Get Felt!

FELT CLUB: HOLIDAY 2008
Sunday, NOVEMBER 16, 11am-7pm
@ Shrine Auditorium Expo Center
700 W. 32nd St., LA CA 90007
www.feltclub.com

No longer a monthly or even quarterly indulgence, we’ve got to get it all in in one day – which is kind of cooler because the annual FC is the cream of the craft crop.

What’s in store, you ask?

• Nearly 150 amazing vendors, offering the best in indie craft and design
• DIY Workshops with the Urban Craft Center & Quarry Books
• Embroidery 101 with Sublime Stitching‘s Jenny Hart
• Jewelry Workshop with French General‘s Kaari Meng
• Handmade Nation documentary sneak preview screenings
• Recycled Giftwrap Booth with ReForm School
• Special Musical Performance by Leslie Hall
• A snack bar offering sandwiches and salads, pastries and coffee, and a full bar!
• Music Provided by DJ Lance Rock (Yo Gabba Gabba), Dirty Robot & Mr. Cocoon
• Hosted by three-time Martha Stewart guest, L.A. “histotainer” Charles Phoenix!!!

PLUS: Swag bags for the first 250 visitors, door prizes, book signings & more!

Admission is free for kids 13 and under, for everyone else they’re asking a $5 donation at the door. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Handmade Nation , the forthcoming documentary film chronicling the rise of art, craft, and design.

The balcony will also be hosting a second, separate event, Swap-O-Rama-Rama , a recycled clothing extravaganza!

Claro's Simple window display facing busy Huntington Drive in Arcadia

For years I’ve heard about “a little Italian market in Arcadia”.  I never bothered to seek it out as I could get what I needed at an Toni’s or Pinocchio’s in Burbank.  Not seeking Claro’s out earlier was a mistake I quickly learned today.  Just getting out of the car I realized Claro’s Italian Market was going to be good.  I wish I had not put  off tracking Claro’s down as it is more of a market with a nice deli instead of the other way around.  The imported foodstuffs alone is worth the visit.

I can’t imagine where else in LA you can find a better selection of olive oils, tomato, cheese, polenta and who knows what else Italian, fobby or otherwise than here.  I was impressed.  The prices were good to outright cheap compared to regular chain stores in the area.   I’m about to be a regular there and can’t wait to sample even more of the fresh stuff as well as all the cheeses.

Details: Claro’s Italian Market. 19 1/2 E Huntington Dr, Arcadia CA 91006 626-446-0275

Turns out they have 5 stores total.  Locations and more info on their web site.  More pics and a little bit more on my finds today.  Read the rest of this entry →

Not the cake you eat, the CAKE you shop at!

Get a jump on the holidays – she’s got amazing one-of-a-kind jewelry, accessories, and some really great handbags.

SATURDAY NOV 8th
10am – 6pm
SUNDAY Nov 9th
11am – 5pm

Holiday notecards up to 70% off
VINTAGE rummage boxes starting at $5
All HIGHWAY & ELSPETH HANDBAGS 20% off

CAKE
4649 Russell Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90027
in the heart of Los Feliz, just off Vermont
next to FRED 62
323-644-5699

Or perhaps, better to say, if you’d like a big “Thank You” for voting, many places around town will honor your civic duty and your “I Voted” sticker with freebies and discounts tomorrow. 

UPDATE (11/4):  I just read in Daily Variety via the AP that Starbucks is giving a way a tall brewed coffee to anyone who asks and Ben and Jerry’s is giving away free scoops from 5-8pm!

Big thanks to Thrillist for this list.

Krispy Kreme will offer a free star spangled donut to all who come in with their sticker.

OBurger will give you free organic fries or cookies with the purchase of a burger.

If you feel the need for a drink tomorrow night (whether in celebration or just sheer relief that November 4th has finally come) Colorado Wine Company (in Pasadena) will offer 50% of selected reds and whites.

Amoeba Music will be handing out $2 gift certificates.

Tart Restaurant is offering free desserts for all comers with their I Voted stickers. They are also offering discounted drinks and a special election night menu.

Chrisophe Salon wants you to look good no matter what the outcome. They are giving 50% off gift-certificates and on the spot services.

Get your vote on early to get this deal: If you need to gird your loins in the middle of the day, Pink Taco is offering a free well-shot of tequila and three free pink tacos at lunch.

At Pitfire Pizza you can choose between either an “Edison Ale” or a McCain/Obama specialty soda. They have a special election night menu and are having a drawing to win a pair of “Vote Shoes” by Tom’s Shoes.

At the O’Neill flagship store in Anaheim (I know I know, not LA, but I’m including LA-adjacent in this post…) you can get 25% of most clothes in the store.

Ask your local favorite retailer if they are doing anything to say “thanks for voting”!

Cheapest mainline gas in the SGV spotted this morning in Azusa

Wooohooo the fill in my little daily driver was $20!  I’m so freaking happy I could just carp.  Now if it can just stabilize that will mean a lot more money being diverted to jump starting the economy instead of blown out the tailpipe.  Map Link here to the cheap gas.

(pic done with the trusty phone cam)

So many choices out there for minding the date – but there’s only ONE Barracuda Girl 2009 Pin-Up Calendar!

These are printed in an extremely small run, so be sweet and click this link to order one.

Days and months are in English, Hawaiian, Japanese, French, German and Spanish with many international holidays, plus holidays invented solely for the benefit of Barracuda Readers!

$12.95 and free domestic shipping – wow!

Found these beauties at Marshall's for 39.99

It started with liking to eat.  Well too might I add.  I learned to cook.  I sold cookware at Bullock’s and learned what made up the good stuff. This is where I learned that good tools make good cooking easier.  I’ve been indulged over the years with some really good cookware.  I’m upping the ante on my cookware collection and getting copper.  Besides cooking very well it is as pissy as it gets for putting on the dog for your guests.

Copper, especially the stainless steel lining as opposed to tin lined have a lot of pluses in terms of even heating, easy clean up, no worry about acidic foods and no having to bother with getting it retinned.  I found these beauties at Marshall’s today.  Copper with 18/10 stainless at $39.99 each.  Considerably less than you would find retail anywhere else.  If you want some good copper with stainless interiors on the cheap check out your local Marshall’s before they are gone.  

For those of you who think copper is a pain to clean, check out Surfas in Culver City for their house label cleaner/polish for only $1.99 bottle!

pic by me with the phone cam

Yep, Obama boxer briefs are marked down from $29 to $7.49 at the Andrew Christian Factory Store, located in Glendale, for a limited time only. Make up your own joke about them, if you must.

Andrew Christian Factory Store, 325 West Cerritos Ave. Glendale CA 91204; open Mon.-Fri. 10 AM-5 PM.

My friends at Beautiful/Decay are holding a sample sale this weekend and it’s looks to feature deep discounts on some rare and unique stuff:

They will be selling rare, limited run and unreleased samples and never before seen Beautiful/Decay prototypes- for all you who love those exclusive designs. The sale will feature the insane discount of 50 to 80% off everything, including shirts and hoodies. Who wouldn’t like a one of a kind t-shirt or hoodie for the holidays? So come out, meet the Beautiful/Decay crew and get your hands on some great deals.

This is a good opportunity to pick up some early holiday gifts for the streetwear fans on your list and save some scratch at the same time.

B/D Sample Sale
Saturday, October 18, 10am-3pm

Agenda Showroom
645 N. Martel Ave., L.A., CA 90026

Forging a bond between the creative pursuits of established visual artists and young writers, Poketo, a Los Angeles design company specializing in limited edition, affordable art products, teamed up with 826LA, a non-profit organization that teaches writing skills to students ages 6 to 18, to create a special series of artist wallets.

826LA held a writing workshop called When Wallets Eat Words, where students developed short stories to line the inside of the artist wallets. Each wallet was then illustrated with a Poketo artists’ interpretation of the stories. The series was conceived when Poketo approached 826LA with an offer to curate a project for the organization.

Started by McSweeney’s Quarterly founder David Eggers, 826 has grown into a nationwide network, with two facilities in Los Angeles (Echo Park and Venice,) as well as branches in San Francisco, Seattle, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Boston and Brooklyn.

The wallets are available for $20 on the Poketo site , as well as at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, 1714 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles 90026. Proceeds benefit student writing programs at 826LA.

Wallet designed by Martha Rich.

Sean first posted about the in-progress move here a couple weeks ago, and yesterday was the first opportunity I had to bring in a front wheel desperately needing a new hub/rebuild and step inside the giantness that is the new home of Orange 20 Bikes in the famed Bicycle SquareQuadrantZoneDistrictRealm. DotCom. Also known as the corner of Heliotrope and Melrose in East Hollywood.

Turns out my timing was as impeccable as my taste in homegrown velocipedic establishments as yesterday was their first day of bustling operations in their new castle:

After stepping inside and gaping at the absolute vastness of all that additional square footage I made my way back across what may have been a change in zip code to the service/repair area — itself easily as large as the entire shack that was O20′s first home across the alley out back.

Greeted by proprietor Jim C. I guesstimated that the place must be three billion times bigger and he corrected me down to reality.

Read the rest of this entry →

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

LA, you know I have much love for you, but some days…some days lady, you really work my nerve.

I’m trying to make some cheese.  It’s really basic: salt, milk and rennet. It’s finding the rennet that is making my head explode. When I was a kid, we learned how to make this cheese from an Egyptian lady.  Luckily the halal meat market in Diamond Bar (shout out to the Jibanis!) carried it, so it was no problem to get it and we made this cheese almost weekly. But all the Eid ul-Fitr festivities are this weekend so there is no way in hell I’m driving out to Diamond Bar for some plant extract. So, I turned to the internet.

I didn’t want to order it online, because I wanted to make the cheese today. Yesterday, I figured if I posted the question to Twitter which also feeds directly to my FriendFeed account then I’d get a response and pick it up in the afternoon. You’d think with all these self-described LA-based “foodies” who follow me on both services, that someone could have pointed me to a local store. I received exactly zero whole responses.

Read the rest of this entry →

Whoo-hoo!

I used to think of Washington Mutual as the Trader Joes of banking. It seemed to be the alternative place where Angelenos would bank that didn’t suck you dry by charging for checks and account fees, and the staff was always nice. Unfortunately, it turned out that after getting that first overdraft fee waived, WaMu was just more like a new Ralphs, but no different than any other grocery store. Or bank. (I’m writing this while I’m hungry, so please forgive me).

Anyway, this really has nothing to do with the big news this week that Washington Mutual became the largest bank failure ever, as they were so nice they gave out way too many loans too easily, and people weren’t paying them back. As a result, the bank was pretty much going bankrupt, so the government swooped in, and sold WaMu to JP Morgan Chase, whose name will soon begin appearing on your banking statements, your checks and debit cards, and the bank itself.

Or something like that. Seriously, I’m mostly thinking about getting some food. Have a snack with me, then make the jump for more details… Read the rest of this entry →

CFL's on the cheap while supplies last at Smart and Final

If you are in need of more CFL’s and want them cheap head over to your nearest Smart & Final.  They are a whopping 49 cents, centavos, pennies or whatever name you have for those small shiny copper bits in your pocket.  The box says the price reflects an allowance courtesy of So Cal Ed.   They certainly are the best price I have seen on them yet.   Word of caution, if you suffer from migraines (like I do) keep some regular incadescents around as those CFL’s can be murder during an migraine, if not trigger one on a sensitive day. 

Pic by my at the Smart and Final on Huntington Drive here in Monrovia with the phone cam this evening.

Note to S. F. :

Is this poster really a good idea? I mean, right here (Sunset and Maltman,) right now (yesterday– and I ride by this corner a few times a week,) at this point in the election? It seems like it could be useful for the McCain campaign. Can’t you just see a 527 luridly splashing it on a massive direct mailing sent out to scare the most impressionable, most easily misled “undecided” voters?

Has the Palin situation gotten me this jumpy? Uh, yah.

“Alleged” cease-and-desist letters and street art branding wars aside, I quote from the “warning” link on the Obey site: “Please use common sense and consideration when applying stickers or other propaganda materials.”

Or maybe it’s just guerilla marketing for the Obey fashion/music/home/cake mix line? (Btw, the money clip? Loves it.)

[Full disclosure: I have a "hope" sticker on my car. And I'm curious about how the jeans fit.]