Those Thomas Guides work well when you’re trying to wend your way through LA, but they sure aren’t as pretty as the Los Angeles typographical map designed by Jenny Beorkrem, founder of Ork Posters. “It is a poster, and less so a map,” Beorkrem says.

What began as a small-scale project of turning her homebase, Chicago, into a map for her own walls has turned into a popular way to show city pride for urbanites throughout the country. Beorkrem has also designed typographical maps of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Boston, and San Francisco. Then came Los Angeles.

“Every Ork poster is restricted to city limits, but with the case of LA I decided to include the separate cities that were wholly within the LA city limits for aesthetic reasons,” explained Beorkrem, “to avoid a bunch of holes in the design.” And even with the inclusion of cities such as Culver City and Beverly Hills closing up the gaps, there’s still a long tail of city heading from South Los Angeles to San Pedro. “The shape of the city in and of itself is pretty, well I guess goofy.” And it’s difficult to disagree.

So how did Beorkrem determine the boundaries of LA neighborhoods and separate cities surrounded by LA? »continue reading Typography/Topography: Ork Posters Tackles Los Angeles

Sea Level Villanelle

When music calls to lift you from the dark
The sun shines on a place that many laud
At Sea Level in the shade of Echo Park

Brimming with suggestions for a lark
Of weekly shows, conventional and odd,
When music calls to lift you from the dark

Its emailed updates, anything but stark,
Had links and new releases to be sought
At Sea Level in the shade of Echo Park

With a selection broad as story arcs,
The kind that makes collectors awed,
When music calls to lift you from the dark

A smiling crew, with nary a grouse nor bark,
Welcome all the punks, folkies, goths, and mods,
At Sea Level in the shade of Echo Park

With this villanelle its passing we will mark
And on to new adventures goes its Todd
When music called to lift you from the dark
At Sea Level in the shade of Echo Park

Here I Dreamt We Were an Audience

The Crane Wife
I cracked open the binding and flipped past the title page, landing squarely upon the first page of the first chapter and began to read the starkly beautiful and tragic folk tale of the sail maker and his beloved. Osamu’s sad tale had barely begun when I looked up to see eight bright red lanterns suspended in a false sky. Behind them was a large woodcut printed on laid cotton paper with dark India ink. The image evoked Osamu’s home, perched high above the sea, serene and still, and it remained so as other images swirled in and out of the foreground. I was inside the story, but which one? Was this Osamu’s tale or another, taken from a different place and time? It wasn’t clear, but there was no time to question the images, for they would come and go like the sweetest of pop songs, and they compelled me forward.
»continue reading The Decemberists at the Wiltern, 10/21/06