Jason Cosper

Semper fudge.

Category: Los Angeles Page 1 of 3

Shit People Say in LA

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On January 24, 2012

In Los Angeles, Video

This one’s for the locals. And the people who don’t live here but still like to laugh at the locals. [via]

Blinded By The Lights

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On August 4, 2011

In Los Angeles, Video

*sigh* I’ll never get tired of looking at this city all lit up.

Underground Eats

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On January 21, 2009

In Food, Lists, Los Angeles

File under “things I didn’t know about 505 Flower before tonight”:

  • Despite almost everything else in the complex dropping their shutters after lunch, Saffron stays open until 9 PM.  So now I have an option other than Subway, Carl’s Jr., Famima, The Standard or Casey’s.  Even better is the fact that it’s Indian food.  Which I love.  So yay for Saffron!
  • Speaking of Famima, they’ve got a huge one hiding down there.  And it’s stocked better than the one off 6th and Grand.  Their refrigerator case had a pile of extra spicy tuna rolls, the steamer was loaded with bao and the shelves were brimming with a bunch of exotic Pocky.  Until the one right across the street from our building opens up, this totally is my new go-to Famima.

You might think I’m easily swayed, but both of these things (along with the fact that Weiland serves Craftsman) have pretty much redeemed that bomb shelter of a food court for me.

Bye Bye, Indie

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On January 15, 2009

In Los Angeles, Music

Indie Logo

A little more than five years after it fired up with a rather curious DJ-free playlist, Indie’s going off the airwaves in LA. And while I’ll miss being able to tune-in while driving around, I’m happy that they’re going to try to keep things going online.

If I ever miss it enough while rolling thru my hood, at least I can load up Tuner on the iPhone and patch it into my car stereo. The quality may suffer a bit, but at least the reception will be a little bit better… ;)

Update: Variety has a fantastic obit that does more than just regurgitate the closing statement plastered across the front page. If you listened to the station for even a few minutes, it’s worth a read.

Update: According to an interview with Mr. Shovel over at The Daily Swarm the announcement running on the radio after every song is a little disingenuous:

None of the primary DJs or music programmers at the station are involved in the website and it’s not being run by people who ran the station – there may be one person from the station. My concern is that people are confused. They are running an ad on the air saying we couldn’t play the corporate radio game anymore and that we didn’t want to change our format to be more mainstream and that we decided to play music on the web. But the guy making the announcement is the head of sales! God love him, he’s a good guy, but the staff of Indie had no control in the decision to shut down the station. I guess they had some success with the web and want to keep it going. But I don’t want the listeners to be confused.

I listened to the web stream for a good portion of yesterday and they were still playing tracks from Check One…Two artists with pre-recorded bits from Mr. Shovel.  That just seems a little off to me.

Going Feral

By

On December 1, 2008

In Events, Geekery, Los Angeles

While reading Jori Finkel’s piece in the New York Times on Machine Project’s LACMA invasion, I was struck by something that Margaret Wertheim said:

I don’t know of any city other than L.A. with so many feral groups.

Now while she was referring to the Los Angeles art scene, this sort of applies to the tech scene here as well. There are plenty of folks trying to make this city relevant when it comes to tech. A streamlined, less paunchy version of Silicon Valley that does yoga and drinks wheatgrass. And that’s fine. They can keep doing that. But to lift a quote from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

I’m not really talking about them tho. Honestly, the most interesting shit that is going on in this sprawl is on the fringe. Groups like Dorkbot SoCal & Betalevel and meetings like Mindshare are where people are doing the really sexy, fun, creative stuff. Well, the stuff that’s worth paying attention to at least.

Seeing as how I’ve helped foster it along, why would I exclude BarCampLA from that tiny (and rather incomplete) list above? Well, first of all, my ego isn’t that big.

Most importantly tho, it isn’t one of those feral members of the fringe anymore. Sure, it may have been a bit of a wild dog in the past, but as time goes on, it has become domesticated. With well over 300 people wandering in and out over two days and the schedule slowly seeing product pitches, SEO talks and social media chatter dominating the landscape, it’s sort of losing some of its original charm.

Think I’m crazy for saying that? Consider BazCampLA. A “mad science only” event, their plan is to get together about two weeks before the next BarCampLA to make sure their technical talks are well tuned and ready for the big show. From the chatter that I’ve seen, they’re sort of worried that this will be seen as a condemnation of BarCampLA. A middle finger to its participants and the Los Angeles tech scene as a whole. But totally I get what they’re trying to do — and I admire their goals.

Frankly, I hope the BazCampers either take the schedule at the next BarCamp over by force or they end up building a framework for a better event. Like one that would make BCLA obsolete and allow me to take a vacation. Lord knows that I could use the rest… ;)

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