Eye Heart Los Angeles

Art Experiment: Beautifying Electrical Boxes

2009-03-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

The result is really effective, camouflaging the ugly utility boxes into the surrounding landscape. I still do double a double take when I walk past, come see for yourself!

"Reverse Graffiti"

2008-06-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

graffiti made by selectively removing dirt

Great Shots By G@BR!3L On Flickr

2008-06-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Tons of pix.

Elevate Lounge (Downtown)

2008-05-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

Culture Jamming In Echo Park

2008-05-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

This one might stay up for a while - it's pretty unobtrusive. There are several of them, too. There's another one on the other side of the intersection, going the other way, and another one a few blocks away, and I got lost in Little Armenia the day after I took this picture, and randomly ended up in another intersection with at least one of them. Somebody out there's got a nice blend of wit and dedication. That's awesome.

Corporations Bomb Los Angeles

2008-04-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

The LA Weekly, after a legal battle with ClearChannel and the City of Los Angeles, obtained a court order which required ClearChannel to provide a list of the locations for each one of the 1,600 billboards it claims to own in the city. ClearChannel turned over a list of 300 billboards, with incomprehensible "addresses" like "Lincoln ES 0.6mi S/O Washington F/N-1."

To quote the print article:

Los Angeles officials suspect that 40 percent of the estimated 11,000 billboards in LA are illegal.

A lot of the talk around graffiti depicts graffiti as a conflict between criminals and/or artists (depending on who frames the debate) vs. corporations and/or governments. It's very important to realize that corporations are in fact sources of graffiti just as much as graffiti artists are.

Illegal visuals are illegal visuals. In terms of the legality of their public displays, corporations are frequently every bit as criminal as graffiti artists are. An honest debate around the meaning of graffiti must acknowledge that.

A Lie, And The Truth

2008-03-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

Mas informacion aqui y aqui.

Parking Structure Staircase & Rooftop Basketball Court

2008-02-02T19:41:00.001-08:00

Graffiti In Hollywood And Silverlake

2008-02-02T19:37:00.000-08:00

Obey And Comply With All Posted Signs

2007-11-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

Echo Park And Silverlake Graf

2007-11-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Graf

2007-11-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

(More graf in Hollywood, start here.)

The City Has Wild Animals

2007-11-21T09:33:00.001-08:00

Downtown Graffiti

2007-11-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

Full-size pics start here.

Me, Exhuasted, On The Baxter Steps

2007-11-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

The three steepest roads in California are all in Los Angeles. Here's me, falling apart physically after attempting to walk up a hill.

Writer's Strike At Universal Studios

2007-11-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

Here's what's missing from these pictures: the sound of honking cars. A lot of the cars driving by were honking their horns in support.

Echo Park: Sleeping Bird & Chilling Squirrel

2007-11-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

Right in the middle of Los Angeles, I'm renting a place surrounded by trees. This little squirrel guy sees me typing away every day and has apparently decided I'm relatively harmless. He sits on that branch and chills. He looks a little nervous in this shot because I've never pulled out a camera before. Usually he just lounges like he's falling asleep. (The pic looks blurry because I was standing right up against the mesh of a screen door.)

He went away after I took the picture. I made some food, wrote some code, did some blogging, and then uploaded the pic and wrote this. Just now he came back and he's chilling on the branch again.

One morning I got up early, which I usually don't do, and this guy was sleeping on my porch. When I took the second picture I was almost close enough to pick him up, but of course the door was closed (and it would have been a rude awakening).

Firedancer, With Whips, At Burning Man Decompression

2007-10-15T22:27:00.001-07:00

Parrots Chilling On A Walker

2007-10-15T22:24:00.001-07:00

Seen on the streets of Los Angeles, somewhere in either downtown or Chinatown (or possibly the border between downtown and Chinatown). I saw the birds moving; they're real birds. I used to have a cockatiel and a couple parakeets. These guys aren't cockatiels, but they were roughly that size. The only parrot I know of this size with roughly this appearance costs like $300 a pop. I think it's the Indian or ringneck parakeet, but these guys are just sorta hanging out on some senior citizen's walker in the streets of a not exactly ritzy neighborhood. I don't know what the story was, but I know there was a story.

Seahorses (From Burning Man Decompression)

2007-10-15T22:23:00.001-07:00

Downtown Graffiti

2007-10-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

Downtown isn't a direction in Los Angeles; it's a specific part of the city.

Overpass Graffiti Downtown

2007-10-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is right where the 10 meets the 101, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. The thing you have to realize is that somebody physically painted that. The area isn't tall enough for a person to stand in, and I took the shot from the freeway below. Whoever painted this was perching in there like a monkey over a height that would have injured them severely, and very possibly killed them, if they had fallen.

There's no money in graffiti. There's nothing but the ego trip of people seeing your work, and the pleasure of doing it. Somebody spent a bunch of time in life-threatening danger for this.

There is graffiti like this all over the city.

Landing @ LAX

2007-10-15T21:54:00.002-07:00

The Other Hollywood Sign

2007-10-15T21:54:00.001-07:00

Treehouse View

2007-10-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

The view from my Echo Park sublet. I frequently see squirrels, cats, and birds from this window. I never see people. It's like a little mountain getaway in the middle of the city. And when I say mountain, I mean mountain. In New Mexico I've lived in actual mountains, and the roads there weren't as steep as the road I now live on. A lot of people think of San Francisco as the hilly California city, but the three steepest roads in California are all here in Los Angeles. Two of them are within a mile or two of this picture.

Broken Sign = Accidental Typographic Genius

2007-10-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Flying Into LAX

2007-10-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

Long Graffiti Mural In Silverlake

2007-10-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

It says "s Angeles." (Guess the missing letters.) It's cobbled together from several pictures, and I only got about half of it. The full-size version is here.

Silverlake Graffiti Plus Photoshop Filters

2007-09-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

I took these pics from my car, merged them, and played with them a bit in Photoshop. You can see the originals here and here. The washed-out colors kind of suffer at this size, but the full-size merged/photoshoppafied version is here and looks pretty cool as a desktop background.

Buckman Editions: Unnoticed LA

2007-09-05T10:48:00.001-07:00

This is a series by my headshot photographer. Los Angeles from a totally original point of view.

Graffiti On A Box In West Hollywood

2007-08-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Restaurant Near LAX @ Night

2007-08-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Westside From A Plane At Night

2007-08-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

This pic was fun to take. It's hard to get a good shot, because the plane's moving and the light is weird. You have to make sure the flash is off, both because it'll ruin the shot and because you can only get this kind of shot after the airplane people have told you to turn your camera off. The flash is a dead giveaway, and if they catch you, you have to turn off the camera. (Amazingly, the plane managed to land safely despite my portable electronic device being activated.)

View From My Hotel Room In Santa Monica Last Week

2007-08-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

I don't actually know what this is. I think it's a parking garage. I was only at that hotel one night. (It was kinda swank though, I was digging it.)

Freeway Underpass, Curvy Sprout Lights

2007-08-18T10:56:00.001-07:00

Pico near Bundy, Santa Monica, under the 10

North Hollywood Healing Arts Studio

2007-08-16T12:54:00.001-07:00

Featuring Sword Workouts. How cool is that?

North Hollywood Graffiti

2007-08-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Connected to some kind of auto shop on Vanowen near Lankershim.

Lock/Unlock

2007-08-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

Great UX/icon design. Iffy grasp of English.

From a cafe at Cahuenga and Sunset.