short strides, and was the size of a pink gummi bear while I was still thinking what I should do, or say. I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that theres CHILDREN on this block, at this time, while she marches with her slouched head and slumped shoulders drawn into the light glowing from her Gameboy, her beacon to the end of the tunnel of sin and darkness.

There's a large Muslim population in the area, evident in the apartment complexes as well as the restaurants, fast-food kebab joints, and the late-night hosts grabbing liquor behind off-license counters. But I still wonder what she was doing out so late, by herself, and how common it might be to see kids that young running about at night in the city. And I wonder if its more of a subconscious defense for her to be completely mesmerized by her DS, to block out the sin about her, masking her eyes with the colorful popping graphics by Nintendo programmers.