While out running errands today, I stopped for lunch near the West L.A. Civic Center. Parking in a city lot, I noticed an old building that I’d seen many times from the front, but hadn’t noticed how old it was, because the front is stuccoed over and looks like any small commercial building. From the back, though, you can see it’s made of brick and has low arched windows typical of buildings from about a hundred years ago.
I noticed a brass plaque, next to what I first took to be curled pieces of palm-tree bark stacked up on an outside windowsill. On closer inspection, they turned out to be the shells of lobsters that had long since gone to meet their maker:
(Be forewarned, it’s a JPG, so it might take a few seconds to load, though right now my online connection seems to be rather slow generally, so it might just be that).
And about the camera phone, which I’ve had for nearly a year. I’ve long been fooling around with the camera feature, mostly just to take a picture of something I want to show someone, which I’ve previously just done with the phone itself. This was the first time I ever tried messaging a picture to myself, and using my notebook. And for a just-a-cell-phone-camera camera, I think the picture came out damn good!
So there you have it. Today I discovered an homage to former crustaceans, and I discovered that I own a decent digital camera.
I love these kinds of things. It reminds me of street art, like Banksy (I’d link directly to his website but it takes forever to load). I would have taken a picture of it as well. They look gilded - are they?
They’re not gulded, it’s just the afternoon sun directly on them. But that would be bitchen!
And I agree with you on the street art thing. It reminds me of something you’d see in assemblage or installation art anywhere from the 60s on. I realize now it reminds me of “Central Meridian”, aka “the Garage”; an installation piece by Michael McMillen that was on display at LACMA for many years. Somehow it’s more effective outside the context of a museum.
No, there was no residual odor. I’m sure these were too long defunct for that. On the other hand, I don’t think this is much older than two or three years. I found something about this on Gather.com from June, 2006. In those pictures you can see that some local seagulls are definitely interested this, which wouldn’t have been the case if they weren’t freshly dead at the time. But yesterday there were no birds or other animals pecking at them.
A view of the whole building can be seen here. I’m curious about the style of architecture, and will be posting a separate thread about that.
