I went out and about t’other day. I didn’t exactly, or solely, “go for a walk” - I essentially went out for lunch – but some walking was involved, and it was a very familiar kind of urban walk, though one with a specific Los Angeles flavor, which is not without its absurdities.
The process was this: Get in the car, drive down the hill, park, walk three quarters of a mile to the subway station, take the subway six miles downtown, emerge from the station, walk a mile from station to lunch venue which included a stroll through Grand Park, which is nice enough not really all that grand.
So I had lunch, then afterwards I went to the Japanese American National Museum to walk around the fourth Giant Robot Biennale, an art exhibition arranged by the good folks at Giant Robot, that being and I’m quoting here obviously, “a staple of Asian American alternative pop culture .., at various times a magazine, a store, a restaurant.” Now mostly just a store. Then afterwards I went back the way I came and did it in reverse: walk, subway, walk, car.
I understand, of course, that no serious walker would consider this a serious walk, and I didn’t. Maybe a psychogeographer would have considered it a psychogeographic drift, but you know, what isn’t? My mother would probably have said I was just mooching about. But isn’t this what a lot of walking is like?
And what (you may ask) did you see, my blue eyed son? Oh what did you see, my darling young one.
Well, first thing, you know, I get it that walkers are supposed to really hate cars but the fact is, I don’t, not really. There are times when I enjoy driving (though admittedly these times get rarer and rarer). But there are still many occasions when I enjoy seeing old cars, appreciating them as a kind of kinetic sculpture. Of course it helps a lot if they’re parked and not likely to run you down. On the way to the station I saw this local beauty – I think it’s those crude nostrils in the hood that really make it for me.
Then, still on the way to the station I saw this. I’d noticed it before without thinking about it too much – the natural world poking up through the urban surface and then being attacked by a different bit of the natural world:
I’ve made a half-hearted attempt to identify the fungus on the tree, and I think it could be Smoky Bracket (Bjerkandera adusta) and if it is, then that’s very bad news for the tree. The website I found suggests that when this stuff appears it’s time to cut down the tree, though in fact the website belonged to a company that specializes in cutting down trees so maybe they have a vested interest. Further research suggests it could possibly be Artists Fungus (Ganoderma applanatum) but that’s no better for the tree either. Once a tree sprouts fungus, it’s in big trouble, as I understand it.
And then on the station platform, and this was something I hadn’t noticed before, though obviously it’s not new – you can walk right up to the end of the platform and stare into the tunnel mouth and you can see there’s kind of a catwalk that you could easily stroll along if they’d let you.
Of course there’s a gate and a stern sign telling you not to, but obviously some urban explorer has been in there and done a bit of scratchy graffiti, though frankly it didn’t look like their heart was in it.
And then out of the subway and walking through downtown there was this amazing and fairly alarming statue of a cyclist right in the middle of Grand Park – part of temporary monument to “fallen cyclists.”
I know we’re coming up to Halloween, and there is a Day of the Dead feel to the monument but I don’t know whether this is an entirely respectful representation of a dead cyclist. It seems both too spooky and too playful, though I noted that he is wearing a safety helmet.
Then lunch, which is a whole other story, and then the Giant Robot Biennale – which was very cool and full of good stuff – not a vast exhibition but pretty much the right size, I thought. I especially liked the work of Yoskay Yamamoto – I’m a sucker for art that includes model houses - who had an installation that looked like this:
And I loved the work of Luke Chueh who does paintings like this one, titled Headphones.
To be absolutely honest I can’t quite remember if that picture’s in the exhibition or not, but I include it here because I found it in a website, alongside an interview with Cheuh in which he says this is a kind of self-portrait – he reckons that’s the way he looks as he’s walking around his neighborhood, though without the ears, I suppose.
Outside the museum there’s a piece of sculpture by Nicole Maloney that looks like a big, mirrored Rubik’s cube, and loads of people photograph it, which usually involves inadvertently or not, taking their own self-portrait. Being a man who still needs a viewfinder on his camera, and also man who doesn’t really understand the current urge for the selfie – I feel pretty well disguised in this picture.
The other person you can see in there is my pal Lynell George – my lunch companion – and she’s working on a book about serendipity – so of course we were concerned with all things random and accidental – but even so it wasn’t till I looked at the picture afterwards when I got home that I saw that pair of detached legs walking in the reflection. Serendipitous? For sure. Spooky? Kind of. Comical? Definitely.
