The Bus Bench

Edith Abeyta. Street Wear.

I was the shelf for artist’s Edith Abeyta’s interpretation of a walking alter at Tropico de Nopal’s Calavera Fashion Show.

 

The art was called: Street Wear

Street Wear is the representation of homeless woman. There are lots of them in downtown LA.

She made a kimono out of a mattress, which I’m going to steal from her house. All of the materials for the outfit were “found” materials that Edith then created something new with. She hand makes everything, which is rare nowadays.

Edith's Street Wear with in the background with me as the hanger, stolen from a photos taken by Robert Gauthier at the Los Angeles Times.

Pershing Square: What Was, What IS and what will never be. . .

Being a fan of cartography, typography, illustration and print, I was excited to take some time from my itinerary of fighting, drinking and satire to drink in the Central Library's latest exhibit, L.A. Unfolded: Maps from The Los Angeles Public Library. It is a decent exhibit (the garish lighting against the Plexiglass and protective glass coverings is rather annoying, to state the least) yet one that I highly recommend. The late 19th Century maps on display are small in number but certainly worth the trip; here are a few, after the jump. . .

Stay Hotel. Fishbowl living in microlofts.

 

I was walking home from the 51 bus and I saw people in the display rooms at Stay. I had been looking out for them since it was brought up at Angelenic that Stay would be having fishbowl rooms.

I wonder how cheap the rent is?

Browne

Beware of the friendly dragon. He doesn't want to hurt you, but he just can't help it.

This Train Safety PSA is courtesy of the MetroLibrarian's You Tube's station

MTA Art. Aviation Station the Green Line. Westchester.

At the Aviation Station in Westchester (Wikipedia has the zip code as 90048. It's 90045. That's about a few hundred thousand dollars difference in real estate world. Looking at the economy, probably about half a million dollars difference currently. Wiki can be wrong. And no one pays over one million dollars to live by the airport.) The Bus Bench went down to see specifically the quote by William Burroughs, but his quote had disappeared. We assumed the death of that quote was owing to vandals, but in his place we saw pieces of poetry by Kerouac, Ellison, Hughes and Ginsberg.

 

MTA Art. Rosa Parks Station.

I noticed all of the rails have public art on display.  I will share some with you.

Artist.  Joe Sam. Hide-n-Seek. 1995

On Green Line Platform in Watts at the Compton border.

MORE AFTER THE TRANSFER

Russell Peters. Race Relations. A bit of funny.

Can you make fun of race? Sure you can. There is an educated smart way of doing it.

There's nothing more irritating that a person of color comedian just catering to easy themes.

Russell Peters is an Indian-Canadian comedian that gets as a person of color there is more in the world than just your relationship to the white mainstream.

Margaret Cho and Chris Rock (yeah you were good for a second Chris, but later you went WAY too into what some white people think is funny in regards to black people...and Margaret you were awesome for a second, but you never went deeper than you thought your parent's accents were funny, sad...) take note. No one thinks you are funny anymore other than that white guy who has one black guy friend and that black guy is a cop.

At the Bus Bench we bring race, because to us it's connected to public transportation, government and the economy. The reason that public transportation in LA is in the shambles it is in is owing partially to race in addition to other factors.

--The Bus Bench

A merci goes out to Racialicious  looking at TV and girly magazines so we don't have to.

Car-Free Thursdays? They are doing it in Brooklyn.

"Car-Free Bedford Here at Last: At Least for Next Few Saturdays
Don’t hate on Jason Jeffries. He wants to close down Bedford Avenue—but it’s only for your own good. Jeffries is the architect behind Williamsburg Walks, an event that will close a stretch of Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn for four Saturdays this summer, beginning this weekend. And, according to Jeffries, this is the best way to build community in the nabe." Georgia Kral, NY Press

Why can’t the most eco-city do that? The most eco city is LA according to the Business Journal. Possibly that is overstating things we have the most environmentally friendly commercial buildings.

But can’t we go take it to the next level? Especially in downtown LA during the Art Walk. Everybody is drunk anyway. Why not ban personal motor vehicle traffic in the areas surrounding the Art Walk? It’s one Thursday a month, how hard could that be? If they can do it in Brooklyn they can easily do it here.

And no I wouldn’t be willing to organize it. I do not get involved in political matters in that way, because that would mean I would have to be nice to people and fuck that.

But maybe you cycling/pedestrian people might want to consider getting together with the city and making that happen.

I noticed that the cycling community has aligned themselves with the “pedestrian” community so as to not look so self-absorbed. By aligning themselves with the “pedestrian” community (didn’t even know that walking was a movement) they are saying, “Hey we’re not selfish we care about other people, but we’re not trashy bus people and are they really people anyway?” 

Bus people are the lowest of the low in regards to status in Los Angeles.  And as a bus rider, I’m not sure if I am a human being. Maybe some I am some kind of She-Devil, which would actually have some benefits.

I guess that is trying in regards to the cycling community being a little bit less selfish, so that would be good, right?

I hope someone takes this cause up so that  for future generations of the Art Walks the only traffic will be two wheel and two feet traffic of people who are part of the alternative transportation revolution!!

Hopefully gas prices stay high.

by Browne

The rich are eating us and shitting us into grants.

The person who drew the above (and below) sidewalk drawings on 4th and Main in downtown LA was a young homeless white guy.  A relatively young homeless white guy who I hope will snap out of it and go back home to the little boring safe world from which he came. Currently though he is still a homeless guy and an artist.

I see a lot of working class and poor kids doing this kind of thing. Copying the methods of people like Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Robbie Canal, it's as if they don't get that these guys are rich and more importantly they are part of a privileged class. These are the kinds of individuals that have the security to slum for awhile, but do not mistake them for not always knowing that they are privileged. They are rich now and they were rich before they started “painting”.

They are so rich and privileged, they sometimes forget how rich they are.

“I’m not rich, 17,000 a year for grade school, is pretty middle class,” clueless rich kid.

Why did they get famous for their “graffiti” while Chaka the infamous tagger of the 90s got jail time, because he’s not rich. It’s really that simple. I remember Chaka tagged in the elevator while he was on trial. Beautiful. But you know there is no complicated conspiracy. It’s simply rich people help other rich people, because while they tell you it’s about the work, we all know that’s bullshit. Those of us who remember Mat Gleason’s Coagula in it’s heyday got a point by point description of the bullshit as well as maps to exactly how it was played out.

"The guerilla spray paint guru (Banksy) is 34-year-old Robin Gunningham, who was educated at the £9,240-a-year Bristol Cathedral School, according to reports.” Scott Hussey, The Sun. 7/ 14

The game is rigged.

I wanted to scream at this young artist lying on the sidewalk that no one was going to look at his work and think it was anything but a nuisance on the sidewalk. I wanted to inform him the only notoriety he was going to get from drawing little doodles on the sidewalk was a ticket, probably a bench warrant and then jail time.

Helpful Art. Chinatown.

The Bus Bench hopped on the 83 and went to the opening of the Los Angeles Poverty Department show “Skid Row History Museum” at the Box in Chinatown.

We liked lots of things about it, such as it’s bringing poverty to the forefront in LA.’s art scene.

Since moving to downtown LA and being mistaken for one of skid row’s denizens many times (I think I may have been mistaken a few times at this event by people doing interviews with the bigger cameras, but I had my “don’t even look at me face” that evening)  it’s made me have more understanding of their plight.

The amount of African-Americans in the homeless population (from my naked eye, not actual count by me or checking of facts) is staggering. It points to something more than people not trying or crack cocaine. I’ve talked to quite a few of the men and women and more often than not they were in the arts fields.

There are a lot of musicians, singers, actor, poets, painter and writers our there on the street.

It’s a bit disturbing, since I myself am a member of the arts fields and I’m black and I do that random screaming thing.

At the LAPD (the clever acronym for the Los Angeles Poverty Department) event, there were musicians from skid row playing for the crowd.

There were pictures of its many residents, but it felt wrong in some ways.

It felt too much like upper middle class white people going to the zoo and looking at the poor animals.

That’s harsh, but from my perspective I just sat there and was annoyed. Annoyed with the pity. Annoyed at an event that everyone had out their damn camera and wanted to interview people, but no one wanted to talk to anyone.

I was annoyed at the very loud soul music coming from the various galleries on Chung King Road.

I saw working class Asian-American families peaking their heads out of their little cheap apartments (for now.)

I just thought what if working class Asian immigrants went to an upper middle class white neighborhood opened up a some galleries and had an art walk along their front lawns while playing loud 1960s soul music. I wondered what kind of scenario would go down if everyone was reversed.

I was annoyed as I saw the working class and fixed income residents of these buildings obsessed with getting the cans of the beer drinking “art connoisseurs”. I wasn’t so much annoyed at the people collecting cans, but I was annoyed that while some people have to collect cans to live in Los Angeles others can look at pictures of homeless people, take pictures of it, blog about and feel really good about themselves as if they’ve done something.

Am I saying that the LAPD is doing a bad thing? Nope, but I am saying it felt unreal, inauthentic and an idea hatched in some desperate, “this could probably get funding” session.

But great art and great things have come out of much more insincere endeavors.

By Browne