ok, sunset pictures.
i know, the internet is overloaded with sunset pictures. but, in my defense, tonight’s sunset was REALLY awe inspiring.
let me try to justify a sunset picture somehow, to see if there’s some architectural merit to it… um. there are buildings in the sunset picture? and some of them are probably really interesting? paltry justification, i know.
how about the oddness of l.a, with the megalopolis spread out to the left (well, a part of it), the coyote filled hills on the right (well, part of them), and the gigantic flaming sky overhead and the strip of ocean spreading out to… new zealand? fiji? somewhere exotic, i’m sure.
so, maybe no architectural significance, but as a portrait of a city it’s fairly telling, with the juxtaposition of city and hills and sky and ocean. and now the sun has set and the frogs are being very loud (i have a lot of frogs up here) and the coyotes are yelling at each other and the crickets are cricketing. all the sounds of a typical urban night. oh, and there goes a helicopter.
in any case, here’s tonights amazing (and yes, architecturally irrelevant) sunset. (tomorrow there will be architecture again, i promise. maybe not as awesome as the purple spaceship church, but something good. i hope).
moby
one of my favorite buildings in grimy hollywood is the robert burman designed 7th day adventist church.
architecturally it’s kind of remarkable, as it’s equal parts urban mid century concrete bunker and lavender hued space ship hovering over the freeway.
i’m going to be an architecture nerd for a second and point out the similarities (well, in the windows) to corbusiers ronchamp church.
i’m also going to write briefly about the homeless man who hung out with me while i was taking these pictures.
him: you taking pictures of the purple church?
me: yup.
him: can you give me a dollar? i need some ritz crackers.
me: of course, here you go.
him: hey, are you moby?
me: yup, i am.
him: hey! i’m the guy you write your songs about!
me: ok.
him: i’m the song cracker. the guy in the songs. don’t forget!
me: i won’t. ok, bye.
him: remember, i’m the song guy! they write the songs about me!
me: i won’t forget.
him: remember, purple church song guy!
me: ok, take care, see you later.
so, all in all a good day of architecture picture taking, as i got to take pictures of the concrete bunker lavender spaceship church and i got to contribute to the ritz cracker fund of the purple church song guy.
this is exactly what i saw myself doing with my adult life.
-moby
a pre-emptive apology, but i’m only posting one picture of this phenomenal place.
to be honest, i even feel hesitant and guilty in putting up this one picture, as:
1-there’s a sign outside of this phenomenal place asking people not to take pictures (mea culpa, i took a picture).
and 2-the people in the neighborhood would drive me out with pitchforks if i revealed more about where and what it is.
so what is it? i can’t tell you. i’m sorry. but it’s amazing, and it’s my sincere hope that someday somehow you’ll get to see it for yourself.
l.a is filled with remarkable stuff, but this is definitely in my top 10. again, corner me in a parking lot or at nature mart and i’ll tell you what it is.
oh, a random aside, a friend was visiting l.a this weekend and we went for a walk around bronson canyon and franklin village and the aforementioned friend said, ‘why do people hate l.a? l.a is amazing.’ i just nodded smugly and sagely. ok, maybe more smug than sage. and i refrained from telling my friend about the head in the bag that had been found nearby, as i thought that would just spoil the moment.
ok, cryptic photo time (if nothing else how can you not be smitten with a place identified by a ‘caution: munchkin crossing’ sign?).
-moby
ok, a very nice, very simple mid-century house. and it’s in color.
years ago i saw a book of los angeles architectural photographs by julius shulman and they led me to believe that all good architectural photography should be in black and white. which is why i feel heretical in putting up color pictures. but, in my defense, it was a really nice day. the sun was shining and the sky was blue and the trees were all bright and green, so in some ways it seemed as if taking black and white pictures of a perfect spring day in l.a was also heretical.
so, i guess i’m opting for a lesser form of heresy. or i just like pretty pictures of sunny days because i’m, at my core, a deeply simple 7 year old.
in any case, pretty pictures of a perfect little mid century house. and, as is often the case, i know nothing about this house. it might be a case study house. it might be an iconic example of l.a mid century architecture. or it might just be a really awesome mid century house surrounded by trees on an unremarkable suburban street.
in any case, as i said, here are pretty pictures of a perfect little mid century house surrounded by trees under a perfect sky.
-moby
p.s-oh, i especially love the curving concrete wall with the little swoop cut out for the tree trunk.
ok, a random almost sort of architectural update. or not.
although there are some buildings in the first picture.
so: 2 simple pictures, one of downtown l.a at the tail end of a thunderstorm. and the other of some fruit that bill pullman gave me (he grows some really impressive fruit, and he’s in the process of further developing the hollywoodland orchard, to wit: hollywoodlandorchard.com).
so: downtown l.a and tasty fruit grown in bill pullman’s backyard. (if it were a diptych i’d call it: ‘tasty fruit and the apocalypse’. or something.)
-moby
This is sort of a cop out, I know.
I’m sending this from my phone, whereas normally I use my VERYFANCYCAMERA to document the beautiful weirdness of l.a’s oddball buildings. But I’m en route to san francisco to play records for the young persons, and I left my VERYFANCYCAMERA at home.
Cos its big.
And I travel light.
Possibly as a result of deap seated psychological issues.
In any case: bob hope international airport. 99.9% of the people who fly in/out of los angeles use lax. But some of us try, whenever possible, to use bob hope (or burbank) airport. Why? Its tiny and provincial and feels more like flying in/out of duluth or sacramento or albany. plus, and most important: it has a giant weird mural of an old plane being pulled by winged horses (pegasus? Pegasii?).
So, here’s a picture of the glamor that is bob hope international (I’m still not sure how it qualifies as ‘international’…maybe a once a week flight to tijuana?) Airport.
Architecturally significant: possibly not. But its little and weird and possessed of a mural of pegasuses pulling an old timey plane. Which makes up for any inherent lack of architectural significance.
Thanks
Moby
this weekend i was at a friend’s house in the center of dirty, grimy hollywood. just hanging out and drinking tea a couple of hundred yards from the center of the grimiest parts of grimy hollywood.
but: my friend’s house feels like a graham greene inspired vision of the phillipines circa 1947.
the house is so flawlessly covered in/surrounded by plants that i actually don’t really know what the house looks like, except that it’s really beautiful. it would be beautiful almost anywhere, but the fact that it’s hidden a few hundred yards from the grimiest of grimy hollywood makes it even more magical.
millions of people go stumbling by, looking for drugs or tshirts or henry winkler’s walk of fame star or sushi or souvenir portraits with crack addicted spiderman or whatever it is people look for in the center of hollywood. and a few feet away are tiny streets filled with bucolic houses and exploding tropical plants.
how many people driving or walking through grimy hollywood have any idea that there are cute and grand and beautiful old houses just a few yards away? i’m guessing, presumptuously, not many.
oh, the pictures are in color. i know, heresy.
so, here are more pictures of gritty urban l.a squalor at it’s grittiest.
as i’ve said, 99% of what’s remarkable about l.a is hidden in almost plain sight.
-moby
ok, this might not make sense to anyone. or it might. make sense.
anyway: l.a has a lot of generic, cheap, and seemingly uninspired/uninspiring apartment houses. they’re generally pretty ugly (‘pretty ugly’ is a funny expression, like ‘civil war’, or ‘soluble fish’. not that anyone every says/uses the expression ‘soluble fish’. except for maybe man ray or andre breton or frances picabia or antonin artaud. my dead surrealist friends).
but, in a very odd and subjective way, i love these strange and ugly little apartment houses. partially for their aesthetics, as they are generally kind of boxy and rectilinear and compellingly decrepit. but more for their implied narrative (if you ever want to sound really pretentious just say ‘implied narrative’ at a cocktail party. people will literally or figuratively throw garbage at you).
when i walk by one of these generic, ugly, ubiquitous, boxy apartment houses i wonder: ‘what’s going on in there?’ or: ‘what has gone on in there?’ or: ‘what will go on in there?’ because the answers could be: ‘anything’.
in one of these boxy apartment buildings you could find: trannies smoking crystal meth at 3 in the afternoon. aspiring screenwriters writing aspirational screenplays. aphasic old actors mentally reliving the halcyon glory days of their professional youth. beautiful tattooed aspiring rock gods having sex with their beautiful tattooed partners. frank booth drinking pabst blue ribbon. naive and fresh faced actors checking their email to see if they’ve gotten a call back on the next michael bay film. or: anything. painters, writers, musicians, actors, drug dealers, performance artists, blue velvet characters, etc etc etc. anything.
and that’s why i love these run down, odd apartment houses. they are stepping stones for some people and repositories for others. sometimes they’re stepping stones and repositories for the same people, depending upon the vagaries of their trajectories.
but as buildings they’re menacing and beautiful and disconsolate and aspirational all at the same time. and again, that’s why i love them.
oh, i’m also not sure a building can be ‘disconsolate’, but it sounded nice in my head as i was writing it.
-moby
25 Abandoned Yugoslavia Monuments that look like they're from the Future
these are just about the coolest things ever built by humans. so, i’ll get back to l.a architecture soon. in the meantime, tito commissioned yugoslavian war memorials that look like they were designed and installed by giant space aliens who loved concrete and lived 50,000 years ago.
-moby
ok, an update involving a completely random l.a house and parking lot.
the first 2 pictures are of a magical little hobbit house (well, if hobbit’s used river rocks to make their little hobbit houses, which they don’t, as they live in burrows), and the 3rd picture is of a parking lot i thought was particularly attractive.
pictures 1&2: i was driving through a simple little suburban neighbourhood (yes, in the middle of a desert megalopolis of 15,000,000 people) and i saw this very odd and adorable little stone house sandwiched between two pretty conventional suburban houses.
so: urban architecture at it’s finest.
although i know nothing about this house, i assume it’s populated by badgers who wear vests and make scones for the neighbours when they come to visit. or, if not badgers, very pleasant accountants who sometimes dress up like badgers.
and the third picture is just an interestingly lit, and empty, parking lot. it’s wasteful, of course, but i kind of love it when empty spaces are brightly and pointlessly lit.
-moby
