For the past few years I’ve been recounting the previous 12 months by skimming my flickr stream and seeing what I was inspired to take photos of during that time, and seeing what that all ads up to at the end of the year. I’ve found it to be pretty therapeutic. Check it out if you want to, and if you want to walk further down memory lane, here’s the photo reviews of 2009, 2008 & 2007.
To recap I entered 2010 in LA which was something I hadn’t done in many years. I’d been making a habit of being in Berlin for New Years (looks like I’m missing it again this year btw). The CRASH space folks and I had secured a space and we’re moving in, and we started having real meetings in January…
January was also when we (Tara and I) started facing up to the fact that “we” was going to include another person before too much longer and threw ourselves a little baby shower.
January was also a point where started thinking that I wasn’t just going to keep snapping a million photos and posting them all online. I wanted to create images that looked a little better, and started really thinking about how to do that. My initial steps just included iPhone filters.
But I also picked up a real camera that shot on real film and started down an interesting path with that.
Luckily for me, living in Venice Beach provided some pretty regular and pretty interesting subject matter with which to try and improve those skills. Before the end of January I was making pretty regular visits to the new Skate Park.
In February I started getting my first rolls of film back from the shop, and was pretty excited with the results. This is from the very first roll I ran through a camera in the last 20 years at least.
I also got the filter settings I really liked on my iPhone pretty dialed in.
This was all exciting and I jotted down some of my thoughts about photography in a long winded blog post. Sorry to anyone who read it.
For my birthday I decided to fix some old tattoos and reaffirm my faith in them. PMAxFVK.
Shooting on film impacted my flickr feed as well, with big dumps when I got things developed rather than uploads as things happened. Feb 19th was the first of those dumps. Clearly there had just been a big storm.
I’ve never been big on heros, but I’ve always looked up to Mike Vallely and I finally got to meet him when his Black Flag cover band, By The Sword played in LA. In the past meeting people I’ve looked up to has been disappointing, with wasn’t with Mike.
But not to get all arty here. Normal things were going on as well. You might remember Johannes from previous years in review, and he came to LA and spoke at Crash Space about fun things they were doing in Vienna like Roböxotica and invited us to contribute something next time they did it.
And just like that, I turned 35.
I think getting into photography helped me cope with living at the beach. Venice has a history and can be quite photogenic at times. Forcing myself to look for those moments was a good thing.
Phone: *ring*
Me: Hello?
Xeni: Hey, I’m going to have breakfast with Die Antwoord, want to come?
Me: HELL FUCKING YES!
On March 3rd things got kind of eventful, on the family front…
And just like that, there were 3 of us.
Enter Ripley Ossm Bonner. But enough of this emo crap..
Shit, actually it’s kind of hard to get past the emo crap.
And that was March. In April we started doing actual building classes at Crash Space, here’s some nerds showing off their recently completed TV-B-Gones. (mine’s on the table)
On a routine trip to Singapore my flight was diverted to Alaska, one of the last two US states I’d not been to. We were on the ground for 2 hours. I think that counts. And I could see Russia from the plane window.
Once in Singapore I finally found some cool areas.
Er, area. But that trip was short, and before I knew it I was racing to the airport at 5am…
En route to Tokyo
Where Matt Alt took me around and introduced me to the famous Japanese “Rice Taco” or some shit.
And Brian took me around and introduced me to the Custom Lowrider Big Scooter scene.
Man I love Tokyo.
Then I rushed back to the US, and out to the Desert with Tara and Xeni to take Ripley to his first show:
Which also happened to be the first US Die Antwoord show.
And then to continue my rock and roll whatever, I ran back to LA to see Murder City Devils play.
It was real fun. I danced real hard. Then a guy hit me real hard and I broke a real rib. Really.
But it was still fun.
And then I got more tattoos.
Because I’m living in my youth or something.
Venice remained good fodder:
And Ripley started smiling, a lot.
Maybe because he knew we were about to leave Venice. We ended our lease, put everything in storage and headed out into the world.
We got to Singapore just in time for June, the hottest month of the year. But at least Tara made a new friend.
I worked a lot that month, and Tara hid inside a lot. But we did get out and see some monkeys.
I spent a lot of time at the Hackerspace there, it kind of became my office. And what a view that office had.
I walked around a lot that trip and got a much better feel for the country, at least I think I did.
By the end of June we were ready to get out. And the flight back to LA worked out much better for us, all family size and whatnot.
But we were only in LA long enough to drop off suitcases and grab other, and then we ran off to Europe. France specifically. Vincennes to be exact.
This was the view from the flat we’d call home for the next two months.
Well, Tara and Ripley would call it home at least. Within hours I was on my way to Dublin.
For coffee.
Really good coffee.
But also to see Glen and the opening of his exhibition. Which I’ve seen plenty of times before, but is always worth seeing.
We had dinner and walked around Dublin in the rain, and then a few hours later I was back in Paris.
Where we went on a secret mission to find black market back alley spices
Which was exciting, but short lived because before I knew it I was back in the US, in NYC at HOPE talking to nerds about hackerspaces
But as usual I learned more than I taught. I like it that way.
While in NYC I took some creepy photos of some friends
Completely unintentionally, all of whom are way better with a camera than me.
But man, NYC was hot. Real hot. I picked the wrong cities to spend the summer in apparently.
But at the same time, the right cities as I got tipped off to a secret last minute Forgetters show in Brooklyn. It was pouring rain outside, but rocking inside.
Fun fact: That’s not a filter or post processing at all, it’s just how my iPhone scrambled to handle the weird lighting in the club. Wild, man. Wild!
And before I knew it I was back in Paris with the fam.
One day we went to the a park
And walked around the city a bit
But the train ride home ended up being a bit more memorable
I have a totally different opinion of Paris after living there for a while. I don’t think it’s any less cold and grey, I think I just found the cold and grey parts that I like.
Yet for all it’s “city of love” flag waving, I think it feels like a pretty lonely place.
Not wanting to waste a European adventure, we headed to the south of France for a week of sightseeing.
Which changed my opinion of France all over again. I like it when that happens too. Then we went back to Paris to re-soak up some of the things we loved before heading back to North America.
We stopped briefly in Toronto and then made our way back to LA, where things hadn’t slowed without us.
We subletted a friends place near Larchmont and checked out a new neighborhood
Well, Tara and Ripley did anyway, because I had to be back in Singapore for an event.
But a had a few days off, and Joi took me diving. From a boat. Me. On a boat. It was crazy. But I loved it.
The Event in Singapore ended up being a little bigger than we expected. But it all worked out.
And Singapore was kind of nuts because that was the week of their F1 race
Which was loud. So I left and went to Tokyo.
Have I mentioned that I like Tokyo? I was there for another event, which was fun. Once we took over anyway. đ
It’s funny, I dreamed of going to Japan for so much of my life, and now I’ve been there maybe 10 times in the last few years and it’s kinda still just as magical and exciting as I’d hoped it would be. I hope that doesn’t change.
I got back to LA to find a little something in my PO Box:
Did I forget to mention that? I spent most of the time when I was in Paris designing this album. Which was fun, and something I hadn’t done in a while. And it made me sort of realize how much I missed the creative parts that used to be such a big part of my life. I need to do something about that in 2011.
And holy crap, Ripley is getting huge.
And acting like a kid twice his age.
And my coffee obsession wasn’t slowing
We made a quick trip to Vancouver so Tara and Ripley could get matching Tiger hats
And when we got back to LA we moved into our new house. One with a yard.
And I finally got a new computer
And was invited to a super amazing coffee tasting at Intelligentsia
And whoah, somewhere along the line Crash Space got real
Meeting in London, BRB
I got back to LA just in time for an amazing dinner and coffee paring thingy at Intelligentsia in Pasadena with Tara and 30 of our closest friends – who we just met that night. One of the best meals of my life, and one of the most fun evenings we’d had in a long time.
We spent Thanksgiving with more friends, and Xeni tried to turn Ripley in a goddamn hippy.
Mark and I couldn’t take it, so we escaped to his bathroom. For espresso.
Then I flew to Vienna, where it was snowing. A lot.
I was invited to speak at TEDxVienna which was pretty fantastic.
And Crash Space and a robot entry for Roböxotica.
Which people seemed to enjoy.
I met some great new people, and came up with some exciting new plans
And then rushed back to LA in time for Rips to get an early xmas gift.
Speaking of the kid, his 9 month check up was all aces. And our Pediatrician, Dr Jay Gordon is awesome.
And through some weird facebook trickery I got invited to be in an art show. So I drew stuff on post it notes.
Which might like a weird thing to make art on, but that’s what all the cool kids were doing.
It’s kind of hard to believe that at this time last year this guy didn’t even exist, and now he’s deciding which is the best Cheerio to eat next.
And then since he was being so cute we decided to scare the shit out of the little guy by handing him off to some creep in a red suit:
Which pissed him off royally for 5 or 6 minutes. But then he got to play with some new toys so all was good.
And seeing friends from NYC (one of the few cities he hasn’t been yet) worked too.
The year came to a close with the final days having some crazy as hell wind here in LA, which resulted in a black out due largely to things like this:
I didn’t take any photos of the big exciting New Years Eve blow out I went to, mostly because it had a little existence problem. There was a dance party at my house though, but it wrapped up early due to bedtime. Then Tara and I spent the rest of the night doing stuff like this:
And watching movies, which was actually kind of awesome. And now, let’s see what 2011 has to offer…