Archive for April, 2007
I love swap meets, flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, anything where you can find bits and pieces of forgotten and discarded history. I used to frequent the Pasadena City College swap meet, every third Sunday, with religious crate-digging fervor. Today we went to the local Guadalajara swap meet or “trocadero”, en español. You gotta look close, but it’s amazing what you can find. I found a powder blue faced vintage Rolex from the 70s, I woulda grabbed it but dude wanted 800 bones US, slightly over my budget. I found a Jacques Cousteau book series that had the most wonderful photos, a grip of old mexican salsa and funk records (I didn’t buy any though, I’ll have to do some internet sleuthing and go back next month) and a slew of old movie cameras. I found and bought several old photographs which I’ll scan and post when I get a few minutes. The crown jewels of today’s finds were vintage Polaroid cameras. I bought the rainbow striped Polaroid 1000 in the pic above, there was another fold-up one as well and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t grab it.
Ain’t Sundays great!
Design Within Reach Airstream is exciting if slightly a little too sterile. The A.Girard Miller Stripe fabric on the seats, is a nice touch.
People often write me asking how they can move to Mexico, it’s not an easy question to answer. I just found a very interesting book that seems to give really good, authentic and practical info: The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico: The Expatriate’s Guide to Moving, Retiring, or just hanging out By Doug & Cindi Bower. Cool!
I was perusing my mint today when I came across a very interesting article about the difference between being an ex-pat and being absorbed into the foreign culture you’re in. The conversation concerns Americans in San Miguel de Allende Mexico, but it’s relevant for Americans in all foreign cultures. Doug Bower has some seriously interesting things to say and I full-heartedly agree with a good portion of it. Makes for an Interesting read.
To me, when I think of the word ex-pat, it doesn’t necessarily refer to my relationship with Mexico, more so my relationship with the U.S. But as the article describes, I am most definitely still connected to my ex-country by a big, fat umbilical cord (so the irony of calling the U.S. my “ex-country” isn’t lost on me). As my homie Ro puts it, and I’m paraphrasing here (cuz I can’t really do chilango-accented spanglish just yet): “Never be in love with a place, because all places change. Be in love with a state of mind and you can take that anywhere.”
Today I did the unthinkable, I got braces and I’m going on 33. Why would I possibly do this to myself?
Well, the story goes something like this: although I have straight teeth, for the most part, my bite is all screwed up. Both top and bottom rows fold a little too far inward. When I was wee lickle shite, the orthodontist told my parents that he’d have to break my lower jaw and wire my mouth shut for 6 months (ala through the wire) to be able to fix my bite. Graciously my parents declined and since have completely forgotten the episode.
Recently I’ve been catching up with my dentist visits, replacing all those metal fillings and trying to get teeth fixed that through time had been ground down or chipped. The dentist said that my teeth could not be fixed. As a result of my bite, any fixes he did would come undone. So he referred me to an orthodontist and here we are. Braces. 6 months. To alter my bite, so that in 20 years I still have teeth and gums left. yay me! Let the pain begin.
Our friend Rima makes wicked Hoodlets. So very cute and cool. Now you know what to get your girl for her birthday!
The only photos in existence, of this hombre, in the process of enjoying a good ride. Not the biggest waves ever photographed, but fun, nonetheless. It sucks being the dude behind the camera 99% of the time and it’s great that my sister Beth is learning how to use the 100-400mm cannon.
Currently super-diggin on Dan Deacon. wicked! update: download his song Ohio from the video, via Internet Archives. [thanks Steve!]
I love Flickr. and I love big huge prints of my work, but I hate that Flickr’s built-in printing service crops my photos in weird and undesirable ways. Enter Imagekind, great printing service with Flickr import functions. Printing on canvas, large prints, matte paper, custom framing, you name it. cool!
Panic’s Coda (a one-window Web Development app) is pretty damn cool. Now if they could get it to work with MAMP, i’d be a happy camper. This is probably what Dreamweaver or Golive should have become.
Nice little preview of Icons: Bali surf video. Makes me miss Bali like mad. On a different note: why do surf videos have to have shots of girls in thong bikinis edited in?
Be on the look out for Zapatista Ninja Cyclops. My good friend, Isaiah, is bananas. I want one! I want one! Viva la Revolucion!
Tyler Warren has some really beautiful surfboard artwork going on. I remember seeing the one with the girl pulling up the “fabric design” on the board, a few months ago, incredible. kid. has. skillz. [via Surfy Surfy]
There has always been a mystery as to why Mavericks gets such enormous waves. The mystery is being revealed by several groups of scientists working together to map the sea floor off the California coast: High resolution mapping of Mavericks. The science is amazing! [via 70%]
We were in Vallarta visiting some friends who were in town from New York. They were staying at one of those gorgeous houses in Conchas Chinas. The sunset was kinda blown and grey-looking. My attempts to capture the beach and the sunset together were not working out. When i exposed for the sky, the beach was under-exposed and grey. When I exposed for the beach, the sky was blown out and chunky. Just then, I tilted my lens up and a group of pelicans flew by.
snap!
gorilla vs. bear has a great collection of mp3s from a recent sirius radio show. all free and legally available for download. lots of great new music.
The north of Thailand has several populations of ethnic minorities: The Hmong, Maos, Yaos, Karen, Long-Neck Karen and several others. These tribes live in their own communities and are slowly being absorbed into Thai culture and touristic service. One of the draws of going to northern Thailand, is to do multi-day treks into the mountainous jungle, to catch a glimpse of these tribes, many whom live their lives just as they had 100-200 years ago. This was certainly one of the reasons we chose to come to this area of Thailand. Read any guide book and you’ll hear stories of elephant rides across the infamous opium cultivation area of the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Laos and Burma by culturally sensitive trek operators giving you a glimpse of tribes rarely seen. And I’m sure there are those kinds of experiences still to be had if you look hard enough. Multi-day eco-treks most definitely take adventurous souls to less accessible spots, but for a large majority of the less-adventurous minded, a day trek is really nothing more then a mini-van tour to accessible national parks and a few village stops where tourism is really altering the tribal social fabric and not in a good way.
Unfortunately for us, we came to the region during New Years, which is when the trek companies all close for the holidays and all that’s available are the ‘mom and pops friendly’ day tours. We signed up with a ‘culturally sensitive’ trek operator, who (unbeknownst to us) gave us to a tour consolidator, who tacked us on to the most base of day-tour operators. The kind where you spend 10 hours driving in van packed with 14 people and a cumulative 2 hours outside of the van. In some of the villages we briefly passed through, I literally felt like a walking atm machine. The picture above was taken because the women badgered me into taking it in exchange for a dollar, admittedly I felt a good dose of liberal guilt. It was wonderful catching a glimpse of these tribes and with my camera in hand I had a few truly great interactions, but for the most part the effect our presence had on the tribes we visited, was enough to make my skin crawl.
My advice? It really pays to do your homework before you go, learn who the good operators are, ask people’s advice on online forums and stay away from day treks.
Surf footage from New York! great video. but turn down the volume though.
We spent our New Years in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Chiang Mai is a serious New Years destination for vacationing thais. As we arrived in town, we quickly learned that the city was filling up fast and as the days wound down towards New Years, Chiang Mai began to burst at the seems with incoming Thais. Trying to find plane tickets out of the city was hard but an unexpected benefit was that white faces became few and far in-between. It was wonderful to be enjoying the city amongst people from all over Thailand.
During the few days leading up to New Years, Thais have a tradition of lighting paper lanterns, making a few wishes and letting them float on up into the sky. Locals, vacationing thais and tourists alike congregated in the Thae Phae Gate area of the city to launch lanterns. You could see a steady stream of lanterns rising in to the sky and following a similar trajectory, literally hundreds of thousands, each night, seen from anywhere in the city and as far away as the Doi Suthep wat temple on the mountain range overlooking Chiang Mai. It was a gorgeous sight and every night the steady stream of lanterns got thicker and thicker.
On New Years Eve, we headed down to the city center, enjoying the blocks and blocks of vendors and food stalls. We ate like fiends: green papaya salad, pad thai, thai iced tea, mango sticky rice and at least 4 other things, that to this day, i still don’t know the names of. All in the spirit of trying anything and everything. Thailand has good food. After stuffing ourselves, we headed down to the gate area to watch the show, snap flicks of the crowd lighting off a gazillion paper lanterns and wait for the promised countdown. We couldn’t really figure out why, but the simulcast abruptly stopped, the show was discontinued and we could see military trucks anxiously watching the crowd. I was interviewed by a local media crew, who caught me off-guard, by asking me if I had known that there is a general curfew in Thailand and technically, no one was ’supposed’ to be there. I kinda stuck my hands in my pockets and raised my shoulders in a vague tourist-ignorance. Midnight came and went and no countdown, so in true anarchical fashion the crowd just decided to do one big countdown and we all celebrated the New Year together, blissfully unaware of the what we’d find out later, while walking home, that there had been several terrorist attacks in Bangkok and that the military had shut the simulcast down without telling any of the people assembled at the gate. After being told the news, it was a somber end to a pretty good New Years.
Big hair is so back in fashion. don’t sleep
After two weeks, basking in the glory that is Bali, we hopped on a plane and got off in Bangkok, Thailand. I have dreamt of Thailand for years; seen movies and photos, read travel magazines and blogs, but our experiences were quite different. We stayed in Bangkok for 5 days and then spent another 5 days in Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. We didn’t make it down to the islands like Phuket and Ko Samui, since we’re from a tropical area with tons of beach time, we were hoping for something a little more urban and Thailand didn’t disappoint. Although now that we look back in hindsight, we’re both kicking ourselves for not having spent some time in southern Thailand.
Bangkok is amazing. A modern city steeped in history, caught somewhere in the malay of tin-roof shantytowns, miles and miles of concrete-block apartment buildings and heavy development and urbanization. It’s a megalopolis of gigantic proportions, yet the thai spirit dominates almost everything.
Chiang Mai is less urban but no less hip, I’d say it’s like a Thai version of Berkeley, a progressive college town with tons of artistic vibe. Kids selling funky, hip and irreverent tshirts, paintings, house decorations and furniture. A million motorscooters in every direction. With easy access to the surrounding mountain ranges loaded with natural parks, ethnic villages, wats etc…
We arrived in Thailand on Saturday, Dec 23rd 2006 and flew on to Cambodia on Tuesday, Jan 2nd 2007.
slideshow | photoset | all Honeymoon sets
I really like this guy’s simple click-n-drag flash interface: Thirdfloorleft. and this guy’s super-clean tiny-type style with insane transition-effects interface: Shane Fleming. Both are competing for an FITC People’s Choice Award. and it seems they work/ed for the same company, Henderson Bas, pretty cool.
Cliff Freeman & Partners has a newish (if slightly too minimal) site up. My mom used to bring their reels home from work and my friends and I would sit around, after school, watching them. Dig the “cliff notes” section that has all their seminal ads: “where’s the beef?” russian swimsuit competition “is next, swim wear, wherry nice.” total classic
