Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
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| The old Ridge Route is a narrow, unmaintained concrete strip that parallels I-5 up the mountains above Castaic, heading north to Bakersfield. The road was only used from 1919 til 1933, afterwhich it was replaced by 99, itself replaced by I-5 in 1960. The foundations of the old roadside rest stops, like the Tumble Inn above, are marked by plaques along the road. I rode up with my friend TJ in his new Honda Element. Out of respect I'll withhold expressing any opinion on the car's design. |
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| The Getty. Pictures of the San Fernando Busway. Los Angeles takes a lesson from Curitiba, Brazil [pdf] While in LA i rode on the MetroRapid bus along Wilshire all the way from Downtown to Santa Monica. It was interesting to see Los Angeles from a New York perspective, that is, as a pedestrian, without a car. LA has done a good job of making the buses fast by spacing out stops and electronically holding greenlights but it's still traveling over surface streets and it took 90 minutes to go 12 miles. Buses and lightrail will always be massively inconvenient for getting around LA. The only real solution would be to charge tolls on the freeways to speed them up. |
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| Los Angeles Vernacular This week I went to visit my Dad in Marina Del Rey. The cheap wood-frame apartment buildings covered with cream stucco created a strong sense of nostalgia for my California youth. |
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| Stairwell in Dia:Chelsea. The colored tiles at bottom were designed by Jorge Pardo. Dia:Chelsea is now closed for renovation, so you'll have to get your minimalist art fix by heading up to Beacon |
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The Starrett-Leigh Building on 11th & 26th as seen from the Robert Mann Gallery on the 10th floor of 210 11th Ave. I like the Starrett-Leigh. It's a 1931 building which, like London Terrace and the Empire State Building were funded at the peak of the boom and debuted and the bottom of the depression. All three buildings are massive and poorly located [who'd ever build a massive office tower in the middle of the garment district?]. Ironically, Starret-Leigh filled up with dot-com companies. I believe Martha Stewart still has offices there.
The current show at Robert Mann is a photographer named Joe Deal who has a series of 1970s and 1980s photographs of Southern California suburban sprawl. The black & white images of pools, shake shingle roofs and barbecue grills made me nostalgic for my California childhood. |
| Over Christmas I got an ibook G4 and i've been so obsessed with ripping music and burning CD's that I haven't even hooked up my digital camera, hence the recent lack of updates to this site. In lieu of photos i'll offer some links to a few interesting sites I've come across recently:
Digital SLR, a blog dedicated to high end digital photography. It does an excellent job explaining concepts in lucid, jargon-free words. Margaret Cho also has a blog which she appears to be updating with extreme prolific intensity. January seems to be the time new gadgets debut and so Gizmodo has been an excellent read lately. Charles Cushman's 1940's color photo archive, which all bloggers have been linking to recently but are very cool, nevertheless. Richard Renaldi has a good show of portraits at Debs & Co. in Chelsea. Go in person, if you can, but these two websites are better than average for contemporary arts. |
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 | For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page. |