As announced in my last L.A. post, I take you to a tour through the Venice Beach Freakshow. But to be straight: the pictures won’t tell the whole story here. You have to experience it!!
There is so much stuff going on on this Ocean Front Walk, I was wondering why they had this special location, because ALL OF IT is a freakshow! There is everything going on, that you could imagine, PLUS everything that you would have never imagined.
Overall, this area seems to attract also talented and gifted people that pursue their art. No offense, but many of them seem to be also somewhat crazy or I don’t know. There was this one guy, who had the appearance of a homeless, sitting at his bummed up and damaged piano on the Ocean Front Walk. He played really well, but maybe he is one of the people that failed in their quest of making it to Hollywood???
Also on our first night there, when we went to SUBWAY to get something to eat really quick, there was a guy in there, that was working on his art, that was spread out over two tables!!! But that just seemed to be normal there as nobody else did even care.
One day, a guy was discussing Nate Dogg‘s death really loud! He had the opinion, that he died, because he had too much money to spend on unhealthy food.
A few minutes later a homeless man needed my help: “Do you guys have any change, so that I can get my wife drunk, so I can get laid tonight?” I was glad to help him out!!!
But maybe you’ll also come accross the stars of tomorrow…
There were also many murals around.
I very much liked this one.
Horny streetart.
If I would have a Mexican wrestler nickname alreadyyy, I would’ve also brought homw a mask. Maybe next time! Nickname suggestions welcome :)
Obviously you are not allowed to be dope on 7th Av in Venice. Must suck for the residents over there! ;-)
What I didn’t mention before… We even had ocean view from our room in the hostel.
Look closer!!!
Also while I unfortunately don’t have any other pics of Venice Beach Hostel, I can only recommend staying there. It is right by the ocean and Ocean Front Walk, right by Abbot Kinney Blvd (bars & nightlife) and also has a cool & friendly staff, clean rooms and even supplies some food in the morning and evening.
I especially like Charlotte‘s blog (@charlottecramer), because her posts are a nice collection of thought-provoking things!
Finally some stickers around Venice Beach.
Nope! It wasn’t sunny all the time…
We also came across many homeless people in this area, but you didn’t feel unsafe, they were rather friendly. When we left, there was this one guy saying “good bye” from the other side of the street. One also asked Charlotte to add him on Facebook.
So, our time in Venice was everything else but boring!
Oh, and notice this Tokyo-like crossing on this intersection right in front of our hostel along with the VENICE sign.
Sorry, I just had to and also wanted to do some round up of last year, because it has been sooooooo kraaaaayzie… (and obviously doing so is still appropriate, since I posted the 09 Memories one year ago on January, 5th as well)! In 2010 I went from being like “OMG. This is alreadyyy two weeks ago…?!?? Wow. Time flies.” to “OMG. It’s really only two weeks ago since this happened?!?? Wow. So much stuff was going on in between alreadyyy.” and I’m really grateful. Nothing worse than those people with their boredom statuses on Facebook. There are countless things you could do, but that’s a whole nother blogpost.
We started the year running around as two dudes at the BRIGHT Tradeshow in Frankfurt, that just got their first stickers made for their blog…
Major shoutouts to Flo for coming up with the idea of the sticker image and also for all graphic design work he did for us all year long!
Then in April Chris was running around Tokyo and I was running around London (cheering on Simon) and each of us got to experience some weird stuff once again.
OK, one of us definitely experienced more crazyness than the other, but we both distributed our sticker all over those cities.
Chris did even so, that it can be seen on this pic of Levi Maestro soon later (on the very left side from photographer’s view). WHAT?
Chris also blew us off with some great RUN FFM journalism par excellence…! ;-)
By the way, I really love those random kind of videos by Chris like this, where he had to kill some time in the morning to go to the airport on no sleep the night before. I had to literally laugh out loud severel times, while I was digging through all that stuff. Here are some more impressions of Tokyo.
Now, this was really a great day as I predicted in the video. We picked up the first print of the RUN FFM shirts in June, which was an unbelievable feeling at that time. Ain’t nothing like rocking your own shirt for the first time.
Immediately after picking them up we went to the public viewing of Germany’s match that day and there was already some guy we didn’t know, that asked if he could take a picture of my shirt. Of course, feel free…
Later that month, I somehow found out about a DJ Neil Armstrong party in Frankfurt by scrolling through my twitter timeline and thinking “Wait…. A tweet by him mentioning Frankfurt? Gotta check that out.” The In Heaven Part 2 party then went down two days later on a rooftop in downtown Frankfurt. And by going down I mean really going down. Like really, really going down. It was more some kind of a festival that night and it didn’t end until the sun came up.
At that party we also met Yves & Lea, who just opened up their pop up store MARKET 41 around that time. They went on to become good friends and even selling the RUN FFM shirt in their store eventually.
The first store to have the RUN FFM shirts in stock however was Julie‘s Barber Shop and this again was very cool to have your shirt in a store in Frankfurt and then even in two stores later on. At this point big thank yous to give us the opportunity to spread the word about RUN FFM and connect with our people from Frankfurt & everywhere else.
Another chance (or from my point of view: obligation, because I was the only one to wear the shirt that day) to make that possible and just to get the shirt on TV was this interview with German TV station RTL, that were filming on Freeline Skating that day – we even made it the most watched news segement the day it aired (like 2 months later, after everybody had nearly forgotten about all of this LOL).
Then in August it was time to get some new stickers and a new TwitVid format out there…
In October we bumped into Adam Tensta and in different news I just wanted to do some stop motion film, also as a way to celebrate the arrival of our white shirts and the new stickers (YES, I posted it once again LOL). Thx to DJ Steph again, who allowed me to use the instrumental without hesitating and to be honest without really knowing me at that point, but we got to know each other more after that.
October & November were DJ Neil Armstrong time again, as he was touring through Germany for a week and also had some off days in Frankfurt. We drove to Düsseldorf to attend the first Party&Bullshit party with him & DJ Rafik at the decks.
And as you can see we didn’t come to party LOL. We had work to do. Chris filmed & I had to drive all the way home again at night. Here’s Chris’ video of the night.
Back in Frankfurt we then had the time to conduct an interview with Neil at Julie’s Barber Shop, while we were driving & running around Frankfurt having lots of fun not only, but also because we introduced him to some Frankfurt gastronomic specialties. And he even liked all of the food as you can tell from his post.
As I mentioned only a few posts earlier, it was great to see him DJing in the RUN FFM shirt here in Frankfurt.
I went to visit my buddy Simon again in November – now only in Berlin and met Phil-G. & Omer while checking out some Berlin spots.
Also another amazing party took place in December: DJ Craze came to Frankfurt and DJed along with C-Arrow, DJ Passion & DJ Jackmode at the first YOSOY party (What’s up, fam?) in collaboration with fenchurch. Chris once again did a nice little video on the event…
… as well as Julian Middle, where you can see both of us. :)
In December, we also had C-Arrowattaching our stickers in NYC, Frankfurt’s own DJ Kitsune (who is with us since day one!) with a dope mixtape series called 1-2-3-4 and we finally made it to printed press as Sven was reppin our hoodie in Journal Frankfurt magazine.
The biggest accomplishment of ‘em all is of course that I got myself finally a nice haircut at Julie’s Barber Shop. :)
Mad love to everyone supporting us, connecting with us, partying with us, rocking RUN FFM shirts & hoodies all over the place (check for some pics here and here) as well as the stickers.
Long post, I know, but there was quite some stuff going on as I told you at the beginning of this post. Looking back we began 2010 as two dudes with a blog and a bunch of stickers, but ultimately it took us places & got us to meet cool people, so thanks for the ride. Let’s see where we can go in 2011.
Just recently Caro, who we met back at the Market 41 Flutschfinger party for the first time, spent her holidays in New York City and judging by the pics she sent us, she spent most of the time attaching RUN FFM stickers all over NYC. :)
Since we really like that, I didn’t wanna keep those beatiful pictures away from y’all, so here we go. :)
She even got other people to join the street team. :D
So if you are in NYC, keep your eyes open. Some goes for Tokyo, London, Berlin, Frankfurt of course and I’m sure also some other places, I can’t even think of right now. As usual, pics are always welcome.
Caro also goes by the name of C-Arrow and as YOSOY‘s 1st lady she is spinning tonight at Walden along with DJ Craze and Klever, DJ Passion & Mango Jack a.ka. Jack Sehn a.k.a. Jacksta a.k.a. Blacksta a.k.a. Jackmode a.k.a. 1 half of The Goooniez.
Stumbled upon this photo of Levi Maestro from the popular web series called MaestroKnows (which I always enjoy watching) via his twitter.
I like this photo and I remember that street in Tokyo.
I remembered it so well that I thought “hey wait I think I have been exactly at that spot”.
This picture was taken by a photographer called Zack McTee on Flickr make sure to check his photos out!
Though the focus of that picture lies on a totally different path, many people might follow the same, some leave bigger traces some leave smaller ones.
So today was the day after the race and I’ll get to that in the video. Just this right now: It was an amazing experience and even though Oxford lost, you can only be proud of the guys!!!
I wanted to do only three things today, but I was running around the city for 10 hours to do so. That’s just how big London is. Today’s post is also an iPhone edition, because I couldn’t take my regular cam to the Fulham game.
My first stop was the Sunday Up Market near Brick Lane. Small booths offered fashion items like shirts, hats, glasses and also art and bootleged music (Or is there maybe any other word for CDs that are recorded from vinyl??).
Dan Hillier has also a booth on this market and I went to check it out and have a brief conversation with him, because he has a design in the ‘Sag es mit einem Design’ contest from Freiraum and in my opinion he does some extraordinary work, that I haven’t seen from anybody else.
On this market I found a booth with lots of these blocks. I just had to get me some.
Outside on Brick Lane, there was also lot of stuff going on like it apparently does on every Sunday.
I also noticed an incredible amount of vintage shops everywhere I went here in London.
Some American Apparel Sale was going down, too.
Around this area I found lots of streetart, cool designs and again some stickers. :)
After I only could spent about an hour there, I had to rush to Putney again to catch the Premier League game between Fulham FC and Wigan Athletic. I had to go to one of those, while I’m here.
What I really like was that this an old stadium and not a new football palace. In the picture above you can see, that from the street, it looks like an old fabric or something.
He has to be to them what MJ was to the Bulls.
And finally, this was the view from my seat. It was tough to decide, whether to follow the game or observe this poor guy in the orange jacket, because his tough battle against not falling asleep was much more entertaining. But the second half offered a much better effort, so there was no question anymore. And I’m glad about it, because otherwise I don’t know, if I would’ve seen the ball coming directly into my direction at one point. Unfortunately, I had to throw it back. Would have been a nice souvenir. Oh, and Fulham also scored two goals in the second half to their 2-1 victory.
The weather was really great today, so I could enjoy my walk along the Thames back to the Underground station. And yes, you can call me a Fulham fan from now on! Hehehe…
My final task for the day was to spoil my stomach even more with the best pizza in town. And man, is this a pizza or what?? You don’t even see the plate anymore. Also tasted amazingly.
You can get it, too: Indo Pub, 133 Whitechapel Road, London, UK
I also noticed this on my way home.
I’ll be leaving for Oxford tomorrow to chill with Simon, so don’t expect me to post from there. See you, when I’m back in Frankfurt.
Hey, I started today with a nice breakfast and a walk along the Thames to Tower Bridge. Then, I went on to attend another Oxford practice, so I could speak to Simon before the race tomorrow. He’s so busy these days, running around through London with TV crews and stuff. Crazy…
After that, I just walked around the city and noticed there are really cool stickers everywhere around town. Here are some of them.
Afterwards, I also made it to Camden. It seemed to me like there has to be a tattoo and piercing studio in each house. But then, it suddenly turned into a really diverse place.
There were some really amazing shops – or stalls as they were called, because in former times it must have been some horse market or whatever – offering everything from vintage clothes to art to music and also food.
And if you should ever see some two bad boys like those here in front of a store: GO IN!!!! I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures, but I’ve never experienced a store like this.
While shooting some footage around the Tokyo streets last August I kept recognizing these “sumo face” decals almost everywhere around Tokyo, alot of them in Harajuku and Asakusa somehow, streetart still seems to be big in Tokyo. I even saw a little documentary about these “sumo faces” if I can find it again I will post the youtube link below aswell.
I hope you enjoy this video its just a little compilation of streetart in Tokyo.
