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Dunce Cap Quarterly
‘Cuz it’s Friday and the weather’s nice and, know what, just shutup, that’s why. At least we’re lazily posting originals for once:
Disclaimer: This post will be relevant to almost nobody who reads DCQ.
A couple Dunces grew up in Burlingame, Calif., a “leafy” suburb south of San Francisco. The town is known for its politely progressive vibe and for producing an abundance of garage bands and a sum total of one professional athlete. Over the past decade, Burlingame also gained a reputation for fostering a slightly more lively bar scene than the slightly more boring suburbs it is wedged between (the Bay Area beyond San Fran proper being one oval-shaped clusterfuck of unbroken suburbs).
Thus, it would seem somewhat less than entirely impossible that a nightclub in Burlingame would find a way to commandeer the artists behind the marketing for Studio B and Santos Party House in New York:
Not the case: SonicLiving, through a partnership announced last spring (yeah, we know, we’re slipping) with burgeoning urban clothier/art space Upper Playground, provides poster templates created by UP-backed artists for anyone who lists an event on the site. More examples below.
As for this “Club 261,” I still say it sounds fun. I’m in. We’ll reminisce on the good old days and talk about Vegas and real estate. Don’t forget your Giants hat and Tapout tee.
This really happened last night: Shaq goes to the hospital after someone pokes him in the eye, and Kobe shows up with a broken right index (Latin=poking) finger. Like Milla Jovovich in “The Fifth Element,” IT’S PERFECT!
Happy Chanukah, kiddies.
If you’ve ever strolled the streets of San Fran, Manhattan or any number of other global metropoli, you’ve seen the BNE guy’s work. It’s pretty basic: Put “BNE” in all-caps Helvetica Neue Condensed, black on white. Multiply times 100,000 or so. Travel around the world, affix to stop signs, parking meters, streetlight poles, etc. Wait for people to get curious.
We started seeing the BNE stickers around SF in 2006 or thereabouts; the perpetrator would get slap-silly on entire blocks of meters in the Tendernob. Someone working for Gavin Newsom noticed it soon thereafter, and the mayor caught a few headlines — and, more significantly, contributed to the BNE guy’s murky legend — by putting a $2,500 bounty on his head. Nobody managed to collect, stickers kept going up, and the artist’s identity remained an enigma.
Then, news broke earlier this month that the guy behind BNE was setting up for a show in Hell’s Kitchen. The Paper of Record scored an unprecedented interview with the alleged artist and managed to reveal next to nothing about him. We took matters into our own filthy hands. NYC ad agency Mother, underwriting the show at its new warehouse on 11th Ave. and West 44th, tried to play up the show’s import by making it an exclusive “who do you know” deal, complete with a tight guest list we managed to weasel onto. For all the frills — dance floor, DJ, pretty people, free booze galore — the show felt uninspired: The artist’s trademark, predictably, dominated the landscape in varying forms, the most evocative of which was a 15-foot-tall block-graf rendering running the length of the north wall. Most of the other pieces commented on the alleged artist’s announced desire to rival the visibility of multinational brands. (He told the Times that “I don’t see other graffiti writers as my competition anymore. Now I’m going up against the Tommy Hilfigers, Starbucks, Pepsi. You have these billion-dollar companies, and I’ve got to look at their logos every day. Why can’t I put mine up?”)
Take it away, photos and video:
Along with the crisp November (now December — I know, we lag) weather, and falling colored leaves came a refreshing perspective from the Bay, in the form of the new Jeremy Fish exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum. Weathering the Storm is the San Francisco artist’s premiere museum showing, and an impressive one at that, including a boatload of new paintings and a smattering of hand-carved dark wood pieces filling the stairwell and the mezzanine level of LAM.
Best known for his whimsical woodland creature/skull hybrids, Fish reveals a successful transition in the show: His familiar forms become sculptural works, including myriad bas-relief frames, a fully functional couchette, and several individual sculptures such as the F-Unicorn (my personal favorite; pictured immediately below). Fish also created a large mural engulfing several walls, overlaid with cutout paintings bearing rainy day themes referencing current world crises and struggles. Having followed his work since my San Francisco salad days, this show seems more reactionary than anything I’ve viewed previously, presenting substantial commentary throughout.
The long hallway of the mezzanine was adorned with a series of smaller cutout paintings. Reflecting on Fecal Face’s earlier coverage of Fish’s studio pre-opening, I vividly imagined how each piece came jigsawed to life in his North Beach space. These cutouts maintained the strongest link to his previous work, providing comedic and lighthearted subjects in bright colors.
The crowds came out in full force, with many from the action sports industry, established Laguna Beach art-types, and families with small children in attendance. LAM’s evolving programming is bolstered significantly by shows such as this, which appeal to patrons beyond the institution’s Sunday-afternoon-luncheon base — as evidenced by the number of youthful bodies roaming the halls.
BONUS: Upon approaching the bar, I excitedly realized that my favorite bartender-about-town, Armando, was manning the buckets. He majorly hooked a sister and her brother up. Armando, you’re “Our-Man…do” (doh.)
Several observations made during the two days of the Treasure Island Music Festival in San Francisco this past weekend:
1) Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros are dirty hippies.
2) Come evening, the girls of SFC Double Dutch delight in providing an opportunity for drunk concertgoers to hurt-slash-embarass themselves.
3) Pirates on stilts bring the creep hard.
4) As a friend noted, hipsters are all closeted fans of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone,” as proven by Girl Talk’s set.
5) Grizzly Bear are wimps: They complained incessantly about the cold while playing on Sunday, and then complimented L.A. on their warm climate at the Palladium on Tuesday. More like Panda Bear, boys. P.S.: Aren’t you from Brooklyn??!?
6) Poem Guy Zach Houston commands a way longer line when the sun is shining.
7) Music can be organized as a family tree of increasing edginess, e.g.: Gin Blossoms —> Dinosaur Jr. —> Hüsker Dü. Noted during Bob Mould’s set.
8) Local graf artist Robert D Harris is adept at creating lovely works despite the damp and salty bay air.
9) Dan Deacon makes everyone smile — no matter how tough you want to look — with his dance contests and human tunnels.
Journalism lost one of its most courageous members earlier this month (via Lightstalkers): Photojournalist-turned-filmmaker Christian Poveda was murdered in El Salvador last week, possibly by the same gang he famously documented in last year’s “La Vida Loca.”
Poveda was found dead with gunshots to the head on the outskirts of San Salvador, near a slum where he’d infiltrated and documented the Mara 18, chief rivals to the Mara “MS-13” Salvatrucha down in the homeland. True, he could have chosen a more original name, and yes, the work covers fairly predictable (albeit wholly fascinating) fare — gnarly facial tats, drug use and distribution, hookers, ultra-violent children. But Poveda succeeded where some had failed and many more had feared to venture in the first place. Born in Algeria to Spanish parents who raised him in France, Poveda gained his first exposure to El Salvador as a photographer covering the devastating civil war for Time in the early 1980s (a 12-year conflict whose atrocities were exacerbated by a little good ole covert Amurrican intervention and whose destabilizing effect helped bring about the emergence of the Maras and other powerful, barrio-governing gangs). He returned a decade later with a video camera and no obligation to present his work sans motif.
It’s trite to revert to the “died doing what he loved” platitude, but in this case, it’s absolutely applicable: Poveda was returning from shooting more gangland footage when he was slain. Regardless of whether his killers were Mara 18 members unhappy with their portrayal, MS-13 guys unhappy with their chief rival’s increased exposure, government operatives in need of a martyr to force the politicians to provide more anti-crime funding, or the proverbial Man on the Grassy Knoll, Poveda lived his passion, his life’s cause, to the end. And for that he deserves our greatest respect and, sadly now, our remembrance.
On a side note, Poveda’s self-styled brand of photojournalism — entrenching himself in communities on the periphery of acceptable society for long stretches, befriending fringe characters, and generally pissing off assigning editors under pressure to keep down costs — is nicely summarized by a former collaborator here.
The man-boy who bragged last fall (while chewing on a gob of Twizzlers for dramatic effect, mind you) that one of the myriad entities suing him had “folded like Mitch Williams in the ninth” in settlement negotiations has pulled the ultimate fiscal implosion: Lenny Dykstra is bankrupt.
Dykstra’s well-documented rise from scumbag athlete to Wall Street darling for bored bankers in desperate need of cocktail party fodder begs a number of questions:
a.) Why does anyone listen to Jim Cramer anymore? Or, more accurately, why did anyone listen to Jim Cramer up until Jon Stewart reduced him to a blubbering, goateed effigy for financial media’s rather long shortcomings during the subprime buildup and collapse?
b.) Who brings Twizzlers to a closed-door meeting in a federal courthouse? During which hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake? “Ashtray money” aside, Lenny either planned out his Twizzler feast hours in advance and stashed the goods in his briefcase, pockets, underwear and/or socks, or employs an assistant whose sole duty as such is to keep Mr. Dykstra with Twizzler-in-hand at all times. “Where’s my fucking Twizzler brick, dude? I didn’t hire you and buy probably one of the top-five most badass Twizzler briefcases around for you to carry everywhere I go and not open and give me Twizzlers LIKE NOW!!!!”
More to come, without a doubt, sooner or later, but hopefully frequently for the rest of our natural lives.
Culver City is experiencing a major re-development at present, spearheaded and contributed to by architect and SCI-Arc Director Eric Owen Moss. Mr. Moss and his team of 25 at Eric Owen Moss Architects have dubbed the revitalization Conjunctive Points, and have and continue to work on more than 20 projects in Culver City, many of which are located on Hayden Street alone. Known for unique interpretations and a diversity of form, Moss’ varied projects fortify Culver City’s hefty reputation as a community teeming with arts. Pictured above are 8511 Warner Drive, a parking structure and retail project and a city-sponsored Architecture as Art public artwork entitled What Wall.
Pictured here is a rendering of the Gateway Art Tower, an “information tower” and office building, constructed at the corner of Hayden and National, marking the primary entry point into the revitalized zone of the city. The building includes 5 screens that advertise messages to passersby pertaining to local tenants’ events and news.
Another of the Architecture as Art public art works, the Beehive, occupies the front section of a two story office building housing medschool.com.
Finally, this image depicts the interior of 3555 Hayden Ave, an office building and television production facility.
Something led us to that old Dr. Dre/Tupac “California Love” video the other day — you know, the apocalyptic one where they’re running around in rags and ramshackle Hummers, all early Gibson-like? We couldn’t help but admire the stylistic shout-outs (ha! get it? hip-hop reference) they squeeze in there: Aside from the obvious overriding Mad Max trilogy theme, the video opens with vintage Chris Tucker doing his 5th Element thing (you know, the outerspace-crackhead schtick he used to land more lucrative gigs playing comic relief to Jackie Chan’s unintentional straight man) and is followed with a scene lifted from The Warriors before descending into full Road Warrior mode; this later tiptoes quietly into Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome territory when they move to sweeping aerial shots of the stars rapping inside a, yes, Thunderdome. The whole video’s simply fantastic, but why waste it on “California Love?” I know Australian apocalypse-themed jams don’t usually chart, but still: “California Love” is one of the few songs that actually warrants your classic mid-90s rap video — you know, 64s, Cristal, ladies in thongs, egregious materialism, guest spots by other definitively regional rappers.
What’s that you say? Oh.
