Silver Strand State Beach

The blog went on pause for a while due to switching jobs, fixing up the condo, going back to the midwestern homeland and acquiring a super-cold/flu on the plane ride back. Yesterday, I attempted to bake out my ailments and chose a new beach to visit - the Silver Strand State Beach near Coronado. I love going over the Coronado bridge. It's even more fun when someone else is driving because then I can look out the window and take in the views of the Navy shipyards, boats in the harbor and rapidly changing San Diego skyline. When I got out to the beach I found the south end packed with people doing something called "Kite Surfing". It looked like a lot of fun and I want to try it so I consulted with one of the born-and-raised Californians I know here and she said knowing how to surf would help and then she added that having good balance is necessary for surfing. So maybe I'll start with a skateboard and work my way to the water. Kite Surfing looks like it requires a lot of upper-body strength to control the sail rigging and a lot of lower leg strength to carve up the waves. There must be some formula for sail-size to human body weight because I didn't see anyone soaring into the atmosphere from a gust of wind but I also was not watching the whole time.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

I am small. Art is Great!

War Mediated - Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Opening Reception of War Mediated at the Mpls Institute of Arts
(work shown by Camille J. Gage)

http://www.artsmia.org/index.php?section_id=2&exh_id=2583

Air Mail

NWA Flight 185: San Diego to Mpls

If you ever sit next to me on an airplane you'll mostly see the back of my head. I always choose window seats and the movie outside the window is different every time.

Asphalt Trip - 3rd Bit

(Venice Beach - Installation Art, artist unknown)

• PHOTOS OF THE GAMBLE HOUSE BY GREENE & GREENE
• PHOTOS OF VENICE BEACH RESIDENTIAL ARCHICTECTURE AND OTHER THINGS...

Asphalt Trip - 2nd Bit

Here's a Pasadena Fact: Julia Child, the American who cooked French cuisine, was born in Pasadena on August 15th, 1912. Who knew a Pasadenan would write a 734 p. best-selling book on French Cooking? Who knew any 734 p. book would be a best-seller in America. It took a visit to France and an epiphany over a plate of oysters for Child to become the most famous cook in America but Southern California was the right geography to supplement her culinary awakening. In 1981 (at the age of 69) she founded the educational American Institute of Wine and Food in Napa, California with vintners Robert Mondavi and Richard Graff to "advance the understanding, appreciation and quality of wine and food" and today the institute has 25 chapters.

we're going to learn some new words

Currently spinning in my thoughts:

• Going to Mpls in 11 Days


• Schreibers going to Switzerland


• The first of many dérives to Los Angeles


• Sonoma County


• New multi-disciplinary job doing architecture + urban planning


• Paris someday


• "The Rise of Network Culture" by Kazys Varnelis


• ambiting southern and northern california

This probably seems like a schizo, spazzy, dis-connected list of things to think about but they are all connected. My gray matter operates as a mixer and the more material the better. Today I came upon the binder needed to set and cure this aggregate of thoughts - Psychogeography.

First, a little background, in the late 50's a deviant group of young artists in France established a movement called the Letterists Internationale which was the French version and counterpart to the American Beat movement.

An important theme of both camps was Psychogeography, defined as "precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals." Within the concept of psychogeography and central to Letterist and Beat culture is the idea of the "dérive" or "drift", defined as the 'technique of locomotion without a goal', in which 'one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'. The dérive acted as something of a model for the 'playful creation' of all human relationships (from Drifting with The Situationist International, author unknown).

Sunday's Asphalt Trip is the continuation and conscious beginning of many dérives. I will be locomoting to geographical nodes that fit within a 2 day ambit (ambit = an external boundary; a circuit, range, sphere or scope). LA is the first node with the second significant node being SF+SONOMA, which thanks to modern life I can get to in less time than it takes to get to LA. In retrospect, my first trip to SF+SONOMA was a dérive-in-disguise. I had no goal, no usual motive and left myself open to the attraction of the terrain and its temptations. The experience of Sonoma County has affected the way I feel and think about California as a whole. Visiting the heart and soul of the wine industry ( $15 Billion dollars a year in California sales) has made the world seem ever-so-slightly smaller.

And so 10 months of living in a bigger city, in a more connected region, amongst a circle of international friends (whom I'll travel with and visit abroad), entering sideways into the field of urban planning is culminating into a major psychogeographic shift. The new office locale and increase in vacation will begin to allow 5 and 10 day ambits on an annual timeline with Paris and Zurich as the next nodes. If I had limits before they are changing now.