Archive for March, 2006
On Sunday as we made our way back from Guadalajara, we stopped in San Pancho, to represent at Lisa Candela’s opening art show at Café del Mar. Lisa’s good friend, Meagan, was showing also. I’m sure the people who patron Café del Mar’s gallery loved Lisa’s work.
Cafe del Mar is a study in how to maximize atmosphere with minimal materials. The place glows with ambiance, yet it’s nothing more then concrete, ironwork and simple wood framing, albeit with an amazing array of creative inspiration thrown in. Not to say that this restaurant is simplistic, it is most surely not. Rather, that it’s an almost perfect example of warm, organic minimalism. As only latin countries can do. You would never see this place in any other country or climate.
If you find yourself in San Pancho, please do stop in to Café del Mar and tell Amandine, I said “Hello”.
Wonderful titles for a new movie: Thank You For Smoking. so fun!
So we are going to LA today. let’s see, here’s my shopping list so far: camera grip (for shooting vertically), a light set up (!), 2 external hard drives, usb card reader, shorts, light pants, jeans, peet’s coffee, a longboard. I got champaign tastes on a beer wallet. something’s got to give.
Andrew, Pau, Salim, Marcia and I are planning the ultimate summer mexican road trip. Following the coast south, of course, to catch the summer swells. Ticla, Pazcuaro and Puerto Escondido are on the route, Chiapas being the southern most point, where Salim’s sister is currently living. The question is 2 or 3 weeks? I think 3. To say the surf will be gnarly is a horrendous understatement. We’ll need one car for the peoples and one for the boards and gear.
Relatedly to last paragraph, Salim has the dopest invention ever. I am on a mad quest to procure one: a camping hammock, made exactly like a tent, complete with mosquito netting. How awesome is that?
I’m currently thinking: the ocean is as flat as I’ve ever seen it, the past few days. and why does the swell come up, just as I’m heading to LA. murphy is not my friend.
Currently listening to: Royksopp - The Understanding. on repeat and repeat and more repeat. possibly the best electronic dance album ever, What else is there?
My good friend, Jeremy Fels is currently in Puerto Vallarta, vacationing with his family. We hung out tuesday and I showed Him and hist sister the glossier side of local nightlife, we hung out at the decadent De Santos, PV’s answer to the Sky Bar, although admittedly we were literally the only people there. A decadence in anonymity.
Everyone in LA says it’s so warm! shah right! The warmest day in LA in the spring, is 200% colder then the coldest day in the winter here. Marcia and I are resigned to the fact that we will be icicles for most of the trip. If you can’t beat him… On Saturday, we are going snowboarding at Mountain High with Mr. Dave Swift and his lovely girlfriend, Lisa. I am Ed’s unbridled anticipation.
my girl is hot!
We took this picture, messing around in her little sister’s bathroom. the rings in her eyes come from one of those kooky flip mirrors that you can attach to the wall. awesome right?
robot dreams: layered-x. welcome to the future
Hollywood should apply this type of thinking to their product: Great brands play the role of protagonists: Scott Bedbury. Movie Studio’s say it’s illegal downloading, but the real reason for declining ticket sales is weak product. A direct result of pre-testing (and making changes based on test audience reaction). “The consumer is not always right…”
Street signage and details from the “Residencial Victoria” neighborhood of Guadalajara. What really captured me was that each worn out sign had been repainted by hand, some even several times over. Leading to a sort of new aesthetic for street signs. amazing. I sometimes wish the houses of this neighborhood were as lovingly decorated.
Marcia y Edmund are coming to the Los Angeles area, this coming weekend. Be prepared. I said be prepared. gracias!
Where Has All The Plastic Gone? a photo essay by my pops. go check it out. suweet!
Apparently Ze Frank is doing daily video podcasts (or whatever you nerds wanna call ‘em now-a-days). This guy is a freakin’ genius. literally. check out today’s video. awesome!
Welcome to Flow in Games. one of coolest games ever. I could play this thing all night. if they built these kinds of games for Xbox and PS, I’d buy a gaming system in a nano second. This kinda thing is gonna be so big in the near future, it will revolutionize gaming. mark my words. it’s kid friendly and it’s educational. I love it!
Excellent read: Andrew Hunt: “Leave room for emergence” [a Getting Real excerpt] - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) “Simple rules, as with the birds simulation, lead to complex behavior. Complex rules, as with the tax law in most countries, lead to stupid behavior.”
great little music video. Sad Little Stars: Dont Fuck With Love [ via Waxy ]
Quimixto is a small town on the south side of the Bahia de Banderas. Only accessible by boat, it’s a mini-version of Yelapa.
Saturday night was supposed to be the big going-into-vallarta night. Marcia and I spent the afternoon snoozing, got ready and went to Roots for the meet-up. Salim was there, having dinner with some surfer friends of his. They floated the idea of going to Quimixto early the next morning. Our plans turned on a dime.
Sunday morning we woke up at 6:30 am. word of caution: when rolling on adventures, keep it down to one car load of people, anything more turns into an exercise in restraint. The easiest way to Quimixto is to grab a boat-taxi at Boca de Tomatlan, a small town 15 min. south of Vallarta, where the road turns south, skirting the rest of the bay (and making the few last towns on that side only accessible by boat).
Quimixto is blessed with a hard, left point-break that peels for hundreds of yards. This was my first time there. As we pulled up to the beach we could see small little waves, no real swell, yet nice three to four foot sets. row after row. very strong and well shaped. I’m new to riding backside (left), but I’ve been diligently learning and getting used to the new feeling. I instantly went for the fish and had some really nice rides as the small-but-strong wave made it much easier to carve. Everyone got their turn and Pato tried to out run everyone, except me, cuz the fish is fast. love that fish. After an hour or so, I headed in, dried off and grabbed the camera for some shots.
Later on, I headed out with the long board. I gotta say, I actually prefer surfing backside on a longboard, more then frontside. why? I guess it’s just that feeling I get as I grab a nice thick, strong wave, inch my way up to the nose. as I look down at my feet, almost hanging off, with a 3 foot drop in front of me. It’s kinda like I’m flying. the feeling is transcendental. I wish I had photos, but someone’s gotta be the camera guy.
We goofed off for a little while and then headed into the small town near by to hail a water-taxi. If i didn’t have to carry the surfboard, I’d have taken some amazing photos. Quimixto has a picture around every corner. An amazing sleepy little town, thriving, yet not a car in sight.
< Begin non-surf related tech talk >
just a heads up to people upgrading to WordPress 2.x Something is wrong with the combo of iPhoto, WP and Photon. Photon is not being actively updated (and hasn’t been updated since iPhoto5 and WP 1.5), so I assume this is where the hiccups are coming from. If you can actually get the Photon UI to work correctly, it will still give you server error messages, even though it uploads to the server and creates the post entry. It will not upload more then one photo at a time. This is a big hiccup in the “iPhoto > Photon > WP” workflow.
I’m issuing a call to anyone in the blogosphere with experience developing mini-apps for OS X and WP experience, to step up to the plate, to get Photon back on track. I’m pretty sure the changes are minor. I’d be glad to assist in any way possible, that a graphic/web tinkerer can. Even forking up some micro-payment-ness.
thoughts?
You can follow my original thread here. please keep comments on the original thread.
< End non-surf related tech talk >
Christian is a mad man. in the best way. I’d say he’s like social glue. The kinda guy that gets your sorry tukas up at 6:30 in the am to go surfing on tiny little waves. and makes it fun. He’s the guy that appeared in the surfing videos along with Andrew and I. Christian came from Germany to Playa del Carmen to teach scuba diving, a week before the hurricane last year. oops. As luck would have it, he schlepped on over to Bucerias to teach scuba at a local all-inclusive. Somewhere along the line we coalesced the most baddest-ass surf posse ever. righteous dudes we were. scouring the mexican seascape for any waves even remotely ridable. we were a force to be reckoned with. And then, one winter day, Christian had to ruin it, by deciding to go back to Germany. Something about replenishing the bank account and working for the man. Our posse was in shambles. The glue had started to come undone. The man left town two weeks ago and things haven’t been the same since.
So here’s to Christian and his 200 pound 10 foot longboard. The Bucerias surf posse salutes Mr. Christian with-no-last-name-cuz-we-probably-wouldn’t-be-able-to-pronounce-it-correctly-anyway. We toast to him a handful of “cacahuates de un otra nombre” and Johnny Walker Black Label Whiskey. We miss you, dude.
–
footnote: portions of this story are entirely inaccurate and written while under the influence. and why are inside jokes only funny to the people who are on the inside?
There’s a ritual here in Mexico where the owners of empty lots slash and burn the green space, in order to get ready for the upcoming rainy season. I’ve written about this before.
We have a corner unit in our apartment building and it over looks the lot next door. The lot is an L-shape of over-grown weeds, trees and jungle. Maybe 30,000 sq. feet. Pretty Large. The lot serves several purposes for us: it’s wild trees and shrubs protect us from the incessant sun on the side and in front it gives us a great jungle view. Occasionally we’ll hear a horse in the lot nearby eating grass.
About once a year, the owner of the lot has it cleared. Last year s/he brought in a bulldozer to knock all the large plants down and to generally clear things. We were inundated with dust for a month, dust everywhere. Slowly but surely the ground cover grew back and the rainy season brought everything back to full bloom.
This year, the owner hired a couple of men to burn the lot. This practice is not uncommon, however it is a federal offense, yet the policia don’t do anything about it. The bomberos didn’t even know that it’s a crime. I wouldn’t think anything of it, except that for lots that border houses, burning can be serious stuff. The usual route means clearing the land bit by bit and making small piles of refuse to burn.
The guys next door started burning small piles and we complained to ourselves about the smoke. It’s windy here in the spring and the smoke hit us hard. I’m sure the guys started out being careful, but things soon took a turn for the worse. After about two days of burning, we came home one night to a house full of smoke. the cats were freaked and had thrown up several times. We didn’t think too much of it, until the next morning when I walked on to the patio to notice that the fires had burned at least 50% of the lot. I could see that the fire had grown out of control and spread up towards our apartment building. All of the trees and bushes were piles of ash. The entire upper portion next to our apartment lay in ashes. The trees on our side of the property line had all been scarred and anything that was living or plastic had been burned (garden hose, drainage pipes, plants etc…) It was a mess. After that day, small fires raged on for the whole week, ending just day or two ago. From conversations with neighbors I here that the flames came deadly close to the gas tanks that sit on the side of our apartment building. Two days after the big burn, someone came around and chopped down any tree that was left standing.
And now? The once beautiful lot next door is a burned-out waste land. I really hope the rainy season brings it back. And the worse travesty of all was that on the corner of our patio, there is a banana tree which was growing a patch(?) of bananas. Have you ever seen this happen, up close? It’s better then a nature show. Some of the bananas and leaves got blackened. I hope the fire didn’t stunt the plants’ cycle.
after:
This is Xipatzin. A part of Sayulita’s local color. He’s a musician that puts the “world” in world music. Xipatzin lives in Sayulita with his wife and four (!) kids. He supports his family off of sales of music cds he records with local and traveling friends of his. I had taken a bunch of photos of him and his kids playing in the low-tide zone, so I felt obliged to listen to the music. It’s actually quite good. very eclectic and tribal.
Say hello to Xipatzin:
Tuesday, Mar 14th, 2006
Categories: food
I love Leeks!
Possibly the best video game ever made? Spore
