fair Cahuenga Pass

Once under the highway near Universal is where does begin a magnificent hill. Its sidewalks are wide with green trees it abounds and thick are the shade-spots that dapple its grounds and rich is the reward that arrives at last when spying the peak of fair Cahuenga Pass. It’s rideable whenever daytime or night (now during the latter I switch on a light) and watch at the top for loose rocks on my right while pedaling madly with all of my might. Along it are fast-food booze cigarette shops dispensaries groomers yet few red-light stops; when southbound upon it people rarely turn lest they run smack into nature’s own rock-berm. Then… over! I’m over! by golly hot dog here comes some relief from that hard-churning slog my wits are about me though I dare not rest for slaloming traffic’s a demanding test. At some points are gravel at some points are holes I take over lanes lest I should be bulldozed by uncaring drivers who’re trying to shoot the gap between me and boulders thick with roots. I know not the name of the goddess whose is the honor of guarding the Cahuenga Pass but thank and applaud her for her loving hands that guide and protect all who pass through her lands.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

installment 3 of images from L.A.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

more images from LA

images from L.A.

the phaltscape calls

As the leaves turn brown and the morning mists catch me shivering, I struggle to resist the siren-song of the far and distant phaltscape. Known also as the asphalt landscape, the phaltscape exists in cities around the world, in urban environments large and small, in concrete jungles the world over. To some degree, the phaltscape exists here, too, in this rural little Pennsylvania town; I ride on it every day, pulling myself on my smogsled across its winding expanse, laboring along its curling and rising and dipping pathways with as much speed as I can muster. There is one phaltscape in particular for which I long, however; it stretches from Santa Monica Bay to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, from the Griffith Observatory to the 10 Freeway – I pine for the blacktop of my fair lost city, El Pueblo De El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula.

I do not linger in agony, nor do I suffer too greatly from being absent for the past seven months from her cruel and tender embrace; my love for her lives in a special place within the folds of my heart, in that place normally reserved for one's biological, or birth, mother. It is likely because I died and was reborn more than once in L.A. that I regard her with such child-like devotion, that I think of her with such fondness, that I am blind to her faults and see only her virtues; if she were less harsh, I'd feel betrayed, yet if she were to age and gain some wrinkles, I would not care one bit. Ask me to explain this affection, and I will draw a blank. Ask me to define, even, what I mean exactly by L.A., and my brains will overload and go blue-screen while they trying to pin down her elusive and terrifying grandeur.

Part of her charm lies in the diversity of her people, in her Chicanos and Japanese and Russians and Germans and Thais; part of it lies in her pleasant weather, in her hot winter winds and cool spring breezes and weeks upon weeks of bright, sunny days. Ah, but I have slipped into the trap I just warned against and tried to pin down that which I just said I could not pin down, struggling for words as my mind grew sluggish, only through great effort pulling myself back from the brink of complete mental shutdown. Suffice it to say that beyond the direct calls from her people – from friends still living there who ask when I shall return – I feel as if Los Angeles herself were pining a bit for me, too, for my footfalls to sound once more in her forgotten and noisome places, for the pneumatic wheels of my wire-donkey to sing from the Ocean to the River, the sweat of my brow gently moistening byway and avenue alike. Of course, such thoughts are but mere foolishness, the heart-pangs of a star-crossed lover yearning for his mate; she is likely glad to be rid of my stink, happy that I have begun to sink in roots of tree and garden, out here. No matter how much, though, I tell myself otherwise, I cannot with ease shake my memories of her. Sigh… and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on street art in NYC

I am yesterday come direct from New York City (NYC), that fair, Mid-Atlantic island-metropolis. Being a purveyor of street art, and a person who collects images of these most fleeting slivers of mankind's dazzlingly bountiful imagination, posting them occasionally at urbanartuploads.blogspot.com, it is my rote to explore a city's avoided and trash-strewn places, taking pictures of any graffiti I find living there. Having collected street art in Berlin, Los Angeles, Amsteram, Philadelphia, Long Beach, San Diego, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Tampa, Boston, and, most recently, in New York, I have amassed an internal sense-knowledge-base of the many different and various trends, techniques, and habits that graffiti writers tend to exhibit; ergo, I believe I can gain a rapid understanding of a city's predominant trends-in-vandalism from seeing but a small portion of the overall milieu.

Perhaps I was in the wrong areas (Hunter's Point, Long Island City, and Manhattan), or perhaps I was on the wrong streets (primarily down Broadway from 42nd to Battery Park, and near the World Trade Center), but most images (except for those examples that will be uploaded to urbanartuploads.tumblr.com in about three months, due to backlog) that I managed to capture were obtained from only a handful of areas around town, including near Canal Street, on the Lower East Side, and in the East and West Villages; the rest of Manhattan was either swept clean of its no-charge-to-the-consumer open-air-art-galleries or the police forces of certain areas are so adept at patrolling and desecrating the works of art that street artists labor to apply there that these clever vandals know well enough to stay away.

Compared, moreover, to the cities mentioned above, Manhattan's street artists seem to prefer primarily self-adhesive name badges sold by one of the major office-supply chain stores, upon which they write – in nearly illegible, seemingly gang-or-crew-specific script – their own names, identifying numbers, or the name of the group or home area. (Such stickers were seen primarily in parts of NYC with little to no other graffiti, as opposed to graffiti-rich areas, which exhibited such profusion of street art that the aforementioned stickers became all but invisible against the colorful and riotous backdrop of other works). Whereas in, say, Los Angeles, one finds curious and strange examples of graffiti adorning otherwise-blank surfaces in nearly every part of the city, whether in the financial district, in the heart of Hollywood, or in the sleepier parts of Koreatown, graffiti in New York tends to be applied to almost any available surface – adorned or blank, private or public – that happens to be in arm's reach of the sidewalk. Whereas in most other cities graffiti-writers generally apply their works of art to the backs of street-signs, to public utility-boxes, or to hatches and those metal doors that cover access panels – mostly avoiding stuccoed or painted surfaces – in NYC, vandals appear to not give a fuck about what they spray over with their pressurized paints, which pisses off the city's property owners.

Persons looking for high-quality street art in New York City will do well to avoid the shiny and the well-swept areas, preferring rather the grimier and less-well-kept areas, which will exhibit such bountiful and beautiful examples of graffiti as one might expect from a world-class city such as the Big Apple. Just remember to stoop slow, to revel in the filth, and to keep your head on a swivel, because the NYPD is alert, and it is everywhere.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit