UCLA Broad Art Center opens! "LA is one of the great art capitals of the world"

[dragonsky]

• Video Link
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/levitated-mass

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Between a rock and LACMA, it's a hard place
When installed at the art museum, a 340-ton boulder will become part of a sculpture called 'Levitated Mass.' Getting there from Riverside County is a logistical challenge and a bureaucratic one.
By Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times
3:58 PM PST, November 24, 2011

The object: A 340-ton, 211/2-foot-tall chunk of granite, sitting in a quarry in Riverside County.

The mission: Lift it and haul it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on a 106-mile journey.

Degree of difficulty: High. Very high.

This is no ordinary rock. The massive boulder is supposed to form the centerpiece of artist Michael Heizer's outdoor sculpture called "Levitated Mass," part of a planned permanent display on the north side of LACMA's Wilshire Boulevard campus.

If only the rock could really levitate. Moving it is turning out to be tougher than expected, and the museum, which was supposed to take delivery in August, now says the rock likely won't leave the quarry until the end of December.

"The move ain't gonna be a picnic," says Rick Albrecht, the project's logistics supervisor whose company, Emmert International, has moved nuclear generators and a 19th-century historic home, so he knows a thing or two about heavy lifting. "But the preparation is the biggest job."

Here's the plan. The big rock sits in Stone Valley quarry, a 90-acre wash of gray and brown framed by dusty, granite hillsides and Riverside's Jurupa mountains. Truckers must wrangle the boulder from the quarry onto a 294-foot-long, modular, centipede-like "transporter," which will carry it through the night on its journey across three counties.

Top speed? Seven miles per hour.

Work crews from 100 utility districts will accompany the rock to take down traffic signs, overhead wires and other obstacles, then reinstall them once the giant transporter moves on. A signal expert will move and then reinstate the traffic lights that otherwise would be mowed down like blades of grass by the transporter, which is nearly as wide as three freeway traffic lanes.

There will be flag crews to stop traffic and a security detail. And, of course, the requisite documentary film crew.

Once in place, the boulder will rest atop a 456-long, ramp-like slot in the ground through which visitors will pass, making it appear that the rock levitates above them. The whole project — cost of the rock, its transport and construction of the sculpture site — will cost up to $10 million, which the museum has raised from private donors, including Terry and Jane Semel, Bob Daly and Carole Bayer Sager.

It is, as LACMA director Michael Govan is fond of noting, a process not unlike that facing the ancient Egyptians when they built the pyramids.

But the Pharaohs didn't have to contend with a thicket of bureaucracy. Even before they get underway, the movers must negotiate with city and county and state officials for the myriad permits required to cross jurisdictions — more than 100 in all.

And local officials are determining which roads and bridges are large enough and strong enough to withstand the weight. Permits are in flux for four cities, with Diamond Bar doing engineering studies on its portion of the proposed route.

"It's intensive," concedes Albrecht, something of a modern-day cowboy with a bushy mustache, silver hoop earring and a deep, above-the-neck-tan. He is standing in Stone Valley, eerily quiet but for the intermittent bleeping of a bulldozer and the occasional rumble of loose rock tumbling down quarry walls.

"Everyone has to be in agreement. It's always changing. Then we re-route. The [permitting] process generally takes a year, and we have six months. So we've been fighting like crazy to get it done."

Albrecht's brother Mark, lead project manager at Emmert, is the Oz-like figure behind boardroom doors, negotiating with municipalities for permission to travel their roads. Rerouting, he says, sets off a domino effect of changes involving multiple crews, scheduling tangles, new test drives, yet more permits — and each time pushing back the rock's leave date.

Meantime, the engineering feat that is the transporter raises its own set of obstacles.

"Try turning a vehicle like that," Rick Albrecht says, pointing out that the transporter will often have to drive on the wrong side of the road to make a turn.

Which is why the rock will travel at night, on roads closed to traffic — a combined 1.2 million-pound load traveling so slowly that the journey will take nine days. The rock itself will be shrink-wrapped for protection and the vehicle illuminated by more than 800 feet of string lights for visibility.

Parking? "The middle of the road, the only place big enough," Rick says. Multiple permits were needed to park the rock during the day.

Tim Culverwell is the green light, red light guy — literally. As a superintendent at LA Signal, he'll have the laborious job of moving traffic signals.

"We're gonna end up flashing, lifting and turning almost every traffic signal pole that we pass," he says. "We've never had to go to this extreme on a load before; it's up to a two-hour process per pole."

If all this seems excessive, the artist's assistant, Tim Cunningham, is quick to play devil's advocate. "I've found it amusing from what I've read in the press about the expense, the naysayers. It's as viable as any other public works project," he insists. "And this is creating jobs above and beyond the aesthetic appeal — for Emmert, the riggers, the truckers, the utility guys working overtime — and the country needs jobs."

Stephen Vanderhart, co-owner of the quarry, has found the experience a mixed blessing. The transporter which was built around the rock, sits smack in the middle of his mining area disrupting production. But what the quarry has lost in production, it's gained in PR, Vanderhart says. Stone Valley gets about half a dozen calls a day from people asking if the rock has moved, and visitors stop by every week to gawk.

"It's amazing; people who aren't necessarily into art are excited about it because of the mechanics, the geology of it," Vanderhart says.

The night the boulder begins its epic journey, Vanderhart plans to see it off with an open-air barbecue for about 300 people at the quarry, complete with a DJ and custom T-shirts as souvenirs.

What will the T-shirts say? "Big … Rock … Move!"

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,6052405.story

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by ArtfixDaily

Édouard Manet’s “Portrait of Madame Brunet” was acquired by the Getty.

Read More: http://artfixdaily.com/news_feed/201...es-county-muse

[dragonsky]

Video Link

[ocman]

Moby, the musician, has an interesting LA architecture photo blog:


http://mobylosangelesarchitecture.com/

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by The New York Times

Berkeley’s Artwork Loss Is a Museum’s Gain
By CAROL POGASH
The New York Times
Published: February 20, 2012

BERKELEY, Calif. — Everybody misplaces something sometime. But it is not easy for the University of California, Berkeley, to explain how it lost a 22-foot-long carved panel by a celebrated African-American sculptor, or how, three years ago, it mistakenly sold this work, valued at more than a million dollars, for $150 plus tax.

The university’s embarrassing loss eventually enabled the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, a large museum and research center in San Marino, Calif., to acquire its first major work by an African-American artist.

The circuitous tale of Sargent Johnson’s huge redwood relief involves error, chance and a partnership of unlikely art-world figures, including an art and furniture dealer who stumbled upon the panels at the university’s surplus store; an antiques dealer who was on a first-name basis with Michael Jackson and his chimp Bubbles; and a lawyer whose hobby is buying lighthouses and who convinced the government that even though the art was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration, it could still be sold publicly.

Harvey Smith, president of the National New Deal Preservation Association, called what happened a betrayal of the public trust. “We all pay for this art and we all own it,” he said.

“It’s hard to imagine losing something longer than a pickup truck,” he added, referring to what he called Berkeley’s “amazing incompetence.”

“It’s astounding,” he said.

In correspondence with the federal government, Andrew Goldblatt, who has the stressful-sounding title of assistant risk manager for the university, described the sale of the Johnson piece as “an error of ignorance.”

“We do regret it,” Mr. Goldblatt said in an interview. “Something went wrong, and it just cascaded.”

Johnson (1888-1967) is considered one of the finest sculptors of the Harlem Renaissance, though he spent most of his life in the Bay Area. He was never able to earn a living purely from his art, but in recent years interest in him has resurged, said Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, an associate professor of American art at the University of Pennsylvania, who is writing a book on him. In 1937, under the auspices of the W.P.A., Johnson designed two large Art Deco redwood reliefs, one of which depicted an idealized natural world of gilded gazelles, open-beaked birds, spiky-leafed plants and a boy clapping cymbals.

Designed to cover organ pipes at the old California School for the Deaf and Blind in Berkeley, this natural-world relief was affixed to a wall until 1980, when the school moved. As squatters (and rats) took shelter there, the university, which had taken over the premises, moved any valuable property to a secure basement warehouse, and the organ relief was disassembled. But one of the organ screens was misidentified as belonging to Berkeley’s graduate schools, so when the university reopened the building three years later, only one of the two Johnson reliefs was returned to its rightful place. The other remained in storage until 2009, when the university emptied the storage space in preparation for the sale of the building and transferred the relief to the university’s surplus store.

That’s where, in late summer of that year, Greg Favors, an art and furniture dealer, came upon eight cracked but still handsome panels in a plywood bin. Mr. Favors did not know what they were or who had created them, but he thought them “amazing and cool,” he said. He paid $164.63, including tax.

In need of a restorer, he contacted Dennis Boses, owner of Off the Wall Antiques in Los Angeles, who has provided eye-popping objects for celebrities like Jackson and for flashy restaurants including the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, and who has been an expert on the popular A&E reality show “Storage Wars.” Mr. Boses trucked the panels to his warehouse in North Hollywood, where he restored them. He was hoping the art might fetch $10,000 to $11,000.

Meanwhile, Mr. Favors scoured the Internet searching for the artist’s name.

On Oct. 16, 2009, at 9:03 a.m., he e-mailed Gray Brechin, a Berkeley scholar of historical geography who specializes in New Deal art, asking for help.

At 9:08 a.m., the response arrived: “You BOUGHT this? They SOLD it?” He identified Sargent Johnson as the artist and added, “I am astounded that they deacquisitioned it.”

Armed with that information, Mr. Boses spoke to Michael Rosenfeld of the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in New York, an authority on African-American art. Mr. Rosenfeld was relieved to learn that the piece had not been chopped for firewood or turned into a trellis. He recalled telling Mr. Boses, “In the unlikely event you get a release from the G.S.A, I would buy it.” (Mr. Rosenfeld was referring to the General Services Administration, which is the official custodian of artwork produced under the aegis of several public programs during the New Deal and is working with the F.B.I. to recover misplaced or stolen art and have it displayed in public locations.)

For help in getting clearance from the agency, Mr. Favors turned to his friend Bradley Long, whose e-mail handle, bradcansell, suggests that no transaction is beyond his abilities. And Mr. Long, through his mechanic at Benz Autobody in Redwood City, Calif., met Michael L. Gabriel, a lawyer whose hobby is buying lighthouses from the General Services Administration. Mr. Gabriel found a loophole in the laws governing W.P.A. art.

Movable art from the W.P.A. falls under federal jurisdiction. But according to a November 2010 e-mail from a General Services Administration lawyer to the university, which Mr. Smith of the National New Deal Preservation Association obtained last month through a California Public Records Act request, the federal government does not retain ownership of W.P.A art affixed to nonfederal buildings.

Jennifer Gibson, director of the General Services Administration’s art in architecture and fine arts program, said in an interview that despite the ruling, her agency hoped Johnson’s work would go “to an institution that provides public access.”

The University of California, Berkeley, tried to be that institution. It hired appraisers who valued the Johnson work at $215,000 but, facing extensive budget cuts, it did not have the money to make a deal. Late last February, Mr. Rosenfeld bought the Johnson relief for what two of the partners said was $225,000.

But the art didn’t even make it to Mr. Rosenfeld’s New York gallery. One week after his purchase, Jessica Todd Smith, curator of American art at the Huntington Library, near Los Angeles, and John Murdoch, the museum’s director of art collections, paid Mr. Rosenfeld a visit, looking for works to fill their newly expanded American galleries.

The Johnson panel had not yet shipped from the North Hollywood warehouse, so Mr. Rosenfeld showed them photographs. On her first day back at the office, Ms. Smith visited the warehouse to see what she called “Johnson’s monumental work.” She added that it “confirmed and surpassed our expectations.” It became the year’s first acquisition of the Huntington art collectors’ council.

Ms. Smith declined to divulge the price. Mr. Rosenfeld, who said he had sold small Johnson sculptures “that you can hold in your hand” for more than $100,000, said the relief was worth over $1 million, but that the Huntington had paid considerably less. He didn’t seek market value, he said, because the work was so important that it belonged in a museum. (Lowery Stokes Sims, a curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and an authority on African-American artists, called Mr. Rosenfeld’s assessment “no exaggeration,” and said it was not unusual for a gallery to sell an important work to a museum at a discounted price.) When the Huntington’s new American wing opens, in 2014, Ms. Smith said, “you will be able to open the doors to the gallery and see it at the end of the vista, holding down the wall.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Smith of the National New Deal Preservation Association is unforgiving, saying that the university, in its role as steward of this art, exhibited a “total disregard for our country’s artistic legacy.”

Arthur Monroe, an African-American artist and friend of Johnson’s, said that if the missing art had been by a white sculptor, “the university would have turned the campus upside down to find it.” Still, he added, “Any time there’s prominent space to exhibit his work is always good for my friend.”

For his part, Mr. Goldblatt, the university’s risk manager, said, “We’re terribly sorry it happened but very happy about the result”: that art that once belonged to the public will be back on public display. The other Johnson relief is locked in a Berkeley conference room and may be seen by the public — only upon request.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/ar...eums-gain.html

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

At the Huntington, a Japanese Garden of new delights
One of the San Marino estate's most popular destinations stands to attract new admirers with $6.8 million in improvements, including a ceremonial teahouse and tea garden.
April 09, 2012|By Karen Wada, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Gloria Cox may be a grandmother, but she's grinning like a little kid as she slips into a shady nook formed by twining juniper branches in the Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. Cox, a veteran Huntington docent, says she has missed visiting "my favorite spot" — which she discovered with her grandsons — and the rest of the garden, which closed for renovation last April and is reopening Wednesday in time for its centennial.

The Japanese Garden is welcoming back old friends like Cox and hoping to attract new ones with $6.8 million in improvements that include the installation of a ceremonial teahouse and tea garden and restoration of the late 19th century-style Japanese House.

Magnate Henry E. Huntington created this retreat of pines, ponds and wisteria in a canyon on his San Marino estate from 1911 to 1912. Officials say it is one of the most popular destinations on the estate, which opened to the public in 1928. "The Huntington has changed over time, but the garden hasn't lost its mystique," says James Folsom, director of the botanical gardens. "On Yelp, it gets more comments than 'Blue Boy' or the Gutenberg Bible."

The Huntington sees this anniversary as a chance to take a fresh look at the 9-acre site's past and future. Folsom says research for the renovations and a centennial history book due out this fall "have led us to keep learning more" about subjects such as the house's construction and the garden's relationships with local Japanese Americans.

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr...arden-20120409

[dragonsky]

• Video Link

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Coachella 2012: Fest expands, floods desert region with dollars
The Coachella festival has expanded to two weekends for the first time, promising to pump up the region's profits.
By Randy Lewis and Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times
April 13, 2012, 9:30 a.m.

Fans and bands may need an extra stamina boost this year. Coachella, one of the biggest events for pop fans, the music industry and the Mojave Desert, is expanding for the first time from one weekend to two and will feature 143 bands. By cloning itself into twin festivals, with identical lineups, spread over consecutive three-day weekends, it will easily rank as the highest-grossing festival in the world this year, according to Billboard magazine.

Last year's one-weekend event grossed $25 million in tickets. This year that figure is expected to jump to the $50-million mark by the time the event closes on April 22. Three-day passes cost $285 sans service fees, and all 150,000 passes were gone within three hours of the lineup being announced in January.

"There were enough buyers in queue to buy online that we probably could have added another two Coachella weekends, and another Stagecoach weekend," said Randy Phillips, president of AEG Live, which is equal partners with Coachella's promoter Goldenvoice in that event and its country music cousin, Stagecoach, coming the weekend after Coachella ends.

The Coachella footprint is not only getting larger, it's becoming permanent. This year AEG-owned Goldenvoice announced that it had purchased 280 acres of land that surround the Empire Polo Grounds. It signaled a commitment by the promoter not only to stay in the area but to continue to shape its surroundings.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,4563468.story

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Mail Online

Coachella


Emma Watson (Harry Porter)


Katy Perry

Read More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...ella-2012.html

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Marilyn Monroe set to return to Palm Springs as 26-foot-tall statue
By Jamie Wetherbe
Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2012, 4:43 p.m.

Preparations continue for the arrival in Palm Springs of "Forever Marilyn," the 26-foot-tall statue that became a controversial fixture on Chicago's Michigan Avenue.

The sculpture by Seward Johnson, the 80-year-old artist and Johnson & Johnson heir who’s known for casting famous images into giant sculptures, re-creates the scene from the 1955 film "The Seven Year Itch" in which a drafty New York subway grate blows the sex symbol's skirt well above her knees.

“We received many requests as far away as Tokyo and Madrid and cities in Brazil, and we really felt that Palm Springs has a special connection to Marilyn because it is the legendary play land for Hollywood,” said Paula Stoeke, the director and curator of the Sculpture Foundation, an organization funded and run by Johnson with offices in Santa Monica.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,3046238.story

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by The Annenberg Foundation

The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts

Opening in the fall of 2013, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will preserve the historic Beverly Hills Post Office and transform it into a performing arts and cultural facility for the presentation of theater, dance, music, professional children’s theater and other cultural activities.

Within the Post Office, existing spaces will be redesigned into a flexible 150-seat Studio Theater, three classrooms for a theater school for young people, a café and a gift shop. Adjoining the landmark building will be the new 500-seat, state-of-the-art Goldsmith Theater. The grounds of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will feature a sunken sculpture garden, elegant landscaping and a promenade terrace.

To celebrate the transformation of the Italian Renaissance Post Office into a performing arts venue, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts presented the United States premiere of Il Teatro alla Moda – Theater in Fashion from October through December 2011. The exhibition explored Italy’s famous haute couture designers and their impact on the stages of opera, dance and theater through costumes, sketches and drawings.

Read More: http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/a...erforming-arts

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by http://pacificbattleship.com/

Battleship of Presidents

Built in 1940, the USS IOWA served our country for over 50 years. Designated the "World's Greatest Naval Ship" due to her big guns, heavy armor, fast speed, longevity and modernization, she kept pace with technology for more than 50 years.

During her more than 50 years in service, IOWA has welcomed and escorted our nation’s Commander in Chief on many occasions. No other battleship in our nation’s history has been host to more U.S. Presidents than the IOWA.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

On 12 November 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt boarded the USS Iowa from the Presidential yacht (USS Potomac) at the mouth of the Potomac River. The President’s party included Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a secret meeting with Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek at the Tehran Conference.

On 14 November 1943, at Roosevelt’s request, the USS Iowa conducted an anti-aircraft drill to demonstrate her defensive capabilities. Escort ships also participated in these activities, one of which was the destroyer William D. Porter. The warship was performing a torpedo drill, when #3 torpedo was accidently discharged from its tube and was headed directly towards the IOWA. After numerous attempts to signal the IOWA via blinker light, William D. Porter crew decided to break radio silence to inform the IOWA of the mishap. IOWA turned hard right to avoid the torpedo, which exploded in the wake of the battleship. During this event, Roosevelt had learned of the incoming torpedo and asked the Secret Service to move his wheelchair to the side of the battleship for a better view.

On 16 December 1943, IOWA returned President Roosevelt back to the United States. His departing address to the crew stated, “…from all I have seen and all I have heard, the IOWA is a ‘happy ship,’ and having served with the Navy for many years, I know, and you know, what that means.”

President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan

On 4 July 1986, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan boarded USS Iowa for Liberty Weekend, the celebration of the restoration and centenary of the Statue of Liberty in New York City. That morning numerous ships from different eras participated in the naval revue, which President Reagan viewed from USS Iowa. He saw the ships as a personification of freedom and liberty:

“Perhaps, indeed, these vessels embody our conception of liberty itself: to have before one no impediments, only open spaces; to chart one’s own course and take the adventure of life as it comes; to be free as the wind – as free as the tall ships themselves. It’s fitting, then, that this procession should take place in honor of Lady Liberty.”

Numerous countries, ships and performers participated in this event and the evening was capped off with a 30 minute fireworks display. The Beach Boys performed that evening on top of turret 3 for the battleship’s crew, their families and several invited guests of the Navy.

President George H.W. Bush

On 28 April 1984, as Vice President, George H.W. Bush recommissioned USS Iowa at Ingall’s Shipyard in Pascagoula, MS.

On 24 April 1989, President George H.W. Bush joined the crew and families of USS Iowa at the memorial service for the battleship’s crewmembers in Norfolk, VA. He remarked:

“We join today in mourning for the 47 who perished and in thanks for the 11 who survived. They all were, in the words of a poet, the men behind the guns. They came from Hidalgo, Texas; Cleveland, Ohio; Tampa, Florida; Costa Mesa, California. They came to the Navy as strangers, served the Navy as shipmates and friends, and left the Navy as brothers in eternity. In the finest Navy tradition, they served proudly on a great battleship, U.S.S. Iowa.

This dreadnought, built long before these sailors were born, braved the wartime waters of the Atlantic to take President Roosevelt to meet Winston Churchill at Casablanca and anchored in Tokyo Harbor on the day that World War II ended. The Iowa earned 11 battle stars in two wars. October of '44, off the coast of the Philippines -- I can still remember it -- for those of us serving in carriers and Halsey's Third Fleet, having Iowa nearby really built our confidence. And I was proud to be a part of the recommissioning ceremony in 1984. And now fate has written a sorrowful chapter in this history of this great ship.

Let me say to the crew of Iowa: I understand your great grief. I promise you today we will find out why, the circumstances of the tragedy. But in a larger sense, there will never be answers to the questions that haunt us. We will not - cannot, as long as we live - know why God has called them home. But one thing we can be sure -- this world is a more peaceful place because of the U.S.S. Iowa. The Iowa was recommissioned and her crew trained to preserve the peace. So, never forget that your friends died for the cause of peace and freedom.

To the Navy community, remember that you have the admiration of America for sharing the burden of grief as a family, especially the Navy wives, who suffer most the hardships of separation. You've always been strong for the sake of love. You must be heroically strong now, but you will find that love endures. It endures in the lingering memory of time together, in the embrace of a friend, in the bright, questioning eyes of a child.

And as for the children of the lost, throughout your lives you must never forget, your father was America's pride. Your mothers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles are entrusted with the memory of this day. In the years to come, they must pass along to you the legacy of the men behind the guns. And to all who mourn a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend, I can only offer you the gratitude of a nation -- for your loved one served his country with distinction and honor. I hope that the sympathy and appreciation of all the American people provide some comfort. The true comfort comes from prayer and faith.

And your men are under a different command now, one that knows no rank, only love, knows no danger, only peace. May God bless them all."

USS IOWA is now transforming to the most interactive and educational museum of its kind and will make its new home in Los Angeles this year.
Read More: http://pacificbattleship.com/page/ba..._of_presidents

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Daily Breeze

Bergamont Station developrs to open art studio/marketplace at Port
By Art Marroquin Staff Writer
Posted: 12/01/2011 06:13:03 PM PST

By next year, the developers of Bergamont Station will open an art studio and marketplace inside a pair of vacant wood-frame warehouses at the Port of Los Angeles under a 25-year lease approved Thursday by the Board of Harbor Commissioners.

Read More: http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_19451047

http://bergamotstation.com/

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Visitors make the first walk under artist Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,3184913.story

[dragonsky]

• Video Link

[dragonsky]

Video Link

http://fyffest.com/

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Read More: http://framework.latimes.com/2012/09...our-photos/#/0

• Video Link

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by NEW YORK POST

Los Angeles is the future
By ANDY WANG and DAVID LANDSEL
Last Updated: 12:51 AM, September 25, 2012
Posted: 5:33 PM, September 24, 2012

It is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when Los Angeles stopped giving a damn what you or we or anyone else had to say — it was a slow but important finding of self, taking place quietly over the past decade. A decade that saw the city grow in all sorts of exciting and impressive ways. A decade of building real transit. (For the first time in generations, you will soon be able to travel by rail between Downtown and the Santa Monica; soon after, expect a subway stop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.) Of creating truly walkable neighborhoods. The melting pot actually began melting, bubbling over messily and rather beautifully all over every aspect of city life. (Not coincidentally, suddenly here in the land of salad and iced tea, people truly learned how to eat. And to love eating.) Oh, and just for fun? A few more people squeezed into the city, now overall the most densely packed in the country. Los Angeles, quite simply, is ready to challenge anyone. New York, watch your back. Here are four LA places to get up to speed.

DOWNTOWN

To see what we mean, you have to start Downtown. It’s a generic umbrella term for a wildly diverse group of neighborhoods that comprise the city’s core; in these pedestrian-friendly streets with their incredible Art Deco architecture and ample transit and tons of people-watching, you can spend a week experiencing a Los Angeles that many outsiders assumed didn’t even exist. Many locals didn’t either, until about 10 years ago, so don’t feel bad.

These days, the core is in overdrive trying to find its rightful place as the city center of a metropolitan region of nearly 18 million people. (That’s right – just four million fewer than in the Tri-State Area.) That’s how you end up having a thing like the glittering LA Live complex with the Staples Center (where the Lakers play), luxury hotels (JW Marriott, Ritz-Carlton), destination restaurants (including a Kerry Simon eatery, of course), daily celebrity sightings, a Times Square-like entertainment district and more just a few blocks down from the Mercado Olympic, an unofficial Sunday street festival of the city’s dominant culture (Mexican, in case you forgot) in the wonderfully named Piñata District (named because of all the people who sell piñatas there, of course), where vendors who speak no English sell food that’s more Mexican than places we’ve been in Mexico. Squash blossom quesadillas, pleasantly chewy Guadalajara-style churros, Mexico City-style fried fish and other intensely good and inexpensive finds.

Then there is the Warehouse District, that vast swath of low-rise industrial complexes, where once barren streets are now punctuated by artist lofts and good restaurants and people biking to places like Handsome Coffee, a local roaster and café that has a pop-up farmers market and occasional taco nights. It’s one of many cafés across the Los Angeles Basin that is becoming a true community center in a city everyone said wasn’t interested in community.

Nearby is the Arts District, next to Little Tokyo — the two share a gleaming light-rail station on the Gold Line, which takes little old ladies from Pasadena into the bustling Union Station intermodal transit hub, or beyond into East Los Angeles for tacos, if they feel like it.

The heart of old Downtown, too, is booming — the Old Bank District with its cocktail bars and yoga studios and the incredible monthly Art Walk, a street party/night market that revolves loosely around the area’s galleries.

Over on Broadway, with its sea of intact theaters and their garish, old-school marquees that lend the whole faded strip a Times Square in the 1970s feel, there’s room for luxury lofts, for the giant Umamicatessen, a sort of hipster Eataly meatery affair from the Umami Burger folk.

And then, down on Seventh Street, which sews all of this together, from the bland glossiness of Figueroa Street on down to the appalling, otherworldly depths of Skid Row, you have one of Downtown’s most promising streets, the perfect spot to stroll on a sunny afternoon.

Hungry? Some of the city’s best restaurants are Downtown these days — anyone will tell you that. Here’s Ricardo Zarate repping Peru at his newly relocated Mo-Chica in the Seventh Street corridor, making diners flip out with his stellar lomo saltado and pan con tuna, serving up ceviches and tiradito that are all ocean and acid and heat and happiness. (What started as one tiny Mo-Chica stall in Southeast LA has turned into a growing Zarate empire that also includes West LA’s Picca, where Peru meets Japan for family-style madness.)

Here’s Bryant Ng at the Spice Table, repping Southeast Asia at his Little Tokyo joint, blanketing tables with satays, Hainanese chicken over rice, laksa and other first-class renditions of hawker-stand staples.

Here’s Josef Centeno at Baco Mercat in the Old Bank section, repping his baco “sandwich/taco/pizza hybrid,” a creation so multi-cultural and over-the-top that you should just describe it as American. And although Centeno might be best known for specialties like his oxtail-hash baco, you shouldn’t overlook his mastery of vegetables (Caesar brussel sprouts!) and fruit (sautéed peaches with goat cheese and honey!).

It all might be rough around the edges, and sometimes you have to dig to get to the greatness — that’s LA in a nutshell — but if you want to see and taste the diverse and unique world-class city that Los Angeles is becoming, Downtown is where you start.

VENICE

If you’re one of those people who show up from New York complaining that all you want to really do is go to the beach, congratulations, you win. Outside of Downtown, LA’s most fascinating area these days is Venice, which has gone from being a funky and fun dead end to being front and center in the city’s complete revamp. (Sorry, anyone who was thinking of buying a ridiculously cheap place in its ever declining catalog of seedy side streets — those days are essentially over.) What Venice has become is, quite simply, one of the most inspiring urban settings in North America, a major leap from a few short years ago.

Beach? Check. Crazy people-watching? That’ll never change. Seedy boardwalk action? Oh yeah. Creepy muscle dudes, people trying to get you in for your free medical consult to get your pot card, street performers, sleaze, stroller moms, skaters — your head could explode.

But the real revolution is in the neighborhood’s back streets, which, like the iconic Canals section, can all be explored on foot or by bike. Start at formerly moribund Abbot Kinney Boulevard — with its boutique, farm-to-table pizza places, non-divey “dive bars,” indie-rock jukeboxes, food trucks and surf shops — which was recently knighted by one glossy magazine as the “coolest block in America” and we’re really not going to argue (pop in for coffee at Intelligentsia one morning, or any time, and see what it’s all about). Locals seem to be all about Rose Avenue these days; walk it from the beach on up to the Whole Foods (one of the most architecturally impressive in the country, and certainly one of the busiest) and you’ll see why; along the way, pop into the patio at Superba Snack Bar for charred figs, black kale salad, a dab of pheasant rillettes, perhaps, or maybe just the fried chicken.

But the best place to eat in the neighborhood, if you’re asking us, is Sunny Spot, over on Venice Boulevard. What is it? Oh, no big deal, just some really great Caribbean food from an Angeleno of the Korean persuasion, Roy Choi, who became famous for making some of the city’s raddest tacos and serving them from his Kogi food truck. How Los Angeles is that?

MID-CITY WEST

People who say that the Los Angeles sprawl cannot be tamed have obviously never been to London. Or maybe they have, and refuse to see the parallels between the two cities, both essentially a chain of villages that grew enough to bump into one another. All you have to do is knit the villages together with a proper transit system, and voila, everyone shuts up about sprawl.

It will take Los Angeles, oh, like, forever, to get all the way there, but in places like Mid-City West, a low-rise, vaguely suburban in-between spot, you can see it all coming together in what has become, rather by accident, one of the most vibrant parts of town.

Of course, it helped to have the historic farmers market at the corner of Third and Fairfax, next to the CBS Television City studio (“Price Is Right” taping anyone?); over time, everything seems to have evolved around it — the revived Fairfax District to the north, the gigantic Grove shopping center, the booming Third Street corridor, Beverly running parallel. This nabe is where you’ll find some of the country’s best sneaker/street-wear shopping (holla, Undefeated, Flight Club, Sportie LA) and, at the southern end of things, behind the imposing Park La Brea residential development, is the cultural magnet and gathering place that is LACMA; the Purple Line subway extension, which will link Downtown, Koreatown, Mid-City West and Beverly Hills with Century City, Brentwood, Westwood and, hopefully someday, the beach in Santa Monica, will have a station right at the museum entrance, at Wilshire and Fairfax.

You don’t have to wait until then to come here — Ray’s and the adjacent Stark Bar, facing the museum’s often busy plaza, are two of the most pleasant places to while away a warm Los Angeles evening. Not that you aren’t spoiled for choice around here. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s Animal and Son of a Gun restaurants are located within walking distance of the farmers market, for example.

Then there’s Karen and Quinn Hatfield, the married chef duo behind the rightfully praised Hatfield’s in Hollywood. The Hatfields know their way around a seasonal menu and understand what it means to create a civilized, white-tablecloth dining environment. But with Sycamore Kitchen, their new order-at-the-counter bakery and cafe on stubbornly unlovely La Brea Avenue, they have a much more casual-cool but equally important goal: creating a ridiculously good salted caramel pecan babka roll. That gooey magic – part of a salted-caramel movement that’s sweeping sweets shops all over the country – is just one of dozens of different baked items (including wonderful chocolate-chip rye cookies and brown butter/date mini bundt cakes) at the new hot spot, but there are more than sweets to accompany your Stumptown coffee at Sycamore Kitchen. The lunch menu has refreshing salads and a crispy and braised pork belly double BLT, for starters. And if you can’t decide between savory and sweet, split the difference and order the toast with house-made ricotta, stewed citrus, fennel and hazelnut.

On Third Street, you’ll find Fonuts, a donut and ice-cream shop from Waylynn Lucas. She’s the former pastry chef at the Bazaar by Jose Andres and Patina, four-star restaurants both. Now she’s baking — yes, baking — donuts with standout flavors including maple bacon, blueberry earl grey and strawberry buttermilk. Lucas is also churning out great ice cream. And yes, the salted caramel soft-serve is habit-forming. Kind of like this part of town.

HOLLYWOOD

For the visiting New Yorker, Hollywood has long been low on the list of Los Angeles musts, unless you wanted a West Coast version of New York’s old-school 42nd Street filth. Slowly, awkwardly, a new kind of Hollywood is taking shape, where chic hotels and grand nightclubs (alongside horrible nightlife, admittedly) sit side by side next to beautiful historic theaters and new residential buildings. In the mix are great new restaurants and awesome old dive bars, a hugely popular farmers market and two very busy subway stations. Best of all? This is only the beginning. To the chagrin of homeowners in the hills, a recent rezoning looks to be upping the height restrictions on development in the area — expect Hollywood the neighborhood to be a major force in Los Angeles life over the next century.

But what of today? Check out Hollywood and Vine, with its hotels like the Redbury. The Redbury’s all about old-world, boho-chic cool mixed with modern-day glam. With its bordello-red rooms, purposefully faded carpet and sexy Library bar, and a location near many of Hollywood’s overflowing nightclubs, it’s a spot for discerning VIPs and a surprisingly pleasant and restful boutique hotel in spite of the partying crowds in and around the property.

It’s also just a couple blocks from the bountiful Sunday farmers’ market, one of the city’s best spots for an impromptu lunch. Yes, you can make a picnic with the finest meats, cheeses, bread and vegetables, but you’re on vacation, so let the locals cook for you: Salvadoran pupusas, Thai sticky-rice desserts, artisanal breakfast sausages served over mounds of French fries. The variety is worthy of Portland food-cart pods.

And Hollywood has mass transit that takes you right to, say, the W Hotel with its Drai’s nightclub up top. Further down the boulevard, there are local, down-and-dirty dining mainstays like Aziz Ansari and Jonathan Gold favorite Jitlada, which some argue is the best Thai restaurant in the country. There’s the Sayers Club, a fab nightspot for rock and hip-hop fans, accessed via a Papaya King. Yeah, Hollywood, the secret’s out. We like you.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainmen...#ixzz27Y0jzmMr

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Tech Titans Hit the Beach
As Silicon Valley moguls go on a home-buying spree in Los Angeles, they're reshaping the real-estate landscape
By LAUREN SCHUKER BLUM
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The tech industry is going south.

In growing numbers, Silicon Valley executives—long based in tech strongholds like Santa Clara and Palo Alto—are buying homes in Los Angeles, as the lines between the technology and entertainment businesses grow blurrier.

Venture capitalist and hedge-fund manager Peter Thiel—PayPal's co-founder and Facebook's earliest investor—paid $11.5 million in January for a 6,000-square-foot house on a promontory above the Sunset Strip. Andrew Frame, a 30-something entrepreneur who founded Internet-telephone company Ooma, bought a contemporary four bedroom in Bel Air for $5.5 million last summer from singer/reality star Nick Lachey, who in turn had acquired the home from model Heidi Klum and singer Seal. In March of last year, Matt Jacobson, head of market development at Facebook, paid $10.9 million for a modern house on the ocean in Manhattan Beach, according to public records. He uses his former home, a just-under 900-square-foot beach bungalow two blocks away, to house Facebook employees visiting from up north.

"It's the Facebook flop house," Mr. Jacobson jokes. "We have a surf in the morning before going into the office."

The southern migration is taking place as companies like Google and Facebook beef up their presence and more Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs establish footholds in the entertainment industry. Prices are soaring in the beachfront communities tech types favor, and rents in these areas are growing at a faster rate than in other parts of the city.

"There is a feeling that techies are the new celebrities," says Eric Kuhn, an agent who heads the social-media department at United Talent Agency. "When I arrived in Hollywood, everybody had written a screenplay," he says. "Now, everyone has an app."

Kurt Rappaport, a Los Angeles broker specializing in luxury real estate, says the number of his house-hunting clients from Silicon Valley has doubled over the past couple of years. Earlier this year, Mr. Rappaport sold a beach cottage in Malibu to a Facebook executive for $6.8 million. Another client, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, just closed on a deal to buy ex-Yahoo CEO Terry Semel's compound in Malibu for $37 million—Mr. Ellison's 27th Malibu property purchase, says Mr. Rappaport. Mr. Ellison did not respond to requests for comment.

It isn't just Silicon Valley-based techies who are buying. Last summer, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—twins best known for suing Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook, and who recently formed a venture-capital firm—bought an 8,000-square-foot bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills for $18 million. Ted Waitt, co-founder of computer company Gateway, also bought in Bel-Air, paying $14 million this past June for a six-bedroom Mediterranean.

Another client of Mr. Rappaport's, Mich Mathews, formerly the head of marketing for Microsoft and a longtime Seattle resident, paid $11.5 million for a 12,000-square-foot home in Holmby Hills in March. From her new perch in Los Angeles, she's helping to launch a company that she says lies "at the intersection of marketing and digital entertainment, philanthropy and lifetime experiences." Ms. Mathews is currently remodeling the seven-bedroom home, adding a wine cellar and a cabana for the pool.

More than 600 tech start-ups have sprung up in L.A. over the last few years, according to Represent.LA, an open-source project that tracks the growth of start-up communities, bringing with them engineers and executives looking for housing. The narrow, 3-mile strip of land that runs from Santa Monica through Venice, and is now stretching down to Playa Vista, has been dubbed "Silicon Beach" due to the heavy concentration of Internet companies and executives there.

Prices have gone up dramatically on this beachfront strip. Previously known for an edgy vibe, the area has grown increasingly upscale with the arrival of gourmet restaurants and mainstream stores. In Santa Monica, the median price of homes jumped 16% in the first eight months of 2012 compared with 2011, after a 9% decline over the same period the year before, according to Multiple Listing Service data compiled by Paul Habibi, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Venice's median home price in the first eight months of 2012 broke the $1 million barrier, rising to $1,012,000 from $899,000 in the first eight months of 2011.

In Los Angeles County, median home prices went up by just under 1% during the first eight months of 2012, compared with the same period in 2011, according to Mr. Habibi's MLS data. Nationwide, the median home price rose 3.3% during that time period to $186,000, according to DataQuick, and in California the median price rose 4.8% for that same time period.

A substantial portion of Venice's real-estate boom is attributable to Google. Last November, the Web-search giant opened a flashy new office in Venice to focus on engineering, sales and advertising; the company will lease close to a quarter-million square feet in the neighborhood by 2014. To create a campuslike setting for its more than 500 employees in L.A., the company took over a funky Frank Gehry complex resembling a pair of binoculars. Like Google's other locations, it offers amenities like a climbing wall and an outdoor movie theater, as well as bicycles and surfboards that can be rented during the workday.

"Want 300 days of sun a year?" Google says on its website. "Forget the Valley—pack your bags for Google L.A."

In February, Google's YouTube signed a lease for about 40,000 square feet of production space in Playa Vista. It will open later this year. And in August 2011, Facebook began leasing about 13,000 square feet in Playa Vista.

The arrival of techies has also had a profound effect on the rental market, brokers and real-estate developers say. Kevin Miller, president of Westside Rentals, which bills itself as Southern California's largest home-finding service, says he has seen rents in Santa Monica and Venice increase by about 10% over the last 18 months—compared with other desirable areas such as Beverly Hills and Culver City, where he says rents increased by about 4% to 5%. Rents have increased by just 2% across Los Angeles over the same time period, he says.

"Entrepreneurs love being around other entrepreneurs, and that's driving demand toward the beach," says Mr. Miller. "Plus, people like to live near where they work, and the tech companies are there."

Silicon Valley buyers shop differently from other wealthy L.A. clients, brokers say. While entertainment moguls often rely on the taste, advice and social connections of the city's top brokers, tech executives frequently do their own research online before they arrive in town, and know what they want before they look.

Broker Mauricio Umansky recalls a moment earlier this year when he was showing several homes in the Hollywood Hills to an entrepreneur visiting from Northern California. "I was telling him that houses in the neighborhood sell for $1,000 per [square] foot. He interrupted me and said, 'No, they sell for $936 per foot.' He was testing me. It totally caught me off guard. And by the way, he was right." Mr. Umansky, who is the CEO of real-estate firm the Agency, adds that many buyers from up north often shy away from relying on the taste of others, preferring instead to rely on themselves. "They will challenge your knowledge of the market," he says. "And only if you pass will they trust you." In the end, he sold an $8 million home in the Hollywood Hills to the entrepreneur.

The business interests of Hollywood and Silicon Valley continue to converge. Tech companies are becoming distributors of studio content; YouTube, iTunes and Netflix have all licensed content from major entertainment players. Talent agencies CAA and WME are incubating start-ups.

"There's so much more traffic between these two worlds of tech and entertainment that we're seeing the social worlds blend together, and that's luring the Northern California community to buy homes down here," says Ben Silverman, former co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. "These days, there are more Internet guys at the Vanity Fair Oscar party than traditional media players."

South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal and Tesla Motors, has also dabbled in the film business, serving as an executive producer on films like "Thank You for Smoking." He commutes back and forth on his Dassault Falcon between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. According to people close to the situation, Mr. Musk is in contract to buy the roughly the $20 million Bel-Air house he has been renting—a 20,000-square-foot estate on a private knoll with a home theater, library, lighted tennis court, gym, pool and 1,000-bottle wine cellar. Representatives for Mr. Musk declined to comment.

More venture capitalists also are putting down roots. "For years, I would watch people launch their start-up in L.A., raise capital and move up north as soon as they got successful. Now, they get successful and they stay," says Paul Bricault, a venture capitalist who founded one of Los Angeles's largest accelerators and lives in Venice. After years of traveling to Los Angeles once every few months, Timothy Draper, founder and a managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, says he now flies down to L.A. about twice a month—often enough that he bought a house in west Los Angeles this year.

"I thought, 'Why leave all the activity here to compete with everyone else in NorCal?' " says Mark Suster, a venture capitalist who started leasing in Pacific Palisades two years ago.

Another factor: Even as prices have begun to creep up in neighborhoods like Venice, L.A.'s real-estate prices still tend to be substantially lower than those in desirable parts of Silicon Valley. In Palo Alto, the median price paid for single-family homes was $1.7 million in the first eight months of 2012, a 20.4% increase over the same period in 2011, according to DataQuick.

"We had a great time looking for a house in L.A., especially after living up north," says Sonya Merrill, an ex-Google executive who moved to L.A. with her husband, Douglas, a former Google chief information officer, in late 2008. "Silicon Valley is all 1960s and '70s tract houses or small bungalows—it's a sea of blah. Expensive blah—I once looked at a teardown in Palo Alto that smelled like urine and was made of cinder block. It was on the market for $1.5 million and there was a bidding war for it." The couple spent $2.8 million on a Hollywood Hills four-bedroom home where actor Bela Lugosi long resided. They spent another year redoing it.

Some tech moguls, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, venture capitalist Ray Lane and Mr. Ellison, have owned property in Los Angeles for years. David Sacks, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, owns a Beverly Hills house where Quentin Tarantino filmed "Pulp Fiction."

But the newest wave of Silicon Valley arrivals is heavily favoring the Silicon Beach area. Viddy, a mobile-video-sharing company, has its office a block from Google in Venice. About a fifth of new employees have relocated from Silicon Valley, says Brett O'Brien, Viddy's CEO and co-founder. One of Viddy's other co-founders, Chris Ovitz, in January paid $1.6 million for a loft on Venice's main thoroughfare.

Developers are scrambling to cater to the influx. Jim Andersen, president of prolific Westside developer NMS Properties, says the firm is opening five more buildings not far from the offices of Google and Yahoo, among other tech firms. He added that NMS has begun building smaller apartments to better serve young renters who are part of the tech scene.

Jim Jacobsen, a commercial-real-estate broker, says he first built one of his projects—a warehouse in Venice converted into 30 lofts for both working and living—with entertainment-industry folks in mind. But with just a month or so until the units, which run between $500,000 and $2 million, hit the market, he is advertising them to people in the technology industry.

Mr. Umansky, who sold two homes in Los Angeles this year to Facebook executives, has another explanation for why Silicon Valley executives are heading south.

"A lot of these guys are young, they have cashed out, they are bachelors, they like to party," he says. "And let's be honest, the partying in Hollywood is way better than in Silicon Valley."

Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...307933850.html

Related Link:

Silicon Beach emerges as a tech hotbed
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/...ach/56241864/1

[StethJeff]

wrong thread.

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Read More: http://timelines.latimes.com/endeavo...ek-through-la/
Read More: http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10...ndeavour-2/#/0