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!

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.

Alissa Walker from MFA Interaction Design on Vimeo.

My good friend Liz Danzico, the new director of the School of Visual Art’s MFA Interaction Design program, tapped me and 13 other designers, writers and educators to make short videos giving advice to design students. Since I waited until the last minute to get it to her (of course), I found myself in a Doubletree Inn in Holland, Michigan and was inspired to do a video about bad design. Go figure.

Channeling more than a little Ze Frank, who used to make a video a day for a year, and often had to produce them in hotel rooms, I used the plentiful, appropriate props that were around me. Enjoy!

You can watch all the rest of the videos here. And thanks to Liz for asking!

You know the rest of the story. I took the stairs and, well, it turned out to be a stairway to heaven.

For the next eight years I made finding those public staircases my job. I investigated dead ends I had located on Google Maps, got confused on twisty double-back roads and ended up in Griffith Park, and walked onto plenty of people’s patios by accident. I would orchestrate my runs, my hikes, my errands around which staircase I felt like walking up that day. I thought I discovered these magical ascents all by myself. I thought I was special!

But then I learned there were lots of other walkers just like me. And just like spotting those stairs for the first time changed the way I saw LA, knowing that other people loved those stairs, too…well, let’s just say now things are really looking up (and down, but mostly up).

On July 18 and 19, THE BIG PARADE will bring together this Walker, those other walkers, and dozens of other people who will support us Walkers and walkers along the way. But since you may not be a walker, or you might like to walk but you hear things like Angels Flight to the Hollywood sign, 2 days, 40 miles, and 135 stairways and feel like you might not have the time, inclination or kneecaps to make it the whole way, here are five easy ways to join or help.

1) Do one of the “loops.” There are several loops where the route crosses itself, delivering you back to your vehicles or public transit options. Check the timetables: Day 1, Day 2. The best loops are in Echo Park (Saturday morning, 11am, meet at Chango) and Silver Lake (Sunday morning, 8am, meet at LA Mill).

2) My house is just two blocks from the midpoint, the Music Box Steps (above), where some people will camp in a park Saturday night. The steps were made famous by the 1932 short film starring Laurel & Hardy, which you can watch online in its entirety ( it doesn’t look much like that empty hillside anymore). You can start at my house Sunday morning around 8.

3) Just do the final canyon leg to the Hollywood sign, where the landscape is as dramatic as the prices at the Beachwood Market, where you can meet us at 5:30pm Sunday. This is a fun hike to do if you’ve never gotten to the sign this way, and we’re all going to have to come back down this way anyway unless someone pays one of those Sunset Ranch horse people for a ride (not a bad idea). Alternatively, if you live in Beachwood, you could offer to drive our sorry selves down from underneath the Hollywood sign and to a place that serves Advil cocktails.

4) Drink or eat at a place along the way and throw things at us (preferably water balloons or other water-filled items). We’ll be at Chango around 11am Saturday. We’ll be at Cafe Tropical around 5pm Saturday (if you meet us here you can go to an urban farm). We’ll be at LA Mill Sunday morning around 8:30am. There are many, many more places to meet along the way, just check the timetables: Day 1, Day 2.

5) Spread the word to anyone—including yourself—who lives along the route to acknowledge us or give us something as we pass! We like water, water balloons, hoses, infinity pools, cold Budweisers and bathrooms (in that order). But you could also just happen to be blasting “Walk This Way” and we would be thrilled. Get creative! Seriously, if you know of something cool along the way—and I do mean cool—let me know.

And because I can’t be a walker without being a writer, I will be doing the Twittering at @BIGPARADELA this weekend. So if you really want to know what’s up, just check in there. Lots more tips, and FAQ and information can be found on the website. All the stairways are numbered and segments color-coded on the route maps so you’ll always be able to locate us on or between staircases. But I do hope to see you on the stairs!

One of the reasons I started this blog was so I could have a way to get feedback on my articles. Good or bad, I love having that kind of interaction with the people who read my stuff. I hardly ever bring up reader comments here in the blog itself but today I got one that I thought needed addressing (but before you read it, you should probably watch the video above, if you haven’t already):

Patty says:

June 3, 2009 at 12:14 pm

There was no need for your to post a link to the hastily made video about Cleveland on your comment on Fast Company’s website in response to them hailing Cleveland. Couldn’t leave something positive alone, could you. What are you jealous in the smog infested, traffic jammed LA.

Reader Patty felt compelled to post this rather angry comment on a random post on my blog that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Not only that, her comment itself has nothing to do with something I wrote, rather, it has to do with a comment I posted on another website that included the previous video. In a sense, it’s a comment about a comment. So I thought it deserved—at the very least—another comment.

Dear Patty,

While I have no reason to believe that you’ll ever return to my blog again since you’ve expressed such disappointment in it, there are a few things you should probably know about me.

First of all, I love Cleveland. I myself am a product of the Midwest: I grew up in St. Louis. Although I’ve moved to LA, a large part of me is still there (and this time of year, I’d give anything for a few of those warm, cicada-symphony evenings we just don’t get out here). But especially after participating in the annual meeting of the urban leadership non-profit CEOs for Cities, and meeting people from the Cleveland Urban Design Center, I’ve come to appreciate how Midwestern cities have had to overcome the devastating economic situations that came with the loss of major manufacturing industries. What Cleveland is doing is pretty amazing.

Also, I don’t know if you noticed, but I write for Fast Company (like, a lot). Fast Company is one of the smartest magazines around and I’m honored to be one of their contributors. That has nothing to do with why I posted the link to the video, though. The reason I posted the link to the video was the same reason I post most things I post. BECAUSE IT WAS FUNNY.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about LA. Smog-infested? Difficult to say. Right now it’s raining, but usually when I’m sitting here at my desk, I can see all the way to Catalina Island. Traffic-jammed? Also tough to comment on since I don’t own a car, and prefer to take the bus, the train, my bike or my feet when I go places. It’s usually a pretty pleasant experience, so I have no complaints.

But you are right about two things. I am jealous, and LA is horrible. As proof, I have another hastily-made video that explains just about everything you’d want to know. It has some inappropriate language that will probably offend you more than my original comment, so I encourage you to leave another comment here telling me exactly how you feel.

All best,
Alissa

[LA video via the fine people at Curbed LA]

At any rate, today’s the day where you can comfortably ride the bus dressed like Princess Leia (The Darth Vader I saw walking through Los Feliz Saturday? A little early.) You can swing by the local cantina (and stay there until Cinco de Mayo—what holiday synergy!). But don’t drink too much, or you might end up in rehab.

Or you can be like my family and celebrate a real Star Wars holiday, the birthday of my brother, Luke.

Somehow I missed the fact that Barbie turned 50 earlier this year, even though there’s been a slideshow of her fashionable half-century plastered alongside my posts on Fast Company for at least a month. I’m surprised, though, that none of the stories mention one of the rarest and most sought-after Barbie products: Bedspread Barbie and Pillowcase Skipper. These limited edition dolls were apparently in production for only one day in 1987.

No, this is not the stage for Frank Gehry’s 80′s birthday party, even though the milestone for the man born Ephraim Owen Goldberg is celebrated with well-wishes from friends and collaborators on today’s DnA. No, friends, this is the quite glamorous set that will greet viewers this Sunday on the Academy Awards. The return to the classy-sparkly-loungey look is thanks to David Rockwell of the Rockwell Group. I suspect it will look better than usual this year, not just because he’s same rockstar who designs thing like the new Jet Blue Terminal at JFK or the new Aloft hotel concept by Starwood (which I just wrote about in a hotel roundup for the Architect’s Newspaper and looks puuuurdy nifty), but because the Rockwell Group—famed set designers on Broadway—actually designed the Kodak Theater itself. Frances talks to Rockwell about this year’s show, the mantra for which is “more intimacy and less lamé.” Let’s hope less lamé also means less lame.

I’ll be on a plane flying back from San Francisco when the actual awards are broadcast but no matter:  Star statistician Nate Silver has already predicted the Oscar winners, including Mickey Rourke for Best Actor (yay!) and an almost complete shut-out for The Curious Case of Forrest Gump (double yay!).

Now speaking of movies, you may have heard of this guy George Lucas, who you may know holds a very special place in my family (a sort of honorary godfather, I suppose). Frances got to speak with him about USC’s new School of Cinematic Arts complex he funded (Lucas attended USC back in the day, and there’s even a famous and very funny student film set at USC called George Lucas in Love). Lucas also oversaw the design of the new building, doing all the early sketches, and it turns out he actually has designed a bunch of the Lucasfilm facilities. But no Death Star modernism for him: He loves Victorians.

The USC center isn’t fully operational, but luckily, we got this exclusive video of inside the new building as some of the students were breaking the place in:

You know, I can never watch that clip without thinking about poor Ponda Baba and how his architecture career was cut short.

Be sure to check out the DnA calendar this month, freshly restocked with delicious items. If you know of any design or architecture events in Los Angeles, please send them my way. You can listen to DnA on KCRW live every 3rd Tuesday at 2:30pm PST, by podcasting through iTunes, or by streaming the audio at any time by clicking the little ‘Listen’ button underneath each show’s title on KCRW’s website.

I hope you don’t mind that I’m writing this as a ghost because according to professional opinion, I’m already dead.

As someone who used to make most of her living writing for print (aaaaaaah!) magazines (oh god, noooooo!), I can’t believe that I have to sift through this kind of crap when I should be enjoying the free-spirited world of the afterlife. While I rather like the tone and efficiency of the original, I’m a little annoyed with all the bad, jump-on-the bandwagon copycats.

Is this what great journalists do? Kill off their compatriots? And not even bother to be funny while doing it?

FYI, “the media” is not dying. (I call it “the media” because I hate that term almost as much as I hate to hear people throw it around with such funereal ease.) But whatever it is, I assure you it’s not dying. It’s changing. And it’s about time.

To retaliate—maybe it’s like haunting; after all, I am dead—I gathered the best examples I’ve found that prove that fact. I began by dividing them into things like “books” and “blogs” which suddenly struck me as pointless because the very reason why I wanted to include them is because they defied categorization. They were so innovative, so fascinating, so ahead of their time, they can’t be pigeonholed. This, my dear, death-bed-ridden media friends, is what we should aspire to. Read on. If you dare!

(Note: Many of these were not published/released/made in 2008, this just happened to be the year I read/saw/heard them. But I’m including them here because they made me feel, well, alive.)

Best stuff that used to be called “television”

The IT Crowd: The single greatest show on American television is not American (surprise surprise) and it’s not on television (at least here). This British sitcom is a Three’s Company for the Facebook (sorry, FriendFace) generation. It makes me laugh so hard I cry. True to its audience, all the episodes are online. You can begin your sobbing here.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job: I don’t have to remind you again that this is the greatest show known to man. If you don’t get it, well, maybe that’s the point. News I could not reveal when I interviewed Tim & Eric back last spring that I can reveal now: John C. Reilly’s Dr. Steve Brûle is getting his own spin-off show. FOR YOUR HEALTH!

Hulu: We don’t have cable, and we don’t have broadcast television. What we have is Hulu, where we can watch the premiere episode of Beverly Hills 90210 (the original one), Alf (which makes a lot more sense now after reading Permanent Midnight), the newest Muppet Christmas special (don’t bother), and 30 Rock (below). With everyone whining about how TiVo would ruin TV for advertisers, they found a way to make it work. And it works great.

30 Rock: I’m writing this on a plane where they’re showing that episode with Al Gore that I’ve seen about 20 times already (thanks to Hulu). It does not matter. 30 Rock is eternally rewatchable, and not only for locating the Star Wars reference in every show.

That Lion Video: Perhaps the most heartwarming tale this side of the internet, although I wish it was possible to watch it without Whitney screeching in the background. You can’t script this stuff!

Everything Sarah Palin Said: You can’t script this stuff! No really, you can’t!

Best visuals

20×200: Whoever said the internet would be the downfall of culture did not check with Jen Bekman. The premise is simple: She finds hot new artists. You sign up for emails that announce their work. Some pieces are $20 prints, some are $200 editions, a few are $2000 investments. Artists get exposure, people get art. High and low. Everyone wins.

Kate Bingaman-Burt: She’s been doing this for awhile now, but it never fails to astound…every day, Kate draws something she buys, then sells the drawings. She also offers drawings of her credit card invoices, which she sells for the minimum balance due.

Daniel Eatock: This British designer has been building a website of his work that features everything from his incredible dancing to car alarms to orchestrating giant crop circles advertising Big Brother. His book Imprint, is one of the most amazing compendiums of What You Should Have Been Doing With Your Spare Time During the Last Ten Years. After the jealousy subsides, It will inspire you to pursue all those self-initiated projects you’ve got on the shelf.

The Whale Hunt & I Want You to Want Me: Jonathan Harris is one brilliant boy, there is no other way to put it. He tinkers around with technology, creating experimental narratives about hunting whales with Eskimos in Alaska or revealing our obsession with online dating. Get lost in this dazzling little world. Get very lost.

The Selby: Beautiful photos of houses inhabited by people who are much cooler than you. Somewhat incongruously, more cluttered equals more classy here.

Christoph Niemann: Basically, whatever he touches.

Best books-as-rabbit holes

The Night of the Gun: As a culture, we’re memoir-ed out. Especially when it comes to the Memoir of the Abusive, Jail-Frequenting Addict. New York Times writer David Carr knew this, and instead of subjecting us to the same old, albeit beautifully-written, description of how much blow a person can cram into the void where a septum once was, Carr takes us on a remarkable and riveting journey through the making of his memoir. I spent an entire afternoon picking up the pieces of Carr’s life one-by-one by venturing through the artifacts of the book’s mesmerizing website. Carr includes every police report (and there are a ton of them), every photo, and clips from video interviews that he used to reconstruct his terribly tragic, yet remarkably redeeming life. From a crack addict to a New York Times awards show writer. You’ll never believe it. But you have to, because all the proof is right there.

Oh the Glory of It All: Same concept as Night of the Gun, different era, less coke. Sean Wilsey embarked upon a quest to reconstruct what happened to his family when his dad married his mom’s best friend and her husband went off and married Danielle Steele, while his mom went of the deep end and dragged him on a globetrotting tour to meet world leaders and the pope. You’d end up at reform school, too, right? It’s a lovely tale of teen angst, with every scrap of evidence right there online. The photos and blurbs about his parents—many nabbed from newspaper society pages and People—are simply priceless.

Best magazines

New Yorker: We only subscribe to one magazine. But we’re not going to renew it, and here’s why: Would you ever have thought the stodgy, looked-the-same-since-1850 New Yorker would have been the magazine that made the most fantastic transition to this millennium? Their website is the only one I can think of that tries and succeeds at replicating the print experience (same typeface and layout, even). Their blogs are great. The bonus video and audio is awesome. They have a conference and a festival. Long live guys with monocles. Online.

GOOD: I’m biased. Very biased. But when a young, constantly-diversifying company gets people this excited, this active, this involved…I can only imagine what will happen in 2009.

Best news

LA Observed: For every paper that’s failing in this country, there should be a front row seat to its demise like the one Kevin Roderick gives us every single day.

Wonkette: Maybe because they got sold away from Gawker and they drank too much to think straight. But Wonkette‘s pugnacious, slurred coverage of the election reminded me of the old days, and I’m talking the way-old-Ana Marie Cox-days (who is still doing her thing, raunchily, elsewhere). I praise them for having the balls to get away with it.

Curbed/Eater/Racked: Still written by the hardest-working editors in the blogosphere, and still the best way to find out everything you need to know about what’s opening/closing/rocking/sucking in your hood. Of course, I’m biased.

Big Pool of Money/Another Frightening Show About the Economy: Who produced the most provocative and insightful coverage about the economic collapse? 60 Minutes? 20/20? Time Magazine? What’s that you say? A bunch of guys at Chicago Public Radio? This pair of shows blew my mind, picked up the pieces and had them read back to me by Ira Glass. Best quote: “So, have you ever seen that movie Boiler Room?”

Best NYT sections

Consumed: The best way get your recommended daily requirement of business, design, trends all at once is my estranged uncle Rob Walker’s column on consumer culture. Peter Arkle’s illustrations, like Leif Parsons before, are a very special bonus. Bonus bonus: Rob’s blog, Murketing, and book, Buying In.

Frugal Traveler: Matt Gross spent the summer engaged in a Grand Tour of Europe, but all his columns are just as fiscally magical. I find myself cheering him on as he scrimp and saves his way through the city, and marvel at his ability to wander into a bar at night and get invited home to some local’s house for dinner. It’s a way of traveling we should all aspire to, and he makes it feel not only possible, but better than the pricey alternative.

Best funniest

The Daily Show at the DNC and RNC: From treating the DNC like a tailgate to trying to get Republicans to say “choice”, the Daily Show’s coverage of the conventions was two weeks of the finest journalism I have ever witnessed.

Running Toilet: Ads have become the den of suck lately, but this PSA from Denver Water that actually happened, live, at Invesco Field, is the only one I saw this year that was worth watching (thanks, Bethy).

Iran So Far: Saturday Night Live is better than it ever has been, true. But the best parts remain the digital shorts, and the best of the digital shorts was this ode to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It’s way better than Dick in a Box. (Thanks Hulu, again.)

Green Team: I never get sick of it. Never.

Wes Anderson commercial for McCain: There was a trio of these fake campaign ads “directed” by famous directors. But this Wes Anderson one was so dead on. Right down to the gratuitous Bowie.

Best nightmares

The Road: Read cover-to-cover on a cold, sunless day, is not how this book should be consumed. Doing so will throw you into deep, plaintive funk for days. Movies can do that sometimes (and this will be one soon), but to be honest, I can’t remember the last book—if any—that has ever done that to me. Cormac McCarthy’s sparest prose (and that’s saying a lot) and bleakest premise to date is one terrifying read. Three months later, I still think about it almost every day.

Dexter: Whatever Jimmy Smits did to me this season has made me physically unable to watch the opening titles by Digital Kitchen, the best on TV. Cereal for breakfast from now on.

Best writing

Claire Hoffman: In 2006 this writer used slick prose and wit to expose smarmy Joe Francis better than any court case did. This year, whether she’s touring Dov Charney’s boy harem, inspecting Amy Winehouse’s drug use, or uncovering Prince’s homophobia, she confides in us like we’re her best friend along for the ride. The best lady writer this side of print.

Jonathan Gold: It’s not so much where Jonathan Gold eats, it’s what he eats (“a plate of CornNuts that has gone through media training”), how it’s served (“a willowy carafe encased in tight, zippered neoprene, like a fitted wetsuit on a supermodel”) and who cooked it (“a chef as hard to pin down as the first chanterelles in spring”). Those are all from the same article, by the way. Take away his fork-as-cultural divining rod and he still makes me a better writer, every time. That Pulitzer—the only one ever bestowed on a food critic—could not have gone to someone more deserving.

David Foster Wallace: In his passing this year, a wake of appreciation and remembrances lead me to revisit his work, finally buying the book named for the story that started it all for me. I remember buying a Gourmet before a flight in 2004 and reading “Consider the Lobster,” by this unknown-to-me, rambling man. I was almost angry at the end: Why isn’t all food writing like this? Which of course lead to: Why isn’t all tennis writing like this? and Why isn’t all travel writing like this? Well, it isn’t, because there was only one.

Best discoveries

Jill Bolte Taylor: If this TED presentation—the most mind-blowing, life-affirming story I have ever heard in my life—doesn’t change your day instantly, then you must be missing one hemisphere of your brain. To find out which one, watch the video.

Bhutan’s New King: What began as an eye-snagging story on the Guardian’s website about the world’s youngest king took me down a path of enlightenment towards the tiny country of Bhutan, which is slowly opening itself up to democracy. Their amazing taste in fashion aside, did you know that its citizens are the happiest in the world (who wouldn’t be, in those clothes), so much so that the country declared its Gross National Happiness to be more important than economic success? This may be common knowledge to you, but to me it was a revelation, and it reminded me that there are still secrets in the world to be discovered. And oftentimes, it’s writers that get to do it.

Got more highlights from “the media” this year? Add them in the comments! And I’ll see you next year, or in hell…you know, depending on how things go.

Update: I forgot so many things I went back and added some more in 2009. Ghosts reserve the right to do that.

Last December when I was in New York to moderate part of Designism 2.0, I stumbled into a tiny storefront on Mulberry Street where Good had set up shop for the month. Although I was only in NY for the week, I found myself there twice more in that short period of time: There was always something going on, which always happened to be completely different from the night before, yet seemed to attract the same kind of creative-cool crowd who always seem to crop up at Good’s events.

Back on their home turf (in case you didn’t know, they’re based in LA), the good people at Good have moved into an awesome new space on Melrose (it’s actually the old offices of Rios Clementi Hale) and they’re opening up the ground floor as a permanent installation/exhibition/gathering/partying space for the community. And to kick it all off, they’ve planned a series of installations/exhibitions/gatherings/parties called Good December. You can see the whole calendar, which includes field trips, a “local world’s fair,” collaborations with groups like 826 LA (where I volunteer) and conversations about food, energy and transportation. It’ll be just like going to the most killer office holiday party in town except it lasts for two weeks and everyone in the whole city is invited.

The smart and sassy masterminds behind Good December, Kyla Fullenwider and Jenn Su, tapped me to help curate two design events for the space, and I hope you’ll come to one or both. Next Monday, December 8, de LaB will present City Listening, a night of readings by local design and architecture writers. We have so many amazing people who are going to read their stories about Los Angeles. You can RSVP for that by emailing us at delab AT gelatobaby.com or just RSVP over on Facebook.

And then, on Thursday, December 18, I’m co-hosting GOOD Design: LA with Casey Caplowe, the magazine’s creative director. We’ve asked the best and brightest from the local design community—people like Barbara Bestor, Materials & Applications, Stefan Bucher, Artecnica, Space Collective, Frances Anderton—to come up with solutions to LA’s biggest problems. We can’t wait to see what they come up with. That’s 7-10pm and you can RSVP here.

Everything is free and open to the public, so if you’re in the neighborhood, don’t forget to drop into the Good Space anytime from 11am-5pm from December 5-19 or RSVP for any of the evening events. All details are here and I hope to see you there!