[sic]

Post RIDE-Arc ride, rolling back home solo I had to stop at the bright lifelessness of Chris Burden’s “Urban Lights” installation outside the L.A. County Museum of Art (click to humongify).

It may seem odd to some, but those late hours are some of the most enjoyable to be on a bike in the city.

(click to quadruplify)

Snapped from the saddle Saturday biking back home from a trip to the Sherman Oaks batting cages with Blogdowntown’s Eric Richardson. Eric wisely opted to subway it back to town from the North Hollywood Red Line station. I on the otherhand didn’t and subsequently got drenched when the rains that weren’t supposed to come until later, came early…. about a mile after I took this picture.

P.S. The only thing the batting cages showed me was that if I can’t hit for shit against a machine, how the hell do I think I can make contact against a human?

Rolling home from work yesterday I detoured up Fairfax* to Wilshire and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the official lighting of Chris Burden’s “Urban Lights” sculpture in the museum’s courtyard.

Flickr set here.

* Point of order: Passing all the restaurants along Fairfax through the Little Ethiopia district when you’re hungry is a hard thing to do.

Owing to my understanding that an untouched mural can be a fleeting thing and my new year’s resolution not to put off until later what one can do now, I stopped meaning to stop and snap this yesterday  and instead did (click to quadruplify):

In the lower right looks to be the artist’s name and the date — 1993.

Found on the front of Monkeyhouse Toys store on Silver Lake Boulevard (click to triplify):

Color this Sunday afternoon football-free and art awesome: Susan and I are gonna get on our bikes at noon and head downtown to catch the 1 p.m. matinee of Cloverfield at the Laemmle’s Grande on Fig. After that we’re gonna scoot on over to the Central Library to catch the last day of the Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles photography exhibit. And then as if that weren’t enough we’re gonna pedal over to MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary space to take in the Murakami show. From there we just might roll up to Olvera Street for margaritas and a late lunch/early dinner at La Golondrina before deciding whether to bike back or to hop a bus home.

Thanks to Elise Thompson over at LAist, yesterday I learned me a new limerick that’s 98 years old:

The Pelican

A wonderful bird is a pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.

– Dixon Lanire Merrith (1910)

Here’s am eastern brown pelican I snapped November 2007
atop a tidal marker at Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.
(click to triplify)

Susan and I made good on plans to partake in the festivities infusing the second-annual Frogtown Artwalk, and as a bonus Susan and I biked all the way over there and back where we took a river tour led by Joe Linton and then met up with friends Stephen and Alice to explore the various participating studios, culminating with a visit to the Brand Name Label space to marvel at the daring doers who strapped themselves in for wild rides aboard a 32-foot-long 360-degree industrial swing, like this happy lass:

Afterward the four of us rode over to Gingergrass (Susan’s and my first time there) and I enjoyed the shaking beef dish and Susan savored the walnut shrimp. Flickr photoset can be viewed here.

So last night Susan and I loaded up a canteen full of cheap red wine and brought along some bread, cheese, salami and olives to snack on at downtown’s California Plaza off of Grand Avenue before enjoying the Grand Performances presentation of China’s Guandong Modern Dance Company (reviewed nicely by Lewis Segal in today’s L.A. Times).

Afterward we walked around the watercourt and the skyscrapers taking pictures, of course, and then opted to stroll up the street around the Disney Concert Hall and through its gardens.

click to triplify

The requisite Flickr photoset is here. Susan’s is over here.

Tonight we venture out into the wilds of Topanga Canyon for a picnic before what sounds to be the Theatricum’s fascinating Transylvanian transformation!

I first learned about the art garden of Silver Lake’s Alberto Hernandez when I read about it in the L.A. Weekly back in 2004 and then again in an L.A. Times feature that came out around the time of Quinceañera last year thanks to the garden’s use as a location in that film.

After seeing the movie Susan and I were very curious about the remarkable place, but having no idea where it was we gave up on discovering it even before we got started searching… besides, we thought it was in Echo Park and even if we did find the place it’s not like we’d just barge on in to take a gander and set a spell. By all accounts this place is private and personal and only on occasion does Hernandez open things up to the public instead prefering to pretty much keep the garden to himself and his circle of friends, family and neighbors.

So it was with much pleasant surprise on a morning walkabout to the Silver Lake farmers market that I charted us a course that brought us past a house in the midst of a big yard sale and the first thing we noticed was the decorative mosaic-y stuff along the sidewalk. Then after entering the property to have a look-see, a man who we later realized turned out to be Alberto saw Susan’s camera and invited her to explore the wonderous garden and it was even more marvelous than we could’ve imagined.

Pix from the walk and the garden are here in this Flickr photoset.