California Day 6

Los Angeles

The roll of film I had in the camera didn’t take, which was really sad because I took some cool shots, but c’est la vie, what can you do. Luckily I took a lot with my phone. The main priority of the day was finding street art, and we found some awesome street art! It was really cool finding more than one Shepard Fairey and JR!

JR

Shepard Fairey

Left- JR

2501

 

These where in West Hollywood, on the library. The Top one is a Shepard Fairey, the second is Retna and the third is Kenny Scharf.

One of the first stops we made was in downtown at The Last Bookstore. It’s one of the main things that comes up on Pinterest when you search Los Angeles. It was definitely worth the walk. It was two stories, had all kind of books, with a room that had over 100,000 books for $1, tons of used records and even artist studios.

We ended up in Little Tokyo, very pretty area, it was a nice clean change after some of the areas we had walked through. We stopped at a Boba place for Jordan and I got one of those awesome Asian sodas I love so much!

One of our last stops of the day was in West Hollywood at Magnolia Bakery where we enjoyed some really good cupcakes, then had some fun with the graffiti wings across the street.

 

California: Day 3

Venice Beach, Costa Mesa, and Balboa Island

Wednesday was beach day, and it was wonderful! We got off a little later because of car jazz, but that was ok it just added the the adventure of the day. Once we got everything figured out we headed out to see the beautiful ocean!!

Our first stop was in Culver City for lunch at Jackson Market. Its hidden away out of sight in a residential area. Its a little neighborhood market that has a sandwich shop in it, kind of like subway but a lot better. We enjoyed a nice relaxing lunch after we finally found parking, then we headed back onto the road.

Our first stop was Venice Beach. Such a cool, and weird area. We stayed there for a while taking pictures and just enjoying the beach.

After Venice we headed over to Costa Mesa to meet up with Jordan’s roommate from last year, Johanna. We met her at this super hip, artsy shopping center that had a coffee shop called The Gypsy Den. We got some coffee and dinner and just enjoyed the area. It had a very Austin-y feel. They even had yarn bombed trees!!!

Our last stop of the day was Balboa Island. We stopped for a frozen Banana, just like Arrested Development! We ended up walking to the beach and just sitting in front of a dock and talking for a long time. It was really nice, my favorite memory from the day.

Artspace in Shreveport

I found out Artist Wayne White was going to be having a show in Shreveport about a month ago and have been dying to go since. I finally talked Dad into going and checking it out with me since it was only a two hour drive. It was definitely worth it! It’s been a while since I’ve been to Shreveport, I didn’t realize just how cool their downtown is! And the show was phenomenal! Wayne White is a beast!

Upstairs, Artspace was showing an exhibit of art by Taffie Crragon Garsee, titled “Dystopian Garden”.  It was superb! We were both very impressed. She has a cool style and the flow of the exhibit was very good.

Right outside Artspace there was an old epic building being renovated that had a construction wall up around it that was covered in poster bombs! It even had a Obey Giant! Which was a highlight for me! Shepard fairy might be my favorite street artist.

Another reason I wanted to go to Shreveport was to see The AT&T building downtown. I’ve admired it since i was a little kid, but have only seen it passing by on I-20, so I decided while we were downtown we had to stop by so I could really see it.  I wanted to really be able to soak it in, and you can only see one side from the interstate. It was definitely worth the stop, but its was definitely a ghetto area, homeless people and all!

We finished up around lunch time so we thought we would go ahead and grab lunch on the way out. Dad loves Popeye’s Chicken, and we both thought it was funny to have it while we were in Louisiana, so Popeye’s it was!

When we crossed the border we went ahead and stopped at the Texas Travel Information Center  for a restroom stop and we found this tiny little guy hanging out in front of the door!!

Our last stop of the day was the Longview Musuem of Fine Arts. LMFA was on the way so we thought why not! They had four Salvador Dali prints from the late 70’s which was pretty cool! Also they were taking down a show called “Shades of Trout”, it was over on June 28th, so we were really lucky we got to see it, even if everything was off the wall.