#the last project i ever used paint for architecture plans was back in college and everyone was panicking

[kaeyachi]

i love yall but some of you dont actually know what architects do when you try to show what kaveh is doing while he is working lmao

[therealvalkyrie]

Painter’s Hands and Guatemalan Coffee: Part 2

insomniac

Pairing/setting: Levi Ackerman x Female!Reader, modern!college!AU

Summary: When you catch your idiot boyfriend cheating, your grumpy roommate is there to pick up the pieces and watch your back as you toe a carefully drawn line in the metaphorical sand.  

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: insomnia, nightmares, (remembering) death, panic attack, cuddling, fluff

AN: Here she is!! I’ve decided to give oc a little ~tragic backstory~ and I really hope it comes across like I’ve intended. I wouldn’t go so far as to call in angst, necessarily, but there’ll definitely be some in the future. Also, I know I’ve painted Annie and Reiner in a really bad light so far in this particular fic, but please know that’s not how I view them in canon at all - it’s simply because someone had to be the bad guy:( Anyways, I hope y’all enjoy and as always don’t hesitate to reach out via reblog/ask with any suggestions/feedback/questions!! ~valkyrie

(read Part 1.5 here)

Bodies jostle against you in the darkness to the beat of music you can’t hear.  The buzzing gets louder, drowning out even your own screams for them to stop.

Stop. Stop. STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP!

“STOP IT!” You can hear yourself this time, your voice embarrassingly loud in the cramped room. You slap hands over your mouth but everyone’s already turned to look at you, disgusted at the display of emotion. Even they peel their faces apart to sneer down their noses.

“Why should we?” Annie’s voice rings with superiority, swirling around the space and nestling in the crook of your neck. You shudder away, but the faceless bodies shove you back.

“Don’t you know this is your fault, anyway? You weren’t enough for me.” Reiner jeers with a satisfied smirk. The whole room laughs, cackling and giggling spitefully. You can’t move, muscles frozen, as they turn back to each other and continue making out. His hand in her hair, her thigh hooked over his hip, obscenely wet noises from their joined mouths.

You scream and scream and scream, jaw wide and aching, and all of a sudden the scene shifts and you’re at your mother’s bedside. Your breath hitches and you’re screaming in a child’s voice this time.

“Mommy, Mommy, no, please, no, MOMMY, PLEASE--”

Your hand twitches towards her and its movement against soft sheets brings you back to consciousness.

You’re spread-eagled in bed, comforter kicked almost completely off, chest heaving.

“One. Two. Three. Four…” you count in a hoarse whisper to yourself, staring out the window at gently falling snow illuminated in yellow streetlights. It takes you to one hundred and twenty-seven before you’re calm enough to do anything productive. 

You reach out a blind hand to find your phone on the nightstand and raise it up to check the time. 4:47 am. Nearly three hours of sleep.

Eh, good enough for jazz.

You heave a sigh, then push up to sit on the edge of your bed and flick on the lamp. The sudden bright light makes you squint against sharp pain behind your eyes and turn away in search of a sweatshirt. Some sifting through the ever-growing pile of laundry later, you settle on a green university hoodie and pull it on over your ratty tank top. Your toes and fingers always feel like icicles after waking up from a nightmare, so you find faux fur-lined slippers as well.

As you push past your bedroom door and into the living room, a figure in the comfy armchair catches the corner of your eye.

You nearly jump out of your skin before recognizing who it is. “Christ on a cracker, Levi! Nearly scared me half to death.”

“Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry as he marks the page in his book and sets it on the coffee table.

“What are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“Well that’s not ominous or anything,” you mutter with an eye roll as you cross to the kitchen and set the kettle to boil for coffee.

Levi sighs and pinches the bridge of his elegant nose.

“Sorry. That’s not what I meant. It’s just… I noticed you haven’t been sleeping much lately and I’m worried.” He crosses to sit at the kitchen table and speaks to your back as you shuffle around the kitchen.

“What do you mean? Of course I’ve been sleeping. Whaddaya think I was just doing?”

“It’s five am, and you were still up when I went to sleep at twelve. Optimistically, that’s four hours of sleep. And yesterday you went to bed after one, but Hange said you were texting her at five-thirty, and--”

“Jeez, what, have you been stalking me or something?” you ask with an incredulous glance over your shoulder.

“We live together. It’s kind of hard not to notice.” Levi’s tone is the usual dry you’ve come to expect, but there’s an undercurrent that you’re too exhausted to pinpoint. “And Hange also told me she’s been worried.”

“What is this, an intervention? Just because I break up with someone I’m suddenly incapable of functioning?” Your voice (and headache) rises with each phrase, cracking on the morning dryness in the air, and you spin to face him.

“I didn’t say that, I--”

“Am I just supposed to wallow in misery for the rest of my life? No. I’m not doing that, Levi, I’m moving on. I-- I’m a busy woman, I’ve got finals and, and internship applications, and I happen to enjoy waking up early. I like watching the sunrise.” Though your words are rushed and you’re gesturing animatedly, uncertainty seeps through the stuttered phrases in your argument.

Levi lets you finish, then returns in a measured voice: “Why are you so defensive about this? I know you’re busy. So am I. But I manage to get more than four hours of sleep at night. I just want to help.”

His statement hangs in the air like dust mites, swirling around you and clinging to the sticky after-effects of the nightmare in your mind. You frown and drop your eyes to the linoleum, guilt settling into the stickiness.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Your voice is much softer. “I just--” A deep sigh. “I can’t sleep.”

“Why?”

The simple question makes your breath stutter and you scrub a hand down your face in an effort to ground your skin into reality.

“It’s so stupid.” It’s practically a whisper. “I have these nightmares. About my mom. I got them when I was younger, too, but eventually they just sort of… stopped. But now they’re back. And I can’t ever get back to sleep after, so I just stopped bothering to try.”

“You know, sometimes I get nightmares, too.”

The admission catches you off guard, your eyes widening. Levi always seems so… steady and sure, you wouldn’t have expected it.

“Really?”

He nods. “About my mom and the foster homes.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you…” Your heart sinks, and you don’t know how to say you’re sorry for the heartbreak he must’ve lived through with any semblance of tact.

“Yeah. It’s not something I talk about much.”

“Right.” You pause and chew on your tongue thoughtfully for a moment. “Do you have...strategies for when you can’t sleep because of them?”

“I have sleeping pills from my psychiatrist and some meditation practices that work for me. I can send you some resources, if you’d like.”

“Yeah, I’d really appreciate that if it’s not a bother.” You feel kind of sheepish now, for raising your voice, and so try to sound extra thankful for his help.

“It’s not.” He stands up and stretches both arms over his head, tipping his face up to the sky, lean body arching and twisting with the effort of it.  “I’ll send them to you later today. I’m gonna go back to bed.”

“Okay. Thank you, Levi.”

He nods and yawns, nose scrunching adorably. “Night, kid.”

“Good night.”

As his bedroom door clicks shut, you sigh yet again and turn off the stove. The first thing to avoid is probably coffee.

--

Your fingers flick off last rivulets of water as you step out of the shower. A shiver rattles its way up your spine before you can grab a towel to dry off. Bless Levi, he had done laundry today and the towel is still dryer-warm, smelling of his favorite fabric softener.

As you go through your evening routine (tooth brushing, face washing, hair drying), you can feel a quiet tension set into your shoulders despite the humidity of the bathroom.

The day had gone okay. You managed to resist coffee until 8 am and cut yourself off at 3. A lecture and a studio in the morning left the afternoon for library studying and a trip to the grocery store. 

You had actually seen Bertholdt there, in the cereal aisle. You hadn’t been too keen on having that particular conversation, but luckily he hadn’t seemed to be either. The pair of you exchanged sympathetically awkward smiles before turning back to the Cheerios. 

The evening consisted of ordering chinese takeout while obsessing over your latest architecture design project, followed by convincing Hange over the phone not to sleep in the mouse lab for extra credit.

“But Bean will be lonely!” she insisted hysterically. “And Sonny wasn’t looking too hot in lab today, what if he needs his mommy and I’m not there?”

“You’re not their mommy,” you reminded her. “They have each other to keep them company, and if Sonny dies, won’t it support your hypothesis anyway?”

She had eventually acquiesced when you promised to help her plan a memorial should they pass in the night.

So now here you are, skin slowly drying, as you psych yourself up in the mirror to go to sleep.

“It won’t be bad. Just use the meditations Levi sent you.” You try to inject confidence into your voice, but you only end up grimacing at yourself in the mirror. “Ah, fuck it.”

You tuck your towel in firmly around your chest and double check to see your things are put away before going back to your room.

As you pass, you hesitate by Levi’s door for a moment. His normal studying music, Chopin, is on and light creeps out from underneath. Another moment of uncertainty, then you gently knock and poke your head in.

“Levi?” He raises his head from where he’s hunched over an easel, paint brush in hand. Brow furrowed and body tensed like a strung bow, he doesn’t look happy to be interrupted.

Fuck.

“I, uhm, just wanted to say good night.”

He grunts and turns back to the painting.

You take that as your cue to leave.

Back in the sanctuary of your own room, you curse again and kick your desk chair, sending it rolling a couple inches.

Why had you bothered him? To say good night?

“Stupid, stupid, UGH.” Your dramatic outburst ends in flopping face-first into bed. Just because he felt concerned enough to stage a fucking intervention doesn’t mean he’s your fucking nanny. Idiot.

Eventually, you roll over and get up to change into pajamas. 

Settling into bed, you open your newly downloaded meditation app and start an audio.

“As you prepare for your meditation practice today, find a comfortable position sitting or lying down where you can fully relax….”

The cool female voice wraps your mind in a hazy blanket of fog and eventually coaxes your body into an achingly needed sleep.

--

This time the dream wakes you up whimpering into your pillow, arms flung above your head as though you’re skydiving. With a sucking breath, you lift your head to prevent imminent suffocation and instead settle on your side, staring unblinkingly into the darkness. Breath ragged in your chest, your mind can’t seem to move past the last image of your nightmare.

It’s burned into your retinas when you close your eyes and etched onto the moonlight-pale wall when they’re open: your mom’s pallid face staring up at the ceiling, hands resting on top of  her blue embroidered duvet cover, chest still.

A sob escapes your unwilling throat and you’re scrambling to sit up and reach for the lamp. The lamplight suddenly reminds you of your own existence in the physical plane, thrusting all your senses into sharp contrast.

Her greying, thinning hair, the frailty in her fingers, the cracks in her lips, the cloying scent of death.

“Nonononononononono,” you moan, hunched over your knees, fingers tangled in your hair. Your stomach is hollow, chest tight, tears now flowing in earnest. It hasn’t been this bad in a long time, not since 7th grade at least.

Do something, do something, you stupid bitch, your mind is yelling at you, and so you force your body to move. Somewhere, anywhere other than here.

You practically fall out of bed and then lean heavily on your desk to compensate for shaking knees as you move to the door. Feet shuffle in the darkness and all of a sudden you’re sniffling outside Levi’s door, fingers in a deathgrip on your shirt. One, two breaths and you knock three hesitant raps.

Fuck. Shit. Instant regret bubbles up in your throat and you pivot away. Before you can get far, the door opens and you hear Levi’s sleep-ragged voice utter your name like a question. Damn.

You turn back sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve woken you up. Go back to bed.” Your voice is unnaturally breathy as Levi tries to make you out in the dim light of the moon filtering in through the living room window. 

He reaches for your shoulder to gently pull you out of the shadows, and realization crosses his face as he registers the tear tracks and haunting terror in your eyes.

“It happened again,” he states.

You nod hesitantly and wipe at your cheeks with the back of one hand. You try again to tell him that no, really, you’re fine and he should go back to bed, but the words get lost in the tangle of truths between your brain and mouth.

Instead, what comes out is: “Can… can I sleep with you?” Your eyes finally flick to his before you quickly follow up. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, I just- it helps to have someone close….”

Levi watches you for a moment before sliding his hand from your shoulder to your hand and tugging gently.

“Come on.”

You follow him inside and fidget awkwardly at the side of his bed as he climbs in. His room is impeccably neat, not that you would expect anything different from the man who once gave you a five minute lecture about leaving dishes in the sink to soak. It was the most words you’d heard him string together at the time, and he only stopped when he realized you were laughing.

“You sound like my Great Aunt Cheryl,” you said between hiccups of mirth. “Insufferable woman.”

He had looked at you scathingly, then made you promise never to leave the dishes for later again on pain of changing the wifi password.

Once he’s settled, Levi turns back the covers on your side and looks at you expectantly. You falter a split second before climbing in next to him, the familiar smell of his laundry detergent clouding around you as you fall back into soft pillows. He throws the comforter over you, then settles down and opens his arms.

“C’mere, kid,” he says with a tenderness that makes a sniffle catch in the back of your throat.

You roll into his arms, resting your head in the curve of his shoulder and breathe the first easy breath since you woke up. An arm flung around his middle means your whole body is against his, warming you up like a midafternoon nap in August.

Levi settles his arm around your back after tucking in the blankets and holds you like you’ve always belonged there. He gradually, gradually feels you relax into him as your breathing begins to match his own.

After a while, your eyes droop closed and Levi allows himself the indulgence of tucking his nose into your hair. A bouquet of lavender shampoo and you accompanies him softly into his dreams.

--

(read part 3 here)

[jarrettfuller]

Everything Connects: The story of a plywood chair, a design life, and the Eames

Last summer, my fiancee and I moved in together. Right away, we began that sometimes-arduous task of reconciling our decorating sensibilities, turning a small second-level apartment on a quiet street in Brooklyn's Sunset Park into our home. (It's coming together!) A few months ago, we finally purchased a piece of furniture I've lusted over for half my life: an Eames molded plywood chair. It's not just my favorite piece of furniture we own, it's also my favorite piece of furniture ever. It's simultaneously the pinnacle of the work of the two designers who have shaped my work more than anyone else and an object that reminds me of my own journey in design.

Officially named the LCW, for "Lounge Chair Wood" or "Low Chair Wood", Charles and Ray Eames released this chair in 1946 after a half decade of research in bending and molding plywood. Along with its siblings, the DCW ("Dining Chair Wood"), DCM ("Dining Chair Metal"), and LCM ("Lounge Chair Metal") — the latter two retaining the molded seat but with metal legs — the collection was the culmination of years of research in material, manufacturing, and 'honesty in design'. It was the distillation of everything the couple had worked on up to that point and in many ways, launched their careers. When Charles was asked if he thought of the Eames chair in flash, he responded, "Sort of a thirty-year flash."

The experiments began when a 32-year-old Charles was the Head of the Design Department at the Cranbrook Academy outside Detroit. He had recently befriended Eero Saarinen, who was then an architect at his father, Eliel Saarinen's, architecture firm. The studio was working on a design for the Klienan's Music Hall in Buffalo New York and in 1939 and Eero and Charles were tasked with designing the seating. The duo developed an armchair made of a single curved seat and back that were well received when installed in the finished building.

A year later, Elliot Noyes, then the director of design at MoMA, was organizing the museum's "Organic Design in Human Furnishings" competition. The contest, which drew 585 entries, was built around Noyes belief that design should evolve organically from the changes taking place in society. "In a field of home furnishings, there has been no outstanding developments in recent years," Noyes wrote in the brief, "a new way of living is developing, however, and this requires a fresh approach to the design problems and a new expression." Charles and Eero, lovers of competitions, saw this as a way to continue thinking about what they started in their work for the Kleinan's chair. They wanted to create a system for mass-producing high-quality, low-cost furniture. Instead of the single curve balanced on a structure, they started working on a new design with multiple curves. Ray had recently arrived at Cranbrook where she was auditing classes in weaving and was quickly brought into the process to help with final presentation drawings. Other Cranbrook students joined in as the deadline approached. They submitting renderings of five chairs, two sofas and two tables, and a series of case goods to the competition. In January 1941, it was announced that Charles and Eero won two categories: chairs and case goods.

In eight months, MoMA would be holding an exhibition with the award winners' pieces in production. The duo's drawings were so refined the jury assumed the pieces had already been produced. They were not. But by this time, both Charles and Eero had turned their attention elsewhere — Charles and Ray had gotten married and moved to California and Eero had begun work on his Defense Housing project. There were multiple manufacturing issues: molding wood proved more complicated than expected and when they finally succeeded, manufacturing costs were too high to offer the chairs at the desired cost.

The exhibition opened in September to mixed response. Only a handful of chairs had been successfully produced. But Charles and Ray would continue thinking about these experiments and it would turn out to be another five years before their potential would be realized.

Before graphic design, I was interested in architecture and interior design. I'd always had a fondness for design (though I wouldn't have used that word) but it didn't crystalize until seventh grade when I saw an episode of the then-new TLC home improvement show, Trading Spaces. I was completely enraptured. I started redesigning my own bedroom. I spent time at Home Depot, looking at paint swatches and floor samples. I installed a design-your-own-home program that came on a CD-ROM and started designing homes. My friend Andy, who grew up down the street, also wanted to be an architect and together we started redesigning our friends' bedrooms for money. We'd present mood boards with furniture options, paint swatches and new ways to rearrange the furniture and then we'd go buy everything, painting their walls and assembling new IKEA furniture. It was my first business. These were my first design projects. We called it J.A. Architecture.

Our family moved into a new home between my seventh and eighth grade years and I relished the opportunity to design my new bedroom from scratch. I drew to-scale floor plans and elevations outlining the specifics about everything from where my new furniture would go to what would be hung on the walls, where lighting would be positioned to what would be placed on each shelf. It was a converted attic and I painted the two end walls a deep red, highlighting the angles of the ceiling. This bedroom became was my ultimate design project; the one I returned to again and again until I left home for college. I spent my free-time rearranging furniture, replacing the artwork on the walls or the pillows on the bed. It looked nothing like a typical fourteen-year-old bedroom.

The author's childhood bedroom, designed at 14

Somewhere in this process, I saw a photo of a red Eames molded plywood chair and I immediately wanted one for my bedroom. The color matched my palette, the design matched my imagined-aesthetic. It became an aspirational object; an obsession even. I just started high school and had no income — the Eames chairs were more expensive than the IKEA furniture I was used to. (I'm not sure I had ever seen a chair that expensive before.) I made drawings of it. I hung a photograph of it on my bulletin board and glued the page from the Design Within Reach catalog — of which I had recently subscribed — into my sketchbook.

A few years later when visiting colleges, I walked into the Kanbar Center — the student union at Philadelphia University — and knew immediately that's where I wanted to go to college. The building was a large modernist structure in the middle of a wooded plot of land, walled in glass. Along the large windows sat two-dozen black Eames molded plywood chairs. It was the first time I had seen one in real life. My mom took of photo of me sitting in one. After I got accepted and moved in a few months later, I spent my first day on campus sitting in one. I tweeted about it.

I ended up leaving Philadelphia University after the first semester — it turns out that basing your college decision on the furniture in the student union isn't always a good idea. The school I transferred to was immediately better fit, even with the absence of Eames furniture.

The Eames continued thinking about molding plywood after moving to Los Angeles in 1942, and began experimenting in their apartment. Their earliest experiments involved a laborious method of gluing and bonding thin plies of wood using a machine the couple created called the "Kazam! machine", the name coming from the sound it made. The device was built with hinged two-by-four-inch pieces of lumber that were bolted together so it could withstand the high pressure necessary for shaping the wood. This was in the middle of World War II, and Charles and Ray used used this technology to begin manufacturing leg and arm splints and even a plywood airplane fuselage and pilot's seat.

In 1945, Noyes gave Charles his own exhibition — Furniture by Charles Eames Despite the title, the Eames had developed an equal partnership, with both Charles and Ray working across all parts of the process. In this show, they introduced the 'Eames Plywood Chair'. In a short film the couple produced in 1954 about the manufacturing, Charles narrates:

In a more or less standard situation like sitting for eating or writing, we found that certain relationship of support gives optimum comfort to a surprisingly large number of people. We found that comfort depended more on the perfect molding to the body shape than it did on the way the bone structure was supported. And if the structure was supported properly, the hard and rigid material like molded plywood can provide a remarkably high degree of comfort. We limited the solution to a hard surface and concentrated on plywood. . . . We tried movement and found that if the back was allowed to move in relation to the seat, the latitude of comfort was greatly increased.

The product was an immediate hit. Time called the LCW the 'chair of the century' They continued working with these ideas into the seventies (hence the '30 year flash') as they developed the Piece Secretarial Chair. "This evolution is a perfect example of the design design process as it worked at the Eames Office," writes Dmtrious Eames, their grandson, in his biography of the couple, An Eames Primer, "the feeling that, rather than a single moment of inspiration, there was a constant working out of each issue one by one, a kind of learning by doing until a solution was revealed."

In December, I finally visited Case Study #8, the couple's home and studio — the base of their operations until they died. Walking along the grounds and looking at the desks where they worked, I was struck by how long I've turned to the Eames for inspiration. I've been designing — from my childhood bedroom to college projects to professionally — for fifteen years. My career goals have changed, inspirations have come and gone, the type of work I do and the type of work I want to do has evolved. Designers who influenced me in my early career no longer fit the kind of work I'm interested in and I look back on much of my old work with a mix of embarrassment and confusion.

The Eames, however, have been the one consistent. Regardless of where I am in my career, regardless of my own aspirations as a designer or creative person, Charles and Ray Eames serve as a model. When I was interested in architecture and interior design, I looked to their furniture and architecture work. When I was interested in illustration, towards the end of my undergraduate education, I looked to Ray's textile designs. As my interest in writing and theory grew, I read the couple's writings and read over their lectures. When I made my first video essay and started thinking about film, their own film output once again became the touchstone for my work. The themes they turned to again and again — media, storytelling, honesty, what design could be — mirror the themes that run through my own work.

In an interview in an interview on NBC's Home show, Charles said the believe everything they do falls under the category of 'architecture', whether its a building or a chair or a dress. They couple, in so many ways, is the epitome of the polymathic designer — building a practice that spans disciplines and included research, writing, building, and teaching. They worked across scales, from home goods to massive exhibitions, within corporations like IBM and independently on their own projects. For Charles and Ray, theory and practice were on in the same; they saw no difference between thinking and making. Everything a response to what came before it.

The Eames chair that sits in the corner of my living room serves as reminder to how they worked — a career built upon ideas and aesthetics, of working in public and a continual restlessness to figure out the next thing. But it's also a talisman of sorts, an object that connects the threads of my own life, the piece that bridges the gap between a childhood bedroom and future ambitions. "We work because it's a chain reaction," Charles said, "every subject leads to the next."

[greenstarmovement]

How Well-Curated Public Art Adds Value, Attracts Tenants To CRE

By Chuck Sudo

December 5, 2017

The amenities arms race often focuses on what a tenant uses within a building — fitness centers, tenant lounges and loaded technology packages. But one amenity is often overlooked even as people interact with it daily. Savvy developers have come to realize that thoughtfully curated public art that stands out while blending in with a building's overall function can attract and maintain tenants. Courtesy of Irvine Company Office Properties A detail of "Suspended Light Veils" Courtesy of Irvine Company Office Properties and James Carpenter Design Associates Irvine Company Office Properties recently installed "Suspended Light Veils," a 29-foot-tall sculpture, in the lobby of 71 South Wacker Drive. CBRE Vice President Cody Hundertmark said the value public art adds to an asset cannot be measured with dollars and cents. Art enhances a building’s buzz.  “There is no question that investors and tenants alike appreciate quality that extends beyond offices and amenities,” Hundertmark said. Irvine Company Office Properties is particularly dedicated to art in its projects across the country. 

Irvine has an in-house planning and design team, dating back to when the company master planned Irvine Ranch in Orange County in the 1960s. That team comes up with the designs for artwork in its properties and works with a dedicated group of art consultants to source its pieces. The team is also tasked with folding new art installations into planned capital improvements across its portfolio. President Doug Holte said video art displays are being installed at Irvine's assets in San Diego and Irvine, California, and Chicago’s 71 South Wacker next year, and he believes well-curated 3D sculptures can help a building with its tenancy. Holte was in Chicago last week for the public unveiling of “Suspended Light Veils,” an 800-pound, 29-foot-tall sculpture from James Carpenter Design Associates, at 71 South Wacker. Holte said Irvine spent six figures installing “Suspended Light Veils” and the work included removing material from the walls, installing new steel support systems to support the piece, and new lighting to give the sculpture different color textures throughout the day. Irvine looks at expressions of art on a regional basis to determine what matters most to its tenants.

 “In Chicago, there’s a high-minded attitude toward the visual arts, so a fixed object is consistent with that. In some of our California markets, we find that performing arts are more valuable to local customers,” Holte said. Holte said the renewed focus on art in office buildings is partly directed at the younger generation of workers. Millennials expect the workplace to have something visually stimulating as an incentive to come in. Holte compared it to when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ordered remote workers to return to the office. “Workers asked, ‘what do I get for that?’ As landlords we’re trying to provide spaces where people say, ‘I like to come to the office,’” Holte said. Chuck Sudo/Bisnow Riverside Investment & Development installed a 200-foot-long video art display in the lobby of its new office tower at 150 North Riverside. For newer trophy assets, art can make a statement that aligns the asset with the high-profile tenancy it aims to attract. At 150 North Riverside, one of Chicago’s newest trophy office towers, developer Riverside Investment & Development installed an 18-foot-high video art display that runs nearly the entire 200-foot length of the building’s lobby. 

Riverside CEO John O’Donnell said the firm struggled to determine what to do with the wall from a material finishes standpoint when the project’s architect, Jim Goettsch, asked if Riverside would be open to a technology-based solution.  "We didn't decide on the installation until the building was 60% leased. We were focused on building the best building we could, and thought this could add to the uniqueness of the product," O'Donnell said. O’Donnell and Riverside Executive Vice President Tony Scacco toured several installations in New York to find concepts they liked, and hired New Jersey-based design firm McCann Systems and a Chicago digital arts firm, Digital Kitchen, to come up with the form and substance of the wall. O’Donnell said Riverside had one simple qualifier. “We wanted the art installation to be a noncommercial enterprise,” O’Donnell said. Scacco would not say how much 150 North Riverside’s video wall cost — he would only say that it was significant but worthwhile. The display is of a scale that complements the lobby's size, while adding a unique wrinkle to what is an otherwise cavernous lobby.  “We simply wanted to create fortress real estate by enhancing the experience of current and future tenants,” Scacco said. He likened the video display to other amenities like food and beverage, wellness and health, and outdoor space. Each contributes to the value of the building. 

Chuck Sudo/Bisnow A detail shot of 150 North Riverside's video art display. Riverside also used the art wall to connect to Chicago at large, bringing the community inside its building. As the installation took shape, Scacco said Riverside took the idea to 15 local institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Adler Planetarium, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago History Museum, View Chicago, University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which offered feedback on how to curate the digital arts portfolio. O’Donnell said Riverside quickly realized it did not have the resources in house to curate the installation. The Art Institute suggested Riverside hire Yuge Zhou, who holds dual master's degrees in computer science and fine art, to curate the wall. Zhou helped solidify the relationships with cultural institutions and built relationships with 15 individual artists. Currently, 150 North Riverside’s video art display has a collection of 150 unique pieces from sources ranging from linear video playback to collaged still imagery, as well as generative art relying on outside data sources like weather and internet search data to create custom and ever-changing pieces. The featured art on the wall runs a gamut from internationally recognized artists like Jason Salavon to art from SAIC graduates who created a pop art illustration of Chicago. Scacco believes the surest sign of the display's success is the level of feedback Riverside receives on specific pieces from its tenants or seeing custom Instagram feeds directed toward the installation. 

"We've taken that feedback, and it has enhanced our appreciation for creating cultural touchpoints which inspires or motivates," Scacco said. Chuck Sudo/Bisnow Akara Partners commissioned artist Hebru Brantley to create a painting, based on Brantley's "flyboy" series, for Kenect, a multifamily development. Kenect, a multifamily transit-oriented development in Chicago, is also using art as connection. Akara Partners CEO Rajen Shastri commissioned an original work from noted artist Hebru Brantley to grace the lobby. Shastri felt Brantley could bring something unique to Kenect's theme of connecting its tenants to the surrounding neighborhood, and each other, through entertainment and amenities. 

 "Art brings people together," Shatri said. Shastri explained Kenect's mission and theme, and Brantley returned with designs featuring characters from his "Flyboy" series of art and sculpture. The final piece reflects the demographic mix of Kenect's neighborhood while also connecting tenants to the building. Shastri said Akara teams up with local art galleries to bring rotating exhibits and networking events to its other properties, like art and wine soirees and meet-and-greets with artists who have exhibits in nearby galleries. These events and the artwork also serve to bring tenants together and give each building a unique identity. "The art absolutely must complement the architecture, and it's different from asset to asset. Art also must fit the interests of our tenants and demographics. We think a lot about that," Shastri said.

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/commercial-real-estate/how-well-curated-pubic-art-adds-value-attracts-tenants-to-cre-82323?rt=51343?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser

[iugesorbust]

The city of Christchurch is a patchwork of pedestrian shopping areas and public art and empty construction sites. The town is built around the Avon River, and the entire riverbank is a beautiful green park with lots of public sculptures. The historical cathedral was one of the buildings that was split in two by the earthquake, and so Cathedral Square, a central park in the city, has a feeling of incompleteness. But the city is clearly trying very hard to keep Christchurch attractive.

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Their main shopping area is made of metal shipping containers, which actually is a fun looking way to have lots of little pop-up stores. We ate lunch at one of the outdoor seating areas and walked around the brightly colored storefronts. After lunch, our group splintered again, with half of us going to find the Earthquake Museum, and half going to try to catch the mountain gondola outside the city in a town called Lyttleton.

Unfortunately, we found out that the museum was moved too late and it had closed by the time we had arrived at its new location. I’ll be going today, so it worked out. With a few more hours until we were planning to meet up with the rest of our group, we continued to walk around the city.

One of the things that struck me about Christchurch is how clean it is. There’s very little litter, the streets and sidewalks are nearly spotless, and the vast majority of graffiti was street art. I don’t have many pictures, but there are numerous giant murals all over the city. There was very little honking, though construction noises pervaded everywhere.  Additionally, there are no panhandlers or homeless people that we could see. I’m not sure of the politics behind this, but it made walking around pleasant.   In fact, I saw a public bench that had edible plants growing around it, with signs encouraging people to eat them. I don’t think such a thing would ever be built in NYC.

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Our next destination was the “Cardboard Church” a replacement cathedral while the old one is being repaired. It was designed by a Japanese “emergency architect,” and it is a very simple, large A structure with most of its main supports made of large cardboard tubes. It wasn’t very attractive. But there was a boy’s choir practicing hymns, and their voices gave the space an aura of serenity and reverence. Nearby there was a memorial to those that died in the 2011 earthquake, an area of empty chairs of various types, all painted white. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent walking around the downtown, and then we met for dinner.

The following morning, we all met in the hotel lobby at 5:15 sharp with our bags all packed. We were ready to be sent off to Antarctica. Sometime overnight, the hotel’s internet network went down (allegedly caused by malware on a guest’s USB stick?). We had heard rumors that the weather down South was too rough and that we’d be delayed at least a day, but no news had gotten through to us. A shuttle pulled up, and we all started gathering our bags. The driver rushed out and told us there was a 24 hour delay, but that we’d have training at 7:30. We all shrugged and went back to our rooms.

We arrived back at the Antarctic Center at 7:30 for a series of powerpoint presentations and videos that taught us about fire safety, health, proper waste disposal, and the rules for driving light vehicles. The fire officer was entertaining, though he made it seem like fires in McMurdo occur daily. Antarctica is the driest, windiest place in the world, and there’s a lot of flammable material in a tight space in the research stations. Fire doesn’t really care if it’s 100F or -50F, and it always wants to get behind you. The medical officer sent in a video presentation of him talking at his desk in McMurdo. He seemed no-nonsense and glib, like Doctor McCoy from Star Trek. It’s probably not too dissimilar a job. Condoms cannot withstand extreme cold, so don’t keep them in the outer pockets of your parka! Waste disposal is complicated and rigorously eco-friendly, but it will take some getting use to all the very specific and enforced sorting rules. The motor vehicle presentation was a very snazzy government instructional video, with early 90s easy listening jazz and smooth male narrator. It was pretty funny.

Back near the hotel, me and a few of my group-mates had a very lackluster lunch of fish and chips from a hole in the wall across from the hotel, eaten while wandering around the suburbs of Christchurch looking for a spot to sit down (we eventually found a small park).

We journeyed downtown to go to Quake City, a museum devoted to showcasing information about the February 2011 earthquake, and the rescue and repair activities afterwards. We learned that in Maori mythology, Ruaumoko, the god of earthquakes, is still a fetus inside the womb of the mother Earth, Papatuanuku. When he kicks, earthquakes occur on the surface. There are records of large earthquakes from the start of European colonization of Canterbury region, NZ, two hundred years ago . Nearly every ten years, a large earthquake destroys parts of Canterbury. The most recent disasters, the Sept 2010 earthquake and the Feb 2011 earthquakes destroyed 80% of Christchurch’s downtown area. Historic cathedral spires, rose windows, and the historic City Council building all fell down. However, it seems like parts of these buildings fell down in previous earthquakes too. Without belittling the trauma and devastation, why did they keep building tall spires and stained glass windows that would then be destroyed? The museum had a number of testimonies of people who experienced the earthquake first hand. One father and daughter were at a public pool, and the water sloshed like a tsunami around the building. One office worker devised a way to repel down using ropes. A woman in an office building was trapped for five hours in the rubble and lost several fingers.

The efforts of numerous organizations and thousands of people have made the city of Christchurch a pleasant place to live. There has been a huge effort to fill the empty spaces with art. In many ways, it is inspiring to see the resilience and cooperation of the New Zealanders in the face of such a disaster. On the other hand, it should not be optional in these areas to build earthquake-resistant architecture, and I think the fact that some of these historic buildings have been rebuilt multiple times raises the question of whether it’s wise to rebuild things exactly as they were.

Our next stop was the Canterbury Museum, a natural history and history museum housed in a very stately stonework building on the edges of the Botanical Gardens and Christ’s College. Right across the street, there is a very beautiful building which I think is the art center, but there’s quite a lot of signage about Ernest Rutherford and his discovery of the electron. I hadn’t realized it, but he’s a New Zealander.

The Canterbury Museum is very similar to the older exhibits in the NY American Museum of Natural History. Musty stuffed animals, Maori artifacts, and historic Antarctic artifacts were the exhibits that we sought out and enjoyed. There was an exhibit devoted to the moa, a giant bird that looks like a mix between a kiwi and an ostrich that the Maori hunted to extinction. The next hall was split between Maori artifacts and early European colonial artifacts. There was a room that focused on Maori familial lineages, which was interesting just for having hundreds of pictures of Maori women over the years. There was a lot to learn just from the evolution of these women’s names and appearances over the last two centuries, from Maori to Western names and from Maori hairstyles and clothes, to Western dress in the early-mid 1900s and then back to Maori dress.

My favorite exhibit of course was the Antarctic history exhibit. There were old photographs and artifacts of the seal hunters of the late nineteenth century and of the heroic age of exploration. Apparently Scott did an aerial survey of the Ross Ice Shelf in 1904 from a hot air balloon, like our project but 100 years ago. I always have mixed feelings about Heroic-age explorers. They did incredible things and are testaments to human bravery, but their motivations were so nationalistic. The most glaring mistakes they made were because they didn’t listen to other people’s advice. Shackleton was told repeatedly that sailing to the Ross Sea so late in the season would get his ship trapped in ice, and that’s what happened. Scott felt sled-dogs were “unsportsmanlike” so he brought ponies and then when they died and had to be eaten, the sleighs were pulled by them by hand. I don’t know. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Their old-fashioned cold weather gear is entertaining to look at.

That evening we had dinner at the hotel restaurant. We talked about our chances of finding Scott’s corpse in the Ross Ice Shelf’s radar images (none, so stop asking, a human body is way too small to be picked up by ice-penetrating radar). The day ended, and it was unclear if we would be traveling to Antarctica the following morning, or staying in Christchurch for an undetermined amount of time. I was ready either way.

Not Enough Time in Christchurch (but then we got more time, part 2). The city of Christchurch is a patchwork of pedestrian shopping areas and public art and empty construction sites.

[emilysn2019-blog]

Our 2019 Los Angeles visitor’s guide offers tips to plan a vacation, including best things to do, best places to eat in L.A., hotel suggestions, and how to navigate Southern California. LA is one of our favorite cities in the world, and we’ll provide you insider tips to experience both the touristy highlights and hidden gems. (Last updated August 21, 2019.)

Maybe you need convincing that Los Angeles is one of the world’s best cities. After all, L.A. doesn’t exactly have the best reputation among some people. Complaints abound about traffic, smog, and the Hollywood culture. Some people pejoratively refer to Los Angeles as La La Land, thinking that everyone is out of touch or fake.

I prefer to think of Los Angeles as diverse and beautiful–in just about every conceivable way. Frank Lloyd Wright put it best when he stated, “tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” Los Angeles is the ultimate melting pot. A beautiful and sometimes strange amalgamation of different cultures, architecture, geography, and more…

When it comes to architecture, Los Angeles was a blank slate for much of the 20th century. This, coupled with a diverse population and favorable climate led architects to test a variety of styles. As development continued, more designers were drawn to the city, and it became a creative hub. While there are downsides to this (sprawl), for better or worse, Los Angeles is still a creative hub.

It’s also a topographical hub…assuming that’s a thing. Surrounded by mountains on one side, ocean on another side, desert on another side, and…what used to be orange groves on another side (okay, Orange County is obviously more than that now…there’s also Disneyland!), there is natural beauty in virtually every direction. You can surf and ski in the same day, and traverse the arid landscape of the desert the following morning before hiking through the forest that evening.

Then there’s the endless summer of the Los Angeles climate. This makes it a popular place both for locals who enjoy outdoor living, and tourists who flock to Southern California for all of the reasons stated above��but mostly the sunshine (and In-N-Out Burger, probably).

If the prospect of enjoying delicious burgers in sunny weather doesn’t convince you to visit Los Angeles, I’m not entirely sure what will. Let’s get started with out Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles, California…

What’s New in LA for 2019 and Beyond

Given that Los Angeles is a major city, there’s obviously always something new to see or do, whether it be a temporary exhibit at one of LA’s museums, a weekend event, pop-up, or something else entirely. If you’re looking for something to do while you’re in town, check out Discover Los Angeles’ Calendar of Events.

Right now, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is all the rage, and so too is seeking out the many real-world backdrops from the film. The movie was shot on location in Los Angeles, and entire blocks of Hollywood Boulevard (among other places) were transported back in time to 1969 by the filmmakers. Check out this map of locations in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood if you’re a fan of the movie and want to see it ‘in real life.’

The biggest development in traveling to Los Angeles is, quite literally, a boom. This has led to an evolving (read: growing taller and denser) skyline, most notably the OUE Skyspace LA, which is California’s tallest open-air observation attraction. There’s also significant investment in public transportation. For the next couple of years, visitors to Los Angeles will mostly notice this in the form of construction on Metro lines and new stations.

This is all part of the Metro Vision 2028 Plan, which is a comprehensive development approach to projects between now and the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. This includes dozens of infrastructure improvements in a quest to give Angelenos and tourists more public transit options so they don’t have to take the freeway.

Many new museums are also on the horizon. In 2020, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will not open on the Miracle Mile. This is a $400 million project that’s been in development for 8 years, renovating a 1939 L.A. landmark. The architecture is expected to be striking, with a defining spherical structure and 1,500-panel glass dome. In total, the Academy Museum will have 300,000 square feet of public and exhibition space.

Following that in 2021 is the the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art featuring George Lucas’ personal collection of art, which consists of about 10,000 paintings and illustrations. This includes works by Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and R. Crumb, along with Hollywood memorabilia from films such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The planned 275,000-square-foot, $1-billion museum will be located in Downtown’s Exposition Park.

In addition, several new hotels have opened in and around Downtown Los Angeles. Notable names among these include InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, Hotel Indigo Downtown Los Angeles, and Kimpton Everly Hotel Hollywood.

Other hotels on the horizon are Park Hyatt Los Angeles at Oceanwide Plaza, Fairmont Century Plaza, and Hotel Nue Hollywood Hyatt Unbound–along with several other Hyatts at LAX and elsewhere in Los Angeles.

We don’t recommend waiting to visit until any of this debuts, but that’s what’s on the horizon if you’re visiting between now and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics…

When to Visit

The smart-ass answer to this question is whenever. If you’ve ever talk to an Angeleno about California, they are sure to let you know that the weather is usually perfect in Los Angeles. Southern Californians like to compensate for traffic and cost of living shortcomings by referring these problems as the “Sunshine Tax,” which I suppose is a sort of Faustian Bargain for beautiful weather year round.

In reality, it’s not quite as simple as that. Los Angeles does get hot in the summer, and even though “it’s a dry heat” it’s still hot. Perhaps more importantly, summer is tourist season for Southern California, which means higher crowd levels and more expensive hotel costs. If you’re only visiting Los Angeles, this probably is not as big of a deal. Prices don’t spike to the same degree downtown, nor do crowds.

However, it is a bigger problem in the beach cities, to which people flock for summer retreats. In Malibu, Santa Monica, or even places like Newport Beach, you’re going to encounter considerably heavier crowds and significantly higher prices. You’ll also find crippling traffic on Pacific Coast Highway as everyone wants to go for a Sunday drive…every single day of the week. Sure, the weather in the beach cities is picture-perfect in the summer, but it’s more or less perfect whenever.

Then there are places to the east that you might also want to visit. Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park are highly recommended side-trips from Los Angeles, but with temperatures over 100º throughout the summer months, they aren’t worth it in the summer. (If you can tolerate that weather, you’ll find some absolute bargains on hotels in Palm Springs during the summer!)

As with any tourist destination, in addition to the summer months, there are isolated spikes in crowds whenever school is out of session, particularly in California. Thanksgiving and Christmas are popular times, as is Easter, and college spring break season.

In terms of the best times to visit, taking everything into account, I’d recommend September and October or February and March. November through January can also be good (outside of the holidays), particularly in terms of crowds and pricing. The downside to those months is cooler weather. This is also “rainy season” in Los Angeles, but those are most definitely air quotes, as many cities get as much rain in a week as Los Angeles gets in a year.

Transportation

When it comes to transportation, there are two components: getting there and getting around. For most visitors, the gateway to Los Angeles is LAX, one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. Other nearby options include John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, Long Beach Airport, LA/Ontario International Airport (in Ontario), and Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.

To figure out which airport will be the cheapest option, we recommend using ITASoftware, typing in LAX, and selecting all nearby (LAX + SNA, LGB, ONT, and BUR) airports. Sometimes, this will have you flying into one airport and out of another, so be mindful of that.

Unless you’re staying in Orange County or score a random deal elsewhere, you’re almost certainly going to arrive into LAX. It’s the huge, utilitarian airport in Los Angeles. Note that it is not downtown, though. None of these airports are downtown. You get downtown, you’re looking at around a $25-40 Uber ride, depending upon traffic.

Then there’s getting around Los Angeles. In most ‘world cities’, public transportation suffices to explore the city. This is not the case in Los Angeles. Due to the way Los Angeles’ population boomed and sprawled without a sufficient master plan, it is notorious for terrible traffic. To compound matters, the city’s public transportation has not kept up with population growth and visitation.

While there are a lot of persistent, negative myths about Los Angeles, the terrible traffic is no myth. There’s no sugar-coating how awful the gridlock is in and around Los Angeles, and the only real “solution” is to do most of your driving during off-hour windows, which are basically between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and after 8 p.m.

One thing about Los Angeles transportation that is a myth is that public transportation is useless. While it’s definitely true that public transportation is not viable as a comprehensive option, it can be quite useful. In recent years, the expansion of the LA Metro has made it easier to get from downtown to some of the beaches (Santa Monica or Long Beach), and you can also get to North Hollywood and beyond.

The LA Metro is far from a comprehensive solution, but it can be leveraged to get some places, and avoid costly Uber fares or parking in some scenarios. It can also be particularly helpful if you’re staying outside of Los Angeles but want to visit the city for a day. We like using the Metrolink from Orange County, particularly the $10 unlimited weekend pass.

With that said, you have to recognize the limitations of public transportation in and around Los Angeles. If you’re expecting to arrive at LAX and never sit in a car, you are going to be disappointed. It is essential to supplement public transportation with either renting a car or relying on ride-sharing services like Uber or Lyft. Each of those options has its downsides.

The downside with renting a car is potentially paying for parking at your hotel (and all over the city) and being stuck driving in traffic scenarios that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. If you’re not used to traffic in a major city, driving in Los Angeles may amount to unnecessary stress on what should be a relaxing vacation in Los Angeles.

If you feel comfortable driving in L.A. traffic, we’d recommend renting a car. In that case, you should choose hotels or vacation home rental around this scenario.

A minority of Los Angeles hotels offer free parking–usually those in locations where space is not at a premium. Meanwhile, others charge over $40/night for it. This is a pretty big swing in pricing, so keep parking costs in mind. (Likewise, some Airbnb and other rentals include spots or are in locations with free street parking.)

Then there are ride-sharing services. The downside to this is the potential cost. Even if you use online calculators to determine what your Uber fares might be, those numbers have the potential to be unreliable because traffic and surge pricing could throw a monkey wrench into things.

The upside to Uber or Lyft is that they’re abundant in and around Los Angeles, and hassle-free. If you’re uncomfortable driving yourself around the city, this is the best option. You can even avoid that pricey LAX ride cost by using a shuttle service, such as SuperShuttle. (They’re awful, but hey, at least the price is right!) Public transit is also an option from LAX, but it’s not convenient to most locations.

Oh, and as a courtesy to the locals, please don’t expect your friends and relatives to be your personal chauffeur. (Especially if your goal is to get from Orange County to North Hollywood at 4 p.m. on a weekday. Those places are like 3 hours apart at that time of day; IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW CLOSE THEY LOOK ON THE MAP, MOM.)

Things to Do in Los Angeles

There are thousands of things to do in Los Angeles, and listing them all is well beyond the scope of this post. If that’s what you’re looking for, we highly recommend downloading our free eBook, 101 Things to Do in Southern California. Well over half the things on that list are in Los Angeles, with additional suggestions for the Beach Cities, San Fernando Valley, and even San Diego.

If you’re looking for ideas specific to L.A., check out our Top 10 Things to Do in Los Angeles post. Unlike a lot of “best things in L.A.” lists, this is exclusively points of interest and attractions within the Los Angeles city limits. Meaning you’re not going to find Disneyland (Anaheim) or Santa Monica Pier on the list. Not that there’s anything wrong with either…they’re both just a decently long drive from Los Angeles.

We are also highlighting our favorite attractions and points of interest via individual posts, which you can find by browsing our posts about Los Angeles. Each of those offers our review of the point of interest, photos showing what to expect, and other tips for making the most of your experience. (Mostly, that means when to visit to avoid crowds, where to park, and good nearby dining options. I like to eat. A lot.)

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of the possibilities, we have put together an index with numerous Los Angeles & Southern California Itineraries that take the planning work out of the equation. Here are some of the best ones:

1-Day Los Angeles Highlights Itinerary

2-Day Los Angeles Highlights Itinerary

1-Day Downtown Los Angeles Walking Itinerary

1-Day Hollywood Itinerary

1-Day Westside Itinerary

There are also a lot of totally free things to do in Los Angeles, with the beaches and recreation below being prime examples. Our other top free picks are the Getty Center, the Broad, and Griffith Observatory. That’s just a small sampling, though. You could spend several days doing only free things in L.A.

If you’re building an itinerary of largely paid activities, we recommend reading about the Go Los Angeles Card. It definitely is not for everyone, but if you’re planning on doing theme parks, studio tours, or other costly experiences, you can leverage one of these cards to save some money.

Beyond that, we want to highlight a few broad categories of things to do here…

Beaches – Los Angeles County has 75 miles of coastline that include world-famous beaches in Malibu, Santa Monica, and Venice. You cannot visit Los Angeles without making a trip to the beach. Even if swimming is not for you (which is fine–very few Californians actually swim at the beach), these beaches are popular draws.

In Malibu, you have some of the most beautiful, photogenic coastline in the world. My personal favorite is El Matador State Beach, which I call the “Megastar of Malibu.” This beach features stunning rock formations, tide pools, hidden sea caves, arch rocks, and more, all of which makes El Matador the most naturally beautiful beach in the area.

If you head north or south out of Los Angeles County, you’ll find more serene options in terms of beaches. Santa Barbara is a favorite to the north, but I’m partial to Laguna Beach to the south. Check out our Top 10 Beaches in Laguna, California list for my top picks there.

Closer to Los Angeles is the affluent community of Newport Beach, which is nice, too. I would not bother with the beaches between Venice and Newport–none offer anything that the aforementioned beaches don’t do better; you’re just wasting time with the commute.

Recreation – With weather like this, it should be no surprise that Angelenos spend a lot of time outdoors. Thankfully, Southern California is quite conducive to outdoor living. Of course, there’s the above-mentioned coastline and beaches. This is great not just for sunbathing, but also walking, surfing, skateboarding, and biking.

Thanks to Los Angeles’ topography, there are also some great hiking trails, right inside the city! Skip Runyon Canyon, which is the one hike everyone visiting Los Angeles hears about (and consequently, everyone does) and opt for the miles of footpaths in Griffith Park. They’re also busy, but not as bad. For visitors, the most iconic hikes in Los Angeles are those that offer an up-close perspective of the Hollywood sign.

I’m partial to starting at Griffith Observatory’s parking area a few hours before sunset, hiking out to the Hollywood sign from there, and then returning just in time to catch sunset and dusk fall over the skyline from the Observatory itself. Consult our Tips for Hiking to the Hollywood Sign for step-by-step instructions, and alternative routes.

If that’s not enough, places like Joshua Tree National Park are easily accessible by car during a day trip. While there are several National Parks in California, Joshua Tree is the closest to Los Angeles–and well worth a visit, in my opinion.

Museums – There are a lot of museums in Los Angeles. There are the mainstays, like the plethora of art museums, plus the California Science Center and Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. Los Angeles being a cultural capital with a diverse population, there are also more focused museums, like the Japanese American National Museum and the Museum of Tolerance.

Then…there are the ‘Museums of the Weird.’ Places that stretch the meaning of the word “museum,” like the Museum of Ice Cream and the Museum of Death. The former has turned into a place to be seen thanks to a celebrity-driven marketing campaign, so good luck getting tickets. The latter is incredibly morbid and seems to thrive on shock value (do not even consider taking kids there).

All things considered, Los Angeles has some of the best museums in the world. I always recommend the Getty Center to visitors, and I’m also a big fan of the Getty Villa. The Natural History Museum of LA County is great for dinosaur fans (which should be everyone), and the Broad features beautiful design and free admission. Other museums can be great options, depending upon your interests. These include the ones focused on specific cultures, as well as places like the Petersen Automotive Museum.

Hollywood – In this case, I’m not referring to the geographical location, but rather, the entertainment industry. While most tourists flock to the Hollywood Boulevard to see the Walk of Fame and take selfies with aggressive versions of Mikey Moose and Spider-Dude, I’d recommend three alternatives to the go-to tourist traps.

First, see a movie at an iconic Hollywood theater. If you look past the shenanigans out fron, the TCL Chinese Theater is a really cool place to watch a movie. Same goes for the Egyptian Theater (if you’re noticing a trend, both of these were originally built by Sid Grauman). If you’re a cine-file looking for an arthouse experience, check out New Beverly Cinema, owned by Quentin Tarantino, or the outdoor Cinespia. Everyone in L.A. has their personal favorite, and mine is the ArcLight; specifically the famed Cinerama Dome, which makes the most of its 70mm projection and huge curved screen.

Second, do a studio tour. Most of these are not in Los Angeles, but they’re close enough. These include Universal Studios Hollywood‘s Studio Tour, the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, Sony Pictures Studio Tour, and Paramount Pictures Studio Tour.

For visitors with limited time, I’m a big fan of Universal Studios Hollywood because it offers the Studio Tour, plus traditional theme park attractions like the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You kill two birds with one stone this way. The Warner Bros. Studio Tour is also really popular, and we highly recommend it. Both of these are slickly produced tours meant to churn through a lot of guests. For a more behind the scenes tour, the Sony Pictures Studio Tour is your best option.

Finally, attend a television show taping. I’d recommend something that airs live. Even if you’re the head of the Sheldon Cooper Fan Club (I’m sorry for you), avoid sitcoms. For the same reasons you probably wouldn’t want to tour a hot dog production factory, you don’t want to do this. Sitcom tapings are long and drawn out, with a lot of reshoots. It becomes tedious after about hour 4.

Theme Parks – Southern California is arguably the theme park capital of the world, being home to the world’s most recognizable theme park, Disneyland, and the world’s first theme park, Knott’s Berry Farm. Despite being the epicenter of fun (feel free to use that as a tag line), there actually is not a single noteworthy theme or amusement park in Los Angeles.

Disneyland and Disney California Adventure are in Anaheim, Knott’s Berry Farm is in Buena Park, and Six Flags Magic Mountain is in Valencia. Farther away still are Legoland and SeaWorld, both of which are in the San Diego area. Universal Studios Hollywood is the only one that’s almost in Los Angeles, and even that is in the San Fernando Valley.

Still, they’re all easy-enough to access from L.A., and should be considered as things to do. Unless you’re a huge theme parks fan, I’d caution against going to too many of these. There are a lot of great things to do in and around Los Angeles, and theme parks can eat a ton of your time–and I offer these words of caution as someone who is a huge Disneyland fan. (I’ve made that mistake on trips back when we didn’t live in California.)

Shopping –  I’m out of my element here. Most of my shopping is done via the internet, or as I am begrudgingly dragged to the local mall. The extent of my shopping in Los Angeles is usually at the various farmer’s markets and specialty grocery stores and eclectic shops in places like Little Tokyo. Other “cool” places to shop (that are more about the place than the actual shopping) are Amoeba Records in Hollywood and the Last Bookstore downtown.

With that said, I realize a lot of people visit Los Angeles to shop. Everyone knows about places like the Miracle Mile, but tony neighborhoods and various promenades also feature high-end boutiques popular with trendsetters and fashionistas. Rather than relying on my ill-informed rambling to choose shopping spots in Los Angeles, check out Vogue’s L.A. Shopping Guide.

Beyond this, a lot of what is happening in Los Angeles depends upon the season, or even the week. For some seasonal recommendations, we like CurbedLA’s Things to Do in Los Angeles Right Now. If you want to know what’s happening in L.A. during your visit, consult the wealth of Los Angeles-centric Twitter accounts.

Finally, there’s our favorite category of things to do: eating. This is so crucial to your experience in Los Angeles that we’ll highlight it with its own section…

Where to Stay in L.A.

Even though we’ve approached experiencing Los Angeles from the perspective of tourists, we are not actually tourists in the city��meaning that we don’t need hotel rooms. As such, this is definitely a knowledge gap for us. It’s one we are working on rectifying in the near future, and we have a couple of hotel and Airbnb stays already booked for the fall, once the off-season starts. (Check back for an update then.)

With that said, there are a number of variables to consider when choosing a hotel in or around Los Angeles. First and foremost, is this a Los Angeles-centric trip or are you simply planning on spending time in the city as part of a larger Southern California vacation, or a California road trip? Let’s address each of the most common scenarios…

Los Angeles Trip – We’ll start with this first, as it’s more or less the operating assumption of this whole guide that you’re spending at least a few days in Los Angeles. In this case, I’d recommend staying at a hotel that is in or north of Downtown Los Angeles, in between the 5 and the 405. Santa Monica might be attractive, but it’s inconvenient unless you’re spending a lot of time at the beach (in which case, see the section below).

Personally, I prefer staying on the north side of the city, and think this will be the best option for most visitors. I think this area provides the easiest access to popular points of interest (especially those you might want to hit early in the morning, like Universal Studios, Hollywood Boulevard, Griffith Observatory, or the Getty Center) as well as some of the best nightlife. This also puts you near the best recreational activities in the

If this is a special trip or you have money to burn, consider one of Los Angeles’ historic hotels, or ones with a unique legacy. The kind of places where celebrities have taken up residence or where Hunter S. Thompson has gotten into mischief. Among these are the Beverly Wilshire, the Beverly Hills Hotel and Bungalows, Chateau Marmont, the Hollywood Roosevelt, Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Hotel Normandie, Palihouse Santa Monica, the Georgian Hotel, or the Beverly Hilton. We’ve stayed at exactly zero of these, but have visited several, and they are nothing short of posh.

By contrast, our stays in Los Angeles to date have all been low budget hotels in Hollywood, and our motivation for staying at those places was always having a cheap place to crash to rope drop Universal Studios Hollywood, or to get up early and hike around Griffith Park. We like that area, but would not recommend any of the hotels at which we’ve stayed.

As with all locations, we’re big fans of using Airbnb for a stay in Los Angeles. Obviously, the lower price is the biggest selling point of Airbnb. We’ve had some fun experiences staying at unique Airbnb locations throughout world and really cannot recommend it highly enough. You can use my sign-up link for a free credit your first time using Airbnb!

When it comes to Los Angeles, we like Airbnb because it offers the chance to stay in nice residential neighborhoods where there simply are not many hotels–or hotels are otherwise ritzy and expensive. Los Feliz, Hollywood Hills, and Beverly Hills are all good picks in this regard. You’ll pay a bit more for these locations than you would other parts of Los Angeles, but they’ll still cost considerably less than a hotel.

Beach or Disneyland Vacation – In this scenario, you’re primarily focused on the Beach Cities or Disneyland, and just want to spend a day or two exploring Los Angeles. In this case, stick to your hotel in Orange County and just drive to Los Angeles and back. Traffic aside, this is pretty simple. Be mindful that some of these hotels will be 1-2 hours from Los Angeles, in moderate traffic. During rush hour, your commute time could be even worse.

Read our Laguna Beach Vacation Planning Guide for tips and tricks for our top pick in Orange County. Laguna Beach is absolutely gorgeous, and has a charming seaside vibe. That guide covers everything from hotels to things to do to where to eat. (It’s a lot like this post, except for Laguna.)

Southern California Vacation – In this scenario, you’re bouncing around a bunch of spots in Southern California, and are allocating at least 3 days to Los Angeles. If you’re doing this and don’t mind changing hotels once–which is what we recommend–we’d suggest doing (at least) a split stay, having a hotel in San Diego/Orange County/Anaheim for the Disneyland, beach, and whatever else portion of your trip, and then a separate hotel in Los Angeles for that leg of the trip.

Given that you’re looking at ~3 hours per day in traffic (x3) and all of the stress that entails, we think it makes sense to change hotels halfway through your trip to actually stay in Los Angeles. That makes it easier to get things done, and less time in traffic is always a plus.

California Road Trip – In this scenario, you’re doing a road trip down/up the state (let’s say flying into San Diego and flying out of San Francisco with a one-way car rental). So long as you don’t mind frequently changing hotels, we’d recommend spending at least a night in L.A. no matter how much time you plan on seeing the city. It’ll make your time spent in the city more productive, and you’re going to be passing through Los Angeles at some point, anyway.

Where to Eat in L.A.

One of the greatest upsides to the rich diversity of Los Angeles is the culinary scene. Any type of cuisine you can imagine is available in L.A., and at a range of prices. While we consider ourselves foodies, keeping tabs on the ever-changing Los Angeles restaurant scene is a colossal undertaking well beyond the scope of this blog. We do have a series of posts highlighting some of our favorite things we’ve eaten recently in Los Angeles, but these are far from comprehensive:

Great Food We’ve Eaten in Los Angeles (Part 1)

Great Food We’ve Eaten in Los Angeles (Part 2)

We’ll also recommend a few resources to help you make your L.A. dining decisions…

The sites we usually consult are Eater L.A. and the Infatuation L.A., and by consult, I mean that I see one of their tweets about a trendy new spot, and we head there. In terms of specific resources, I like their regularly-updated “Hottest Cheap Eats in Los Angeles” map and Infatuation’s Los Angeles posts.

As mentioned above, Los Angeles has a wealth of restaurant choices for every budget, but I skew towards preferring (and recommending) options on the lower end of the spectrum. There are a lot of exceptional ‘fast casual’ options, from street vendors to hole-in-the-wall joints that offer food that will blow you away.

In my opinion, a big part of the fine dining scene is about status. Places where people go to see and be seen. To be sure, there are some truly amazing high end restaurants in Los Angeles, but it can also be a pretty superficial experience. That, coupled with the fact that inexpensive but high-quality, inventive options are available at the cheaper price ranges leads me to recommend sticking with those.

If you do decide that you want something fancy for a date-night (or because you’re hoping to spot Nicolas Cage–can’t say I blame you, he’s a real-life national treasure!), a good resource is Eater L.A.’s Hypothetical Los Angeles Michelin Guide.

If you’ve never been to Southern California, the only specific restaurant I consider a must-do is In-N-Out Burger. This is a California institution, and is deeply ingrained in the culture. From their secret menu to their distinctly California style, In-N-Out Burger is beloved by locals and tourists alike. It may not be the best meal you’ll have in Los Angeles, but it’s the most iconic.

Everything else beyond that is a matter of personal preference. We really like eating in Little Tokyo, K-Town, Chinatown, and Sawtelle/Little Osaka. Speaking of these neighborhoods…

Neighborhoods to Visit

Los Angeles is like New York City in the sense that certain neighborhoods have reputations that precede them. Places like West Hollywood and Beverly Hills need no introduction, but other neighborhoods are not quite as well known outside of Southern California.

In the case of these places, we recommend visiting even without a particular agenda or point of interest you want to see. All of our favorite neighborhoods are worth simply wandering to get a better flavor of the local life and culture. Oh, and you can certainly get a flavor of the cuisine of each, too…

Koreatown – K-Town is usually the place we go to eat after spending some time doing things on Museum Row. Koreatown has some of the best food in all of Los Angeles. Whether you’re looking for great Korean BBQ or traditional fare, Koreatown has it all.

It’s also near DLTA, convenient to public transportation, and is a pleasant place to walk. There are probably other things to do in K-Town aside from stuffing your face, but we are always in such a food coma upon stumbling out of the restaurants that the rest is pretty much a blur.

Chinatown – I’ll spare you the famous, cliched quote from the movie of the same name. The upside to Chinatown is that it’s really convenient to Union Station, making it an easy place to grab a meal when arriving into, or departing from, downtown. The neon-tinted vibe here is cool at night, and the food in Far East Plaza is surprisingly good.

The downside is that proximity to Dodger Stadium and busy freeways take their toll. Looking for a cheap gas station here? Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

Little Tokyo – If you’re visiting DTLA, Little Tokyo is a must. The outdoor Japanese Village Plaza has some interesting shopping (who does not need a life-sized Totoro plush?!) and some excellent restaurants. Kula Revolving Sushi Bar is an inexpensive, delicious, unique, and approachable place for sushi that I highly recommend. The options in the Plaza for dessert after your meal are pretty much endless. Also nearby are a number of great ramen shops, including Daikokuya, which always has a line. (Go to one of their other locations instead.)

This is also where you’ll find the Japanese American National Museum, the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and nearby is the Arts District. On any list of Los Angeles’ Most Instrammable Walls (sadly, there are multiple such lists), the Arts District is a popular location. Great news if you want the same ‘unique’ photo as everyone else.

Sawtelle – If you weren’t already convinced Los Angeles is the greatest, how about this fact: it has two ‘Little’ Japans: Little Tokyo and Little Osaka. Official (or is it unofficial?) name aside, most people just call is Sawtelle, because that’s the road that runs through this enclave. Truthfully, I don’t know what there is to “do” in Little Osaka aside from eating and shopping.

This is a common stop for us because it’s conveniently located on the 405, and has some of the best restaurants in all of Los Angeles. In fact, I’d say this is the most restaurant-dense area in L.A. Some seriously good, and mostly inexpensive, dining. Check out my Tsujita v. Daikokuya post for my head-to-head on the two best ramen shops on Sawtelle.

Silver Lake/Echo Park/Los Feliz – Technically, all separate neighborhoods, but they more or less blur together. The former two have an upstart hipster vibe as the beneficiaries of a lot of recent urban renewal. The result of this is a lot of trendy places to eat. That can be a mixed bag, as an unnecessary layer of smugness sometimes enters the fray–but not always. Los Feliz is an older, residential neighborhood.

If I could live anywhere in Los Angeles, Los Feliz would be it. We often detour through its quiet streets on our way up to Griffith Observatory; I absolutely love the vibe and charm of this area. There’s not necessarily much to do in Los Feliz, but it’s a really lovely area, and if you enjoy wandering around neighborhoods (gosh, we sound so old), it’s a good choice.

Santa Monica/Venice – These adjacent cities are the closest beach cities to Los Angeles, and both are less about natural beauty and more about artificial beauty. (In more ways than one!) The big draw here is the iconic Santa Monica Pier, which contains a seaside amusement park. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Santa Monica’s stretch of coast (or the pier), but there’s certainly something to be said for a sunset ride on the Ferris Wheel overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A short walk from the beach is Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, which consists of three open-air, car-free blocks of shopping and dining.

Continuing south, there’s Venice Beach. This eclectic community of counterculture and artists. Venice is a bit rougher around the edges than Malibu or Santa Monica, but it shouldn’t be overlooked or avoided. The most well-known aspects of Venice are probably Muscle Beach (where Arnold Schwarzenegger famously pumped iron) and the Ocean Walk. If you’re a bit more…sheltered…these places may not appeal to you. In that case, head inland a bit towards the Venice Canal Historic District, which is modeled after the other Venice.

I think that’s as good of a place as any to stop this. We’re already at ~6,000 words, and I feel we’re only scratching the surface. We plan on updating and refining this Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles as readers ask questions and we have additional experiences. For now, hopefully it’s a good jumping off point!

Any Questions?

If you’re planning a trip to Los Angeles and still have unanswered questions or want personalized planning advice based upon your specific interests, needs, desires, and that sort of thing, your best option is leaving a question in the comments below. While I cannot promise to have advice on everything (see the hotels section above), I’ll do my best. 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101 Things to Do in Southern California

The eBook is 51 pages long, featuring 75 photos, and (obviously) 101 things to do in Southern California. If you want a copy of this totally free 101 Things to Do in Southern California eBook, all you need to do is subscribe to our newsletter and you will receive a link to download the eBook.

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The post Ultimate Los Angeles City Guide appeared first on Travel Caffeine.

[artstartart]

Artist Spotlight: Anna Korol

Get to know one of our University of Illinois artists from the July 2019 Sale on ArtStartArt.

To get us started, share more about yourself and your artwork.

Hi! My name is Anna Korol and I am a senior pursuing a BFA in Graphic Design and a minor in Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since I am a naturally shy person, art has been a way for me to express myself when words could not. I realized that with becoming vulnerable through my art, it could also become an outlet and source of inspiration for others going through their own struggles. Self-identity and growth have always been underlying themes in my work that I find myself constantly going back to. Through this exploration, I hope to illustrate the complicated path of finding yourself in a world that oftentimes pushes against it. With that in my mind, I strive to make work that can create a positive impact on others, even if it is as small as putting a smile on someone’s face as they scroll through their feed on social media.

Tell us about your first experience creating.

I have been drawing ever since I could scribble on walls. My childhood was filled with fond memories of making art. From drawing my own fashion collections as a kid to painting landscapes or portraits, crafting a DIY project with my dad or making mixed media collages - I have always been drawn to exploring art making as an outlet in a variety of forms.

What has been your favorite part of art school so far?

The best part of school has hands down been the friendships and connections I have been able to form with my peers and professors. I am always really excited to be surrounded by so many talented and passionate young artists and designers - they continually push me to think critically, expose me to dig deeper into topics I may not be familiar with and inspire me to put forth my best work. Seeing what my close friends and peers create makes me so hopeful and proud of what our generation will achieve! Art school is also one of the only times that students really get to experiment and pursue projects that they are genuinely interested in - I have definitely seen myself grow immensely as an artist, designer and critical thinker just in these past few years. I am looking forward to what new creative projects my senior year of college will bring!

What are you currently exploring in your work?

Last year, I challenged myself to create a doodle a day and documented the progress daily on my Instagram (@annakorolart). With 365 completed pieces and a self-published book, I pushed myself to explore new themes, styles and mediums. This daily exercise truly taught me a new type of self-discipline and helped me improve my skills in order to further develop my own personal style. Along the way, I became interested in animation. I am currently trying to include more storytelling through animation in my work and hope to continue exploring and pushing my limits. I also love the satisfaction of teaching myself something new!

What excites you about ArtStartArt?

As a student, it is difficult to find ways to put yourself out there and get your work noticed. ArtStartArt is doing a wonderful job in not only providing the opportunity to connect students to buyers but also in connecting students to each other. I am excited to gain this new exposure for my work and to connect with art students across the nation. It is so important to empower young artists and believe in them and their work - it truly makes such a difference and I am excited to be part of a community that does exactly that! 

What’s your favorite spot on campus and what do you like to do there?

On a beautiful sunny day, the Quad is my favorite spot to be! When it is nice out, you can find students relaxing on the grass before or after class, playing sports, hanging in hammocks or walking their dogs. I love sitting with my friends and taking in the sun while sketching or just enjoying the care-free atmosphere of everyone being outside!

Who, or what, is currently inspiring you?

After coming back from spending a semester abroad, I am filled with all sorts of inspiration from being exposed to new cultures, lifestyles, architecture, art and museums. Specifically, am most inspired from studying and living in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I picked up on the minimalistic and sustainable Danish lifestyle and became very interested in Scandinavian design. However, I also have gained inspiration from local artists and designers, the architecture in some of the world’s oldest structures, in the rich design history embedded throughout Europe and from the new friendships gained abroad. I am eager to bring this fresh perspective and inspiration to my work!

What plans do you have for the future of your art?

As of right now, I hope to continue exploring new ways of creating and pushing my work. In the future, however, I dream of creating illustrations for children’s books, magazines or other publications. Most importantly, I hope to leave a positive impact on others. As an artist, the greatest satisfaction is hearing someone say they can relate to my work or that they really needed to hear something they found in one of my illustrations. This is truly the best feeling and what constantly keeps me creating. If I can do what I love while still somehow helping others - I know I have found true success!

Rapid fire questions for Anna:

Next place you’d like to travel: France

Go-to karaoke song: Dancing Queen - ABBA

Guilty pleasure: Any and all types of desserts!!

Last album you listened to: How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence + The Machine

Best piece of advice you’ve ever received: Don’t be afraid of or upset with failure. It is what you learn from the most difficult times that will pave the way for the great ones..

Behind the Scenes with Anna:

We asked Anna to share some images that encapsulated the creative process.

VIEW ALL OF ANNA’S WORK CURRENTLY FOR SALE.

[yegarts]

Mission: Mural Rescue – Conserving 50 Years of Edmonton Public Art

This is the first installment of a multi-year project which will be documented on the YEGArts blog

(Buckets of equipment)

On a freezing afternoon in February, the Edmonton Arts Council Conservation lab, tucked in the corner of a west-end industrial park, looks like Command HQ for a complex recovery  operation. Rubbermaid tubs full of equipment – spray bottles, brushes, knives, tissue paper – are neatly stacked next to plastic sheeting cut in complex shapes, and protective apparel. Public Art Conservator Andrea Bowes is busily diluting odiferous bottles of Lee Valley Codfish glue, while Conservation Director David Turnbull scans his workplan for what could be the most complex project ever undertaken by his department.

Their mission is to remove, restore, and reinstall a 50-year-old, 1600 square foot, 10,000lb mural. The untitled artwork, created by Alberta artist Norman Yates in 1967, is painted directly on a semi-loadbearing wall in the Stanley A. Milner Library Circulation Department on the main floor. The location places the artwork directly in the path of the extensive renovations which will reshape and transform the building, so the team is working against the clock to remove the art.

(Mural section)

“This is the only known surviving artwork in Edmonton’s Public Art Collection commissioned for Canada’s Centennial, so I feel we’re preserving an important part of Edmonton’s art history,” says David. “Norman Yates was an important artist in the city. He founded the graduate program in the University of Alberta’s Department of Fine Arts, mentored generations of artists, and before he died in 2014, also kept up a thriving art practice.”

Born in Calgary in 1923, Yates studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design following service during World War II with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Following graduation, he taught at the college for three years before accepting a post at the University of Alberta in 1954 where he taught for 33 years.

The mural under conservation is one of Yates’s “landspaces” a technique he devised for painting sprawling, almost three-dimensional paintings of the Canadian landscape. Students and visitors to the University of Alberta campus are very familiar with one of his largest works, North and West on the north wall of the Education Building on the U of A campus. The Centennial artwork in hues of green and blue, is a smaller hidden treasure.

(Back of the mural)

“A large part of conservation is planning,” remarks David. “This is a hugely complex project. The mural is painted on plaster that was applied directly onto a concrete wall; there is a 2-foot gap between the back of the mural and cinder block wall so there is little room for maneuvering behind the structure; the entire mural must be cut and moved in sections while preserving the inch or so of plaster it’s painted on. In addition, the work is physical, uncomfortable, and hot. So, success is not just about what are we going to do, but how are we going to do it?”

The first step is preservation of the artwork surface. David and team researched different methods of mural restoration and removal, and settled on a version of the Italian stacco a massello method. “…it was developed in Italy for removing frescoes. You take canvas and a lot of adhesive. Essentially you glue the fabric to the face of the painting and then you bash away the backside and the material holds the front and you are literally the art component. But you destroy the architecture; the art would be put on another support and reinstalled somewhere else.”

“What we’re doing with the Centennial Mural is, to quote M*A*S*H, a bit like delicate meatball surgery – we’re stabilizing then evacuating so we can do the real surgery later.”

To preserve the Yates mural, the team spent a week facing the artwork with a layer of Japanese tissue paper and the thinned-out fish glue. “We cut the tissue in 1 foot squares,” explains public art conservator Andrea Bowes. “We then placed one piece of paper on the mural surface, painted it with water and then cross-grained a second layer over the first with glue. As we go along we also overlapped the edges to give more strength. That way, if some of the paint gets dislodged when we remove the mural, the tissue will hold it in place. We are using the Japanese tissue because it has long strands which make it incredibly strong despite its lightness.” The team can then tease off the tissue facing with water and paintbrushes.

Getting the mural from Edmonton’s downtown to west end is the next challenge. Painted on plaster applied over a cement wall, the mural is incredibly heavy. There’s no room for a crane or large team of workers, so the three conservation experts must remove it in sections. “Andrea calculated that a 4X8 section of the mural and wall will weigh about 2000 lbs,” says David. “With removing the excess concrete and metal mesh that’s behind the artwork, we hope to cut down that weight quite a bit, but it’s still going to be substantial. So, we’ll have to cut out sections in manageable sizes. There’s going to be a lot of grunting and groaning!”

Cutting the mural into a grid would make removal easier but the conservation team is going to let the artwork itself dictate the cut lines. “There are natural lines where there are colour shifts and within the pattern itself so if we follow them as much as we can and cut into the natural lines, we can limit the amount of restoration work we may have to do later.”

(template detail with Norman Yates signature)

The team traced the artwork shapes and patterns onto thick plastic sheets which have been used to make plywood formwork in the shape of each section and then lined with foam. “We’ll place the forms on the face of the mural with the foam facing inward so the paint is protected. Then we’ll sandwich the mural with lumber from the back so as the old supports are removed, it doesn’t just fold and crumble. The last step is to pull the section out, lie it face down, and high fives all around!”  

(The team has about 2 feet of space to work in behind the mural)

Complimented on the brilliance of the plan, David cautions; “It’s all theoretical, we’ll have to go through a few sections to make sure this is feasible and if not, change direction on the fly! It’s going to be hot and uncomfortable work - there isn’t a lot of air movement and a lot of dust, so we’ve brought in an air handling unit. This is really the same principle as excavating a dinosaur skeleton; how they stabilize the bones, cover them in plaster and undercut, then dig out from underneath.”

(First section removed successfully)

The test piece is successful, so the team will continue with the plan. Once the mural is removed like a giant jigsaw, it will be transported to the lab where the painstaking work begins. “First we’ll remove any residual substrate so we’re left with just the plaster which is about an inch thick. Then we’ll attach the sections to a lightweight backing like an aluminum honeycomb – something with a lot of dimensional stability and strength. After that we’ll tease off the tissue paper facing and repair and restore the surface. The last step will be to engineer a hanging system and a way to reassemble the artwork with the least amount of onsite restoration.”

The entire process will take about three years with the intent that when the construction crew is completing final fit-up for the Milner Library, the conservation team will be able to install the mural in its new home.

Asked what he believes the entire journey will entail, David shrugs and grins. “A lot of adapting on the fly, changing plans, and figuring out what’s going to work and not work for the sake of the artwork. There are so many unknowns that you just have to deal with it as you go... and a lot of chiropractic visits!”

[dracolord1208]

Unexpected Reunions

Dracolord1208

AO3

Day 2: Modern AU

Summary:

Satya was at a complete loss. Her world had entirely changed within 5 minutes. The man standing before her had no business being in her office.

Tags:

Modern Era

Alternate Universe

Vacation

Romance

Angst

Character Death

Grief/Mourning

Satya was at a complete loss. Her world had entirely changed within 5 minutes. The man standing before her had no business being in her office.

When Satya was a little girl, she was given a full ride by Vishkar to go all the way through elementary school to university. As she went through school, she found that Vishkar’s guidelines would require her to live a very academic life. Vishkar had rules on everything from her grades to how she spent her spare time. During this time she was not to fall beneath a B+ in a single class, she was too spend a substantial portion of her days on community service, and she was to have no romantic connections. Vishkar valued efficiency more than anything, and any form of romantic relationships were seen to be a distraction until an employee had raised high enough in the organization where it would be appropriate.

Despite this during this time Satya thrived. The rules acted as guidelines that would give her a sense of order throughout her youth. Satya had performed flawlessly during school; she graduated from her American college at the top of her class majoring in architecture. Her community service was known throughout Vishkar due to her landing a major contract with Rio to bring stability to the favelas. She had worked with local leaders to find the optimal deal to restore peace to Rio.

Satya was given the nickname Symmetra due to her legendary skill in finding perfect symmetry in her blueprints with no need for measurements. Symmetra’s designs were well known where her measurements would be exactly what the future inhabitants would require no matter the use.

Symmetra had done so well with her scholarship that her position at Vishkar was guaranteed. She had even done so that Vishkar gave an all expense trip to Sydney, Australia for three weeks during the Christmas holiday.

Symmetra spent a week preparing for her journey. She planned her itinerary down to the minute; she decided that she would she all that Sydney had to offer.

What she did not know was that Sydney had different plans for her.

When Satya arrived in Sydney, she checked into her hotel and decided to head to the beach to start the day. She put on her blue swimsuit and her white cover up. She headed over to the beach with a towel, a book, and her wide brim hat.

When she got to the beach, she began to set up her towel, and she started to read her book. As she began to read her book she did not notice the footsteps heading her direction.

“I forgot my number....can I borrow yours?”

Symmetra lowered her book and looked up; she was greeted with the sight of a tall gentleman in swim trunks. His hair was matted down with water from swimming. His flip flops seemed to be covered in wet sand.

“You forgot your phone number? How would having my phone number help you figure out yours?”

“Well, Shelia is a turn of phrase you know? A conversation starter. See we’re talking now.”

Symmetra just stared back at the man. She did not know why this person was talking to her. “So what do you need?”

“I was asking for your phone number since you are the most beautiful gal I have ever seen, so I just need to talk to you. I was taking a swim when you started setting up, and I said to myself ‘Junkrat that girl is the most remarkable girl that you have ever seen. You need to ask her out right now, or you are going to regret it for the rest of your life.’”

Symmetra was completely taken aback; she had never met someone as confident as this Junkrat. She also had no experience with romance due to Vishkar’s interference during her school years. So this gentleman’s advances caught her off guard.

“Junkrat?”

“It’s my call sign. Work as a pilot for the RAAF.”

“Symmetra. I work as an architect.”

“You building buildings that is fantastic!”

“What do you do?”

“I pilot an F-35A Lightning II for the Junker squad. The name is now a bit outdated gotta admit. See the Lightning is a brand new fighter that the RAAF has been integrating into the air force, but my squadron was the last one to make the switch, so we were the Junkers flying in our old jets. Sorry. I am totally ranting I just like the planes.”

Symmetra let out a laugh while trying to cover her mouth. “It’s quite okay. It is very refreshing to hear someone be so excited about what they do.”

Junkrat had almost missed what Symmetra had said because that laugh was exactly what he imagined angel’s sounded like. “Th, Thank you. So what are doing here in Sydney?”

“I am currently on vacation, I just landed and checked into my hotel. I decided to relax on the beach before I got lunch at,” Symmetra then pulled out her travel plan. “The Sydney Tower Eye.”

“The eye?”

“Yes, is there a problem?”

“Not exactly just it’s going to be completely packed by the time you get there. It will probably be two hours until you get any food to eat.”

“Well, that’s no good. I would rather not go anywhere overly crowded.”

“How about this then? I know a perfect place we could grab a bite to eat. Foods utterly delicious and it won’t be crowded, it’s even nearby.”

Symmetra was only partially hesitant, on the one hand, she did want to go and grab some food with this Junker, but Vishkar’s rules still felt like an iron vise on her heart.  

Sensing Symmetra’s hesitation Junkrat began to panic, not wanting to stop talking to this goddess for even a second. “Come on don’t you want to see the true side of ‘Stralia.” This was the final push Symmetra needed. This was a vacation that Vishkar had sent her on to have some time outside of Vishkar, so she decided that she was going to make the most of her time away from her rules.

Junkrat decided to take them to a hole in the wall restaurant that Symmetra had never heard of in her research. Junkrat then went through her entire itinerary complaining about each and every entry saying that it was going to be a tour of the tourist Sydney not of the real Sydney. Junkrat’s offer that he could take Symmetra on a real tour of Australia one that she would never forget.

Over the next three weeks, Junkrat showed Symmetra all that he could. The two started growing closer and closer over the trip. Symmetra found herself falling completely for the pilot. The two went way past the romantic guidelines set by Vishkar by the end of the trip.

Symmetra and Junkrat had fallen deeply in love with each other.

Then Symmetra’s time in Australia ran out.  She had already extended her vacation and Vishkar was eager to get her started on projects when she returned. Junkrat’s leave had also run out, and he was to be deployed. The two had to separate. The time they spent together was the happiest that either had ever been. They spilt up deciding to stay in contact in hopes of being able to make it work out between them.

Six months later was when everything changed. Symmetra and Junkrat had been sending emails back and forth every Monday no matter the time zones. When Friday came by, and Symmetra had not heard anything from him, she knew something was very wrong. A week later a soldier arrived at her door.

“Satya Vaswani?”

“Yes, that is me.”

“Did you know a Jamison Fawkes?”

“Did? Yes did something happen?”

“I am sorry to inform you that sergeant first class Jamison Fawkes has passed away. He was on a mission when his jet was shot down.”

The soldier continued to talk, but Symmetra had stopped listening. She finished the conversation with the soldier through a haze. Once he had left Symmetra closed the door and then collapsed on the floor and wept for the future she had lost.

Symmetra found a news report about an RAAF fighter pilot who was shot down. An image of a smoldering plane with a yellow painted smiley face and blue diamond adorning the side it. The pilot was not found but was presumed dead, a 25-year old pilot Jamison Fawkes AKA Junkrat KIA.

Symmetra cried for the next week. She stopped going to work and even stopped leaving her room.

A week later when she received an email from an unrecognized sender.

Roadhog: Satya Vaswani I have a message that is for you.

Symmetra: What could you possibly have?

Roadhog: Junkrat wanted to send this to you if he ever didn’t make it back.

Symmetra: Give it to me.

Roadhog: I want you to know that during the mission his jet was hit but did not go up immediately. He was told to disengage from the enemy, but he decided that it was more important to save his fellow pilots. He saved my life. He also would never shut up about you. I knew that kid was serious about you, so I want you to know that you were on his mind until the very end.

Farewell.txt

“Love, If you are reading this I am so so sorry. I set this email to send to you two weeks after my mission. The plan was to postpone it hopefully forever, but that’s not the way it had turned out. If I did not stop this email than I am dead.  I always knew this was on the table. I mean I never thought I would make it past 25, and I guess that’s the case, but when I met you everything changed. I wanted so badly to live. I wanted to live with you; I wanted to get married and have kids and live in a house that you built. I wanted to give you the amazing life that you deserved. I’m sorry. I hope that you don’t mind, but I set you as my next of kin so you should receive official notice in time. I know this is going to be hard on you, but I need you to promise me. You need to promise me you won’t let this destroy you. You are going to do great for the world, so I need you to be strong. You have to promise to keep living your life no matter what. I want to you to be successful. I want you to move on as well. You told me that you wanted a big family since you were a kid. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to give you that in our time together. Lol. But I want you to move on get married and have your family. I won’t like the guy only so much a dead man can deal with, but I will always love you.

Forever yours even in death,

Junkrat”

Symmetra thought that she had run out of tears when she got the email, but she was confident that her cheeks were yet again flooded with tears. Junkrat was completely unfair asking her to do so much when he couldn’t even do something as easy as not die. She was resolute if Jamison was going to set rules for her then like Vishkar’s rules when she was young she was going to do her best no matter what.

Symmetra: Thank you.

Now three years later Symmetra was now a chairman of Vishkar board of directors. She was in charge of all of Vishkar’s reality efforts all over the world. She was making sure that Jamison’s last words were respected. She had gone and had raised herself to the highest position she could while still making sure that Vishkar was going to do good for the world.

Symmetra, however, was not able to do all that Junkrat had asked of her. She could not find it in herself to get married or even date. Junkrat was that special to her he had shown her that there was a beauty in the chaos of the world, that you could find order even in the most chaotic situations.

As she was finishing her meeting, her assistant Sanjay informed her that she had an interview with a new investor that had the wish to remain anonymous. Sanjay reported that they had a plan to work with Vishkar to bring relief to war-torn areas. Symmetra interest was piqued with the prospects, so she decided to head to her office to meet with the investor.  

Satya was at a complete loss. The world stopped making sense for the last 5 minutes. The man standing before her should be dead.

The man standing in front of her was nothing like her memories but at the same time unmistakable. The man was missing his left arm and a leg with prosthetics making up for the lost. His posture was all off bending forward heavily due to what seemed to be discomfort with his peg leg. His suit looked entirely misplaced on him.

Junkrat was standing in her office holding up a framed photo of her and him that they had taken when they were together.

Satya ran across the room and pulled Jamison into a desperate embrace. She could not believe that he was real, that he was here, that he was alive. She started crying into his chest. He was real he was as warm as she remembered. Even with his new limbs, Symmetra could not detect a difference in the way that he held her.

“How? How are you alive? They never found your body.”

“Well, I have always been pretty lucky with explosions. When I crashed my jet, I had to book it fast and get out of there. Were some parts of me that weren’t so lucky but I was able to sort that all out.” Junkrat then began flexing his prosthetic showing it off. Unfortunately was captured a bit. Little did they know that I can make a bomb from almost anything, I was able to escape. The whole thing was rough on me; I wasn’t in a right place when I finally came back. I had to get a lot of help from Dr. Ziegler before I was ready to come back to you. I didn’t feel like it would be fair to you if the man who came back weren't the same man, so I had the doc not tell you.”

Symmetra reeled back and slapped Junkrat across the face then pulled him in for a kiss.

“How dare you try to protect me from the pain of getting you back by allowing me to suffer without you? I have always loved you, and I will always love you.”

“I am sorry. Now I am almost sure I told ya to get married and have some kid, but here you are in a fancy suit and only some photos of your vacation and no pictures of your family.”

“I was busy. And the man I loved decided to die before we became a family.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

“How would you know?”

“Oh, I know quite a bit. But my memory is pretty bad.”

Satya looked quizzically at Jamison.

“I forgot my number....can I borrow yours?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“If I am the most beautiful women you have ever seen.”

“Always.”

At last, the two of them were finally reunited, and neither of them had any plans to separate again.

Notes:

Just when you think its angst its fluffy reunions. Suck it. Die from happiness I hope you all have a good week and life. I love all of you.

Series this work belongs to:

« Part 2 of the Draco's Junkmetra Week series

[lodelss]

Rebecca McCarthy | Longreads | February 2019 | 14 minutes (3,579 words)

Atlantic City covers the northern third of Absecon Island, a barrier island made up of an alarming amount of sand. It is a bad town to die in — there are plenty of vacant lots but no cemeteries. In many places, if you dig down more than eight feet you hit water. A couple blocks away from the beach, the Absecon Lighthouse is built on a submerged wooden foundation for exactly that reason — so long as you keep wood wet and away from oxygen, it won’t rot. “We haven’t tipped yet,” said Buddy Grover, the 91-year-old lighthouse keeper, “but it does sway in the wind sometimes.”

“The problem with barrier islands is that, sort of by definition, they move,” said Dan Heneghan. Heneghan covered the casino beat for the Press of Atlantic City for 20 years before moving to the Casino Control Commission in 1996. He retired this past May. He’s a big, friendly guy with a mustache like a push broom and a habit of lowering his voice and pausing near the end of his sentences, as if he’s telling you a ghost story. (“Atlantic City was, in mob parlance … a wide open city. No one family … controlled it.”) We were standing at the base of the lighthouse, which he clearly adores. He’s climbed it 71 times this year. “I don’t volunteer here, I just climb the steps,” he said. “It’s a lot more interesting than spending time on a Stairmaster.” The lighthouse was designed by George Meade, a Civil War general most famous for defeating Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg. It opened in 1857 but within 20 years the beach had eroded to such an extent that the water was only 75 feet away from the base. Jetties were added until the beach was built back out, but a large iron anchor sits at the old waterline, either as a reminder or a threat.

A little more than two years ago, when I was an intern at a now shuttered website called The Awl, I went out to Atlantic City to cover the Trump Taj Mahal’s last weekend before it closed for good. My first night there I met a woman named Juliana Lykins who told me about Tucker’s Island — New Jersey’s first seaside resort, which had been slowly overtaken by the sea until it disappeared completely. This was a month before the election. The “grab ’em by the pussy” tape had just broken, it was pouring rain, the city was on the verge of defaulting on its debts, and 2,000 casino workers were about to lose their jobs. At the time — my clothes soaking wet, falling asleep in a Super 8 to the sound of Scottie Nell Hughes on CNN — it was hard to understand what Lykins was saying as anything other than a metaphor for the country. I missed the larger menace and focused on the immediate. Trump was elected obviously, but Tucker’s Island wasn’t a figurative threat; it was a very straightforward story about what happens to coastal communities when the water moves in.

Last June, NOAA released a report on high-tide flooding in the United States over the course of 2017. Atlantic City and Boston were tied for second place with 22 days of flooding from high tide alone. The only metro area more affected, with 23 days of flooding, was Sabine Pass, which sits on the Gulf Coast, where Texas meets Louisiana. “Sea level rise is very spatially dependent,” said Maya Buchanan. Buchanan is the resident expert on sea level rise at Climate Central, a research center based in Princeton, New Jersey. “So even New Jersey and New York are expected to have a different amount [of flooding] because there’s a lot of different factors. Some of them are global, some are regional, and some are very, very local.” New York is built on bedrock — metamorphic rock specifically, once incredibly hard and hot; that’s why so few dinosaur fossils have been found in the city. New Jersey’s soil is considerably more porous. “Atlantic City in particular,” said Buchanan, “but even New Jersey writ large, are expected to experience more sea level rise than the global mean.”

*

The decade since the recession has been rough for everyone except the wealthiest, but here the recession was a disaster. According to the South Jersey Economic Review, more than 25,000 jobs were lost in the past decade and the city’s real GDP declined by 21.4 percent between 2006 and 2015, the largest dip of any metro area in the country. Five casinos shut down in two years, and the day after the 2016 election the city was taken over by the state in order to avoid default. Oliver Cooke, an economics professor at nearby Stockton University, has referred to the past 10 years as Atlantic City’s “lost decade.”

The shuttered casinos — windowless basements filled with slot machines — were perfect for a lab.

For the first time in a while things are looking up. Last year violent crime and property crime were down 36 percent since 2017 according to the Atlantic City Police Department, and the boardwalk was markedly busier this past summer. The only place Trump’s name still appears in the city is on an old mural in the bus station, and the shuttered Trump Taj Mahal reopened as a Hard Rock Café in June. Come hell or high water, it is always sort of 2005 in South Jersey (a lot of Simple Plan on the radio) and the Hard Rock is designed to capitalize on that. In place of the Taj Mahal’s famous chandelier is a giant guitar, and what was once a jewelry store has been reborn as a shrine to Boomers called the “Rock Vault.” A Kramer Pacer, painted in the style of acid-wash jeans, hangs on the wall. bon jovi, it says. new jersey. As far as I could tell the only holdover from the Trump Taj was a sandwich chain called White House Subs, although it’s unclear whether or not that’s a nod to the president. When I walked by, a man was standing at the counter wearing a Rob Zombie T-shirt that read, 100% corpse fucking flesh eating zombie loving god damn son of a bitch.

It’s a start, but the reality is that people don’t gamble the way they used to. According to a YouGov poll from May 2018, 47 percent of millennials find casinos “depressing,” and next door to the Hard Rock, where the former Revel has reopened as the Ocean Resort, business was much quieter. The Ocean is visually striking — an enormous mass of curved glass — but it doesn’t seem to have a real identity besides ‘playing a lot of Frank Sinatra’ and several of the pushcart operators that work on the boardwalk told me they’d placed bets on how long it will last. As I was walking past, a woman asked a couple if it was as beautiful inside as it is from the boardwalk.

“Not really,” they said.

*

A little more than three years ago, as hope for a revival began to ebb, an architecture firm called Perkins+Will proposed a plan. Within the range of plans for Atlantic City, this one was unique — it was responsible. Atlantic City is four square miles, about the size of some college campuses. The shuttered casinos — windowless basements filled with slot machines — were perfect for a lab. The idea was to take the city’s vulnerability to the sea and turn it into an asset. Atlantic City would become a global hub for climate science, casinos gradually replaced with laboratories, the convention center reinvented as a training ground for civic leaders. “We weren’t talking about abandoning Atlantic City,” said David Green, one of the primary architects behind the project. “We were talking about repurposing it and bringing in academic and research partners to kind of rehabilitate the area as a kind of research hub.” Scientists would study ecological changes, sociological changes, and the way different kinds of buildings respond to sea level rise. One of the central parts of the plan was something Green called The Line, which would be a physical reminder of the changing coast and a way to make clear to the public what was happening. “You’re testing not just the physical community, but social community elements,” said Green. It was a good idea, but maybe a couple years ahead of its time. Climate change hadn’t settled into the national consciousness yet, and in the confusion of casino closings and the 2016 election Green’s plan failed to gain traction with local politicians and eventually died off.

*

In the early 1950s, two writers for the New York Daily Mirror named Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer published a book of all-American gossip (communists! grift!) called U.S.A. Confidential. New Jersey did not fare well. “There is no such place as New Jersey,” they wrote. “It is a breeding bed, playground and refuse dump for New York and Philadelphia and a refuge for their criminals. It is a highway between the two great cities. Few who use it ever stop off or look behind its billboards. If they did, they’d see plenty of ugliness.”

There is no such place as New Jersey. Pretty harsh! But Atlantic City leaned into it, learned to monetize it. The referendum to bring in casinos, paradigmatic non-places, was passed in 1976, but their success was contingent upon maintaining a duopoly between Atlantic City and Vegas. Once gambling was legalized in New York, Connecticut, and (especially) Pennsylvania, things started to decline. “What happened was that we lost the convenience gambler,” said Heneghan, “and that was a big chunk of the market. The regulators in Pennsylvania, I think very, very wisely on their part, chose sites close to the [Delaware] river to kind of create a barrier. With apologies to Winston Churchill, there was a casino curtain drawn around New Jersey.”

The city has been struggling to develop a coherent comeback plan for years. Last June, Philly Mag ran a feature on the arrival of John Longacre — a developer and bar owner who helped gentrify South Philly and is looking to open a bar in Atlantic City. Others are looking to esports — the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority is in the process of finalizing a deal to install 6,000 square feet of secure servers in the city, and souvenir shops prominently display shirts that read do you even fortnite bro? Because most of the esports audience is underage, it won’t exactly bring an economic boom, though. The New York Times threw its money on sports betting, which was legalized in New Jersey in June and could help bring in revenue during the city’s lean winter months. None of these reports mention climate change.

You gotta be up the whole night just to push the water out. Unless you got a big-ass vacuum to suck it up, you gotta do it with a broom.

Heneghan, like everyone else I spoke to, doubts that sports betting will be enough to fix the city’s economic problems. At the time we spoke, the only nearby states in which it was legal were Jersey and Delaware. But Rhode Island legalized it in October, Pennsylvania in November, and New York and Connecticut are expected to follow suit in 2019. Essentially, it’s the casino curtain all over again. “I think sports betting will generate some additional revenue,” said Heneghan,“but it’s not the panacea, no.” When I asked him what the city wants to be, he had trouble answering. We were standing at the top of the lighthouse now, overlooking the Absecon Inlet — once called Graveyard Inlet because of the frequency of shipwrecks — and the small section of the boardwalk that was destroyed in Sandy. “I remember in January of ’76 I went to a meeting with the local press corps and one of the city commissioners was the speaker,” Heneghan said. “He was an older guy who had been a member of the governor’s cabinet and had been state commissioner of banking. This was before casinos and he was kind of bemoaning how quiet things were in Atlantic City. He said when he was a kid, Atlantic City was a place to go to with somebody you shouldn’t be seen with. Do things you couldn’t do at home.” The bars, Heneghan reminded me, never close here.

*

Last spring, Climate Central published a report on the injustice inherent to Atlantic City’s floods, focusing on a single block called Arizona Avenue. The casinos are protected by large dunes and the Army Corps recently finished building a sea wall with recovery funds from Sandy. Along the back bay though, residents largely rely on aging, undersized bulkheads, and where there are vacant lots there’s often no barrier at all. Things have not improved much over the past year.

“They’re always saying ‘We’re trying to work on it, the sewer systems, blah blah blah,’ but honestly I mean, come on. How do you not make a contingency plan knowing that the bay is right there, the ocean is right here,” said Raymond Mendoza. Mendoza works as a porter and a barback at the Borgata and lives about a block and a half from the back bay. When I met him he was walking a very fat, amiable beagle named Roy. “I’m always worried. When it’s really bad I just watch the tide, ’cause once I see that,” he said, pointing to the water, “come this way, I’m taking my car and driving it right into the casino [parking garage].”

‘Nuisance flooding’ is the technical term for this, but it doesn’t feel adequate. It only takes six inches of fast moving water to topple a grown man. Two feet can sweep a car out to sea. As the water rises so will structural damage. Black mold will spread, kids and the elderly will get sick, and the already debt-ridden National Flood Insurance will edge further toward collapse. “You gotta be up the whole night just to push the water out,” said Neto Alavez. Alavez moved up here from Maryland to work for his uncle’s painting company. “Unless you got a big-ass vacuum to suck it up, you gotta do it with a broom. All they have to say is ‘just go somewhere else.’ They protect all them places over [by the boardwalk]. You know what I’m talking about, the fancy stuff.”

Everyone I met spoke of Hurricane Sandy as the high-water mark for catastrophic flooding, but Sandy — despite the damage it caused — didn’t hit Atlantic City directly, and by the time it made landfall in the Northeast it was only a Category 2 hurricane. There is a pervasive Tale of Two Cities narrative that hangs around Atlantic City — the obscene wealth that circulates within the casinos butting up against dilapidated row houses outside — but the reality is rich people don’t really live in Atlantic City, they just come for conventions. It’s a city of waitresses and bartenders, and many of the residents are elderly. Others moved here after being driven out of Philadelphia and New York by rising rents. Some of them do not have anywhere inland to which they can evacuate. A stronger hurricane, a more direct hit, and people will lose everything.

“A lot of people see sea level rise as just an inundation risk, right? Or this slow problem that’s encroaching,” said Buchanan. “But any flood is basically the summation of sea level and tides and storm surge. Anything that’s adding to that platform just makes a flood that much more likely and it can really increase the frequency and severity of floods.” Last year, scientists at Rice University and Texas A&M released a paper on fossilized coral reefs that showed sea level rise did not happen gradually at the end of the last ice age, but rather in fits and spurts with brief periods of stasis.

Things could get bad here very fast, and all of the revival plans are short-term fixes. We’ve already locked in a certain amount of sea level rise at this point, so for Atlantic City it’s a question of when, not if. According to Climate Central’s risk map, even if we cut carbon emissions to zero yesterday the city would still flood by 2100. It’s likely to happen much sooner, but in that scenario at least, the Borgata is one of the last places above the waterline. Mendoza has been parking his car in the right place.

*

The news was bad this past year. In April, a lawyer named David Buckel lit himself on fire in Prospect Park to protest the world’s continuing use of fossil fuels. In early October, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that we only have until 2040 to drastically alter the world’s economy in order to prevent an effectively uninhabitable planet. In late October, the World Wildlife Foundation released a report estimating that humanity had managed to destroy 60 percent of wildlife since 1970. In November, the deadliest wildfires in a century swept across California. This January, Science released a report that showed oceans were warming 40 percent faster than previously believed. In Atlantic City, a man by the name of David Dichter began petitioning lawmakers to take action. Dichter grew up in Atlantic City and served overseas as a Marine Corps officer and a foreign service officer before retiring. “I think I came back,” he said, “with a pretty good understanding of how screwed up the environment really was.”

Sea level rise did not happen gradually at the end of the last ice age, but rather in fits and spurts with brief periods of stasis … Things could get bad here very fast.

Dichter’s plan was more modest than David Green’s, but the foundational idea was the same: Atlantic City is really going down this time, the question is whether it can figure out a way to make the transition less painful. Dichter focused on tourism — if Atlantic City could position itself as the place for climate conferences, maybe that would lead to bigger things. At the very least it was a way to bring in revenue.

A resolution to turn Atlantic City into a hub for climate science and conventions was passed through the Atlantic City Council, the county freeholders association, and the state legislature, but it’s unclear how committed lawmakers are to specifics just yet. The city was still under state control and about $450 million in debt as of June 2018. The first climate conference took place the weekend of January 25th at the Claridge Hotel, and Dichter has been speaking with David Green about the way things might progress, but it’s been slow going so far. Atlantic City is, for lack of a better term, behaving like Atlantic City. In December, the mayor, Frank Gilliam, was arrested after getting into a fight outside of a casino. (Asked by a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer if he was still mayor, Gilliam replied, “Today.”) A few weeks later he was being investigated by the FBI.

What seems to be lacking at this point is grassroots community involvement. “[The city] should invite the people that organized themselves in Staten Island [after Hurricane Sandy] for the buyout,” said Klaus Jacob. Jacob is a geophysicist and Columbia University’s disaster risk and climate expert. He became somewhat famous for essentially predicting the effects of Hurricane Sandy on New York’s transit system a year before it hit. “It came from the community, it didn’t come from the government. Invite one of those main macho people that organized that neighborhood for a buyout and get a little primer from them. I’m a geophysicist, so what am I talking about here? Not my field of expertise. I just have seen it happening over the last ten, twenty years — where things are moving and where they don’t move … Wherever you look, unless there is a buy-in from neighborhood families — forget it.”

*

Climate change can’t be solved, or really even mitigated, by tourism, and there’s no shortage of people who stand to profit from future disasters. But South Jersey is much poorer than the rest of the state and as the water rises and fire spreads across the West, Dichter and Green’s respective plans might be a way for Atlantic City residents to avoid being lost in the shuffle. Whether or not the city ultimately ends up donating its body to science, there is something oddly endearing about this last push for revenue. There is no such place as New Jersey, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer wrote 70 years ago. Turns out, they weren’t all wrong! The state will be significantly smaller in a hundred years. But if this plan moves forward, Atlantic City — a place that, for all its faults, has always tried to make the best of a bad situation — may at least be able to go out in something like style.

I reported most of this story over the summer, and every time I came back to New York I had to walk through Times Square to get to my subway stop. Mel Chin’s Wake and Unmoored had just opened — an exhibition put on by No Longer Empty and the Queens Museum. Wake was a 60-foot wooden sculpture meant to mirror a sunken ship or a whale’s ribcage, and Unmoored added context. Chin had paired with Microsoft to create a VR rendering of what Manhattan might someday look like should climate change go unchecked. When you put on the VR glasses boats began to float above you, crowding the airspace until they suddenly disappeared in a rush of plankton. It was a little too obvious and the boats looked like something out of Minecraft, but it was effective in spite of itself. The water is already above our heads, we just can’t see it yet.

* * *

Rebecca McCarthy is a freelance writer and a bookseller based in Philadelphia. She’s written for The Awl, The Outline, Medium, and others. 

Editor: Dana Snitzky

Factchecker: Ethan Chiel

Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

[ltdedngallery-blog]

THE BIG INTERVIEW … DAN BALDWIN

(Originally published Nov 2014)

BRITISH ARTIST DAN BALDWIN RECENTLY RETURNED FROM HIS STUNNING SOLO SHOW ‘END OF INNOCENCE’ IN NEW YORK CITY…AFTER 101 DIFFERENT INTERVIEWS ABOUT THE SHOW & THE NEW WORK, WE CAUGHT UP WITH HIM TO TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE…

LTD/EDN… Hey Dan, you are so often described, perhaps incorrectly, as an urban artist.  It doesn’t get anymore urban than NYC, so how the hell was New York? Could you ever live there?

DAN…We had that very conversation out there, could we live here? We thought Yes and No .

If we had a massive loft in the Meatpacking District… Yes!

Although the TV Shows, disclaimers and adverts… that was driving us to a No!  One commercial actually announced ‘If your erection lasts for more than four hours, seek medical advice’ and they invent words like ‘ruggedise’ and ‘dramadies’!

So as long as that loft apartment has no TV, you’ll be fine! Did you get to see any more of the City on this trip, or was it just work, work work? Any favourite spots?

Some good friends flew in from Brighton, and we visited all the usual places… Central Park, Liberty Island, Trump Tower, Dakota Building, Times Square, The MoMA, Soho, Cast Iron District, Ground Zero.

The Meatpacking District was the area we liked the most – round by Chelsea market and the historic High Line. I took photos I’m going to use in my new paintings which I’ve never done before – really interesting architecture, great buildings etc.

As for that Urban Artist tag, I guess I’m not easily labelled.

My paintings can be figurative, abstract, landscape, or non-perspective and they move forwards fast –  I make sculpture and paint pots, I didn’t grow up in an inner city – but I’m not from the countryside either. My work may have urban appeal, and that may link back to my passion towards skateboarding and it’s art and music. I grew up in a very exciting time with music, that has inspired me.

When I started in 1990 (or 1996 if you exclude college) there was no Urban tags, until 2006, I guess art movements or chapters need to be boxed into a category.

Like they did with Pop Art – many of the Pop artists weren’t, like Ed Rusche, who was a young exciting painter making eye catching art at the same time as Rauschenberg – who actually wasn’t POP either, but was dating Jasper Johns, who was quite POP. I guess we all just love to categorise.

Brit’s taking and breaking the US has been a UK obsession in music and art for generations. With your management team PMM at your side are you part of a new British invasion?

Hopefully – who knows – what I loved was the response to my art from such a diverse mix of people – and selling art direct to people walking in from Texas, Canada, Australia, Germany and NYC, that doesn’t happen in my experience as much in London.

Can you tell us a little more about how it works with you and PMM Art Projects?

PMM will oversee all aspects of putting a show on for me – Pat, Roger, Richard will agree dates that work best, Roger will scout out venues across the city, Pat will then agree, then employ PR to maximise on Press, Roger will spread the word ‘like a scud missile’, Richard will deal in sales and clients, the hanging of the show, and email enquiries, Chippy will deal in decal, graphic design , show preview, lists, poster and sign, Marta will help deal in all admin, and take care of logistics; like cars, flights, hotel, crates, shipping etc -​ Pat had 700 posters distributed across NYC, and arranged a dinner for special clients and collectors the night before the opening. We all do our bit, I focus on making the art, then photographing it all, packing ready for crates and shippers,​ and I am there to hang it with Richard and a specialist hanger.

Pat and Roger also oversee any specific projects I may be asked to do, other than a show, like the deal with my recent Paolo Nutini project – If I’m approached by a company for example, I will run it past PMM.

It’s like I have a backbone of support and it all will come together on a show.

Do you pay attention to the American art scene? Feel different to London/UK?  Any current artists out there you like? We heard that Shepard Fairey is a collector…

Not really – I rarely get time for other UK shows. I am aware of a lot of artists​ and try to keep my eyes open, but I’m 6 days a week absorbed in my own work so it’s not so easy.

I went to MoMA NYC just to see if there was a Basquiat, but sadly it was in storage. I was thrilled to see my favourite Rauschenberg again ‘Canyon’, I hadn’t seen that since I was about 19. It’s a mixed media collage on canvas with a eagle stuck to the bottom on wood, with paint and cardboard and as a young artist it made me realise you can do anything in art. I also still get a buzz from seeing Warhol like the huge black red Disaster piece/car crash .

I remember going out to a show in London after my LA show and it was so pretentious compared to LA, which is very much dress down laid back in its vibe. NYC was cool, good people.

Shep isn’t a collector of mine as such, but he has a lot of art – he came to my LA show and requested to meet me, which was great as I saw him there and was like Fuck, its OBEY ! . . Weirdly I had bought myself an Obey print when I first went full time in 2006.

We had a good chat about music mainly and my art and the next day he invited us to his downtown Hollywood studio, which was amazing – he was incredibly generous and gave me 12 prints, and two books, so I pasted some onto a canvas and made a Baldwin on top of some Obeys and one was a Martha Cooper, so it’s a one off Baldwin on some Shepard Fairey Martha cooper prints! I then sent it back to him. (pictured above left).

That meeting was a highlight of our LA trip and years later I had no idea it would link up to PMM via Logan Hicks.

You have a number of other celebrity collectors. If you could collect something from a celebrity what would it be?

I think something from the classic car collection of Jay Leno would be a nice one … I don’t know.

​I do want a 50s American car, a 58 Plymouth Fury, after my top 3 favourite movie Christine,​ or some original Westwood punk gear.

I collected badges as a kid… Now i collect stuff for my art – something from Elvis’s Gracelands, perhaps or a bit of James Dean’s wardrobe, or his conga drums. One of Andy Warhol’s striped t-shirts would be cool or a Basquiat scrap of paper or something from his studio – similarly something from Bacon’s studio. A drum kit from Adam Ant was on my childhood wish list… They gave one away on ”Jim’ll Fix it’.

We covet inanimate objects – is it nostalgia? or sentimentalism? There, I invented a word! Or maybe not. I have a cabinet full of objects we collect. Old children’s dice, a dead Bee, a cats whisker, it’s memory and object – I like nostalgia.

Your Cyclone piece was recently used by Paolo Nutini on his album sleeve artwork – if you could design any album for any band through history what would it be?

Album art used to be so important, I never forget the power Frankie Goes to Hollywood had with their first album, and the symbolism they used, the heart, the bullet, the crucifix, the sperm. It made a big impact on me, as did Adam Ant, but that was more his look and that great logo.

So did Santa bring you anything exciting this year? What was on your list to Santa? Did any goodies cross over with your son’s list?

We escaped the misery of Dads Army, Quality Street, the Two Ronnies repeat from 1978 and you know, all the rest of it and celebrated Rome.

Is finding out that Santa doesn’t exist the real ‘End of Innocence’?  

He doesn’t?

Ha, so enough of Christmas, it’s a New Year…What’s up next?

Thursday (Jan 8th 2015) sees the opening of a new print show alongside Peter Blake at the GX Gallery (www.gxgallery.com/exhibition/fame-promise) I have made 5 new works on paper for it.

I also have a lot of loose ends since NYC, some commissions to do, two charity events coming up, and making new art. I am itching to continue my SUBVERT series and make more bronzes.

There will be a lot going on over the next 12 months, we are also planning to move and relocate the studio. Plus I’m already planning my new show! In my head anyway!

Lastly, talking of your head, one question about the Show…. We noticed a splendid hat, move over Pharrell…Where did you get that hat, where did you get that hat?

Ha, I’m not brave enough for ‘Child of the Jago’, yet, but you know, all in time .. but in NYC it was essential.

​I like the look of some of these www.nickfouquet.com

In the 90’s, or earlier, when England was full of casuals and mullets, if I said then imagine if all the young casuals started to dress like it was the 1940’s – braces, hats, cloth caps, brogue boots, beards you would have laughed – but now it’s  true!

Everything comes round in circles. Look at Duchamp, ​putting an urinal in a gallery in 1917, how ahead of his time was he? Anyway you know the old saying ‘if you want to get ahead, get a hat ‘…1934 that slogan was created.

Thank you Dan for your time, we look forward to new work in 2016.

[robertkstone]

Woodward Dream Cruise: GM Designers Show Off

The beauty of the Woodward Dream Cruise is that it’s an excuse to embrace car culture for the full week leading up to it. And if you work for an automaker, it can be a ticket to bring your favorite project car to work and a hall pass to leave the office for the day.

The cruise might technically not be until Saturday, Aug. 19, but General Motors on Tuesday celebrated the 8th annual Design on Woodward. It is an employee enthusiasm event for the design organization.

Almost 100 cars were registered to take part, starting with a gathering of vehicles from a Model A hot rod to current Camaros and Corvettes and everything in between, brought lovingly to work by design staff. Then at noon, under police escort, a caravan made its way from GM’s tech center on a 10-mile cruise to Memorial Park in Royal Oak, right on Woodward. You know you are in Detroit when motorists at blocked intersections sit back and admire instead of fuming over the short but unanticipated delay. This is the first year using Memorial Park, but it proved an idyllic lawn to park cars for the afternoon to be admired.

Here are some of the cars we checked out.

1949 Cadillac Coupe de Ville Series 62

Father Joe Nemecek and sons Jacob and Josh all work in GM Design. This smooooth restomodded Caddy belongs to a family friend, and the Nemeceks have helped do much of the work on it. Beneath the shaved skin (the door handles have been removed and replaced by electric latches operated from behind the flip-up taillamp), lurk many nonoriginal bits. The front suspension is from a ’71 Plymouth Barracuda, the engine is a ’96 Cadillac Northstar V-8 (with its top covers painted beige to match the roof), and it runs a 9.0-inch Ford rear axle. Josh says it’ll do 90 mph with ease and get 18 mpg.

1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396

Bryan Campbell, a studio engineer with the global architectural studio, loves Chevelles and GTOs. He found this one in Michigan in 1989. It is an original SS 396, but it does not have the original engine. Campbell restored it the way he envisions it: with an LQ9 Escalade truck engine with LS heads. Like most project cars, it is still a work in progress. His current focus: an over-the-top interior.

1972 Nissan Skyline GT

This stunning JDM gem has been restored almost entirely by owner Jose Gonzales, who works in the GMC truck studio. The labor of love took about five years, the last two of which were mostly spent sorting out the mechanicals. Right now it’s running an L28 inline-six bored out to 3.0 liters, but he has one that’s out being restored and runs an 85mm stroke crank for 3.2 liters. The car started life as a GT with flat-topped rear wheel openings, but Gonzales has rounded the arches and added GT-R style flares and has mounted BRIDE racing seats from Japan. The stunning finished product recently took home a Lion award from the Concours of America at St. John’s.

1999 Pontiac Trans Am Ram Air WS6 30th Anniversary Edition

Ralph DeWitt is a digital modeler working in Global Brand Identity. He has one of the 535 Pontiac Trans Am 30th Anniversary Special Edition convertibles made in Quebec before the car was discontinued. Of the 535 made, 35 were for Canada; the rest for the U.S. DeWitt has had it for five years, and he knew the previous owner. He also knows the car. He was part of the production styling team that worked on it in clay form in the mid-1990s. He was told his Ram Air Trans Am was a pace car used to carry former astronaut Buzz Aldrin around the Daytona 500 just before the car became available in 1999. The car is all stock except a modified exhaust. The badging on the back says it all: LS1-sick and twisted.

1956 Chevrolet pickup truck “Silverod”

Tom Raleigh of the Advanced Design studio shows off the barn find that his younger son found in Port Huron, Michigan, 12 years ago. It has been “mildly worked on” including adding “Silverod” to the tailgate. The truck has its original steel, original gunmetal metallic paint, and a 327 with mild cam. It gets used. The original wood in the bed has been covered in landscaping material. Every year he says he will redo the wood, but it hasn’t happened yet. As he makes plans to retire in Charleston, it could happen. And this could also be his last Woodward Dream Cruise in the truck that has lawn chairs in the bed for fellow cruisers to join the ride. Raleigh has had old ‘Vettes and Buicks, but the truck is low maintenance, the most fun and “stupid loud” with cherry bombs. “In second it starts backfiring like a howitzer.”

1986 Lamborghini Jalpa

John Mack serves as Design Manager in Chevrolet’s Performance Studios, and he’s a big fan of Italian design. He already owned some Alfas when he set his sights on acquiring one of Carrozzeria Bertone’s most quintessential designs: the mid-engine V-8 Lamborghini Jalpa. “I love Bertone’s aesthetic,” he says. “It’s blocky and masculine where Ferraris tend to be softer and more feminine shapes.” He has no plans to modify this pristine example (the 386th of 410 ever built), and he reports having comparatively few mechanical troubles with his exotic. Just some accelerator cable issues, which are mostly resolved.

1963 Buick Riviera

Adam Bernard now serves as GM’s associate director of competitor intelligence, but he’s “grandfathered in” to Design on Woodward from his days as a design analysis manager in the 1990s, and he serves as an associate faculty member at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. So it’s no wonder that when he set out to acquire a Buick Riviera, he insisted on the original—which hews most closely to former GM Design honcho Bill Mitchell’s orders to Buick chief Edward Rollert to design “a cross between a Ferrari and a Rolls-Royce.” He loves the first-year-only aircraft style slider controls and the accessory purse hook (a $1.25 dealer accessory).

1929 Model A Hot Rod

Sculptor Todd Storrs built a roadster from a lot of parts bins. In his regular job he builds show cars and concepts for GM, which must be perfect under the auto show lights. The roadster is his therapy car, built from found parts, no rules, and is anything but perfect. He used the book Birth of Hod Rodding as his guide and started with a steering wheel and an engine, neither of which he ended up using. It is a tribute to original hot rods; an ode to speed, not beauty. It was built with six decades of car parts ground and welded to fit. It has an original patina but a small block engine that looks like a 331 V-8 engine from a ’55 Cadillac. Riding in it is like going 100 mph on a wild mouse carnival ride. Storrs says. Along for the ride: a picture of Rita Hayworth tacked to the passenger-side panel.

1991 GMC Syclone

Retired experimental powertrain engineer Richard Reider owns this two-door pickup built for the 1991 model year and only offered in black. He has number 2,287 of the 2,950 made, and everything is original except the boost gauge he added because the original was too hard to see. The truck chassis and body were built at the Shreveport assembly plant but then sent to ASC (American Sunroof Corporation) to get the cladding, the modified 4.3-liter turbocharged V-6, and the bespoke interior including special seats with a lumbar package that involves squeezing a ball similar to the pump on a blood pressure machine. Reider found the Syclone in Ohio six years ago using Craigslist. He had not driven it in three years, but his daughter Jen Kostrzewa works at the design center and encouraged her dad to get his historic vehicle license to take part in the cruise.

1970 Pontiac GTO

The first thing that caught our eye on this baby was the almost stock-looking alloy Pontiac rally wheels. The originals were steel, often worn with trim rings, but owner Jim Ciolfi explained that YearOne Muscle Car Parts sells 8.0-by-17.0- and 9.0-by-17.0-inch billet or cast wheels that look stockish while greatly increasing the car’s footprint and stance. Jim had a GTO like this in high school and acquired this one in great shape, but he has enjoyed dressing it up with carbon-fiber trim inside, white vinyl gage faces, and ambient lighting. Future plans include more carbon fiber—a front splitter and new hood vent inlets.

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[jesusvasser]

Woodward Dream Cruise: GM Designers Show Off

The beauty of the Woodward Dream Cruise is that it’s an excuse to embrace car culture for the full week leading up to it. And if you work for an automaker, it can be a ticket to bring your favorite project car to work and a hall pass to leave the office for the day.

The cruise might technically not be until Saturday, Aug. 19, but General Motors on Tuesday celebrated the 8th annual Design on Woodward. It is an employee enthusiasm event for the design organization.

Almost 100 cars were registered to take part, starting with a gathering of vehicles from a Model A hot rod to current Camaros and Corvettes and everything in between, brought lovingly to work by design staff. Then at noon, under police escort, a caravan made its way from GM’s tech center on a 10-mile cruise to Memorial Park in Royal Oak, right on Woodward. You know you are in Detroit when motorists at blocked intersections sit back and admire instead of fuming over the short but unanticipated delay. This is the first year using Memorial Park, but it proved an idyllic lawn to park cars for the afternoon to be admired.

Here are some of the cars we checked out.

1949 Cadillac Coupe de Ville Series 62

Father Joe Nemecek and sons Jacob and Josh all work in GM Design. This smooooth restomodded Caddy belongs to a family friend, and the Nemeceks have helped do much of the work on it. Beneath the shaved skin (the door handles have been removed and replaced by electric latches operated from behind the flip-up taillamp), lurk many nonoriginal bits. The front suspension is from a ’71 Plymouth Barracuda, the engine is a ’96 Cadillac Northstar V-8 (with its top covers painted beige to match the roof), and it runs a 9.0-inch Ford rear axle. Josh says it’ll do 90 mph with ease and get 18 mpg.

1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396

Bryan Campbell, a studio engineer with the global architectural studio, loves Chevelles and GTOs. He found this one in Michigan in 1989. It is an original SS 396, but it does not have the original engine. Campbell restored it the way he envisions it: with an LQ9 Escalade truck engine with LS heads. Like most project cars, it is still a work in progress. His current focus: an over-the-top interior.

1972 Nissan Skyline GT

This stunning JDM gem has been restored almost entirely by owner Jose Gonzales, who works in the GMC truck studio. The labor of love took about five years, the last two of which were mostly spent sorting out the mechanicals. Right now it’s running an L28 inline-six bored out to 3.0 liters, but he has one that’s out being restored and runs an 85mm stroke crank for 3.2 liters. The car started life as a GT with flat-topped rear wheel openings, but Gonzales has rounded the arches and added GT-R style flares and has mounted BRIDE racing seats from Japan. The stunning finished product recently took home a Lion award from the Concours of America at St. John’s.

1999 Pontiac Trans Am Ram Air WS6 30th Anniversary Edition

Ralph DeWitt is a digital modeler working in Global Brand Identity. He has one of the 535 Pontiac Trans Am 30th Anniversary Special Edition convertibles made in Quebec before the car was discontinued. Of the 535 made, 35 were for Canada; the rest for the U.S. DeWitt has had it for five years, and he knew the previous owner. He also knows the car. He was part of the production styling team that worked on it in clay form in the mid-1990s. He was told his Ram Air Trans Am was a pace car used to carry former astronaut Buzz Aldrin around the Daytona 500 just before the car became available in 1999. The car is all stock except a modified exhaust. The badging on the back says it all: LS1-sick and twisted.

1956 Chevrolet pickup truck “Silverod”

Tom Raleigh of the Advanced Design studio shows off the barn find that his younger son found in Port Huron, Michigan, 12 years ago. It has been “mildly worked on” including adding “Silverod” to the tailgate. The truck has its original steel, original gunmetal metallic paint, and a 327 with mild cam. It gets used. The original wood in the bed has been covered in landscaping material. Every year he says he will redo the wood, but it hasn’t happened yet. As he makes plans to retire in Charleston, it could happen. And this could also be his last Woodward Dream Cruise in the truck that has lawn chairs in the bed for fellow cruisers to join the ride. Raleigh has had old ‘Vettes and Buicks, but the truck is low maintenance, the most fun and “stupid loud” with cherry bombs. “In second it starts backfiring like a howitzer.”

1986 Lamborghini Jalpa

John Mack serves as Design Manager in Chevrolet’s Performance Studios, and he’s a big fan of Italian design. He already owned some Alfas when he set his sights on acquiring one of Carrozzeria Bertone’s most quintessential designs: the mid-engine V-8 Lamborghini Jalpa. “I love Bertone’s aesthetic,” he says. “It’s blocky and masculine where Ferraris tend to be softer and more feminine shapes.” He has no plans to modify this pristine example (the 386th of 410 ever built), and he reports having comparatively few mechanical troubles with his exotic. Just some accelerator cable issues, which are mostly resolved.

1963 Buick Riviera

Adam Bernard now serves as GM’s associate director of competitor intelligence, but he’s “grandfathered in” to Design on Woodward from his days as a design analysis manager in the 1990s, and he serves as an associate faculty member at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. So it’s no wonder that when he set out to acquire a Buick Riviera, he insisted on the original—which hews most closely to former GM Design honcho Bill Mitchell’s orders to Buick chief Edward Rollert to design “a cross between a Ferrari and a Rolls-Royce.” He loves the first-year-only aircraft style slider controls and the accessory purse hook (a $1.25 dealer accessory).

1929 Model A Hot Rod

Sculptor Todd Storrs built a roadster from a lot of parts bins. In his regular job he builds show cars and concepts for GM, which must be perfect under the auto show lights. The roadster is his therapy car, built from found parts, no rules, and is anything but perfect. He used the book Birth of Hod Rodding as his guide and started with a steering wheel and an engine, neither of which he ended up using. It is a tribute to original hot rods; an ode to speed, not beauty. It was built with six decades of car parts ground and welded to fit. It has an original patina but a small block engine that looks like a 331 V-8 engine from a ’55 Cadillac. Riding in it is like going 100 mph on a wild mouse carnival ride. Storrs says. Along for the ride: a picture of Rita Hayworth tacked to the passenger-side panel.

1991 GMC Syclone

Retired experimental powertrain engineer Richard Reider owns this two-door pickup built for the 1991 model year and only offered in black. He has number 2,287 of the 2,950 made, and everything is original except the boost gauge he added because the original was too hard to see. The truck chassis and body were built at the Shreveport assembly plant but then sent to ASC (American Sunroof Corporation) to get the cladding, the modified 4.3-liter turbocharged V-6, and the bespoke interior including special seats with a lumbar package that involves squeezing a ball similar to the pump on a blood pressure machine. Reider found the Syclone in Ohio six years ago using Craigslist. He had not driven it in three years, but his daughter Jen Kostrzewa works at the design center and encouraged her dad to get his historic vehicle license to take part in the cruise.

1970 Pontiac GTO

The first thing that caught our eye on this baby was the almost stock-looking alloy Pontiac rally wheels. The originals were steel, often worn with trim rings, but owner Jim Ciolfi explained that YearOne Muscle Car Parts sells 8.0-by-17.0- and 9.0-by-17.0-inch billet or cast wheels that look stockish while greatly increasing the car’s footprint and stance. Jim had a GTO like this in high school and acquired this one in great shape, but he has enjoyed dressing it up with carbon-fiber trim inside, white vinyl gage faces, and ambient lighting. Future plans include more carbon fiber—a front splitter and new hood vent inlets.

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[lodelss]

Atlantic City Is Really Going Down This Time

Rebecca McCarthy | Longreads | February 2019 | 14 minutes (3,579 words)

Atlantic City covers the northern third of Absecon Island, a barrier island made up of an alarming amount of sand. It is a bad town to die in — there are plenty of vacant lots but no cemeteries. In many places, if you dig down more than eight feet you hit water. A couple blocks away from the beach, the Absecon Lighthouse is built on a submerged wooden foundation for exactly that reason — so long as you keep wood wet and away from oxygen, it won’t rot. “We haven’t tipped yet,” said Buddy Grover, the 91-year-old lighthouse keeper, “but it does sway in the wind sometimes.”

“The problem with barrier islands is that, sort of by definition, they move,” said Dan Heneghan. Heneghan covered the casino beat for the Press of Atlantic City for 20 years before moving to the Casino Control Commission in 1996. He retired this past May. He’s a big, friendly guy with a mustache like a push broom and a habit of lowering his voice and pausing near the end of his sentences, as if he’s telling you a ghost story. (“Atlantic City was, in mob parlance … a wide open city. No one family … controlled it.”) We were standing at the base of the lighthouse, which he clearly adores. He’s climbed it 71 times this year. “I don’t volunteer here, I just climb the steps,” he said. “It’s a lot more interesting than spending time on a Stairmaster.” The lighthouse was designed by George Meade, a Civil War general most famous for defeating Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg. It opened in 1857 but within 20 years the beach had eroded to such an extent that the water was only 75 feet away from the base. Jetties were added until the beach was built back out, but a large iron anchor sits at the old waterline, either as a reminder or a threat.

A little more than two years ago, when I was an intern at a now shuttered website called The Awl, I went out to Atlantic City to cover the Trump Taj Mahal’s last weekend before it closed for good. My first night there I met a woman named Juliana Lykins who told me about Tucker’s Island — New Jersey’s first seaside resort, which had been slowly overtaken by the sea until it disappeared completely. This was a month before the election. The “grab ’em by the pussy” tape had just broken, it was pouring rain, the city was on the verge of defaulting on its debts, and 2,000 casino workers were about to lose their jobs. At the time — my clothes soaking wet, falling asleep in a Super 8 to the sound of Scottie Nell Hughes on CNN — it was hard to understand what Lykins was saying as anything other than a metaphor for the country. I missed the larger menace and focused on the immediate. Trump was elected obviously, but Tucker’s Island wasn’t a figurative threat; it was a very straightforward story about what happens to coastal communities when the water moves in.

Last June, NOAA released a report on high-tide flooding in the United States over the course of 2017. Atlantic City and Boston were tied for second place with 22 days of flooding from high tide alone. The only metro area more affected, with 23 days of flooding, was Sabine Pass, which sits on the Gulf Coast, where Texas meets Louisiana. “Sea level rise is very spatially dependent,” said Maya Buchanan. Buchanan is the resident expert on sea level rise at Climate Central, a research center based in Princeton, New Jersey. “So even New Jersey and New York are expected to have a different amount [of flooding] because there’s a lot of different factors. Some of them are global, some are regional, and some are very, very local.” New York is built on bedrock — metamorphic rock specifically, once incredibly hard and hot; that’s why so few dinosaur fossils have been found in the city. New Jersey’s soil is considerably more porous. “Atlantic City in particular,” said Buchanan, “but even New Jersey writ large, are expected to experience more sea level rise than the global mean.”

*

The decade since the recession has been rough for everyone except the wealthiest, but here the recession was a disaster. According to the South Jersey Economic Review, more than 25,000 jobs were lost in the past decade and the city’s real GDP declined by 21.4 percent between 2006 and 2015, the largest dip of any metro area in the country. Five casinos shut down in two years, and the day after the 2016 election the city was taken over by the state in order to avoid default. Oliver Cooke, an economics professor at nearby Stockton University, has referred to the past 10 years as Atlantic City’s “lost decade.”

The shuttered casinos — windowless basements filled with slot machines — were perfect for a lab.

For the first time in a while things are looking up. Last year violent crime and property crime were down 36 percent since 2017 according to the Atlantic City Police Department, and the boardwalk was markedly busier this past summer. The only place Trump’s name still appears in the city is on an old mural in the bus station, and the shuttered Trump Taj Mahal reopened as a Hard Rock Café in June. Come hell or high water, it is always sort of 2005 in South Jersey (a lot of Simple Plan on the radio) and the Hard Rock is designed to capitalize on that. In place of the Taj Mahal’s famous chandelier is a giant guitar, and what was once a jewelry store has been reborn as a shrine to Boomers called the “Rock Vault.” A Kramer Pacer, painted in the style of acid-wash jeans, hangs on the wall. bon jovi, it says. new jersey. As far as I could tell the only holdover from the Trump Taj was a sandwich chain called White House Subs, although it’s unclear whether or not that’s a nod to the president. When I walked by, a man was standing at the counter wearing a Rob Zombie T-shirt that read, 100% corpse fucking flesh eating zombie loving god damn son of a bitch.

It’s a start, but the reality is that people don’t gamble the way they used to. According to a YouGov poll from May 2018, 47 percent of millennials find casinos “depressing,” and next door to the Hard Rock, where the former Revel has reopened as the Ocean Resort, business was much quieter. The Ocean is visually striking — an enormous mass of curved glass — but it doesn’t seem to have a real identity besides ‘playing a lot of Frank Sinatra’ and several of the pushcart operators that work on the boardwalk told me they’d placed bets on how long it will last. As I was walking past, a woman asked a couple if it was as beautiful inside as it is from the boardwalk.

“Not really,” they said.

*

A little more than three years ago, as hope for a revival began to ebb, an architecture firm called Perkins+Will proposed a plan. Within the range of plans for Atlantic City, this one was unique — it was responsible. Atlantic City is four square miles, about the size of some college campuses. The shuttered casinos — windowless basements filled with slot machines — were perfect for a lab. The idea was to take the city’s vulnerability to the sea and turn it into an asset. Atlantic City would become a global hub for climate science, casinos gradually replaced with laboratories, the convention center reinvented as a training ground for civic leaders. “We weren’t talking about abandoning Atlantic City,” said David Green, one of the primary architects behind the project. “We were talking about repurposing it and bringing in academic and research partners to kind of rehabilitate the area as a kind of research hub.” Scientists would study ecological changes, sociological changes, and the way different kinds of buildings respond to sea level rise. One of the central parts of the plan was something Green called The Line, which would be a physical reminder of the changing coast and a way to make clear to the public what was happening. “You’re testing not just the physical community, but social community elements,” said Green. It was a good idea, but maybe a couple years ahead of its time. Climate change hadn’t settled into the national consciousness yet, and in the confusion of casino closings and the 2016 election Green’s plan failed to gain traction with local politicians and eventually died off.

*

In the early 1950s, two writers for the New York Daily Mirror named Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer published a book of all-American gossip (communists! grift!) called U.S.A. Confidential. New Jersey did not fare well. “There is no such place as New Jersey,” they wrote. “It is a breeding bed, playground and refuse dump for New York and Philadelphia and a refuge for their criminals. It is a highway between the two great cities. Few who use it ever stop off or look behind its billboards. If they did, they’d see plenty of ugliness.”

There is no such place as New Jersey. Pretty harsh! But Atlantic City leaned into it, learned to monetize it. The referendum to bring in casinos, paradigmatic non-places, was passed in 1976, but their success was contingent upon maintaining a duopoly between Atlantic City and Vegas. Once gambling was legalized in New York, Connecticut, and (especially) Pennsylvania, things started to decline. “What happened was that we lost the convenience gambler,” said Heneghan, “and that was a big chunk of the market. The regulators in Pennsylvania, I think very, very wisely on their part, chose sites close to the [Delaware] river to kind of create a barrier. With apologies to Winston Churchill, there was a casino curtain drawn around New Jersey.”

The city has been struggling to develop a coherent comeback plan for years. Last June, Philly Mag ran a feature on the arrival of John Longacre — a developer and bar owner who helped gentrify South Philly and is looking to open a bar in Atlantic City. Others are looking to esports — the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority is in the process of finalizing a deal to install 6,000 square feet of secure servers in the city, and souvenir shops prominently display shirts that read do you even fortnite bro? Because most of the esports audience is underage, it won’t exactly bring an economic boom, though. The New York Times threw its money on sports betting, which was legalized in New Jersey in June and could help bring in revenue during the city’s lean winter months. None of these reports mention climate change.

You gotta be up the whole night just to push the water out. Unless you got a big-ass vacuum to suck it up, you gotta do it with a broom.

Heneghan, like everyone else I spoke to, doubts that sports betting will be enough to fix the city’s economic problems. At the time we spoke, the only nearby states in which it was legal were Jersey and Delaware. But Rhode Island legalized it in October, Pennsylvania in November, and New York and Connecticut are expected to follow suit in 2019. Essentially, it’s the casino curtain all over again. “I think sports betting will generate some additional revenue,” said Heneghan,“but it’s not the panacea, no.” When I asked him what the city wants to be, he had trouble answering. We were standing at the top of the lighthouse now, overlooking the Absecon Inlet — once called Graveyard Inlet because of the frequency of shipwrecks — and the small section of the boardwalk that was destroyed in Sandy. “I remember in January of ’76 I went to a meeting with the local press corps and one of the city commissioners was the speaker,” Heneghan said. “He was an older guy who had been a member of the governor’s cabinet and had been state commissioner of banking. This was before casinos and he was kind of bemoaning how quiet things were in Atlantic City. He said when he was a kid, Atlantic City was a place to go to with somebody you shouldn’t be seen with. Do things you couldn’t do at home.” The bars, Heneghan reminded me, never close here.

*

Last spring, Climate Central published a report on the injustice inherent to Atlantic City’s floods, focusing on a single block called Arizona Avenue. The casinos are protected by large dunes and the Army Corps recently finished building a sea wall with recovery funds from Sandy. Along the back bay though, residents largely rely on aging, undersized bulkheads, and where there are vacant lots there’s often no barrier at all. Things have not improved much over the past year.

“They’re always saying ‘We’re trying to work on it, the sewer systems, blah blah blah,’ but honestly I mean, come on. How do you not make a contingency plan knowing that the bay is right there, the ocean is right here,” said Raymond Mendoza. Mendoza works as a porter and a barback at the Borgata and lives about a block and a half from the back bay. When I met him he was walking a very fat, amiable beagle named Roy. “I’m always worried. When it’s really bad I just watch the tide, ’cause once I see that,” he said, pointing to the water, “come this way, I’m taking my car and driving it right into the casino [parking garage].”

‘Nuisance flooding’ is the technical term for this, but it doesn’t feel adequate. It only takes six inches of fast moving water to topple a grown man. Two feet can sweep a car out to sea. As the water rises so will structural damage. Black mold will spread, kids and the elderly will get sick, and the already debt-ridden National Flood Insurance will edge further toward collapse. “You gotta be up the whole night just to push the water out,” said Neto Alavez. Alavez moved up here from Maryland to work for his uncle’s painting company. “Unless you got a big-ass vacuum to suck it up, you gotta do it with a broom. All they have to say is ‘just go somewhere else.’ They protect all them places over [by the boardwalk]. You know what I’m talking about, the fancy stuff.”

Everyone I met spoke of Hurricane Sandy as the high-water mark for catastrophic flooding, but Sandy — despite the damage it caused — didn’t hit Atlantic City directly, and by the time it made landfall in the Northeast it was only a Category 2 hurricane. There is a pervasive Tale of Two Cities narrative that hangs around Atlantic City — the obscene wealth that circulates within the casinos butting up against dilapidated row houses outside — but the reality is rich people don’t really live in Atlantic City, they just come for conventions. It’s a city of waitresses and bartenders, and many of the residents are elderly. Others moved here after being driven out of Philadelphia and New York by rising rents. Some of them do not have anywhere inland to which they can evacuate. A stronger hurricane, a more direct hit, and people will lose everything.

“A lot of people see sea level rise as just an inundation risk, right? Or this slow problem that’s encroaching,” said Buchanan. “But any flood is basically the summation of sea level and tides and storm surge. Anything that’s adding to that platform just makes a flood that much more likely and it can really increase the frequency and severity of floods.” Last year, scientists at Rice University and Texas A&M released a paper on fossilized coral reefs that showed sea level rise did not happen gradually at the end of the last ice age, but rather in fits and spurts with brief periods of stasis.

Things could get bad here very fast, and all of the revival plans are short-term fixes. We’ve already locked in a certain amount of sea level rise at this point, so for Atlantic City it’s a question of when, not if. According to Climate Central’s risk map, even if we cut carbon emissions to zero yesterday the city would still flood by 2100. It’s likely to happen much sooner, but in that scenario at least, the Borgata is one of the last places above the waterline. Mendoza has been parking his car in the right place.

*

The news was bad this past year. In April, a lawyer named David Buckel lit himself on fire in Prospect Park to protest the world’s continuing use of fossil fuels. In early October, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that we only have until 2040 to drastically alter the world’s economy in order to prevent an effectively uninhabitable planet. In late October, the World Wildlife Foundation released a report estimating that humanity had managed to destroy 60 percent of wildlife since 1970. In November, the deadliest wildfires in a century swept across California. This January, Science released a report that showed oceans were warming 40 percent faster than previously believed. In Atlantic City, a man by the name of David Dichter began petitioning lawmakers to take action. Dichter grew up in Atlantic City and served overseas as a Marine Corps officer and a foreign service officer before retiring. “I think I came back,” he said, “with a pretty good understanding of how screwed up the environment really was.”

Sea level rise did not happen gradually at the end of the last ice age, but rather in fits and spurts with brief periods of stasis … Things could get bad here very fast.

Dichter’s plan was more modest than David Green’s, but the foundational idea was the same: Atlantic City is really going down this time, the question is whether it can figure out a way to make the transition less painful. Dichter focused on tourism — if Atlantic City could position itself as the place for climate conferences, maybe that would lead to bigger things. At the very least it was a way to bring in revenue.

A resolution to turn Atlantic City into a hub for climate science and conventions was passed through the Atlantic City Council, the county freeholders association, and the state legislature, but it’s unclear how committed lawmakers are to specifics just yet. The city was still under state control and about $450 million in debt as of June 2018. The first climate conference took place the weekend of January 25th at the Claridge Hotel, and Dichter has been speaking with David Green about the way things might progress, but it’s been slow going so far. Atlantic City is, for lack of a better term, behaving like Atlantic City. In December, the mayor, Frank Gilliam, was arrested after getting into a fight outside of a casino. (Asked by a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer if he was still mayor, Gilliam replied, “Today.”) A few weeks later he was being investigated by the FBI.

What seems to be lacking at this point is grassroots community involvement. “[The city] should invite the people that organized themselves in Staten Island [after Hurricane Sandy] for the buyout,” said Klaus Jacob. Jacob is a geophysicist and Columbia University’s disaster risk and climate expert. He became somewhat famous for essentially predicting the effects of Hurricane Sandy on New York’s transit system a year before it hit. “It came from the community, it didn’t come from the government. Invite one of those main macho people that organized that neighborhood for a buyout and get a little primer from them. I’m a geophysicist, so what am I talking about here? Not my field of expertise. I just have seen it happening over the last ten, twenty years — where things are moving and where they don’t move … Wherever you look, unless there is a buy-in from neighborhood families — forget it.”

*

Climate change can’t be solved, or really even mitigated, by tourism, and there’s no shortage of people who stand to profit from future disasters. But South Jersey is much poorer than the rest of the state and as the water rises and fire spreads across the West, Dichter and Green’s respective plans might be a way for Atlantic City residents to avoid being lost in the shuffle. Whether or not the city ultimately ends up donating its body to science, there is something oddly endearing about this last push for revenue. There is no such place as New Jersey, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer wrote 70 years ago. Turns out, they weren’t all wrong! The state will be significantly smaller in a hundred years. But if this plan moves forward, Atlantic City — a place that, for all its faults, has always tried to make the best of a bad situation — may at least be able to go out in something like style.

I reported most of this story over the summer, and every time I came back to New York I had to walk through Times Square to get to my subway stop. Mel Chin’s Wake and Unmoored had just opened — an exhibition put on by No Longer Empty and the Queens Museum. Wake was a 60-foot wooden sculpture meant to mirror a sunken ship or a whale’s ribcage, and Unmoored added context. Chin had paired with Microsoft to create a VR rendering of what Manhattan might someday look like should climate change go unchecked. When you put on the VR glasses boats began to float above you, crowding the airspace until they suddenly disappeared in a rush of plankton. It was a little too obvious and the boats looked like something out of Minecraft, but it was effective in spite of itself. The water is already above our heads, we just can’t see it yet.

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Rebecca McCarthy is a freelance writer and a bookseller based in Philadelphia. She’s written for The Awl, The Outline, Medium, and others. 

Editor: Dana Snitzky

Factchecker: Ethan Chiel

Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

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Woodward Dream Cruise: GM Designers Show Off

The beauty of the Woodward Dream Cruise is that it’s an excuse to embrace car culture for the full week leading up to it. And if you work for an automaker, it can be a ticket to bring your favorite project car to work and a hall pass to leave the office for the day.

The cruise might technically not be until Saturday, Aug. 19, but General Motors on Tuesday celebrated the 8th annual Design on Woodward. It is an employee enthusiasm event for the design organization.

Almost 100 cars were registered to take part, starting with a gathering of vehicles from a Model A hot rod to current Camaros and Corvettes and everything in between, brought lovingly to work by design staff. Then at noon, under police escort, a caravan made its way from GM’s tech center on a 10-mile cruise to Memorial Park in Royal Oak, right on Woodward. You know you are in Detroit when motorists at blocked intersections sit back and admire instead of fuming over the short but unanticipated delay. This is the first year using Memorial Park, but it proved an idyllic lawn to park cars for the afternoon to be admired.

Here are some of the cars we checked out.

1949 Cadillac Coupe de Ville Series 62

Father Joe Nemecek and sons Jacob and Josh all work in GM Design. This smooooth restomodded Caddy belongs to a family friend, and the Nemeceks have helped do much of the work on it. Beneath the shaved skin (the door handles have been removed and replaced by electric latches operated from behind the flip-up taillamp), lurk many nonoriginal bits. The front suspension is from a ’71 Plymouth Barracuda, the engine is a ’96 Cadillac Northstar V-8 (with its top covers painted beige to match the roof), and it runs a 9.0-inch Ford rear axle. Josh says it’ll do 90 mph with ease and get 18 mpg.

1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396

Bryan Campbell, a studio engineer with the global architectural studio, loves Chevelles and GTOs. He found this one in Michigan in 1989. It is an original SS 396, but it does not have the original engine. Campbell restored it the way he envisions it: with an LQ9 Escalade truck engine with LS heads. Like most project cars, it is still a work in progress. His current focus: an over-the-top interior.

1972 Nissan Skyline GT

This stunning JDM gem has been restored almost entirely by owner Jose Gonzales, who works in the GMC truck studio. The labor of love took about five years, the last two of which were mostly spent sorting out the mechanicals. Right now it’s running an L28 inline-six bored out to 3.0 liters, but he has one that’s out being restored and runs an 85mm stroke crank for 3.2 liters. The car started life as a GT with flat-topped rear wheel openings, but Gonzales has rounded the arches and added GT-R style flares and has mounted BRIDE racing seats from Japan. The stunning finished product recently took home a Lion award from the Concours of America at St. John’s.

1999 Pontiac Trans Am Ram Air WS6 30th Anniversary Edition

Ralph DeWitt is a digital modeler working in Global Brand Identity. He has one of the 535 Pontiac Trans Am 30th Anniversary Special Edition convertibles made in Quebec before the car was discontinued. Of the 535 made, 35 were for Canada; the rest for the U.S. DeWitt has had it for five years, and he knew the previous owner. He also knows the car. He was part of the production styling team that worked on it in clay form in the mid-1990s. He was told his Ram Air Trans Am was a pace car used to carry former astronaut Buzz Aldrin around the Daytona 500 just before the car became available in 1999. The car is all stock except a modified exhaust. The badging on the back says it all: LS1-sick and twisted.

1956 Chevrolet pickup truck “Silverod”

Tom Raleigh of the Advanced Design studio shows off the barn find that his younger son found in Port Huron, Michigan, 12 years ago. It has been “mildly worked on” including adding “Silverod” to the tailgate. The truck has its original steel, original gunmetal metallic paint, and a 327 with mild cam. It gets used. The original wood in the bed has been covered in landscaping material. Every year he says he will redo the wood, but it hasn’t happened yet. As he makes plans to retire in Charleston, it could happen. And this could also be his last Woodward Dream Cruise in the truck that has lawn chairs in the bed for fellow cruisers to join the ride. Raleigh has had old ‘Vettes and Buicks, but the truck is low maintenance, the most fun and “stupid loud” with cherry bombs. “In second it starts backfiring like a howitzer.”

1986 Lamborghini Jalpa

John Mack serves as Design Manager in Chevrolet’s Performance Studios, and he’s a big fan of Italian design. He already owned some Alfas when he set his sights on acquiring one of Carrozzeria Bertone’s most quintessential designs: the mid-engine V-8 Lamborghini Jalpa. “I love Bertone’s aesthetic,” he says. “It’s blocky and masculine where Ferraris tend to be softer and more feminine shapes.” He has no plans to modify this pristine example (the 386th of 410 ever built), and he reports having comparatively few mechanical troubles with his exotic. Just some accelerator cable issues, which are mostly resolved.

1963 Buick Riviera

Adam Bernard now serves as GM’s associate director of competitor intelligence, but he’s “grandfathered in” to Design on Woodward from his days as a design analysis manager in the 1990s, and he serves as an associate faculty member at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. So it’s no wonder that when he set out to acquire a Buick Riviera, he insisted on the original—which hews most closely to former GM Design honcho Bill Mitchell’s orders to Buick chief Edward Rollert to design “a cross between a Ferrari and a Rolls-Royce.” He loves the first-year-only aircraft style slider controls and the accessory purse hook (a $1.25 dealer accessory).

1929 Model A Hot Rod

Sculptor Todd Storrs built a roadster from a lot of parts bins. In his regular job he builds show cars and concepts for GM, which must be perfect under the auto show lights. The roadster is his therapy car, built from found parts, no rules, and is anything but perfect. He used the book Birth of Hod Rodding as his guide and started with a steering wheel and an engine, neither of which he ended up using. It is a tribute to original hot rods; an ode to speed, not beauty. It was built with six decades of car parts ground and welded to fit. It has an original patina but a small block engine that looks like a 331 V-8 engine from a ’55 Cadillac. Riding in it is like going 100 mph on a wild mouse carnival ride. Storrs says. Along for the ride: a picture of Rita Hayworth tacked to the passenger-side panel.

1991 GMC Syclone

Retired experimental powertrain engineer Richard Reider owns this two-door pickup built for the 1991 model year and only offered in black. He has number 2,287 of the 2,950 made, and everything is original except the boost gauge he added because the original was too hard to see. The truck chassis and body were built at the Shreveport assembly plant but then sent to ASC (American Sunroof Corporation) to get the cladding, the modified 4.3-liter turbocharged V-6, and the bespoke interior including special seats with a lumbar package that involves squeezing a ball similar to the pump on a blood pressure machine. Reider found the Syclone in Ohio six years ago using Craigslist. He had not driven it in three years, but his daughter Jen Kostrzewa works at the design center and encouraged her dad to get his historic vehicle license to take part in the cruise.

1970 Pontiac GTO

The first thing that caught our eye on this baby was the almost stock-looking alloy Pontiac rally wheels. The originals were steel, often worn with trim rings, but owner Jim Ciolfi explained that YearOne Muscle Car Parts sells 8.0-by-17.0- and 9.0-by-17.0-inch billet or cast wheels that look stockish while greatly increasing the car’s footprint and stance. Jim had a GTO like this in high school and acquired this one in great shape, but he has enjoyed dressing it up with carbon-fiber trim inside, white vinyl gage faces, and ambient lighting. Future plans include more carbon fiber—a front splitter and new hood vent inlets.

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