Bloging about being blogged
Check out the “Hella Ballou” post on Core 77. It’s great to be mentioned on one of the blogs that I check on a regular basis.
Salvage
My friend John Douglas is somehow the guy in charge of a 30,000 sq ft warehouse in South Central LA. Last night he invited a handful of friends over to share what the heck he’s been up to in there. The sheer size of the place is really overwhelming. The warehouse was mostly taken up by an abandoned architectural salvage business. He made a deal with the owner to sell off everything inside and convert it into studios and workshops. The new studios are in addition to the 3 craftsmen who were already working in the building.
It’s right off the 110 on Slauson. The building was used as a salvage materials business for about a week, then closed down.
John is a designer / builder that knows a lot about restoring classic Spanish and Craftsman homes. He even keeps it real by doing all his construction drawings by hand on a drafting table. If you woke up from a coma in his office you would have no idea what year it was.
The door to the studio.
John (right) and Pete Deeble (left).
Luc Peltier (right) and Joel Lueb (left)
Upstairs is one of the gnarliest wood shops i’ve ever seen. This picture is just a fraction of what is up there. It also looks like it hasn’t been swept in 10 years. Either way it was incredible.
Down the hall from the woodshop is a ceramics studio that specializes in custom Spanish tile.
Other studios in the building include a foundry, a welding shop, a fashion designer, and a production designer. The place is amazing.
John took us next door to an abandoned (for now) warehouse where we did a little conveyor belt surfing.
and found a trap door that went down to a small pump room covered in 30 years of dust. Also known as where the horror movie starts.
THREAT
I was in NYC this past weekend for the American Design Club’s newest exhibition “THREAT”. I created the Who’s There Chair for the show. The AmDC is an amazing group of young designers that promote creative, American design.
There are much better photo galleries of the event on Core 77 and the AmDC’s facebook page, but here are a few of my favorite designs from the lens of my point and shoot.
Defense Mat by Reed Wilson
Louie by Felicia Ferrone
Turning Violent Aggression Into Fashionable Dance Steps by Society Of Creative Non-Violent Reactions Tommy Knockers by Junior Aesthetic Fundamentalists (AKA Izzie)
AK(Ass-Kicker)47 by Steph Mantis
Boxing Gloves by Kiel Mead
Baseball Bats – 10 Designers were given bats to modify and will be part of a raffle. My ticket went into Jonah Takagi’s (5th from left)
The Who’s There Chair by yours truly.
Stockholm Design Week
A couple weeks back, I went to Stockholm for design week. I got the impression that design is to Scandinavia as baseball is to the US. It’s a national pastime. Stockholm is design centric any time of year, but it was really going off for the furniture fair. It’s a small show relative to ICFF, but everything is good, or if not good then at least interesting.
The first night (after a nice plate of pickled herring, Swedish meatballs, and some kind of beet) we stopped by the DFTS party, where they were launching ‘the last ashtray’ by Richard Hutton. His idea was to design a beautiful ashtray to be used for his last cigarette. Then, it can be used for something else. Holding eggs looks possible.
The next day we hit up the furniture fair. So much good stuff.
Spun chair by Thomas Heatherwick for Magis
Not new but I love it – Donuts by Dirk Wynants for Extremis
Waver by Konsatntin Grcic for Vitra.
Anyone remember the move “the peanut butter solution’ ?
A little more pickled herring, and we headed over to the Form Us With Love party. It was on a small island, with candles leading the way to the exhibition space. It was for sure the event with the most excitement and energy. These guys are taking over.
Next stop on the trip was Copenhagen, where I saw so many good bikes.
Check out this stamped metal kids seat.
Two memorable swanky bars in Copenhagen – Ruby was an American Speakeasy / Prohibition type bar, with some seriously gnarly bar tenders. They make high craft cocktails. Have you ever had a drink that tastes like a campfire but still tastes good? They also had a jazz version of the US national anthem playing at one point.
Along the same lines but not as hip, although probably more authentic, was the Library Bar in the Copenhagen Plaza Hotel.
The end.
Rose Park Roasters
My friend Andrew is roasting coffee in Long Beach under the name Rose Park Roasters. It’s all roasted to order, and delivered by bicycle to your door (if you live in Long Beach). You can get a subscription, leave him to his own devices every week and get something new, or you can place a specific order. I’ve been geeking out over espresso and coffee for years, and the Rose Park coffee is good as it gets.
Plus you get to see this guy sneaking around your front porch once a week.
Canvas Shop
My buddy Ryan Callis runs the new Canvas Shop in Seal Beach. I’ve known Ryan since high school and he’s a great artist, and all around swell guy. The Canvas Shop is a real Canvas Shop, where he and his wife make boat covers and other custom canvas things. I dropped in on him last night to check it out. The front of the store is retail where they sell books, CDs, clothing, surfboards, and whatnots from local makers. They are presenting a screening of the movie “come hell or high water” on Jan 28th. Ray Barbee will be there playing music as well. It’s going to be a good one!
Day Trippin
I took a quick trip to San Francisco on Thursday, which included meeting up with Dan Nguyen-Tan of PUBLIC bikes. I met Dan in LA a several months back and stopped in on his storefront in the South Park neighborhood. He kindly lent me his own bike for the afternoon, which I rode down past Mission Bay and into a gigantic industrial ghost town. The bike was amazing, and surprisingly efficient for a european style commuter bike.
I had no idea that there were miles of abandoned warehouse and industrial buildings just south of the city, in the most expensive real estate market in the country. I’m not exactly sure what the heck is going on down there. I think it might be a front for an underground military complex, or a plan to make a gigantic, year round Knotts Scary Farm.
Dustin used to live in SF and he tipped me off to Blue Bottle Coffee. They are set up in an alley in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. Their specialty is pour over coffee, and it was a good coffee.
Sturdy, Plebeian, Full of Body…. great ways to describe coffee that I stole from O Lucky Man…. Wait a sec here. I actually found the clip from O Lucky Man on Youtube.
Ahura on Beavis and Butthead
I designed the Ahura First Defender back when I worked with the good people of Altitude in Boston. Somehow the product ended up on Beavis and Butthead, which ties my teenage and professional life together quite nicely.
Here is a link to the episode. The device appears around 5:27. By the way, the title of the episode “Dumb Design” is a jab at Intelligent Design, and has nothing to do with the Industrial Design…. at least that’s what I’m saying.
