There were lots of kids, lots of dogs, and lots of booze at the BTxGGPPwBC3 party this last Saturday.
I also stumbled upon what has got to be the largest colony of succulents that I’ve ever seen in one spot.
There was a shrine set up for Otto Schutt who passed away recently from cancer.
I love his taste in fashion, as is evident in his hoodie.
UPDATE # 1
Great footage by Mr. Holehead of the BrassTax Boom Box at Burning Man 2009
I love it when DJs have a sense of humor.
The genesis behind this week long field trip and open love letter to The Mission was Balmy Alley.
Balmy Alley is one of the more famous collections of murals in San Francisco, almost to the point of being a busy tourist destination.
On the one hand I felt very much like a tourist taking pictures here. On the other hand, it’s kind of neat that after living in San Francisco for 15 years there are still some parts of the city that are completely new to me. There are some parts of this town that I know like the back of my hand, but then travel just a few miles away and I’m a stranger in a strange land.
I like this contribution that was taped to the wall a lot. It’s very democratic.
The time of day that you take pictures out here makes all the difference in the world.
Unfortunately one of my favorite pieces, The Victorion, was cut off because of the mid afternoon shadows.
I love how this mural has incorporated all of the wires that were already attached to this building into its theme, even though I’m not quite sure how to read that.
Are they like razor sharp piano wire that is slicing that person into different pieces?
Or are they more like electrical organic wires that are creating that Pink Floyd assembly line creature below?
And what the Hell is going on down there?
It’s like one of Neil Gaiman’s nightmares that someone decided to put up on the side of their house.
I don’t know. Don’t ask me.
This mural really compliments this building. The building itself is pretty haggard; it could stand to use a new paint job, yet that works with the mural that has a beautiful yet haggard feel to it. I think this is a great example of how a building doesn’t’ have to maintain a pristine paint job to work with its mural.
It’s a really interesting piece.
Check out how the artist snuck in a real coat hanger into his mural.
Nice touch.
This is hands-down my all-time favorite double cassette tape set.
The San Francisco Project series were live mix tapes of DJ Dan spinning at the Funky Tekno Tribe parties. This was during a period when Dan had just moved from LA to SF and was experimenting with more Funky House and Progressive House tracks, but still had that LA NoDoz level of intensity in his programming.
Not just really, really good records but LOTS of really, really good records mixed really creatively together, one right after the other, sometimes building into this kamikaze onslaught of sound.
I played the hell out of these tapes and must have made over a dozen copies of each for friends. I remember playing this tape during my summer job at SF State and even some of my co-workers who were into Hip-Hop and hated House loved this tape, especially all the scratching and the Jungle Brothers part at the end. We used to play it all the time and it became the soundtrack to my 1994 summer experience.
Dan just re-released a digital version of Take a Fix to Funk as part of his Future Retro mixtape series and you can check it out for free over here
Priceless…
UPDATE # 1
Dan just dropped
San Francisco Project #4 Weed Wacker.
These really are like the Paul’s Boutique of 90’s House Music mix tapes.
= Priceless
UPDATE # 2
Simfonik recently did an excellent post on DJ Dan’s involvement with The California Project
At 16 tapes spread across 8 different DJs, The California Project is easily the most ambitious mixtape box collection that I’ve heard of.
Dan’s two contributions were “Live at Organic” and then one simply labeled “live” I’ve heard, taped, and traded both these tapes over the years and there was a lot of confusion as to where they came from, so it’s nice to see the story behind it. Simfonik also did an excellent job, as he always does, of scanning the original j-cards and cassette tapes themselves. It looks like for the California Project all the DJs donated pictures of themselves as kids to be used in the artwork. Quite an amazing find and you can check the whole thing out for free over here –
DJ Dan – The California Project
Related Posts –
I had the weirdest dream about some Lucha Libre masks I photographed in The Mission last week.
If I had to pitch my dream in 30 seconds it would be LOST meets Caligula. There’s a cast of 20-30 men and women that live all across the world that all share common connections that they are unaware of, but that the viewer can pick up on if they are paying attention. Every week 4-5 of those people are teleported away and into their Lucha Libre masks where they now have super powers and fight zombies and vampires as part of a massive never-ending secret crisis war.
That lasts about 5 minutes and then they spend the rest of the episode having kinky sex and playing BDSM games with each other. All while in character, with the masks on and with superpowers. I must have dreamt through an entire season last night.
I think if I toned this down I could pitch it to Fox as a mid season replacement. It’s got a legion of kinky Lucha Libre super heroes, that just writes itself.
UPDATE # 1
Faith No More rocking the lucha libre masks for the Nov 11 2009 show at Arena Monterrey in Monterrey Mexico. They did all of Reunited with the masks on. Love how Mike Patton has incorporated his hat into the look.
Photo courtesy of Roddy Bottom’s twitter
RELATED POSTS –
I stumbled across Clarion Alley purely by accident after coming back from a day of shooting pictures of Balmy Alley in The Mission.
I could easily spend the rest of the week just taking pictures of this place and still feel like I didn’t do justice to the alley.
Ha!
Someone gave Alex Jones some airtime. Awesome…
This race ends in The Outer Sunset area of Golden Gate Park and that’s normally where most of the splinter parties are at, so I normally ride my bike straight there to check out the action.
Bay to Breakers is a pretty unique event and it’ a great free party with 70,000 + other people. It’s one of the few events that San Francisco will wake up at the ungodly hour of 8AM on a Sunday and then be smashed by noon. People were annihilated last year. If you’re any kind of recovering alcoholic you want to stay far, far away from Bay to Breakers.
You could definitely notice the effects of the city’s Death of Fun campaign but people still had a great time. As I type this now on Monday it’s really cold mid 50s and overcast outside. The fog has come in and even bundled up under a few layers it’s still cold. Yesterday it was gorgeous, sunny in the low 90s, with people in shorts and no shirts. Amazing how drastically the weather can change in just a single day out here.
There wasn’t anywhere near the number of floats this year, but there was still quite a few sound systems. I think in the future we’ll see smaller scale, individually powered, sound systems.
All you really need are some speakers, an energy source, an ipod, and some wheels.
The pink people were back and set up shop under the bridge again.
I had heard reports that all music had to be off by 11:30, but this was the party going off at 3PM with no indication that it was planning to wrap up anytime soon.
The Outer Sunset 