It’s funny how some American cultural institutions, though supposedly predicated on reality, are in fact products of our collective imagination. Take ‘tiki’ culture, for example. When I was in LA, I had the good fortune to go to one of the country’s longest operating tiki bars: Tiki Ti. Ray Buhan opened Tiki Ti in the early 1960s after working for some of the city’s original tiki establishments, and it stands in the same spot to this day. Unbelievably, it is also still run by his family– his son, and now his grandsons tend the bar and make the 85+ concoctions on the menu. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the ‘Pre 1970’ Category
December 13th, 2009
I stumbled upon the work of Haruki Murakami around 1997, picking up a copy of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World at my local bookstore. I had never heard of him, but the blurb sounded interesting enough, and I had been trying to find out more about Japanese literature– the internet left something to be desired at that point as far as research went. Read the rest of this entry »
October 17th, 2009
Fall is a funny season. For me, it has the dual connotation of innocence– new school books and pencils, and of decay, the inevitable end of the warm season, and the yearly celebrations surrounding the reminder of mortality. Heavy? Kind of. Read the rest of this entry »
April 10th, 2009
So, spring is finally eking its way across America, reaching small fingers to my corner of Brooklyn. As a sort of anticipation of the summer, I’ll head due south for this mix, to New Orleans.
I grew up a few hours from New Orleans, and to be honest, it has doggedly followed me around since the first time I visited. They say that the city either gets in your blood or not– it chooses some people to retain for its own, some people to leave outside the circle of influence. Even before the hurricane, it could be a vicious place, full to the brim with poverty, a dark past replete with the worst offenses of the colonial era, and a bizarre, violent sense of humor. It was very cruel… and very beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »
February 20th, 2009
Sometimes it is difficult to say what you mean, more difficult to do what you intend– intentions are slippery creatures, constantly shifting with context and emotion. I intended to be productive this winter, to come up with a sort of road map for the next few years, but I find myself at the tail end of it having done almost none of my own work, though I have so far managed not to become a casualty of the economic downturn (yet). So, instead of a road map for the next few years, I made a mix for the next few months– something that reminds me of the coming changes, something somewhat wistful, somewhat quiet. What I really want is to record it onto an old cassette tape and take off somewhere in a beat-up car, but we can’t have everything, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »
December 23rd, 2008
So, this is the end of the year, yet again. I am currently back in the Southlands, which make me alternately Very Happy (the excellent comforts of good food and general moody ambiance) and Very Unhappy (needing to drive everywhere and not owning my own vehicle, being held to other people’s schedules, lack of the internet). It’s strange not to have visited in an entire year. Contrary to what we may think, towns and cities are very much alive, constantly shifting and changing whether we observe them or no. Geographies are not fixed, but are a matter of pure context, rather like time. Read the rest of this entry »
November 3rd, 2008
The winds of change, they are a-blowin’. This, combined with the steadily cooling weather puts me in the mood for Tropicalia. Started in Brazil in the sixties, the movement encompassed a diverse mash of influences, taking on guises from many styles of music, poetry, and literature. It ended abruptly in 1968 when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, the leaders and most recognized voices of Tropicalia, were incarcerated on false charges by Brazil’s right wing military dictatorship. Though later released, they were exiled from the country for four years. Many of their contemporaries were not even this fortunate, undergoing torture and forced “psychiatric care” for their artistic creations, lifestyles, and attempts at cultural syncretism. Read the rest of this entry »
October 23rd, 2008
Some days are, admittedly, better than others. For the Mondays of the world, there will always be soul. No matter how tired, cranky, or miserable I am, this is the music that turns my sniveling into something epic. Read the rest of this entry »
