List of Stores Open for Thursday May 20th Downtown Fashion Walk!

Thursday May 20, 2010 Fashion Walk Map – Noon to 9 PM

MAIN STREET & SIDE STREETS                            

1.  Blends                  125 W 4th St.

Limited Edition Sneakers & Urban Clothing.

www.Blendsus.com               213-626-6606               

2.  SkinGraft                             125 W. 4th St. #102

Raw underground Style combined

With sleek high-end couture. 

www.skingraftdesigns.com    213-626-2662

3.  Elmer Ave                            120 W. 4th St.

Rock and Roll Rebels do High-End Formal Wear

www.Elmerave.Com            888-356-3728

              

4.  Crewest                       110 E. Winston St

Finest graffiti artist art & artist designed clothing

Closes at 6 PM tonight

www.Crewest.Com               213-627-8272

              

5.  The Gallery@118 Winston       118 Winston Street 2nd floor 

Vintage designer clothes & contemporary art

Might not be open today

http://www.118winston.com/      310-422-6231

             

 6.  Stelladottir                                430 S. Main St.

Handmade, vintage inspired clothes & hats.

Downtown store of the year last year - this year's LA Weekly's

Best Buy Open late most nights!

www.stelladottir.com               213-623-8464 

7.  (Sub)Urban                                101 W. 5^th St.

New contemporary furniture, design and homewares.

Store – plus monthly exhibits.  Closes 6 PM

www.suburban-la.com

           

8.  Pussy & Pooch                    564 S. Main St.

Pet couture, treats, food & grooming

www.pussyandpooch.com              213-438-0900

9.  Upper Playground         125 E. 6th St.

Fusion of fashion with fine art by locally and nationally

 known artists.  Closes 6 PM.

www.Upperplayground.Com              213-623-4300

10.  Mr. Cartoon's Tattoo Shop        129 E. 6th St.

Urban clothes & classic tattoos.  Shipment of new

items of all kinds just arrived!

Closes 6 PM Today

www.Mistercartoon.Com         213-488-0313       

11.  Soulful Commandoe Skate Café    121 E. 6^th St.

One stop shopping for Downtown Skaters,

’Soulful Commandoe’ hip-hop couture

line by Nicholas Mayfield and music &

Fashion events.

www.shop.soulfulcommandoe.com  213-291-9601

12.  Gather///Otto Gates        630 S. Main St.    

VERY FIRST sneak preview of Downtown’s soon to be hottest

retail store featuring modernized antique furnishings, unique home

wares and rare young apparel  and jewelry.  Be sure and bring

your hard hat!                       Mobile 805-320-1225

13.  Symbiotic Form             NW Corner of 7th & Main on Main

Vintage inspired woman's hand bags, hats, clothes and jewelry

Also unique household wares and one of a kind gift items.

 www.symbioticform.blogspot.com         213-631-6971     

14.  Not For Sale                      NW Corner of 7^th & Main on Main

Kaws, TrustcoCorp, Tristan Eaton, Monsieur and

Keith Haring Pop Shop – and much more….

http://www.NOTFORSALEGALLERY.com/

15.  1-Man's Trash        NW Corner of 7th & Main on Main St.                                           Hard to find vintage items and one of a kind re-worked vintage pieces                                          for men, women and children that have been worn by Usher Raymond,                                      Ellen Degeneres and Carmen Electra.818-355-1130

 16.  ZZYXX Gallery of  Natural Science    NW Corner 7^th/Main on 7^th

Gems, minerals and crystals.

www.ZzyzxGallery.com/         323-284-8360

17.  Fremont                                          NW Corner 7^th/Main on 7th

Classic cool  couture and runway fashions for

men and women.          

www.Fremontapparelco.Com            213-626-1756

SIXTH  STREET FROM MAIN TO SPRING                   

18.  apliiq                            6th Street between Main and Spring

apliiq applies unique rare textiles to everyday garments.  Learn

how to customize your own wardrobe and find out how to develop

your own personal style!

www.apliiq.com              323-300-6492   

19.  Flea                             6th Street between Main and Spring

Vintage clothes, furniture, hats, design magazines, one of kind

gift items and contemporary art.  Perfect place to find gifts for

the person who has everything - or nothing.

213-622-2122

20.  KAPSOUL               6th Street between Main and Spring

Contemporary & vintage clothes, sunglasses, and a wide

selection of unique and unusual gift items.  As cool as 

they come!

Cell 818-693-4180  

SIXTH STREET FROM SPRING TO BROADWAY      

21.  Dialect                     215 W. 6^th St #111

Fashion, Jewelry, Art and House wares.

www.Downtowndialect.com 

22.  Norbertellen Art Gallery       215 W. 6^th St. #110

Art of every type and medium

www.norbertellengallery.com/    818-662-5041

 23.  ZLB                        215 W. 6th     #108

Vintage Clothing from around the country and around the world

of every kind and every price.  If you don’t see it there –

ask them if they have it in storage.

213-627-2476         

24.  New York Hats               217 W 6th St

New & Old School Hats. Located in historic chocolate store

filled with Batchelder tiles.   Worth a visit just for the interior!

213-228-1915   Closes 6 PM

25.  Crack Gallery       204 W. 6th St.

Crack Gallery wants to get the city hooked

on a new drug: their own blend of fashion and art.

 www.crackgallery.com               213-622-3493  

26.  Buchanan Gallery     204 ½ W. 6^th St.

Art Gallery and Art Studio

www.bryonbuchanan.com    323-823-1933              

BROADWAY & SIDE STREETS

(Most Broadway stores close by 6 or 7 PM)              

27.  Goodwill                 235 S. Broadway

Vintage/Used Everything!  Huge selection!

www.Goodwillsocal.Org            213-628-1748               

Closes at 7 PM

28.  Broadway Army Store                 217 W. 4th

Military & Civilian Uniforms, Cool Shirts - and much more

Closes at 6 PM

www.broadwayarmystore.net           213-617-8495

            

29.  Shoe Hut                           529 S. Broadway

Huge Selection Of Baseball Caps, Shoes & Sneakers

Closes 6 PM

www.shoehutusa.com               213-688-8310

30.  Red Zone                          629 S. Broadway

Excellent selection of creepers, heels and punk & rock shirts

LA Weekly says one of LA's best stores. Old School

Melrose Punk & Metal Fashions at Downtown prices.

 http://redzone7777.googlepages.com/redzonebrandsvans1.html 

213-622-8649    Closes 6 PM

 31.  Chanelli Outlet             625 S. Broadway

Wide mix of product – but look for the

great leather jackets and amazing high end women’s

handbags at bargain prices.

www.blogdowntown.com/2009/08/4616-hidden-treasure-chanelli-on-broadway

213-489-4099  Closes at 6 PM

Link to May 20th Downtown Fashion Walk Map!

Click title above to get May 20th Downtown Fashion Walk Map!

705 W. 9th Street Now Formally For Lease

I just picked up the leasing flier at the front desk tonight since the lobby was open for a wedding reception of a friend of the former owner - Richard Meruelo - that was being held upstairs.  The new owners - Watermarke Properties - are going to take possession on Monday and, it appears, may even start showing for leasing as early as Monday.  

The new leasing website is at the above link and the leasing number is 213-308-7877. The website has the floor plans for the six different units, a list of all the many amenities but no prices, so far.  


Oh, and the building is now called - The Watermarke.

My collective thanks in case I miss personally thanking anyone.

I’d like to thank everyone for all the kind words and particularly thank those who helped me this past week.  And now, as always, life will continue to go on, enhanced now by his too short presence among us, diminished by his loss and sustained by our memory of how honorably he lived that life.

The Son I Never Knew I Had

Yesterday I was told that over 20 years ago I had fathered a son I was never told about and, then, I was told that two years ago he had died.

And as a brief outline of my son’s life was being described to me, I slowly started to understand that this unknown son of mine had somehow discovered I had fathered him and, without ever saying he was my son, he had begun an email relationship with me starting when he was 17 that lasted until his death.


And suddenly all those first questions he had asked me about my cowboy days - which began when I too was 17, came rushing back to me. For months, there hadn't been a detail he did not want to know about my horse Mr. D and Lance and Tom and all the others.

But over the years, his questions became more personal - such as asking my advice on how to tell his parents he loved so much, how he could never last four years in college, how he could never get a degree and how he could never get a regular job when he knew he could never live a life like that. Or when he wanted to find the way to tell one special girl why he wasn’t yet able to make a lifelong commitment with her or anyone – and that he didn’t know if he ever was going to be able to do that.

And in all those cases, I did as I always did; I explained how much I understood his situation and then reinforced the advice of his parents and usually ignored the examples of my own very different life to his amused befuddlement. But then, a little later, after I finally gave in and emailed him a long requested copy of my novel, The Long Rider, he replied he finally understood everything. And when I asked him what he meant by that, he responded with a smiley face icon.

Then, by the end of his first year at college, his emails had become less about advice – or permission to live his life the way he wanted, but were mostly about the excitement of his many new lives – and many new loves – during college and after college and how he wanted to tell me about them all until one day the emails stopped and I never heard from him again.

And since I never knew his real name or address, I was never able to find out who he really was- or why we were so much alike in so many unexpected ways – and I just imagined he had grown out of the need for our chats.

So as unimaginably sad as this time is for me, there is already one spark of joy in that I am only now starting to understand what an amazing young man our collective son turned out to be. And I will always be grateful to him that he found a way he and I could have our own private and meaningful relationship whenever he needed to talk to someone who understood some of what he was going through, and that he did so in a way that that never once interfered with his primary relationship with his real father, the man who had raised him and who was able to quietly pass away never having to know about me.

Watch CONCEPT Fashion Week Show LIVE on the internet tonight!

http://www.swaggmedia.com/
Go to the above page and click on the live streaming Fashion Week LA link at the top of the page. Show starts at 6:30 and goes until at least 9:00 PM.  
Schedule of shows at www.conceptfw.com
See runway shows by Jen Awad, martinMARTIN and The Battalion and presentations by Valerj Pobega, John Sakalis, Indian Casino, Katie Kay of Otto Gates and SKINGraft.

Los Angeles Times Covers Fashion Week Show - CONCEPT - At Historic Downtown's Spring Arts Tower

All The Rage

THE IMAGE STAFF MUSES ON THE CULTURE OF
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

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Los Angeles Fashion Week: 'Concept' on the calendar

March 5, 2010 |  4:46 pm

Score one for the fashion cowboy. Friday afternoon the be-hatted Brady Westwater confirmed for All the Rage that his efforts to rope, throw and brand a fashion week is moving ahead -- although it appears to be kicking like a bucking bronco; its hooves are hammering a stretch of the calendar from March 19 through March 24, with a dust storm of details still to settle.

Still, it's a bright spot; as we mentioned a few days ago, it was starting to look like tumbleweed might be the only thing rolling through downtown during the traditional time frame for Los Angeles Fashion Week. Then Westwater -- whose past efforts to bring fashion-related events downtown include working with early incarnations of BOXeight and more recently starting a Downtown LA Fashion Walk -- saddled up and rode into the thick of it, announcing his willingness to work with local designers and the management of the Spring Arts Tower at 453 S. Spring St. to use that space for a few extra nights (he'd already reserved it, he says, as part of an upcoming Fashion Walk event).

Soon Mike Vensel (the designer, photographer and organizer of a short-lived Kitten Fashion Week held at the downtown Standard Hotel back in 2007) was saddling up beside him, and as of this writing, the newest dynamic duo of downtown is trying to circle the wagons and nail down all the details.

Westwater is short on specifics such as potential sponsors (beyond the building's management), participating designers and schedules, allowing only that the calendar is currently configured to entertain runway shows, art installations and  the like from March 19 through the 24th, with two of those days (Saturday the 20th and Sunday the 21st) already booked with shows.

"Right now we're in the phase of reaching out to designers to see what their needs are," he told All the Rage. "We're going to be flexible so that everybody who wants to stage a show can." He said that hopes are to line up sponsorships to cover the cost of staging the shows, said to be "a couple hundred bucks." "But we don't want anyone to be turned away for inability to pay," he said.

One important specific that has been hammered out is the name. "We're calling it 'Concept,'" Westwater said. "We wanted it to be something that was simple and easy and elegant."  While theConcept website is still under construction, interested parties should contact Westwater directly at bradywestwater@conceptfw.com.

While it remains to be seen what sort of event ultimately arises (we'll keep you updated as sponsor and designer lineups are confirmed), we're optimistic about its chances.

After all, everybody knows nailing the concept is the hardest part of any project.

-- Adam Tschorn

Photo: A look from designer Mike Vensel's runway show at BOXeight on March 15, 2008, at Los Angeles Fashion Week. Vensel and Brady Westwater are spearheading a group that's working to provide runway space at the Spring Arts Tower for designers to show their wares to press and buyers in downtown Los Angeles, through a just-announced show dubbed "Concept." Credit: Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times.

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More in: Adam Tschorn, Downtown, Los Angeles Fashion Week

LA Times Asks - Can LA Fashion Week Be Saved From Being A 'Ghost Town'? Find out Tomorrow

LA Fashion Week: Ghost town in the City of Angels?

March 3, 2010 |  6:00 am

Downtown LA Fashion Week? M.I.A. Passion Revealed? Not so much. Mode Israel? Unless it's operating  in "stealth mode" it's currently another one of the events from last season's crowded fashion calendar that seems to have quietly disappeared off the Los Angeles Fashion Week map.

Of course, all that could change; downtown L.A.'s  "fashion cowboy" Brady Westwater is trying to rope the wind by offering to play go-between for displaced designers and the owners of the recently renovated 1914 Citizen's Bank space at 5th and Spring streets, to host a day or more of shows as part of the Downtown Fashion Walk (would that make it "Downtown Fashion Walk Week"? Stay tuned.)

Much more at the above link.