A Touch of Class

It's cuddle season, as things start to chill a bit and we pair off for the Winter as mother nature intended. So, as we tire of the political rhetoric or Madonna's divorce, why not go out for a bit and support our once forgotten indie movie houses. This institution the Red Vic, was where I once volunteered. After my eyes kinda popped out at age 18 over their plentiful condiment section, they offered me a gig. And as a teen, I smoked in the back garden discovering for the first time wild Jasmine growing all over the fences, learned how to project massive plates of film, and even did a little film programming. Come have a bowl of popcorn, in a wooden bowl, of course, sip on a grape soda, and get stoned for this masterpiece. "Film", indeed.

San Francisco. Please register to vote!

Park Life Gallery

Our friends at Park Life have put together a much anticipated show.. by me, mostly, but it will be rad. Curated by Don, it includes new works by these emerging artists including some by one of my faves Ben Jones (paperrad?).
I was once invited to go with Taylor and Misaki Kawai during Art Basel Miami to one of her collector's homes far out with another awesome Japanese artist, whose shoes I bought at the Mori Museum earlier that year in Japan... it was pretty memorable as we drove out with a tailgate party of artist friends into a gated community ended up having a black out and the host showed me her collection by candlelight. She had this awesome Kawai piece in her living room which was like a Pee Wee's Playhouse meets early George Lucas Chewbacca tree house type sculpture with vidoes in the consoles of the spaceship mountain. Later on that evening we cosied up in the guesthouse. While the collector was giving me the dish on her divorce, I looked around and all this miniature art was hanging by this knockoff artist that I was having a dilemma with at Aqua Fair - Christopher Wool's, and I can't remember what else but a few in the room. But whenever I go to Miami, I always want to buy something at Aqua and this year, it was a tiny Elizabeth Peyton painting.. but it was a knockoff. I knew I loved her work and I think I had heard of this guy being like yelled at at Chelsea openings for being a total con... but thinking I could never afford the original and feeling like Miami is a foreign country I tried to compare it to like buying some weird knockoff in Nam or something like an Aphlex Trin record or something. Was this unethical? Complimentary? Anyway, I didnt get it because the work was covered in gel medium, which was kinda funny, but I thought I could do better.
Back to the show..., good folks, good artists. And the notorious Kathy G. will be in town wreaking havoc no less! Kathy is a curator at Deitch, whose got a competitive edge.. but I guess in NYC, who doesn't? Congrats to PL on this show and I think they are making a catalog to go along with it. CHECK IT OUT!! THEY ARE TOTAL FP FAMILY...fpxbn.

Albino Crocodiles

Well, now I know from where those Martin Margiela wallets come from... there's an unbelievable white crocodile at the entrance of the well-raved about Academy of Sciences that just opened last Saturday in SF's breathtaking and breath-inducing Golden Gate Park. It's the first thing you see when you walk in, and I don't recall it being there at the last aquarium before they renovated, so I'm going to assume this is a new rare edition. Along with an insane looking "Dinosaur Fish". This thing doesn't even need to swim. It just floats and swear, to god, looks at you and prolly completes some thought. This species is endangered and lives to be 100 years old. They had a few fish in their aquariums that looked like if they had legs, they could totally walk ashore and be the first reptiles. I was pretty stoked on their new species. Of course, competitive now with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I'd say the one in GGP is well of course, closer to the City, doesn't have as many large tanks - big enough to fill a great white shark, or any adorable sea otters paddling about, but I think it's definitely worth a visit.
They also boast a 4 story rainforest which I wasn't too impressed with. Yes, there are cute butterflies in arresting colors sipping on halved oranges, tiny venomous tree frogs and a few Geico lizards, but overall I guess I wanted to really hold a baby orangutan's hand or something more exotic.. kinda fucked up. But the overhead fish tank on the bottom is pretty nice. The benches provide a good lil' chill zone for watching massive catfish hover over the glass and those big silver fish you might have seen during the 80's at the entryway of a lot of Chinese fancy restaurants as a sign of luck and prosperity.. or show offiness.
Don't wanna give it all away.. you should just go, once at least. Admission is a whopping $25 for the public, but I'm going to go again this Wed. Oct. 15, as third Wed's of the month are FREE and I missed the planetarium.
Happy to hear Hilary Clinton was in town for the groundbreaking. And hope to meet w.some of the researchers to do a more in depth interview for Issue 3 of First Person Magazine.

Lydia Fong

The Barry McGee show at Ratio 3, delivers wall to wall eye installation, painting and video in the new space. This is the first solo show that I feel really fills the space with multimedia. Although it offers the usual Barry runnings, spray graffiti, and abstractions, the piece that I mostly enjoyed was the animatronic hand tagging the wall out of a tree and whiting out. Check it out before it ends Oct. 18.