We Are Local: Digitally Curating Urban Wanderlust

Finding Chicago's Underground Jazz Scene

Sat, 01 May 2010 14:16:19 -0400

Chicago has an incredible underground avant-garde jazz scene with an unbelievably incomplete online presence. The best, and often only, way to learn about a lot of the great shows going on around town is to hit up the magical Now Is Chicago Music Calendar. Even their listings, however, are incomplete and often just wrong. I went to see Chicago experimental rock staples Zelienople last night based on a Now Is listing and the band was scheduled to come on half an hour later than had been listed, with different supporting acts.

The way things turn out, a tuned-in Chicagoan usually ends up hearing about the best gigs and coolest venues by word of mouth. It was by word of mouth that I ended up seeing the David Boykin Expanse at the Hyde Park Quaker House last night. I mentioned I had found the Zelienople event on Now Is to my good friend Andy, and he suggested that if I was in Hyde Park anyway we should go to see David Boykin on 57th Street later in the night. Andy had heard about David Boykin but never seen him live.

When we got to the Quaker House we were greeted warmly by Iccha Devi Ra, a.k.a. The Reluctant Vegetarian (Facebook & Web). I had never even heard of her before, but she has been hosting concerts and invite-only dinner parties at the Quaker House and Backstory Cafe for the better part of the last year. She has an amazing presence and made me feel right at home in a very small crowd of strangers. The show was totally casual and friendly–when David Boykin announced some of his sillier song titles we all laughed together, and occasional shouts of “Oh My!” and “Oww!” accompanied the rocking solos.

The actual band was something else. Alex Wing on electric bass and guitar, Jayve Montgomery sat in the back messing with a projector that displayed warped video of the band on the ceiling, scratching on a turntable and beat boxing; two drummers, a pianist and a double bassist whose names I have already forgotten (sorry!) rounded out the ensemble while David Boykin stood up front shouting out time signatures and keys in between KILLING solos on the tenor sax and rapping. Everybody was great, and Boykin absolutely brought the house down with his playing and his rhymes.

David Boykin plays in several different ensembles, and all of his releases come out under the name “Sonic Healing Ministries.” SHM is a sort of spiritual project. Ensembles ranging in size from 3 to 10 meet and play over an hour of ambient soundscape using every instrument available. The inset of the recording I bought (SHM 001) lists floor, maple syrup tins, kitchen bowls, and bumble ball alongside bible harp and sousaphone. Here’s the mission statement:

SALVATION IS FREE… MUSIC

Everything in existence on the physical plane, all energy/matter, vibrates at a particular frequency that defines it.

Love is the force that harmonizes this myriad of frequencies and binds everything together into a functioning whole.

Creative music, spiritual jazz, avant garde jazz, experimental music, improvised music, etc., is a sonic representation of this love. It is a unified expression and celebration of each individuated experience of creation simultaneously. It is a reverberation of the macrocosmic sound.

Check out the videos below to feel the love! In the first see DB’s rap and hear some killer solos; in the second see the joy of the Sonic Healing Ministries (check out the little girl loving it around 24:00). If you see his name anywhere in Chicago, walk in and experience it for yourself!

David Boykin | MySpace Music Videos

This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Amasa Delano.

Yelp For Help

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:08:00 -0500

Almost every week I turn to Yelp to research restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area. After trying to find a reliable food blog to guide me, I resorted to Yelp to give me reviews from normal restaurant goers such as myself. Last weekend, my boyfriend found a promising Japanese restaurant called “Minako Organic Japanese” in the Mission district. Since we have tried countless places in Japan-town, we decided to branch out and drive to a shoe box that sits between a Hispanic dollar store and a graffitied alley. The website gave us photos of the interior, along with a wide range of reviews. Raters praised the restaurant for its intimate atmosphere, exquisite vegan rolls, and fresh udon. We entered the restaurant hungry, and were seated promptly while Julian Casablancas’ howled in the background. The restaurant is owned by a mother-daughter team, and we were served by the mother who kindly explained dishes. The menu is overwhelming, but I tried an aged tofu and vegetable salad with miso dressing and thin soba noodles as decoration. I also had a California roll with fresh crab legs and veggies, along with a small bowl of purple rice. We also tried the udon, which was by far the best udon I have ever had. You could taste every element of the broth: ginger, salt, and hints of soy. Not to mention the noodles were perfectly chewy. The only draw back to this place is the cost. The udon was over twice the price of what we spent elsewhere ($18) and rolls were upwards of $6.00. Minako also has its share of bad reviews, and has been characterized as ”a conceptual art project curated by wanker-artists.” Yelp has served as a hit or miss tool used to scope out possible good times in SF, or anywhere across the globe. Reading each entry, you begin to analyze the writer and question whether or not they are credible. The writers aren’t reliable food critics, and you have to trust that the food is ten times better than the amateur pictures would have you believe. Yelp can sometimes be too hard to analyze that it makes me want to just explore the city myself and stumble upon things. But in a place as expansive as San Francisco, it can serve as a compass for finding hidden gems like Minako Organic.

* Best photo, taken from Yelp

By Emma Rogers

Sample Fashion Plate

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:16:00 -0500

Having a friend who works as a wholesale rep I usually get the scoop about sample sales around the city. On Wednesday night I was eating a pork belly taco at Big Star (to be reviewed soon, trust) and ran into one of my friend’s colleagues who told me about two simultaneous sales at Grand and Leavitt happening the next day. Fighting a bad cold with pork and whiskey, an old Irish remedy learned from my grandmother, I only half listened to his pitch to get me to check out the sales. The next day my friend posted the addresses of the sales on Twitter and I decided that having the details on screen in front of me was the tipping point.

Lines represented included: Tulle, Alternative Apparel, Erica Weiner, Toppin, Mikko, Gentle Fawn, and a lot of others that I didn’t spend very much time digging through. After making two rounds each at both showrooms I was able to find a celery and white striped Mikko scarf for $10 and a plaid Tulle jacket for $34, see link below.

Tulle Plaid Scalloped Yoke Jacket, snagged for $34, original price $108

http://tinyurl.com/yj7jpkh

by Meredith Adams-Smart

BOAT: Setting the Paces (Magic Marker, 2009)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:38:00 -0500

[PNW POP] BOAT | Listen while drinking a tallboy of Rainier followed by a mug of french press

Three big releases from three of the more popular indie groups (Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, and Animal Collective) have taken up a lot of space in |unintentionally| squeezing out some of the more catchy, chord driven, jump on your bed tunes that have seen releases in 2009. Seattle’s BOAT falls under that such category - their lyrics relate simple tales of hurling down Interstate 5, struggling to find coffee on We Want It! We Want It!, and generally dealing the rainy climate on God Save The Man, Who Isn’t All That Super. BOAT hint at Pavement influences with their slacker ‘tudes, yet a more appropriate comparison aligns them with the likes of The Unicorns. Indeed, BOAT’s (Do The) Magic Centipede comes off as a striking companion to I Was Born (A Unicorn), parenthesis included although, sadly, the drinks to help coax you into singing along are not.

-Rita Rogers

So That's How He Dies?: Complex Character Deaths, Chart Style

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:48:17 -0500

I’m a kind of data junkie but I wasn’t always one. In undergrad and graduate school I studied the least ‘data’ friendly of academic disciplines: religion. My life was spent reading and writing papers and analyzing the cultural production of texts. Blah blah *insert euphemism for overly intellectualized b.s. here* In my post-grad school life, I have worked and currently work as some kind of Excel chart making, data analyst and I love it. The beauty of number crunching is its simplicity: the margin of error for Foucault quoting and critical theory infused analysis is practically non-existent. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Michael Foucault but sometimes the b.s. levels are little too high.

More important than data analysis is data representation. Data representation is key: What is the best way to visually represent x to an audience of y? I love great data visualizations but more importantly, I love it when data junkies use their skills to have a little fun with pop culture like the example above. Randall Munroe, a data junkie, has created “some interesting (and humorous) graphics describing the paths that characters in movies (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Primer) intertwine.” Dude, basically plotted out what happens to characters in movies. The Lord of the Rings diagram is quite impressive, even if it’s totally nerdy.

The 12 Angry Men diagram is my favorite. I feel sort of inspired to something similar with this blog and my social media behaviors. On second thought, maybe that’s a super lame idea.

Source:

Matthew Hurst -> Twitter-> Via Google Reader/Rss Feed-> XKCD

-Posted by Christina D.

Redesigning Nabokov: 21 New Takes on a Dead Russian's Work

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:42:00 -0500

The Design Observer Group has become one of my favorite blogs. Period. Authored by some truly intelligent and talented people, the posts of the DOG blog are always as insightful as they are visually stunning. While doing my daily industry reading via my Google reader, I read John Gall’s (art director for Vintage and Anchor Books) post about redesigning the book covers of Vladimir Nabokov. Nothing makes Christina happier than a combination of graphic design and dead Russian writers!

Gall’s project:

“Every so often, a dream project lands on your desk. Here’s one: redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s book covers. All twenty-one of them. Let me rephrase. Every so often the most daunting project of your entire life arrives on your desk.”

The following are two of my favorite covers from the complete series:

How I found Gall’s post or more aptly, how I was introduced to the DOG blog:

The Short of It: Me-> Daily Industry Reading Via Google Reader-> RSS Feed from D.O.G. Blog-> Gall’s Post.

The Long of It: Joy Olivia Miller, a former of colleague of mine at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , posted an article by the D.O.G. on her tumble blog which showed up in my Facebook Newsfeed. After reading the article in the notes section of her profile, I then spent some time on the D.O.G. website. I fell in love, added the RSS feed to my Google reader and now read the writers’ brilliant posts from the comfort of my RSS reader via my iPhone.

And this, my friends, is the art of citing your sources.

-Posted by Christina D.

Paul Octavious' "The Things I Saw from JFK ✈SFO."

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:15:00 -0500

Paul’s work is interesting and visually striking. His work has a kind of nostalgic, almost timeless feel to it. It reminds of events and people I can’t quite place but who are familiar nevertheless.

Anyway, I am a sucker for travel photography like that of Octavious’ “The Things I Saw From JFK to SFO” series. Each time I am on an airplane I attempt to photograph my views but my photos never come out as bold or striking as Paul’s. Depressing, really. All that time spent pressed up against the plastic interior of the plane and not a damn photo to show for it. On the local level, Paul’s series, Montrose Harbor, is a great take on the harbor that is a 15 minute walk from my apartment in Uptown.

How I found Paul’s work:

Tumbler JeSuisPerdu blogged about Paul’s “Montrose Harbor” series from someplace in NYC. I read Paul’s posts in my Tumblr dashboard. After clicking on Winslow’s (Jesuisperdu) post, I spent some time on Paul’s site where I discovered his “JFK to SFO” series. It took a 2O year old tumbler in NYC to connect me, in Chicago, with Paul, who is also based in Chicago.

Breakdown: JeSuisPerdu (NYC) -> Me (Chicago) via Tumblr -> Paul (Chicago).

-Posted by Christina D.

Social Media Digest #3

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:22:00 -0500

Apple Begins Fixing App Store Approval Process Via Mashable.

Expect Caffeine (Google’s new and improved search engine) After December Via Matt Cutts (an engineer at Google).

Painting with Flickr Via Matthew Hurst (Data Analyst extraordinaire). Teaser: “Cartogrammar has an interesting post describing using photographs tied to locations to interpolate average colours in a map. By positioning the pictures in space and analyzing them for colour distribution, then taking a function of the colours of pictures in the same area, some quality of the location as a function of photographs, emerges…”

The Digital Economy’s Coming Subprime Crisis (And What You Can Learn From It) Via Harvard Business Blog.

Three Masquerades of Metrics Via Social Abacus.

-Posted by Christina D.

We Are Local Author || Lauren Campbell

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:19:00 -0500

Lauren is a recent Chicago transplant to Boston, having just embarked on an exciting three years of law school. She studied the reintegration of Berlin post-Reunification (in part via media), which subsequently led to landing a research analyst position studying the use of media in corporate communications, primarily as a tool for creating and sustaining brand positioning.

Interested in the ever-evolving sphere of social media, Lauren will be addressing issues of how to integrate oneself into a new community with very few preexisting contacts. She’ll answer questions such as: Where can I get the best Pad Thai near campus? What bar has the best double-beer specials? Do any bands ever play gigs in Boston? Who do I trust to cut my hair? And can I find better answers to these questions through social media than I can by asking friends and acquaintances?

Lauren tumbled at In the Abstract.

We Are Local Authors

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:23:00 -0500

Meredith Adams-Smart holds a BA in English from Kalamazoo College and like nearly everyone she knows with the same degree from that fine institution, she works for a non-profit. While she had hoped her current role as an assistant to the director of a Jewish Community Center would yield some fine office fashions reminiscent of “Mad Men” she alas has had to find other outlets to express her love of clothing…

Full Bio Here. Location: Chicago

Christina Dennaoui is an American rapper, digital strategy maniac and all-around tweed clad bad-ass. Only she, with her old man prowess, can make wearing tweed blazers and driving loafers nothing short of miraculous. Her old man swagger, coupled with unnecessary intellectualism and a penchant for kitsch and serial commas, made her a hit at all of the graduate student parties she attended while at the University of Chicago…

Full Bio Here Location: Chicago

Rachel Berkowitz is a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the departments of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature. When I’m not reading or writing about dead Germans, I work on my elaborately cultivated quirky intellectual persona by watching movies, moving in circles and scoping out scenes. I also like to hype the chosen people…

Full Bio Here Location: Chicago

Emma Rogers is the product of Portland, Oregon’s rain and a current student at the University of San Francisco, studying Art History and Arts Management with a side of Independent Cinema. I am a food & fashion culture enthusiast. My favorite place to meditate, in San Francisco, is by the jelly fish tanks in the Academy of Sciences. Also, I am currently trying to conquer all of Japantown’s restaurants, in San Francisco, in hopes of finding the best ramen.

Full Bio Here. Location: San Francisco

Rita Rogers grew up on a houseboat in the majestically musical town of Portland, Oregon. She currently resides in Seattle where she is working towards her M.A. of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington, pulling espresso, riding the bus, and giving into the umbrella…

Full Bio Here Location: Seattle

Lauren Campbell is a recent Chicago transplant to Boston, having just embarked on an exciting three years of law school. She studied the reintegration of Berlin post-Reunification (in part via media), which subsequently led to landing a research analyst position studying the use of media in corporate communications, primarily as a tool for creating and sustaining brand positioning…

Full Bio Here Location: Boston

We Are Local Author || Meredith Adams Smart

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:13:00 -0500

Meredith Adams-Smart holds a BA in English from Kalamazoo College and like nearly everyone she knows with the same degree from that fine institution, she works for a non-profit. While she had hoped her current role as an assistant to the director of a Jewish Community Center would yield some fine office fashions reminiscent of “Mad Men” she alas has had to find other outlets to express her love of clothing. When not dressing herself Meredith spends nearly the rest of her waking hours cooking, eating, dining out, and recounting recent meals with family members who are equally food obsessed. Perhaps to justify the percentage of her income that goes toward fashion and food, Meredith will be reviewing her Chicagoan experiences on both topics.

Meredith’s ‘beat’: Food, Fashion, and Art in Chicago

Meredith is showing link love to:

Orangette

http://orangette.blogspot.com/

The Sartorialist

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

Nerd Boyfriend

http://nerdboyfriend.com

Les Anti-Modernes

http://lesantimodernes.blogspot.com/

Hoping for Happy Accidents

http://hopingforhappyaccidents.blogspot.com/

The '5 on Social' Questions:

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:28:00 -0500

‘5 on Social’ are guerrilla style interviews with random people in random cities about social media and their social media practices. The authors of We Are Local will ask the following five questions of their interview subjects. Subjects cannot have the questions explained to them, only repeated. They may only ask ‘Yes or No’ questions of the We Are Local author interviewing them.

1. Please define social media.

2. Do you participate in social media? If so, how often?

3. Does social media affect your decision making process when deciding your social activities (e.g., where to go eat, what to do, what brands to buy, etc)? If so, how?

4. How do you determine if the content you’re reading on a website is legitimate? (i.e., is it ‘fact or crap’?)

5. How do you determine if the content on a website is written by an authority or expert?

About We Are Local

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:13:00 -0500

WHAT:

“We Are Local” combines hyper-local blogging with critical inquiry to explore what impact social media actually has on people’s lives. A number of “social media experts” claim that social media impacts people’s decisions on everything from what to wear to what to brand to buy. Although this may be true for some people, We Are Local doesn’t believe this is the case across the board. The “We Are Local” Project focuses on how social media does or does not help us answer the following questions: What to do Tonight? Where to Eat? What’s Happening? Here, the authors of WAL are going to write about our various (local) experiences in using social media to answer these simple questions and share insights about the conclusions we came to, our experiences and our sources. Social Media is certainly relevant for some people but is it relevant to everyone?

WHO:

Christina had an idea and she asked her friends to help. Then they asked their friends. But WAL is not exclusive. If you’re interested in participating in the project, email christina here or send general inquiries about the project here.

The theme used for this website is Paul Giacherio’s “Museum Theme” which has been modified for SEO purposes.

We Are Local Author || Christina Dennaoui

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:06:00 -0500

Christina Dennaoui is an American rapper, digital strategy maniac and all-around tweed clad bad-ass. Only she, with her old man prowess, can make wearing tweed blazers and driving loafers nothing short of miraculous. Her old man swagger, coupled with unnecessary intellectualism and a penchant for kitsch and serial commas, made her a hit at all of the graduate student parties she attended while at the University of Chicago.

After acquiring two degrees in a field of study that is useless to everyone except for academics and Homeland Security, she decided to give up the ghost on rap and armchair anthropology. In her post-graduate school life, she works as a (social) media and brand reputation analyst in the research division of a highly ranked Public Relations firm. She’s an artist, musician, and maintains a blog read by a riveted audience of three.

Christina’s ‘Beat’: She’ll be writing about the culture of social media and its implications for everyday life. On occasion her posts will be critical analyses of the opinions of social media ‘experts.’ Other times, she will be conducting guerilla style interviews with strangers to pick their brains about what this thing called ‘social media’ really means.

Christina Dennaoui’s website. Christina tweets at twitter.com/cdennaoui

We Are Local Author || Rachel Berkowitz

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:50:52 -0500

I’m a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the departments of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature. When I’m not reading or writing about dead Germans, I work on my elaborately cultivated quirky intellectual persona by watching movies, moving in circles and scoping out scenes. I also like to hype the chosen people.

Rachel’s ‘Beat’: I want to report on the various channels through which information is disseminated and eventually gets to me/you/Joe. I’m looking to see not just how an attendee or spectator finds an event but to what extent social media figures into the foundation of organizations and projects. Watch my posts for tags of every organization/channel that intersected to bring me to this event.

Rachel Tumbles at Amasdelano.

We Are Local Author || Emma Rogers

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:45:00 -0500

Emma Rogers is the product of Portland, Oregon’s rain and a current student at the University of San Francisco, studying Art History and Arts Management with a side of Independent Cinema. She is a food & fashion culture enthusiast. Her favorite place to meditate, in San Francisco, is by the jelly fish tanks in the Academy of Sciences. Also, she is currently trying to conquer all of Japantown’s restaurants, in San Francisco, in hopes of finding the best ramen.

Emma’s ‘Beat’: To explore the different food, music and arts culture in San Francisco.

Emma tumbles at Caniche Noir.

We Are Local Author || Rita M. Rogers

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:41:00 -0500

Rita Rogers grew up on a houseboat in the majestically musical town of Portland, Oregon. She currently resides in Seattle where she is working towards her M.A. of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington, pulling espresso, riding the bus, and giving into the umbrella.

Rita’s ‘Beat’: casual observations of living in the PNW with a heavy helping of bourbon and local music, supplemented with that found in between.

Rita tumbles at prettyconnected, tweets, and her listening habits can be found here.

Social Media Digest #2

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:10:00 -0400

Free Music: Electronic Edition Via Mashable

The History and Evolution of Social Media Via Web Designer Depot

What You Need to Know About the New FTC Endorsement Rules and Why Via Advertising Age

Why is Google Giving Us the Finger? Via the Design Observer Group

Why Desktop Touch Screen Don’t Work Really Well for Humans Via Tech Crunch

Social Media Digest #1

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:45:00 -0400

Young Social Mediaphiles: 36% Tweet and Check Facebook After Sex
Via Mashable
New Shepard Fairey Print Blows Via Animal New York
Genentech’s (And Apple Board Member) Arthur Levinson Leaves Google Board Via Techcrunch
Danger Will Robinson! Do Not Approach the SideKick Via WSJ’s “All Things Digital”
Recession is Changing The Workforce Via MediaPost