the Common Place

Overheard on Pacific Avenue:

“Santa Cruz is a great place to live. I’ve only got the shit beaten out of me once in 28 years.”

Some activity on the internets related to GP Surfboards and the Surface show:

Cococello design

The show is a collaboration between Brown and surfboard designers, Bruce Gordon and Nick Palandrani of GP Surfboards in a combined effort to raise ocean awareness and responsbility. Brilliant.

I’m eager to see the boards (Brown promised to send some images my way and I’ll be sure to share them with you as soon as they come in.) as I bet they are stunning. I know nothing about surfboards but what I’ve seen on GP Surfboards’s website looks impeccably crafted. Just check out those fins!

This is from artbusiness.com, a site that reviews art openings in SF, kudos not only for the art but also for attracting “an atypically active, attractive, and fit crowd.” There are some great pics of the opening but unfortunately you have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see them.

A stunning display of surfing-related art includes a raft of exceptional atmospheric oceanic photographs by Brown W. Cannon III, and amazing hand crafted pictorial all-wood surfboards with inlays built by GP Surfboards of Capitola, California. These surfboards are so good, as far as I’m concerned, they’re sculpture. The good news? You can surf on ‘em too. Plus special added bonus– an atypically active, attractive, and fit crowd (for an art show, that is). The event is being held in part to support The Baum Foundation, The Marine Mammal Center, and Surfrider Foundation.

Interview with Brown Cannon III at rawtake.net:

Cannon: Two years ago, I started a creative collaboration with two surfboard designers from GP Surfboards in Santa Cruz bringing fine art images to classic surfboard designs. The images are of water texture, ocean life, and coastal environments – the full scope of a person’s relationship to the ocean. I am excited about these boards because they are beautiful, usable, and innovative. I have come to feel a personal and constantly increasing sense of responsibility to the ocean and hope that this project will raise ocean awareness.As a photographer I spend a lot of time alone, which is why this collaboration became so appealing. It has enabled me to bring an idea to fruition and to get the best results by entrusting and working with other specialists. Sure I could have completed this show on my own, but the opening reception would be in 2015. It is fantastic to combine efforts with other talents and to see what can happen. Just in the simple act of reaching out and getting people involved, I have made many new friends in the creative field. That is inspiring.

Here is a vocabulary list of some words which have been occurring lately in my vicinity. I invite myself and anyone else who is interested to contemplate this list in hopes of understanding some recent news.

1. vivisector
2. legal protest
3. home invasion
4. stalking
5. attack
6. vandalism
7. sidewalk chalk
8. domestic terrorism
9. police state
10. melodrama

Here’s what I encountered  walking home last night. Literally a swarm of cop cars , 7 or 8 cops standing in the front yard of a home, and a crowd of college-age kids. A drug bust, or a really heavy response to a noisy party? I asked a cop, and he said the raid was “part of an ongoing investigation of activities at this residence.” From someone I knew in the crowd, I got the info that the police had followed some of the people home from a protest, and were refused admittance to the house. The police then blockaded the house, while waiting for a search warrant to be prepared.

From this report, it appears that the earlier incident was neither peaceful nor legal but, of course, this is the SC Senile we’re talking about, so who knows what actually happened. For one thing, the reporter seems very willing to take the police spokesperson’s word that the crowd last night was “agitated” and were “taunting” officers. The one thing that struck me in fact was that it seemed so oddly quiet for such a dramatic scene. And since when is asking for a badge number a “taunt?”

The actual raid occurred about 45 minutes after I left. At that point, the landlord had arrived, and provided the police with a key. But they still broke in with a battering ram. Why? Lots of reasons, but mainly I think because battering rams must justify their own existence by being used.

Right now I feel very weird about what’s going on around the corner from my house. I have a lot of unanswered questions.

Photos from indybay.org (As usual, the photos are the most interesting thing about the post on indymedia. The verbiage is long on attitude, short on information. Also, a comment from a neighbor there makes it seem like the atmosphere changed after I left.)

Jon Kersey’s Photo A Day Journal is alive. He has a great eye for what makes this place what it is.

I’m going to feature some of my clients when they do (or pay me to do) something particularly cool. Here’s a video by Gary Irving that we put on the GP Surfboards site.

Working for these guys has been cool, particularly when the whole team (7 guys) showed up to preview the new web site design. There has never been so much testosterone in the John Malkovich Suite here at the ID Building Mezzanine.