kuaptic.: April 2006

The tease

Some days you can, some days you can't. And some days, you just tease.

Ashes and Snow

The idea of a temporary museum made of shipping containers, canvas and things that look like really big paper towel roles is a good one. Unfortunately, after about three of the photographs at Gregory Colbert's (no relation to Steven Colbert) Ashes and Snow exhibit, the awe begins to fade. Pictures of people and animals (generally attractive people and animals in dreamy, ancient world /primordial sepia settings) feel a little Anne Geddes. The points are made once in photographs, then again in film and possibly a third time, again in photos. Maybe we're too cynical to appreciate this harmonious vision, but we found the whole thing could be done in about five photos. Also, they didn't sell seperate post cards -- instead you have to buy some $30 book. Not cool! We just wanted one to send to granma.

Forbidden Spices

Afield in Los Angeles, you come across so many plants, blooming huge and happy, all over. But not all of us are lucky enough to have gardens or even decks. And we tire of buying spices in the market, having them droop and wilt after a couple of days. Sometimes, if you know what to look for, you can find spices in other people's gardens. We don't want to go into great detail (and be blamed for your stomach ache/er visit/ untimely death) but rosemary seems to be fairly common. It grows like mad in our climate, and people use it as hedges, bushes and shrubs, often in their front yard. So here's a pic -- keep your eyes peeled!

More than meets the eye

This transfocus will now transform into a car that isn't so crappy!

Seriously though, if you own(ed) a Focus, wouldn't you?

Nooks and Crannies

Just barely in the corner of a nondescript mini-mall in a nondescript stretch of westside road is a tiny restaurant. Once you park in the parking lot, you may still not be able to find it. And once inside, you may have to wait for a seat, so come early.

Well seasoned meats are complimented by fresh soups (we had the carrot ginger and the lentil) and well made sides -- though the spinach served with a chicken breast was stringy and lacked flavor and the steamed peanuts served instead of bread were mushy and disappointing. (Bread! We like it!) -- the meal was complimented by a lovely Spanish white wine, and Coppola Sophia Blanc de Blancs (in a can! And not terrible!)

A little modern looking and expensive for its "bistro" moniker, Nook definitely warrants a return trip, though whether it'll become a permanant fixture in our eating out remains to be seen.

Nook Neighborhood Bistro, 11628 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite 9, Los Angeles, CA

Box of Treasures

We have already mentioned Sweetcake in our cupcake expose, but their small bites are worth another look. When you open their box, tied with a brown ribbon, the confections themselves are jewel-like, delicate and inscrutable. It is hard to know, just by looking at them what they are, but you can be sure they are delicious. There are small flat round cakes, with mod decorations that are really just small versions of their cupcakes, there are tiny lemon and chocolate tartlettes. There are chocolate "boxes" filled with wonderful custards, topped with berries. A personal favorite, is a round marzipan "basket" filled with chocolate, topped with a fanciful wedge of pink striped chocolate and a blueberry. It's not cheap, but every bite is worth it.

Sweetcake, 5825 Sunset Boulevard Suite 112, Hollywood, CA

Missing

We know what you're thinking. We know what you want. Where are the couches? We are wondering the same thing whenever we're afield in Palms. The streets are bare of any couches whatsoever. We've often had the opportunity to speculate what would chase them back inside -- but it's spring, and the weather's lovely! We can't figure it out...

225 years

LA turns 225!! She looks great, doesn't she? We hear she's had a lot of work done... We believe the gift for 225 is a new school system. Or it may be according to our mayor at any rate.

LA City Nerd (nice template!!) is celebrating by counting up 225 things to do to celebrate the diverse city in which we live. LAist and Franklin Avenue are participating by adding five, and since we never saw a bandwagon we didn't like...

1. See a movie in Hollywood Forever Cemetary with Cinespia.

2. What's black and white and red all over? The nation's murderous and rare Silent Movie Theater.

3. Have dinner with history -- eat at Musso and Frank's, Formosa Cafe, The Smoke House or Cicada.

4. A lot of people have mentioned hiking, but no one's mentioned Temescal Canyon or Will Rogers State Park.

5. Have a cupcake.

Austrians in Los Angeles

Oh so close to Palms, in green furrowed Cheviot Hills, lives a woman named Maria Altmann. Recently, she won. And so have you. Gustav Klimpt, an important artist of Vienna's "jugendstil" school, painted a number of portraits of high society ladies of the era, many in his masterpiece "gold style" which incorperated the use of gold with Egyptian and Byzantine motifs. Many of these women were Jewish.

Adele Bloch-Bauer was born into just such a priviledged family in Vienna in 1881, and married her husband, Ferdinand, a sugar magnate, there. He commissioned Gustav Klimpt to paint a portrait of his wife, and bought two, as well as three landscapes. Adele succumbed to menengitis in 1925, and from that time, her husband kept her room, with the portraits in it like a shrine -- clean as a whistle, and filled with flowers.

During the build up to World War II, the Bloch-Bauers, and the Altmanns (Maria was about 25 at the time) had all their assets "aryanized" (saw the word iin the process of researching this very article. Maria had a necklace from her aunt, given to her on her wedding day, taken from her. It ended up as a gift to Goebbels wife. Her husband was sent to Dachau, but returned when his brother signed over his company. Maria and her husband managed to escape to the US. Ferdinand escaped to Switzerland where he watched his company, his home, his paintings, disceminated among the Nazis. He often said that of all his possessions, he wished he had the portraits of his dear wife back again.

Skip forward several decades, to the legal battle between Maria Altmann and the Austrian Government was resolved in January. As it happens, Austria's contention that Adele had left them her paintings in her will was, at worst, false, and at best, misconstrued. However, Austria's loss is your gain, as the five paintings (which constitutes the largest Nazi looted art return in Austria's history) are now on display at LACMA through June 30th. They're the only ones on the west coast. Though the exhibit seems tucked into the corner of the museum, and the main gold painting is poorly lit (so that you can't see the changing gold without squatting) but they're Klimpts and they're here. Thank you, Maria Altmann, for sharing your bounty with us! And being broke is no excuse -- it's free after five every day!

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard.

Traxx Restaurant

Just when you thought we were through with our Union Station-ness...we can't spend a few days at one of LA's most beautiful landmarks without discussing Traxx -- a fine dining restaurant located in the station itself.

The food is California organic, with great salads (especially the caesar -- it will blow your mind!), entrees with an Asian flair, like skirt steak with baby bok choy and their french fries are to die for.

They have a unique wine list, full of tough to get small labels. The staff is friendly and capable, and though dressed in white shirts and black ties, there's a kind of familiarity among them, like family.

Sometimes the menu runs stumbles -- notably an over-spiced lentil soup (needlessly hot) that was a special, and the mushroom risotto which never quite gets off the ground, but the main courses themselves are seasonal and perfectly pitched, like the salmon with melted leeks.

Go to Union Station. Eat some yummy food. Feel yourself walking the knife's edge of Los Angeles' gorgeous past and its shining future.

Designing the West

In our last installment on the Fred Harvey Company, we celebrate his master architect, Mary Jane Elizabeth Colter. Born in 1869, Colter moved around the frontier in the years after the Civil War. After her father died in 1886, she attended the California School of Design in San Francisco. After graduation, she taught mechanical drawing at the Mechanical Arts High School in Minnesota. In 1901, she began working at the Fred Harvey company as an interior decorator, becoming his full time architect in 1910.

One of the few rugged female architects in the business, a chain smoking perfectionist, Colter worked in the Fred Harvey company for 30 years, completing 21 projects, and worked uncredited on countless others. Her structures were a combination of organic, indigenous structures (generally of Native American origin) and a modern, commercial sensibility. She was very in tune with the history of these buildings, both the imaginative one she invented while designing, and the land around it. She was a huge influence on the Pueblo Revival style, examples of which include the Franciscan Hotel by John Gaw Meem.

The Fred Harvey Company owned the the land in and around the Grand Canyon, and Colter designed many distinctive structures there, including, Phantom Ranch, Hermit's Rest (named after Louis Boucher, a hermit who gave tours of the Grand Canyon in the 1890s) and Bright Angel Lodge, with its "Geological fireplace" which featured the different rocks featured in the Grand Canyon in chronological order. Bright Angel Lodge became the template for National Park Structures for years to come, inspiring the "National Park Service Rustic" style, which featured site materials, and large scale design elements.

Other notable Colter structures include La Posada Hotel in Winslow, AZ, The Hotel Alvarado in Albaquerque, NM, and her masterwork, The El Navajo in Gallup, TX. The latter two of these buildings were demolished in her lifetime, though La Posada has been completely restored. She died in 1958, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of her last projects was the sleek and moderne restaurant and bar space at Union Station, in Los Angeles. Now the space, along with the original ticket concourse, is closed to the public, though they rent the spaces out for movie and tv shoots and private parties.

Mary Coulter never achieved the notoriety of some of her fellow turn of the century architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright or Irving Gill, but her work fired the imaginations of a new breed of travellers who were eager to travel faster than anyone ever had, to come out west and to see the rich past that this new land had to offer.

Fred Harvey

While we're talking about train stations, a man by the name, Fred Harvey forged a partnership in 1876 with the railroads to open chains of hotels and restaurants along the railways, they continued to be built and operated through the 1940s, though Fred Harvey himself died in 1901.
They became a civilizing force in the wild west. Food was served on china, and coats were required in the dining rooms.

It's thought that blue plate specials were started by the Fred Harvey company, seeing as they appeared on their menus as early as 1892 -- thirty years before they appear anyplace else. They were so named because they were served on blue patterned china.

Harvey Rooms and Hotels were often buildings of great beauty, designed by Mary Colter. They were clean, efficient, served good food, dished up by clean young women, imported from the east coast, paying them $17.50 a month with free room and board. These jobs were some of the first decent work for women who wanted to come west, including teachers and domestics.

In 1946, MGM released The Harvey Girls, a musical starring Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury, based on the novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams. In the sixties, until the mid-seventies, with train travel dwindling, the Fred Harvey organization made a go at roadside rest stops -- mounted on bridges above the Illinois Tollway. The company itself was sold in 1968.

Union Station, pt 2

In its heyday, Union Station was a dynamic location most people passed through on their way to and from LA. Celebrities were often photographed as they arrived and departed for news clips. After LAX was built, and most people began to fly, the station fell into decline. Recently, it's been invigorated by becoming part of the metro lines, so once again, it's a hub of transportation for most of Los Angeles.

Union Station

Los Angeles' Union Station is widely considered to be the last of the great train stations built in this country. Designed by John B. and Donald D. Parkinson, the station was opened in 1939, with a dedication ceremony featuring both the mayor of Los Angeles and the governor of California, amidst three days of pageants, parades and other celebrations.

Built on what was once part of Chinatown, its grand combination architecture highlights the futuristic, transportation inspired art deco contemporary at the time and Spanish style, celebrating California's rich past. Fitting, as it's located right next to Olivera Street, where Los Angeles was founded.

The walls are lined with cork, preventing echoes so common in large structures. Union Station has been featured in films, tv and commercials since its dedication. The first train that ran out of the it was part of a promotion by Paramount Studios for their film, Union Pacific. Other notable films include, Blade Runner, the Way We Were and Guilty by Suspicion.

Who ya gonna call?

The answer is clear if you're at Ocean Park and 31st in Santa Monica -- Ghostbusters!

Monsters in Silver Lake

The folks at Materials and Applications are at it again. Fresh from the fabulous Maxmillian's Schell exhibit last year, they upped the ante this spring with their 'Here There Be Monsters' installation this spring. (The phrase, 'Here there be monsters,' interestingly enough is what used to be put on the edges of medieval maps -- indicating places no one had ever been.) The exhibit creates a interactive garden out of rainwater flowing through different pools (one that reacts to kicking -- you have to see it for yourself) and natural materials such as bamboo tht explores our endemic fears.

Back in Black

or...er...green. It's been quite the month around here!

And we're thrilled to come back home, refreshed from our vacation with new stories to tell!

kuaptic.

Friday, April 28, 2006

The tease

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Ashes and Snow

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Forbidden Spices

Monday, April 24, 2006

More than meets the eye

Friday, April 21, 2006

Nooks and Crannies

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Box of Treasures

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Missing

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

225 years

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Austrians in Los Angeles

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Traxx Restaurant

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Designing the West

Monday, April 10, 2006

Fred Harvey

Friday, April 07, 2006

Union Station, pt 2

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Union Station

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Who ya gonna call?

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Monsters in Silver Lake

Back in Black

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