Downtown Fashion Walk Wants Some Steampunk!

After the success of the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk the second Thursday of the month - we are now starting Fashion Walk the third Thursday of each month along Main, Spring and Broadway. That same night, we are also launching an entertainment and other all other arts Broadway Walk along Broadway from 2nd to 9th Streets.

Both events will be on the third Thursday of each month. And both events would like the extend an invitation to the steampunk movement to join us. We want to build upon the excitement - and wonder - of the recent Edwardian Ball at the Tower Theater and success of Los Angeles based circus - Cirque Berzerk - currently playing to rave reviews in Downtown's Cornfield Park.

And if you have not yet seen Cirque Berzerk and the one a kind... spectacle... it produces - their shows have just been extended - yet again - until August 9th. (see above link for ticket details).

These two new monthly Downtown walks will debut - side by side - Thursday night August 20th and they will run from 5:30 PM - 10 PM. And since many of the area's buildings (and interiors) date from the steam punk era, the Historic Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood will provide an excellent environment to display and photograph all things steampunk.

Ad we will soon post more information about these events later. But, first, we are looking for any steampunk - or any other alternative clothing life-style - designers and dealers who would like to showcase their goods during Fashion Walk. We are also looking for unique entertainers to participate in our Broadway Walk.

So if you are interested, contact Brady Westwater at.... bradywestwater@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Economic Development Committee Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council July 28th Meeting 7 PM

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL
Economic Development Committee Agenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DLANC_ED/
Committee Board Co-Chair David Hurtado @ davidhurtado@gmail.com
Committee Co-Chair Brady Westwater • 213-804-8396 •
BradyWestwater@gmail.com

Tuesday • July 28th, 2009 • 7:00 p.m.
1100 Wilshire Blvd. Community Room – Los Angeles, CA 90015

Park on the street, nearest subway stop is at 7th and Figueroa. When
you enter the building, let the security guard know you are there
for the Economic Development Committee and the security guard will
direct you to the room we are meeting in. If you need help, contact
Committee Co-Chair Brady Westwater bradywestwater@gmail.com
213-804-8396 (cell)
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL
Mailing office DLANC POB 13096 LA CA 90013-096
TELEPHONE: (213) 473-6451
www.dlanc.com MAIL STOP: 968-01
DEPARTMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD EMPOWERMENTwww.lacityneighborhoods.com

CITY OF LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL OFFICERS:
J. RUSSELL BROWN, PRESIDENT
BRADY WESTWATER, VICE-PRESIDENT OF ADMINISTRATION
PATTI BERMAN VICE-PRESIDENT OF OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATION
ALEX CHA, TREASURER
ANNA DANIELLE DURAN, SECRETARY

MEETING AGENDA
1. Call to order.

2. Public comment on non-agenda items.

3. Approval of minutes of prior meeting.

4. Discussion of plans for future mixers.

5. Discussion on Fashion Walk and Broadway Walk publicity.

6. Discussion and action on DLANC participation on Fashion Walk, Angel's Flight Walk, Broadway Walk and promoting local businesses to hotel guests and new residents and $1,000 towards website and marketing materials.

7. Discussion and action on outreach for two proposed City West boundary expansions.

8. Discussion and possible action on Downtown residential housing market.

9. Discussion on Downtown workers survey on what changes people need before they would move Downtown.

10. Update, if any, on CEDS program and possible partnerships to get grant money for the community.

11. Discussion and action on promoting Downtown ED activities on DLANC website and other on-line forums.

12. DIscussion and action on helping create economic development incubators.

13. Discussion and action on what ED activities could support SDAT project focusing
upon financially sustainable housing and walkable neighborhoods.

14. Discussion and vote on committee budget priorities for next fiscal year.

15. New/old business/future agenda items.

16. Board member comment.

17. Public comment.

18. Adjournment.

The public is requested to fill out a "Speaker Card" to address the
DLANC Planning & Land Use Committee (Committee) on any item of the
agenda prior to the Committee taking action on an item. Comments
from the public on agenda items will be heard only when the
respective item is being considered. Comments from the public on
other matters not appearing on the agenda that is within the
Committee's subject matter jurisdiction will be heard during the
public comment period. Public comment is limited to 2 minutes per
speaker, unless waived by the presiding officer of the Committee.
As a covered entity under Title II of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, the City of Los Angeles does not discriminate on
the basis of disability and upon request, will provide reasonable
accommodation to ensure equal access to its programs, services, and
activities. Sign language interpreters, assistive listening devices,
or other auxiliary aids and/or services may be provided upon
request. To ensure availability of services, please make your
request at least 3 business days (72 hours) prior to the meeting you
wish to attend by contacting Committee Co-Chair Brady Westwater at
213-804-8396 or bradywestwater@gmail.com.

SI REQUIERE SERVICIOS DE TRADUCCION, FAVOR DE NOTIFICAR A LA OFICINA
3 dias de trabajo (72 horas) ANTES DEL EVENTO. SI NECESITA
ASISTENCIA CON ESTA NOTIFICACION, POR FAVOR LLAME A NUESTRA OFICINA
AL 323-224-2316

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It's the National Day of the Cowboy!

But this cowboy is along ways from his cowboy homes and even further away from this cowboy roots. So all you guys out there living the cowboy way - cowboy up while you can.

It doesn't last forever.

Join The Broadway Walk! And Fashion Walk, Too!

Broadway Walk Call for Projects!


If you are interested in Downtown – or Broadway – or both - or if you are involved in the performing or visual arts - you don’t need to read the article linked to above (and below) to know how the Art Walk has totally changed Main and Spring (but read it any way).

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/07/la_observed_on_kcrw_downt.php

What you do NOT know, though – is that it’s now Broadway’s turn to have its own walk. But rather than just visual arts – beginning on August 20th – on the THIRD Thursday of the money – the week after second Thursday Art Walk – Broadway will showcase ALL of the arts each third Thursday of the month.

And just like Art Walk started with only a handful of pioneers – we are looking a dozen cultural organizations and about that many individuals willing to perform or exhibit in vacant storefronts, in restaurants, on vacant upper floors of buildings, on sidewalks - – or … possibly… maybe even in a theater – or its lobby.

That same night we will also be holding our first Fashion Walk, on Main and Spring - and on Broadway, too - with over twenty boutiques being open - plus special events. So feel free to come to both events dressed as your real, your fantasy or your forbidden selves.

So – if there is anything you'd like to do on Broadway – or anyone you think we should be talking to – let us know.

August 20th, 2009 will go down as the date Broadway nightlife – finally - first came back to life.

And how often are you given a chance to create history?

Brady Westwater
bradywestwater@gmail.com
213-804-8396

Julius Shulman, Dies at 98

To say an era has passed with the death of architectural photographer Julius Shulman is inadequate. It is the end of several eras.

At 98, Shulman was the last person living who knew or worked with every member of the generation of modern architects who came to prominence in the Los Angeles of 1920's and 1930's. He then worked with each new generation of architects who came after them during the 70 years after his first job with Richard Neutra in 1936.

He was also the last of that early generation of architectural photographers remaining just as he was one of the first to specialize in that field. He was also one the few Angelinos left with memories of what it was like to live in the Los Angeles of the late post WWI era and the boom times of the 1920's. He was also - possibly - the last of his generation to be an active participant in civic life well into the 21st Century, right up until his death.

The time I first met him - in a class at UCLA back in the 1960's - I remember how impressed I was by the energy of such an 'old' man - particularly one from such a distant era. I was also impressed by how surprisingly candid he was in all his answers to our questions. And when we met last a few years ago - forty years after our first meeting - I was just as impressed.

Below is the opening of the LA Times article; but, better yet, just hit the link above for the whole piece.

Julius Shulman dies at 98; celebrated photographer of Modernist architecture
Shulman died Wednesday at his L.A. home. One observer says he had 'a profound effect on the writing and teaching of architectural history ... especially Southern California modernism.'
By Claudia Luther

12:03 PM PDT, July 16, 2009

Julius Shulman, whose luminous photographs of homes and buildings brought fame to a number of mid-20th century Modernist architects and made him a household name in the architectural world, died Wednesday night. He was 98.

Shulman, who had been in declining health, died at his home in Los Angeles, according to gallery owner Craig Krull, who represented him.

Starting with Richard Neutra in 1936, Shulman's roster of clients read like a who's who of pioneering contemporary architecture: Rudolf M. Schindler, Gregory Ain, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Eames, Raphael S. Soriano, John Lautner, Eero Saarinen, Albert Frey, Pierre Koenig, Harwell Harris and many others. His work was contained in virtually every book published on Modernist architects.

"He has a sense of visual bravura of composition," wrote the late Robert Sobieszek, photography curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "so that he can take a rather mundane house and make it look exciting, and take a spectacular house and make it look triply spectacular."

Shulman had "a profound effect on the writing and teaching of architectural history and understanding architecture, especially Southern California modernism," said Thomas Hines, UCLA professor emeritus of architecture and urban design. And Newsweek magazine's Cathleen McGuigan wrote that some of Shulman's photographs of modern glass houses in Palm Springs and Los Angeles "are so redolent of the era in which they were built you can practically hear the Sinatra tunes wafting in the air and the ice clinking in the cocktail glasses."

After the Depression, Shulman's studio was one of three in the U.S. to which Arts & Architecture, Architectural Forum and other magazines turned to document the exciting new work being done in architecture. The others were Ezra Stoller's firm in New York and the Hedrich Blessing firm in Chicago.

Shulman's 1960 photograph of Koenig's Case Study House #22 -- a glass-walled, cantilevered structure hovering above the lights of Los Angeles, became one of the most famous architectural pictures ever taken in the U.S. It was, as architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote in the New York Times, "one of those singular images that sum up an entire city at a moment in time."

But Shulman's work went well beyond merely taking beautiful pictures of houses and buildings. His mission was to use his photography to build the reputation of the architects who were bringing innovative design to the West. Indeed, his photographs were, by and large, all that most people would ever see of noted architects' works, many of which were later destroyed.

Neutra, whose association with Shulman lasted 34 years until the architect's death in 1970, acknowledged this.

"Film [is] stronger and good glossy prints are easier [to] ship than brute concrete, stainless steel or even ideas," Neutra said.

Shulman was born Oct. 10, 1910, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Soon after his birth, the family moved to a farm in Connecticut, where they raised cows, grew corn and had a small fur business.

It was on the farm that Shulman first developed a love of nature that, he said, awakened him to light and shadow and influenced his life's course.

When Julius was 10, his father moved the family to the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, which at that time was predominantly Jewish, and opened the New York Dry Goods Store on Temple Street. His father died of tuberculosis in 1923, leaving Julius' mother to run the business and raise five children.

After graduating from Roosevelt High School -- where he took what would be his only course in photography -- Shulman spent seven years as what he called an "academic drifter," auditing geology, philosophy and other courses at UCLA and UC Berkeley. He returned to Los Angeles -- without a degree and still unsure what he wanted to do.

He was, by then, however, earning rent money from pictures he took at Berkeley with an Eastman box camera. And one photograph of the 6th Street Bridge over the L.A. River had won first prize in a national magazine competition.

It was a chance meeting with Neutra in March 1936 -- two weeks after Shulman left Berkeley -- that would open up the possibility of becoming an architectural photographer. A man who was renting a room from Shulman's sister, and who was working as a draftsman for Neutra, invited Shulman along one day to see Neutra's Kun house, which was under construction near Fairfax Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

As was his habit by then, Shulman took along a vest-pocket camera that was equipped with a bellows that unfolded.

"I had never seen a modern house before," Shulman said. It "intrigued me with its strange forms -- beyond any previous identity of a house in my experience."

Shulman developed a few of the pictures and sent them to the draftsman, who showed them to Neutra. The architect, then in his mid-40s, sent for young Shulman and ordered up more prints.

With Neutra's invitation to photograph other projects, Shulman was suddenly a professional architecture photographer....

(REST OF ARTICLE AT ABOVE LINK)

Weird - Even Scary - G-Mail Experience.

I just sent an email and mentioned I have been hit by a bad case of my mold fungus allergy. Then when I sent it - rather than the screen going back to g-mail - it came back to a company that removed... mold fungus.

Scary, huh? Anyone else ever have that experience?

http://www.amoldspecialist.com/