Westside, Eastside, All Around the Town... - Sunday 1/13/2008

Ah, those Westside sophisticates. A bright and lively bunch.

But judging by this sign inside the unisex bathroom at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on the corner of Pico and Midvale, the management must have found some of them to be--shall we say?--lacking in mechanical skills.

Traffic was so good that I arrived for my lunch date with History and Cowgrrl about 25 minutes early and snagged a little coffee and writing time. Lunch at Jaipur was delicious and the literate conversation was even better.

Traffic remained reasonable and I hit every light green but one on way way towards downtown on Pico. It was a blessed day. Except.

Except that I stopped to get a truly brilliant photo of the Wiltern Theater when I cut over to Wilshire, and discovered that my trusty little Kodak camera was no longer trustworthy. The flash card was full after I took the photo above and the little knob that gives one control over deleting, etc. is fully broken now. It has been loosening up for a few months, but I don't use that camera much.

I was thinking I didn't want my Nikon confiscated at the door of the Murakami exhibit I went to at the Geffen Contemporary; nor did I want to leave it in the trunk of my car which I parked on the street about 6 blocks away (saving me a dollar a block in parking fees!)

Needless to say, for the rest of the day I saw fabulous photos begging to be taken, and me with a broken Kodak in my glove compartment. Sigh.

I love the old buildings in L.A. and stumbled across a very busy market area along 12th Street (due to faulty online directions from The Geffen itself. You turn onto 6th Street off of Flower, you don't wait to see if a 6th Avenue miraculously appears.)



The Murakami exhibit... I liked the three-dimensional pieces a lot better than the works on canvas and board. The latter felt kind of like computer art that someone had taken the time to hand-color. Very much enjoyed the KaiKai & Kiki short film. It was worth the short wait.

I heard a couple of what I presumed to be those West Side sophisticates wandering around complaining about the commercialism and, well, pretty much everything else. I've never thought that art for commercial reasons wasn't still art, myself. And it seems to be working well for Murakami. There was a line to get into the gift shop!

These last two images are from the MOCA website. No photography was allowed inside, but they weren't frisking people for cameras, either.

Made a stop at the Studio City Branch of LAPL on my way home, which is why I say I was all around town today. Good day for it.