3.1 Venice Vol III MMXVI

MARCH MMXVI

War & Pierce - “I Lived to Tell About It” EP by War & Pierce on @AppleMusic.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

M ARC H M M X VI

F e at u r e s THE VENICE LEGACY...

In this issue 3.1 Venice delves into who is influencing the Venice Legacy now.

The Venice Legacy

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The Art of Thinking, With John Van Hamersveld

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Sunny War, A Musical Revalation 7 The WNDO Space

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Ara Bevacqua, Alchemy with Metal

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Art Artist and Urban Development 19 Community Men in Skirts 23 Film Embargo – History in the Making Profile The Wiles of Wylie Wilson

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35

Cuisine The Stoop 41

COVER

Rear View Mirror The Monster in the Wires 45

Rose Avenue Motel Illustration by Taylor Barnes

Music Mojo Harmonics 50 Last Look... back cover

L7Studio.com

© Taylor Barnes 2016

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Editor and Designer Taylor Barnes Editor Bailey Lewis Associate Editors Rudy Garcia Jennifer Garcia

L ETTER F RO M T H E EDITOR Lately I have given considerable thought to the Tsunami Evacuation signs posted around Venice. Graphically they are compelling – a little figure trying to outrun a huge group of waves and get to higher ground. You cannot help but wonder if you could actually outrun a Tsunami. Some of the signs have arrows pointing the right way to run (away from the ocean.)

All over Venice, the signs serve as a constant reminder that we live tenuously on this spot under the unpredictable threat of annihilation by a wave of epic proportion. In an effort to give us the chance to survive the sudden influx of a Tsunami we are shown clearly marked evacuation routes to higher ground.

As I contemplate the sudden and destructive power of a Tsunami, an allegorical picture of real estate developers and gentrification begins to build in my mind. At this moment in time, the physical changes moving across Venice are like a Tsunami destructively sweeping across everything we know and find familiar about our town. In this instance, we do not have clearly marked evacuation routes. We seem to be standing still and allowing the wave to envelop us.

The aftermath of a Tsunami is a time to rebuild. To reclaim. I have to believe the spirit that resides deep in the roots of this community will eventually rise up and paint the cement box houses purple. Beautiful murals will appear on the large expanses of the three-story high walls that these new buildings are sporting. I have to believe that the musicians and poets will find a place to be heard again. I have to believe that we will create a new version of community that welcomes the artists to stay. I have to believe that as the new wave of residents settle in, the spirit of “anything goes” will override the investment mentality and they will actually value being a Venice resident at any cost. I have to believe...

Advisory Board Laura Ragan, Dita Barnes, Tyrus Wilson

MARCH MMXVI 3point1-venice.com Copyright 2016 3.1 Venice is published and designed by L7studio.com.

All rights reser ved.

Nothing shown may be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder.

For more information or submission guidelines: E-mail 3.1venice@gmail.com

Because there is no clear evacuation route from this tidal wave.

—Taylor Barnes

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Illustration: “Boardwalk Tsunami”, by Taylor Barnes, the Jim Budman collection

CONTRIBUTORS

Carol Becker

Tom Laichas

Carol Becker is a Professor and Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She is the author of several books and numerous magazine and journal articles on art, artists, and critical theor y.

Tom Laichas is a long time Venice resident, historian and educator. He teaches at Crossroads School in Santa Monica. tlaichas@gmail.com

Nika Cavat

Matias Moreno-Bunge

Nika Cavat has had her poetr y, essays, short fiction, and art reviews published for over twenty years. Nika teaches in the English department at Crossroads School for Arts & Science and resides in Venice, CA. Nikawriter@yahoo.com

Matias was born and raised in Santa Monica. He likes to write, breathe, stay curious and eat his beets.

MatiasMBunge@gmail.com

Paula Chorley

Krysta Ohle

Before transplanting to Venice, Paula Chorley lived in New York where she was an American correspondent for a major German television network, Pro-Seiben (Channel 7) for program “Taff”. When she is not writing for 3.1 she is either writing screenplays, TV shows, or working on her next art project. paulachorley.com

Born and raised west side beach girl who captures the essence of free spirit.

Skateboarding is her hobby while dancing her life away.

Special Thanks To our people at Groundwork Coffee of Rose Avenue for keeping us caffeinated.

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THE VENICE LEGAcy

A

s Venice strains to adjust to the changes in

the architecture of its neighborhoods, as well as the ethnic and economic makeup of its residents, who is taking the legacy of the city in hand?

In the following pages, we share stories of people that have either shaped or are shaping the future of Venice with the legacy in mind. Just as Abbot Kinney envisioned a Venice of California, these people have their own vision of Venice Beach.

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V E N I C E B E Y O N D T H E B O A R D WA L K

T H E ART O F

T H IN K IN G

WITH JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

by Taylor Barnes

Iconic designer and artist, John Van Hamersveld, has explored the relationship between thinking, art, and technology for most of his career. As Venice is adopted by more and more technology firms, some believe that the true creativity that made the city unique is disappearing. As an early adopter of technology, Van Hamersveld was one of the major designers of the 80s art culture of Venice Beach. With this in mind, he has developed a theory about the impact our digital age is having upon the creative process and with a fifty-year career to look back upon, he is in a position to impart his wisdom. Referring to the fact that we have become an information/data driven society he claims that art has become trivialized.

“Seeing” is what Van Hamersveld does well – from his famous Endless Summer movie poster to recent forays into electronic installation art, his vision is always crystal clear. He was diagnosed with dyslexia as an adult, which led him to the UCLA Psychology Department and professor emeritus, Herald Gerard. Professor Gerard explained the similarity between creativity and dyslexia and as Van Hamersveld understands it, “they both work by ‘accident’, which explains the spontaneity of the artist. “The brain is like the computer and the subconscious is like the application that you redundantly do this stuff over and over again,” Van Hamersveld explains.

“But the unconscious is the well where everything comes from. So, you are no more than your experiences.

How could a guy say that applications and machines is a logical way to go about making decisions? It’s missing the unconscious, which is the driver, the engine, the experimental part.”

“That’s what the electronic system does. It’s what the TV always was - a fireplace with the logs burning. It’s incredible how much information is burned every day and like HBO, they have to repeat it. They repeat movies in sequences and then HBO moves it to another channel but they sell it to seventeen other channels as well.

The interlacing of this movie goes on for a year, multiplying, another year and another year. What does that do? Fresh information is not used. It doesn’t have the ability of being made or being presented because there is a receiver who will just see the same movie for the experience. As TV has gotten better, the old movies that were made ten years ago really look good on a new LG and forty inches of digital high def.

“In a sense, by becoming an information society and having Google work everything out for us so that you can go anywhere in that thing, and find whatever you want, it has built a conceptual membrane around the continued on page 4

Photograph by TAYLOR BARNES

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JVH [continued from page 3]

world limiting us in going beyond that. We are limiting the thinking of humanity by defining ever y single thing we see as a reference.” As Van Hamersveld delved into the world of web design, new pathways of thinking emerged. “I had to look into the fourth dimension - when a floating object stands alone by itself. At that point, I realized where this culture was going in terms of that Google thing. As Google developed, they changed the world into the past as the future. So, I started a company called “Post-Future.”

I think it’s the turtle and the rabbit. The digital world is the rabbit, showing off every day how fast it can go and the lethargic turtle is thinking about it every step of the way. People are moving through information but they are not studying the information. They are not collecting and analyzing.”

“The analog world is rickety and needs to be fixed. We can digitize it and move it quickly but the bridges are worn out.”

RIGHT: A SMALL SAMPLE OF SOME OF THE WORK VAN HAMERSVELD HAS DONE OVER THE DECADES. TO READ MORE ABOUT HIS CAREER: John Van Hamersveld – Coohous Studio: 50 Years of Graphic Design.

“ the

unconscious is the well where everything comes from. So, you are no more than your experiences. How could a guy say that applications and machines is a logical way to go about making decisions? It’s missing the unconscious, which is the driver, the engine, the experimental part. ” John van hamersveld

HIS

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6 MARCH MMXVI

V E N I C E L E G A C Y T H E B O A R D WA L K

It’s a beautiful day down on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, and Sunny War has just finished a session in front of the Figtree Cafe. Her easy musical style and unassuming presence captures the attention of anyone passing by. A woman walks up to Sunny, hands her some money and says, “We really enjoyed your music.” At the age of twenty-five Sunny has crafted a sound that is an amalgamation of her musical interests, which range from blues to punk.

3.1 Did you grow up in Venice?

SW I went to Hamilton High (in Culver City). I didn’t care about being in the music program back then, so I couldn’t really be a part of anything.

I took all of the basic music classes – music theor y and piano, but I was kind of just repeating the same year over, and over. Then i just dropped out around tenth or eleventh grade.

3.1 What did you do after you dropped out?

SW I was hanging around here drinking and doing the usual Venice scene. I went to San Francisco and I was stuck there, living in the park, homeless. But my mom, she was always looking for me. I remember one time, she put up flyers all over the Venice boardwalk saying, “this is my daughter, please call me if you see her.”

She had been talking to the cops and the firemen, and one of them found me. It was so embarrassing when she came and got me. I feel bad now,

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because I was gone all the time. She was always looking for me. But now I’m twenty-five, I have my own freedom.

3.1 How is your relationship with your mother since you are so independent?

SW I felt like I was twenty-five when I was thirteen. I wouldn’t ask her things, i would just tell her things. I would just tell her I was going to San Francisco and she didn’t believe me. But I would just go. I was on my own planet. I would come home with a tattoo and a nose ring and she would just be like, “woah.”

I want to make a girl group like Destiny’s Child. I have to get three hoes and teach them what to do…

3.1 Why didn’t you stay in school?

SW I was just crazy, I just didn’t care. Now, I would like to go back, but it’s too late. I have my GED, got it when I was nineteen. Went to community college for a bit. If I had done ever ything right at Hamilton, I would’ve tried to get a scholarship to Berkeley (School of Music) or something. I just never thought about it like that before. Now I wouldn’t know how to go about going to college.

3.1 Don’t you think you have a handle on the music business and understand what it would take to make that happen for you?

SW I want to be a producer. I can be someone’s intern without going to school. That seems to be how everyone else has learned. I want to know more about recording. I want a publishing deal, or a record company. I want a collection of people that I tell them what I think they should do because I have a lot of ideas. I like making beats.

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I like country, if you bring me the right kid in overalls I can tell them what to do. I know what’s missing from them. When I go see bands, I know what’s wrong with them but I can’t just go up and tell them. I wish they would ask me to tell them. I have a gift to change people’s stuff and make it better – as an arranger and a producer.

It’s kind of like Nirvana when they got famous, they changed because someone told them they needed to be sellouts. I want to make a girl group like Destiny’s Child. I have to get three hoes and teach them what to do, repackage them.

3.1 You strike me as a person that doesn’t wait around for things to happen, you just go out and make it happen. In the next year, if you could have your ideal year as a musician, what would that be?

SW I want to get with a booking agency so that I can go on tour. I was with one a couple years ago, but not anymore. I had a manager, but not anymore. I don’t move fast enough for people. She was managing me from New York and I think she thought I had more resources than I actually do. I told her about the whole punk album, and she liked the idea, but I don’t have any place to record. I don’t have money to buy studio time. I think she thought that I did. We were recording at a church in Hollywood, owned by a hippie guy and now they have to sell it. I can’t go back and finish my album, because they are losing that place.

3.1 When you talk about business you are ambitious. Your face lights up as you speak about all those things and what you would do with them. We know you must have a plan, what is it?

SW I want to be a singer/songwriter – it’s cool, but sometimes it’s really depressing. I was traveling and playing – Brazil and Bogata, Columbia. I’m starting to save to go to Europe. I want to tour out there.

I’m not sure how to organize it.

3.1 How would you say you’ve been accepted for the music you have done so far? It seems like you are getting on people’s radar here and there.

SW I don’t know. I think I have to put out something really soon. This new album with Chris Pierce, War and Pierce, is our band/collaboration. He was the lead singer because he just has such a big voice, but now we are supposed to try and record a single next month. I’m not sure when we will record a whole album. He has his band, Reverend Tall Tree, and sings for Cold War Kids, and solo. He is never around, he is always somewhere else.

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3.1 What about a solo album for you?

SW That’s what I need to do! I feel like I need to be in charge of all of my recordings. I have one that is coming out, but it was from three years ago. It comes out sometime in March, there is a video too. It took almost a year mixing it because they are my friends, I’m not paying them to do anything, so it sat there for a while. I’m going to have to promote it on my end because I want to put something out. But the next one will be much better. Hopefully it will be soon.

3.1 The first time I heard you sing I couldn’t help but make the comparison to Tracy Chapman, which I’m sure you’ve heard more times than you’d care. You do have a unique phrasing to your singing. What I am also impressed with, is the way you strum and pick the guitar strings. How did you develop your style?

If you’re really into punk, you should be really into Bob Dylan as well.

SW It all started at Hamilton, I was listening to Tracy Chapman then and I was really getting into blues, or I thought that I was getting into blues. It’s not really an influence. There was this boy Aver y, and he plays finger style blues. I remember hanging out with him. I really like blues, but only the guitar part of it and only a certain era.

I am from Nashville and my dad is from Chattanooga. Somehow I tried to pretend like I knew more about it. I listened to Mississippi John Hurt for the guitar. I want to come clean and just say I don’t really listen to that kind of music. I like Blues, because at first it sounded just as extreme to me as Punk did. I like the attitude. Lyrically, the attitude is the same.

If you’re really into punk, you should be really into Bob Dylan as well.

It’s that same connection between folk and punk. Even hip hop, its like a Roots culture. I wanted to make a blues punk album. That was basically the theme of my first album.

I don’t have a favorite style of music. I listen to a lot of hip-hop, gangster

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rap, and punk. I love Joni Mitchell but I care more about Joan Armatrading.

The first time I sang, was in the Anus Kings. I wasn’t interested in singing. I always thought I was going to be like Angus Young, the guitarist for ACDC. I really liked Slash and Jimi Hendrix when I was younger – I was just into the guitar players. I developed as a guitarist and added singing later. Now I have been singing for ten years but I don’t feel comfortable with it. Singers that I’ve seen drink tea and I don’t really know what they are doing. I feel like they are trained. I am trained in guitar. I want to be more in control of my voice. I want to be able to improvise. I want to get to the point where i can just sing. I want to be like Toots. I want to be able to belt and hold notes.

3.1 What’s coming up for you in the near future?

SW I would like to be on tour and have some kind of following that actually wants to hear what I have to put out. I would like it better if it was at a place the size of The Bistro (on the Venice Boardwalk). I feel like certain things should stay in certain places, in a more intimate space. I am working on a punk tribute album. One song sounds like lounge music. One is blue grass. Different songs from popular 70s and 80s bands. One is a David Bowie cover.

I want to be in a community.

3.1 You’re in ours now.

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VENICE LEGACY EVOLUTION

T

he partners of the WNDO Space ask that you please “don’t call it a gallery.” They intend the space to be a multi use area for not only art shows, but photo shoots, art meetings or gallery talks, music, and interactive affairs. They want the WNDO to facilitate the development of creativity in whatever form it may take, and limiting the definition to just a gallery doesn’t leave it open for interpretation. Jim Budman of the Budman Studio, Jason Drake, and Brad “Bisco” Smith of Daylight Curfew. They formed a partnership to rent Venice artist, Doug Edge’s former studio to keep it a pure art producing space.

They are so committed to the idea of preserving the artistic climate that Doug Edge has been given a key and open access anytime.

The partners are an eclectic group that perfectly compliments each other. Budman, a photographer and collector, with a studio of his own in the 361 Vernon building, is a lay curator with an eye for putting things together. He maintains a permanent setup within the corner of the WNDO space that is populated by his unique brand of pop art, found objects, his and other’s photography, and vintage items. He is passionate about lighting and creating unique spac-

THE PARTNERS OF THE WNDO SPACE (L-R) BISCO SMITH, JIM BUDMAN AND JASON DRAKE.

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W NDO S P ACE es. The WNDO has already become known for the “Black Room,” a favorite place to hang out during art openings. Budman has curated the room with a carefully selected group of vintage and modern furnishings, lighting, and art to compliment the black theme. With his history within the Los Angeles and New York art worlds, Budman provides a long-term perspective to the partnership regarding legacy within the Venice art community.

Brad “Bisco” Smith and Jason Drake were already partners in Daylight Curfew when they paired with Budman. Bisco is known for his dramatic black and white canvases that are a cross between a beautiful, unique graphic language that he has spent years developing, and a modern street art vibe. In his words, he describes his work as, “… a blend of graffiti deconstruction, graphic design, and fine art that captures

WNDOspace.com You can follow the WNDO space on Facebook to find out about upcoming events.

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the untamed energy and uncharted environments of street style and expresses a sense of duality, spontaneity, and movement.”

Defalt (aka Jason Drake) creates, “Instrumental hip-hop built on dirty chopped samples, dusty drums, and hauntingly emotional melodies.” Drake also collaborates with clients such as; High Fructose and Run the Jewels, as a designer. Smith and Drake represent the fusion of fine art, street art, and commercial sensibilities with the graphic savvy needed to survive in the new art market emerging in Venice.

The energy of the WNDO space is somewhat like a creative incubator. During a time when other artists are moving out of the area this group has found a way to combine their talents, work in smaller spaces, and maximize their creative output.

The pure energy of the 361 Vernon building helps to fuel the passion for the WNDO space and all the possibilities it holds for the future.

For over 25 plus years, Venice artist, Doug Edge, rented a cavernous studio at 361 Vernon Avenue.

He occupied the corner space through multiple gang wars and the growing art movement within Venice. Edge even named his small, streetside, studio art gallery the “Drive-By Gallery” (a creative take on the many drive-by shootings in the area over the years). In 2014, Edge finally gave up his studio but rather than let it fall into the hands of another tech company that would close the doors to the public and have nothing creative to offer the community, he chose three artists; Jim Budman, Jason Drake, and Brad “Bisco” Smith to carry on the legacy of the space.

And Doug Edge still has a key to the studio.

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VENICE LEGACY TRADITION

by Taylor Barnes

When Ara Bevacqua was eighteen years old and newly graduated from high school, he took an unusual turn in life. While most of his friends were panicking about what college they would get accepted to, Bevacqua boarded a plane for Vecchio, Italy to study the art of lost wax metal casting with Brother Jerome Cox, of the La Sallian order of monks. In exchange for helping Brother Jerome rebuild his monastery, Bevacqua received invaluable lessons in exquisite metal working as well as priceless wisdom to live by.

“He taught me everything I know,” said Bevacqua. Brother Jerome taught him “Pazienza e follia” or patience and insanity. Words to live by according to Bevacqua. Brother Jerome is traditionally monastic in his approach and Bevacqua claims, “I guess I am either extremely patient or very disciplined because it worked for me.” Brother Jerome says he needs patience, something that doesn’t seem to be in high reserve for people in his age group. “I am not as patient as I want to be. I look at my peers and I think, ‘Wow! I can sit still way longer than they can!” Even now Bevacqua exhibits a monk-like quiet and wisdom far beyond his age.

Ara Bevacqua was not a typical candidate for such an artistic, monastic life – a member of his high school’s wrestling team, he had focused on athletics throughout his school career. Tall, and built like an athlete, he doesn’t readily conjure a nimble fingered jewelry artisan creating perfect little miniatures of shells and tools in sliver and gold. But dig a little deeper and you will find that he probably had his destiny carved into his DNA starting with his father, Alberto Bevacqua, a local sculptor and photographer. Both his grandmothers are artists as well. His aesthetic was being honed within this creative family.

Ara Bevacqua personifies a new bread of artisan, one who it willing to put in the 10,000 hours to learn their craft and then some. For him it was a moment of inspiration at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago that inspired him to find a way to pursuer metal working. “I was at the Museum and they had this gold Incan nose plate and it’s a big half dish. Half of it is silver and half of it is gold. The seam in the middle is so flawless – the guy who made this had no tools – he had a rock, some raw silver, some raw gold – he probably refined it himself. And he made this nose plate which was beautiful but knowing what I know about Incan culture – gold and silver were everywhere – and this might not have been the highest form, he might have just been some dude. But his technical skill in metal working is something I couldn’t do. I have learned how to fuse gold and silver – I can do it. That’s all mold work. But this man was hand pulling it out. And that is crazy.” arabevacqua.com ILLUSTRATION by TAYLOR BARNES

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Artist, Marty Katon, in his venice beach studio.

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ART

by Carol Becker Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts

It is common knowledge that one sure way to develop urban real estate is to “Follow the Drips of Paint,” as a 2012 New York Times article on Bushwick, Brooklyn, mused. Follow the artists, who move to affordable but marginal neighborhoods, as they transform them in positive ways, and then watch property values increase wildly as expensive condos emerge. The group that Richard Florida calls the “Creative Class,” drawn to the aura that accompanies artists and artistic production, then will pay top prices for these renovated lofts and apartments that inevitably will displace those artists who actually made the area desirable to them in the first place. But as such groups move in and artists are pushed farther and farther from urban centers, cities lose some of their much-valued diversity of age, class and race, as well as their cultural vitality, often all at once.

SoHo in New York City, for example, originally a site of small industry, became a haven for artistic production when manufacturing left the city. It was then transformed into a gallery district, but not for long. When artists began to cohabitate these spaces, they also began to negotiate with the city to rezone the buildings as live/work space.

Once this was accomplished, it was easy for developers to come in and renovate these properties. Now, few artists can afford SoHo. No longer a site of production, it has become all about shopping.

This dynamic has been replicated in many European cities as well. Kuntshaus Tacheles in Berlin is a familiar example. The work to protect this enormous building -- once a department store in a Jewish neighborhood, then a prison in World War II and now kept from demolition as a historic site -- was spearheaded by artists. But after the neighborhood was gentrified, artists were pushed out.

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ART

In order to understand the implications of this problem and why it urgently needs to be addressed, we should ask, what do we actually love about cities? Why are they so culturally important? One answer is the diversity of the populations that often define cities, bringing multiple cultures, ideas and languages to the urban environment. This mix keeps cities exciting and represents one of the great human achievements -- a location where, for the most part, we actually relish difference. Cities are also significant because of the cultural importance of public spaces.

In urban parks, museums, theaters, nightclubs, concert halls and plazas, groups come together to define and enjoy the city. Urban tourism is dependent on the wealth of a city’s public cultural life, past and present -- how well it has been preserved and how much this complexity is imagined for the future. Tourism based on artists’ projects also has increased immensely. Digital media allows people to plan their visits around great exhibitions, theater events and art, such as Olafur Elliasson’s Hudson River Waterfalls and James Turrell’s installation at the Guggenheim Museum.

This type of cultural tourism brings serious income to cities.

Artists have always been central to the allure of cities, from classical Greek sculptors; to Impressionist painters; to the musicians, poets and artists of the Harlem Renaissance; to the Beats of Greenwich Village and North Beach.

Artists gravitate to the intensity of cities and to each other. This proximity has created Bohemia -- a condition of mind that we associate with cultural innovation and risk.

To preserve the diversity and cultural richness that artists bring, cities of the future need to learn how to stop “using up” artists and then pushing them out. To do this, they first must ensure that artists can be guaranteed permanently affordable live/work space into the future. Some cities, recognizing that artists help build communities through initiatives such as communal gardens, architectural and historic preservation, inner city youth programs, free art classes, concerts, dance performance, children’s theater, mobile libraries and so forth, have begun to relegate buildings specifically for artists’ use, and some of these projects also recognize the need to encourage transgenerational housing as part of this concept. Cities need to secure that these spaces will be permanent and not taken away when the local real estate booms.

The oldest such community is Westbeth in New York City. Established in 1970 in a former Bell Telephone Lab building, it now houses 364 artists. P.S. 109, a similar project in East Harlem, New York, will provide 90 live/ work spaces. In Chicago, there is the Logan Square Hairpin Project -- housing and studios for artists partnered with street-level retail. Artist Theaster Gates initiated his Dorchester Artist Residency project, also in Chicago, by repurposing abandoned low-rise public housing for affordable multigenerational living, studio space and an artist-run educational facility for children. And the U.S.-based ArtPlace, recognizing that artists can bring new ideas to urban planning, attempts to integrate artists into transportation, housing, community development and job creation efforts.

We are witnessing the suburbanization of urban space, not just in the U.S. but globally as well. Safe for some, cities have become boring and flattened for others. This homogenization signifies a profound loss of diversity at all levels, essential to the transgenerational, multiclass, multiracial global cities we have always loved and envision for the future. Artists embrace difference and uniqueness. They know how to help protect, augment and sustain such complexity. Their place in these future cities must be secured.

First published in the Huffington Post

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Venice artist, Rohitash Rao creating his power box art on the corner of 7th and Rose Avenue, in Venice, CA.

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22 MARCH MMXVI

COMMUNITY

W

MEN IN SKIRTS

by Nika Cavat

alking down Abbot Kinney in Venice this evening, I pass a man, about 25 years old, wearing a skirt. Not a kilt, but a pleated, rather ugly skirt. He’s not in drag; he has a full beard, men’s business shirt and tie, and sporty spiked hair. He’s plugged into his iphone, chatting about a party he’s heading to. In a certain slant of light, one could say he’s on the cutting edge of metro-sexual chic fashion. No one seems to notice or care. A few blocks down, where the clientele is a bit grubbier and the homeless congregate on the boardwalk, a man totters towards me, and he too wears a skirt. His shirt is not pressed and he is definitely not on an iphone angling for his next party. The skirt is not neatly pressed, nor clean. It looks like something he pulled out of a dumpster. Others not in his “friend” circle smirk as they walk past him.

What determines fashion is slippery because once the fashionistas deem a look or an item desirable, it may be a matter of a season or a few short weeks before it has inexplicably become outdated. When you are young and homeless, you don’t stop caring about your fashion sense. You just are at the mercy of the mysterious forces that swirl around donation centers and non-profits that service the homeless.

Nyla* is perhaps 19 years old, cocoa-complexioned, with an almost bald head, shaved eyebrows, drawn back in like a bird’s wings. She has the body of a ballet dancer, reed thin, but with a small baby bump in evidence. As she picks her way through the clothing options, Nayla pulls out a pair of striped leggings, almost new Uggs, a butter yellow t-shirt, and a Navy blue mini skirt. The clothes donated here are, to say the least, a real grab bag of hippy chic, beach casual, and teen grunge. You may even find gold high-heeled sandals, trendy leather belts, and porkpie hats. At Safe Place for Youth in Venice Beach where I teach writing classes, each youth can choose one full outfit. They walk away with these neat swag bags, the contents of which they then show off to one another, whistling and strutting with a new jacket or striped button down shirt.

They come to SPY in all kinds of conditions. Marlene, a diminutive girl who shattered her collar bone when a car hit her, wears a complicated body brace, her right arm bound to her chest. She has abrasions on her face, her hair a dusty brown tangle to her shoulders. Marlene swears like a truck driver.

All photos by Bailey Lewis

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COMMUNITY She is alternately friendly, short-tempered, and doesn’t like anything too spicy. Another girl who calls herself a gender neutral name and has a voice made raspy by cigarettes, coffee, and cold nights on the streets, has literally dozens of found trinkets on her; safety pins and sparkly metal objects pierce her nose, upper lip and right brow; a string of keys and key-chains drapes across the back of her black leather jacket (with “Sex Pistols” and other 80s punk bands’ names painted on); her boots are taped at the toes as one would tape the nose of an alligator. As she reaches into her pockets, her hands reappear full of paper, lighters, and other things.

When she walks, she tinkles. The girl takes to strumming a metal string guitar and sings a song loudly punctuated by profanity. No one seems to mind. She finds a white t-shirt and asks if I will draw the Anarchy symbol (an A breaking out of a circle) on it for her. I oblige, taking the opportunity to speak with her about her song writing. Though her appearance may be off-putting to some, there is something endearingly child-like about her. Visually, she is not that different from any other teen obsessed with the punk movement.

For some reason, she reminds me of my daughter at four years old, when she would walk about with her most beloved toys, books, and bangles clutched tightly to her chest.

The youth here undergo subtle transformations as they change out parts of their clothing for what SPY donations offer. Over the days and weeks that they return here, the clothes they decide upon from the donation center do help to shape their evolving characters accordingly. They each have their own stories about how they came to this point in their lives. When I ask a few in my writing class to draw me a map of their travels, inevitably the lines are circuitous, from San Francisco to Las Vegas, from New York to Oklahoma. A young Japanese man with beautiful curly hair he has corralled into a ponytail down his back draws a map from Tokyo to Honolulu to Los Angeles. It is here where he says he plans to find a wife, and bring her back to Hawaii to farm the land. He proudly shows me a tattoo on his bicep of a pretty woman and a biblical quote, something about light and darkness. This is my future wife, he tells me.

Carl, a tall, lanky youth with bright eyes and an easy smile comes in with a backpack, a rolled yoga mat, a sleeping bag, a pair of worn boots,

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COMMUNITY and a water bottle, all somehow affixed to his back. Dark black curls escape from his ski hat, over which he’s thrown his hoodie. Carl loves poetry, song lyrics, and although he doesn’t directly participate in my class, he hovers about, listening and occasionally chiming in. In the summer time, the young women wear slips, cut offs, “wife beater” t-shirts. With the help of the magical SPY closet, they exchange what is torn, worn out, and in tatters with often very stylish outfits – nothing you’d seen in Vogue or on Melrose, but outfits with certain flair. These are the children of the incarcerated, the mentally ill, the addicted.

They are the children of parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept their sexual orientation or their willful behavior (Carl once described his father as a “sperm donor” who popped in and out of his life unexpectedly, who had nothing but unkind words for his son). They may be struggling heroically with mental illness and physical disabilities. One girl with stunning Asiatic features has half a body and gets about surprisingly well on a skateboard. Her arms and chest are covered in vibrant tattoos. I recently came across an article on her in a fashion magazine that called her an “underwear model.” What they wear at this tender age may then become an unintentional statement about their values, tastes, and social alliances, as much as a visual representation of what the rest of society has decided is no longer fashionable and so, cast off.

For some like Ethan, who arrives in soiled pants and shirt, his hair in unwashed dreadlocks, each one embellished with a bottle top, a plastic spider, or whatever he can find, the idea of changing into clean clothes is off-putting. With his jack-o lantern smile, his bottle thick glasses and bitten nails, Ethan would almost certainly suffer terrible rejection and ridicule out on the street.

I have come to view him as my devoted poet.

He pulls out a very tattered piece of paper upon which he has written stanzas of poetry and tries to decipher the writing. I wait. The paper literally falls apart in his hands and he seems quite dismayed, then remembers that he has posted several poems on a Facebook page called something like “Poems from the Edge”.

“You can find my poems here. Tell me what you think.” He smiles, snaggle-toothed, as he hands me a slip of paper with a web address.

We talk about his favorite writers and poets.

Inevitably, it’s the Beats. Ethan says he lost his 26 MARCH MMXVI

“What they wear… may then become an unintentional statement about their values…”

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COMMUNITY journal when his back pocket ripped off. When I suggest that he get himself a new pair of pants, he shakes his head, dreadlocks aflutter. “No, thank you. I like these.”

How you dress, for whom you dress, what image you’re trying to project, the fantasies you have about your identity as defined by clothes takes on a whole new perspective when you are homeless. I lived in Dublin, Ireland in the early 1980s at the very beginning of the punk rock movement, which ignited amongst the teens of poverty there and in London. The kids around me sported t-shirts ripped in fights and leather jackets dripping in paint decorated during drunken or drug-inspired moments. Returning to New York, I saw similarly ripped and safety-pinned shirts and trousers in Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.

Pop culture quickly adopted that torn, I-don-t-give-a-fuck look with a vengeance.

Suddenly, it was fashionable to look like a poverty-stricken street punk. A similar phenomenon occurred with sagging pants associated with young urban African American males, a trend that has historically caused panic amongst adults (of any race) because it presumably emerged from prison attire where inmates were forbidden from wearing belts. Sagging pants also were rumored to convey a prisoner’s sexual availability. Precisely how and when sagging pants made the leap from prison to trendy on the Outz, I don’t know. Suffice it to say that the upper classes have often both condemned and appropriated the fashions of the poor without being aware of or really caring to give credit to those influences. Marie Antoinette, the not so favored Queen of France for a few short years in the 1790s until she was beheaded for various unsavory acts, had a fake peasant village built. The Hameau de la Reine offered all the aesthetic charm of a real village, without the backbreaking toil that real villagers had to endure. I’m sure prancing about in a shepherdess’ costume did not endear her to the commoners one iota.

When it is time for me to go, I look around at the 40 or so youth here, feeling protective and deeply satisfied that the work we collectively do with them truly matters. Two are sleeping half seated on the sofa, a small Chihuahua huddled between them. A young mother has her infant strapped to her chest with a colorful blanket. Nayla has changed into pencil thin jeans, a pair of black ankle boots, and a cropped leather jacket. She admires herself in a mirror near the clothing area, wraps a pair of black leggings around her neck in dramatic fashion, and struts away.

Ethan has found a faux fur hat with ear protectors, the kind a hunter would wear out in the forest. It is too small for his head, so it sits atop his dreads like a triangular cone. He smiles radiantly. Having found my copy of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, I hand it to him. He pores over it now, nibbling on a chocolate cookie. I have maybe an hour to kill before returning home to make dinner, so I slip into a few stores along Main Street in Santa Monica. Planet Blue has a deal that if you spend $500, you get $50 off the purchase. The clothes there are like moth’s wings, gently frayed here and there, airy. They feel expensive. With the full tilt of holiday madness in the air, the desire for material things is quite palpable. The phenomenon of the well-todo acquiring the fashion sense of the street, so to speak, is nothing new. Nor is the fact that circumstances have always forced the poor to make do with the table scraps of the rich. And it is indeed a matter of circumstance that labels a man in a skirt either fashionable or homeless. *all names are pseudonyms

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HISTORY IN THE MAKING

FILM

JERI RICE’S FILM, EmBARGO, REPHRASES CASTRO’S CUBA

Jeri Rice was living the dream – a successful fashion business, real estate on the side, and had a beautiful home in the Seattle area. Suddenly the bottom fell out of the real estate market and just like that, she lost everything. Well, almost everything – she still had her film, Embargo, which she was passionate to finish. She packed up her life, her golden retriever dog, her film, and headed to Venice Beach, California.

Photo left: by Bailey Lewis, all other photos by Jeri Rice

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FILM When Rice arrived here she would go to Groundwork Coffee, on Rose Avenue, almost everyday. She was living out of her car with her dog, Butter, and set up her office on the back patio, where she would make calls to promote her film.

No one cared about what she had or did not have, everyone was supportive of her, and it made her not have to think about her desperate situation. The community is what kept her going.

Embargo became Rice’s life work after a trip to Cuba with a group of forty university women. She had no idea the impact that trip would have upon her.

When she first arrived, she was ushered into a room where suddenly she was facing the man himself, Fidel Castro. During that conversation he stated, “I tried to create a utopia and I failed and I don’t have time to fix it and if you had come before this moment I never would’ve said that to you.”

That encounter with the Cuban Premier in 2002 set Rice on a mission to find out why her country’s embargo of Cuba had persisted unabated long after the Cold War had ended. “For me, he had recognized the failure, but the question is how do we then go forward?” said Rice. The documentary includes interviews with Robert Kennedy Jr., son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy (who was in

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FILM office during the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion), and Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Rice used information from recently declassified documents and original interviews with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Sergei Khrushchev, Ted Sorensen, and Lucie Arnaz— among others—to recreate the setting and historical background of Cuba prior to the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power. The fear that Castro was a puppet of the Soviets led to the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cuban Missile crisis is of particular interest to Rice because as person in her age group it was one of the monumental events of her life. Rice, a 62-year-old grandmother, sees the story of the embargo as her legacy to her children and her grandchildren. As a child growing up in “post nuclear America”, she had vivid recollections of the threat of a nuclear showdown. After her pilgrimage to Havana in 2002, and her meeting with Castro, she viewed him and the unilateral embargo of Cuba over the last fifty-four years in a different light.

Embargo’s compelling truths are the direct result of Rice’s search for the real story to pass on to future generations.

Jeri Rice recently attended Sundance with her film and will have a special screening of Embargo at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas later this month.

For more information about the film, Embargo, visit the website: embargothemovie.com.

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COMMUNITY

Photo Left: Australian actress and artist, Peta Wilson is the creative spark behind the Wiley Wilson store on Abbot Kinney Blvd.

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PROFILE

the wiles of wylie wilson

L

ong before Abbot Kinney Boulevard became the overpriced hallowed ground of international fashion retailers, there were creative businesses, surf shops, art galleries, vintage clothing, and emerging restaurants. Wylie Wilson is the energetic expression of these former businesses. This unique space, which emerged from an unusual catalyst – the Wylie Wilson lingerie line has blossomed into a full luxury lifestyle brand while managing to retain it’s funky, creative, “whatever goes”, art for art’s sake attitude of old Venice Beach.

Peta Wilson: Venice resident, designer, curator, and inspired proprietress of this “salon,” has tapped into the creative reserves of her community to design her store. From the often witty and inventive front window displays, to the back alley mural of ladies in vintage knickers by local artist Jules Muck, the “lingerie as art” theme is established before you walk in the front door. On some days you might be greeted by Aphrodite, a tarot card reader perched under her colorful sun umbrella on the sidewalk. Visitors feel a bit like Harry Potter entering Diagon Alley as they search for the entrance, which is hidden within a narrow passage draped in twinkly lights and color. The setting and the whimsy all serves to enhance the magical quality of the store.

The Wylie Wilson line of bras and panties was the brainchild of necessity. Wilson had a date and wanted the appropriately seductive lingerie to wear. Sorting through what she had, she found nothing so she whipped up something beautiful from a piece of gorgeous antique lace she’d been holding onto, and Wylie Wilson lingerie was born. The artistic connection was strong from the very beginning. Wilson would hang her creations in the window of her Santa Monica condominium as a work of art, much to the chagrin of one of her neighbors. The rest of her neighbors loved it and told her to keep on sewing. Eventually she moved to Venice and a friend in the fashion industry encouraged her to take designing her line seriously. She took the plunge and launched Wylie Wilson. The production of the line is done locally and Wilson is involved with every aspect of each design.

Branching out from her roots as a lingerie designer, Wilson has collaborated with other artists to create one-of-a-kind patterns, which she uses on her continued on page 39

Photos courtesy of Wiley Wilson

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PROFILE

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PROFILE

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PROFILE

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PROFILE {continued from page 35}

lingerie and other items. The Abbot Kinney “salon” has grown into a gathering place for events such as First Fridays and “Wylie Wednesdays.” Peta Wilson’s discerning eye has assembled a collection of fashion and objects, which is full of vibrant color and design. She is passionate about the fusion of art into lifestyle – from what you wear, to how you furnish your home, her collection in rooted in artistic ingenuity first.

Peta Wilson was the star of the television series, La Femme Nikita, and was instrumental in the development of her character’s signature couture/street chic look. This penchant for recreation and reinvention is a quality she expresses in every endeavor she has taken on, from acting to designing for Wylie Wilson.

The result is an immersive environment that goes beyond the usual retail experience. Peta Wilson has taken her commitment to the community a step further with the philanthropic arm of the company. In 2014, she joined forces with the Pegasus Foundation to channel funds for the liberation and rehabilitation of people living in debt bondage in India and Nepal. It takes approximately $525 to free one slave.

This idea, along with her commitment to helping women recovering from breast cancer, have become cornerstones of the Wylie Wilson philosophy and help to ground the company in its ideal to give back to the world.

“Humanity and philanthropy are as essential to the brand as the fabric of each piece,” Wilson explains.

“It is the foundation on which I build this luxury lifestyle brand. It’s beautiful and can make a difference.”

Wyliewilson.com IG: @wyliewilson Wylie Wilson is located at 1301 Abbot Kinney Blvd.

Photo by bailey lewis

Venice Beach, California, 90291.

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COMMUNITY

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CUISINE

The Stoop T

by Bailey Lewis

he Stoop, a funky little surfer’s shack that doubles as an organic vegan cookie bakery can be found on Windward Circle in Venice Beach. Two brothers, Kyle and Wesley Stuart, and their friend Dustin VanderKolk, are keeping the spirit of Venice surf culture alive and well in this cool local hangout.

“One day we were sitting on our stoop and we were just like, dude, let’s turn this place into a cottage food operation,” said Kyle Stuart. “We had some of our buddies drive down from our hometown with two-hundred pounds of grain, along with their construction tools. We got some wooden boards, rebuilt the whole outside stoop area, and then we opened up on Christmas day of 2015. We started with a soft launch to see how business would do and didn’t know what our neighbors would think but the feedback has been positive and supportive. We both quit our jobs, and here we are, sitting on top of a stoop selling cookies.”

The Stoop is open mornings and afternoons. Rising early, the brothers prepare a fresh batch of cookies each day before heading out to catch some waves.

They have a great passion for sharing their quality baked goods with the community and want to promote the “farm to table” concept in baking.

PHOTOS THIS PAGE AND LEFT, BY BAILEY LEWIS

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CUISINE The Stuart brothers know what they are talking about when they refer to the “farm to table” food movement since they grew up on a their family’s 100-yearold farm in Ludington, Michigan. The Stoop’s vegan protein cookies are made with hard red wheat, grown on the family farm.

“The staple in our cookies is tofu, so it gives it the extra protein, as well as the grain and the flour we use.” The Stoop cookie recipes have been developed within the Stuart family over the last twenty-five-plus years. Their father, Jim Stuart, originally found their most popular recipe for coconut cranberry cookies, in an 80s cookbook he picked up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

With the recent trend in baking towards “gluten free,” it would seem that these wheat farmers would have a difficult time marketing a wheat-based cookie – even if it is vegan. “In my opinion, people are getting drilled with low-grade enriched flour that has no nutritional value, and that is giving all gluten a bad rap, when in fact, gluten is a natural protein,” said Kyle Stuart. “The movement for “gluten free” products shouldn’t focus on axing it out completely. Instead, people should pay closer attention to where their gluten is coming from and

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CUISINE how it is grown. You can tell our flour is quality and that it’s not enriched. Not a lot of people are getting that right now.”

The Stoop’s cookie menu includes: peanut butter banana, walnut chocolate chip, oatmeal maple raisin, and the fan favorite – coconut cranberry.

“It’s cool to be out here in Venice beach, it’s great feedback. This community understands the importance of good quality food,” says Kyle. stuartfamilyorganics.com IG: @stuartfamilyorganics The Stoop is located at --- Windward Ave., in Venice Beach, California, 90291

“In

my

opinion,

peo-

ple are getting drilled with

low

grade

en-

riched flour that has no nutritional value, and that is giving all gluten a bad rap, when in fact, gluten is a natural protein…”

PHOTOS LEFT, BY BAILEY LEWIS, PHOTOS THIS PAGE COURTESY OF THE STOOP

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author, Ray Bradbury riding his bicycle through the venice canals, circa 1963. still photo from the documentary, ray bradbury: story of a Writer

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REAR VIEW MIRROR

The

Monst er

in t h e Wir es

by Tom Laichas

It is 1964. A man bicycles along an unnamed Venice Beach canal, mounded bungalows retreating into the middle distance. It is overcast.

No one else is out. It’s May or June, maybe a Monday morning around 10a.m. The man is Ray Bradbur y.

If fame has an arc, Bradbury is, perhaps, just beyond its crest. When he died last year at 91, many of the novels and short stories that made his reputation were already sixty years behind him. In the last years of his life, he won a National Book Foundation Medal, a Pulitzer Prize special citation, and a National Medal of the Arts. His work will continue to attract readers. But twenty years from now, those readers will have to explain just who Bradbury was.

In Venice, that is particularly unfortunate. Born in Waukeegan, Wisconsin, Bradbury moved to here in mid-adolescence. The Venice that nurtured Bradbury’s creative sensibility is long gone, but Bradbur y always had one eye on neighborhoods that didn’t – but one day might – exist. And so here we are. Books replaced with intrusively interactive screens? Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Thousands moving off the grid, beyond the reach of government sur veillance? The Martian Chronicles. A foolproof technology compromised by a clumsy accident that changes millions of lives? Bradbur y’s 1952 short stor y “Sound of Thunder.” (The accident: a time travelling tourist steps off an elevated walkway, killing a Cretaceous-era butterfly. Returning to his own time, he finds a radically altered political landscape).

Bradbury defined, redefined, and then transcended science fiction. His was a humanist vision, touched in equal measure with love and menace, with horror and with sympathy.

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I encountered Bradbur y’s Venice in David Wolper’s 1963 made-for-television short “Ray Bradbur y: Stor y of a Writer,” encountered in a summer creative writing class at Thomas Starr King Junior High School in East Hollywood. The film stuck with me. I found it on YouTube a couple of months ago; it’s held up remarkably well.

Wolper largely lets the Bradbur y do the talking, following him around town and through his writing process: Bradbur y opening a densely packed file drawer and thumbing through the alphabetized short stor y drafts, Bradbur y talking up the writing life in a university lecture hall, Bradbury visiting an aerospace plant, Bradbur y mailing a manuscript to his publisher, Bradbur y playing with his young daughters in the living room while his wife Marguerite stands pensively off to the side, obser ving husband, children, and film crew.

I remembered none of those vignettes. The one scene I could recall seeing forty years ago had Bradbur y peddling along a Venice canal, his own voice describing his process: The time we have alone, the time we have in walking, the time we have in riding a bicycle, is the most important time for a writer. Escaping from the typewriter is part of the creative process. You have to give the subconscious time to think. Real thinking always occurs on the subconscious level.

I recall as well what happens next. A buzzing drone, rising in volume, cuts short Bradbur y’s reverie. He comes to a stop and turns his head to get a better look at the source. Now we see what Bradbur y sees: a switching station, singing with the “mains hum,” the sound of high voltage oscillating current.

Wolpe’s film now takes a hard left turn into Bradbur y’s imagination, now seeded with a plot device: that the electrical system has birthed an amorphous and searching intelligence, one which comes to reside in a circuit box at the top of a telephone pole.

The camera shows us what Bradbur y has in mind: We are in a living room. A man, maybe in his early 30s, straightens his tie for work. It’s Tom. He’s almost out the door when the phone rings.

He picks up the receiver: “Hello?”

A voice, grating and mechanical, repeats: “Hehl-lo.”

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Who… is… this” “Who is this?”

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REAR VIEW MIRROR

“Who… is… this” “Is that you Charlie? Come off it, will you?”

“Come… off… it…”

“Who is this?”

“Who… is… this” “Look… um, what number are you calling from?”

“What… num… ber” Tom hangs up.

And then, again, the phone rings.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Hello. Who are you?”

“Who … are … you?”

Tom hangs up and turns to leave, but the phone summons him back.

With each call the intonation becomes more natural. Tom imagines it’s a crank caller. He alerts the phone company, but the calls continue.

Exhausted by the constant ringing, his fear and anger mount. He begins thinking that this is not a crank call, but something else. He walks down a street, passing one telephone pole after another. Like Bradbur y, he looks up.

After dark, he climbs the pole, wire cutters in hand. He struggles to cut the cable. Police arrive. He’s frantic, wrestling with the wiring.

Then there’s an electric flash. Tom falls to the street, dead.

Cut to the next morning. The telephone pole is still standing, the box affixed to its upper length. Both look much less sinister than they did the night before. As the camera studies the scene, Bradbur y reads his story’s last paragraph: By morning, every trace of Tom and his seeming madness had been removed. And in the vicinity of poll 78426, all was normal once again. The damage to the wires had been repaired, the box had been shut, without the repairman touching or having seen whatever it was that Tom had seen…

Rediscovering that story, “Dial Double Zero,” I also rediscovered Bradbury’s Los Angeles.

Nearly all of it has vanished. Louis Epstein’s Pickwick Books, “The Big Bookshop of Hollywood,” shut its doors in 1995. Westwood Village’s 1930s-vintage post office, where Bradbur y sends his stor y off to a pub-

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REAR VIEW MIRROR

lisher, moved in 1969 to the Federal Building on Wilshire. Canoga Park’s Rocketdyne is long gone: acquired, sold, resold, renamed, and finally relocated to Sacramento. As for Venice, the canals have been dredged, the water cleansed, and the embankments artfully xeriscaped.

I write this on a Sunday in June. I’ve just been walking the canals, looking for the stretch Bradbur y biked fifty years ago. Sherman Canal?

Howland? Carroll? The bungalows long ago gave way to elaborate architectural confections. A bridge that appears in one frame might give me a clue, but my talent for recalling the telling detail falls short.

I give up the hunt, walking Dell out to Venice Blvd before zig-zagging north and east through Oakwood. This being one of the first Sundays of the summer, beachgoing traffic already clogs the boulevards.

But just a block into the sidestreets, the spongy bank of stratus soaks up the noise. Abruptly, it is dew-damp and entirely silent.

Then, above my head, I hear the wires sing.

Though nearly everything Wolper found in Venice is gone, that sound remains. While we are accustomed to imagining history as a record of rapid change, it is striking how slowly some clocks tick, how one day’s routines can so closely resemble another’s though a hundred years apart.

Running water is like that, sluicing down aqueducts through reser voirs and into the tap since 1913. Traffic is like that, tire treads crawling along pavements since 1905. Radio and television signals are like that, their sine waves oscillating outward no matter who wins a November’s election. David Wolper is dead. Ray Bradbur y is dead. Tom is dead.

But the wires haven’t stopped singing.

Ray Bradbur y knew this world intimately. His father Leonard worked as a utility lineman in Waukeegan and Tucson before moving the family to a small home on Venice Boulevard in 1934. That home stood next door to the brick powerhouse which dispatched Leonard to his day’s assignments. When Wolper has poses Bradbur y on his bike just outside the DWP substation, ear cocked for the mains hum, Bradbur y has to feign surprise.

Bradbury’s upbringing did not leave him hostile to technology. To the contrary: he genuinely enjoyed touring aerospace and data processing plants in the name of background research, and enthusiastically celebrated the space program. That said, Bradbury believed that technology would not so much change our conflicted human nature as amplify it.

In “I Sing the Body Electric,” Grandma – mechanized and immortal – tells the family that her creator knew that most machines are amoral, neither bad nor good.

But by the way you built and shaped them you in turn shaped 48 MARCH MMXVI

REAR VIEW MIRROR men, women, and children o be bad or good. A car, for instance, dead brute, unthinking, an unprogrammed bulk, is the greatest destroyer of souls in histor y. It makes boy-men greedy for power, destruction, and more destruction. It was never intended to do that. But that’s how it turned out.

Grandma is an android What unsettles a lot of Bradbury’s stories is the way technology insinuates itself into life’s ordinary routines. As unobtrusive as a light switch or a mechanical grandma, technology alters our relationships without our conscious knowledge or overt consent.

A half-century years after Tom climbed a telephone pole and died for our sins, we remain plugged into an electrical network system far larger than our own neighborhoods. We flip a switch and suck power through transmission lines strung all the way to Diablo Canyon, the Hoover Dam, and northern Arizona’s Navajo Generating Station.

Seen from the perspective of an electron transmitted along these wires, “Venice” does not exist except as a tiny synaptic cluster dangling from the Northwest-Southwest Intertie. Venice exists until the thread is cut.

On a night a few years ago, I was in my living room watching television, cocooned with my wife and daughter.

All at once, a bright flash, an explosion, and a pitch-black darkness.

We found the flashlights and checked the house. A fire engine sirened by. I followed it down the street and gathered with my neighbors, a few in their bathrobes, as the firefighters, police and linemen got to work.

We spoke quietly. Some of us recalled the city-wide blackout after the Northridge quake in ’92. Others remembered more local events: a telephone pole downed in a storm, a rolling blackout ordered during one particularly hot summer, a wire severed by a bough broken in one of November’s cold Santa Ana gusts.

This time, it turned out, a transformer had blown, for reasons unknown.

Power, we were assured, would be restored in a few hours. We were urged back to our homes, where tucked ourselves into our beds and slept.

By morning, all was well. Refrigerators, clocks and laptops met their electrical obligations. Technology kept its promises.

In Venice, we live on landfill, floating on silt dredged from a duck marsh.

To keep the lights on, we dig up the crushed and blackened corpses of ancient treeferns and trilobites. We enclose ourselves in curtains of wall and door, watch some tv, set the alarm, and drift into dream.

But even here, a monster sleeps in the wires. Ray Bradbur y told me that.

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MUSIC

MOJO HARM ONICS Hiatus Kaiyote

by Matias Moreno-Bunge

Last month in Los Angeles, troops of two-legged humanoids huddled in Venice under a unified wish to receive what some might say today is largely un-receivable.

Hiatus Kaiyote is a quartet of wholes. Lead singer, Nai Palm rains hot, sweet, gentle, fierce; water incarnate, and like water, her voice takes many forms: flows, crashes, destroys and revives. Drummer, Perrin Moss grows tentacles, each arm its own brain; an octopus with octagonal groove; an octopus with Einsteinian time; an octopus with a bad case of funk. Paul Bender, bass guitarist, guardian of thump, fingers plump and running, running to the sun as they hop, skip and pluck their way over strings from hertz thirty to one-thirty, a deep divine.

Simon Mavin, synth-lord, the fabric on which all else is felt, his atmospheric textures bend and twist under the weight of sound which the group pulls into existence from the mystery of all mysteries; I speak, of course, of the mystery of nothingness.

SOUND. It rests in that arcane world of the formless where it lies unheard and unseen, like the snake charmer’s serpent concealed in its box. Sound, like the serpent, is lured from its silent corral by the incantations of the musical witch doctor. The truer the charm—that is to say if the call comes direct from the pink heart, unsullied and free as Pan and his nymphs— the sweeter the dance of the serpentine hum, which quavers and pops, slurs and snaps, and sta-cca-cca-ccatos its way from arcane to arrived, from here to there, into ears, through the air, and back to…………….

Hiatus Kaiyote. Take a bite from their apple, make friends with their snake, dance in their grove; under those trees is a root that is neither female nor male, yet somehow from it comes the this and the that which has dug its flag in the summits of our mind; the intellect does not always realize the inevitable, and the inevitable on this warm winter night was polyphonic mojo harmonics. Received was the echo etched in the ethos. Like the heart from which it came, it beat: Recieved… Recieved… Recieved…

Out from that obscure vat of silence is a sound seduced, charmed into existence, held aloft and caressed before its return to all that ever was, to that which all is: silence, stillness; an interaction known intimately—tantricly, even—to those who go by HIATUS KAIYOTE. Thank you, my darlings. I will follow you into the sun. Rise.

50 MARCH MMXVI

COMMUNITY

Last Look...

“We cannot abandon this rabbit hole for fear of a traumatic encounter with our own culture.”

Elif Shafak

PHOTO BY KRYSTA OHLE of VENICE ARTIST, JULES MUCK DOING A LIVE PAINTING AT TOWNHOUSE, VENICE, CA. 51 MARCH MMXVI

After thirty-seven years on Abbot Kinney B o u l e v a r d , we say “good-bye” to t h e f a b u l o u s Roosterfish Bar. PHOTO BY BAILEY LEWIS