Abandoned Treasure

Here are some more images we captured while checking out the Pinhole Photography exhibition at Rayko studio.  After we returned from the exhilarating ride aboard the Bus Obscura, we got distracted (as curious little girls with cameras often do) and began wandering through the urban wasteland under the freeway, snapping shots of all the eye-candy/industrial detritus we found there. 

--gillian

The higher the graffiti, the closer to god?

Such a sweetly proud logo

A close-up of part of an enormous mountain of snowy white scrap metal

An unfinished thought

5 o'clock shadow

The New York Revue

After being inundated with requests by anxious and impatient Telescopic superfans, I have acquiesced and finally produced some blog-worthy selections from my (not-so-recent-anymore) trip to New York...

Enjoy!

--gillian

These first few are shots taken aboard the Long Island RailRoad... just some cool metalwork and industrial dinosaurs.

I spent a day in Brooklyn with my friend Ahsen, where we took tea, Williamsburg-style:

...and then enjoyed a delicious afternoon brunch (the best kind) at Egg.  Here's Ahsen & co. while we wait for our table.

While in Brooklyn, we checked out The Future Perfect, a totally awesome spot well-stocked with hand-picked furniture and accessories for the modern urbanite/borough-dweller...

...including some bad-ass jewelry personally made by the adorable Kiel Mead (jeweler/shopboy/cutie)...

... and these fine art skateboards (they read Father/Son/Holy Ghost).

Another lovely New York day was spent, West Village style, with my good friend Will.

I was lucky enough to get taken on a tour of this adorable neighborhood, stopping at a couple of his favorite spots, which I'm delighted to share with you!

Our first stop was Lord Willy's: a little nook of a men's shop where sharp-dressing New Yorkers can get outfitted with the finest in haberdashery: colorful shirts and ties, heirloom-quality suiting, and cheeky cufflinks.  Keep your eyes peeled: you'll know it by the garden gnome standing guard in the front window.

"Don't be silly. There's no such thing as too many shirts!"

Will also took me to Greenwich Letterpress, one of the most adorable card shops I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot!) -- it's beautifully arranged and packed with charming stationery, hand-selected cards, antique-y bookplates and vintage maps.

He also turned me on to my new favorite stationer: Jonathan Wright.  I love to get some anatomy with my correspondence.  Thanks, Will!

And thanks to the entire city of New York for keeping its shops tended by adorable and charming shopboys the whole city over.  How can you not love this?

Daily Door

Analog Dreams

Check out these slick Nakamichi Cassette Decks.  These completely feed into my love for obsolete electronics of questionable functionality...  if only my mechanical tinkering skills would ever catch up with my insatiable urge to rescue ancient personal electronics off the street, my wood-encased Marantz tuner with matching speakers would be more than just musically suggestive decor for my living room.

Woldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Pinhole photography has always seemed like a mysterious art form that only people infinitely more pretentious then I could master - thus we here at The Light Telescopic were happily surprised to find out that the folks at Rayko took a much more user-friendly approach to their Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day exhibit last Sunday.  On top of workshops and displays of homemade cameras, the piece de resistance was the Bus Obscura, a roaming multiple-aperture camera obscura which gave passengers free rides around our gorgeous city.  The windows of the bus were blacked out except for hundreds of tiny pinholes, which projected images of the passing landscape onto plexiglass screens inside the bus.  

For just $5 you can buy an original piece of work from the Art-O-Mat.


We took multiple pictures in Rayko's Photobooth - look for those soon!




The view from inside the bus!

I almost forgot one of the most enjoyable aspects of our amazing Bus Obscura experience - sound artists Michael F. Zbyszinski and Walter Sisper providing the live soundtrack for our trip. When we thanked them for the great music Michael had to double check to make sure we weren't being facetious. Flabbergasted, we assured him that here at The Light Telescopic we pride ourselves on our highly refined appreciation of all types of art, sound or otherwise.  Thanks again, boys!

Daily Door

Rayko Photo Center door. More to come soon on Rayko and their infamous World Wide Pinhole Photography Day Celebration....

Tonga

Good evening, and Mahalo!  Just returned from a ridiculously festive dinner with my friend Will, who is visiting from NY.  He was eager for the full SF experience, including the famed Tonga Room, in the Fairmont Hotel, so being the supportive friend and excellent tour guide that I am, I obliged and joined him as his date for an evening of Polynesian delicacies, Mai Tais served in fake coconuts, and "feel good" music played by a 3-piece band floating on a pool surrounded by fake rain.  If that doesn't scream San Francisco, I don't know what does.

After several courses of "exotic" fare (and one flaming volcano-shaped dessert), and trying to outdance retirees to MJ's "Rock With You" (stiff competition, I'll say), we took a stroll through the ground floors of the Fairmont and admired the museum-caliber collection of artifacts and photos from the famed hotel's history.  Among old brochures and advertisements were many photos from the era that begat kitsch: royalty wining and dining at the Fairmont, bathing beauties, pre-war extravagance.  There was also an entire hall of photos chronicling the citywide destruction from the fire at the turn of the century.

It's amazing that so much history (and so much South Pacific style fabulousness) is right here in our little city.  Just walking through the opulent lobby with its gold mouldings and velvet settees makes one feel decadent.

Well, despite my coconut-cream Tongaccino, I'm feeling a little drowsy...

Over and out,

gillian