I’m super-bummed that I’m several states away from the LA Street Food Fest’s Summer Tasting Event today. Not just because it requires spending the entire day consuming food, but because it includes an entire section devoted to ice cream. But some of you may have also missed out on today’s gorge-o-rama since it’s the hottest ticket in town: The event has been sold out for days. So, to satiate my own curiosity and help out those of you who can’t be there, I got an exclusive sneak peek at what frozen goods they’ll be serving today. I think of it as a long list of drool-inducing summer to-dos.

Coolhaus, my very favorite architectural ice cream sandwich truck that I’ve interviewed before: Brown Butter Candied Bacon Mini Ice Cream Sandwiches

King Kone, an amazing soft-serve truck:  Milk Chocolate Dipped Soft Serve Cones

Natura Bar, the awesome new Oaxacan juice bar in Koreatown: Flor De Piña (Pineapple Blossom), Cactus Fruit, Leche Quemada (Burnt Milk), Nuez (Walnut) Oaxacan Ice Cream

Pop Art Artisanal Popsicles, another brand-new company: Organic Pineapple Habeñero, Orange Rosewater and Mexican Hot Chocolate Popsicles

Scoops, the LA original, featuring new street food-inspired flavors curated by Matthew Kang, who is opening a second location in Mar Vista: Pistachio Cardamom, Thai Iced Tea Coconut, Mango Sweet Orange and Basil Seed, Tamarind Pear Rum Sorbet

Sweet Lucie’s, an ice cream company that serves out of a vintage truck: Organic Handmade Ice Cream including Lemon Basil Sorbet

The Good Karma Truck, run by the Silver Lake restaurant Cru: Vegan Sorbets and Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream Bon Bons

Tropical Shave Ice:  Hawaiian Shave Ice with fresh fruit, condensed milk and red bean

Vintage Longboards Ice Cream:  Oreo Cookies n’ Creme Ice Cream Bars

Best of luck today to the fabulous ladies behind the event, the lovely Sonja Rasula and Shawna Dawson. Check out their musings about the food truck economy in The Atlantic.

Thanks to Gelato Bar and a little help from my Facebook (and real-life) friends, we had a great group show up last night on a positively balmy evening for the first-ever Gelatobaby Ice Cream Social!

Yes, that is a sign on the sidewalk with my name on it. You’ll remember I won a gift certificate to Gelato Bar for winning a highly-competitive contest. Well, the folks at Gelato Bar are so cool, they put my name outside the shop for a whole week!

Thanks so much to our lovely co-hosts, Wendi Matthews and Gail Silverton. They were the sweetest! Wendi’s son even got behind the counter and scooped for the group—a gelato master-in-training!

Some of last night’s flavor highlights included rose sorbetto and banana split. You can read about my first visit to Gelato Bar when that amazing award-winning photo was taken.

It was the first truly hot night of the year—a perfect opportunity to sit outside in Gelato Bar’s pastel glow and soak up some serious summer.

Check out all the photos from last night, and of course don’t forget to visit Gelato Bar, or at the very least, become a fan of their  Facebook page.

In fact, last night was so successful, I think we should do it again. Where should we do it next? Pazzo? Scoops? Bulgarini? Chasing Coolhaus through the streets?

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!

Last week I took part in an experiment to see what happens when you combine two of my favorite things: gelato and social media. Gelato Bar, one of the finest gelato purveyors in the city of Los Angeles, who just opened up a new Los Feliz location, held a contest to win a $100 gift certificate. All I had to do was see how many people I could get to “like” my Gelato Bar photo on Facebook. Easy, right?

Like, sure. After hours of campaigning, multiple appeals to both my Facebook and Twitter audiences, many IMs, a few targeted emails, and yes, a few text messages, I came from behind and was tied for “most liked” on Gelato Bar’s Facebook page. In the last few minutes I was breathlessly refreshing my page, shaking down my contacts like a junkie for just one more “like,” PLEASE HELP ME! At midnight I collapsed on the couch, my laptop smoking beside me. I won.

As part of my campaign platform I promised that, if elected as most “liked,” I would share my $100 of gelato with everyone who helped. So what better way to celebrate than with a good old ice cream social at Gelato Bar?

I talked to the lovely Wendi Matthews and she said that not only would she welcome all friends of Gelatobaby to Gelato Bar, she’ll also be sure to make all the flavors that friends of Gelatobaby love. SO! If you think that you might make it, leave your must-have, favorite flavor in the comments by Monday (you may want to check their voluminous list first) and that flavor will be waiting for you on Wednesday night.

And thank you again, for your support. I’m Gelatobaby, and I approve this message.

Gelatobaby Ice Cream Social
Gelato Bar
1936 Hillhurst, Los Feliz
Wednesday, July 14
8pm-9:30pm

It was one of those nights that started—as many summer nights do—by drinking wine on top of a hill as the sun went down.

And eventually covered four neighborhoods, four staircases and two buses—all on your own two feet.

It was one of those nights where popcorn was made just for you by a man named Ruben.

Which is, incidentally, the best dinner in Hollywood.

It was one of those nights where you somehow end up in a carpeted, stained-glass cathedral to debauchery, its interior swirling with smoke. A little slice of Vegas on Temple Street.

Where the band played a song that you had dialed into the jukebox at the last bar, and for a moment it felt like the whole world was tuned in to one cosmic playlist.

Yeah, it was one of those nights. (If this is you, I’m sorry. Really sorry.)

It was one of those nights where you ran into your oldest friends completely accidentally and realized that LA is indeed very small.

So small, in fact, that when you step out of that carpeted, stained-glass room, you realize you’re closer to where you started than you thought. Close enough to walk home, down your favorite street of Victorians, up some more staircases, past still-sizzling taco trucks.

So you do.

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!

Back, way back, in ye olde 2008, we held a very special de LaB as part of GOOD December where we asked local design and architecture writers to read pieces about LA. I read a poem about LA’s design culture facing a downturn, Christopher Hawthorne read about wildfires, Frances Anderton read about LA’s mythical status to architects, Josh Williams and Marissa Gluck presented horrifying interiors from real estate sites, Jade Chang and Sam Lubell both read about malls, and John Chase read something…unpublishable. But man, was it funny.

We’ve always wanted to do an event like City Listening again, and at the same time we’ve come up with some plans for growing de LaB. If you look at the kinds of events we’ve been throwing for the past two (almost three!) years, our attendance and ambition has grown in leaps and bounds since that first let’s-all-meet-at-a-bar event we had at the Edison in 2007. If you had told me back then that de LaB would eventually evolve into a day of biking through Chinatown with 50 of my new best friends, I would have called you crazy.

So, we’re proud to announce our first-ever de LaB fundraiser, City Listening II! On Saturday, June 26, de LaB and a fantastic roster of collaborators will present an evening of stories about Los Angeles read once again by your favorite design, architecture and art writers from both sides of La Brea! The event will also feature a silent auction with art and design work from members of the de LaB community, fantastic food and drinks (of course), and plenty of surprises and special guests, all at the beautiful Spring Arts Tower in downtown LA.

Early bird pricing ends June 10, so buy your tickets now! And I hope to see you at City Listening II!

I’ve been flying in and out of LA a lot lately and I find myself missing it more and more when I’m gone. I think what I miss the most is wandering around LA and being delighted by all the wonderful weirdness that I keep discovering every single day.

The fact that there are still places like this.

But I can be walking down a street and find something like this.

Or in a random yard in Historic Filipinotown, this.

Or just the other day, on a Silver Lake hillside, this. (Seriously, what is this?)

And every night I still get floored by this.

I don’t think anyone has captured this sense of LA discovery better than the folks at Poketo and Kitsune Noir. They took a blank space at Space 15 Twenty in Hollywood and turned it into a show called Los Angeles, I’m Yours where they tapped over 20 artists to reclaim objects found in local thrift stores and flea markets.

Which they supplemented with other oddities they found in the same kinds of places. And everything is for sale.

Here are some old lamps brought back to life by Tim Biskup.

I really liked this skateboarding overnight kit.

And I got some really good ideas for new places to put my succulents.

To me, these little vignettes around the store captured everything I love about LA: Sun-bleached colors, hand-crafted goods, ever-present succulents, a touch of Wild West, and the prerequisite helping of cheese (or in this case, a picture of sausages).

On the opening night, the space had an energy that was altogether different from the typical gallery. The usually reserved art crowd had given in to the jostle-and-haggle of a really good flea market. Now add that treasure-hunting mode you go into every time you enter a thrift store—the feeling that it’s your duty to dig through a dusty crate of old glass bottles to find The Perfect Piece. It was like rediscovering LA all over again.

The show has been extended until May 22 so I highly suggest going to check it out. Luckily, Space 15 Twenty has great events almost every night:  Tonight is movie musical night sponsored by the suddenly-ubiquitous Umami Burger.

Last night was the absolutely fantastic (re)opening of the nomadic A+D Museum, which has had more addresses than a Yellow Pages. As an institution that emcee Frances Anderton rightly called a “permanent pop-up,” A+D has been a fixture in the LA design community for years now but has never had a fixed location. This new space, perfectly situated opposite LACMA and next door to the Petersen Automotive Museum, signals the first time it’s ever had a place to call its own.

And what a place it is! The Streamline Moderne building was packed to its rounded-cornered gills last night with almost 900 of the local designerati. Truly everyone was there, testing out the digs, getting comfy in their new home, sipping pomegranatey cocktails called Blushing Ladies as a nearly-full moon rose out of a hazy horizon.

To raise money for the museum, a balsa wood kit was given to dozens of architects and designers to transform into whatever they pleased and the results were auctioned off. But I was much more impressed by the work of local Carthay Center Elementary students, which, incidentally, is the same school where I shot those photos of that amazing school garden. This must be some school!

There are some seriously inventive ideas in these structures. How does a kid come up with something like this? It’s like Fallingwater!

This one has to be my favorite, a sort of freeway-of-the-future. I love the triangles hanging from the top beam.

Solar panels, a fantastic color scheme, and a welcome mat.

Of course, architectural eye-candy wasn’t the only thing to gawk at…there were also the fantastic designer outfits. Best dressed went to West Hollywood’s urban designer and host committee John Chase with his oh-so-preppy pink and green get-up. It was as bright and optimistic as the museum’s future.

More photos of the evening right over here.