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Malibu hosts some of the most beautiful beaches in this country, and apparently many of the residents in the area have been putting up fake signs for years, discouraging the public from accessing them.
USA Today reports that despite recent legislation put into action to protect the rights of the public to use the beaches, it’s not exactly easy or encouraging to do so when you can’t find a good way to get to the beach. Most who try will be confronted by fake trespassing signs and locked gates. Of course, nobody wants the influx of tourists to happen in their own back yard, but public land is for public use, and living next to it comes with that probability. Until now, the wealthy residents have managed to deter visitors, but at least a few people have come up with a way that will make it harder for them to keep the land to themselves. Jenny Price, a writer, artist, and environmentalist, has come up with an iPhone app that will show you exactly where each public access point to the beaches exist. She’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the app, where you can learn more about how it works, and how to find your own sandy getaway.
May 03, 2013 | Categories: Nature, Surfing, Travel | Comments Off on Unlocking Malibu’s Beaches
Musician and writer Damon Krukowski, of the bands Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi, breaks down the meager royalties currently being paid out to bands by streaming services and explains what the music business’ headlong quest for capital means for artists today.
Consider Pandora and Spotify, the streaming music services that are becoming ever more integrated into our daily listening habits. My BMI royalty check arrived recently, reporting songwriting earnings from the first quarter of 2012, and I was glad to see that our music is being listened to via these services. Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat”, for example, was played 7,800 times on Pandora that quarter, for which its three songwriters were paid a collective total of 21 cents, or seven cents each. Spotify pays better: For the 5,960 times “Tugboat” was played there, Galaxie 500’s songwriters went collectively into triple digits: $1.05 (35 cents each).
May 02, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture | Tags: economics, music | Comments Off on Making Cents
Matt Paweski, Tulip Lamp, 2013, steel, acrylic, enamel, copper rivets, electrical components, 27 x 7 x 2″.
On view at Atelier de Troupe , 3418 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90039.
May 01, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, Surfing | Comments Off on Matt Paweski, Tulip Lamp
This past Sunday, The New York Times’ Sunday Review section featured a portfolio of images from photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, who has long documented human suffering and its causes around the world. But for his latest project, he has turned his lens on Earth itself, in order to document the beauty it retains despite its own destruction free online pokies and suffering at human hands. His forthcoming book, “Genesis,” takes up this theme not to bring us down, but to inspire us to preserve and maintain the nature we are so fortunate to witness.
You can see excerpts from the book here, and read an interview with Salgado about the project here.
Apr 30, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, Nature, Travel | Comments Off on Sebasti?o Salgado’s “Genesis”
Opening credits and inset of Kassia Meador's long noseride in Malibu from the film Daughter: The Movie
I’m super excited for the premiere of the experimental surf film, Daughter: The Movie. Shot on 8mm & 16mm film, and featuring footage of Kassia Meador, Mikey DeTemple, Derek Hynd and others it’s guaranteed not to be your average surf film. Check out the teaser here:
Apr 29, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, Surfing | Comments Off on DAUGHTER: THE MOVIE TEASER
Harmony Blog contributor Arthur Ou has a solo exhibition opening this Sunday, April 28, from 6-9 PM at, this show departs from his recent photographic seascapes and gestural alchemical interventions by transposing the sensibilities of both into an engagement with painting. The show runs until June 9—don’t miss it!
Apr 27, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Comments Off on Arthur Ou at Brennan and Griffin
On Wednesday afternoon the Solar Impulse, a plane that relies entirely on energy from the sun, made its third and final test flight above San Francisco Bay. Soon it will fly across the length of the United States, ending its trip in New York come the end of June or July. According to the Guardian, the Solar Impulse is considered the world’s most advanced sun-powered plane. Check out the video from this week’s test below.
Apr 26, 2013 | Categories: Random, Sustainability, Travel | Comments Off on Solar Plane Flies over San Francisco
New Yorker contributor George Packer offers an “unprovable hypothesis … that obsessive upgrading and chronic stagnation are intimately related.” A little more:
It’s almost a tale of two countries—on the same news day, in the same story, in the same sentence, in the violent yoking together of apparent opposites. “Around the country, as businesses have recovered, the public sector has in many cases struggled and shrunk.” “Although experts estimate that sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, Wall Street does not expect the cuts to substantially reduce corporate profits—or seriously threaten the recent rally in the stock market.” “The wealthiest .1 per cent of Americans now enjoy a life expectancy of 107.3 years and typically die in their sleep, while the bottom sixty per cent can anticipate living only 56.8 years and are statistically more likely to perish in hideous car accidents and firearm incidents, from drug overdoses, or after losing their lower extremities to diabetes.”
All right, I made up the last one. But it’s thinkable, even probable.
Read more at the New Yorker‘s site.
Apr 25, 2013 | Categories: Random | Comments Off on “Upgrade or Die”
