Herbie Hancock - 1975

!Quimtime!

Quim Cardona; it's always a pleasure!

Magenta Skateboards - San Francisco, CA

Fact; Leo Valls and Yoan Taillandier hustle hard. These men are on a mission to give back to a culture that embraced them with open arms; skateboarding. And the above-mentioned humble street soldiers have seen a good portion of the globe, having traveled throughout Western Europe, America’s west coast, and the Far East (that I ‘m aware of), which is remarkably portrayed in Yoan’s ingenious edits. As soon as Yoan and Leo arrived in San Francisco earlier this year they immediately acclimated to San Francisco’s diverse weather patterns, or lack there of, along with SF’s dive bars, jazz venues, and the famous steep streets that skateboarders gawk over. As proud Bordeauxians, this pair of scholarly gentlemen aptly represent for there home town in France and welcome all fellow comrades to come taste there wine and powerslide through their streets.

Magenta's SF Hill Street Blues from Magenta Skateboards on Vimeo.

Shun Moroi しゅんくん!

This is at Shin-Yokohama skatepark, an old stomping ground of my crew's. They've expanded the park and added new ramps. I can't wait to go back...

Nina Knows

Follow Nina Knows on twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/Nina_Knows

THE UPSETTER

Eastern Exposure Zero

In 1996 I had just entered the 9th grade in Plant City, FL, at a high school strategically surrounded by cow fields. Upon entering this school I had been on a ten year streak of juking out defenders, eating orange slices at half-time, and drilling soccer balls into the upper 90’s. I had also been skating for about a year, really not knowing what I was doing or what actual skateboarding was. My central Floridian suburb kept me safe and secluded from urban America and the lurking street skateboarding scene. This new found interest in thrashing eventually led me astray from my traditional team sport, partly because of the lack of scheduling involved, but mainly because of schralping’s over abundance of personal freedom, much like the feeling obtained from creating art. High school introduced me to some older shredders who then popped my street-skating-cherry, in and around downtown Tampa. I quickly saw the likes of Jeff Lenoce, Chris Williams, Josh Stewart, and a handful of other locals within the city's circumference. Around this time I started my first part-time job at a bicycle shop that reveled in skateboarding. It was then that I bought one of my first skateboarding VHS tapes, Easter Exposure Zero. I quickly and completely dorked-out so hard with this nine minute video, that still to this day, almost 15 years later, while re-visiting it again for the first time in years via YouTube (17,105 views on YouTube, but I must have watched that tape 18,000+), I can almost predict what clip and or skater follows the previous clip. It’s amazing how our minds’ memory works…

Anyhow, the fact that I can watch a skateboard video from 15 years ago and still be inspired and enthused about it, because of the trick selection, the look of the locations, and the individual skate styles of those in the film (blah blah blah), sums up the argument that skateboarding is in fact an art form (at least in my opinion!); it’s timeless, much like a painting or a traditional, academic form of art.

Homemade Mac & Cheese

Homemade MAC-N-CHEESE; serves 4+:

1/2 lb. elbow/macaroni pasta
1 lb. block of medium sharp cheddar cheese (shred it yourself!)
1 pint of 2% milk
2 teaspoons of REAL butter
1/2 onion, diced
1/4 cup flour
2-3 minced garlic cloves
bread crumbs
mustard
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 350.

Boil the pasta al dente; perhaps for 5 minutes depending on how hot your stove is. Drain the pasta and rinse with cool water. Set aside your pasta in a baking dish and focus on creating your rue.

Rue, aka gravy, and cheese (medium heat): In a frying pan, saute the onion with butter until lightly browned. Stir in the flour until it lumps together with the onions. Stir in half a pint of milk, mix well, and then add the other half. Continue to stir until the flour mixes with the milk. Add the garlic, a healthy squirt of mustard, and salt to taste, and stir until your rue is gravy-like. Add the shredded cheddar and stir until the cheese melts and your rue becomes an oozing cheese sauce.

Remove the cheese and pour over the macaroni. Stir the cheese in with the pasta and cover with a decent layer of bread crumbs. The bread crumbs keep the mac-n-cheese moist while baking. Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the bread crumbs turn a light brown.

Serve with greens; keep it Southern.

Treasure Island, SFC

A view of Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge

Bay Bridge

On a clear day, Treasure Island boasts some amazing westward views of San Francisco and the surrounding bay.

MASANORI URUMA 【UNBOUND】

Masanori Uruma, aka "Uru"; a good friend with a powerful street skating style. Uru and I had a lot of fun in Yokohama and SFC. I miss you, man!

song: Can "Oh Yeah" on Tago Mago.

Shun Moroi しゅんくん!

Shun Moroi has been filming for Pursuit with Jin Nakajima. It looks as if Hisashi Nakamura will also star in Nakajima's latest film. By the looks of Nakajima's cinematography and his choice of Yokohama shredders, I am led to assume that Pursuit will be an underground classic.

Augustus

San Francisco: FOOD

Dolce Gelato

916 Sutter St

(between Hyde St & Leavenworth St)

San Francisco, CA 94109

Dim Sum Bar

620 O'Farrell St

(between Harlem Aly & Leavenworth St)

San Francisco, CA 94109

Neighborhood: Civic Center/Tenderloin Chile Pies and Ice Cream

601 Baker St
(between Fulton St & Mcallister St)
San Francisco, CA 94117
Neighborhood: Western Addition/NOPA Pho Vietnam
1406 Polk St

(between California St & Pine St)
San Francisco, CA 94109

Neighborhood: Nob Hill Tommy's Mexican Restaurant

5929 Geary Blvd

(between 23rd Ave & 24th Ave)
San Francisco, CA 94121

Neighborhood: Outer Richmond Ajisen Ramen

865 Market StSte C-12

(in Westfield Mall, bottom floor)
San Francisco, CA 94103

Neighborhoods: Union Square, SOMA !RICE & EGG!

homecooked

Neighborhood: The Tenderknob

Fresh Yields

Buy as much produce as you can from farmer's markets; support local farmers by eating healthy!

Corona Heights, SFC

ななちゃん

AKA "Red Rock"

Go Pro

http://gopro.com/ These cameras are amazing. I want one

I miss Japanese TV

Anticancer

It's about food, mental and physical activities, and a positive outlook on your life

Las Vegas is Dangerous

Raoul and Dr. Gonzo in Las Vegas Painting by Daniel Bergren

The Quintessence of Continued Existence

“Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest Lion or it will be killed.

Every morning in Africa, a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle; when the Sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Harvest Moon

Tomorrow the sun will pass directly over the earth’s equator and the Fall Equinox will be underway, or perhaps it will have taken place. Along with the Fall Equinox, star gazers and horizon hunters will be awed by the Harvest Moon, a concurrence that hasn’t happened in 19 years, as well as a small star-like light close to the moon; “star-like” because it’s not actually a star, but the planet Jupiter. This will be the closet Jupiter has come to Planet Earth since 1963.

“Harvest Moon” was coined by Native Americans, denoting the proper time to harvest crops and bring the yield in pre-winter weather, and to give thanks to all living things of the fields and earth that provided them with life. Let’s give thanks

Photograph by Jeff Kiessel, Ludington Daily News/AP

Bummer Summer edit

Bummer Summer from Pass the Soap on Vimeo.

Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, ' My son, the battle is between two ' wolves ' inside us all.

One is Evil. - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. '

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ' Which wolf wins? '

The old Cherokee simply replied, ' The one you feed. '

I'll Have Produce, Hold the Bug Spray Please

Hiroshima

Midterm Essay: 20th Century Art History

Fountain, 1917

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

World War I started in the summer of 1914 in Western Europe and eventually advanced to Eastern Europe. To this day, the Great War is still recognized as one of the most calamitous struggles in history. Despite the amount of countries and soldiers who fought in the World War, none can truly say that they enjoyed the battle; wars are not glamorous, and for the most part they are not constructive. Wars fuel oppression, indifferences, and murder. There have been wars throughout mankind’s history, and unfortunately there may be future conflicts and hardships. Despite this fact that war is inevitable and supported by some, there are those who denounce conflict to promote peace, knowledge, and creation. Often time’s passive conception entails anti-war ideals that are communicated through literature, visual arts and theatre, music, and art movements. Dada, or Dadaism, was an art revolution spawned from WWI in 1916 in opposition to the war. An early influential Dadaist known as Marcel Duchamp toyed with Cubism before finding refuge within the Dada movement. One of Duchamp’s most controversial pieces, Fountain, 1917, incorporated a ready-made object that would challenge academia for decades to come. Eight years after the introduction of Dada, Surrealism was introduced also out of spite towards the Great War. Salvador Dali, arguably the most famous Surrealist of all time, shocked patrons and the art community with hallucinational works that were meant to induce paranoia and connect viewers with their subconscious. The Persistence of Memory, 1931, was an early work of Dali’s that cast viewers into a dream-like plain and inspired people to seek imaginative expression beyond what the materialistic world had to offer. Fountain and The Persistence of Memory, at first glance, appear aesthetically dissimilar, but Duchamp and Dali’s main intentions were in fact very similar. These similarities mainly involve retrospection on the art works themselves and on the viewers’ psyche, as well as a counterbalance of the art community in the early twentieth century. Through this text these two pieces and their respective art-revolutions, which were both formed in response to WWI and materialism, will be dissected and summarized in search of further similarities and oppositions.

Dada, as a cultural movement, began in Switzerland and New York City, concurrently. Dadaism was a social protest against the Great War. These counterculturalists blamed the science of reasoning for the fighting and unrest in Europe. Dada was also a means to denounce the snobbery and subjugation of the art-institution by shocking viewers with humorous and illogical pieces of art. Dadaism incorporated found or “ready-made” objects that Dada artists claimed. Dadaists either displayed their ready-made objects after slight modifications, or without alterations. This avant-garde tactic undermined traditional art and forced viewers to think differently; either scoffing or pondering. Dadaism inspired and insulted artists and patrons for roughly seven years. At the forefront of the Dada movement was Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp already had a sufficient background with traditional painting styles and his boredom with these mediums accelerated his personal drive to emphasize idea over materials. His new artistic epiphany guided him to Dadaism. Using Dada as a means of expression, Duchamp sought to challenge viewers to see things differently, to allow patrons to walk away with their own personal experience and interpretations of art, and ultimately to award artists with crucial artistic freedom; Fountain did just that. Duchamp displayed a men’s urinal turned on it’s side with a signatory “R. Mutt 1917” as a alias, which referred to a local plumbing company that manufactured the same toilet. The alias masked Duchamp’s identity when he submitted the work to an exhibition of the SIA, the Society of Independent Artists, whom he worked for as the director of installations. Duchamp was testing his fellow comrades to see how strongly they were devoted to artistic freedom. This piece caused people to debate “what is art”. Fountain stretched the borders set by art elitists and challenged a stable logical society. The “R. Mutt 1917” scribe was also a humorous joke that correlated with the renowned comic Mutt and Jeff. This was Duchamp’s means of bringing humor and jest into the art establishment.

Duchamp’s beloved Dada movement paved the way for another avant-garde Parisian artistic revolution known as Surrealism. Like Dada, Surrealism was actualized in response to WWI, and also because Surrealists felt that industrial progression was fueling a repetitious, ambiguous lifestyle overrun by materialism and lacking imagination. Andre Breton composed his Surrealist manifesto in 1924 shortly after Dadaism had subsided. Breton’s manifesto announced his intentions of a philosophical artistic approach to conveying what was once considered a subconscious state of mind; thoughts that most would not publicly express without fear of alienation. Breton intended to evoke the subconscious mind by portraying hallucinative states of illusion. These dream-like images seemed extremely real with fixed light sources, clear perspectives, and crisp imagery. Like Dadaism, Surrealism was an attack on rational society and it challenged the art-community. Surrealists promoted self-exploration by challenging viewers with surprising juxtapositions and frozen images in order to evoke paranoia and the subconscious mind. Shortly after Breton’s manifesto, Salvador Dali had fled from art academia, given up on Cubism, experimented with Dadaism, and grew a distinguishable mustache. Dali worked diligently to formulate what he called “Paranoiac-critical method”. The Paranoiac-critical method was Dali’s brain-child of accessing the subconscious mind to promote pronounced artistic originality. Dali’s method was meant to connect what is rational with what is irrational by causing viewers to experience images and places that are unimaginable in a conscious state of mind. Dali was diving deep with in his subconscious, or a dream realm, and he was determined to make his patrons do the same. Many of his famous works included images that looked like two different things that may have resulted in two different connotations, depending on how the viewers mind operated. This went hand in hand with Paranoiac-critical method. The Persistence of Memory has one such image centered in the foreground; what appears to be a white cloth draped across the earth, but with the resemblance of a nose, tongue, and eye lashes it also looks like a face melting away in due time, as if aging. Atop the cloth-like figure is one of four clocks, three of which are melting. The closest melting watch is slithering off a normal table-like surface while the other is again draped from a hollowed tree. The last clock, which lies face down is covered in ants that busily work and cluster as most ants tend to do. In the left background there is another flat surface. These two tables develop clear perspective and establish the distance between the watches in the foreground and the cliff in the far right background. This landscape with water leading up to the cliff is lucid enough to cause viewers to second guess what it is they’re viewing, and this response is exactly what Surrealists and Dali wanted.

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory were both executed in reaction to one of the world’s most devastating wars, The Great War, and also in response to man’s industrial progression and consequential materialism. Both artists desired reactions from their patrons and the art community by displaying what had never been done before; claiming found objects as art work and painting paranoiac subconscious thoughts that most would never recall to their friends. Duchamp’s goal was to create more freedom for artists and extend the boundaries of what was considered art. Dali took advantage of these alleviated barriers by exposing the subconscious and unrealistic to the normal, sound mind. Both artists supported new creative methods that catapulted their respective movements; ready-made with Dada and the Paranoiac-critical method with Surrealism. Dali and Duchamp’s later inspirations came to them after they experimented with Cubism. On another note, both Fountain and The Persistence of Memory are dissimilar. Fountain is a three-dimensional ceramic object covered with written text most likely in ink or paints, where as The Persistence of Memory is an oil painting on a two-dimensional canvas. Fountain lacks detail and artistic skill, like that of Dali’s painting, and there is no foreground or background, psychedelic images, or landscape. Fountain’s minimal perspective does not compare with the depth of the lucid landscape of The Persistence of Memory. Although Fountain was meant for viewers to debate what is art, The Persistence of Memory seems to hint at how precious and impermanent time and life can be, and thus has a deep peculiar implication. Lastly, Fountain can have natural shadows depending on the light source above the display where as The Persistence of Memory has a fixed light source reminiscent of Surrealist paitnings.

Many people say that positivity blooms from negativity, and in the case of art movements like Dada and Surrealism sprouting in reaction to World War I, some may agree with the aforementioned. Marcel Duchamp pushed the envelope with in an art community that he felt needed more freedom of expression by presenting his Dadaist piece Fountain in 1917. He was determined to stir artistic debate and promote further creativity in a time when most were worried about the destruction taking place in Europe. His bold accomplishments, like presenting ready-mades to art academia, inspired Salvador Dali, who after toying with Cubism and Dada found himself trapped with in his subconscious mind juxtaposing the rational with the irrational. Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, created in 1931, applies his Paranoiac-critical method in terms of making a cloth seem like human skin, or was it the other way around? The Persistence of Memory perfectly captures a subconscious dream-like realm by pairing a genuine landscape with surreal melting clocks, a misplaced hollowed tree, and random ant farm runaways. Like Duchamp, Dali was communicating the importance to live boldly and creatively by accepting what may be eerie or out of place in a perfect world; a world without war and greed.

***written by A. Burgess

Surviving The Tokyo Metro; Yokohama To Ueno

This would be me, as an North American Brontosaurus romping through the Far East

Elementary students in a Ueno park

I was cruising the World Wide Web when I stumbled upon a video that captured the Japanese insanity known as the Tokyo Metro system. I was immediately thrown back almost four years in time to the most memorable year of my existence thus far; 14 months teaching English in Yokohama with my wife. Yokohama is not as clustered as Tokyo, but it does boast the second largest population in Japan. Luckily for Teresa and I our commutes to and from work were civil in comparison to that of central Tokyo.
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art

On a fine winter’s day Teresa and I had gone to Ueno to see the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. We arrived early and spent about six hours in Ueno, viewing the exhibit, strolling through the local parks and byways, and smiling at the stray cats the congregate around Buddhist temples for a free meal of compassion. We entered the Ueno train station close to 6PM on a week day, and to our surprise the station was extremely crowded with business folks, students, and house wives returning from shopping sprees. We nervously waited in line as two trains came and went with no room for the extended queue. Finally it was our turn, and like these films, we were pushed in and somewhat separated from one another. Praise the Gods and my genes for making me a foot taller than the rest of those sardines, and putting my head above the stench of sweat, blood, and tears; I could breathe! We must have been on that train for 25 minutes, riding from Ueno to Yokohama. I was paired with the fattest man I have ever seen on a Japanese train, and I could see and smell the sweat seeping through his jacket. A small woman, perhaps a solid 4’11” in height, was smashed into the same blob’s side, and truth be told she was gasping for air and did seem to pass out more than once. Because I stomp through Japan like a brontosaurus with all the black haired deinonychus running around under my stride, I was grasping the bars on the train ceiling that the locals had dreamed of one day touching (these bars are the cleanest by far, free of hand oils and cough spat spray). I could see Teresa’s buttocks mashed into another man’s groin, and despite her torture and my annoyance there was absolutely nothing either of us could do. At each stop a few people would exit the train only to have more enter, and by the time we reached Yokohama station we all emerged through the train doors like water flowing through a hose. After acclimating to the fresh air on the platform we dodged through the stairways to cross over to our local, comfy, quiet train line where the seats seemed to glisten like a misplaced quarter on a sidewalk.

Local art


Feline Refuge
The ride home


trains in Tokyo