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Once a blogger who carried some weight in this town, L.A. City Nerd remains underground in an undisclosed tunnel beneath Downtown and is gathering cult members on Facebook.
He recently reminded Club Nerd about City Hall’s Dedication that was held 80 years ago, on April 26, 1928 at 10 am.
Carry on anyway you can, City Nerd.
Pictured: City Hall in background of City Hall in model of Grand Avenue Civic Park, expected to move forward despite more Grand Avenue project delays.
Kent Twitchell's mural "Ed Ruscha Monument" on May 22, 2006. On Friday, June 2, 2006, the mural was painted over. Photo/viewfromaloft
Kent Twitchell settles with over his lost mural, Ed Ruscha Monument. Via LAO, the LAT reports the $1.1 million dollar settlement may be the largest awarded under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act or the California Art Preservation Act. view [Artist settles suit over disappearing mural]
In a February 2006 interview with Twitchell's consultant, Nathan Zakheim, a test of the wall confirmed minor damage and that the work could be restored:
"Let's put it this way, I think $1 million would be cheap," Zakheim said.
The mural took 9 years to paint and was completed in 1987.
The marches for May Day brings street closures to Downtown. It's broken down at blogdowntown.
The Santa Fe Art Colony will open 57 of their artist studios for their annual art walk this Saturday, May 3rd, and Sunday, May 4th, from noon to 6pm. From the website: "Once a year, over 40 residents of the
colony open their private studios to the public. Also participating
are some non-resident artists and sponsors providing art-related
products." And as usual, they are promoting it as the alternative art walk that's "easiest of its kind
to tour."
One of the first of its kind in Downtown, the factory was renovated In 1988 into artists' lofts by the CRA and Los Angeles art patron Marvin Zeidler.
The original brick portion of the Santa Fe Art Colony was built in 1906 by entrepreneur C.B. Van Vorst, and was used as a mattress factory until the 1940's. Train tracks wound through the property and up to the building itself in order to load and unload raw materials directly from freight cars. These tracks were recently paved over in 1999. Additional buildings were added in the 1930's and 40's, and the site saw later incarnations as a robe factory and a carpet business.
Compared to the Brewery Art Walk, or Downtown's Art Walk, you do feel like you are walking from room to room.
Monday
morning heat and construction crews didn’t stop ceremonial groundbreaking
of The New Carver Apartments, the first Skid Row Housing Trust Project in Downtown L.A.'s South Park. Inset: Michael Maltzan.
The New Carver Apartments will be a six-story 95-unit complex sitting on a fragmented parcel where 17th Street bends into a part of South Hope that was cut off by the 10 and 110 freeways, a lost corner of Downtown. The plan to provide a first step for
supportive housing solutions for homeless hospital patients released in
Skid Row, making some of the units the first to be designed with the intent to receive patients with a immediate hospital release, also known as "patient dumping."
It was the “patient dumping” and needed affordable housing adaptable for disabled residents that prompted this joint City, State, non-profit, and developer project. It since enabled by CRA, seen through by Jan Perry, and steered by Skid Row Housing Trust, making the complex filled with social and architectural ambition.
Designed by the firm Michael Maltzan Architecture, the apartments sit in a saw toothed cylinder on a fragmented parcel next to a bend in the road. Rather than retreating and hiding the disabled, the introduced project will engage both building and resident with the rest of Downtown. It gives Micheal Maltzan the chance to answer his own question that he posed just before the ground breaking: “How do buildings not shrink from their responsibility of being part of the city?”
Above: Close inspections of "FLUIDS" at the The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Inset: After the last ice block is placed at CSULA; a victory dance in the parking lot.
California State University, Los Angeles parking lot and the
courtyard for The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA were two sites for a re-creation of Allan Kaprow's 1967 communal labor and art installation project “Fluids.” From Friday to Sunday, volunteers around Southern California build structures made of 50-pound blocks of ice, and it survives unsteady foundations or ice mortar
chipped by novice igloo builders, the large assembled frozen roofless brick
houses (measuring 30 feet long, 10 wide and 8 high) are completed, then
allowed to melt in the sun.
Fiesta City Hall: Mariachi music greeted council chambers this morning to promote the 19th Annual Fiesta Broadway being
held this Sunday, April 27 where over 500 thousand people are expected
to fill the Broadway corridor. Street closures for the largest Cinco De Mayo
celebration are on a pdf at their website–– or listed at blogdowntown. Don't hold back. Tell me what you really think: EL Chavo's POV. RIght: Inside Chambers. Below. Map of Fiesta Broadway.
SAVEY FARE: Traveling in style via East L.A. Latinos Taxi Cab company, DotDotDash take a little trip around Downtown with a look at a communications on pace, the use of green space, and some ice in public space. It's below the fold:
By now you have may have seen the Kobe Byrant's jump over a moving Aston Martin for Nike's viral Hyperdunk shoe ad campaign. Of course, for Downtowners the most interesting part of the commercial is spotting the Biltmore in the background. [Commercial] [AD + TNT Spoof]