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these are just things you will need and not just want this summer, fall, winter, and next spring.
King of the corner willy takes us on a day in the life of running his corner and the stories that came with the territory
DTLA is a part that is developing very quick and there is alot of intresting compositions happening that are eye candy to anyone walking around.
At a time that is so dark there is so much lights around us, roaming around you will for sure getting the feeling of inspiration and nostaglia
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I remeber the first show and tell I had as a kid I brought my Old Dirty Bastard CD and got my ass kicked for it... i guess catholic school is not down with the Wu-Tang. One of my favorite food places would have to be grand central market.
As far as food goes, I love everything, especially Indian food…(I like it spicy… really spicy). Something most people don’t know about me, is the fact that I play the harp. I started playing the harp when I was eight years old.
I have a hyper active imagination that flows onto the page, oh and I like dry toasted rye bread... that’s it.
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he issue you are holding in your hands is something that the team at SSDD had a real fun time making. This is the first issue and most likely the last but regardless, we want you to really just take your time flipping through these pages and try to make the connections with your day to day. This is the LA issue we really tried to put a focus on the background noise of everyone’s life’s and just highlight those things to show you that you that there are pretty interesting things in your daily journey. There is a lot of things out there and we really can get stuck with saying that it is the “same shit different day”, but if you get your greasy, smug, beautiful face of your phone then you can really pay attention to the same shit you see every day and might find something interesting. Thanks,
Jacob Vazquez
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COFFEE
10 Speed Coffee Responsible sourcing practices and micro batch roasting ensure that we are always producing the highest quality cup of coffee. We are dedicated to growing cycling culture through sponsorship of local riders, events, national races. A percentage of every purchase goes back into the pursuit of growing cycling culture.
Andante Coffee Although the coffee menu will ultimately rotate, Brazil, Columbia and Ethiopia are all well-represented here. You’ll also find teas, chai lattes, cold brew and a selection of pastries from the small kitchen in the back.
196 °C (385 °F) Cinnamon Roast A very light roast level which is immediately at first crack. Sweetness is underdeveloped, with prominent toasted grain, grassy flavors, and sharp acidity prominent.
210 °C (410 °F) American Roast Medium light brown, developed during first crack. Acidity is slightly muted, but origin character is still preserved.
225 °C (437 °F) Full City Roast Medium dark brown with occasional oil sheen, roast character is prominent. At the beginning of second crack.
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SHAVE
rank’s Chop Shop, the premiere Lower East Side barbershop, voted best barber shop by New York Magazine consecutive years in a row, is proud to announce the opening of a brand new Los Angeles location that doubles as a fully functional art gallery. The Los Angeles shop is a bold new move for the brand located in the heart of Hollywood on the infamous Melrose strip at 8209 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90046. The 2000 sq ft shop will be a permanent fixture on the palmlined street offering a one-of-a kind experience for the distinguished “Modern Gentleman of Leisure” along with a
selection of retail goods, men’s grooming products and visual art and photography by featured artists. Like its east coast counterparts, patrons of Frank’s Chop Shop LA are in for a one-of a kind, high-end grooming and social experience unlike anywhere else in the world. The ambiance alone, an homage to the classic barbershop, and a feast for the senses, features vintage 1930’s barber chairs, a purple hot rod powerplant motorcycle in the foyer, lacquered black and white checkered floors, along with classically trained barbers who use straight razors, scissors
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YES Paying attention to the water temperature in your grooming routine may seem like splitting hairs, but it has a significant impact on the success of your shave. In much the same way that warm or hot water pushes pores to open, cold water can cause them to close up shop.
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Somewhere in a long-lost fatherson handbook must have been misguided advice to shave with endless strokes — the kind that meander from cheek to jaw and curve underneath before reaching their final destination at the base of the neck. It’s a mouthful as much as it is mistaken.
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KRINK
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x n alcoholic beverage consumed as a hangover rememdy. The phrase comes from the expression “hair of the dog that bit you”, meaning that the best cure for what ails you is to have some more of it. In ancient times it was literally used to say that if a dog were to bite you, putting the dog’s hair into the wound would heal it. “Like cures like”. This hangover remedy is not recommended because a) it leads to a bad habit of drinking during the day and b)it doesn’t really work very well. Still, this method works about as well as most other hangover remedies.
One serving. What You’ll Need: 2 oz. Vodka 4 oz. Tomato juice 3-5 dashes Worcestershire sauce 1 oz. Lemon juice Tobasco and horseradish to taste Cocktail shaker Highball glass Instructions: Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker. Mix by pouring liquid back and forth between the shaker’s two halves. Pour into glass over ice.
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Matty Matheson has a new series on Vice wherein he gets shitfaced with his chef buddies and then wakes them up the next morning and forces them to cook a hangover curing meal for him. The first episode of Matty Matheson’s Hangover Cures took place in Markham with Nick Liu, they ate dim sum, crushed some racist boneheads with endless tequila shots and then woke up Nick the next morning and got him to cook up a feast of Hakka style comfort food with ingredients procured from T&T Market. The second episode sees Mat-
ty travel to Montreal to do some damage with Antonio Park of Park restaurant, we’ll be screening it this Monday at 86’d. To accompany this screening we’ll be serving up a selection of creatively rendered pogos by Drake sous chef Kevin Gilmour. He’s planning on doing a meat, veg and a sweet – all fried and served on sticks. Complimentary cocktails come courtesy of the wonderful folks at Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers, they’ll be bringing their incredible
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or over 30 years Willy has been king to the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights, a title he doesn’t take lightly. He treats his kingdom of concrete and secondhand disposables, like that coffee related fuck-fest of caramel and other artificial syrups sold in green labeled cups you just can’t be bothered to dispose of properly, with the respect of Jerusalem.
This is his holy land, and he can be seen sweeping up our mess on a regular basis, for shame. What sets him apart from the usual nameless tapestry of people down on their luck, a part of LA that’s as everyday and unrecognized as the trampled on pieces of gum fused to the sidewalks… sorry gum, is his style.
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The man doesn’t have much but he likes to look good, his wardrobe is a collection of bright colors and suits reminiscent of an Oakland pimp, hope you feel good about wearing sweatpants outside now. In fact he has a pair of gators supposedly gifted to him by John Stamos
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one fateful afternoon, John get back to us. However as native as vanity is to LA, Willy is a Southside Chicago transplant, your move Kanye. Willy left back in 1963, leaving a wife and two twin girls after a career in finance went bellyup. Trouble would continue to follow him, there is no easy life on the streets, and Willy
learned firsthand what that meant here in LA. In the early times of his reign as king he had to fight to defend his turf from those looking to move in or take what little he had, one rabblerouser in particular frequently came to try and dethrone Willy, showing up around 5pm always. Go
However, like a red bandana clad war hero Willy carries a machete around as his first line of defense, oh if machetes could talk. He also used to have a companion with him, a heroin addict Mike reminiscent of everyone’s favorite character
from The Wire. Willy was very adamant about letting me know he never took any drugs himself, we get it drugs are bad…but so fun. That is until you overdose like Mike did right on the same corner Willy fought for.
His altar was now tainted as a permanent reminder of a selfish sacrifice, no young lambs for the gods to smile on just a shot up husk of a poor soul trying to numb the pain, Dionysus can
you hear me? Look it up. The corner isn’t where Willy puts his tired eyes to rest though, it’s like his office. His “home” is the lot adjacent to a lawyer’s office, the irony of it all, but it’s not a bad SSDD spring 2016
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He has an arrangement with the office to stay there and leave his things in the lot; he just has to keep an eye out for any misconduct after hours like a slightly less official neighborhood watch. He even gets a little cash for his troubles, combine that with his nine-hundred dollar social security check and he’s doing better than most on the streets.
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A place that is full of eye catching compositions and up and coming spots to check out.
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t may seem like a no man’s land at first glance, but the Downtown Arts District in Los Angeles is a whole ‘nother beast when you take a closer look. Equal parts warehouse wasteland and burgeoning hub for LA’s young, professional and creative, the Arts District is the city’s neighborhood to watch. And with approximate limits of Second Street to Seventh Street and Alameda Street and the LA River, surprisingly, the Southeast section of Downtown is totally walkable.
Wurstkuche 800 E 3rd st, 213-687-4444
Angel city brewery 216 S Alameda St. 213-622-1261
Hennessey + Ingalls Bookstore 300 S Santa Fe Ave 213-437-2130
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Sprinkled amidst these perimeters are the makings of a community rich in character, featuring stylish galleries, handsome coffee shops, socially conscious boutiques and some of the best restaurants and bars. These pockets of budding establishments lie amidst a stretch of early 20th-century warehouses—many ex-factories—some of which are deserted, but all of which hold the promise of artist studios and loft apartments with exposed brick walls and floor-to-ceiling windows. Before it’s crawling with crowds and Silver Lake expats, get the lowdown on the Down-
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town Arts District’s best places to eat, drink, shop and explore. Arts District’s changing landscape is worrisome to longtime residents If this report is to be more than just a feel-good data dump, it could use some solid recommendations on how L.A. compares to other cities culturally and how we might improve the situation for artists and cultural organizations, both small and large. New York’s Center for an Urban Future issues a similar report (with far less frequency) on the state of the arts in that city. But “Creative
New York,” as it is called, is far more comprehensive. For one, it offers data on how the city›s cultural scene fits into a larger national picture.
riously lags when it comes to share of households donating to public broadcasting or the arts. New York is number one on the list. DeKalb County, Ga., is number two. San Francisco is number It covers the city’s job growth in crethree. L.A. doesn’t break the top 10. (For ative sectors relative to other locations shame, El Lay. For shame.) in the U.S. It breaks those jobs out by “Creative New York” also, quite neighborhood. It addresses cost of living issues and closures of cultural spaces, as helpfully, offers nine pages of concrete well as the drying up of government grant recommendations on what might make the city more hospitable to the arts. This dollars. It looks at the strength of the includes a description of the types of cultural nonprofit sector and attendance programs that have successfully supplied figures in the performing arts. artists with free or below-market studio It provides a holistic picture of the space. It offers tips on how artists might city’s various cultural assets within a lobetter qualify for subsidized housing. It cal and national context. In fact, it was in suggests ways in which the tax code can reading “Creative New York” that I found be less punitive to creative workers. out how much Los Angeles County se-
It even, quite intriguingly, discusses ways in which real estate developers and property owners might better support cultural activities by designating less lucrative secondand third-story or other off-the-street retail spaces as cultural zones that rent at below market rates. “City officials,” the report states, “should work with local development corporations and other business organizations to develop a set of carrots and sticks that could encourage landlords to rent these spaces to arts organizations, creative sector businesses, freelancers and others with significant space needs.”
But the ordinance — and the debate over it — strikes me a little bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. What does it matter if a studio-loft has 1,000 square feet of live-work space if it is totally unaffordable? This isn’t just a zoning question, it’s an income question. If neighborhoods such as the Arts District are to remain dynamic and true centers of arts production, we need to think not only about setting aside spaces that are functional for artists, but that are affordable to artists, too. And by artists, I don’t mean wellpaid showbiz types, programmers or the mysteriously wealthy members of the elite who can afford to dump $7 on juice. A healthy neighborhood is like a healthy ecosystem and should have a little bit of everything — including members of the working class.
By Marietta Springs
Photos by Jacob Vazquez
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Which gets to execution. And this is where civic and cultural leaders come in. In recent weeks, developers and civic leaders in the Arts District have been debating the minutiae of a live-work ordinance that would help preserve the character of the neighborhood by continuing to develop buildings where creative types might be able to both live and work.
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Written by Jane E. Boyd and Joseph Rucker Photography by Jacob Vazquez
he story of neon begins in the 1890s, with Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay. Best known as the codiscoverer of four of the noble gases (neon, argon, krypton, and xenon), Ramsay also isolated and characterized helium and radon, the other two noble gases, winning the Nobel Prize for his efforts. Together, these six gases form a family of elements distinguished by their unwillingness to bond with other atoms. This standoffish “nobility” gave the noble gases their name. It was a long time before the atmosphere gave up all its secrets. As early as 1785 prominent chemist Henry Cavendish had noted a small residue of gas left over after he removed oxygen (then known as “dephlogisticated air”) and what we know now as nitrogen from “common air.” Ramsay and his mentor John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, took up the challenge of identifying this mystery gas.
In 1894 they began attacking air with bruteforce methods—combustion, reaction, and absorption—to strip away every possible atom of nitrogen and oxygen. In one early experiment they removed oxygen from air using red-hot copper. To remove nitrogen the deoxygenated air was passed over red-hot magnesium, soda lime, copper oxide, and phosphoric anhydride. After further steps eliminated the remaining nitrogen and oxygen, they named the residual gas argon (derived from the Greek for “the inactive or lazy one”). high voltage. These gas-discharge tubes, named for the electrical discharge that made them light up, would become the basis for neon lamps. Ramsay found neon’s light particularly striking. In his 1904 Nobel Prize lecture he described the neon spectrum as “a brilliant flame-coloured light, consisting of many red, orange, and yellow lines.” Travers was even more
Claude was not the first to look to gas tubes for light. Spurred by the commercial success of Thomas Edison’s incandescent lightbulbs, inventors attempted to transform gas-discharge tubes into practical lighting systems. In the late 1890s Daniel McFarlan Moore, a former Edison employee, filled 10-foot glass tubes with nitrogen or carbon dioxide under low pressure, adding electrodes at both ends. These “Moore lamps,” which glowed bright white when electrified, were more efficient than the carbon-filament incandescent bulbs then in use.
Though the lamps were used as general lighting in some stores and workplaces, they were expensive to install (a “glass plumber” had to connect the tubes on-site), required highvoltage electricity, and tended to leak. After 1910, when improved incandescent lamps with tungsten filaments displaced Moore’s tubes, his company went under. Claude soon found that
adapting Moore’s concept to neon involved more than just switching gases. His tubes gave a magnificent glow, but impurities set free from the hot electrodes quickly dimmed the brightness. A carbon filter solved that problem but not the issue of metallic
buildup around the electrodes, which made the tubes flicker out too soon. Claude installed larger electrodes that stayed cooler: the resulting tubes burned brightly and steadily, with 20-foot tubes lasting as long as 1,200 hours. Successful at last, Claude filed his first patent for neon lighting in 1910. That December he demonstrated his invention at the Salon de l’Automobile (the Paris Motor Show). Inside the exhibition building thousands of incandescent bulbs studded light fixtures and manufacturers’ signs, glinting off the shining metal of the cars below. Outside, two 40-foot neon tubes glowed a vivid orange-red on the building’s colonnade. Modern technology of all sorts was on display: the newest cars and the newest lighting made possible by the electrical
Claude admitted that red neon was not ideal for general lighting but insisted there were some situations in which neon would prove superior, such as for illuminating monuments and in advertising, where “the more dazzling and attractive a light, the more suitable it is.” This last use turned out to be the most popular. In 1912 Claude installed the first-ever neon advertising sign in a Parisian barbershop on the Boulevard Montmartre. A large rooftop sign for the Italian vermouth maker Cinzano soon followed, along with illumination for the entrance of the Paris Opéra. Making the most of his new invention, Claude formed another company, Claude Neon, to sell franchises for neon signage. Despite a high price tag—$100,000 plus royalties—dozens of franchises opened around the world, especially in major American cities. Neon was on its way to becoming a household name. Though the earliest neon signs were relatively simple—the range of colors and animation would come later—business owners competed with each other to trace their signatures on buildings and rooftops. Claude’s signage monopoly lasted through the 1920s, eventually crumbling as his patents expired and former employees leaked his trade