Discover the Secret History Of Historic Downtown LA This Weekend! Four Walking Tours Starting at THE LAST BOOKSTORE!

The Last Bookstore Presents
(and it's just opened 2nd floor with 100,000 books at only ONE DOLLAR each!)
Presents….

... The Secret Lives of Historic Downtown Los Angeles!


The HISTORIC DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES 101  2 hour walking tours will take place this Saturday July 7th  at both 11 AM and 2 PM and this Sunday July 8th only at 2 PM - and then also next Sunday July 15th at 2 PM.   That is two tours each of the next two Saturdays and one tour each of the two next Sundays.


NEXT... the HOW DOWNTOWN LOS ANGLES INVENTED THE WILD WEST (and why no one knows it) walking tour will take place this Sunday July 8th at 11 AM and next Sunday July 15th at 11 AM - and each tour will be followed by the Historic Downtown LA Sunday July 8th and 15th 2 PM tours.


And  besides our regular schedule tours, we will be offering customized tours on different days and different times - depending on your schedule.  With a minimum of four reservations, we will design a tour of any part of Downtown focusing on any subject matter you choose.  These tours can be after work, during lunch breaks - or??


FOR MORE INFORMATION  - contact Brady Westwater at 213-804-8396 - or bradywestwater@gmail.com

BRADBURY BUILDING

All tours begin at THE LAST BOOKSTORE at 453 S. Spring Street in the Spring Arts Tower and will be led by long time Downtown resident Brady Westwater who, besides being involved with the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council, the Historic Downtown BID, Gallery Row, Art Walk, and the BOXeight and the CONCEPT Fashion Weeks, has brought over 150 businesses, artists and non-profit institutions to Downtown.  All tours are only $15 per person.  

Wyatt Earp

If you are a participant in Saturday's 'Historic Downtown Los Angeles 101' Tour, you will see the first motion picture theater built,  the place where Babe Ruth signed his contract with the Yankees, the hotel where Charlie Chaplin lived when he made his early films (and the place where he made his Los Angeles vaudeville debut in 1910) - plus the homes and haunts of everyone from actor Nicholas Cage, the Black Dahlia, Rudolph Valentino, LA’s version of Jack the Ripper, President Teddy Roosevelt, the Night Stalker, western outlaw Emmet Dalton,  actor Ryan Gosling and more.  And you will also visit where O. J. Simpson bought his knife.

You’ll explore an intersection where all four buildings were often visited by gunfighter/sheriff Wyatt Earp since they were all built or occupied by friends of his from Tombstone during the shoot-out at the OK Corral.  At this intersection you will also discover what John Wayne, a prime minister of Italy, Houdini, Winston Churchill, boxer Jack Dempsey, Greta Garbo, President Woodrow Wilson and multiple Mexican boxing champions all had in common here.

You will also see where the first new lofts were opened, the places where Gallery Row and the Art Walk began and where Fashion Week returned to Downtown.  You will see many of the new boutiques, designer showrooms and stores that have recently opened in the area along with getting a sneak preview of what will soon be happening in the area.

And if you take the "How Los Angeles Invented The Wild West (and why no one knows it"tour, you will discover that long before the famed Western cowtowns and mining camps Tombstone, Dodge City, and Deadwood existed, Los Angeles was the first town where everything that happened in the Wild West, happened here first and that everyone from Wyatt Earp to Judge Roy Bean came to Los Angeles first before going east to help start the Wild West. You will also discover LA was a far ‘wilder’ town than any Western town that followed after it.

And besides ‘inventing’ the original Wild West, Los Angeles also remained part of the Wild West for far longer than other place (from 25 years to over 90 years - compared to the average period of 3 or 4 years to 10 years of most cowtowns) and LA was also one of the few towns built upon both cattle and mining.

Tickets for either tour are only $15 per person - free for children under 8 - and reservations can be made by calling Brady Westwater at 213-804-8396 or emailing bradywestwater@gmail.com.  All credit card orders will be processed  at Last Bookstore and cash payments may be made at the start of the tour.   All proceeds will go towards the revitalization and the study of the history of the neighborhood.  

Lastly, future tours will feature specialized areas of interest such as architecture, art of all kinds, shopping and food, single streets, sports (from steer wrestling to luchador wrestlers to a Sumo wrestler), transportation, specific periods of history, the hidden Wild West history of Los Angeles, movie locations, Downtown after hours and many other aspects of the neighborhood. And custom designed can be developed by request  for groups of four or more.

We will also be soon starting weekday and evening tours on what it's like to live in Downtown Los Angeles. You will be introduced to the many of stores, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues (and often their owners, too) - along with being given previews of one of a kind special events - so you can get a feel for what it is like to live in Downtown Los Angeles.

We expect this tour to be popular with not only people considering moving to Downtown and people who work in Downtown and who would like to know what to do after hours in Downtown - but also to recent and even long established Downtown residents who want to know more about their neighborhood.

For future updates and more information go to www.historicdowntownlosangeles.blogspot.com

MOCA (former) Chief Curator Paul Schimmel Facebook Response to his Leaving

Dear friends and colleagues,
For once I’ve decided to try and post something of some consequence, rather than pictures of dogs and children. I want to talk about my last day as Chief Curator of MOCA. It has been an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have been part of this museum. I have counted each day of my 22 years at MOCA as truly special, and the work of helping to define a growing institution and identify a rapidly changing community of artists, both here in Los Angeles and internationally, has been both a great pleasure and a great privilege.

Working at MOCA has meant working with exceptional people, first and foremost the artists with whom I have collaborated over the years and who have made me the curator I am today. There are so many of you out there—artists, museum professionals, dealers, collectors, and patrons—who have meant a great deal to me and to the success that I’ve had at MOCA. And to all of you within the family of MOCA itself, I have found enormous support and opportunity—one that I can’t imagine could have been any better, or will be any better anywhere else. My colleagues in the Curatorial Department, many of whom have gone on to other wonderful opportunities, are extraordinarily dedicated people who have done some of their best work here. And the catalogs that we have produced with our publications department are not only great contributions to art historical scholarship, but testaments to the legacy and longevity of MOCA’s outstanding exhibitions.

I extend my profound thanks to all MOCA staff past and present, including Richard Koshalek for having brought me to MOCA, as well as to former director Jeremy Strick, all of whom have made the important happen again and again through the years. These colleagues were driven as much by a passion for art and artists as for a desire for MOCA’s individual successes. Together, we have striven to make our shows not just good, not just great, but the best that artists and curators could ever achieve. I also want to recognize the many trustees and patrons how have supported MOCA over the years. Again and again, individuals have stood up to make important contributions to the museum, whether for the success of an exhibition or for the acquisition of a major work into our collection. I know that these last few years of financial crisis have been difficult ones, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your perseverance and dedication; when you love something, you love it unconditionally.

I am so grateful that even during these last years that MOCA has been able to realize so many important exhibitions that it had long been committed to---“William Leavitt,” “Suprasensorial,” “Amanda Ross Ho,” “Ends of the Earth,” and the upcoming “Blues for Smoke” exhibition, as well as my exhibition “Destroying the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962.” After over 20 years, I feel such pride and honor to have been the Chief Curator at MOCA, and I hope that for the next 20 years, MOCA’s staff and trustees can feel the same sense of privilege and accomplishment that I have.

With love,

Paul

MOCA's Press Release on the Resignation of Chief Curator Paul Schimmel

Below is MOCA's press release on Paul Schimmel leaving MOCA.  Most of it is what one would expect, but there are surprises.  The biggest surprise is the naming of interior of the old Temporary Contemporary, now the now Geffen Contemporary, as the Paul Schimmel Exhibition Space.

That is a considerable honor - particularly  given the awkward nature of his severance from the museum.  The detailed description that follows of his 22 year career at MOCA is also particularly well done and gives him the full credit he deserves.

To my amazement, it is a far better send-off than I think anyone could have imagined when the news first broke.  It even manages to have his career at MOCA end on a now expected high-note.  Long after the personality and other differences that led to his leaving MOCA are forgotten, his name will remained attached to the space where he more than once not just redefined contemporary art in Los Angeles - but contemporary art, period, during the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.


Lastly, the one other expected note.  It was the last line in his resume.   He was described as 'the co-director of the Mike Kelly Foundation for the Arts'.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2012

THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES (MOCA), ANNOUNCES NAMING OF
PAUL SCHIMMEL EXHIBITION SPACE
AT THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA


MOCA CHIEF CURATOR HONORED FOR 22-YEAR TENURE
AS HE STEPS DOWN AND BECOMES
INDEPENDENT CURATOR


Los Angeles—The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announced today that Chief
Curator, Paul Schimmel, has resigned from his position to become an independent curator, after 22 years
with the institution, organizing some of the museum’s most successful exhibitions. Mr. Schimmel will continue
working with MOCA on the upcoming exhibition Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962
(September 29, 2012–January 7, 2013), which explores abstraction and destruction in the period. In
recognition of his many contributions to MOCA, where Mr. Schimmel has been Chief Curator since 1990,
the Board of Trustees announced the naming of The Paul Schimmel Exhibition Space at The Geffen
Contemporary at MOCA in his honor.

“Paul’s contributions to MOCA’s curatorial program and permanent collection over the past two decades
have made an indelible mark on the legacy of the museum,” said MOCA Board Co-Chair Maria Arena Bell.

Co-Chair David G. Johnson added, “With his vast knowledge of art, and keen curatorial eye, we look forward
to following his work beyond MOCA, and will continue to maintain our close relationship with him. We thank
Paul for this legacy, and we wish him much success.”

“Paul has been a champion of modern and contemporary art, and has been a leader in firmly establishing Los
Angeles as an international art center, recognized throughout the world,” said MOCA Director and CEO
Jeffrey Deitch. “The works that came into MOCA’s collection under Paul’s curatorial leadership are
extraordinary, and will be appreciated by MOCA audiences for years to come. All of us at MOCA thank Paul,
look forward to his continued consulting with MOCA, and wish him well.”

Mr. Schimmel reflected, “MOCA has given me an opportunity to come of age with the institution during an
exciting period in its history, and has allowed me to work with an extraordinary community of artists over the
past two decades.” He added, “I am deeply honored by the naming of the exhibition space at The Geffen
Contemporary at MOCA.”



MOCA ANNOUNCES ANNOUNCES NAMING OF PAUL SCHIMMEL EXHIBITION SPACE AT THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA
MOCA CHIEF CURATOR HONORED FOR 22-YEAR TENURE AS HE STEPS DOWN AND BECOMES INDEPENDENT CURATOR
Page 2 of 3

The space at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, which will be named in Mr. Schimmel’s honor, is a
dynamic exhibition platform. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, which opened in 1983, is a former police
car warehouse in Little Tokyo renovated by the architect Frank O. Gehry. It includes 40,000 square feet of
exhibition space and has been host to scores of exhibitions curated by Mr. Schimmel.

MOCA’s collection of works by visionary contemporary artists grew significantly under Mr. Schimmel’s
curatorial oversight, with the additions of works by internationally renowned artists including: Diane Arbus,
John Baldessari, Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, Richard Diebenkorn, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Olafur
Eliasson, Llyn Foulkes, Sam Francis, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres,
Jasper Johns, Mike Kelley, Liz Larner, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland,
Chris Ofili, Charles Ray, Jason Rhoades, Nancy Rubins, Edward Ruscha, Robert Smithson, Fred Tomaselli,
Luc Tuymans, and Franz West. Mr. Schimmel developed the Acquisition and Collection Committee (1995),
the Drawing Committee (2000), and the Photography Committee (2005). Since 1990, MOCA’s collection
grew by 5,749 objects, from 987 at its founding to 6,735 objects today.

Major collections acquired for MOCA during Mr. Schimmel’s 22 years at MOCA include The Ralph M.
Parsons Foundation Photography Collection (1995), the bequest of Marcia Simon Weisman’s collection of
83 prints and drawings (1996), the Lannan Foundation’s gift of 114 works by 53 artists (1997), and the
Blake Byrne gift of 123 works (2004). Schimmel also organized two of the most significant permanent
collection exhibitions to take place in both MOCA museum spaces simultaneously, A Room of Their Own:
From Arbus to Gober, From Rothko to Rauschenberg; and Collection: MOCA’s First 30 Years.

Mr. Schimmel has been a prominent figure in the international art community during his time at MOCA.
Overseeing some of the most memorable exhibitions in MOCA’s history, Mr. Schimmel has organized an
impressive list of visionary shows, many of which traveled to major museums on national and international
tours.

Mr. Schimmel has organized numerous major group exhibitions, including Helter Skelter: LA Art in the
1990s; Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition 1955–1962; Out of Actions: Between Performance
and the Object, 1949–1979; Ecstasy: In and About Altered States; and, Under the Big Black Sun:
California Art, 1974–1981. In addition to Mr. Schimmel’s own exhibitions, he has supervised a program of
over 350 exhibitions, including over 100 devoted to the permanent collection. This program is internationally
recognized both for its deeply researched and critically acclaimed, historical exhibitions, including WACK!
Art and the Feminist Revolution, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968; and, the current exhibition,
Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974.

Solo exhibitions he has curated include Sigmar Polke Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish; Robert Gober:
Untitled; Charles Ray; Willem de Kooning: Tracing the Figure; Laura Owens; Robert Rauschenberg:
Combines; and, © MURAKAMI. In addition to Schimmel’s solo exhibitions, major shows have been
presented of Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly, Bruce Nauman, Richard Diebenkorn, Ed Kienholz, Cindy
Sherman, Andy Warhol, Juan Munoz, Marlene Dumas, and Alan Kaprow, as well as the MOCA-originated
standard reference exhibitions for Barbara Kruger, Martin Kippenberger, Dan Graham, and Robert Smithson.



MOCA ANNOUNCES ANNOUNCES NAMING OF PAUL SCHIMMEL EXHIBITION SPACE AT THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA
MOCA CHIEF CURATOR HONORED FOR 22-YEAR TENURE AS HE STEPS DOWN AND BECOMES INDEPENDENT CURATOR
Page 3 of 3

MOCA's curatorial vision will continue to remain strong under Jeffrey Deitch’s leadership, and with the
support of the MOCA curatorial team, as well as guest curators, who will bring pioneering international
perspectives to MOCA's collection and exhibitions. In this way, MOCA will continue to serve and grow its
diverse audiences, which recently have increased from 147,000 to 400,000 annually.

Highly anticipated, upcoming exhibitions curated by guest curators, working closely with Jeffrey Deitch,
include a solo show of artist Urs Fischer, curated by Tate Modern’s Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art,
Jessica Morgan (spring 2013), and a major retrospective of Jeff Koons (January 2014), organized with the
Whitney Museum of American Art, curated by Scott Rothkopf. Mr. Deitch, together with the MOCA team,
has planned an exciting roster of summer programs that reflect the museum’s mission to attract varied and
expanded audiences, including the recently announced FRAMEWORK, a new series of three site-specific
dance performances by L.A. Dance Project/Benjamin Millepied and Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford, in the
galleries at MOCA Grand Avenue, to take place July 19, August 2, and August 9, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.

Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962 will open at MOCA Grand Avenue on September 29,
2012–January 7, 2013, and will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The exhibition will be
accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog including essays by Nicholas Cullinan, Astrid Hagna-Gagnard,
Sorichi Hirai, Paul Schimmel, and Robert Storr.

More About Paul Schimmel:

Paul Schimmel has been the Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), since
1990, and previously served as the Chief Curator of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA
(1981–89), as well as the Curator (1975–77) and Senior Curator (1977–78) of the Contemporary Arts
Museum, Houston, TX. He has won numerous awards, including two awards from the Association of Art
Museum Curators (AAMC), six awards from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), and the
Award for Curatorial Excellence given by The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (2001). Mr.
Schimmel currently serves on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, the La Caixa
Contemporary Art Collection Acquisition Committee, and is a co-Director of the Mike Kelley Foundation for
the Arts.

# # #

MEDIA CONTACTS

Lyn Winter Sara Fitzmaurice
MOCA FITZ & CO
Tel. 213-633-5390 Tel. 310-395-2900

lwinter@moca.org sara@fitzandco.com
www.moca.org www.fitzandco.com

Discover the Secret History Of Historic Downtown LA This Weekend! Four Walking Tours Starting at THE LAST BOOKSTORE!

The Last Bookstore Presents
(and it's just opened 2nd floor with 100,000 books at a buck each!)
Presents….

... The Secret Lives of Historic Downtown Los Angeles!


The HISTORIC DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES 101  2 hour walking tours will take place this Saturday June 30th and this Sunday July 1st at 2 PM  at 11 AM and 2 PM AND  next Sunday July 8th at 2 PM.   That is two tours each of the next two Saturdays and one tour each of the two next Sundays.


NEXT... the HOW DOWNTOWN LOS ANGLES INVENTED THE WILD WEST (and why no one knows it) walking tour will take place this Sunday July 1st at 11 AM and next Sunday July 8th at 11 AM - and each tour will be followed by the Historic Downtown LA 2 PM tours.

BRADBURY BUILDING

All tours begin at THE LAST BOOKSTORE at 453 S. Spring Street in the Spring Arts Tower and will be led by long time Downtown resident Brady Westwater who, besides being involved with the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council, the Historic Downtown BID, Gallery Row, Art Walk, and the BOXeight and the CONCEPT Fashion Weeks, has brought over 150 businesses, artists and non-profit institutions to Downtown.  All tours are only $15 per person.  

Wyatt Earp

If you are a participant in Saturday's 'Historic Downtown Los Angeles 101' Tour, you will see the first motion picture theater built,  the place where Babe Ruth signed his contract with the Yankees, the hotel where Charlie Chaplin lived when he made his early films (and the place where he made his Los Angeles vaudeville debut in 1910) - plus the homes and haunts of everyone from actor Nicholas Cage, the Black Dahlia, Rudolph Valentino, LA’s version of Jack the Ripper, President Teddy Roosevelt, the Night Stalker, western outlaw Emmet Dalton,  actor Ryan Gosling and more.  And you will also visit where O. J. Simpson bought his knife.

You’ll explore an intersection where all four buildings were often visited by gunfighter/sheriff Wyatt Earp since they were all built or occupied by friends of his from Tombstone during the shoot-out at the OK Corral.  At this intersection you will also discover what John Wayne, a prime minister of Italy, Houdini, Winston Churchill, boxer Jack Dempsey, Greta Garbo, President Woodrow Wilson and multiple Mexican boxing champions all had in common here.

You will also see where the first new lofts were opened, the places where Gallery Row and the Art Walk began and where Fashion Week returned to Downtown.  You will see many of the new boutiques, designer showrooms and stores that have recently opened in the area along with getting a sneak preview of what will soon be happening in the area.

And if you take the "How Los Angeles Invented The Wild West (and why no one knows it"tour, you will discover that long before the famed Western cowtowns and mining camps Tombstone, Dodge City, and Deadwood existed, Los Angeles was the first town where everything that happened in the Wild West, happened here first and that everyone from Wyatt Earp to Judge Roy Bean came to Los Angeles first before going east to help start the Wild West. You will also discover LA was a far ‘wilder’ town than any Western town that followed after it.

And besides ‘inventing’ the original Wild West, Los Angeles also remained part of the Wild West for far longer than other place (from 25 years to over 90 years - compared to the average period of 3 or 4 years to 10 years of most cowtowns) and LA was also one of the few towns built upon both cattle and mining.

Tickets for either tour are only $15 per person - free for children under 8 - and reservations can be made by calling Brady Westwater at 213-804-8396 or emailing bradywestwater@gmail.com.  All credit card orders will be processed  at Last Bookstore and cash payments may be made at the start of the tour.   All proceeds will go towards the revitalization and the study of the history of the neighborhood.  

Lastly, future tours will feature specialized areas of interest such as architecture, art of all kinds, shopping and food, single streets, sports (from steer wrestling to luchador wrestlers to a Sumo wrestler), transportation, specific periods of history, the hidden Wild West history of Los Angeles, movie locations, Downtown after hours and many other aspects of the neighborhood. And custom designed can be developed by request  for groups of four or more.

We will also be soon starting weekday and evening tours on what it's like to live in Downtown Los Angeles. You will be introduced to the many of stores, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues (and often their owners, too) - along with being given previews of one of a kind special events - so you can get a feel for what it is like to live in Downtown Los Angeles.

We expect this tour to be popular with not only people considering moving to Downtown and people who work in Downtown and who would like to know what to do after hours in Downtown - but also to recent and even long established Downtown residents who want to know more about their neighborhood.

For future updates and more information go to www.historicdowntownlosangeles.blogspot.com

First Official Word From MOCA Regarding Paul Schimmel

MOCA Board Co-Chair David G. Johnson states:   "Paul Schimmel is stepping down as MOCA's chief curator. It is amicable and there will be a press release tomorrow."

Paul Schimmel Fired By MOCA!

According to Mat Gleason, editor of art journal COAGULA - the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art has just fired art world legend Paul Schimmel from his post as Curator.  This - as of yet unannounced and unconfirmed  - but not denied - move, has stunned the Los Angeles contemporary world.

MOCA Fires Curator Paul Schimmel

As I blogged about at CoagulaDotCom, the shuttering of ArtNetDotCom is no longer the top art story of the week.

Paul Schimmel was fired at MOCA - it was the end of the fiscal year and they tightened the belt. It is easier to have a corporate sponsor pay a guest celebrity curator - the curating has been outsourced.

The design department is outsourced to Sheppard Fairey’s design company, the education department gets grants and therefore competes with the Board for power so people there are being hacked away left and right, but the cutting off of Schimmel is a bold move by the Jeffrey Deitch Eli Broad consortium to advance the outsourced party time event based museum that will not function as a repository of great art but of great parties.

If Moca is downsized into a celebrity-curated kunsthalle style circus, it will give the blue chip Broad across the street more Gravitas. And then of course when MOCA is broke yet again - who will save MOCA by purchasing the best paintings in the collection because the museum is more concerned with event programming? The Broad Museum across the street of course.

Schimmel changed the course of institutional focus with his exhibit HELTER SKELTER which favored the energy of figurative art addressing American abjection. he rejected the party line of a formalist art history. For this he will have an impact that goes beyond his years. He curated some turkeys. Richard Serra told me that Schimmel's 1998 Out of Action exhibit would have made a better enyclopedia than an exhibition. Schimmel's cotton candy Takahashi Murakami exhibition was downright suspicious with the close involvement of the artist's American dealers and a high-end commercial boutique in the middle of the museum allegedly functioning as an art piece.

I wrote about Schimmel for the LA Downtown News and got into trouble for mentioning how fat he was in an article called "Curator Rates the Eats". His wife thaked me a few years later sayin she could never get him to the gym until that came out. MOCA pulled my press credential and I was barred from the Ellsworth Kelly retrospective press preview. That week a trustee who was going to be out of town gave me his invite to the big party. Paul almost crapped his tuxedo when they let me in... Actually MOCA events were always easy to crash with the whispered missive "I've got a delivery of an ounce of pot for Paul Schimmel, I can't just hand it to you and he has GOT to get it for the afterparty." Worked like a charm for many MOCA soirees. Now party crashers are reduced to sucking-off Sheppard Fairey's douchebag posse for a pass into MOCA events which are ind of blurring into a Hollywood version of what they think an art party at a bottle-service Vegas Strip nightclub should look like.

My bet is Schimmel lands on his feet at the Mike Kelley Foundation. What is that? You'll see.

Easy to Read Links to All the New Products Google Announced Today

Google announced today its new $199 tablet Nexus 7, a major upgrade in Google Maps, upgraded Apps for Android (Jelly Bean, Google Now & Google+),  a social streaming media player - Nexus Q for $299 and another peak at the still beta Google Glasses.

The two best and quickest reads for non-hard core tech types I could find were at benzinga ....
... and at USA today.

Mayor Villaraigosa Gets Serious About Helping Businesses Thrive in Los Angeles

After decades of talk and blue ribbon panels who churn out soon to be forgotten reports - a new group of serious work horses has been called together by the Mayor to get LA back in the game of helping, attracting and creating existing and new businesses.  Here are the opening paragraphs of the Daily News story:

Villaraigosa creating new council to boost local investments

By Gregory J. Wilcox Staff Writer

In an attempt to boost entrepreneurship and venture capital investment in the region, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday announced the creation of a new council.
The Los Angeles Mayor's Council on Innovation and Industry is backed by a broad range of businesses and will involve neighboring cities.
The council will focus on slowing the brain drain of local college graduates leaving Los Angeles for technology development centers in other parts of the country and focus attention on the area's innovation economy, officials said.
"Los Angeles is an incredibly creative, diverse city, offering a phenomenal life-style and anchored by academia and cutting edge research from leading universities in our backyard," Villaraigosa said in a statement.

MORE at the below link:

Mayor Villaraigosa Gets Serious About Helping Businesses Thrive in Los Angeles

Four Walking Tours of Historic Downtown Los Angeles This Weekend - And Next!

The Last Bookstore Presents….

  

The Secret Lives of Historic Downtown Los Angeles



The HISTORIC DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES 101  2 hour walking tours will take place this Saturday June 30th and this Sunday July 1st at 2 PM  at 11 AM and 2 PM AND  next Sunday July 8th at 2 PM.   That is two tours each of the next two Saturdays and one tour each of the two next Sundays.


NEXT... the HOW DOWNTOWN LOS ANGLES INVENTED THE WILD WEST (and why no one knows it) walking tour will take place this Sunday July 1st at 11 AM and next Sunday July 8th at 11 AM - and each tour will be followed by the Historic Downtown LA 2 PM tours.

BRADBURY BUILDING

All tours begin at THE LAST BOOKSTORE at 453 S. Spring Street in the Spring Arts Tower and will be led by long time Downtown resident Brady Westwater who, besides being involved with the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council, the Historic Downtown BID, Gallery Row, Art Walk, and the BOXeight and the CONCEPT Fashion Weeks, has brought over 150 businesses, artists and non-profit institutions to Downtown.  All tours are only $15 per person.  

Wyatt Earp

If you are a participant in Saturday's 'Historic Downtown Los Angeles 101' Tour, you will see the first motion picture theater built,  the place where Babe Ruth signed his contract with the Yankees, the hotel where Charlie Chaplin lived when he made his early films (and the place where he made his Los Angeles vaudeville debut in 1910) - plus the homes and haunts of everyone from actor Nicholas Cage, the Black Dahlia, Rudolph Valentino, LA’s version of Jack the Ripper, President Teddy Roosevelt, the Night Stalker, western outlaw Emmet Dalton,  actor Ryan Gosling and more.  And you will also visit where O. J. Simpson bought his knife.

You’ll explore an intersection where all four buildings were often visited by gunfighter/sheriff Wyatt Earp since they were all built or occupied by friends of his from Tombstone during the shoot-out at the OK Corral.  At this intersection you will also discover what John Wayne, a prime minister of Italy, Houdini, Winston Churchill, boxer Jack Dempsey, Greta Garbo, President Woodrow Wilson and multiple Mexican boxing champions all had in common here.

You will also see where the first new lofts were opened, the places where Gallery Row and the Art Walk began and where Fashion Week returned to Downtown.  You will see many of the new boutiques, designer showrooms and stores that have recently opened in the area along with getting a sneak preview of what will soon be happening in the area.

And if you take the "How Los Angeles Invented The Wild West (and why no one knows it"tour, you will discover that long before the famed Western cowtowns and mining camps Tombstone, Dodge City, and Deadwood existed, Los Angeles was the first town where everything that happened in the Wild West, happened here first and that everyone from Wyatt Earp to Judge Roy Bean came to Los Angeles first before going east to help start the Wild West. You will also discover LA was a far ‘wilder’ town than any Western town that followed after it.

And besides ‘inventing’ the original Wild West, Los Angeles also remained part of the Wild West for far longer than other place (from 25 years to over 90 years - compared to the average period of 3 or 4 years to 10 years of most cowtowns) and LA was also one of the few towns built upon both cattle and mining.

Tickets for either tour are only $15 per person - free for children under 8 - and reservations can be made by calling Brady Westwater at 213-804-8396 or emailing bradywestwater@gmail.com.  All credit card orders will be processed  at Last Bookstore and cash payments may be made at the start of the tour.   All proceeds will go towards the revitalization and the study of the history of the neighborhood.  

Lastly, future tours will feature specialized areas of interest such as architecture, art of all kinds, shopping and food, single streets, sports (from steer wrestling to luchador wrestlers to a Sumo wrestler), transportation, specific periods of history, the hidden Wild West history of Los Angeles, movie locations, Downtown after hours and many other aspects of the neighborhood. And custom designed can be developed by request  for groups of four or more.

We will also be soon starting weekday and evening tours on what it's like to live in Downtown Los Angeles. You will be introduced to the many of stores, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues (and often their owners, too) - along with being given previews of one of a kind special events - so you can get a feel for what it is like to live in Downtown Los Angeles.

We expect this tour to be popular with not only people considering moving to Downtown and people who work in Downtown and who would like to know what to do after hours in Downtown - but also to recent and even long established Downtown residents who want to know more about their neighborhood.

For future updates and more information go to www.historicdowntownlosangeles.blogspot.com

Celebrate Downtown LA's THE LAST BOOKSTORE One Year Anniversary in Their New Space!

To celebrate one year in the SPRING ARTS TOWER at 5th and Spring, THE LAST BOOKSTORE will open their second floor ... filled... with one dollar books and hold  a  Saturday June 22 sale with all the other used books, vinyl records, cds and dvds being 10% off.

And there will be 2 hour walking tours of Historic Downtown Los Angeles  at 11 AM and 2 PM both days - for only $15 a person.  The Saturday tours and the Sunday 2 PM tour will explore the secret histories of Downtown - and how those histories have affected the present - and will continue to impact the future

And the Sunday 11 AM tour is: How Downtown Los Angles Invented the Wild West - And Why No One Knows That.  For reservations for any of the tours call Brady Westwater at 213-804-8396.

911 & The World Champion Los Angeles Kings

Kings fan honors fallen scouts, brings Cup champions hat to World Trade Center memorial (PHOTO)

By Harrison Mooney | Puck Daddy – Thu, Jun 14, 2012 10:55 PM EDT

• Email

@dkrasne

The L.A. Kings' first Stanley Cup in franchise history meant a lot to many long-suffering fans that feared they might never see the team raise the Cup before they die.

But there were some that weren't so lucky. Two in particular: Garnet "Ace" Bailey and Mark Lawrence Bavis, L.A. Kings scouts who were aboard United Flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Both men are commemorated at the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero. Their names are written at the South Pool, on Panel S-3. That's a photo of the spot above, with an L.A. Kings Stanley Cup champions hat resting between them.

Kings fan Dave Krasne, who lives in New York City, thought of the two scouts when the Kings won the Cup, and decided it wasn't right that they miss Thursday's Stanley Cup celebrations. He brought a hat to the memorial and laid it between them.

"May Mark Bavis and Ace Bailey finally RIP," he said in a tweet.

An incredible tribute, and a fitting end to a day of celebrating in Los Angeles. Said Bryan Reynolds over at Hockey Wilderness:

To Mr. Krasne, a hearty "Well Done!" sir. You took a step very few would have thought to take, and for that you deserve the praise of the entire hockey world. Thank you for keeping these men in your thoughts as you celebrated your team's championship.

Ditto. Now, if you'll pardon me, things just got a little glassy in here.

s/t to Bryan Reynolds.

Van Dyke Parks Makes Yet Another Come Back

Back in the late 1960's and early/mid 1970's, it was almost impossible to move in the creative circles of Los Angeles without knowing - or at least regularly running into - Van Dyke Parks.  

He was one of those people who everyone seemed to somehow know even if they all didn't know his music all that well. 

And even though I had to have met/run into him a dozen times in just one or  two year period, I never once heard him perform live.  I only knew his music from the few local FM stations that played anything of his that they could get their hands on - even if it was a pirate tape late at night. 

So it's nice to read about his continuing comeback and know that someday - maybe - I just might be able to hear him perform live.

Van Dyke Parks: return of a musical maverick

He tried in vain to move the Beach Boys away from surf and bikinis. Today artists from Rufus Wainwright to the Scissor Sisters are queuing up to work with him

• 
• • Richard Williams
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 June 2012 17.55 EDT

Producer and composer Van Dyke Parks in 1970. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

As the small, white-haired, bespectacled man in a sleeveless cardigan took his seat a few rows from the front of the stalls in London's Royal Festival Hall one night in 2004, several dozen people among the already packed house greeted him with a standing ovation. Those who did not recognise the seemingly insignificant figure were soon apprised of his identity and importance: this was Van Dyke Parks, the former wunderkind who, almost 40 years earlier, had supplied the lyrics to the work whose world premiere the audience was about to hear: Brian Wilson's SMiLE, the album designed for the Beach Boys at the height of the 60s but abandoned in despair and left to acquire the status of myth.

1. Van Dyke Parks
2. Barbican Hall, 
3. London
4.  E2

1. Starts 23 June 2012
2. Venue website

Reconstructed under the supervision of its authors and a small orchestra of acolytes, SMiLE turned out to be, if not quite the "teenage symphony to God" that Wilson had promised during the album's original gestation period, then a compellingly original symphonic portrait of America, studded with brilliant moments of pop fantasy. At the conclusion of the performance the lyricist stepped up to share another ovation with his old friend, relishing the belated acclaim for a work that had once been engulfed in acrimony.

As a child chorister and actor in the 1950s, Parks had sung under the batons of Toscanini and Beecham, performed Silent Night to the accompaniment of Albert Einstein's violin, and appeared in Grace Kelly's final movie. Yet his first substantial contribution to pop music was initially met with incomprehension and disdain when Mike Love, the lead singer of the Beach Boys, took angry exception to the wordy, allusive, double-punning lyrics being supplied by Parks to Wilson, the group's chief composer and resident genius.

While Love and the rest of the group had been on tour abroad in the middle of 1966, singing their songs about cars, girls, surfing and high school proms to an adoring public, Wilson – who had retired from the road – and Parks began their collaboration. The approach they took was very different from that enshrined in "Surfin' USA" or "I Get Around", and more ambitious even than the romantic tone poems of Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys' previous album. Now each individual song was a dazzling patchwork of movements featuring lyrics that resolutely avoided mention of beaches and bikinis.

Their endeavours were fuelled by a mutual enthusiasm for mind-altering drugs: speed, hash and LSD. During a conversation five years later Parks recounted how, on first arriving in California as a teenager, he had been falsely arrested on a charge of possessing marijuana. "I'd never heard of it at that time," he told me in 1971. "After that I took plenty of opportunities to find out what it was that I'd been arrested for. And I found out. I stayed in a stupor for some time." Not the sort of daze, however, that could dull the edge of a sharply inventive intellect.

"Hung velvet overtaken me / Dim chandelier awaken me / To a song dissolved in the dawn," Parks wrote for a song titled, with conscious irony, "Surf's Up". "The music hall a costly bow / The music all is lost for now / To a muted trumpeter swan." The vaulting melody seemed more appropriate to a cathedral mass than a rock gig. When Wilson sang it, alone at a piano, on a national TV show hosted by Leonard Bernstein, the great conductor called it a masterpiece.

Love didn't agree. On the group's return to Los Angeles, where they joined Wilson and Parks in the studio to add their voices to the new songs, profound differences of opinion emerged. Love had written the words to several of their earlier hits, including "Surfin' Safari" and "Good Vibrations"; resenting the switch to a direction he neither understood nor appreciated, he challenged Parks to "explain" a line from one of the new songs: "Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield."

"It was an American Gothic trip that Brian and I were on," Parks would recall 10 years later, in an interview for a Beach Boys documentary, but his reaction to the challenge suggested that he knew he was up against superior forces. "I said, 'I don't know what these lyrics are about. Throw 'em away.' So they did." Having spent months helping to construct such complex songs as "Heroes and Villains", "Cabin Essence", "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up", he walked off the project, which was soon abandoned by a dejected and increasingly reclusive Wilson.

By the time Parks took his seat in the Festival Hall to witness its re-emergence, he had long been accepted as a kind of benign enfant terrible of pop. In recent years he has composed for film and television, written books for children, and worked as an arranger with Rufus Wainwright, Saint Etienne, Scissor Sisters, Laurie Anderson, Inara George – the daughter of his late friend Lowell George, the leader of Little Feat – and Joanna Newsom, whose widely praised second album, Ys, he orchestrated.

(The rest of the article continues here)

Downtown Art Walk ReCap Thursday June 14, 2012

Art Walk is Over. And we all survived it once again. 

It turned out to be a pretty mellow crowd - typical in size for a cool June night. A lot of people forget that the real crowds don't begin until the July heat, and then build in August - and sometimes even build in September before slowing down in November.

The sidewalks at 5th and 6th and Spring were congested at times but it was all easily managed by a handful of traffic officers and I didn't see anything untoward during my hourly ramblings.

Venue wise, main food truck site was a compact lot at 3rd and Spring and the Broadway Spring Arcade was closed, possibly because of a new marble floor being installed in sections.

And if I am counting right, tonight I lost my 20th pop-up venue for Art Walk since Art Walk first started - and for the same reason I lost all the others. I helped lease the Regent Theater to Mitchell Frank and by this time next year on Art Walk - it will be the coolest music club in Downtown LA - if not the city.

And the new additions were the first half of the new mezzanine section at THE LAST BOOKSTORE - which will eventually have 100,000 books at only one buck each - and a glimpse of the Old Chocolate Shop just before it starts its restoration. Something new - and something old that will be new again.

Does Anyone Know Where This Bizarre Photo... Skyrocketing... Around the Internet Comes From?

We should try and get this on Art Walk next month!

Four Walking Tours of Historic Downtown Los Angeles This Weekend - And Next! UPDATE! Special Father's Day Weekend Discount!

The Last Bookstore Presents….

  

The Secret Lives of Historic Downtown Los Angeles



The HISTORIC DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES 101  2 hour walking tour will take place this  Saturday June 16th and next Saturday June 23rd  at 11 AM and 2 PM AND this Sunday June 17th  and next Sunday June 24th at 2 PM.   That is two tours each Saturday and one tour each Sunday


Then the HOW DOWNTOWN LOS ANGLES INVENTED THE WILD WEST (and why no one knows it) walking tour will take place this Sunday June 17th at 11 AM and next Sunday June 24th at 11 AM.  

BRADBURY BUILDING

All tours begin at THE LAST BOOKSTORE at 453 S. Spring Street in the Spring Arts Tower and will be led by long time Downtown resident Brady Westwater who, besides being involved with the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council, the Historic Downtown BID, Gallery Row, Art Walk, and the BOXeight and the CONCEPT Fashion Weeks, has brought over 150 businesses, artists and non-profit institutions to Downtown.  All tours are only $15 per person.  EXCEPT FOR THIS WEEKEND!  This weekend if you bring your Father with you, you will only have to pay $5 for your Dad.on either day!

Wyatt Earp

If you are a participant in Saturday's 'Historic Downtown Los Angeles 101' Tour, you will see the first motion picture theater built,  the place where Babe Ruth signed his contract with the Yankees, the hotel where Charlie Chaplin lived when he made his early films (and the place where he made his Los Angeles vaudeville debut in 1910) - plus the homes and haunts of everyone from actor Nicholas Cage, the Black Dahlia, Rudolph Valentino, LA’s version of Jack the Ripper, President Teddy Roosevelt, the Night Stalker, western outlaw Emmet Dalton,  actor Ryan Gosling and more.  And you will also visit where O. J. Simpson bought his knife.

You’ll explore an intersection where all four buildings were often visited by gunfighter/sheriff Wyatt Earp since they were all built or occupied by friends of his from Tombstone during the shoot-out at the OK Corral.  At this intersection you will also discover what John Wayne, a prime minister of Italy, Houdini, Winston Churchill, boxer Jack Dempsey, Greta Garbo, President Woodrow Wilson and multiple Mexican boxing champions all had in common here.

You will also see where the first new lofts were opened, the places where Gallery Row and the Art Walk began and where Fashion Week returned to Downtown.  You will see many of the new boutiques, designer showrooms and stores that have recently opened in the area along with getting a sneak preview of what will soon be happening in the area.

And if you take the "How Los Angeles Invented The Wild West (and why no one knows it"tour, you will discover that long before the famed Western cowtowns and mining camps Tombstone, Dodge City, and Deadwood existed, Los Angeles was the first town where everything that happened in the Wild West, happened here first and that everyone from Wyatt Earp to Judge Roy Bean came to Los Angeles first before going east to help start the Wild West. You will also discover LA was a far ‘wilder’ town than any Western town that followed after it.

And besides ‘inventing’ the original Wild West, Los Angeles also remained part of the Wild West for far longer than other place (from 25 years to over 90 years - compared to the average period of 3 or 4 years to 10 years of most cowtowns) and LA was also one of the few towns built upon both cattle and mining.

Tickets for either tour are only $15 per person - free for children under 8 - and reservations can be made by calling Brady Westwater at 213-804-8396 or emailing bradywestwater@gmail.com.  All credit card orders will be processed  at Last Bookstore and cash payments may be made at the start of the tour.   All proceeds will go towards the revitalization and the study of the history of the neighborhood.  

Lastly, future tours will feature specialized areas of interest such as architecture, art of all kinds, shopping and food, single streets, sports (from steer wrestling to luchador wrestlers to a Sumo wrestler), transportation, specific periods of history, the hidden Wild West history of Los Angeles, movie locations, Downtown after hours and many other aspects of the neighborhood. And custom designed can be developed by request  for groups of four or more.

We will also be soon starting weekday and evening tours on what it's like to live in Downtown Los Angeles. You will be introduced to the many of stores, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues (and often their owners, too) - along with being given previews of one of a kind special events - so you can get a feel for what it is like to live in Downtown Los Angeles.

We expect this tour to be popular with not only people considering moving to Downtown and people who work in Downtown and who would like to know what to do after hours in Downtown - but also to recent and even long established Downtown residents who want to know more about their neighborhood.

For future updates and more information go to www.historicdowntownlosangeles.blogspot.com

How to Start a Successful Startup. Or - Why Are Startups Like Real Estate?

How to start a successful start-pup?  Well, its kind of like real estate.  
It's all about customers, customers and customers.


Or at least that is what serial entrepreneur Steve Blank says in his new book, The Startup Owner's Manual.  And here is the beginning of an article and interview with Blank by Drew Hansen of Forbes. 

In case you missed it, Steve Blank published a new book titled, The Startup Owner’s Manual, and it’s billed as a step-by-step guide for building a great company.
He’s spent 34 years in Silicon Valley and worked on eight startups in 21 years. He’s been an educator for the last decade. That adds up to a wealth of knowledge and experience — which he’s distilled in this book.
Last week I referenced it while teaching a handful of first-time entrepreneurs the basics of his Customer Development methodology.

1. Customer discovery

1. Customer validation

1. Customer creation

1. Company building

We reviewed these four steps before capturing the hypotheses for our business ideas in a Business Model Canvas.
This is the beginning of a sea-change: the democratization of entrepreneurship. Don’t be surprised when hundreds of versions of his Lean Launchpad class roll out across the globe in the next couple years.
Thanks to FounderLY for giving me an early look at their interview with him. To view the second half of their interview, click here.
Follow me on Twitter @drewhansen26