“Gourmet” food trucks and communities with budding art walks have increasingly developed a relationship that’s akin to a newly-wedded marriage.
Everything is golden at first and that is so because each bring gifts to the table that complement the other and allows both to thrive.
Food trucks are their own marketing machines, each drawing hundreds of their fans to wherever they may be with a single tweet or a single post on their blog. Art walks provide the perfect festival-like venue that complements and maximizes a food trucks drawing power.
Aside from the expiration date of the delirium of USS Iowa fever, which has its grand opening on the July 7, there’s an equally important date fast approaching: The grand opening of Crafted — potentially the largest and most significant showcase for handmade crafts in Southern California.
This isn’t a venue for cheap knockoffs and mass produced trinkets with “Made in (fill in the blank)” stickers slapped on them. We’re talking about handmade crafted objects made in the United States that are utilitarian in nature while embodying the crafter’s inspiration. These kinds of crafted works range from wearable art to furniture, and from soap to desserts made from liquor.
In the past, the Artwalk has flirted with the idea of incorporating a crafted dimension to the First Thursday event, only to watch it devolve into something closer to a swap-meet. In downtown San Pedro, where division is as common as liver spots when it comes to the direction of the arts district, there is uncommon unity in the belief that hordes of imported trinket peddlers do not fit the vision of a destination town.
Once fully established, Crafted is expected to serve as an incubator space for up to 500 micro-businesses and drawing up to 500,000 visitors a year. This is project number two for the three-person development team, Wayne Blank, Howard Robinson and Alison Zeno in Santa Monica. Since opening in 1997, Bergamot Station has become a destination point in the art world for both collectors and artists, drawing 600,000 visitors annually.
Zeno has been the face of Crafted from the start, pitching the idea to the Port as well as to the community. With gravitas garnered from Bergamot Station’s success, she has been able to inspire a degree of confidence and comfort in the Harbor Area.
Random Lengths News caught up with Zeno at FinDings Art Center during First Thursday’s Artwalk this month and picked her brain about the vision of Crafted. She had just fought through the 6 o’clock traffic after an already long day to pass out handbills for the Crafted grand opening, and then touch bases with various community members amidst the throngs of people there for the Artwalk.
So far, there are more than 70 crafted business listed as sponsors that will have booths at the super marketplace for crafts. By opening day, Zeno expects to have close to 100 crafted artists locked in and ready go.
Though Crafted is a juried exhibition space, there’s enough flexibility to allow for the diversity that is exhibited by its crafted sponsors, like K.C. Sears who describes her boutique, Make Shop Live, as eco-chic meets funky vintage– a community that supports a lifestyle that embraces process over product, by making wearable and furnishing goods from “up-cycled” materials.
Lindsay Zuelich’s Wood on the Brain, a Crafted vendor that crafts wearable and home décor objects from wood.
Then there are the food related vendors such as the Cake Bar, which bakes any imaginable pastry with its main ingredient being liquor or Hepp’s Salt Co., which has many variety of cooking salts.
Zeno comes from a design background as does everyone on her team and has been in the arts industry for more than 30 years. She explained that her team avoided the traditional jury process of selection, noting bias amongst different disciplines of crafts.
“Everybody has such a distinct point view of their own and then applying that to their peers,” Zeno explained. “And, what we wanted to do was stress a broad definition of craft… So I couldn’t get a committee of people who represented everything from skateboard art to fiber art.
“At the end of the day, what we’re trying to create here is not a juried art affair with prizes, we’re trying to bring together a quality group of visual artists who have an opportunity to make a living making the things they love and they have to have a consumer appeal to do it.”
The concept of raising in importance process to the level of substance is a common refrain amongst Zeno and the craft community. One of the first crafting organizations to sign on to Crafted was FinDings Art Center which sells handcrafted stationery goods, clothing, aprons and handbags made from recycled or reused materials. The makers of these goods are the women who are a part of FinDing’s family literacy program.
“We applied for Crafted and of course they fell in love with our concept and they offered us first contract,” Annette Cicketic, founder of FinDings said. “So we are the first contracted in Crafted to have a booth. And they loved the concept of women and the nonprofit, and community involvement.”
Cicketic explained that the art center really began with the desire to promote family literacy and the recognition early on that with a holistic approach, family literacy could be the catalyst that mitigate some of the more destructive forces affecting low-income immigrant families. For Cicketic, that meant carving out a place for where mothers can have a bit of peace and quiet.
“The result was something like a quilting bee sort of an environment,” Cicketic explained. This space turned out to be a classroom in 223 Street Elementary School in Harbor Gateway, she noticed that most of the women had hidden talents that they took for granted like embroidery, knitting, crocheting and sewing.
Before long, immigrant women from around the world were sharing their native knowledge of embroidery, sewing, crocheting while teaching each other English with assistance from Cicketic, who is a retired Los Angeles Unified School District teacher.
This is what Zeno encountered when she met Cicketic and was introduced to finDings:
“I came down here and talked to Annette and learned about her passion for family literacy, and helping people finding gainful employment and it resonated with the work that we’re doing,” Zeno explained. “You can see it in the quality of work that they’re doing. It’s an excellent example of what we keep saying, ‘It’s about high quality, not high end.’
“It doesn’t matter that some pieces sell for $2.50. It’s not about $1,000 sweatshirts. Everybody should have the opportunity to appreciate their own art. You should be able touch art everyday. It should be a piece of your house. You should be able to find out the story of the object you bought. And I can’t think of a better story than this one [of finDings].”
Zeno, reflecting on potential and the future of said of the artisans leasing with Crafted, “Here’s a group that can help each other learn from experience rather than failure. But at the same time everybody takes responsibility for their business.”
In Zeno’s way of looking at things, no one is coming to the table saying, “I don’t know how to do this, can someone do it for me.”
To Zeno, Crafted is a forum where artisans come to the table and say, “I don’t know how to do this, can somebody give me the benefit of their experience so that I can go sell this.”
Zeno–like all those connected to Crafted–believes passionately that an one should be able to make a living from making things they love, despite a rough economy. She noted historically that people turn to crafting in such economic times to supplement their incomes.
“They’re finding that they don’t have to fit into someone else’s mold,” Zeno explained. “They can have an entrepreneurial spirit and there’s a venue that’s now available to them that is somewhere between their dining room table and a retail storefront on Main Street.
“We hope to grow people up and out of Crafted. The rents are affordable enough to take that leap of faith.”
Though it’s a cliché, Crafted was born out of the idea that if you build it, they will come. There’s a lot of things that will come out of this, Zeno explained. With the presence of gourmet food trucks and live music, Crafted will take on a festival atmosphere without turning into a carnival, allowing it to become a sophisticated event destination.
Zeno stresses that there are also other business opportunities for the folks who plant themselves at Crafted, noting that as they grow, they could grow the wholesale side of their business or form partnerships with people doing like-minded things.
“It shouldn’t be viewed through the, ‘I make, I sell.’ lens,” Zeno explained. “It should be, ‘I make, I sell, I expose myself to the world and see what happens.’”
And that’s the view many observers with hopeful aspirations for the Waterfront are taking.
It opened June 29. Crafted will be open from Fridays through Sundays with all sorts of crafts and fun to get into. Visit Crafted’s website for more info.
From June 30 to July 1, the family, friends and supporters of Jacob Villegas will be hosting a softball tournament. Villegas is a 8 year-old San Pedro kid who has been fighting for his life for the last two years after developing orbital eye cancer.
Jacob has been in remission thanks to Miller Children’s Hospital at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. To give back while paying off the medical bills, the Villegas family along with friends and supporters that have followed the family’s battle with cancer are hosting a fundraiser. Half of the funds raised from this event will go towards help paying down the medical bills incurred during Jacobs illness while the half will be donated to the hospital.
There will be food, raffles, and a deejay. You can also get your car washed while you’re there. There are currently 11 teams competing teams, but organizers would like add a 12th team to complete the tournament. The two day tournament is from 8a.m. to 8p.m.
Details: Arthur Ybarra (213) 985-5748 Venue: Bloch Field Location: Bloch and Harbor Blvd., San Pedro, between 7th Street and 22nd Street
Story by Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor Photos by Slobodan Dimitrov
Lazy Dog Studio is presenting the work of several labor photographers, including the work of Slobodan Dimitrov, a labor photographer of international acclaim.
Slobodan embarked on a 20-year project documenting the work, hands and faces of the Piledrivers Union Local 2375 and Local 34. The results of that endeavor are currently housed in the lobby of the Piledrivers Union Local 2375 in Wilmington, Calif.
I cried myself to sleep that night, praying, ‘Oh God, God, what the f… is happening here?’—Adam S.
War is no video game.
No matter how a bloody battle may end, weary, surviving fighters trembling with spent adrenaline, reeking of sweat and smoke, are wounded by what is seen and done.
Healing has taken nearly 20 years for Adam S.,whose surname is abbreviated to protect his privacy. He survived the explosive cloudburst of Desert Storm, the swift 1990 invasion of Iraq as a U.S. Army infantry foot soldier. He had been deployed initially for Operation Desert Shield, to protect Saudi Arabia after Iraq overran Kuwait and threatened to invade Arabia next.
Research is flourishing into brain chemistry’s role and new treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the single costliest injury in wars spanning America’s history.
The $650 billion — the estimated cost for the next 20 years of PTSD disability benefits to men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and came back home scarred by emotional wound — question is how to cope with it.
This is aside from the current annual treatment cost of $6,000 (counseling) to $30,000 (medication and other treatment) per man or woman, for thousands more Veterans Affairs patients who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Cost estimates are up to $3.7 trillion to date, for two un-won wars, states Reuters News Service.
Modern weaponry virtually eliminates most close personal combat contact, but as the saying goes, “War is hell,” and it still takes a terrible toll.
Government records show 761 American troops were killed in action, from the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan until mid-2010, but during the same period, 817 committed suicide, mostly Army and Marine troops.
A recent document filed in the 9th Federal Court of Appeals states 18 veterans commit suicide every day in America and one in every four is enrolled in the VA medical system. Every month, 1,000 vets attempt suicide, VA records show.
The search for a successful treatment regimen continues on several fronts but there is no magic silver bullet to quell the costly torment that still hounds aging vets under treatment, 40 years after the Vietnam war, as well as the 1950-53 Korean Conflict.
Medication and psychotherapy remain standard, but fail in many cases. Psychotropic drugs perform differently in different patients and prolonged therapy disrupts employment and family life.
Many vets finally give up, but no treatment at all exacerbates problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, crime, violence and societal costs including law enforcement and social services, including welfare.
One experiment that utilizes a prosaic method is about to begin at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center. It involves injecting an anesthetic — buprivicaine — into the right side of the neck, which is called the stellate ganglion block (SGB). It takes about 10 minutes.
The buprivicaine is injected into a star-shaped juncture of six nerves near the C6 spinal vertebra. The nerves are killed in one to three shots within one to three years.
Similar trials at other facilities show promise rather than perfection, although some patients with severe PTSD symptoms claim “miraculous” results with relief in 30 minutes.
Back in 2005, renowned Chicago anesthesiologist Dr. Eugene Lipov developed the SGB approach and retitled it The Chicago Block, to distinguish a safer method of injecting the anesthetic into the neck.
Previously, it was given in the C7 vertebra area closer to the heart and lungs, and without the benefit of X-rays to put the needle on target.
Buprivicaine has been around since 1925 when it was used as an epidural shot to ease labor pain during childbirth. That dosage wears off within a few hours.
“It’s amazing how many drugs long available turn out to be useful for something else later,” says Dr. Michael Hollifield, a psychiatrist in the Long Beach VA Medical Center’s Program for Traumatic Shock.
Dr. Michael Hollifield, a psychiatrist in the Long Beach VA Medical Center’s Program for Traumatic Shock. Photo by Arthur Vinsel
He and anesthesiologist Dr. Mike Alkire (the needleman) and supervising Dr. Christopher Reist are the three principal SGB researchers in Long Beach, but have other duties as well.
“We’re about to start recruiting and interviewing men for our study,” says Hollifield, a tall Southerner who joined the team 15 months ago, just before the hospital Institutional Review Board began vetting its parameters. “All three of us have been interested in PTSD for quite awhile. We have about 3,500 in our department, accounting for 23,000 visits in the past year.”
They hope to begin in a few weeks with 12 subjects, six from the Vietnam era and six fresher from the ordeals of war in the Persian Gulf action. Age will be a study factor, for PTSD never heals and goes away unaddressed, though symptoms may alter.
Prior to Long Beach, others have investigated SGB, as well. The U.S. Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. and the Pentagon have all tested or evaluated the nerve block method and were impressed.
However, the Department of Defense has turned down four proposals from 2007 to 2011 for funding a large study of SGB efficacy by simply responding that approved PTSD treatments are available now.
Specialists including a Harvard PTSD expert say the existing military and VA treatment regimens are not highly effective, but seem to do no harm.
Lipov plans to seek private sector grant monies for a study large enough to yield substantive results.
Alternative therapies that got a trial hearing from the military include providing veterans recreational and bonding time with dogs and horses, with unknown effectiveness.
The Pentagon also approved $3.75 million for a touring theater company to present plays by Sophocles and other tragedians at 50 U.S. military sites on a theory they were used to help reintegrate warriors into society.
The Greek play therapy was also inconclusive in helping PTSD.
From Joseph Wambaugh’s new police thriller, Harbor Nocturne, about a recovering Croatian longshoreman who falls in love with an illegal Mexican stripper to the San Pedro Squeeze Accordion Festival at the Grand Performances this summer in downtown Los Angeles–everybody seems to be “rediscovering San Pedro.”
Of course, the flagship of this rediscovery expedition seems to be the lauded arrival of the USS Iowa. However, the big-town media has learned how to say “Pee-dro” not “Pay-dro” as some non-Spanish often attempt to pronounce it in Spanish. Thanks to both Wambaugh and the public relations arm at the Port of Los Angeles that would prefer that everyone knows that the battleship is not owned by POLA.
By all appearances, this coming July 4thcelebration is ramping up to be one of somewhat historic significance here in the Los Angeles Harbor Area, what with the San Pedro’s First Thursday on July 5, Swing Pedro’s dance party under the moon on a closed off Sixth Street July 6, and the USS Iowa’s grand opening that weekend. On July 4 itself, all of the usual festivities that come along with our national birthday will also be celebrated. The politicians will be giving speeches at the Korean Bell, civil libertarians will read the Bill of Rights at Liberty Hill and Cabrillo Beach will host, once again, a traditional fireworks display–thank you John Olguin. All of this takes place in the context of 5,000 various barbeques, a whole lot of beer drinking and the unrestrained exuberance of illegal neighborhood fireworks– some of which have become so extensive as to compete with the “official” shows. And then two weekend days to recover.
As Americans we love celebrations, and the bigger and more spectacular the better. What of course seems to be continually lost, for the most part, is why we’re throwing the party. In our own convoluted sense of history the idea of ratifying the Declaration of Independence and the pronouncement of these principles being the guiding light of universal human rights does get lost amongst the explosions and political hubris. When you hear one of our leaders speak of American Exceptionalism, they are in part referring to this founding document as evidence of being exceptional.
However nothing in our revered document of independence is there any reference to granting “person-hood” to corporations, which was recently upheld by our conservative majority “activist” Supreme Court.
“We’ll believe a corporation is a person when: Arizona deports one. Texas executes one. Massachusetts marries two of them [how do you determine if they are of the same sex?]. The U.S. government issues one a Social Security number. The CIA extradites one to Guantanamo [presumably to be water-boarded]. One sacrifices its life in military service.” Obviously a majority of our Supreme justices believe differently.
The July 4th celebration is also our official kick-off of political campaigns that end in November in election years, particularly when it’s time to elect a president. No doubt, we’ll be treated to a media smorgasbord of images of Obama and Romney eating hot dogs and speechifying at various flag-waving events. Meanwhile, as we gorge ourselves with barbeque and beer, take a look at what MoveOn.org tells us about the condition of our (dis) enfranchisement to vote:
Florida: Republican Governor Rick Scott tried to kick 180,000 people off the voter rolls in his state and is now suing the Department of Justice after they stepped in to stop him. Rick Scott’s racist voter purge, which directly targets Latino voters is so egregious that every one of the 67 supervisors of elections in the state Democrats, Republicans, and independents has so far refused to carry it out.
Ohio: Republican Governor John Kasich signed legislation to eliminate Ohio’s “Golden Week” early voting period, which had allowed for voters to register and vote on the same day and eliminated all in-person early voting on Sundays when large groups of voters, including significant pockets of Democratic-leaning African American voters, often voted together after church.
Nationwide: According to the Center for Justice, “the states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012―63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency” and could prevent as many as 5 million voters from exercising their right to vote.
It seems all to obvious that far more people participate in the celebration of freedom and independence than who actually practice it by voting. Which leads me to the conclusion that what is needed is a second nationwide holiday to celebrate election day with only this caveat– that you wouldn’t be admitted to the party if you didn’t have proof you voted! It is something to consider while you are stuffing your face and watching the rocket’s red glare.
