For the last two weeks I traded sidewalks for rivers, a two-bedroom house for a two-person tent, and public transit for a rental car (yes, which I drove hundreds of miles without incident, thank you very much). Along the way I discovered some pretty amazing places I’d love to tell you all about, just as soon as I summit this mountain of laundry. And do something about these bug bites that have turned my skin into a lovely pattern of pink polka-dots. And get some proper gelato.

Summer finally showed up here in LA—complete with thunderstorms and humidity—just in time for me to get out of town. I’ll be on the road for a bit, hopefully filling my Flickr and Twitter streams with lots of adventures. Until then, it wouldn’t be summer without a repeat viewing of this clip from a memorable vacation to Silver Dollar City. For those of you not from the midwest, that’s in Branson, Missouri. Happy trails!

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!

Last weekend I went on what was probably one of the most magical adventures I have ever been on, less than one hour from Los Angeles.

Everyone knows this place as the Bridge to Nowhere, but more accurately, it’s the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, the river that runs parallel to the LA River through most of LA. We caught up with it just north of Azusa in a pretty easy 10 mile hike—5 miles out, 5 miles back—through a canyon that used to have a road through it until a 1938 flood washed it out. 1938 was the same year, incidentally, that huge floods in LA prompted the paving over of our river banks.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain this year, so the wildflowers were absolutely explosive. (This is something called Sticky Monkeyflower. Not kidding.)

As were the forests of yuccas, many as tall as me.

Since there used to be a road here, there were still some old structures.

But the absolute best part about the hike were the multiple river fordings. I think we did least a dozen, some up to our hips.

Which we didn’t mind at all since it was a cloudless 80-degree day. In fact, we started planning for the next time, when we swore to hike in with innertubes.

Suddenly the river drops down into a canyon, you round a corner in quite literally the middle of nowhere, there’s a bridge, which was completed in 1936—just before the road meant to meet it washed away.

And what could be more natural for a bridge in the middle of nowhere than bungee jumping? In fact, the bridge itself is owned by Bungee America. It felt like we were watching a Juicy Fruit commercial.

Then back out the way we came.

Past the fields of blackberry bushes (a great reason to come back later in the summer).

By some ridiculous rocks that looked like they’d been spatter-painted.

And through all the perfect little swimming holes, some of which, I thought, looked awfully similar to the soft-bottom section of the LA River.

When I was in college, we used to tube down Boulder Creek, which looks a lot like this, except it winds through the middle of a major metropolitan area. What if some day we could do the same in the river that runs through LA? That it could be so clean again, and so natural, we could actually…use it? (Although there are some who have—illegally—kayaked it.)

I put my bare feet in the water at the end of the hike and imagined tubing from Burbank to Downtown, stopping for beers in Silver Lake along the way. I think it could definitely happen.

More photos from the Bridge to Nowhere, and here’s how to get there.

It’s that time of year again. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming. And the students are not sleeping. Yes, it’s the annual Spring Show at the Academy of Art University, where students from architecture to animation proudly display the brilliant work that only the finest sleep deprivation can provide. And I’m back in San Francisco with a repeat performance of the popular live-blogging, student-interviewing, photo-snapping, social-mediating, ice cream-eating experience that covers it all: Spring Show with Gelatobaby.

This year’s Spring Show kicks off Thursday, May 27 at 11am PST. From then until the wee hours of 7pm I’ll be posting highlights to Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter, all of which will be collected on this pretty little site here. You can peek at last year’s show to get a pretty good idea of how this will work.

I’m excited to announce that we also have a Very Special Event planned for 5-7pm. You’re all invited, but you’re going to have to stay tuned here or follow me at @gelatobaby to find out exactly how and where this specialness will occur.

Meanwhile, a group of people I like to call my “A Team” (but without the extra-prickly whiskers) is back in action and they are even more fabulous than before. We have superwomen-in-heels Pam Williams and Kim Rogala from Williams + House. The indefatigable Randy J. Hunt and his Citizen Scholar, without whom none of this (none of this) would be possible. We also have key support once again from the trio of awesome at the Academy’s school of graphic design: Mary Scott, Phil Hamlett and Hunter Wimmer (who designed the Spring Show’s identity). And a big thanks to Elisa Stephens and everyone at the Academy of Art University who brought us back again this year.

Right now I’ve got to go fire up my Flip cam and practice my Tweeting stance. We’ll see you back here Thursday!

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.

“I’m here for business,” I answered the cab driver on the way from the airport. It was true. I had just arrived at Sarasota, Florida to watch the final presentations from Ringling College of Art & Design students for GOOD Design Sarasota (more on that soon). I would be there for a little over 24 hours and I had a lot of work to do. But with every moment I was there it became increasingly difficult. If you come to Florida for business, slowly, Florida convinces you otherwise.

Maybe because it was the place where we took our mythical spring breaks when I was a kid, but Florida still holds this incredible exoticism for me. The water water everywhere, the white white beaches, that fuzzy humidity that wraps around you like a wet beach towel and muffles out the rest of the world.

I kept getting distracted by the fact that I was quite literally walking on seashells, all the time.

And looking above my head where the trees were dripping with moss.

And peeking down oozy mysterious backwaters that serve as freeways for pelicans.

How can one work in the presence of so many pastels, really? A place where pink and green is the most widely-accepted color combination is not a place for business. Neither is a place populated by lightly-sunburned people in untucked golf shirts and gauzy tent-like sundresses shuffling lazily on sand-dusted sidewalks.

They practically pour mojitos with fresh sugar cane down your throat, you know. And everyone, after a certain time of evening, is pretty much required by city code to maintain an ice cream cone.

So I gave up. I put on a flowy dress and tucked a pink hibiscus into my hair. And like everyone else in Sarasota, it seemed—whether they were there for business or pleasure—walked to the beach to see the sunset.

Florida wins.

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.

Why do I always think of SXSW as some kind of Spring Break-level celebration of food and drink? Maybe it’s because I get to go to Austin, where they pass out micheladas as you get off the plane and trees pop pink confetti over the crowded streets. Or maybe because, when I come home to LA, the orange blossoms and jasmine have just started to bloom, drowning the city in this funky perfume that primes the tongue for cocktails.

The truth is, last week I may have done some of the best eating and drinking I’ve ever done in my life. I also wrote a few things that I really liked—see the connection? I do.

The week began in Chicago to see my adorable new relative Meghan and attend my friend Heather‘s bachelorette party, where her amazing future sister-in-law Erin curated an incredible deep-dish DIY pizza bar. We were able to pile our pies high with whatever we wanted and sipped (okay, gulped) wine as we waited for them to bake. I also had an incredible lunch at Coudal, where I surveyed the new Field Notes and met my elusive UnBeige co-editor Steve. And I also wrote a story about the fantastic visual art made by the fantastically talented musician Devendra Banhart.

Sunday, I made it to Austin just in time for several Mexican Martinis with old friends at the Driskill Hotel. I also had the now-famous Gelataco and wrote about the success of my favorite internet entertainment destination, Funny or Die. And then a few of us flitted away for a meal at Eastside Cafe, where our crudites came from the acres of garden surrounding the building, and egg salad was courtesy of the friendly resident chickens.

Now, the thing about SXSW, like any conference, is that you’re always scrambling to grab a bite between sessions, and often settle for mediocre meals. I swore not to do that this year, and planned ahead using Citizen Taco‘s SXSW meal guides. Me, Anya and Casey walked about a mile to the east to Las Cazuelas, which also lead us by my fantasy garden shop, several pinata stores and this guy. After this meal I watched what was possibly the most disastrous interview I’ve ever seen in my life, and wrote about it: Twitter Announces @Anywhere at SXSW. I’m lucky I didn’t lose my lunch.

The next day, me and Steve walked about the same distance in the other direction to Juanita’s Tacos, housed in a bizarre caboose-like building (although we were near the Amtrak station, so maybe not that bizarre). The tacos, served to us by Juanita, were probably some of the best tacos I’ve ever had. Steve and I shook off our raincoats, toasted our sweaty good fortune and folded over our crispy carnitas pillows with huge grins. I’ll never settle for convention center cuisine again.

I can’t say I remember all that much about this night, but these waffle fries I shared with Liz at the brand-new retro-fabulous wienery Frank’s are etched into my brain. I also happened to meet and write about some of the creators of the newspaper that was created, printed and delivered all at SXSW, and I also wrote a story on how infographics and data visualization have become so prevalent in our culture, we just might be a little too obsessed with numbers.

It doesn’t end there,  believe it or not. I got off the plane to LA, smelled that sultry jasmine-orange blossom air and needed some gelato to properly welcome me back to town. I went to Mozza with a few friends where I got my usual squash blossom burrata pizza, and for dessert managed to convince everyone that we actually needed five desserts: Meyer lemon gelato pie, caramel copetta, butterscotch budino, a gelato trio of espresso, vanilla and peanut butter, and a kid size of olive oil gelato. That’s SIX types of gelato! I went home, collapsed into a heap of drooling joy and wrote nothing.

The next night—I know!—I had a funky Sardinian red, oozy-woozy cheese and cheddar-crossed apple pie with some of the fine folks from Architizer at Lou, LA’s finest wine bar. They had just thrown a party to celebrate the West Coast launch for their new site that’s like a Facebook for architects, so I wrote a story for Fast Company about why their idea was so welcome. Because, for the most part, architect websites suck.

I closed out the work week out at my favorite neighborhood joint, Speranza, with my lovely girlfriends and some killer housemade linguine with pesto. I also did my taxes.

And on the seventh day, I rested my internal organs. I piled in the car with sisters Sarah and Rebecca and headed to the unbuilt desert suburb California City for Obscura Day, a global exploration of weird and wonderful places that I wrote about for GOOD. On the way, we stopped at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, which I highly recommend doing this weekend for anyone who lives in LA.

The hills of traffic cone-orange poppies, while not edible, certainly looked good enough to eat.

More photos of Chicago, Austin, California City, gelato and everything else.

If you’re a designer, or a writer, or a meticulous note-taker, or a collector of small brown objects, you’ve probably seen the tiny notebooks named Field Notes.

Field Notes have become extremely popular among people who write and draw things—there’s even a Flickr group to prove it.

So popular, in fact, that they’ve been spotted in the hands of more than a few famous writers and drawers, including the late screenwriter John Hughes. In last month’s Vanity Fair a story about Hughes included a photo of his desk stacked high with tiny notebooks. Right there on top is a Field Notes, tucked next to a copy of the original Breakfast Club script, then named Detention.

Last week I went to Chicago to find out where Field Notes came from, which is a little place I like to call Coudal. They make lots of other stuff, too, like a website, and a nifty way to make custom CD/DVD cases, a Field-Tested Books book, and a great way to waste away your Friday afternoons.

All of this, including Field Notes, are packed and shipped straight to your door by this strapping young man. Or, if you prefer to pick up your Field Notes in person, as I did, you can use the Will-Call window (likely manned by the same strapping young man).

The little note-taking wonders now come in different editions, all designed by Aaron Draplin, who lives in Portland where he also designs other, larger things.

I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the newest Field Notes edition, which quite literally go back to the Field Notes’ roots. Tiny notebooks like this were given out as promotional pieces by seed companies, so farmers could use them to jot down notes about their crops while they were—yes!—in the field. These bright yellow notebooks are named Packet of Sunshine and they include marigold seeds. I suggest you order a bushel immediately.

While at Coudal, I also got meet someone extremely special who works there: My former UnBeige co-editor, Steve Delahoyde. Unbelievably, it was first time we’d ever met. For some reason I thought he’d be taller.

So goes the contemporary definition of “co-worker”: We worked alongside each other every single day, populating a site with our ramblings, coordinating content and trading witticisms, for two years starting in 2006, yet as of March 2010 we had still never met in person. We took a photo to prove it, then we planned to see each other again in 2014.