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N 59° 19’ 54.03” E 018° 03’ 50.23”

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20 // 12

P H OT OG RA P H Y

MAGDALENA WOSINSKA DROP CITY CONTRIBUTOR for more photos visit: www.magdalenawosinska.com

// News

COMUNE / Drop City Gallery Opening October 2012 LA Arts District thecomune.com/drop-city

// Function

COMUNE was created by people who embrace the rawness and imperfections of everyday life and use it to creatively push the boundaries in fashion through art, music, skate, and snow.

// Purpose

OUR GOAL is to provide clothing that reflects a lifestyle of carefree idealism and to support the people that choose to live it.

DROP CITY

// SOMETHING BETTER CHANGE

1300 FACTORY PLACE

LOS ANGELES

90013

// Model Kerry Krogstad Greg Bolyard

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// INFO@THECOMUNE.COM

// THE-CHANGE.TUMBLR.COM

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CANVAS CREW creative director + publisher DANTE COLOMBATTI

editor-in-chief REBECA ARANGO

art director

ERIN DENNISON

design

RACHEL MANY DAVID SALAZAR

internet

ROSS GARDINER

photography CAPTAIN EMILY BRADLEY RACHEL MANY CONAN THAI ASHLEY BARRETT TAYLOR DUNFEE HAILLEY HOWARD

art editor

SHANA NYS DAMBROT

account managers MATT OLSON JANESSA MOLINA

illustrations

ERIN DENNISON

event coordinators JANESSA MOLINA MAX EHRLICH KYLE GIANGRANDE

+crew

MEGAN ADAMS COLE WESTERHOLM BECKY YOUNG RONALD PRE OLIVER

Gather ye brethren around an open flame at Ace Hotel & Swim Club and share the heat. Book with friends & get upgraded to a Patio Room. Cook there, and eat there -- or by the pool. Pitchers of icy cocktails and buckets of craft beer are available, too. ACEHOTEL.COM/BBQ

AC E HOTEL

& SWIM CL UB PALM SPRINGS

1778 N. MAIN ST. LOS ANGELES, CA 90031 P:(323) 352-3250 E:PR@LACANVAS.COM LACANVAS.COM Copyright 2012, by LA CANVAS. All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from LA CANVAS. LA CANVAS makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information it publishes, but is not responsible for unsolicited or contributed manuscripts, photographs, artwork or advertisements. LA CANVAS is not held responsible for any consequences arising from errors or omissions.

Delphin Boot

the

No time for laces.

â&#x201E;˘

available at Footland Sports

CONTENTS MUSIC band SUPERHUMANOIDS

playlist CHANGE CLOTHES AND GO

venue SOFAR SOUNDS

ART LA STREET ART

artist KIMBERLY BROOKS

ART EVENTS

gallery MERRY KARNOWSKY

book PLEATS PLEASE

STYLE coveted

editorial DUSK TILL DAWN

editorial HIGH STREET

editorial LADY LUCK

editorial LATCHKEY KID

designer NAVEN

ones to watch

#TRENDING

FOOD chef CRAIG THORNTON

food scoops FOOD FOR SHOP

restaurant DUPLEX

bar THE PARISH

drink SPICY 50

LA CULTURE NOTED

the guide WEST 3RD STREET

calendar SEPTEMBER

calendar OCTOBER

story BUCCANEER DAYS

story THAT BLACK JUMPSUIT

continued

last look DESIRE OBTAIN CHERISH

104

KILLCITY.NET

PHOTO DIRK MAI - DIRKMAI.COM

7266 MELROSE AVE LOS ANGELES CA 90046

CONTRIBUTORS

TAYLOR DUNFEE

RAUL GUERRERO

STEVE YATSKO

Photographer, Scale it Back, p. 20

Stylist, High Street, p. 48

Photographer, Latchkey Kid, p. 62

“I Love: Art. The Ocean. Photography. Whiskey. Surfing. Orange County native Raul Guerrero (Stylist & Fashion- Steven Yatsko is a Los Angeles based American director and Motorcycles. Women. Trees. Birds in Trees. Birds Flying. Do-It-All) gained interest in the fantasy revolving around screenwriter. His multiform focus includes narrative films, Mary Jane. American Spirits (Yellow). Whiskey. Bicycles. clothes after exploring photography. The yearning to subject portraiture, and photography. Exercising romanticist Sand in My Toes. Positivity. Creativity. Honesty. Eye Contact. emancipate his ideas might just be the result of growing and academic virtues in form and ideals, he places characters Family. Friends. Stories. Love Everyday, Love Everything. under a conservative roof. Currently based in New in a position to reflect on their intrinsic relation with their ‘Merica”

York, Raul hasn’t neglected his home state, where he environment and personal search for purpose. His portrait still continues to work. After all, his “High Street” direction and fashion photography relies on classicism independent of for LA CANVAS commenced with the exposure of street stylistic extravagance, while still maintaining a firm control of wear labels in Southern California. Since the modern detail and mood. This attention allows for crafting uncontrived industry’s primary concern is to express individuality performances from talent, both in motion and still work. His (specially in menswear), the shift to avoid conformity is works intimately explore themes of identity, beauty, and esoteric part of Raul’s manifesto.

stevenyatsko.com

tsdphoto.com instagram: @tsdivision

philosophies commonly structured around a female figure.

raulguerrero.net

instagram: @stevenyatsko

DAN JOHNSON

CONAN THAI

ROSS GARDINER

Writer, Buccaneer Days, p. 90

Photographer, High Street, p. 48

Writer, That Black Jumpsuit, p. 98

Dan Johnson is a screenwriter and creative strategist Conan Thai is a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Born and raised in the Highlands of Scotland, Ross has living in strange and beautiful Downtown. When he’s He graduated from the University of California, Irvine been moving around the world for a number of years. After not chronicling the bevy of pirate festivals in greater with a BFA in studio arts. Growing up, he lived in books, an overdrawn stint in Korea, a colorful spell in India, and a Los Angeles, Dan works on a variety of film projects, played with matches, and dug holes in the backyard degenerative period in Nepal, he began what will inevitably operates a creative consulting firm, runs the Evolve garden. He’s fascinated with decay, identity, relational be a squandered lifetime in the bowels of Los Angeles, strugSticker blog and writes the listings for the LA Downtown aesthetics, film theory, narrative structure, and situational gling to be creative for money. His fiction writing has been News. He’s never too busy for your paltry criticism ‘aha’ moments, when the senses clear and the fog lifts.

published in newspapers and magazines across the world,

though. His latest film Stalking Dixie is due out in October.

and he has been working with LA Canvas since May 2012.

evolvesticker.tumblr.com

conanthai.com

rossgardinersblog.wordpress.com

@evolvesticker

@Conan_Thai

@RossGardinerMan

FROM THE DESK OF REBECA ARANGO editor-in-chief Do I need to explain the significance of Gucci handcuffs? Probably not, but let’s go for it anyway. The cuffs were created by Desire Obtain Cherish for our first ever sculptural, photography-based cover. In retrospect, I don’t think we could have chosen a more appropriate street artist to open our September/October fashion issue. In and-of-itself, the anti-mantra “Desire Obtain Cherish” embodies the cyclical rhythms of American acquisition culture. And perhaps the purest form of that culture is the one perpetuated by the fashion industry.

Remember, this is an industry built to arouse deep-seeded lust by ascribing

fantastical, intangible meaning to unnecessary objects—only to destroy that meaning shortly thereafter and re-invent it again later. Getting caught in this cycle is—as neatly represented by the Gucci cuffs—akin to becoming enslaved by fashion. Though independent, LA CANVAS is a magazine with a style section and paid advertisements, making it, admittedly, part of that cycle. To further complicate things, this magazine initially gained popularity in and entrance to that cycle by being the first local publication to showcase LA street art. While street art—and particularly the art of Desire Obtain Cherish—echoes pop art with its recurrent subversion of branding and popular/consumer culture, it has achieved mainstream success at a time where branding awareness and acceptance is at an all time high. Most people (especially Gen Y kids like me) no longer suffer instinctual disgust at the sight of product placement or sponsorship—anything goes in 2012. Moreover, branding is no longer just about, why coca-cola is more meaningful than RC; it’s something to consider as you craft on-message tweets from your personal account and edit the light curves on your Facebook cover photo. Meanwhile, street art has risen not only parallel to this branding frenzy but strangely in cahoots with it. The success of a street artist depends on creating brand awareness by ensuring the message is “sticky.” Over the past couple of years, we’ve watched street artists graduate from offering aesthetically powerful cultural criticism to commodifying their ideas and personas (subversive or otherwise) into merchandise. Often, into fashion. (This is not unlike what happened to rock-androll. Gene Simmons knows what I’m talking about.) Hey—we’ve all gotta eat. And in the post-digital world, art and commerce are more tangled than ever. But it’ll all straighten itself out eventually, one way or another. Spoiler Alert: (MUTE YOUR TELEVISION!) this issue ends on an apocalyptic note. Skip straight to page 104 to hear it from the mouth of Desire Obtain Cherish himself.

NOTED COLL ECT ‘EM A LL

L I S T E N U P: R-M E A N

Looks like art collecting is no longer just for the Gordon Gekkos of the world. Nowadays, there are

Armenia is a small country of fewer than four million

plenty of young artists out there producing striking and thoughtful work that’s affordable—but they’re

people sitting in the south caucus region of Asia and

not always easy to find. Enter artist Chelsea Neman and art historian Jordan Klein, two Los Angeles

landlocked between Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and

natives who met at the University of Michigan not long ago. After watching talented friends struggle to

Iran. You should know this because Los Angeles is in

get their work shown and sold, they came up with the idea for Tappan Collective, an online platform

fact home to one of the largest Armenian immigrant

connecting aspiring art collectors with up-and-coming artists. Neman and Klein have recruited some of

enclaves in the world. Celebrities Serj Tankian and

the country’s best emerging artists, producing high-quality, limited edition prints of their photographs,

Kim Kardashian (who both grew up in Los Angeles)

paintings and drawings. The pieces are easily accessible on thetappancollective.com, framed and

have each made a powerful impact on their respective

unframed and ranging from $30-$800. Rest assured—almost anything will look great next to your Slim

fields of alternative music and reality television,

Shady poster from 2000.

introducing disparate and unique takes on Armenian

THETAPPANCOLLECTIVE.COM

identity into American pop culture. And now, with lyrical prowess and melodious flow, Los Angeles-born, overtly-Armenian rapper R-Mean is bringing word of his mountainous ancestral republic to one of our biggest cultural expressions of all: hip-hop. This Fall R-Mean is dropping his most ambitious album to date, 7 Deadly Sins, on Pentagon Records; and the autobiographical first single “Lost Angels” features none-other than multi-platinum artist The Game. A sleek, raw black and white video helps take us inside R-Mean’s version of Los Angeles, from Downtown to Little Armenia and back. YOUTUBE.COM/RMEAN

N O T J U S T A N O T H E R PI Z Z A J O I N T

At this point pizza places are a dime a dozen, which is why we’re stoked on Soleto—a new Italian spot in Downtown LA serving up a lot more than pies. Located by FIDM on 8th and Figueroa, Soleto’s lofty brick interior and gorgeous outdoor patio is currently open for lunch, dinner and—get excited—happy hour. This four-hour window of absolutely gleeful prices runs from 3-7pm and should serve as motivation enough to overachieve at work and bust out early. We’re talking $4 appetizers like crispy polenta with truffle cream sauce and $3 glasses of signature Sangria, beer, and Soleto’s house-made ‘cello liquers. If afternoon drinks roll into dinner, there could be a very reasonably priced plate of pumpkin ravioli or skirt steak with truffle fries in your future. And be sure to cap the night off with a “Godfather,” aka the most badass whiskey, Amaretto and ginger cocktail you’ll ever drink. G’s up. INNOVATIVEDINING.COM/RESTAURANTS/SOLETO 801 S. FIGUEROA ST., LOS ANGELES, CA 90017

PAY I T F O RWA R D

The Giving Keys began as a jewelr y project, but when founder Caitlin Crosby decided to become business par tners with a homeless couple she met in Holly wood, itevolved into a community with a purpose. It works like this: you pick a chain, a message, and for $ 35, you get a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelr y. But eventually, you give it away to someone who needs the message more than you do. TheGivingKeys.com is loaded with stories about people paying it for ward by giving away their keys, just as founder Caitlin Crosby pays it for ward by employing the homeless. THEGIVINGKEYS.COM

L I S T E N U P: A N A L O G U E M O N S TA

L I S T E N U P: PR OX I M A L R E C O R D S Women, weed and weather—sure, but Los Angeles has also been famous for its underground hip-hop scene for a minute now. And from the looks of it, the city’s formidable output of progressive beats isn’t slowing down anytime soon. So let’s put away our Drake CDs, because Proximal Records has made it real easy to keep up. Over the past year or so, label founders Sahy Uhns and Jeff Elmassian have been compiling the best in underground electro-hop for their “Beat Stew” series. Featuring emerging artists alongside established heavy-hitters, these chilled-out mixes are slick, stylish and much stranger than anything you’ll hear on mainstream radio. Did we mention they’re free? PROXIMALRECORDS.COM

Separately, LA DJ TOKiMONSTA and Philly songstress Suzi Analogue are both known for their eclectic, experimental beats. Together, they make trippy R&Binflected electro-hop under the hybrid moniker Analogue Monsta, fusing their aesthetics into a sound that’s as catchy as it is bizarre. This past summer, the duo released their debut full-length album as a free download through Scion AV. Boom is eleven tracks of deep, churning textural soundscapes sometimes accompanied by Suzi’s super slinky vocal lines and often littered with freaky synth blips and frantic percussive bursts. In a word: dope. ANALOGUEMONSTA.COM

T O M T O M C LU B The Irish pub officially known as Tom Bergin’s Old Thoroughbred and Horseshoe Club first opened on Fairfax in 1948. In Los Angeles years, that’s beyond classic. So when restaurateurs Warren Ebbink and Chef Brandon Boudet of Dominick’s and Little Dom’s took over the historic space this year, they cleverly kept it intact, restoring all the original charm while simply re-imagining the traditional pub and steakhouse fare. The new menu has gourmet spins on dishes like fish and chips, corned beef, and cottage mashed-potato pie; cocktails that lend modern sophistication to classics like Irish Coffee; and an expert Pastry Chef making pretzels, soda bread, and sweets like Guinness stout cake and apple bread pudding. Apparently, the Irish bartender claims the food is even better than his mom’s home cooking. Obviously we can’t verify that statement, but damn is that soda bread delicious. TOMBERGINS.COM 840 S. FAIRFAX AVE, LOS ANGELES, CA 90036

DOT COM LA’S BEST ART, MUSIC, FOOD, STYLE AND EVENT SOURCE

IS THE INTERNET STILL COOL YOU GUYS? OR SHOULD WE THROW OUT OUR SMART PHONES AND GET BEEPERS? Unless you’re a real artist or a malnourished UK immigrant (it’s funny ‘cause we have one) you probably own a smart phone. And unless you’re my dad, you probably know how to work Google Chrome. Luckily for you, our internet thugs are sending out a constant stream of digital strangeness and joy, conveniently broadcasted straight from the LAC clubhouse to your nearest Wi-Fi receptor or 4G device (if that’s even a real thing). For more LA-centric reading material, visit LACANVAS.com. You can peep our e-issue for extended interviews, photo-shoots and extra stories, plus we’re always posting local artist profiles, reviews, and random funny stuff on the LA CANVAS blog. Tired of drinking beers in your backyard? Our calendar has an up-to-date list of things to do. We post all the best events (the ones we’d actually want to go to), including special dinner deals, gallery openings, parties, concerts and miscellaneous (usually the most exciting category). If you’re browser-phobic and prefer information that’s neatly sorted as an E-MAIL, we’ve got those too. Every Thursday, the LA CANVAS WEEKLY rounds up our Editors’ top seven events of the week and favorite three blog posts and drops it right in your inbox. Talking to you guys via twitter and facebook is great and all, but all we really want is see you in the flesh at one of our parties. Subscribe to our social media outlets or sign up for THE WEEKLY to make sure you get the memo. Help us help you.

PROFESSIONAL

“

FOCUS WAS A VERY IMPORTANT THING FOR US ON THIS ALBUM. FOCUS—AND SIMPLICITY.

”

SCALE

BACK

LA POP BAND SUPERHUMANOIDS FOCUS THEIR SOUND, TURNING OUT TUNES FIT FOR

SESSIONS

BETWEEN

THE

SHEETS

text REBECA ARANGO photo TAYLOR DUNFEE

“I can’t think of an activity I’d want people to be engaged in while

Max, Cam and Sarah affirm that they do enjoy listening to D’Angelo,

listening to our album more, than having sex,” says Max St. John.

and report that—maybe—they were all just, “feeling kind of sexy.”

I’m talking to LA band Superhumanoids about their upcoming LP

It’s not like they’re trying to be international sex symbols. As people

Exhibitionists, from which two singles have recently emerged. Much

and performers, they maintain an understated presence and low-

to the dismay of many a clean undergarment, polling indicates “Geri”

key temperament. But we’re not talking about altogether traditional

and “Too Young for Love” have listeners feeling: a little turned on.

paradigms of pop sexuality here. This music has neither the funky womp of “Let’s Get it On” nor the in-your-face sweat-drip of “I’m A

As the band’s resident low-end specialist, Max St. John is pleased

Slave 4 U.” It is nowhere near as aggressively suggestive as Elvis’s

to take some responsibility for that. The bassist/keyboardist has

gyrating groin. It does not, in short, have moves like Jagger.

managed to coax a slick, wicked sensuality out of a synthesizer, teasing a primal vibration from a digital machine. It’s this beast of

Superhumanoids have made no calculated attempt to fill any of

a bassline that holds down the slow-churningverses on “Too Young

those shoes. Despite otherworldly sonic habits and a space-age band

For Love” before erupting into a totally satisfying synth-scape swirled

name, lyrically, they are above all concerned with relating human

with layers of singer/keyboardist Sarah Chernoff’s girlish swoon.

experiences based on situations from their everyday lives here on

Maybe it’s safe to say the era of asexual, bespectacled indie-rock

earth. And it just so happens that in doing so, they’ve become

and its only slightly groovier little cousin—hi-hat-driven, quick-

comfortable with this mostly accurate statement: “Everybody likes

clipped hipster dance music (the kind that started and ended with

having sex.”

LCD Soundsystem)—is over.

their primary aesthetic ambition.

The name Superhumanoids can be traced back to a few bedroom

So what was? “Focus was a very important thing for us on this album.

recordings singer/guitarist Cameron Parkins began making in 2007. Sarah

Focus—and simplicity.” Sara explains. With age and experience,

and Max joined almost immediately thereafter, though the band only got

the band has gained an appreciation for the art of subtlety and

serious following the 2010 release of Urgency. The self-produced, five-

restraint. They’ve refined their sound with studio precision and hi-

song EP set a sleepy pace, laying the foundations for a big, blurry world

fi mixing, but it was also a matter of meticulous arrangement and

where lo-fi loops and guitar licks dance quickly as melodies spill-over in

careful writing. “We were really concerned with just making good

slow motion. Two official releases and dozens of Soundcloud posts later,

pop music,” explains Cam, “and not shying away from what makes

they had a solid collection of tracks outlining a spaced-out pop sound. It

pop so great, which is simplicity, repetition, focus and structure, and

was all very dreamy. But until recently, it wasn’t particularly sexy.

having songs that are really neatly packaged.”

As far as make-out sessions are concerned, Exhibitionists would

Whoa whoa whoa—did he just say, “packaged”? Scary, I know.

make an entirely appropriate soundtrack. Primal bass-buzz—

Commercial pop gets a bad rap; like the manufactured fragrance

check; but there’s also the juxtaposition of Cam’s molasses-thick

in a McDonald’s fry (admittedly, delicious) it’s designed to hit you

baritone against Sarah’s slight, soaring soprano. While said contrast

over the head with sugar and satisfaction until you’re hooked.

has always been part of the band’s sound, mixing on Exhibitionists

Fortunately, like all the best Super Humans, Superhumanoids use

has altered its weight, bringing the vocals up front so what

their powers for good, not evil. “It’s not like we’re making pop music

previously echoed angelic now reads like an intimate whisper. Most

in the genre of what’s currently popular. If we did that, we’d be

importantly, the groove has been redefined. The beat falls deep and

screwing ourselves because it’s so hard to keep up. Pop is more of

heavy in all the right spots, moving at the speed of a last call slow-

an approach, making music that can resonate with people, that they

dance rather than a late night valium-trip.

can understand,” says Cam.

Though making music for making babies was never

CONTINUED ON PAGE 98

ON CAM Original Penguin White Button-up & Raven Denim ON MAX Comune Shirt & Raven Denim ON SARAH Dex Splatter Top HAIR Cam via Salon Barras MAKE-UP Barbara Yniguez STYLING LA Style House

CHANGE CLOTHES AND GO A l G o r e inv en te d th e In te r n e t and global war ming, s o h e r e’s y our Indian summe r play lis t ( y ou w ouldn’t pir ate a c ar— w ould y ou?). I t ’s n o t e x ac tl y p e r f e c t h o o die w e ath e r y e t , s o w e’ll k e ep our k ni t s p o r ous and our S a z e r ac o n th e r o ck s . Hip - h op and fashio n go toge th e r lik e Sigur Ro s and naps — did y ou r e all y think w e w e r e go nna gi v e y ou Ru Paul, “ Sup e r mo del”? Sh ou t s to V irgo and L ibr a babie s .

“Bonnie and Clyde” Jay-Z

“Peso” A$AP Rocky

“Mr. Me Too” Clipse ft. Pharell

“Killin’ Em” Fabolous

“No Matter What They Say” Lil Kim

“Barry Bonds” Kanye West & Lil Wayne

“Fashion Party” Das Racist

“Come Real” Drake

“Bad Girl” Rihanna

“N**gas in Paris” Kanye West & Jay-Z

“Burry me in Guccis” Max B, Jim Jones, & Stack Bundles

“Comedy Central” Cam’ron

SONGS FROM A ROOM GLOBAL MUSIC DISCOVERY CLUB SOFAR SOUNDS ARRIVES IN LOS ANGELES text REBECA ARANGO photo RACHEL MANY

“Why would people pay money to see a show, and

the secret line-up, which included local alt-pop band

then drink, text and talk throughout?” Londoner

Chasing Kings, Georgia singer-songwriter Tyler Lyle,

Rafe Of fer wondered this one night at a Friendly

and OC folk-rockers York. The small studio apartment

Fires show. The band was amazing, and yet for

was quietly buzzing with bodies and anticipation. (You

some reason the audience was distracted. To resolve

couldn’t swing a cat in there without hitting a new

this dilemma, Rafe and his friend Dave decided to

friend!) While standing next to the stage-slash-kitchen,

challenge apathy and launch a global live music

we bumped into our hosts for the evening, Rocco and

movement. No big deal.

his little dog, Roxy, who was a bit overwhelmed by the influx of strangers. Around 8:30 pm, York finally took the

Sofar Sounds star ted in 20 0 9 with eight friends and

stage, and suddenly we found ourselves cross-legged

four songs in Dave’s London apar tment. Today, it ’s

on the floor listening to an MC tell us to be quiet and

an international net work of volunteers who produce

silence our cell phones. A lot of people instagramed,

intimate pop-up concer ts in seventeen cities around

but one dude in the front kept it real with a watercolor

the world, including Los Angeles. It works like this:

set. Mostly, everyone just sat still and paid attention all

first, you sign up for a newslet ter on sofarsounds.

night like entranced kindergarteners at a puppet show.

com. Eventually, you’ll receive an e-mail with a time

Even Roxy couldn’t keep her eyes off the music.

and a date. The local Sofar team then selects sixt y to eight y people from hundreds of RSVPs to watch a

Maybe it’s just the allure of secrecy, intimacy and

surprise line-up of musicians per form in someone’s

exclusivity, but Rafe and Dave have found a way to get

home. All of the per formances are then recorded,

people excited about live music again. By connecting

filmed, and streamed on the Sofar website.

local music scenes around the world, they’ve become tastemakers for a post-digital global community. While

This past August, the LAC team managed to gain

conquering apathy is no small feat, that’s not even the

entry to a Sofar gig in the Arts District. We rolled up to

craziest part. “We’ve done 159 gigs around the world

Hewitt Street around 7:45 pm, cold beer in hand, and

and to date, we’ve had no accidents, no bad behavior,

followed a series of clues up to one of those new-fangled

and nothing stolen—it’s incredible really. Music fans

renovated lofts. Inside, a hand-scribbled poster divulged

are lovely people.” Group hug, anyone?

S O FA R S O U N D S .C O M

STREET ART :

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: MR. RAMANO CYRCLE. SEPTERHED UNKNOWN ANNIE PREECE

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: UNKNOWN WIL ABCNT EDUARDO KOBRA AJL

photos EMILY BRADLEY SPONSORED BY:

U n

E L

On the day of our studio visit painter Kimberly Brooks was just back from Paris and eager to show off a stash of vintage fashion drawings she had unearthed there—the kind with cascading heaps of tailored pink satin and elaborate salon interiors in the background. Also, she was about to host a cocktail party to unveil a just-completed wedding portrait of a friend—a ceremonial monument to youth and surreal beauty in which the bride’s voluminous red dress takes up all the room and tells the story of the picture. Although rendered with a crisp Asian-inflected symmetry, it was also reminiscent of those old Renaissance pictures of nobility where the richly made clothes were overtly the focal point of the portrait, even more so than the sitter’s face sometimes. Garments have functioned as indicators of social and/or economic status in fine art just like in real life since long before the modern era of the glossy magazine-fueled, label-obsessed lifestyle. And visual art and fashion can be described using a lot of the same words: pattern, movement, volume, structure, texture, palette, story. But in the art of Kimberly Brooks, fashion is a whole language unto itself, in which garments are occasions not only for encoding meaning into stories, but also for executing some really rough and tumble, melodramatic, and increasingly abstract painting. “It’s a way for me to crawl into abstraction that hasn’t been done in art, not the way it could be.”

HOW PAINTER KIMBERLY BROOKS RIPS FASHION APART text SHANA NYS DAMBROT photos RACHEL MANY

efore her post-graduate art studies at UCLA and Otis, she’d been an English major at UC Berkeley, so it makes sense that she’d be interested in the narrative

potential of fashion as a visual language. For the record, she never actually wanted to be a fashion designer, but through grad school and beyond, her personal love of fashion has endured. “I secretly paint people I see at cocktail parties!” Attending a talk hosted by the LACMA Costume Council on Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel’s influence on Henri Matisse’s Post-Impressionist paintings, Brooks was blown away by the fabulous aging couture-creatures in the audience. Those women became the instant inspiration for “The Stylist Project”—her first solo show with Culver City’s Taylor de Cordoba Gallery, in which famous professional stylists like Grace Coddington (Vogue), Janie Bryant (Mad Men), and Arianne Phillips (Madonna) were asked to dress themselves so Brooks could paint their portraits. “Stylists help people interpret themselves for the public; I was asking them to instead use all their powers to express who they themselves were, for me.” The paintings in the first iteration of “The Stylist Project” (a new series of her subjects’ NYC counterparts is currently underway) were provocative and haunting, and often featured great swaths of finely detailed fabrics and riotous color. There was a lot of emotion and intimacy, as Brooks remained conscious of her role as portraitist even as she willfully began to unravel the perfection of the staged scenes with loose brush strokes, awkward perspectives, and broken poses, all in the service of exploring the overlap between fashion and modern art. By her second show with Taylor de Cordoba, “Thread,” her paintings had gotten weirder and more broken down than ever. The runway-ready theatricality and intensive detailing of earlier work was becoming increasingly loose and unraveled so to speak—like someone who can paint well but has chosen not to. Those paintings were smaller, emptier, and darker, featuring barely resolved figures, architecture, and clothing. And she says her next show in 2013 will be her most abstract yet. “The most exciting place for me is in between abstraction and figuration. And is it just me or are more women painters moving toward the abstract?” There’s some truth to what she says, as the current moment in painting isn’t really about either—it’s about a fusion of the two. And what Brooks is up to with the way she deploys her disparate ideas about fashion, deconstructing it to be reassembled in a new way, is right on trend.

“

TH E MOST E XCI T I NG PL ACE F OR ME I S I N BE T WE E N AB STR ACT I O N AN D F I GU R AT I O N. AN D I S I T J UST ME OR ARE MORE WOME N PAI NTE RS MOVI NG TOWARD TH E AB STR ACT?

”

“ANNA WINTOUR ON DAVID LETTERMAN” 12” X 16” OIL ON LINEN

F I N D O U T MO RE ABO U T B ROO KS AT K I M B E RLYB ROO KS.COM & TAYLO RD E CO RD O BA .COM

GALLERY OPENINGS JAIME SCHOLNICK: ARTIFACTS CB1 Gallery September 5 - October 7, 2012 Opening: Sunday, September 9, 5 - 7pm Scholnick transforms styrofoam packaging into sculptural talismans of the modern era with the help of paint, marker, glue, a sense of humor and maybe a little OCD. Discarded, oddly-contoured technology packing material is both the artist’s medium and source of inspiration in creating a dialogue about consumerism, permanent waste, and the transformative power of art. cb1gallery.com RERO: IMAGE NOT AVAILABLE Fabien Castanier Gallery September 8 - October 7, 2012 Opening: Saturday, September 8, 7-10pm French-born, London-educated artist Rero is having his first solo show in the US, thanks to the efforts of Fabien Castanier to present Street Art as the truly international scene it is. Rero is interested in how the past and the future collide in daily urban life, combining a raw painting style and “fossils” of the past like abandoned buildings and fancy books with slick, text-based ironic commentary. castaniergallery.com

THE MIRACLE MILE ART WALK GALLERY & STUDIO TOUR SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2012 2-10PM

JENNY HOLZER: THE FUTURE PLEASE L&M Arts September 13 - October 27, 2012 Opening: Thursday, September 13, 6-8pm Jenny Holzer is one of the most iconic artists to have emerged from the fertile art period of the 1980’s. Her hilarious, biting, funny-becauseit’s-true “Truisms” cried out from crawling LED-lit signs and the t-shirts of museum-store hipsters everywhere (Money Creates Taste, Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise, etc). This show of her new work at L&M’s gorgeous Venice space is one of the most anticipated of the season. lmgallery.com

A FREE, SELF-GUIDED TOUR FEATURING MORE THAN 50 GALLERIES, STUDIOS, MUSEUMS AND PUBLIC ART INSTALLATIONS IN MID CITY L.A MIRACLEMILEARTWALKGALLERYTOUR.BLOGSPOT.COM TWITTER @MIRACLEMILEAW

RETNA Michael Kohn Gallery September 15 - October 27, 2012 Opening: Saturday, September 15, 6-8pm Local rock star –er, I mean artist—RETNA has been increasingly working larger on the outside and more prolifically on the inside, pursuing a global tour of alternative spaces, making a splash at the big MOCA show and all the best art fairs. Now he checks in at home with a new show featuring his trademark combination of old-world and Eastern calligraphy, Modernist abstraction, and panache. kohngallery.com

A PROGRAM OF PIERCY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION. SPONSORED IN PART BY:

Bleicher Gallery

PHOTOGRAPHY SCULPTURE FIGURE M+B Art September 15 - October 27, 2012 Opening: Saturday, September 15, 6 - 8pm “Photography, Sculpture, Figure” presents the work of Daphne Fitzpatrick, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, K8 Hardy, Mariah Robertson, and Sara Vanderbeek—five New York artists all working in photography and sometimes in sculpture. These five artists also, but not always, address the figure in their work in differing combinations of movement, the body, identity and performance. mbart.com

Pa s

11am - 5 pm

Colorado & El Molino, Pasadena THE PA SA D E NA A RTWalk F E ATURE S :

JURIED ART SHOW & SALE • • • • •

Art Chats Entertainment Free Museum Admission Gallery Walk Hands-on activities

Pasadena ARTWalk is

free and open to the public.

www.playhousedistrict.org/a r twalk 626.744.0340

GET MORE OF L.A.’S BEST OPENINGS AT LACANVAS.COM

October 13, 2012

JASON SHAWN ALEXANDER 101/exhibit October 13 - November 26, 2012 Opening: Saturday, October 13, 6:30-10pm Miami’s 101/exhibit is launching its first LA operation with a solo show for local painter Jason Shawn Alexander. Presenting new large scale works alongside graphics and illustration-based pieces—including the latest Batman pages that already have people going nuts—the gallery celebrates both their favorite LA artist and their new LA home with this moving, powerful portraiture. 101exhibit.com

Saturday,

ad e

MARK WHALEN & MEL KADEL Merry Karnowsky Gallery October 13 - November 10, 2012 Opening: Saturday, October 13, 8-11pm Mark Whalen (aka Kill Pixie) and Mel Kadel exhibit their complementary painting skills and taste for random adventure in concurrent solo shows. Kadel has hinted at an installation based on an amusement park her grandparents operated, while Whalen is expanding his retro-futurist, science-based mythologies and has also threatened holograms and laser beams. mkgallery.com

W RT 7 A

CHRIS BURDEN: SMALL SKYSCRAPER One Colorado Courtyard August 11 - November 11, 2012 Reception: October 12, 6-10pm Small Skyscraper is a sculpture as well as a prototype for a hypothetical dwelling. Described by Burden as “a modern-day log cabin,” Small Skyscraper represents a quasi-legal structure that exploits a loophole Burden discovered in Los Angeles County’s building codes that once allowed small buildings, like greenhouses and sheds, to be built without a permit. Already installed in Pasadena, the reception takes place during October’s ArtNight festival. armoryarts.org

Celebrating Our 10th Anniversary Season

WORLD PREMIERE

L.A. DANCE PROJECT Lead Sponsor CENTER DANCE ARTS

September 22-23, 2012 WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

CLASSIC REDEFINED

Photo by Benjamin Millepied.

The Music Center commission includes works by dance legends William Forsythe and Merce Cunningham and a World Premiere by Benjamin Millepied, in collaboration with composer Nico Muhly, artist Christopher Wool and designers Rodarte.

TICKETS START AT $28!

musiccenter.org (213) 972-0711

2012|13 SEASON Celebrate timeless pieces and ground-breaking works, featuring the U.S. Debut

of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the 100th anniversary of dance’s most inﬂuential work, The Rite of Spring with The Joﬀrey Ballet and the visionary Alvin Ailey® American Dance Theater.

“★★★★★! Sexy, savvy and uproarious!” —David Cote, Time Out New York

Jeff Goldblum. photo by brian higbee.

Ahmanson Theatre Oct 10 – Nov 18

Pick your exact seats online!

CenterTheatreGroup.org/Seminar 213.972.4400 season sponsors

QUIXOTIC SEASON MERRY KARNOWSKY CELEBRATES 15 YEARS OF CLASSIC STYLE AND DARK ROMANCE ON THE MIRACLE MILE text SHANA NYS DAMBROT artwork LEZLEY SAAR

Just how exactly does an English Lit and Intercultural

but ner vous ab out the f inancial commitment. Jan

Relations majo r t r ans fo rm her s el f into one of the

just smiled at me and said, ‘ Well, my dear, you just

m o s t p e r s o n all y s t y li sh an d p o p ul ar l y in f lu e n t i al

have to tr y ! ’ It w as that simple. I no w o c cupy the

ar t de aler s in L A , largely re sp onsible for bringing

ground floor space Jan was in for 30 years. It really

post-illustration darlings like Shepard Fairey, Todd

feels like passing the torch between women gallerists

Schorr, Camille Rose Garcia, and Kent Williams into

working at dif ferent time s in his tor y. I c an hardly

the fine-ar t mainstream over the past t wo decades?

b elieve my f ir st show was 15 ye ar s ago now — and

“I’ve always been at tracted to outsiders and others.

w hen I lo ok b ack, I fe el as though I grew up w ith

I like work that looks a cer t ain way on the sur face

a lot of the ar tists I st ar ted with. In some ways we

but is more subst antive underne ath, that plays on

were a c at aly s t for groundbre aking change in the

assumptions and bites back, of ten with underlying

L A s c e n e.” H e r v e r y f ir s t sh o w w i t h To d d S ch o r r

s o cial, p olitic al or cultural comment ar y. ” Fif te en

and Kathy Schorr sold out before it opened. Camille

ye ar s ago, the work she w as intere ste d in alre ady

Rose Garcia’s first show in 20 0 0 completely sold out.

had strikes against it—it was considered illustrative,

Shep ard Fairey had line s around the blo ck for his

car toonish, figurative, narrative — all things that were

openings, and Merry had to hire seven security guards

not widely accepted at the time. When she opened,

for his last exhibition because people were tr ying to

there were really only t wo other galleries that were

climb over the b ack gate of the building to get in.

showing similar t yp e s of ar t: L a Luz de Je sus and

All 10 0+ of his pieces sold— and this was happening

Zero One. Tamara Bane maybe. “I have a great deal

10 years before the high-ar t world really caught on.

of re sp e ct for them b e c ause they were rene gade s who had a punk ro ck, DIY sensibilit y that app e als

Merr y operated a second galler y in Berlin from

t o m e , b u t m y o v e r all ap p r o a c h w a s di f f e r e n t . I t

2 0 07 until e arly 2 010, during w hich time she got

w a s i m p o r t a n t f o r m e t o h a v e a f o r m a l s p a c e .”

marrie d and had her s e c ond child; s o she clo s e d the Berlin sp ace to fo cus on L A , and st ar ted MK 2

When she was first looking to open, a second floor

proje ct s, which do e s p op - ups and sp e cial show s.

s p a c e i n t h e f a m o u s A RT 17 0 B u i l di n g f o r m e r l y

During Pacif ic St andard Time MK 2 hosted a “life -

o c cup i e d by N eil M en de s b e c am e av ail ab l e. S h e

changing” exhibition curated by Ed Moses featuring

met with legendar y L A gallerist Jan Baum, who had

site-specific installations by L arr y Bell, L addie John

the le ase on the whole building. “I was intere sted

D ill, Rob er t Ir w in, E d M o s e s, and Rob er t W ilhite. CONTINUED ON PAGE 98

170 S O U T H L A B R E A LOS A NGELES, CA 90036 M KG A L L E RY.C O M

IN THE FOLD A FASHION VISIONARY’S MOST POPULAR DESIGNS INSPIRE PERSONAL STYLE AND CUTTING-EDGE ART IN ISSEY MIYAKE: PLEATS PLEASE. text SHANA NYS DAMBROT

photo FRANCIS GIACOBET TI

There are some books—just like there are certain

movements show off the rich textures and create shapes

clothes—that you just feel compelled to touch, to

that read more like modern sculpture than magazine

see with your hands as well as your eyes. The new

editorial. But the pictures of the clothes are not the only

TASCHEN release, Issey Miyake: Pleats Please is that

artistry they inspire— there is also the most unique and

book—just like the Pleats Please pieces themselves

unexpected part of the book, the Guest Artist Series,

are those clothes. Launched in 1993 and more

chronicling intense and genre-blurring collaborations

popular than ever, the Pleats Please clothes are the

with some of the world’s greatest gallery artists.

result of a unique fabrication process developed by Miyake’s Tokyo-based design studio that infuses

Cai Guo-Qiang, whose fireworks-based performance/

visual intrigue and tactile drama into a ready-to-wear

sculpture/installations recently lit up LA’s Museum

product that is not only gorgeous, but also convenient,

of Contemporary Art, gives the same treatment to

comfortable, and affordable. What this hefty, 500-

some formerly pristine pleated garments. Yasumasa

plus page volume depicts and evokes is how Miyake’s

Morimura,

signature invention has inspired photographers and

audiences as the subject of self-portraits in the

fine artists—turning a fashion concept into a palette

guise of art history’s most famous images of women,

for all manner of visual invention.

introduces

photographer

images

from

known

the

museum

Renaissance

and

antiquity into the visual dynamic, creating anatomical The book looks at the inception and evolution of the

and narrative puns. Photographer Nobuyoshi Araki

designs, also taking an unprecedented tour of the

modifies the clothing and arranges scenarios more

fabrication

manual-press

reminiscent of Nan Goldin or early shots of Blondie

technique that permanently creases the polyester

than Vogue. And LA-based sculptor Tim Hawkinson

fabric. The noir-ish melodrama of the black-and-white

not only creates stunning fabrics, but fully integrates

production shots plays off the vibrant, saturated colors

the raw materials of Miyake’s line into his large-scale

and crisp crinolation of the clothes, creating optically

avant-garde video and architectural installations,

vibrating abstraction through close-up and color-

proving that the mirror on the wall isn’t the only place

blocked cropping. Models are often dancers, whose

to get inspired by beautiful clothes.

process,

painstaking

I S S E Y M I YA K E .C O M TA S C H E N .C O M

COVETED # S N A P B AC K

BEL I EV E T H E H Y PE

Made in LA with a DIY ethos, The Ampal Creative’s unique six

One of our favorite online bookmarks, HYPEBEAST,

panel snapbacks and camp caps are joined this FW’12 by beanies

has recently released Issue One of its print

and a special earflap cap. Every material is hand-picked by a pair

magazine, now available worldwide. Introducing

of genuine urban surf bros, a rare hybrid indigenous to DTLA.

itself to the masses with a feature on Dior Homme’s

Snapbacks for grown-ups? Possible. A classic men’s hat with a

Artistic Director Kris Van Assche, the tangible

well-executed cat eye? You had us at “bowler.” Did we mention the

version of the comprehensive blog engages in

Creative Director’s brother has a sunglass company called “Crap”?

exclusive content that would otherwise be lost in

THEAMPALCREATIVE.COM

rapid online updates. Think fashion news and interviews that smartly bridge the gap between

I T GI R L

contemporary and street fashion, for the former Lifestyle

meets

editorial

with

WEAR

Again.

Designer Amber Kekich-Purling’s vintage inspired

BAPE kid who now has a 401k. HYPEBEAST.COM

garments with contemporary adaptations allow for a sophisticated look that scratches your trend itch at the same time. Classic silhouettes, cut-outs and plunging necklines can be worn from day to night with a simple make-up/shoe change. AGAINAPPAREL.COM

ALL TIED UP Calling all Diane Keaton fans: the bow tie is back and more extravagantly awesome than ever. Tycoon Neckwear’s wacky assortment of bow ties for ladies are made from recycled men’s ties and embellished with vintage buttons, pins and tassels. They come in retro paisleys, polka dots and pin stripes as well as contemporary color-blocked neons. The best part? 2% of proceeds are donated to “Women for Women International,” an organization helping women in war-torn regions improve their lives through support, education and job training. TYCOONNECKWEAR.COM

T H A N K YO U I N T E R N E T Chelsey Santry, the creative force behind online shopping sensation StyleMint, knows a thing or two about aesthetic cohesion. The Creative Director’s latest venture PJK specializes in luxury women’s contemporary

AU S S I E I N T R O

and is sold worldwide at selective high-end retailers.

Aussie label MINKPINK has finally arrived stateside

But this season, all styles are also available online with

with a launch at LA cult favorite Wasteland. Their

the launch of PJK’s E-commerce site. Effortlessly-chic

Global 2012 collection has a girly, yet punk sensibility

silhouettes, flowy tops, elegant basics and great knits

comprised of vibrant colors and eccentric prints to spice

are all just a confirmation email away.

up your Zara-obsessed pallet (guilty). Like, if Clarissa

PJK.COM

Darling and Parker Posey (Dazed and Confused) had a teenager who grew up on the Westside and regularly tweeted with Solange Knowles about remixes. M I N K P I N K .C O M

H OW I T ’ S D O N E What do Vogue Latin America, Teen Vogue, W, Harper’s Bazaar Korea, and Nylon Japan all have in common? They’ve all featured handbag designer Reece Hudson. Classic yet relevant, these vintage-inspired handbags come in materials like snakeskin, lambskin, Italian leather and suede, and may very well be the missing link between luxury and Manhattan Street style. (We’d sell our mothers twice for the Number 7 Sling Bag). REECEHUDSON.COM

PU N K ROCK LOGIC

B O N E S A N D F E AT H E R S C O L L E C T I V E

Renaissance man, Gemini, and Brooklyn transplant

Snakes and foxes and sharks, oh my! Our favorite NY transplants over at BFC continue to bring us

Victor Wilde is known for being a bit of a provocateur.

taxidermy-inspired jewelr y made right here in Downtown L A. Their mid-range price points can dress

The LA designer playfully explores insubordination

up your F21 (we won’t tell) and add a contemporar y kick when layered with the good shit you got for

and political revolution within his lifestyle brand

graduation. The gals also dabble in handbags, producing a select few st yles ranging from boho to

Bohemian Society. Wilde’s pieces cleverly blend

classic. You really can’t say enough about a well-structured leather bag.

concepts of creation and deconstruction with a dash

BONESANDFEATHERSCOLLECTIVE.COM

of rebellion—a narrative threaded throughout the designer’s other mediums of choice: film, writing and painting. We’ve never seen a re-worked American Flag man-skirt we didn’t like. THEBOHEMIANSOCIETY.COM

I C O U L D B E YO U R G I R L F R I E N D Decorative candles may not be the first thing you free-associate with Justin Timberlake, but believe it or not, Beiber 1.0 ‘s new collection for HomeMint (StyleMint’s latest spin-off) is a rare hybrid of instant gratification and legitimacy—much akin to a Langer’s sandwich. Timberlake and his interior designer Estee Stanley have teamed up to curate a home collection that strikes that effortless balance between classic design and eclectic kook. So next time you’re putting together a fantasy dinner party, maybe it’s time to replace Spencer Pratt’s name-card with JT. I mean, him and Ellen are already friends. HOMEMINT.COM

S O C K GA M E PR O P E R Artist/Dancer/Creative Director/Origami-Enthusiast/ Photographer about town Maceo Paisley knows a thing or two about vivid hues. He’s the man behind American Apparel’s color palette, and is beloved by fashion-heads and bloggers alike. Paisley grew tired of the child-like sock climate and so decided to step out and design his first line independently of AA. Refined whimsy for the contemporary gentleman? Kind of sexy. PAISLEYSOCKWEAR.COM

H E Y I K E A—H I D E Y O K I D S , H I D E Y O W I F E Dozens of 11:11’s later and FINALLY. H&M has been spoiling the Netherlands since 2008 with its Home Collection, and come early 2013, it’s OUR turn. Expect linens, decorative storage and all the knick-knacks your Melrose Trading Post bookshelf can hold. Think less “dorm room” and more “this is why we can’t have nice things —oh wait, nevermind, we fancy now.” Home will draw directly from fashion trends (we hear houndstooth is back with a vengeance), contain three main collections each season and continue to inject stores with new items every two weeks to satisfy our little vertically-integrated-fashion-company-enthusiast-with-ADHD hearts. HM.COM/US

Artist and Skateboarder Kris Markovich for Project Canvas Shoes Available at Sportie LA, Brooklyn Projects, Boarders and CCS.com

DUSKtill

RING AND EARINGS BY AZATURE

AWN

photo ASHLEY BARRETT art direction JARED TATE JOHNSON hair and makeup BARBARA YNIGUEZ models CHARLIE AND OLGA @ NEXT MODEL MANAGEMENT styled by: AKAI ITO BOUTIQUE 941 EAST 2ND ST. LOS ANGELES, CA 90012 AKAIITOBOUTIQUE.COM

UNIFORM UNION BY LOY AND FORD

ON HER:

SWEATER AND PANTS BY ROARK

ON HIM:

DRESS BY VALERJ POBEGA

ON HER:

BODY HARNESS BY DEAR RAYMER

ONESIE BY ROARK / JACKET BY ODYNVOVK /

ON HIM:

JEWELRY BY AZATURE

DRESS BY FALGUNI AND SHANE PEACOCK

ON HER:

JACKET AND JEANS BY ODYN VOVK

ON HIM:

RADAR

high

street

photography Conan Thai styling Raul Guerrero hair & makeup Jake Sherwood Eric Ramos & Mateus Lages @ Re:Quest Christin Godale @ Wilhelmina

opposite Beanie by Nudie Jeans / Shirt by Diesel / Jumper by Diesel on this page Jacket by Insight / Underwear Modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Own / Sweatpants by Etnies

on this page Cap by Etnies / Sweater by Insight / Jeans by Nudie Jeans opposite page Complete Look by Nudie Jeans / Sneakers by Supra

on this page Mesh cardigan by Diesel / Crop shirt by American Apparel / Pants by Diesel / Sneakers by Etnies opposite page Jacket by Nudie Jeans / Shirt by 3rd and Army / Jeans by Nudie Jeans / Sneakers by Supra

on this page Jacket by Insight / Sweatpants by Etnies / Sneakers by Supra opposite page Beanie by Nudie Jeans / Shirt by Diesel / Jumper by Diesel / Sneakers by Etnies

lady

luck

photography MIKE NGUYEN styling Kristen Stuart with FURNE ONE AMATO COUTURE hair and makeup LEIBI

photography and styling STEVEN YATSKO hair and makeup KATIE HALE modeling CHELSEA MACLEOD-ELLIOTT at boss models

pants H&M

shoes MODEL’S OWN sweater GROWZE

scarf VINTAGE necklace SAINTE-MARIE VINTAGE jacket VINTAGE

WHO RUN THE

WORLD? BRAINS, BEAUTY, AND BRANDING: NAVEN FINDS SUCCESS BY DESIGNING PIECES WITH IDENTITY Amongst the strictly highbrow constructionists of the fashion elite, the term

two-woman show behind contemporary women’s line Naven, the McKays design,

“lifestyle branding” elicits mixed feelings at best. Yet its power and profitability

produce and market all content, and are often featured in it. Their personal

in the industry are undeniable. Gone are the days of artists executing an

appeal has earned them a massive online following and impressive retail sales—

anonymous process of sketch, source and show in their East Village loft,

Naven has been carried at Bloomingdales, Ron Herman, Kitson, Fred Segal,

furtively chain smoking and clad all in black. Accessibility is everything. Using

Revolve and many more, plus, in 2011 it sold out at Neiman Marcus in under a

campaigns, look books, Facebook and Instagram to market a multidimensional

week. The concept is surprisingly simple: flattering, well-made silhouettes that

identity is quickly becoming the industry blueprint for success.

are feminine and versatile, all done in quality silks at the industry’s price point sweet spot. The bold, simple pieces allow you to present the most polished, yet

Entrepreneur is the new black. And as it turns out, pre-packaged feminine

relevant version of yourself. In other words, throw on a Naven dress and heels,

whimsy is the new oversized clutch. Twin sisters Alexis and Kim McKay are

and you’re ready to step and repeat at latest SBE night spot. LAC chatted with

mastering the branding game at a level previously reserved for celebrities. As the

Alexis McKay to find out a bit more about how they do it all.

WHAT VOID HAS NAVEN FILLED IN THE WOMEN’S CONTEMPORARY MARKET?

YOUR CAMPAIGNS AND LOOKBOOKS ARE ARGUABLY AS WELL KNOWN AS YOUR DESIGNS. IS MODELING THE SECRET TO YOUR BRANDING SUCCESS?

We saw a void for fashion-forward runway looks at an affordable price, so we developed the NAVEN Designer Collection for high-end customers such as

We live, eat and breath NAVEN, and so it ’s impor tant to us to share not only

working women, and The Neon Collection for the price-conscious girl who loves

our creativit y through our designs, but our stor y as t win designers by being

seasonal trends. Our goal is for Naven to be a lifestyle brand. We want to offer

the faces of the company. Being able to share an inspiring stor y behind a

a convenient way to shop for women on the go, where you need only come to

product is not only a power ful marketing tool, it also allows customers to

one place for all your fashion needs. We offer everything through Naven.com.

relate. Building connections is the only way to successfully build a brand.

WHAT’S MORE CHALLENGING, THE ROLE OF DESIGNER OR THAT OF A

HOW IMPORTANT IS VISUAL CONTENT TO A LINE’S IDENTITY?

BUSINESSWOMAN? DO YOU BOTH SHARE THE SAME FOCUS EQUALLY?

MOST IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF A VISUAL STORY?

The lines between my work and my personal life were blurred the day we launched

Naven is a lifestyle brand, so creating a story that relates a girl’s fashion to her

NAVEN. Being able to work alongside my sister and a great team makes our job

mind-set, beliefs, self-image, and day-to-day endeavors is key. Some ways

fun and rewarding. We are a twin team in every sense of the word, so being able

we achieve this is through the use of lifestyle pictures in our look books, on

to brainstorm on the same wave length and come up with creative concepts each

our website, and in our ad campaigns. We try to create settings that a NAVEN

season for our designs together is a blast. Our personalities are polar opposites. Kym

girl would fit perfectly into. Another way is by selecting a celebrity we think

heads the Design and Production department, and I head Finances and Operations.

best fits our “Fashion Icon” ideals and styling them in our clothes.

text ERIN DENNISON

WHAT’S THE

SAMPLE S

ALE

SEPTEMBER 14TH 3PM-8PM SEPTEMBER 15TH -16TH 11AM-8PM LIVE MUSIC, ARTISTS, & A BARBER

SPACE 15 TWENTY

1520 N. CAHUENGA BLVD • LOS ANGELES, CA 90028

VISIT US ONLINE AT WWW.GOORIN.COM

OUTSIDE THE BOX EXECUTING YOUR CREATIVE VISION 101 text ERIN DENNISON Beauty is a multi-billion dollar industry, and yet it still remains under-appreciated by even the most educated fashionheads. While models and designers often take center-stage in a campaign, any creative director will tell you hair and make-up play as important a role as the garments themselves. Gloria Noto and Eric Johnson have not only mastered their respective crafts, they’ve managed to construct unique platforms to share a vision with the masses. LAC got a chance to catch up with the creative entrepreneurs to find out how they’ve navigated a career that scratches the itch, pays the bills and directly engages a wide audience. Turns out there are corner offices, outside the box. photo A ARON HARVEY

photo CAPTAIN

GLORIA NOTO WHO: Editor-in- Chief at Work Magazine, Make -up Arist at JedRoot

ERIC JOHNSON WHO: Hairstylist and owner at Barras Salon

fashion, design and art publication presenting work from both emerging and established artists.

WHAT: A unique lof t-like space on Highland Park’s up - an d - c o min g F i g u e r o a S t r e e t s t r ip. Ro b e s ar e vint age silk hand-sewn c af t ans and hair pro duct s are all natural.

HOW: Noto began her career in the fashion industry as a Make-up Artist, which ultimately led into creative direction and publishing. She continues to work as a MUA while running Work.

HOW: Johnson began his career as a hairstylist, and then conceived and designed Barras Salon while continuing to service high-profile private clients.

FOLLOW: theworkmag.com, jedroot.com, @the_work_magazine on Instagram

FOLLOW: @barrassalon on Twitter

FASHION AND CULTURE EXIST IN LOS ANGELES?

WHAT ROLE DOES HAIR PLAY IN A FASHION EDITORIAL/

WHAT: Work Magazine is a quarterly concept-based

Ye s ! T h e r e ar e s o m e am a z in g b r an ds an d s t o r e s home - grown in L A — like Field S cout, C erre, EPIC,

CAMPAIGN? CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS BETWEEN A CREATIVE TEAM?

Gather, Thvm, Raquel Alegra, Other wild, and many

The role of hair in an editorial campaign is crucial—

more. I think those who want to write of f L A are just

as is make-up, clothing, lighting and composition. It’s

to o laz y or inf luence d by date d ide as of what the

impossible to have one without the other and expect

cit y ’s culture is. Per sonally, I f ind there is a huge

something beautiful to come of it. Good shoots involve

renaissance happening here, which is a big reason

planning. Maybe it starts with the lighting person’s vision

why I st ar ted Work Magazine — I saw so much that

of a mood that he /she wants to create. They would

needed to have another platform to stand on. Though

then bring that to the other artists involved and start

we are international, a lot of our featured ar tists and

conceptualizing the story. Once your team gets together

collaborations are straight out of L A. It ’s a beautiful

to sho ot there may b e s ome las t minute change s.

thing to be a par t of these changing times.

There usually are, and hopefully you create magic.

#TRENDING model BROOKE HENDERSON photos HAILLEY HOWARD Just because Sally Mae’s knocking on your door, that doesn’t mean your closet is any less deserving of a back-to-school revamp. We stopped over at one of our favorite DTLA spots, Brigade LA, to play dress-up with all the garments of our wildest dream wardrobe, narrowing down our three favorite looks for Fall.

(OUT AT LOS GLOBOS)

(AT HAPPY HOUR)

(WITH HEALTH INSURANCE)

Avant-guard sci-fi television series aside, all

Finish your final project and wash all the linseed

This fall, designers are really going H.A.M. on

black everything is very two-thousand-thousand.

oil off? Can’t choose between kooky art teach-

prints; Miu Miu, Rochas and Rag & Bone are

This season, syzygies and nu-rave day-walkers

er and CPA? Don’t. Embrace your grown-up

all aggressively embracing eclectic patterns.

aren’t the only ones dabbling in the dystopian

bohemian by layering textures and adding a

How to pull it off without looking like

future. The rise of sartorial reaganomics means

dash of naughty structure to your breathable

might come climbing through your bedroom

the high street has gone Proenza Schouler on us

favorites. Nothing says “I’m not a hippie any-

window any minute now? Classic proportions,

just in time for the haunted hayrides.

more” like a sleek leather jacket.

quality-fabrics and big-girl heels should do the trick.

pants FLUXUS

jacket MUUBAA

blouse EQUIPMENT

top FLUXUS

top GYPSY

pants CURRENT/ELLIOT

boots JEFFREY CAMPBELL

pants GYPSY

robe SOMETHING ELSE

boots JEFFREY CAMPBELL

sandals JEFFREY CAMPBELL

Sam

THE GUIDE: WEST 3RD STREET text REBECA ARANGO photos RACHEL MANY Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, West 3rd street was lit tle more than a land of dr y cleaners, tailors, leather shops and antique stores. And while you could totally kill a whole day in that universe, the future looks more like cocktails, clothes, and cologne. Treat yourself.

THE CHURCHILL Listen crabby-pants, nobody likes a hungry shopping buddy. Good news is you have pretty much all day to devour a ham-and-gruyere waffle with a sunny side-up egg at the Churchill. Wash it all down with a mason jar’s worth of Bloody MÍar y and you’ll be just tipsy enough to endure the trials and tribulations of trying on sweaters. We say the more porous the better—at least till December. the-churchill.com POLK ADOTS + MOONBEAMS If you were looking to strike a p e r f e c tl y e x ub e r a n t b a la n c e bet ween Grace Slick- cool and M a r y Ty l e r M o o r e - a d o r b s , a devoted dig through this explosive wonderland will undoubtedly leave you victorious. Floor length zigzag Ella Moss gowns hang alongside prim Milly frocks, all of which just beg to be accessorized with the most ludicrously printed platform Jeffrey Campbells you can find. polkadotsandmoonbeams.com

SATINE Alex ander Wang skir t s, A .L .C tops, Jen K ao dre s s e s, Chlo é b o ot s — we’re hyperventilating harder than spin class. What kind of evil bastard put all the s e excruciatingly b e autiful thing s in o ne go r ge o us li t t le hig h - c eilinge d sp o t ! ? Le sigh. Satine is a fun place to play the, “if I could buy one thing, what would it be?” game. Which is the kind of game us masochists like. satineboutique.com

WOODLEY & BUNNY While the LA version of famous Brooklyn salon Woodley & Bunny has yet to launch styling services, they’ve brought over the next best thing—their carefully curated selection of global apothecary products, many of which can’t be found anywhere else in the country. Rare handmade perfumes are lined up next to artisanal Australian candles, boutique French skincare products, and futuristic make-up from Holland. They even have lip-balm flecked with 24 karat gold.

LE L ABO Upon opening the door at Le Labo, you’ll be consumed by a waft of aroma so delicious it could only come from the marvelous amalgam of essential botanical oils brewed and mixed in-house. Ten signature androgynous fragrances arranged from light and sweet to dark and musty could keep your olfactory glands busy for hours, but we’ve got things to do and places to be, so grab your RX Adderall, some espresso beans and cleanse your nasal pallet. You can do this. lelabofragrances.com

GOGOSHA A sp ot- on s election of retro/modern spectacles and sunnie s make s G o gosha a mus t- s ee shopping de s tination for the nearsighted and stylish alike. gogosha.com

TR AVELER’S BOOKCASE Whether you’ve got a first class ticket to Bangkok in your pocket or simply excel at conjuring up compellingly vivid daydreams, chances are you could quite pleasantly kill some time perusing this shop’s beautiful selection of city guides, maps, language books, big photography hardbacks and other voyage-related goodies. travelbooks.com

FONUTS Blood sugar low? What a drag. Luckily, we know a place that makes salted caramel, maple bacon, and red velvet donut s — except they aren’t even real donuts! Because here’s the soft gooey truth about RE AL donuts that people don’t readily admit: you’re eating fried cake, and that’s like, doubleungoodforyou-disgusting. But the genius of Fonuts is that they’ve managed to take everyone’s favorite lil’ round sugar thing down a few blips on the guilto-meter by skipping the scalding-hot oil bath. You know, baked—not fried. fonuts.com

LIT TLE NEXT DOOR Les macaroons? Le soufflés? Ooh-lah-lah! On parlent justement en Francais maintenent, ouis? D’accord. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Eh, peut-etre. Francophone coffee break...anyone? littlenextdoor.com

MILK I know. You’re filled up on donuts—not to worry, no actual dairy products here. Instead, some nice threads by J Brand, Elizabeth & James, Suno, Pamela Love and other favorites. shopatmilk.com

ST. NICK’S PUB Alright, so it’s been a very fancy day, which is nice and all, but a good life requires balance. St. Nick’s is an old neighborhood haunt that’s been on the block since way before West Third Street was a chic shopping destination. So let’s put away our pretentions and get drunk the old fashioned way, with bottled beer and a game of Parcheesi. (You’re going to walk home, right?)

速

SILVER LAKE. STUDIO CITY. MAR VISTA. COSTA MESA. SEAL BEACH. SAN MARINO.

HOLLYWOOD. SANTA MONICA. 3RD AND FAIRFAX. REDONDO BEACH

Live. Create. Inspire.

A space ﬁlled with memories, designer collectibles and a variety of items that ﬁt any style of budget.

LA WEEKLY: “Their store’s recycled high fashion (Chanel, Margiela, Chloe, YSL, even some TOPSHOP) truly satisfies our soul.”

DAILY CANDY: “Buttons & Bows gently worn designer clothing and accessories (think: 3.1 Phillip Lim, Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu) tune in to affordable luxury.”

LoCAtIoN:

111 West 7th Street Suite R11 DT. Los Angeles, CA 90014 (On Main between 7th & 6th St) storE Hours:

Monday-Friday 12-7pm Saturday 11am-6pm Sunday : Closed

Hudson | Rory Beca | One Teaspoon | Joie | Patterson J. Kincaid

1410 Abbot Kinney Ste. 101, Venice, CA 90291 310.399.3988 - gossamershop.com - facebook.com/gossamershop

buttonsandbowsla@gmail.com (213) 622-0648

LEADING THE

PACK CRAIG THORTON FORGES A NEW CULINARY CAREER PATH AS A PUBLIC INDEPENDENT CHEF text REBECA ARANGO photo CAPTAIN

y now we all know the story—in today’s Internet age, musicians, designers, and artists can independently sustain their craft by exploiting social media and online storefronts. No longer bound by traditional channels of marketing and distribution, artists are liberated to brand

and package themselves as they please. But how do you apply this strategy to the business and art of food, or rather, fine dining? It doesn’t seem possible, but Chef Craig Thornton has pretty much figured it out. After traditional career beginnings that included culinary school, a stint at Bouchon in Vegas and a gig as Nicolas Cage’s private chef, Craig started hosting 12-course dinner parties for his friends. Dubbed Wolvesmouth, the invite-only BYOB supper club soon opened to the public via a website and mailing list, evolving from a private gathering to a sustainable, pay-what-you-want home enterprise. Going rogue was a risky move, but operating outside the restaurant system means Craig is free from the expectations and trends that drive the industry. He works alone in his kitchen with limited help and rarely cooks the same dish twice. In both presentation and content, his food is far from what you’d find on a commercial menu, yet thousands of people are on the waitlist to get a taste. LAC spent the afternoon in Craig Thornton’s kitchen while he cooked a summer vegetable salad and gave us the scoop on the evolution of Wolvesmouth. THERE’S NO DRESS CODE AT WOLVESMOUTH. WHAT DO PEOPLE WEAR? We definitely see interesting attire. We’ve had some people with insanely good style. I remember this one guy came in with a pockethandkerchief, just dressed to the nines. I was like, this guy deserves an award he has such good style. But on the website we say we don’t care if you show up in a Nascar shirt and sweats. So of course, someone once showed up in a Nascar shirt and sweats. YOU MUST OVERHEAR ALL THE CONVERSATIONS. WHAT’S IT LIKE WHEN SIXTEEN STRANGERS GET TOGETHER IN A LOFT FOR DINNER? It’s a very self-selecting audience—that’s what’s cool about it—so everybody has that connection of, “how’d you hear about this?” And that’s a good opener for someone who’s not even the least bit social. Then it starts to change because people make connections and are like, “Wait wait, you know so-and-so? Were you at this event?” And then all of a sudden you realize how small the world is, and in a way, how disconnected you become by just sitting on your phone all day. A lot of people make the comment, “Usually I’m just at dinner with my friends and on my phone the whole time, but not here.” HOW DID THE WOLVESMOUTH DINNERS START? It was kind of a fluke. I was working in a restaurant, consulting, and trying to teach the owner about the idea of doing these little hitters—it’s called an “amuse.” I tried to explain the importance of this in building a relationship with repeat customers. So this one guy, I sent him out a little first bite of food, and he came back a week later and said, “Oh man, can I have two or three of those?” And then the week after that he said, “I just want like ten of those.” It turned into this thing where he kept coming in asking me to do these small tastings for him. Then one day he said, “Hey, I have these friends in San Diego, can you come cook some food there?” So I drove down and did this dinner in an open kitchen where I could have this engagement with people—and for me that was kind of the light bulb moment. It’s total transparency, people are right there, and they’re coming up to me, asking questions, learning. In a restaurant you aren’t able to have that. NOW THAT THE PROJECT HAS ESTABLISHED SO MUCH MOMENTUM, WHAT KIND OF NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES DO YOU FACE? I’ve had all these crazy experiences through an idea that, were it seven years ago, probably wouldn’t fly. Right now I’m doing this campaign with Dos Equis—three years ago I would have never imagined someone approaching me with, “Hey—do what it is that you do, we want to support it.” I have a job that people are excited about, which is kind of mind-blowing to me. I’m able to do stuff that helps push the cooking in this whole other direction. The challenge now is trying to figure out the best way to do more of it without changing it. I want to stay true to what it is that excites people about coming to eat. I’d like to do more nights, but I don’t want to be doing a dinner of eighty people because that changes the whole dynamic. Imagine if there were eighty people coming up to me trying to talk. There’d be no intimacy to it. YOU’VE BEEN KNOWN TO CREATE DISHES INSPIRED BY POP CULTURE OR CURRENT EVENTS. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THAT PROCESS? Sometimes I do, but those ones are few and far between. One dish that I’ve made quite a few times is the BP Oil Spill dish, which is a big one that people latched on to. There are dishes inspired by metal music, like goat with a pentagram. You can turn almost anything into a dish, it’s just about figuring out the right way to do it without it becoming a gimmick and making sure all the elements make sense together. I did a dessert that was like my sarcastic view of Hollywood. It had what looked like little silicon implants, diamonds, chocolate gold and silver, coconut, and this black sesame meringue that dried to look like concrete. And I love the show Twin Peaks, so I made a dish based off of that. It was this cherry pie with a little espresso, pine flavor and lime worked into it. So it’s things like that that I get inspired by. But I don’t want people to think that’s the only thing that I do, so every once in a while I’ll throw in something—but not all the time.

WAT C H T H E V I D E O F R O M O U R D A Y W I T H C R A I G AT L A C A N VA S .C O M

FOOD FOR SHOP Sur e , th e phr as e “ Sh op ‘ till y ou dr op!” s ounds cu te and all, bu t i t isn’t r e all y pr uden t adv ic e . Ending up pas s e d ou t o n a depar tmen t s to r e f lo o r in a h e aping pile o f gar men t s y ou had op timis tic all y b og ge d y our s el f do w n w i th — c an y ou imagin e? Ye ah, le t ’s r e fu el. BARNEY GREENGRASS SHOP: Barney’s in Beverly Hills PEEK: The most appropos way to complete any Barney’s pilgrimage is by indulging in a thoroughly East Coast bagel and lox from Barney Greengrass on the fifth floor. Think NYC-deli meets chic Beverly Hills diner. PERK: Enjoy an incredible view of Beverly Hills with a crisp glass of champagne. Because you deserve it, don’t you? barneygreengrass.com 570 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212

CAFÉ MIDI SHOP: American Rag PEEK: When you open a vaguely French café in Los Angeles, you run the risk of ending up with “burritos” filled with goat cheese or tomato Provençale (I believe we call that a wrap, you guys). But on the bright side, a flair for cross-cultural culinary experimentation means Café Midi’s extensive breakfast and lunch menu has something for everyone. PERK: This cute little restaurant is connected to the American Rag boutique on La Brea. It’s like you never stopped shopping. cafemidi.com 148 S La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles Ca 90036

MAURO CAFÉ SHOP: Fred Segal PEEK: When dining at one of the most iconic LA shopping joints of all time, you get sophisticated, simple Italian fare, a stylish yet understated ambiance and an even more stylish clientele. PERK: Engage in some excellent people watching and maybe even celeb spotting while you nibble on that Prosciutto di Parma sandwich. When in Rome. mauroscafe.com 8112 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90046

THE FARMER’S MARKET SHOP: The Grove PEEK: Well DUH. Everyone loves the farmer’s market, but the plethora of options can be overwhelming. So here are our favorites: Short Order for burgers, Loteria for Mexican, Monsieur Marcel or Little Spain if we’re feeling fancy (/trying to have wine), and the French Crepe Company or Bennett’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream for dessert. PERK: Forget clothes—you can go shopping for hot sauce, gourmet macadamia nuts, poultry, fish, sweets and more while you’re here. farmersmarketla.com 6333 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90036

LA SANDIA SHOP: Third Street Promenade PEEK: This modern Mexican spot just East of the Promenade comes from Chef Richard Sandoval, so expect traditional Mexican dishes reimagined with innovative techniques—and fresh margaritas on the side. PERK: $2 Taco, Torta and Tecate Tuesdays plus complimentary valet for up to three hours? In there like swimwear. richardsandoval.com/lasandiasm Ste 305, 395 Santa Monica Place, Santa Monica, CA 90401

GJELINA TAKE-AWAY SHOP: Abbott Kinney Blvd. PEEK: Even if you’re hustling down the boulevard in yoga pants in last-minute search of the perfect garment for tonight’s scheduled debauchery, you can grab a quick taste of famed Italian eatery Gjelina at their take-away option, GTA. PERK: Fennel salami pizza? Market veggie sandwich? Panzanella salad? Yes please! But from 7am-9am you can also get some fresh roasted coffee and baked goods. gjelina.com 1427 Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Venice, CA 90291

GET MORE OF L.A.’S BEST FOOD SCOOPS AT LACANVAS.COM

jarritos.com

Thanks for your support of our FREE community event! It was a success due to our super attendees, great bands, talented artists, unique vendors, dedicated volunteers, and generous sponsors.

SPONSORS & SUPPORTERS (partial list)

LOS ANGELES RIVER ARTISTS & BUSINESS ASSOCIATION

Full list at www.BloomfestLA.com/supporters

SAVE THE DATE!

SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2013 BloomfestLA is an annual FREE community festival that is presented in the Arts District, founded by LARABA, and produced by Melissa Richardson Banks and Edgar Varela.

WWW.BLOOMFESTLA.COM

JUST LIKE HOME DUPLEX LENDS STYLE AND SUSTENANCE TO A NEARLY HUNDRED-YEAR OLD RESIDENCE text REBECA ARANGO

photo MAT THEW HUTCHISON

Between the marble counter tops, shelves lined with

sustainable practices. It’s on-trend California cooking

hand-marked jars of house-made pickes and sauces,

with a respectful nod to old-world Mediterranean.

and the seasonal, farm-to-table food being cooked-up inside, you could say the commercial kitchen at Duplex

We checked, and yes, “small” is still the most popular size

feels homier than most. E xcept in this case, home

for plates these days. Accordingly, Duplex has some great

means an ultra-glam, two-story modern residence from

‘lil share-ables. Grilled peaches are paired with sweet

the early 1900s, covered in ivy and towering panes of

creamy burrata, balsamic vinaigrette, and fresh pesto; the

glass and sitting just west of the Beverly Center.

crab cake is perfectly complemented by a complex citrus aioli; and a sweet and sour rhubarb mignonette balances

briny oysters. For something slightly more substantial,

of Duplex feels much unlike your typical LA restaurant.

opt for a flatbread or a pasta dish. The meatball, Fresno

A massive black bull’s head crowns a simple wood

chili, broccoli di cicco and asiago is perfect for meat

fireplace flanked by rose leather wingbacks. A plush

lovers who like a little kick, while another with sunchoke,

couch is dot ted with furr y pillow s while a cr yst al

arugula, mushroom and black-truffle drizzle keeps things

chandelier drops dangerously low in the background.

deliciously vegan. But if you never learned to share,

It ’s a home spun ver sion of Holly wo o d swank that

the hearty entrees are equally appealing; a Berkshire

evokes a 60s-70s hunting lodge, while a few modern

pork chop sits atop garlic-mascarpone polenta, while

touches keep the whole thing grounded in 2012.

soft shell crab gets a Japanese treatment, tempura-fried

Either way, you could easily envision gorgeous women

and served with sesame ponzu sauce.

flitting about in colorful silk Caftans or even tiny mod

Duplex’s cocktail list focuses on fresh fruits and house-

cock t ail dresses, and the dark wood bookshelves

made syrups with all spirits accounted for, and the dessert

just beg to be a backdrop for dapper men in smar t

menu includes molten chocolate-fi lled beignets, ricotta

suits holding neat glasses of whiskey. Wait…is this an

cheesecake and a rotating selection of fresh ice creams

episode of Mad Men? Oh, right—we’re here to eat. Like

and sorbets. Aside from lunch, dinner, brunch and drinks,

the decor, the food toes the line between traditional

Duplex is designed to host events and private parties. Just

and contemporary, focusing on whole, ancient grains

sprinkle some family photos throughout and maybe you

and heirloom veget ables sourced from farms with

can convince your friends that this is, in fact, your home.

8722 W 3R D ST LOS A NGELES, CA 90048 D U P L E XO N T H I R D.C O M

FANCY A DRINK? THE PARISH BRINGS CASUAL ENGLISH ELEGANCE TO DTLA’S FASHION DISTRICT text REBECA ARANGO

photo LORET TA LON

You probably wouldn’t wear your best bespoke blazer

and cut ting edge techniques. For something light

or slinkiest black dress to chug beers at the local pub,

and refreshing, try the Disco Nap —a tart and sweet

but at The Parish it would be entirely reasonable, if

orange fizz of grappa, apperol, lemon and mint— or

not appropriate, to look kind of classy while holding

the Russian Tulip — a tall glass of vodka mixed with

a chicken wing to your lips. Be c ause b efore you

housemade grenadine, lemon juice, and bit ters. To

manage to accidentally smear your silk blouse with

make grandpa proud, opt for the Parish’s excellent Old

the glistening, gooey stout glaze, someone will bring

Fashioned, or try their signature creation, the Historic

you a damp cloth napkin scente d with rosemar y.

Core cocktail—a combination of rye, applejack, sweet

Yes — it seems the gastropub concept has reached

vermouth, green char treuse and bit ters. If you’re

the pinnacle of sophistication.

stopping in for dessert, go for the Nightshift—a creamy,

Housed in the gorgeous, historic Flatiron building

espresso, pu-erh tea, milk and chocolate syrup.

bit tersweet drink made with bourbon, Czech fernet, where Spring and Main converge, The Parish brings some much-needed nightlife to the formerly desolate

Because this is a “pub,” beer appears in both the

neighborhood. D ownst airs, a minimalist, informal

cocktails and the cooking, and there are t went y taps

café spills onto the sidewalk through floor-to-ceiling

reserved exclusively for L A and Orange count y craf t

windows, while the moody, dramatic upstairs references

brews. Meanwhile, a thorough wine list and sherr y

‘20s-30s Downtown with vintage décor and period-

program means it’s safe to bring mom. Past the lounge,

inspired furniture. Brought to you by Chef Casey Lane

there’s a plush, low-slung seating area for more formal

of the Tasting Kitchen and Mixologist John Coltharp of

consumption of Chef Casey Lane’s re-imagined English

Seven Grand, the Parish can be experienced as either

pub fare. You can expect a frequently changing menu

an elegant restaurant with a reverence for booze or

with dishe s like bone marrow, deviled eg gs, fried

a chic bar that happens to serve high-quality food—

chicken and stout sausage.

depending on what you’re trying to get into. Wait—it gets bet ter. Like most L A bars, last call is at Up on the second-floor, you can grab a stool at the long

1:30, but amazingly, the kitchen stays open till 12:30

central bar or snag one of the candle-lit high-tops lined

AM(!). So whether you’ve hit that burrito truck one

up against the large antique windows. The cocktail

too many times this month or are just tr ying to take a

menu features fourteen classically driven concoctions,

busy special someone out for a late-night dinner (not

all orchestrated with high-tech ice, designer glassware

at Carl’s Jr.), now you’ve got options.

840 SOU T H SPR I NG ST R EET L O S A N G E L E S , C A L I F O R N I A 9 0 0 14 T H E PA R I S H L A .C O M

SPICE UP YOUR LIFE THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE, NOW AVAILABLE IN COCKTAIL FORM WITH MIXOLOGY 101’S “SPICY 50.” text REBECA ARANGO So you’re at the Grove. You’re probably here to shop. Maybe grab dinner. See a movie. C atch a glimpse of Mario Lopez in the flesh — why not? Either way, you’re probably not in the market for an existential experience. But go order a Spicy 5 0 from Joseph Brooke at Mixology 101, and you’ll sor t of get one. Perched like a large, luxury tree house high above the Famer’s Maket, Mixology 101 is the open-air, cocktailcentric bar and lounge at the new Planet Dailies restaurant. With a drink program designed by worldrenowned mixologist Salvatore Calabrese, 101’s lengthy libation menu has something for everyone, not to mention the best dry martini in town (though that’s another story). Affectionately known as “The Maestro,” Salvatore gave head-bartender Joseph Brooke (formerly of Bar Marmont and The Edison) an intensive crash course in cocktails before officially appointing him “conductor.” Along with his best tips and techniques, he managed to impart some colorful meaning and poetry on the art of mixology. “Salvatore likens this cocktail to the journey of life,” Joseph explains after setting down a fresh Spicy 50. “Sparing you the gory details of his full-blown description, the first thing you taste, on the tip of your tongue, is the sweetness—sort of like childhood; everything is fun, nice, and light. By the time you get to the middle palette, the center of the tongue, it’s like your coming of age— still sweet, but you have all these other elements playing with it, there’s this lovely balance between sweet and sour, a hint of citrus and a bit of spice. And then at the very end of it, in your twilight years, that’s the wisdom.

RECIPE: 1 ¾ oz Stoli Vanil ½ oz Elderflower Cordial (do not substitute St. Germaine) ½ oz Fresh limejuice ¼ oz 1-to-1 Honey syrup 1-2 Slices green Serrano chili

The lasting sensation is this gentle bite of the Serrano pepper in the back of your throat.” A whimsical description, we know—but it ’s pret t y much spot on.

Combine everything with ice into a metal cocktail shaker (do not muddle). Shake vigorously; pour into a frozen martini glass.

FILM SCREENING

Dirty Dancing @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery

SEPTEMBER

1 2 FESTIVAL

3 FILM SCREENING

Scarface @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery

LA County Fair, All Month Long @ Pomona Fairgrounds

FILM & FOOD EVENT

Street Food Cinema @ Exposition Park

CONCERT

Lonely Willd @ the Satellite

CONCERT

Gotye + Chairlift @ the Greek Theater

FILM SCREENING

Reality Bites @ Caulfields Beverly Hills

FOOD EVENT

Fresh Pasta Class @ Drago Centro

THEATER

CONCERT

The Book of Mormon, through 11/25 @ Pantages

MUSIC FESTIVAL

Fashionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Night Out @ Shops & Boutiques all over LA

The Walkmen + Milo Greene @ John Anson Ford Amphitheatre

ART EVENT

STYLE EVENT

Echoes West @ the Echoplex

CONCERT

Cardboard Lamb @ the Satellite

Art Walk @ Downtown LA

PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW

The Dirty Lights Collective @ Swing House Studios

FILM SCREENING

STYLE EVENT

Goorin Brothers Sample Sale All Weekend @ Space 15 Twenty

A Fish Called Wanda @ Caulfields Beverly Hills

FOOD EVENT

Good Eats Pasadena @ Playhouse District

CONCERT

Silversun Pickups + School of Seven Bells @ the Santa Monica Civic

CONCERT CONCERT

Chelsea Wolfe @ the Echoplex

Eternal Summers + Bleeding Rainbow @ the Bootleg

PARTY

Sinjin Hawke + Clicks & Whistles @ Los Globos

PARTY

Saturdays off the 405 w/ Poolside @ the Getty

PARTY

Dublab 13th Anniversary @ Freak City

PARTY

3rd & Army @ the Dragon Fly Hollywood

PARTY

FESTIVAL

Sepalcure + Say Uhns @ Los Globos

Precious Cheese Italian Feast @ 1651 N. Highland Ave, Hollywood

DANCE PERFORMANCE

L.A. Dance Project @ Walt Disney Concert Hall

ART EVENT

Pasadena Museum of California Art 10th Birthday Party @ PMCA

THEATER

November, through 11/4 @ the Mark Taper Forum

CONCERT

GZA + Bear Hands @ the El Rey

PARTY

LA Beer Week Kick-off @ King’s Row Gastropub

ART EVENT

CONCERT

LAND Benefit Gala @LAND

Django Django @ the Echo

FESTIVAL

Tarfest @ the La Brea Tar Pits

ART FAIR

EVENT

Downtown Culver City Third Wednesdays @ Culver City

Art Platform @ the Barker Hangar

COMEDY

Jeff Garlin + Lena Dunham @ Largo

FOOD EVENT

The Feast of San Gennaro, Street Food Menus through 9/30 @ Dominick’s + Little Dom’s

FOOD EVENT

Rosh Hashanah Dinner, through 9/18 @ STREET

CONCERT

Animal Collective + Flying Lotus @ the Hollywood Bowl

CONCERT

Savoir Adore + Kisses @ the Echo

FOOD + MUSIC FESTIVAL

Port of LA Lobster Fest, 9/14-9/16 @ Port o’ Call Village San Pedro

MUSEUM EXHIBIT CONCERT

Reptar @ the Echo

CONCERT

Beach House @ the Wiltern

Graphic Design: Now in Production, through 1/6 @ the Hammer Museum

OCTOBER CONCERT

First Aid Kit @ the Fonda

CONCERT

Florence & the Machine @ the Hollywood Bowl

MUSIC FESTIVAL

CONCERT

Eagle Rock Music Festival @ Eagle Rock

Foxy Shazam @ the Wiltern

CONCERT

Hospitality @ the Echo

CONCERT

Metric @ the Greek Theater

STYLE EVENT

THEATER

A Current Affair: Pop Up Vintage Marketplace

Krapp’s Last Tape through 11/4 @ the Kirk Douglas Theater

CONCERT

Conor Oberst + Jenny Lewis @ the Fox Theater Ponoma

CONCERT

Patterson Hood & The Downtown Rumblers @ the Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Freelance Whales @ the El Rey

CONCERT

Miracle Mile Artwalk @ Miracle Mile Galleries

CONCERT

ART EVENT

K. Flay @ the Echo

13 16

FESTIVAL

Abbot Kinney Fest @ Abbot Kinney Blvd.

FOOD EVENT

CONCERT

The Lumineers @ the Fonda Theatre

2nd Saturday Food Trucks @ La Brea Blvd. (between 1st and Beverly)

CONCERT MUSEUM EXHIBIT

Farewell to Surrealism: The Dyn Circle in Mexico, through 2/17 @ the Getty Research Institute

The Intelligence @ the Satellite

CONCERT

Superhumanoids (Residency) @ the Echo

CONCERT

Neil Young @ the Hollywood Bowl

FRIGHT FEST

Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor, all month long @ the Queen Mary, Long Beach

MUSIC FESTIVAL

Culture Collide, through 10/7 @ Echo Park Venues

CONCERT

Kimbra + the Stepkids @ the Fonda

ART EVENT

Pasadena Artwalk @ Pasadena

CONCERT

The xx @ the Hollywood Forever Cemetery

ART EVENT

GALLERY OPENING

CONCERT

Brewery Artwalk, through 10/21 @ the Brewery

Reckless Unbound: Christy Lee Rogers @ EVFA

Thieves like US @ the Echo

ART PARTY

Celebrating the Art of Resistance w/ Tom Morello @ Professional Musicians Union Local 47

EVENT

Dan Deacon + Height With Friends @ the El Rey

MUSIC FESTIVAL

LA CANVAS presents La Brea Block Party @ La Brea

FOOD EVENT

Sunday Swine Celebration, Beer + Pork Pairing @ Haven Gastropub

CONCERT

Perfume Genius @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery

PARTY

Saturdays off the 405 w/ Cold Cave @ the Getty

CONCERT

Crystal Castles + Kontravoid @ the Hollywood Palladium

19 19

23 23

PARTY

CONCERT

Matt & Kim @ the Wiltern

A$AP Rocky @ the Hollywood Palladium

PARTY

Oktoberfest, FINAL WEEKEND @ Alpine Village

DANCE PERFORMANCE

National Ballet of Canada, through 10/21 @ the Music Center

27 28

CONCERT

Cult of Youth @ Los Globos

ART EVENT

Street Art Auction @ Bonham’s

29 EVENT

Dia de los Muertos @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery

ART EVENT

2012 Art + Film Gala @ LACMA

30 CONCERT

Miike Snow @ the Hollywood Palladium

PARTY

Bassnectar @ the Hollywood Palladium

CONCERT

Willie Nelson + Band of Horses @ Ports O’ Call

PARTY

Fright Night @ the W Hollywood

photo AIMEE BARKER

bd uccaneer

ays

A Chronicle of Shame

EVERY OCTOBER MAINLANDERS DESCEND ON CATALINA ISLAND FOR A WEEKEND OF PIRATEINSPIRED REVELRY. MADNESS ENSUES. text DAN JOHNSON

It’s 2 p.m. on a Saturday and across from our mooring at N7 in Isthmus Cove at Two Harbors, the orgy has commenced. Those participating are all things considered very discreet. Though they’ve been masquerading naked a top the cockpit of their sailboat for the past hour, they are subtle compared to the wild revelry of the hundreds of binge drinking people dressed like pirates surrounding them in the harbor. It is Buccaneer Days, an annual Pirate Festival on Catalina Island and across from us, three couples in their late fifties are fucking and sucking at a slow-tease pace that seems to coincide with the vaguely erotic roll of the ebbing tide beneath us. Difficult as it is, I will attempt now to explain the concept of an annual Pirate Festival held in a sleepy, insular island town every year for over twenty years. The appeal is simple: go to Catalina, camp out, dress and act like a pirate, drink to excess and abuse whatsoever drugs you find appropriate. Then try not to act like a dick. If you have to barf, do it in the ocean. There is little intrusion by the Coast Guard and less from LA Sheriffs who only seem to give a fuck if you’re beating the shit out of someone. Buccaneer Days is open source madness. Everyone contributes to an air of absurdity in a hyper reality built on popular nostalgia for the secluded whoring, plundering and boozing of the Spanish Main. What really boggles the mind is how so many people who you might ordinarily classify as dingle berries hanging by a modest hair from the anus of life and just above the threat of drowning in the toilet bowl of mass stupidity could possibly coexist and survive such an ordeal. Later, the true mind boggler will be when you realize you are the greatest dingle berry of all.

*** Two days prior, on Thursday at about 1:45 p.m., I sit in the Catalina Ferry Terminal beneath the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro. It is deathly still. A pervasive quietness, save the occasional premature “argh” haunts the space that will soon serve as the most popular gateway to Buccaneer Days. It’s the only choice for mainlanders like me without access to a seaworthy vessel. In twenty-four hours, a surge of makeshift pirates will flood the Terminal like a proverbial buccaneer’s Ellis Island. Those without the foresight to drink to the very doorstep of blackout will uncomfortably shuffle with the eager anticipation of the bar aboard the ferry. Those already blacked out will repetitively scream the same pirate slogans and teeter back and forth. Despite the drug-sniffing dogs, many in line for the ferry will slip onto the boat with enticing bags of poorly cut coke, shake weed and cheap ecstasy. But fuck that Johnny-come-lately noise. It’s still Thursday and the massive influx of walking/talking refutations to the theory of natural selection have yet to descend on me like the hoard of insects they are. It is calm and after driving pedal to the metal down the twenty odd miles of the 110 from Downtown to San Pedro I eagerly await the bucolic serenity and relative isolation of Two Harbors. To call Two Harbors a city would be a gross overstatement. Two Harbors is the sort of demi-village that the aquatically-minded and island-hearted have trickled into over the past thirty years to escape the ongoing cultural apocalypse of fast-living and stunted social evolution on the mainland. To spend time in Two Harbors is to live, if only temporarily, in some alternate world where the Ruskies already dropped the bomb and the relative provincialism/ closed minded vibe is a small price to pay for not having to live amongst the genetically mutated back in Long Beach. It is all-in-all a lovely Faustian bargain. Trade isolation for peace of mind and irrelevance in the modern world for the slow life. I cannot help but fixate on this notion when around 9 p.m. I stumble to the top deck of our sailboat, Carnival, and look north towards the mainland. For the five hours I’ve been in Two Harbors, I have been abusing aforementioned shitty shake weed in conjunction with a steady regimen of cheap beer and a bottle of “Meritage” wine called Dr. Jebediah Drinkwell that I purchased at Trader Joes because it looked unrepenently shitty. Punishing oneself with shitty booze seems apropos.

On clear nights the sky above Two Harbors is replete with stars. The Milky Way lactates across the heavens and you can actually convince yourself that there is a God above and he still gives a fuck about us. As you shift your gaze from pure zenith down many degrees towards the port of Los Angeles twenty odd miles distant the light pollution of a 24-hour-a-day port burns through the atmosphere like a false dawn. It is at this moment that any rational viewer, or those imbued with the special truth divining ability provided by chemical intoxication, can deduce that Two Harbors sits somewhere between true paradise and the industrializedhell we’ve brought about this earth. In a frenzy of premature cabin fever, my two companions and I dingy to shore in search of steady ground where I can accurately differentiate between my sea legs and the bizarre marionette steps I take in my near black-out state. The dedicated drinkers are already at work in the indoor bar, but we are stoned and motivated so we opt to retreat from the glow of civilization to the north and trek the two odd miles to the other side of the isthmus. We stumble past the last unlit buildings down an unmarked dirt road pointing more or less towards the cove and deep water on the opposite side of the island. The road sidles and snakes between slopes in a clear, narrow valley not more than a half-mile wide. In the light of a now-setting crescent moon the shadows and accompanying stillness become ghostly and ominous. I was once a rural beast, but after years living in Downtown I am an urban monster. Things like stillness and quiet are no longer contemplative and serene. They’re terrifying harbingers of impending doom. The gentle slopes remind me of something out of the Bible, some sort of awful valley of the shadow of the death, where I refuse to lie down in green pastures and the promise of goddam quiet waters is the only thing motivating me forward. I move deliberately in paranoid silence. Every bush is a killer buffalo laying in wait; every dip in the road some sort of island-made pangee pit filled with feces, smeared spears and a little note at the bottom that says “locals only.” Again, I cannot stress the importance of the aforementioned shake weed.

photos BROOKE MALTUN

The hills flanking the harbor on the backside are awash in strange shadows. There is glowing phosphorescence out in the harbor, the source of which we can’t see. I wholly expect some sort of Travis Walton type alien abduction scenario to await us over the crest, so I pound the rest of my Coors Light in what I assume is the last moment of

The sun begins to set. The wildest colors possess the myriad clouds above turning the sky into some psychedelic masterpiece of modern meteorology. A mindless chorus of domestic violence apologism repeats endlessly “Live Your Life! Live Your Life!” from the speakers on the other boat. One of the stunted man-children points at the sky and yells over the four on the floor holocaust “This is the photo of the trip dude! Mad love for Catalina!” I smile mindlessly back at him, masking my disdain. Later at the bar when one of my friends nearly chokes him out for hitting on his girlfriend, I will smile one of the most genuine, heartfelt smiles of my life. There is something about Buccaneer Days that is conducive to cuckoldry. Older gentlemen dressed in fine red coats and powdered wigs accompany wild-haired women dressed as whores. The wenches pinch your nipples and ask coarsely when “you’re going to fuck them.” Then they’ll grab you or your friend by the balls and make you dance with them as their husbands watch. They’ll pull you closer and whisper in your ear for you to grab their ass or finger them, but it’s not about you. You are only an object. When you finger them and they moan and ask “do you like that?” they’re not asking you, they’re just mouthing words at their foppish husbands who look on and try to swallow their sobs of emasculation.

my terrestrial anal virginity. But instead of E.T. our eyes slowly focus on what is just an asshole in an elaborately lit boat corralling countless fish into a trawling net. I down another beer. Around 4 a.m. I awake from my slumber to a full-blown, skull-fucking hangover. I am face up in the forecastle cabin staring up through the hatch as Venus flies back and forth with the pitching of the boat in the rising swell. My stomach rumbles and I gently massage what I assume to be a burp out of my lower belly. But the burp has a terrible liquid weight behind it. I have just enough time to remove my wallet from my pants so as not to drop it in the water and pull half my body through the roof hatch before my mouth and throat fill with vomit. In a rather gymnastic maneuver I heave myself belly first onto the deck and crawl barf-mouthed to the rail where I spew into the otherwise unblemished water. After a few extraneous spasms of my throat reflex I collapse on the deck and admire the sunrise to the North. When I remember the color spectrum is just light pollution I vomit more Coors Light, Meritage wine and carne asada onto King Neptune’s playground below. *** Some people have the motto “No Bad Days.” Publicly I say good for you to those people. Privately I say fuck off. Friday is a shit day. Sure I’m on an island watching my friends drink on a plank hanging off a sailboat in an idyllic harbor, but the reverberating hangover headache causes my motor skills and IQ to drop a good 30%. I am in a stupor for a good deal of the day. I could have seen a mermaid or been adopted by a pod of dolphins and not have given a shit. The afternoon passes uneventfully. More friends trickle in and more beer is inserted into our respective stomachs to mixed results. A thunderstorm moves through around 3 and washes the shame and dander off my body. Despite the greatest display of lightning I have seen in my seven years in California, I do not attempt to move. Hours pass and the storm moves through leaving hundreds of high level, little fluffy clouds in the sky. I recognize the irony and wanting to be direct in all things, especially music, I put on the song “Little Fluffy Clouds” by the Orb. Some acquaintances of the boat owner have rafted their rented sailboat alongside ours. I suspect that I will hate them because they insist on playing some piece of shit Chris Brown song so loud it drowns out my own symphonic selection.

Despite the sheer volume of intoxicated people there are few fights. Most conflicts are resolved with the purchase of grog or a hearty, shared “argh.” The displaced bikers mind their own business and the inland empire crew does their best to black out without too much destruction of property. There’s a pirate band. I should mention that. They’re actually a hard rock band from San Diego named Damaged Goods, but for the intents and purposes of Buccaneer Days, they are a pirate band. And what sort of music does a pirate band play? They play hard rock covers, of course. When they open their set with a Cure cover someone in the distant bar screams “Faggots!” The musical pirates get the point and by 10 p.m. they’re playing “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver,” a slap-happy, demented piece of 90s rock by Primus.

I have never heard this song covered because most audiences find it gauche or even repulsive, but their song selection here of all places has hit home. Pirates and wenches flood forward and applaud heartily when the song ends. They then launch into “Killing in the Name Of” by Rage Against the Machine and the most respectful mosh pit of all time erupts. LA County Sheriffs smile and let the controlled violence continue, because unlike everything you ever heard about Woodstock ’99, these hard rock fans are just trying to get their kicks without raping anybody. It is a slice of sublime anger. Around this time, my friend nearly chokes out our douche bag drunkard acquaintance. We use the promise of his girlfriend’s body to lure the choke artist through a crowd of cuckolds and wenches to the dingy dock where the fucking boat won’t start. We end up flooding the engine and attracting the attention of a crew of Coast Guard patrolmen. We are all stinking drunk, attempting to operate a water-borne vehicle in the state of California. This is of course illegal, but so long as we promise to be cool and bring life jackets back the Coast Guard will let us go. They are more interested in the drunken pirates fucking in the sand fifty feet distant. My drunk, choke out buddy angrily tries to start the outboard motor. For cosmological reasons I will never understand, the fates choose to reward him by starting the motor on the first pull. He begins to scream, “get in the boat you fucking fuck dicks! Get in my fucking boat!” The Coast Guards shine their lights on us and attempt to interfere, but we gun it out of the dock and make it into the labyrinth of moorings before they can catch us. *** Imagine Buccaneer Days as the last party on Earth, the type of wild catharsis the entire world would engage in if they knew a giant comet would obliterate us all in a week. In 2011 this concept isn’t far-fetched. Doom saturates the consciousness. It’s this sort of insipid, all-encompassing paranoia that makes dressing up like a pirate and drinking till comprehension is beyond the faculties of the mind seem like a rational response to the world equilibrium. It’s this sort of dread that makes having an orgy with two other couples in public seem reasonable. It’s this sort of thirst for escapism that makes you tap the keg at 9 a.m. Which is what we do. We tap the keg at 9 a.m., because the world is strange and fucked-up and from the perspective of someone who wakes up deeply hung-over on a sailboat surrounded by people wearing pantaloons and spots of vomit from the night before, the only way out is deeper through this god-awful rabbit hole. Deeper, further until the white rabbit of hope and satisfaction is caught and slaughtered mercilessly by confused, coked out pirate mongoloids as Damaged Goods plays a Nirvana cover in the distance. “Is that ‘Rape Me?’ No? Well who gives a fuck? Smear some more bunny blood on my face, babe, and suck my dick because the whole harbor is watching.” It is one of the most beautiful mornings of my life. The sun comes up like a ball of hope, only to illuminate a harbor of shame. There are people passed out on the sand at the beach when we to pick up my friend Jake who chose to sleep with a cougar named Karen. The early morning refuse of a Buccaneer Days party looks like an awful time warp where all the extras for the Papa Roach video “Last Resort” were sucked up in 2000 and dropped off dressed as pirates eleven years in the future. One major concern for those of us pirates still clasping desperately to what’s left of our souls is hygiene. Yes, there are showers at Two Harbors. You put in seventy-five cents and get ninety seconds, unless the power goes out, in which case you get nothing. When you’re surrounded by water you just don’t see the logic in paying for it. We opt to bathe in the ocean. Considering the amount of boat sewage dumped in the harbor over this weekend this is not wise, but we do not care about these particulars. I do, however, have another slight problem and that problem is swamp ass. It feels like someone sewed sandpaper to the inside of my ass cheek, which is not beyond the realm of reasonable concern at Buccaneer Days.

I am a man of innovation and being without proper soap or bathing instruments I ask my friend Jake to pump some dish soap down my asscrack before I jump into the ocean. It’s a gamble, but it pays off. With a little scrubbing and a lot of salt water douching, my ass feels next to normal. Thank God on high. The day could be considered a grand success. Thirty or so friends including the members of Damaged Goods join us on the boat throughout the day as we binge drink and watch an orgy. It’s good old-fashioned spectator sport. I can feel myself devolving as I watch 50somethings plow each other out and I discuss the relative merits of Neil Peart versus Danny Carey. I glance over the side and the reflection of my face in the water below has a far more pronounced brow than I remember having. When I attempt to stand my knuckles drag on the deck. I attempt to protest, but my voice box and lingual organs can only produce odd grunts and moans. I am becoming ape. A lovely blond who is strangely pure-looking and yet tolerant of amateur pirating borrows my camouflage jacket. She checks the pocket and finds a condom and my AARP card. She is oddly unoffended. I realize that she doesn’t think I’m a total dirt bag and even if she does, she’s ok with it. I begin to think too much, which makes me want to piss. In a microcosm devoid of rules and imbued with a seemingly lax tolerance for exhibitionism, public urination is strangely still a faux pas. Beneath deck my esteemed colleagues are polishing off the rest of the tequila and a line six-deep has amassed to use the last working head on board. I am desperate and have no other course of action. In a very casual maneuver, I pocket the tequila bottle and retire to the forecastle cabin where I piss so much I nearly fill it. From somewhere I hear faint strands of “Last Resort” being blasted through boat speakers. Someone up top says “P. Roach! Classic!” Things could not get any stranger. Someone gives me a handful of mushrooms, which I swallow. This will be the only time on psychedelics I encounter a landscape so naturally foreign and absurd as to render the mushrooms ineffective. The combination of Buccaneer Days and Psilocybin was like an existential double negative. The paradox was too much. Mind and liver could not possibly foist any stranger paradigm on my consciousness so both shut down. I spend the night in a haze of apathy. I forgo hand washing. I listen as my coked-out friend tells me how much he loves the world because of its “potential.” I let Skip, the bass player from Damaged Goods, tell me to follow my heart and then I return to the boat where at 3 a.m. I witness three drunken bastards fall into the ocean and I do nothing. Blessed sleep washes over me. *** The general consensus on Sunday morning is fuck pirates. This shit has got to end. I am exhausted and without even the slightest landmark of sanity with which to draw a bearing. I opt to take the ferry home and I spend the entire ride wondering what the fuck is wrong with me and if indeed that foul smell in the boat cabin is me, which it is. At Buccaneer Days there is no middle road to tread. There is no moderation and there is no thoughtful reasoning about the paths of righteousness. There can only be madness. Such is the brutal truth of the matter. In 2011, the only way to escape a mad world is to descend further and further into madness. We all stoke the fires of insanity in a foolhardy attempt to put out the scalding embers of our age with greater flames while the onlooker with the bucket of water is labeled a heretic. I wonder what will become of us. I wonder how big we can get the bonfire before it consumes us all. I have so many questions and, after a weekend like this, absolutely no answers. I write this now for posterity. It is a cautionary tale. Mothers tell your children not to do what I have done. But yet no matter how stupid and ill-advised and juvenile and cathartic and electric and exciting and completely necessary it was I can’t help but feel silly telling you not to go, if only so I could have it for myself.

T H A T

BLACK

JUMPSUIT text ROSS GARDINER photo LIZI

he was sitting with her back to me, looking into the mirror. I was at her desk,

we got back together, but it’s hard in Glasgow. Everybody smokes, so we did too. I

trying to draw something. Every now and again I would look at her to check

hadn’t really wanted to quit. She did. She’s older you see. She told me it mattered

if she was looking at me. But she just continued applying eyeliner, fluttering her

more. I thought that it would be too hard for her to do it alone, so I quit too. She

long heavy eyelids now and again. I was tempted to tell her that she looked better

said I didn’t have to, but I insisted.

now than she did when she started. But somehow it didn’t seem appropriate. Her hair was tied up at the back in a bunch. I could see the back of her neck and the

“Two cravings are weaker than one,” I offered. She didn’t say anything.

little knuckles at the top of her spine. The long wisps of hair tangled with each

She pulled out an item of clothing from the wardrobe. I noticed the sudden movement

other and stretched out from her skin.

from the corner of my eye. I turned. The black jumpsuit.

“Where are we going again tonight?” I asked. She didn’t respond. She just contin-

She stepped into it and hiked it up over her body. It had a ruffle of elastic under

ued to focus on her reflection.

her breasts that pushed them up slightly, hiding them under a large puff of fabric. She didn’t have large breasts and so she liked the design. Her legs looked like

“Darling?” I said. This time she looked at my reflection. “Where are we going tonight?”

they came all the way up to her armpits and her ass had the shape of a delicate teardrop. She looked fantastic. She was tugging at different parts of the outfit, pulling

“I told you” she said, cold, taking the mascara brush away from her face. I

parts out to change her figure to the perfect shape. Her bumpy sternum was visible

thought about it for a moment, but couldn’t remember her answer. “Merchant

above the elastic at the top of the black jumpsuit. Her sharp shoulders and her long,

City, to meet Jackie and Mark for dinner. I told you.”

thin arms lay bare. She thrust them onto her hips and spun around to face me.

She put down her brush and picked up her glass. As she drank the last mouthful

“What do you think?” she asked. I looked her up and down. I smiled. But inside

I heard the ice cubes rattle as they left her lips and slid to the bottom. I looked

I sighed. She looked gorgeous. Maybe better than I had ever seen her. Her frame

back at the paper in front of me.

had become more defined recently and her make-up had the gloss of hours spent, without too much care. She looked like she had been planning to steal the

I had scribbled a couple of lines which could be the start of a face. Or something

show, if there even was one. I loved everything about the way she looked, except

else maybe. I had started to write words around the outside of them. The lines

the black jumpsuit. She wore it the night she found out. It empowered her that

had taken an hour. The words: two minutes. As I read over them I realized that

night. And with her make-up diluted with the disappointment and anger I stirred

they were better than the drawing ever would be. I sighed. My glass was still full

at that moment, she looked dangerous. I could never forget how her arms went

and the ice cubes had started to melt. I like to let my drink dilute and my coffee

that sassy way. Like she was made of smoke. I thought they would come crashing

cool. She doesn’t really do either of those things. I looked back at the lines and

down on my face, unhampered by cloth and free to strike. Something inside me

words. I sighed again. Silently this time. I looked at her computer. I opened a

began to well up. Panic overcame me. I remembered how she yelled and how

new tab. I started to type “guardian.co.uk/sport.” The memory bar didn’t pop up.

everyone stopped to stare. I shuddered.

I waited for the computer to remember. I typed in the full address and waited. “You,” I started, “you, you look wonderful darling. Just wonderful.” She smiled “Argentina have sacked Maradonna!” I shouted to her. It didn’t surprise me, but

and turned back to her reflection. I looked back at the computer but my eyes

it might have surprised her. She liked Maradonna. Her family was from Argentina.

moved around her workspace. I couldn’t concentrate on the news or the ‘drawing’

She didn’t look up. Just continued with her make-up. This time she was pouting

or anything. Just the darkness spilling into the corner of my eye from that black

and dabbing at her lips.

jumpsuit. I noticed that things had been moved around since I was last here a few days ago. Her sketches had been taken down from the wall and the pictures of us

“Darling?” I said again, this time a little softer.

had joined them. They sat in a little stack next to her laptop. I saw the little stains left on the wall from where the blue tack had been pulled off. She always said that she decorated around her workspace to help her think when she couldn’t draw.

“What?”

Looking at you helps me, she said. Maybe the blue stains helped her more these days. “Maradonna has been sacked” I said again, this time with a little less enthusiasm. I knew she didn’t really care about what I was saying. Football was something

“Are you ready to go?” I asked, looking at the time in the top corner of the screen.

we bonded over when we got back together. I tried to like art. She tried to like football. We both knew though.

“Almost,” she said, “You?”

“Oh no,” she started, “Well the World Cup is over now, so...” and got back to

“Of course, I’ve been ready for ages,” I replied, immediately wishing I hadn’t said

pouting at herself.

anymore than ‘of course.’ She shot my reflection a stern glance as she clipped on her gold earrings. I wondered if they were the same ones she wore that night.

She was right, the World Cup was over now. * I had been dressed and ready for over an hour. Since I had shaved my head it

Her phone vibrated next to her. She immediately picked it up, leaving only one earring attached.

didn’t take me long to get ready. I had become more conservative in my dress recently. My more colorful outfits had been replaced by a wardrobe of dark, plain

“Who’s that?” I asked after she started typing her reply.

cloth. I think I was readying myself for the transition to winter. She had finished her make-up and was flicking through the dresses in her wardrobe. Every outfit

“Maria” she responded quickly, almost without a thought. She gave me a glance.

fought for its place, squeezing against the others. It was hot outside so most of

A slight glance. I sighed to myself again. I knew it wasn’t Maria. But I didn’t say

the clothes would probably be ignored. I liked most of the things packed into the

anything about it. She wanted me to ask. I could tell she felt ready, in her black

tiny space, but there was one that I didn’t like at all. And a part of me knew that

jumpsuit.

she would choose that one. I sparked another cigarette and the smoke scratched at the back of my throat. We had tried to quit together a month or so ago, after

* We went out that night. I never saw that black jumpsuit again.

CONTINUED... SUPERHUMANOIDS (from page 18) If the indie approach is to cloak the message in noise, complexity and metaphor to create art that appeals to an elite few, then the pop approach can be described as delivering that message in its purest form—which is what Superhumanoids aspire to do. But indie is also about executing the entirety of one’s art outside of mass-market influences—which Superhumanoids also do. What the resulting art and the people who make it look like, however, is no longer so neatly definable. We talk about the band’s upcoming October residency at the Echo, and

“Break Bread. Share Wine. Feed the Soul.”

they joke about performing a choreographed dance routine to a track. And I guess they could get away with it. As the elitism of previous decades wanes along with conceptions of “selling out,” the lines between authentic and manufactured are fading.

Tools once reserved for purveyors of

mainstream music are now available to indie kids too—not just marketing tools, but aesthetic choices, including the choice to take off your glasses and get down with your animal impulses. So with a collection of catchy, four-minute, hi-fi tunes in their arsenal, Superhumanoids are fashioning a stylish pop alternative that speaks to collective experience.As with what’s sartorially tried-and-true, the music is as much about restraint and elegance as it is about sex appeal. Like a chic black shift that hits just above the knee, sometimes the key to being sexy is simply: less is more.

MERRY KARNOWSKY (from page 33) And still the gallery keeps growing, taking on new talents as well as tending to the OG family. She showed two new artists in August, Nicola Verlato and Vonn Sumner; and Greg Simkins (Craola) had his first solo exhibition in February 2012 along with Johnny Rodriguez (also new). She introduced photography into her program at the end of 2011 with a show of street photographer Vivian Maier hosted and co-curated by Tim Roth. “We had lines around the block for the opening, national press, and will be part of a feature documentary. It was really a highlight of my career; the work and Vivian’s story struck me personally and very deeply.” They’re planning a second Maier exhibition at the end of 2013. Merry’s calling this upcoming 2012-2013 program the “Quixotic Season,” and it’s starting huge with Lezley Saar opening Madwoman in the Attic: The Female Gothic in 19th Century Literature on September 8th—an installation examining so-called “insane” females from 19th Century novels, illustrating the women’s altered realities, hallucinations and visions along with an assortment of medical quackery devices to make it a truly unsettling experience. Mel Kadel has mentioned that she might do an installation for her October 13th show, having to do with the amusement park her grandparents had when she was growing up—but that’s all Merry can tell us as she was “sworn to secrecy.” Mark Whalen, whose show also opens on October 13th, is adding aspects to his retro-futurist, sciencebased mythologies that nod to the classical influences in his painting and has also hinted at the presence of holograms and laser beams. Mercedes Helnwein has big plans for her November 17th opening as well, refining some “really rich and beautifully moody oil paintings,” which are quite a departure from her black and white graphite work. No laser beams though. Each of these Fall shows promises to be a huge big deal, and the occasion for more of the gallery’s famously festive opening nights. “Our signature cocktail created by our bartender Will Potter is vodka lemonade with fresh mulled rosemary. I feel openings are celebrations of the artist’s accomplishments, and a way for collectors and fans to join in the celebration. There are a million things to do on a Saturday night, so if people choose to come to a gallery to see artwork and meet the artist, the least I can do is offer a welcoming glass of something nice when they walk through the door!” We couldn’t agree more, so let’s raise those glasses to another fifteen very merry years.

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DESIRE OBTAIN CHERISH ONE ARTIST’S QUEST TO DESTROY POP CULTURE FOR THE GREATER GOOD text SHANA NYS DAMBROT

The ar tist known as Desire Obtain Cherish at tended

employing an entourage of assistants, fabricators,

some of the best ar t schools in the countr y, but still

and representatives. His first solo show at L ab Ar t in

he never thought he’d be an ar tist—not for a living

September 2011 was followed by Miami Basel with

any way. He tried just about ever y creative profession

Maximillian Galler y and an avalanche of at tention.

he could think of before he finally gave in to fate.

Now he’s the one being desired, obtained, and

But ever y random thing he did in bet ween has made

cherished. Good thing he’s long on fresh ideas. “I’m

him the visual emperor he is today. He had studied

interested in what ’s fashionable, and street ar t is

architectural theor y and environmental design along

fashionable, but I’m also much more of a conceptual

with ar t, reveling in the chance to re-imagine the

thinker. I don’t have any real st yle visually; objects

materials and tools societ y uses to tell its stories. But

and images come from the idea and they look like

at the time he graduated, the ar t world was drowning

whatever they need to look like to ser ve that idea.”

in Pop Surrealism and a taste for Gothic painterliness,

This is the same approach that made him so good as

and that didn’t seem like his cup of tea. So af ter a

a creative director, and the results are as eclectic as

foray into furniture design, he took a job at a small ad

they are power ful and funny. Billboard inter ventions

agency where his interdisciplinar y and ar t-historical

using painstakingly recreated fonts; heav y cast

training came in handy. In six weeks he went from

sculptures of melted lipstick and lollipops taking

glorified intern to Creative Director of the company,

Pop in a ner vous direction; couture-house logos

and his love for quietly subversive, conceptually rich,

on enormous pill-packs; por traits of celebrities

graphically brazen messaging systems firmly took

rendered

root. But it wouldn’t be long before he turned those

technique using the same contraband pills that

skills against their own masters.

killed them; roughly-finished mixed media works

One day his par tner from his other life as a music

sculptures that only look pret t y until you star t to

producer sug gested a wheat-pasting foray. Fast

catch the hidden codes. But though his sur faces

for ward a few years, and what star ted out as a

and strategies may change, he identifies one major

precision-mathematics

collage

that speak directly to social and political ills; outdoor

cheeky tex t-based appreciation of our culture

through-line that connects ever y thing he does as an

of acquisition has become a full- on ar t career

ar tist, “Rome is burning.” It ’s funny because it ’s true.

D E S I R E O B TA I N C H E R I S H .C O M

104

photos:Mike Piscitelli

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