Kristopher Grunnert
check out the photos of Kristopher Grunnert. amazing architectural/industrial and landscape images. great site too. and powered by slideshowpro
Archive for October, 2005
art, food & friends
Wednesday night, we met up with Lisa and Megan and we all headed down to see Mark Callanan, who had invited us out to a gallery in Vallarta that he was showing at. It turned out to be an art walk, unfortunately we showed up fashionably late at around 9 or so, just as the galleries were closing up. His piece in the show was awesome as always, a photograph of a fern that was abstracted almost to the point of looking like an explosion of fireworks. beautiful.
Miguel showed up also, in rare public display, we were most certainly blessed with his presence, always good to see the man. After a while of checking out the gallery we talked a bit and sauntered over to “Si, Señor” a relatively new restaurant (I think), a few blocks down from “Cafe Des Artistes”. Whoever did the interior/exterior design did a hell of a job, it’s a beautiful restaurant, very well designed and crafted. But the food wasn’t so hot. Mark and I both had the Azteca soup and the Chiles en Nogada. The Azteca soup was actually quite good and it was on that high note that I was so disappointed with the chiles. The Axteca soup had an amazing broth with hints of guajillo chile or some other kind of chile, it was like crack as I slurped it up, um waiter can I have more broth? The Chiles en Nogada is a traditional dish serves all around mexico around this time of year, and it’s usually like pizza, even when it’s not so good, it’s still pretty good. It’s got a ground meat base, stuffed in a roasted poblano chile with a slightly sweet walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds on top. This version of it, though, had a sauce that tasted like melted strawberry ice-cream and the meat filling had fruit chunks in it. I had two or three bites out of hunger and had to put it down. Mark didn’t even get that far, he was the smart one and had it sent back (and hence not charged). I was the dumb one with the $18 charge for un-eaten Chiles en Nogada (yes, 18 bucks, did the chile have gold leaf? no). Oh well.
Past the food it was a nice night. It was great to finally connect Lisa with my homies Mark and Miguel. All Quality Peoples for sure, and a slight shame that it took me this long to connect them. When talented people come together, good things always happen. Us artists gotta stick together. I hope we start doing this on a more regular basis.
unconventional.
I found these cone looking things made out of woven tree vines at a nearby “vivero” (plant nursery), the plant is called “pato de elefante”. I have never seen the planters before, so when I happened upon them, I knew instantly that they would be a very beautiful touch to the palapa. I put four of the cones together and tied them to one of the wood pillars of the palapa on the terrace near the pool.
It’s the little touches that count.
The Finishing Line.
We are in the last throes of finishing up the house in Punta de Mita and the owners are due for arrival on Monday. Nothing quite like an imminent deadline looming, we’re working furiously to finish up all those last minute time consuming details or in other words we’ve been trying to cram a month’s worth of work into the past two weeks. I’ve been managing the crew, the past couple of days, and it’s been so much fun being back out on the job site after having spent most of the last 5 months or so, behind a computer designing the marketing material for our other project (which is coming along nicely and shall have a debut of it’s own very soon). This is the point in the project where you can see the most dramatic results. and it’s definitely the most gratifying. My job is basically to answer a hundred and one detail and design questions and to make things happen as easy as possible. There is no shortage of “what the hell are we gonna do” moments, when a problem comes up that looks like it can’t be ironed out easily. With our design instincts and the crew’s craftsmanship and knowledge of materials, we always end up coming to some kind of compromise that makes the potential disaster work out ten times better. With our crew and anywhere from three to four vendors (a/c, electrical, plumbing, wood work) on site all day, people can get in each other’s way, and it’s my job to make sure everyone is taken care of and can do their job as best they can. Mary and are the pickiest of bosses and no little detail is missed, questions come all day long as the crew have come to an understanding that all tiny design questions are better asked, then redone later. We are most certainly perfectionists but we also have a good understanding of the mexican saying “only god makes things perfect”.
On one of our trips to Guadalajara, Marcia and I found the most amazing clay lamp shades (I guess that’s what you would call them), here they are called “lamparas”. They are a pretty standard outdoor wall lighting feature in Mexico, but these are special. There is no hint of mass-production and you can literally see the cuts in the clay where the shapes were made by hand. They have a boxy feel to them, almost like something you might see in Arizona or New Mexico. They are much simpler and low profile then the ones I see around and add an interesting design element to the mix. They’re what I would call a perfect example of warm, organic mexican modernism. Yesterday I prepared the lamps by coating them with a sealer and then measured and drilled the walls and hung all 20 of them. The crew appreciated my effort and I was glad to lend a (working) hand.
Mexico City Abstract
Every time I go to Mexico City I fall more and more in love with it’s bi-polar grandiosity. This time we stayed at the Nikko. Mom and I spent most of the day and a half that we were there at a construction expo. We were there to make contacts with a zillion different suppliers for everything from water purification systems to carved stone sinks. Yeah, I know sounds like fun. But in all truth it’s always great going on these little excursions with mom. We have a lot of fun. It’s like we’re building our company little by little, together.
Even cool expos can tend to get tedious, so as a counterpoint I took a bunch of abstract pictures, using architecture, light, color and whatever else I could find to create art out of something as mundane as a convention.
So I present, Mexico City Abstract:
20 photos in slideshow format.
Flock of Seagulls
or an ode to Melvin (warning inside joke)
OK, so I’m testing Flock right now. It’s a web browser, based on Mozilla, that includes built in support for web services like Del.icio.us and Flickr and has a blog editor built in. It’s still in beta and it has some rough edges but man is it cool.
Flock does away with traditional bookmarks all together and instead pulls your bookmarks from Del.icio.us, with the “Favorites Manager” you can edit your bookmarks as if you were on your Del.icio.us account page. You can organize your bookmarks into collections and view them by collection or tag.
I haven’t even played with Flock’s Flickr integration yet and I know it’s gonna be killer. You can load your Flickr images in a handy thingy called Flickr top bar, a little shelf under the navigation buttons. You can then drag and drop your photos into a blog post. The blog editor is still a little dicey but just to have a one stop shop for browsing the web and publishing blog entries is all I need, combine browsing with Flickr, Del.icio.us and posting to my blog and I’m in heaven. oh and a littel feature called the “shelf” is liek a visible clip board, where you drag items of interest from the web, to blog about later. yeehaw.
Flock also rocks the rss support. not too shabby, once they beef it up and make it a double pain menu/content situation, I’d gladly switch from BlogLines.
There like twelve-zillion other features I haven’t mentioned, check out Flock’s 13 things you can do with Flock. This is a great new (dare I say) web 2.0 app. it combines a well thought out, extensible desktop app with intelligent web services, it even has an api so that developers can extend the functionality for other web services. The gauntlet has been thrown down, Flock is still a bit weak in the knees but man are these guys good.
Burr-ohz
A small little swell is gracing us at the moment and this afternoon I headed out to Burros to enjoy it. The tide has been super low recently and today the rocks that line the beach of Burros were rearing their ugly heads, making it hard to enter. The first thing I noticed as I hit the water was that the ocean temperature has literally dropped 10 degrees or more since the last time I went surfing, a week ago or so. I know I know the cold water brothers are calling me school-yard names at the moment, but the temperature was truly shocking. We’re talkin’ wet suit cold, here. I don’t know what storm was brewing off the coast (it seems in this season there always is one) but it was most certainly pushing the cold water up from the deep.
The waves were pretty shabby one and two footers with sets of three and four footers every fifteen minutes or so. I can’t complain though, it’s been so long since I had a decent session. The waves didn’t have much strength and since I was riding the Al Merick, there was an awful lot of pumping going on. And then the lulls would come, numbing my legs and cramping my feet, then a nice set would roll through and my arthritic legs would protest any sudden movement. Do I sound like i’m an old man yet?
It was awesome being out there again and I enjoyed every minute of it. Some sets had really nice peaks that broke in both directions, so I practiced my lefts. and I suck at lefts. so it was good day. The swell peaks tomorrow morning, so I may just wake up a little early and have myself a much needed morning session.
Here’s to a good (but small) day at Burr-ohz!
making sense.
Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) Letter to President Bush, October 19th, 2005, re: the Plame-Fitzgerald Investigation. Go get um chuck!
I ♥ Apple
Just when I finally have had it and start a big long rant on how iPhoto is sucking major wind, here comes Apple with a professional photo app called Aperture. It’s like iPhoto’s well-groomed big brother, or rather it’s like what Final Cut is to iMovie. Just from taking the quick tour, I’m sold. Now, how do I get a copy to mexico, today, that is the question. I can’t wait to play with the color adjustment palette not to mention being able to browse my entire library without the sight of iPhoto’s dumb spinning beach ball.
yay Apple. good boyee. good boyee.
ps. anyone notice how the Aperture site uses Flash and is optimized for a larger screen size? I checked out the site on my 12″ powerbook (1024×768) and things were looking mighty cramped. so when I checked out the site on my 20″ Apple Display (1680×1050) and opened the browser up, wow, what a different experience. I guess Apple is aiming at the pro audience, who they assume have faster processors and larger monitors (they’re right). an interesting divergence from how they typically present information at apple.com. Oh and it just dawned on me that the Aperture site was probably designed by Mike Matas (of Delicious Library fame), although I could be wrong, but it does look like his work.
shutterbook
There’s a new kid on the block Shutterbook. People are ’saying’ that it’s a Flickr-killer that will been snapped up by Google. Shutterbook is in beta and if you sign up now, you get a lifetime membership (I assume for free). I’ve been playing with it and it is a very compelling service, I don’t know about the “all flash, all the time” interface but for your average jane/joe Shutterbook looks like a very easy site to use. I mean really easy. Uploading, organizing and sharing is a total no brainer. We’ll see how the interface handles hundreds of photos and how the services scales as user accounts grow exponentially. lookin’ good, me thinks, a definite alternative to Flickr but not cool enough (just yet) to get me to switch but it did make me think about all the photo entries I have on this blog that link back to Flickr (ouch!).
DF bound
So, I’m going to Mexico City, tomorrow, with mom for a construction expo. supposed to be really good, I hope so after the last one, in Guadalajara, turned out to be a disaster. We’ll be gone ’til Wednesday night and as luck would have it, a nice little swell is coming into town just as we leave. Hopefully it’ll stick around ’til i get back. or heads will roll.
I miss my baby already.
barcelona tapas
Saturday, Marcia and I absconded to Puerto Vallarta for the night to have dinner with her friend, Alejandra, who was in town for the weekend from Guadalajara. We went to ‘Barcelona Tapas’ a pretty well known, highly regarded restaurant, just a few blocks off the melecon in downtown Vallarta. The food was hit and miss, for the most part it was a hit. The Spanish Tortilla was insane. Next time I go back, I’ll take three orders. The roquefort salad was also the bomb. The sangria? eh, it got me good and schnockered, but for some odd reason they put vodka in it (oh let me see, to get the tourists drunk quickly?) well, it did it’s job, but I’m a sangria purist, no vodka, thank you.
All in all, it was a great meal and not very expensive. I give Btapas a big thumbs up and it’s a nice romantic place with a great view, so bring your girlfriend and tell the waiters that the guy who ‘got the cork out of the wine bottle by only using a napkin” sent you.
Architectural
These are the first in a series of images I’ll be posting over the next month or so. I’ve been documenting the construction of a house we are building in Punta de Mita. These images are a first attempt at capturing some of the more finished architectural aspects of the house, playing with angles, light and color.
note to self: I really gotta get a better camera, this little point-n-shoot just ain’t hackin’ it.
camera toss
It’s camera toss time!:
“For we are the reckless folks on flickr that enjoy the abstract, chance, generative, physical photography that results from throwing our cameras into the air (most often at night in front of varied light sources).”
unexpected.
So there’s this guy, out in Punta de Mita that likes to make sculptures out of bushes, ala Edward Scissorhands. This one is a chicken.
totally (insert cuss word here) sublime.
New Elliott Smith.
Apparently, 22 unreleased Elliott Smith tracks were posted online recently. They’re calling the album “From A Basement On The Hill II” and from what I’m reading, the tracks are incredible. This guy has a link to a 90mb “YouSendIt” file. Happy Sunday!
UPDATE: I’ve just listened to the album once through and I gotta say this, when “From A Basement On The Hill” was originally released it didn’t grab me like his other albums. It missed the intimateness of his previous records. The album grew on me for sure and some of the tracks especially “Let’s Get Lost” and “Twilight” are two of my favorite Elliott tracks, but the album still didn’t have that special thing that made me like it from the very first second I heard it. It seemed muddled, like an album half finished and then picked up by someone else, with their own intentions. And that’s essentially what is was. And now comes these new songs. From what I’ve read so far, “From A Basement On The Hill” was to be a double album, of which some 50 recordings were done. And these new songs, are some of the songs that didn’t make it on to the final single album.
But as I listen to these new songs, they grabbed me from the very first listen. It’s like Elliott Smith singing and playing into a microphone, right next to me. Very immediate, accessible and very much in your face, in the way that Elliott Smith is. It’s good to have an old friend back.
Go download it now, before it’s gone!
oh and I just found this: archive.org has tons of Elliott Smith live shows. I feel like I’m a little late to the party!
iPhoto Broke.
I know it’s been said a lot recently, but I just need to let loose a little:
Apple, would you please, for the love of god, fix iPhoto? It is broken. broken horribly. It makes me want to throw my cute little 12″ Powerbook into the vast jungle outside my window, silicon and metal meet organic life forms.
Let’s take a look at “Activity Monitor” shall we? Ok, iPhoto is consuming 812.30MB of real memory and 2.92GB of virtual memory. Last time I checked, not even the hog slop chomp of Photoshop ate that much memory, real or virtual.
While I’m at it, wouldn’t it be nice if iPhoto actually let you play with your photos and organize them? I mean past the simple film rolls, folders and slideshows, something more like tags and categories? I know, tags are all the rage these days, but Apple could definitely learn from Flickr. If those guys made a desktop app, I’d drop iPhoto like a hot potato.
This isn’t to say that I don’t love iPhoto. I do love it. And want to continue to use it. But A) it’s gotta get fixed and B) it’s gotta move past the functionality that was implemented over four years ago. Everyone grows up, so should your favorite photo management program.
Let’s hope Apple fixes iPhoto pronto.
nip-tuck
By the way: if I don’t answer your email or it looks like I haven’t been updating, it’s because I’m watching Nip/Tuck Season 2 DVDs in their entirety in one sitting. aww yeah!
And the rains ended.
And just like that, the rainy season has ended.
This past weekend, a small storm off the coast kicked up some heavy off shore winds blowing all the humidity and clouds inland. Sunday was a glorious day. The barometer must have dropped like a lead weight. Marcia and I went to the movies on Sunday night and then to Vallarta for some dinner and we both actually wore pants. That night the winds were heavy and we watched as the perpetually low lying blanket of clouds were whisked away. Monday and Tuesday were both gorgeous and it hasn’t rained since.
The humidity has slowly crept back up and the clouds have sneaked back in to the bay, but for the most part the rain is over. Everywhere around me I can see the signs that the rain is done. The dust is creeping back and all of the locals have begun the process of clearing out the three months of intense jungle growth and I’ve started to see small brush fires which signal the beginning of the burning season. You can smell it in the air, the light smokey smell from a small burning fire, somewhere just out of sight.
It’s literally rained every day for the past 2 months. I mean every single day. I’m going to miss the rains when they’re gone, but for now, it’s wonderful to see a largely empty saturated blue sky with a few light and fluffy clouds. The ocean is an almost emerald green as it recovers from two solid months of run-off water being drained from the surrounding mountain ranges. Things are changing by the day.
Now if only the waves would start bowling in, life would be, well, almost perfect.
Chip Kidd & Milton Glaser
completely hilarious interview in The Believer: Chip Kidd talks with Milton Glaser. what i would have given to be a fly on the wall. [via Kottke, of course]
A message from Taymour
My good friend Taymour Ghazi just sent me this awesome email. Apparently, he’s tearing it up in Amsterdam. His note had a very similar tone to the one I wrote when I first got to Vallarta, about a year ago. I thought I’d share (i hope he doesn’t mind?!):
a dutch journalist put it best, “going into a bar in
amsterdam for one drink is like jumping off a building
only hoping to fall one floor”
it is safe to say that i’m still falling.
……i landed in madrid.I’ve got nothing to do today but smile. Think of a
bright future and live like a bird cold and free.
Use time sparingly and cease to think of concrete and
money.
Let go of broken hearts and twisted promises. Live and
Love yourself.
I am beginning to see what the world has to offer to
make me a better man. To make a man like me happier. I
have a hard time treading in stale waters. The kelp is
too thick.
Keep chin up
Keep smile wide
Live hard
Breathe deep
Love longtay
Roots is open!
I got a great call the other day from none other then Andrew, my good friend who owns Roots, the wicked vegetarian restaurant here in Bucerias. Andrew was calling to tell me that after having been closed for the summer, Roots is now back in business. Marcia and I are ecstatic. Last night we had dinner at Roots and talked awhile with Andrew, he has been galavanting around Europe for the summer, needless to say we were both jealous. It was great. We shared a taboulli salad, Marcia had the eggplant and sunflower seed Ravioli and I had the Mixed Vegetable Stir-fry with an amazing slightly sweet soy-ginger sauce. The food was excellent.
I told Andrew that it was good to be home. we have missed Roots something fierce.
Here’s the thing: Bucerias isn’t the best place to open a vegetarian gourmet restaurant. There is an influx of tourists during the high season for sure, but in order to really get a restaurant to thrive you have to advertise heavily and that means buying continuous ads in the local glossy magazine called “Lifestyles”. This costs money, a lot of money and I don’t think Andrew has that kinda dough. For him to stay in business, he really needs to get the word out to the other communities like Puerto Vallarta, La Cruz, Sayulita, San Pancho, Punta Mita and the scores of tourists who search the internet for good restaurants and places to visit, before they come down.
So here’s my little “I’d like to help out a friend” post: If you are staying in Vallarta, La Cruz, The Four Seasons in Punta Mita, Sayulita or San Pancho and you are looking for a killer restaurant that has gourmet quality food please stop in to Roots. Ask your concierge about the location. It really is the best food on the north side of the bay, I’d even say it’s the best food in the entire Vallarta area. And at the most, it costs $15/person that’s cheap, considering that for comparable food you’ll have to look to the 4 Seasons, where a salad will cost you $30. Andrew bills the restaurant as gourmet vegetarian, but in all honesty you’d never know it’s a vegetarian joint. There’s no vegetarian stuffiness here. I’d simply bill the restaurant as inexpensive gourmet. The food is exquisite, fresh, creative and always top notch. Andrew is constantly re-inventing his menu, he’s like a painter, mixing food ingredients like paint colors. always the best. Oh and Andrew just got his license to sell beer and wine! If you’re a totally foodie like we are, and enjoy really good food, you can’t miss Roots. So when you’re in town for vacation, don’t pass go, go directly to Roots in Bucerias. and tell Andrew I said ‘Hi!’.
Here are several reviews: mine, dad’s, and two reviews on Happycow.com
storm surge.
The surf has been up the past few days. not up as in 12 feet up, but we’ve had a nice little increase in wave height. A tropical depression has been hanging off the end of the bahia de banderas, sending mushy waves our way. I went out to Burros, friday afternoon, and it’s funny, they were the same mushy waves that were hitting the beach in Bucerias, the little one or two footers, except in Punta Burro they were as tall as six feet. I’m never gonna complain about any kind of six foot wave. Definite storm surge. There were a few people out when I first got there, and then after about 15 minutes I had it all to myself. The waves were hard to read, breaking everywhere and nowhere. i’d see one coming in, and gauge where it was going to peak and i’d be totally off. Then one would just stealthily crawl up my back door and break a foot to my left and i wouldn’t even need to paddle in to it. Once I caught a wave, there would be at least five drop in sections, where the wave was changing. not the best day out, but definitely a learning experience. After about an hour, the waves turned off, unexplainably. and without realizing it I drifted pretty far out into the bay, from the break zone, I guess the currents were stronger then I realized. After about a half hour I paddled back in, and the waves started again. It turns out I was way out past all the action. I grabbed another six footer and rode it about half way in. I promptly got stuck on the inside, in the mixing bowl of white frothy soup, my arms were so tired I couldn’t get back out, so I paddled a little to the right to avoid the rocks and grabbed a little wave in, on my stomach.
Saturday, Marcia and I headed up to Punta Mita to pay the crew. The house is coming along great. After depositing the cash, we drove over to Anclote to see the waves. it was a nice little break with several rows setting up, but only for longboarders. there just wasn’t enough height. So we came back down to Burros again. This time there were about 10 people in the water and even some of the sayulita crew were there. No worries though, since the water was so choppy and the waves so unpredictable as long as you weren’t too close to anyone you were guaranteed a few good ones. I got mine, for sure. The stand out was a 6+ wave, broke right on my door step and had about nine transitions and as long as I kept cutting and pumping I could make each transition, in these situations the Channel Islands 6′2″ Flyer II comes in so handy. But as the mid-day turned into afternoon the on-shore wind picked up and blew everything out that wasn’t already blown out. I kicked in one last wave, had some nice carves and road it all the way to the beach. Marcia says I’ll be ready to go Pro soon. ha!
Back at the car I ran in to two guys down from the states Nate and John (i think). They were scouting locations and getting the lay of the land probably for a future trip. We talked for a while and I gave them a pretty good summary of the various breaks in the area. The surf spots in the Puerto Vallarta area do not have street signs or “x”s on the map. They have no signage what so ever, are rarely accessible by car and often require a 20 minute hike through the jungle following a completely unmarked path. The only other way is to hire a boat, and that’s just not feasible for us locals, on a day to day basis. My advice to surfers visiting this area is either to latch on to a local for the “adventure” of it all or hire a boat out of Anclote, Punta Mita. The guys seemed like pretty nice fellars, I noticed they both were riding fish boards. Same general outline and style as my fish with a nice paint job and glassy finish, nice looking boards (mine is a matte white powder finish, i just kinda like it that way). These guys were alright. Always good to meet quality visiting surfers. Being so close to the US, we often get “all business” weekend warriors who think they’re out in the line-up at County Line (malibu), us locals are a peaceful people and it’s nice to meet visiting surfers that are on the same wavelength.
and that was my surfing weekend.
google reader
I whole heartedly agree with Dave Winer, the Google Reader is crap. what are they smoking? i applaud their interesting use of ajax but the usability is garbage. why try to reinvent the wheel? oh yeah, it’s because they’re google and they can. i know it’s been said before, but Google really has jumped the shark. It’ll be nice to see Yahoo!’s version when they release it next week.
Los Arcos
This is “Los Arcos” a grouping of rocks just off the coast between Mismaloya and Vallarta. god lives here.
Dream House v2
Last week, Mom and I were in Vallarta looking at potential pieces of land to build on. On the way up to a gorgeous mountain-top lot, which was virtually inaccessible, I ran into this little house at the top of a dead end street. Forget the grand houses of the tony sections of Vallarta, north and south, this is my dream house. A knotty little one floor shack, next to a small stream.
my little slice of heaven.
Sweet Judy Blew Lies
The Next Hurrah: Sweet Judy Blew Lies. the entry title, alone, is worth a thousand words. great “fictional, but will most likely turn out to be true” account of the Libby, Cheney, Rove, Bolton, Miller, Plame Gate shenanigans.
Web 2.0
Ok, so I’m down here in Puerto Vallarta. I gave up the good life of developing web sites for the movie studio crowd and watching as the tech bubble first inflated and then popped. and the internet lost it’s shine. I lost a significant amount of money during that time, no doubt my own fault, as I poured my hard earned green in to plastic tech stocks.
I’ve been down here for a year now, away from full time web development, having chosen real estate development as an eager substitute. It’s been nice watching the web from the sidelines. Things have been going so smoothly for Web 2.0 or whatever you wanna call the resurgence in good ideas popping up all over the web. and with the good ideas have come the VCs and IPOs and Mergers & Acquisitions.
First it was Flickr going to Yahoo!. Live Journal going to Six Apart. My Space going to News Corp. Then it was Skype and Ebay. Bit Torrent raising 8.75 million bucks. Upcoming.org going to Yahoo! and NetNewsWire going to News Gator. Microsoft gives themselves a makeover and Google does free wifi (and prepares to take over the world). Weblogs Inc. is going to AOL. What’s next? 37 Signals going to Microsoft. Vonage and Ice Rocket or Technorati going to News Corp? AOL going to MSN?
It really is “Web 2.0″ and we probably haven’t learned from our collective mistakes. All this “synergy 2.0″ is great, but me thinks it’s time to sell the house in LA. Fool me once, can’t get fooled again.
