Half a year ago, I tapped you all for help with a massive project. I was asked to curate the product design section of the California Design Biennial, a hefty task that sometimes felt like I was sifting through every single design blog post written in the last three years.

Fast forward to six months later and the show is opening this weekend! I don’t want to give away the surprise of what’s actually featured in the exhibition, but I do want to give a shout out to all the amazing designers whose work will be found in the product design section. These designers are doing amazing work and, to me, epitomize California’s unique convergence of high-tech wizardry and crafty activism. I couldn’t be prouder to live in this state with them.

Stefan G. Bucher/344 Design
Office
NewDealDesign
RKS Design
Stuart Karten Design
Heath Ceramics
Robert Brunner/Ammunition
Semigood
Google
Zhanna Shamis/Twitter
Whipsaw
Synn Labs
Yves Béhar/fuseproject
Andrew Riiska
Tanya Aguiñiga
Method Home
Project H Design and the Downtown Women’s Shelter
Bluelounge
TBWA Chiat Day and Artecnica
Astro Studios, Inc.
RL Leaders

The 2010 California Design Biennial, Action/Reaction opens this Saturday night at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, and runs until late October. The opening is 7-10pm and admission is $5. However, there’s another great opportunity to see the show and the people behind it:  On August 1, at 3pm, there will be a panel discussion at the museum featuring all the curators: myself, Frances Anderton, Louise Sandhaus, Rose Apodaca and Stewart Reed. I’m also planning another talk in September with some of the most inspiring product designers. Hope to see you there!

This was one of those stop-and-sigh perfect moments on Friday night, as I walked towards Los Feliz and a fizzy rosé revelation at my new favorite neighborhood bar. I passed a dozen banners advertising John Baldessari’s new LACMA show but didn’t really notice the image on it until I turned the corner on Sunset and the light caused it to almost blend seamlessly into the sunset behind. I loved that it’s this frozen urban scene suspended in an urban scene in motion, the fact that both skies are exactly the same shade of blue, the way the palm tree appears like punctuation, a pattern repeated on every LA block.

On the show, I’m also thrilled to be paired with the awesome Portland-based designer Kate Bingaman-Burt, who passed the assignment over to her students and documented their process as well. There’s more on the winners at our brand-new design site over at Fast Company or you can listen to the segment yourself, right here. I come in around the 5:00 mark with some curious information about that old Uncle Sam you’ve come to know.

I’m still buzzing from the amazing response to last weekend’s City Listening II (and the success of the Dwell on Design conference, and the fun of emceeing the LABC’s Los Angeles Architectural Awards…I’m telling you, it was quite a week!). We’ll have a full recap of the evening, including photos, very soon, until then, you can read this review by Mike Neal at Architizer.

But before all that, I just wanted to show you this beautiful photo by Monica Orozco, which was taken at the very end of the night, and take a quick moment to thank my two lovely co-hosts—or as you can see from this photo, maybe three lovely co-hosts—Marissa Gluck and Haily Zaki. These ladies are two of the smartest, hardest-working, most creative forces of nature in this city. Over the last two years they have organized and strategized and materialized dozens of events with huge smiles on their faces and strong cocktails in their hands (except, you know, when Haily got knocked up). And in the process, they’ve also become two of my dearest friends. I can’t wait to see what the future will bring! And on that note, here’s what I read at the event to open it up:  Our de LaB manifesto, in rhyme, of course.

The de LaB Manifesto

We were tired of PowerPoints and panels and pretense
Sick of working the room at lame-ass design events
Tired of the stodginess that came with such happenings
We wanted to know what our neighbors were making

La Brea was picked as an arbitrary line,
But we knew wherever we drew it someone would mind
We welcome the Westsiders, they’re not ostracized
As long as they don’t lie about not crossing the 405

What began as a drinking club quickly turned civic
Our visions for the city became more optimistic
Don’t get me wrong, we still like the drinking
Alcohol is liquid innovation to fuel design thinking

de Lab gets people out of cars and into their city
Introduces neighbors and promotes collaborativity
I know that’s not a word, I invented it myself
de LaB is DIY: We do it ourselves

For design in LA we will walk and ride bikes
We take buses and trains and take LA River hikes
We’re a committed gang of creators who can make a difference
We’re raising a new generation of Los Angeles urbanists

Your support has been amazing for the events we’ve had before
There’s a whole LA out there we haven’t begun to explore
All we need is your support…
…actually, no, we really need your money

By drawing a line through the city, divided
We ended up making it feel more united
We love LA so much it makes us feel giddy
Now sit back, have a drink (that part is important!) and listen to your city

Thanks to everyone for coming and for supporting de LaB!

Update: In all the fabulosity of Saturday night, I screwed up and neglected to post the winning raffle tickets for our eight door prizes. If you were at City Listening and had a raffle ticket, check here to see if you won and email us if you did!

It’s going to be a big, fat, designy weekend here in LA and I hope that you can join me for as much of it as you can muster! First up, Friday, Saturday and Sunday is Dwell on Design, the West Coast’s largest design show and one of my favorite conferences of all time.

For the last few weeks I’ve been writing over at Dwell about all the highlights, including a beautiful tile collaboration between Heath Ceramics and Dwell, a free design clinic hosted by my friends at Architizer, Project H’s GreenAid seed bomb vending machines, David Thompson’s lovely Larchmont Village house, the announcement of a new Cleantech Corridor competition for LA, and an exciting collaboration between Dwell and Arkitip on 10 prints of 10 Dwell houses by 10 artists, including this piece by Andrew Holder (who I was thrilled to interview!). Plus, I got to go to Ed Begley, Jr.’s supergreen house—he’s talking Sunday—and we chatted about riding the bus. He does it!

If all that wasn’t a reason to come out, I’ll be speaking there, too, and I hope you can come by and say hi! Saturday at 12:30pm on the Sustainability stage I’m moderating a panel called Improvising and Improving LA Transit, showcasing how three Angelenos have taken a DIY approach to making the city’s transportation better. On my panel are three of my transit heroes: Dan Koeppel, founder of the 35-mile stairwalk named THE BIG PARADE, which I just wrote about here; Richard Ankrom, the artist who took it upon himself to improve an Los Angeles freeway sign (which I wrote about over at GOOD); and Joseph Prichard, a graphic designer who is improving bike signage, and whose Better Bikeways series I edit at GOOD.

And then at 5pm, same day, same stage, I’m moderating another panel, Watts House Project: Architecture, Art, and Sustainability, about one of the most exciting public art projects in the country, the Watts House Project, featuring Edgar Arceneaux, John Umbanhowar and Frank Escher.

And because I love you so much for reading this blog, I’d like to offer you a special discount on the Dwell conference. You’ll receive $15 off the Dwell Exhibition Plus Ticket (50% off the two-day Weekend Pass) if you purchase tickets online before Friday with the code: DWELL8B

But wait, there’s more! Saturday night, after my last panel at Dwell on Design, I’ll be scurrying up Spring Street to the Spring Arts Tower for our very first de LaB fundraiser: City Listening II.

We’ve got a killer lineup of design writers who are all going to be reading stories about LA, including Frances Anderton on “Living With Gehry,” John Chase ruminating about fun-size Twix bars, Sam Lubell reading bible verses, Tibby Rothman with an amazing (and true) art world story, Nick Adams on LA’s “subway,” Chris Nichols from Los Angeles Magazine, LA Creek Freak Joe Linton, LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, Rico Gagliano from the PRI show The Dinner Party Download, Brooke Hodge, Adrian Glick Kudler, Tom Marble, Marissa Gluck, and letters to LA from 826LA students. And yes, I’ll be reading my annual poem about design in LA. Plus, anyone who arrives by bike or transit receives a very special walking-themed door prize!

We couldn’t have done any of this without our amazing de LaB community. The event decor is currently being laser-etched by Crimson Collective (the same designers who built that giant bird nesting in the center of this year’s Coachella festival), and we’ll have a silent auction featuring items ranging from beautiful custom-built “barchitecture” by Jason King of Somewhere Something, to a walking tour of West Hollywood’s art and urban design with John Chase, to an amazing airplant sculpture by Kara Bartlet’s toHOLD. Plus, I can’t forget the tireless work of our most valuable de LaB community member: Derrick Schultz, who built our website and designed all the beautiful graphics.

We’ll also have delectable Asian-French eats by Flying Pig courtesy of The Architect’s Newspaper, vegan truffles by Nicobella, our well-named de LaB cocktails, and wine courtesy of FORM. And yes, there will be gelato, well, ice cream—did you really think I could throw a party without it? My good friends at Coolhaus will be serving up mini ice cream sandwiches with a very east-of-La Brea flavor: Horchata!

And because if you’ve read this far I really love you, I want to offer you a discount on City Listening tickets as well, if you purchase online before Saturday. Just use delab to get $5 off regular tickets, which include drinks, food and admission to the show; or delabVIP to get $10 off de LaB Groupie Tickets, which include drinks, food and show plus a guerrilla gardening kit from GreenAid, a very good chance at winning great door prizes, and an after party at the Crocker Club, conveniently located below the venue.

Bonus: If you make it to the after party, you just might get to see me collapse after this overload of awesomeness. Hope to see you there!

Now that LOST is ending (badly), I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking: What could possibly replace the fall-down-funny physical comedy of the Black Smoke Monster? Well, friends, just in time, we have a new show that will have all that wit and whimsy, without any of the bothersome good vs. evil storylines. And like LOST, I can pretty much guarantee its creators have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

In 2008 I interviewed the world’s greatest living actors Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim for LA Weekly’s People issue (I also wrote about spending the day on the set of their show, Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which was pretty much one of the best days of my life). During the interview they hinted to me in the strictest of confidence that they had a new show in production, one featuring their show’s most popular recurring character, the Channel 5 weatherman Dr. Steve Brûle (played by John C. Reilly). Two years later, I can finally free myself from this great burden of knowledge and reveal this information to the world: Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brûle premieres Sunday night. I do hope you will. For your health.

Updated post-visit! If the sky seemed a little clearer this morning, the birds a bit chirpier, the sun a whole lot sunnier, all I can say is this is what happens to the world when a new gelateria opens up in the neighborhood. Gelato Bar is the fantastic cafe helmed by Gail Silverton (yes, sister of Nancy) and Joel Gutman that has been tantalizing the Valley gelatiscenti for a few years in Studio City. And now they’ve ventured over the hill to open a location at 1936 Hillhurst, in Los Feliz, occupying the old Hollywood Gelato spot.

My friend Lenny, who just moved down the street, has been monitoring the situation for me and snapped a few shots. Last night they piped the yards of feathery, satiny gelato into the case, which could only mean they were opening today.

More importantly, this means the Great Gelato Triangle is once again complete. I’ve created this handy GeLAtomap (or click on the image above) to help you navigate between all three points in three of LA’s coolest neighborhoods: Pazzo Gelateria in Silver Lake, Scoops in Hel-Mel, and now Gelato Bar in Los Feliz.

This morning, it was confirmed, courtesy of my friend Jess Ritz over at the LA Weekly: Soft opening today! So what could I do but high-tail it over there for lunch?

The tiny space has been reimagined in the shade of blood orange sorbet.

Gail was there, as was her cohort Wendi Matthews—who have been friends since childhood!—and they traded off giving us a personal tasting tour of all the highlights. They won’t be officially open for another week or so—although Wendi did hint that they might open up for a few hours on Saturday night—but the only reason for the delay is that they still need to hire someone. They’re looking for someone who’s knowledgeable and passionate about the cold stuff, so if that’s you, I’d suggest stopping by for a gelato-spiked chat with the ladies this week. Although you may have some competition…I was ready to jump behind that counter right then and there.

But there’s really no need to fret about the opening at all since Gelato Bar is serving free mini-cones all week—which I, of course, like to call baby gelato. I recommend trying one of their rich ultracreamy flavors—like the salted caramel, pannacotta or pistachio—and then be sure to get one of the seasonal, pretty-in-pastels sorbets. Although it would be a shame to miss out on the chocolate sorbet, which is kind of the best of both worlds: It’s such a jolt of pure, unfettered chocolate that they don’t even make a chocolate gelato. I’ll most likely be back tomorrow.

Where to find this (plus how to get there on public transportation) at Gelatobaby’s GeLAtomap!

My mom sent me a bunch of LA postcards she found at an antique sale in Denver to add to my collection. I love these idealized visions of LA, if only to see how much the city has changed and how much it has stayed the same. Here’s the bridge on Echo Park Lake looking pretty much how it does today, although the landscaping is lots more lush in this postcard. There’s also a boater to the left, something I really miss about the lake: Echo Park unfortunately got rid of its paddleboats last summer.

This looks like the Elysian Park entrance near Chinatown, and down in that little valley is the railyard that’s now home to the Not a Cornfield park and Farmlab I wrote about for I.D. last year. Check out the streetcar!

Atop a hill in my old Hollywood neighborhood is the Japanese restaurant Yamashiro, now home to a lively Thursday night farmers market. You can also see the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians—who have guest passes from time to time—at the far right.

Eagle Rock, just northeast of downtown, when it used to actually have an eagle on it. Can you still climb on top of the rock? Not sure if this promenade and picnic grounds are still there or not. Can I hear from an Eagle Rocker?

One of my favorite LA buildings, the Eastern Columbia, now a condo building owned by the KOR Group. This part of Broadway in downtown still looks pretty much the same.

The Original Farmers Market (meaning the permanent one) on Fairfax. On the back of this card the letter says “It’s cool and not much sunshine.” It’s dated 6/14/49—another vacationer falls victim to June Gloom.

This is the Park La Brea development, which is pretty much across the street from the Farmers Market on Fairfax. This housing development was designed in the 1940s and remains a pretty successful model for high-density residential living. On the far right you can see the neighborhood’s other claim to fame:  The park that’s home to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Finally I can declare there is a happy, “Hollywood” ending to this story, but the plot up until now was as comical as The Hangover. For those of you who just joined us:  A few months ago, the Trust for Public Land announced that they were buying a 138-acre parcel of land near the Hollywood sign from developers in order to prevent it from turning into a ridge of McMansions. A massive campaign was launched to raise $12.5 million by April 15, and the first order of business was to drape the Hollywood sign—not on land affected by the sale, mind you—with mesh banners that were to read SAVE THE PEAK.

I attended the initial press conference and wrote about it over at Fast Company where I mentioned that there were a few problems with this idea. First of all, the Hollywood sign itself was never in any danger, which made the decision to cover over the sign—which is no longer altered on behalf of causes, and has only been lit on special occasions—all the more confusing. Although it did get attention, mostly when the half-covered letters read SAVE THE POOD for several hours. Someone must have been thinking about this wordplay because they obviously realized the potential for double toilet-humor (SAVE THE PEAD was up next), posting the K first, then going back in and filling in the A. Okay, I do admit the whole idea of a real-time Wheel of Fortune game was pretty entertaining. “Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle.”

What made me the most frustrated was how clunky and unimaginative the whole thing was—and in a neighborhood that’s probably most famous for high-tech production design and special effects! As workers struggled to drape even one of the giant letters with an “S,” I slunk away from the press conference, truly embarrassed for the images that were being slung around the world of my city. I walked through Beachwood Canyon and climbed into the park, where no one I encountered even knew what was going on—they thought it was a prank. As I wrote over at GOOD last week, this would have been a fantastic opportunity to engage some of Hollywood’s creatives in a way that allowed us to see the Hollywood sign in a new light. Instead, we all got a big laugh when, for one night, we lived in SALLYWOOD.

The big story—the big victory here—is that LA just got 138 acres of open space. In a nice Hollywood twist, we can even thank Hugh Hefner for forking over the last $900,000 needed to secure the purchase. The only problem is that most of the people who read stories about “saving” the Hollywood sign in the last few weeks had no idea there is, say, a huge lake in this part of Hollywood. That there is a massive system of hiking trails that interlace into all the surrounding neighborhoods. I think a much more effective campaign would have been to lead hikes into the wilderness back there, or publish maps showing how the trail system could be extended once the land came back into the city’s possession. In fact, it’s for that reason that I’m so glad this whole thing happened because my outing to cover the sign’s change got me to re-engage with this part of Griffith Park—I got to spend the day back on those steep hillsides and secret passageways that I hadn’t explored much since I moved away from Hollywood.

In fact, it had been so long since I’d walked these trails that I had no idea the Lake Hollywood gates were closed yet again due to mudslides, and when I ambled down one of those secret passageways I became trapped inside the reservoir. I ended up navigating these century plants and climbing over this barbed-wire fence to get out, snagging my Spandex pants in the process. I ripped them so badly they stretched cartoon-style from the top of the fence to my now-bare bottom, which forced me to wrap my long sleeve shirt around my waist so I could take the bus home without being arrested for indecent exposure. But that, my friends, is a Hollywood story for another day.

You may remember last year I ventured out for the BIG PARADE, a 40+mile stairwalk from Downtown LA to Hollywood. I wrote a little piece about our adventures over at GOOD, too: “Walking for Walking in LA,” which included some history about the streetcars that used to run the same route, two houses painted in Lakers colors, and camping in a city park. The one sour note about the adventure was that I didn’t make it to the end—a busted knee from running too many half-marathons in close succession gave out in Los Feliz, and I missed out on the staircases near my first Hollywood home that I knew the best.

This year, I’m not making that same mistake. The BIG PARADE is scheduled for June 12 and 13 (which will hopefully be slightly cooler due to June gloom) and organizer Dan Koeppel has smartly set up a series of practice walks from now until then to help us train. I’ll be leading one next Saturday, April 24 starting at 9:30 am. We’ll meet at the brand-new Silver Lake Public Library and go about five miles around the reservoir, stopping at as many architectural gems as I can string along the route, and then of course, we’ll break for gelato nourishment at my favorite Silver Lake establishment Pazzo. Hope to see you then, or at Angels Flight the morning of June 12, when I’ll be healthy, healed and determined to walk the whole way to the Hollywood sign!

Update: Thanks to all of you who came out, it was a great day! Here are some photos and a Google Map of the route, plus more houses we didn’t hit!