cityjournaling-blog

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Write Up

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

~Robert A. Heinlein

I think pop culture is status quo. Pop culture is the farthest away from the inquiry that requires conscious, the decisiveness of what that entails.

It is farthest away in that no matter how far you venture-there are counterpoints. Foucault said if there is a normative standard, there is something to contrast it, and it exists only in contrast, in so many words. As the wise man in front of pound cake by drake said, as we enjoyed playing it for you, because we had a ball, only real is gonna last, all the other bullshit is here today and gone tomorrow.”  

Do we dismiss this? Do we dismiss things relevant but not necessarily good? Good in the sense that it is relevant quantifiably and therefore somehow good? What if someone truly resonates with Taylor Swift, the Chainsmokers, and as I write this right now, the top of the charts-again not the best, but measured by the most played, the most bought.

Quavo! I'm the one that hit that same spot (hit it)  

She the one that bring them rain drops (rain drops)

We go back, remember criss-cross and hopscotch? (hopscotch)

You the one that hold me down when the block's hot (hot)

This is number two

Hey, hey, hey

I got a condo in Manhattan

Baby girl, what's hatnin'?

You and your ass invited

So gon' and get to clappin'

So pop it for a player

Pop, pop it for me

Turn around and drop it for a player

Drop, drop it for me

I'll rent a beach house in Miami

You need to apply a certain set of standards (to make this work, and not be scary. Imagine please a homeless person, whatever you as an individual imagine: I imagine someone totally unhinged, running swinging aimlessly at anything that moves, screaming these lyrics at the top of their lungs. Imagine the setting where these set of lyrics are acceptable on YOUR OWN TERMS and also the antithesis, based on the ideas of Foucault’s power principles.

What are our values? If this is a mere google search of the number fucking one song, what does this mean? Sorry it is the number two? Let’s go back to this formative, substantial song

You tell me, "Hit this and let's go.

Blow the smoke right through the window."

'Cause this is all we know

'Cause this is all we know

'Cause this is all we know

Never face each other

One bed, different covers

We don't care anymore

Two hearts still beating

On with different rhythms

Maybe we should let this go

This is back to the current number one song: (NOT DESCENDANTS)

Oh-eh-oh-oh-oh, eh-oh

I'm the one

Oh-eh-oh-oh-oh, eh-oh

I'm the only one

Oh-eh-oh-oh-oh, eh-oh

I'm the one

Oh-eh-oh-oh-oh, eh-oh

I'm the only one…

So I used to view a city as structure, the basis of everything, people occupying and working within given constraints. But now I see it as history of us as a species, the same way we observe beavers constructing their dams, or a swallow’s nest-and efficiency is based off our needs.

The city usually entails several things: it is large and also there are many people residing within it. Some places tout efficacy, efficiency and some beauty, functioning aesthetically. Each concept I just mentioned are components of a much larger system and do not begin to be able to be enough to conceptualize anything really, other than understanding there are a plethora of factors that go into the idea of “the city.”

Any theory of school of thought, statistics, sociological, economical, historical, cultural, geographical conditions, climate conditions, … are all factors that play into being able to consider a city. Being able to honne in on one specificity would entail looking at how it is affected by some other concept. The city is like constant combustion, never still, never stagnant.

The same way we can look at pop culture in music, sports, food, technology, what we chose to observe in each of those camps would too be considered in examining components of a city. Infrastructure reflects what we value in a society. When buildings, like a historic Taco Bell, are removed-are people that passionate about the Taco Bell really, or what the building represented and meant to a community. How do we feel things for a building?

So all of these things sometimes cycle through my mind as I try to participate in cities, mainly in nightlife. To me, somethings come out and can be seen better in the dark.

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enter the void. enter means to come or go into a place. the is referential. void is a completely empty space. 

the searing oblivion of attempting to make meaning out of abstract concepts is overwhelming. 

I don’t understand it. 

finding space in the city can be the dilapidated shit hole i pass on my way home everyday or the sexy, expensive building in the heart of the city. 

what does the city entail? 

the same way with in defining everything, there is something human in us that is void of all theoretical concerns of trying to statistically demographically graph us better into a group to make meaning out of number, but it is dependent on the color of your lenses, what you’ve seen, and what you see now. 

the same way pop culture is a hyper condensed form of what is pertinent to us as people born into the world operating in a system which we abide to or not, the influx is quick-or slow. with cities, it takes time to build, more so it takes money and motive. 

is pop culture a reflection of capitalistic interest, or is it really what it is definitively descriptive of what it is, the scaling of the what is most popular? does it mean anything to be popular? what is popular? what gets the most plays, the most visits, the most clicks, looks, etc.? 

is pop culture distraction, facilitation, a binding burning building for us to all see, and find meaning only in contrast from this-is it so hard to contrast from something burning up in flames? 

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This assignment is very quickly making me realize how much more I am staying in and not going out. Maybe even just a year ago, or when I was in LA, I would have been able to fill out ten entries in 12 days. 

Maybe its growing up, but I think it is mainly that I chose what I spend my time with differently. I think being in the city is part attempting to find what to do, what’s going on. Thats the thing with LA, however, is there is ALWAYS something going on. 

My friends were partiers, and made me feel genuinely uncomfortable about being a homebody more or less. So like a wisp in the wind, I threw myself into the void of the night life, drifting where ever, staying no where. 

The Smell was a place where there was, in one space, so much shit going on all the time anywhere you looked, it made me aware. Being now 23, then 19, it takes a lot to force becoming aware of what is surrounding you. 

This place is special in that it takes a part of you, you take a part of it, and you want to give that part to others. I guess ownership was what I felt a lack of. The bad part of ownership-the pissing contest, where this is mine and no one else’s of certain parts of the city, was not there. Ownership was there, respected, and wanted to be shared. 

Its not an anti-capitalism sentiment to make it pitched as a “non profit” venue. I mean, ethical consumption under capitalism is impossible, right? I can’t name many other places like this, that the room feels like there is a heart and a soul, and you feel like you’re standing in the middle of it all. The vapidness, the hype of most of what I had been shown throughout the rest of LA was a starkly contrasted with the goal and “vibe” of The Smell. 

“Life is what you make it, so let’s make it right.”

-H. Montana  

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I don’t have a lot of pictures of events, I went through this phase of turning myself into a case study of not relying on the cell phone, but I took this one.

This is Jens Lenkman, one of my most favorites artists, ever, all time, who is from Sweden and barely in the US. He did a show at the Hollywood Masonic Lodge which I went to by myself, and was one of the most magical experiences. 

Here, this is at the Teragram Ballroom. Out of performing the city journal as something I need to turn in, as opposed to something I was hyper aware of but never really documented ever. 

This was the weirdest demographic of people, just based off components demographics consist of, in terms of statistic variance I have ever seen. Age wise, teen agers to grand parents, white to black, everything you can think of. Adherence to image based style, or not. I think my favorite part was when everyone was singing together, I drunkenly looked around the venue and almost giggled. It was one of the sweetest things I had ever seen, his melodic acoustic sounds created almost an odd religious bonding. 

I think it was because he wasn’t from the united states and rather obscure, yet his blog is the most updated and personal I’ve ever seen an artist share, and it created an odd sense of community through almost chain letter emails of connectivity and closeness.  

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I guess I seem like a groupie for my friends band at this point, but that’s okay. This is a little out of the time frame of the City Journal, but it was a formative night for me and my experience of Long Beach. 

I just moved from couch surfing in LA to my parents to Long Beach. I live on 7th so 4th street is, well, only three blocks away. I had just moved in, maybe this same week of this video. My roommate and I take her poodle, Gigi, out from strolls around the area quite often. 

I’m obsessed with the notion of novelty and at what point we become used to something, or at what point does the novelty wear off for us as individuals. How does novelty translate to a community. Like restaurants opening that operate on social trends, when do they lose their magic? Waffles and beer, ice cream made in different ways, multicolored staples of food, donuts and ice cream, sushi burritos, etc. 

The Pike is familiar. It’s Island Burger’s cousin that never graduated from college. It’s also one of the most staple, feel-good bars in Long Beach, before you start getting into Fern’s and V-Room. But the novelty is gone. There’s no shtick, no gimmicks, it is what it is. Moving from LA scene of people waiting in lines for food (a phenomenon I will never understand), there is nothing other than maybe the people that make you want to come back. You can’t really instagram the pike-it isn’t very glamorous, but its a great place to hang out with your friends-if you want to talk to them. 

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May 4th, The Good Bar, Long Beach

My friend Evan was performing at the Good Bar with his band. I hadn’t seen him in a few months, and we used to see each other fairly often, so it was more than nice. His band, LIMMS, sounds like if Tame Impala is a glistening silky, glistening pond, then LIMMS is a dampy, dark green, warm,tangled swamp with friendly creepy creatures swimming through. It was May the Fourth be with you day and there were $5 Tangerine IPAs so before they even started setting up, my friends and I were a bit sloshed. The bar was packed and everyone was nice. My friend TJ who I went with introduced me to some of his friends, and one of them had graduated from Long Beach last year in Creative writing, the other was a sassy political science major who had a tendency to get into beer fused, heated arguments with me- not necessarily arguments, but honest discussion about our views on our very common interests, and how we also disagreed. Chain smoking outside after they played, Ray and I were retelling our friends about the first time we met we were talking about trying to make a living off being a blogger, or even a writer.

I took the video I think exactly for this reason to submit but I had forgotten to sanitize my language, so there’s that. But I was so grateful more meeting people like Ray, who can challenge and provoke, but still be so tactful in giving an honest response. They’re also all a little older than me by at least five years, so I know they love giving me council. Going to see live music is one of my raisons de etre, but when one of your friends is playing, its such a beautiful thing. The vulnerability of music playing is so intimate. At the end of the day, music is made by slapping, touching, plucking, strumming something-its just noise. But how it makes us feel something is always and forever mystifying.

I met Evan for the first time when I was bartending at our monthly First Fridays, where local Cerritos DJ’s would get compensated ONLY if we sold over 1,000. I didn’t know of his then drug abuse problem, a certain one that ought to not be taken also with a copious amount of alcohol served to him by me. He did his set, the bar closed, and everyone left, even our mutual friends. He tripped, broke his set up, and was laying on the floor. I had just met him maybe four hours before and he was grabbing my leg, crying almost trying to stand up. The next time we met it was at a funeral for one of our friends who died from a several year long battle with xanax.

Seeing Evan then, playing his little heart out (his heart isn’t little but he is about 5’2) with his friends, I had started crying in the small space that Good Bar had for the band and its audience. I am a very emotional person, but hardly get brought to tears at shows and I knew it was this feeling of seeing this person who I learned to care about so much for, be contributing to his band, his music, and Long Beach.

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This was during Spring Break at The Getty. There was a college night where the grounds as well as the galleries were open a little later, and $12 beers and wine were sold. 

My sweet, darling boyfriend took me here the night after 2nd Street. I would have gone here even if he didn’t offer it as a date. My refuge has always been museums. My parents had teacher discounted memberships to LACMA, Natural History, the Science Center, and the LB Aquarium almost all of my childhood. As an adult, museums are now usually date-spots, or something to Instagram, but they are little slices of heaven. As an English major given an Aesthetic education on beauty and dedication to ideology, museums are entire havens of someone funding money to make this place. Every ounce, every blade ties into something. Maybe, everything has a given meaning. 

That’s reassuring after being thrown into the other realms of hell night life can provide. This was his first time at the Getty ever, and he knew it would be nice for me. He lets me wander around and get lost. I remember he took this picture after he had found me standing on a balcony. I was just staring at this. He said “You like that, huh?” 

Being smack dab in the middle of LA/Malibu, these museums are always filled with tourists, locals, whoever, which I love because it shoes that people really want to see things kept and preserved, things that can stand the test of time and still have significance.