recap-tarts and flea markets

Sunday we got up to have brunch with Brian and his lovely lady at a family hotspot called Tart. Which is attached to the Farmer's Daughter, you may remember it from earlier blog entries as the place we like to stay. It has unfortunately become pretty expensive.

From Tart we went to the Melrose Trading Post to find some treasures, as recommended by the latest Lucky magazine. It was a hot day and for some reason trying on vintage clothes wasn't all that appealing, sorry Lucky. What was great was all of the jewelry, handmade and vintage. A lot of 1920's pieces a little too outside my price range and besides I had furniture on my mind.

We both walked away with some nice trinkets, me a star necklace and a vintage purple purse and mom a necklace and vintage pin that went so great with what she was wearing. I came home with some ideas for my small space.

I hear later that Taylor Swift had been there the same day we were. We didn't see her, but we had a great star sighting ourselves just after leaving the flea market. We hadn't seen anyone all weekend, which was strange for LA and this time of year. I thought it would be great to stop into Bristol Farm's for some French Macaroons, a bit of a snack before having mom try another gluten free pizza place, a favorite of mine. I also knew since it is one of the last grocery stores before hitting the canyon, that the probability of seeing someone was pretty likely and just when I thought that there wouldn't be, we saw Will Ferrell.

After the sighting it was more pizza, then home and a movie.

recap-dim sum athon

I was excited to show mom a bunch of places she had never been before, make her try some things she was not familiar with. Especially since we have already done a lot of the touristy things, Walk of Fame, Pink's the like. And what I like about mom is that she is up for anything, so I took her to Chinatown.

It was super hot that day and we took the subway to Union Station. We took a side trip through the station so that we could admire the architecture and see why so many people want to get married there, next to where you board the Surfliner to San Diego.

We went to Empress Pavilion, where I like to get dim sum. My LA bestie, Teresa, met us and as soon as we were swarmed with cute older asian ladies with carts upon carts of dumplings, deserts, boba tea and chicken feet. (which I have tried, but not on that occasion. let me tell you, I have tried a lot of things, but you never, never forget the fact that they are feet, ever)

I stayed tame for mom's sake. We snacked on chicken buns, meatballs, crystal shrimp dumplings, sesame buns with red bean paste. See pictured.


After lunch we walked around Chinatown and went to some shops. I was on a quest to find Rose Green Tea. I love the taste and rose is really good for your skin. But alas after all the places I checked, they didn't have it. I made special care to tell mom not to come into the places that smelled like salted squid, I love trying new things, but that is something that really has a smell that lingers.

Mom and me in Chinatown:

recap-pampered and pressed

Day 2 of Mom's visit involved heading to the Aveda Institute in Los Angeles to get our hair did and beautify pre-birthday dinner.

I was all ready to do before and after shots, but they were a little just too before for my taste. So imagine us in our before shots, gray hair, pale skin, sad and then see us here in our after shots.




Happy Happy.

After beautifying we went to a place for Chicago style hot dogs, just to tide us over before going to have one of the best steaks in our lives at Taylor's.

Taylor's is a short dangerous, not because of the environment, but because it is so close to my house walk from my apartment. My mouth is watering right now. I thought Taylor's was a perfect place since it was born the same year as my mom, so I thought they would have it in common.

It is a really old school joint, dark, with leather half moon booths, white table cloths, waiters in uniform. We thought old school drinks were also called for. Their Dirty Martini isn't bad. Then it was time for steak heaven, you know when you take that first bite, make eye contact with the person across from you and both at the same time say "oh, my expletive God, that is a good steak"

We both had the Kansas City, upon a friends recommendation. I can't describe how good it is, you just have to come out.

recap-finally

After giving mom the 15 second tour of my house. (It is pretty small, but cute. I will show pictures when I feel like I am more settled and am not living out of boxes.) We headed for our traditional first stop Marmalade Cafe in the Farmer's Market section of the Grove. We sat outside soaked up the blazing sun and put a plan for the trip in action. Which involved shopping and a trip to whole foods to get supplies for pizza making at home.

I was surprised to learn that mom had never had a heirloom tomato. Feeling sorry for her, I bought one so that she could try. I don't think she will be going back to those mealy tasteless things at the grocery store, but then again every fruit and vegetable tastes good here.

One thing that we learned is that surprisingly hipster looking stock boys in knit caps have really great wine recommendations. I like reds that aren't that dry, mom likes white and sweeter chilled wines. With that he pointed us immediately to the Fire Road Sauvignon Blanc, which was in fact perfect and went well with the gluten free pizza I made.

That was day 1.

Update

I am sure you are anxiously waiting photos and a report from my mom's visit, but one thing I learned about this app is that I cannot post photos without it crashing and it takes up so much memory on my phone that I have to charge it all the time, even when blogger Is not in use. So I will just have to wait until I get my internet next week.

Hb

Happy birthday to my mom, who will be coming to visit me this week. I can't wait to have her all to myself.

303

I am settling into my temporary apartment in koreatown. I am reminded of the Neko Case song "In California" and the line that goes "Now i'm living in koreatown waking to the sounds of car alarms". Already this neighborhood is quieter than my last one. Although I miss the firefighters, I don't miss the sirens at all hours.
I live in a 1920's building that used to be a residence hotel a stones throw from the Ambassador hotel and its Coconut Grove. It is fun to think that within these walls there were stars waiting to be discovered right next door. Maybe this is the impetus of my reading a biography on Garbo.
I am excited to bring you a new series of "these are the places in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood, in my neighborooood." This is los angeles old school.

For now it is unpacking, decorating, etc.

Bisy Bakson

I have been so busy with packing, cleaning and trying to sell some furniture that was never my style in the first place that I haven't had time to write.

I will be trying a new android app for blogger, so I hope that I can send off some quick posts if I have the time. If not, enjoy these next couple of weeks.

500

I hope that you didn't get used to me having this mailing address. Time to paste in a page because in the next few months I will be moving twice.

What I am excited about is that I am moving into an apartment that served as an exterior for (500) days of summer.

And by the way this is my 500th post.

inter museum relations

One of the things I like about my job is that I have the opportunity to see a lot of exhibits before they open. Such was the case last Thursday when I went to the Natural History Museum's Dino Dance Party for the new dinosaur pavilion the night before it was revealed to the public. I wasn't much of a dancer, but I had never gone to the museum and since everyone else was shaking their tail feathers, I pretty much had the exhibits to myself. Which is my version of heaven.

I will get to the dino pavillion in a minute, but since I was a newbie I will talk about the other stuff first.




The museum featured a lot of beautiful dioramas featuring once live animals. This was before PETA and in the early 1900's where people would think:

"I would really like that in my museum"

BANG BANG
"Now this animal is in my museum"

(Which I would like to mention is conjecture by me)

To the right are Arabian Oryxes. What is hard to pick up though is how amazing the dioramas are painted and thought out. Standing there in front of these animals you are totally transported to the dunes of the Sahara. The sun, the sun's shadow, the hoof prints in the sand.

There were dioramas of Grizzly Bear, White Tailed Deer, a grand scene of elephants of all sizes w/ water buffalo and for the first time I was able to see how a giraffe drinks water (very awkward by the way), animals upon animals that I had never heard of and then there was a scene of what is in Los Angeles' back yard-which is coyote eating a house cat next to an outdoor pool. Wylie coyote.





To the left are the Walruses resting lazily on an ice float. Which was my favorite. The ice bergs were 3D I swear.

Click here for more information and there is a video on how the Natural History Museum thinks about creating a diorama and the history of dioramas. More are also featured on this site.

We wandered around to the conservation labs where you can watch them clean fossils, when through the bird section and spotted all the birds that we usually see tide pooling or on other Team Girl Trips.

We end up underneath a Fin Whale skeleton which was the whale we stalked in this post

The dinosaur pavilion was amazing as well, sheets of rock with fossils still inside, life sized dinosaurs. Which I assume are at other museums, but I don't ever remember going to those as a kid and Northern Minnesota isn't really known for its museums. I guess that is why I am here, in the land of museums.

what I have been up to-exploring the natural

It has been a while since I have talked about exploring the surrounding nature areas. Sometimes it is easy to forget that there is nature out here, with all the traffic, burger parlors, donut shops and the TMZ.

This is a composite of two visits to Solstice Canyon in Malibu in June and July. There is really a lot to explore here. As you will see from the following photos.

First things first, so that we get it out of the way, I saw my first ever snake in its natural habitat here. That is it to the left, trying to blend in with that tree. I didn't get a good shot of it, what you don't see is its head inside of a beehive, eating bees I guess. Thankfully I have a big zoom and didn't have to get too close. I think that this is a California Glossy Snake which is non-venomous, but I really wasn't going to hang around to find out. heebs, heebs, heebs.

A forest fire swept through the area in 2007, a lot of the trees have burnt trunks and have been hollowed out and are home to a lot of bees. The sound of them swarming in some areas is so loud you can't hear the person next to you.

I just realized that I am starting to make Solstice Canyon sound so scary, but once you get past those parts there is a lot of beauty here. This canyon is one of the few that have running water all year long. There is a waterfall, pictured later, that turns into a creek that runs into the ocean.

Solstice Canyon is home of the first stone house in Malibu, called the Keller house. Reports are shady on when it was built, I'll go with 1904 like the sign says. The shell is all that remains after that 2007 fire. To think, this might have looked like an actual preserved home 5 years ago.

This was not the only house built in this canyon. Tropical Terrace located up the trail a bit was once featured in Architectural Digest and in it was one of these 5 fireplaces.

This house burnt to the ground too, but it is right next to a waterfall.

Trip one we followed a trail to see where it went, unfortunately for me, where it went was teetering on the side of a mountain, almost to the tippy top where there are a lot of lizards trying to trip you up,

but the view is pretty fantastic if I do say so myself.

independence day

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy 4th.

What have I been up to: devouring books

I was so jealous of my sisters who had the chance to participate in BOOK IT! which was an incentive program to get kids reading by rewarding them with pizza. They got this cool button and put stars for each book they read and when they got 10 stars or something, they got a free Pizza Hut Pizza. I think maybe I was too old for BOOK IT! when it came out 25 years ago. (yikes)

I never had a problem being inspired to read. I loved it from the moment I opened up the accordion page in Eloise with her journey up and down the elevator. I guess though being addicted to reading isn't pizza worthy.

So, now I am on my own reading goal this year. 20 books. I have spent most of my free time reading this year. I have read a lot of great books-the Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, Super Sad True Love Story, Ines of My Soul. Some that made me think- Remainder, Super Sad. Some I didn't like so much-Black Hole and Never Let Me Go. I think now I also know a little too much about Finnish textiles.

I am coming to grips with being gifted a Nook. I haven't read anything on it because I feel like I am cheating on book stores. Maybe I'll just download some fashion magazines.

So far it is 12 books down and 8 to go. Now if only someone would give me a gluten free pizza at the end.

what have I been up to: Devouring art

There is so much amazing art going on in Los Angeles right now. It is really hard to know where to go on my days off.

What I have seen:
Cuba from Walker Evans to now: At the Getty Center. An amazing collection of photographs of Cuba dictator to dictator, revolution, poverty, landscapes. I was fortunate to be able to see Alex Harris , one of the photographers speak about the 3 series(es) he had featured in the exhibit and how he was able to get access to Cuba, take the photos he took, his inspiration and his work with Walker Evans.
(closes October 2nd)

Tim Burton: At LACMA. Tim Burton not only is a talented director and artist, but probably his own best archivist. I can't believe how much work of his has been saved over the years. It is a fantastic collection of sketches, models, photographs, costume and movie sets and a cute rejection letter. I had almost forgotten the breadth of his movie career Big Fish, a Batman movie, Pee-wee's big adventure (see an earlier post from this month), Mars Attacks (which I watched again on netflix instant) I have always been a fan of Tim Burton, and many of you commented how much I looked like Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice and a young sardonic teenager and still equally love as a sardonic adult.

Note: this is an extremely popular exhibit and a lot of the installations are pages from his sketch books, like 8 x 10, set up in clusters on the wall and it is hard to see w/ so many people around. The exhibit is timed entry and it is best if you go on a week day during the day.

In addition they are featuring his films on the weekends with Q & As with the director and other people who worked on his films.

(closes October 31st) ;)

Art in the Streets : at MOCA- Geffen center. This is one of the first comprehensive exhibitions of graffiti and street art in the US. It traces the history of graffiti/street art from it's inception in New York and how other cities, twisted it, changed it and made it theirs. It raises the questions what is art? is street art and graffiti -art? or is it vandalism? To me it is art and it is political, but I understand that maybe not everyone thinks that way.

What do you think?

This exhibit closes on August 8 and is free on Mondays courtesy of Banksy.

There is one last exhibit that I am dying to see. I hope to report back soon.

amendment

after I wrote this post I ended up seeing Glen Campbell in a blue flannel onsie sleeper. No, I did not just relay a strange dream I had.

stars they are everywhere

Jack Fisk and his wife Sissy Spacek- He is an art director and production designer and has worked on all of Terrence Malick's films and other films like Mulholland Drive, Water for Elephants and There Will Be Blood. He did a Q&A after "Days of Heaven". Okay I get it now ladies, Richard Gere was really hunky and Sam Sherpard wasn't too bad to look at either.

Ryan Gosling was researching a part in my building, but our paths never crossed

My book club ran into Quentin Tarantino

I saw Lucy Liu at the movies

and Vincent Gallo getting tips for his Mac at the Apple Store

Just normal people doing stuff

food-part 4

I surround myself with great cooks. I have always been inspired by people who know there way around a frying pan or paella pan in this case.

The photo on the left is a picture of my birthday blueberry pie that was made gluten free for me. It was so good. Many of my friends had never had blueberry pie before. For shame because it is so very good.

We spent a lot of our time cooking together and taking turns cooking for each other. I made Finnish pancake one morning and the next we experimented with grilling breakfast. Which was fantastic and a first for me. (Can you tell I have never been camping?) Next time you are debating on what to make, half a green pepper, crack an egg in it, cook it to your desired liking, top it with goat cheese and a fresh Avocado. You will thank me.

The main course for my birthday dinner was a paella and it was beautiful.

the house-part 3

I will never rent a hotel room again. It is silly when you can rent an entire house for less than one hotel room a night. In searching for my mid-century birthday dream house I turned to vrbo.com. The same place we went through to get the house in Vegas (awesome right ladies??) One night, because there were 7 of us we paid $36. I totally recommend it and they have properties everywhere.

Now that my shameless plug of vrbo (vacation rental by owner) is over I can continue on with my trip.

The house:
there are so many great mid-century houses in PS that it was hard to pick. I was this close to staying at the house once owned by Liberace, which would have been a lot of fun swimming around in a pool shaped like a grand piano. In the end we ended up staying at an author's house and a lot of his books about modern and retro living were placed around the house for our reading pleasure. And I did read them to get inspiration for an upcoming move I will be making, details to follow.

living room:





All of the big furniture pieces in all the rooms had little drawers to hide things and opened like puzzles.

master:


the pool:


3o minutes after arriving=bliss

The journey-part 2

I had never had the luxury of having a road trip where I had the time to stop and see all the kitchy things the U.S. have to offer. (ginormous balls of twine, corn mazes, graceland) We always had to be somewhere before it got dark or we didn't leave in time and had to be somewhere. Most of my long car ride stops involved peeing, eating, shopping. On the way to Palm Springs (hereto called PS for the remainder of this post) I knew that there was a stop I needed to make. The place where Pee-wee and Simone watch the sun go down in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Which happens to be inside the head of a dinsosaur.

Strangely the location of the Cabazon Dinosaurs is now a creationist museum. There are placards siting evidence of to co-existence of man and gigantic reptile. There is a 40 million years old man leg in a cowboy boot. (cro-magnon metrosexual nostrodamus?)




It was a short trip to Hadley's to try a date shake (date, the fruit)I saw a California Gold episode where the correspondent had a date shake and really liked it, but it was Huell Howser, I have never seen him be disagreeable. So I had to see if he was lying. I was scared, I don't really like dates all that much. They are really sugary and pasty.

dates=sugar paste

Somehow mixed with ice cream it kind of works. My friend T and I were pleasantly surprised, I can't say the same for the third person in our party.

The 60 is a beautiful stretch of land, recommend it.

3 to the 5-part 1

I debated almost a year on what I wanted to do for my birthday. 5s and 0s are always the big ones and it was big, at least to me. So I wanted to do something that felt equally big for this, my 35th. I took some times and thought about what to do and some of it I had to admit was pretty outlandish. Like traveling around Europe for a month.

I knew that I wanted to travel with friends who mean a lot to me. Friends who are my family here, the ones I spend most major holidays with, even though sometimes we make up those holidays. Some of us are still feeling the recession blues and I knew that it was more important for me to celebrate with people instead of wandering (wondering) around Montreal by myself.

I finally got inspiration from my surroundings Julius Shulman, Nuetra, Krissel, Southern California architecture. I knew that I wanted to go to Palm Springs and stay in one of those houses I see in photographs daily. I wanted to be one of those girls in the photos, pouring over books, having fake conversations in a-line dresses. Like case study 22. (I can't put the photo here, because I know way too much about rights and repro fees)

So that's what I did.