Mission Mission

Every week, photographer Joshua Cobos shoots a roll of film just for us. He picks the 13 best photos and we post them here, and it’s called “Bad Blood with Joshua Cobos.” Here’s what Joshua has to say about this week’s installment:

All of these images are of objects in plain sight, I imagine. Nothing posed, nothing directed. Just long walks with an old U.S. army issued Canonet. There is truth in simplicity, one of the main motivators in my photography. A protest march, a friend’s tattoo, abandoned theaters on the main drag, the modern hotel fireplace in stunning HD. I question society’s directives & morals all the time, are we enlightened by technology or depraved. Through these walks & all the witnessed beauty, I put the big questions aside and just enjoy the moments.

Thanks, Joshua! Ten more shots after the jump:

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[via When It Pains, It Roars]

Gifted kindergartner David Enos has produced a stunning animated history of the Doors. The narration, as you can see, is straightforward but haunting, and the depictions of Jim and the gang (and the supernatural oddities they encounter) will leave you breathless.

Watch it below now, or wait and see it on the big screen at next week’s San Francisco International Animation Festival.

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Artists’ Television Access wants to give you two passes to the program of your choice at this year’s ATA Film and Video Festival. Tonight is a shorts program called “Human Nature,” and tomorrow night is a shorts program called “Lo-Fi Future.”

Leave a comment below explaining which one you want to attend and why, and we will pick a winner based on merit. Contest ends at 5pm today.

Note that there’s a special hands-on workshop on Saturday, and special installations in the ATA window all month long.

View the trailer for the event below, and peruse the full press release after the jump:

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Last month some friends took me out to this spot called Beelitz, an hour out into the countryside southwest of Berlin. It’s 60 or so beautiful old buildings, all abandoned and falling apart, and it used to be a mental hospital. My favorite of the three or four buildings we had time to explore was the one with an entire fucking old-growth forest on the roof.

I pride myself on always blogging things in a timely fashion, but I’ve been busy and I just now got around to “developing my last few rolls of film,” so I apologize for the untimeliness of this collection of extremely stunning photos (if I do say so myself), but here it is. Please trip out.

Previously:

Berlin Mystery Girl

Biking in Berlin

Is Santa Rosa’s latest piece of public art a stunning monument to cycling, or a waste of a shit-ton of perfectly good bike parts?

Inhabitat has lots more pictures right about here.

UPDATE: It is a stunning monument to cycling built with unusable bike parts.

A love letter to Shotwell Street from reader Neo Displacer, via our Contact Us page:

I think you should do a post on how Shotwell is the most beautiful street in the Mission. I think folks may say Valencia, but they would be wrong. It has truly stunning people walking to and fro,  but the street? Not so much, it’s a commercial strand. How about Dolores? Nah, it’s the border between the encroaching Castro at the 18th St end and further south it’s Baja Noe. 24th? Are you kidding me? It’s great to walk between Papalote at one end and Dynamo at the other, great coffee can be had at at least 3 places. But again commercial, and what with the strollers it’s not as beautiful in walking human terms as Valencia. Now I live on Folsom, and you may argue it’s beauty. The allee is indeed gorgeous but the fact that is four lanes ruins it.  That brings me to Shotwell. It shares tree lining with Folsom yet it is informal. I was walking down it today and was struck by its loveliness.

There are many old, pre-quake, houses. They are well kept. There were many folks sitting on their stoops. There were several grills fired up cooking meat. I saw some kids playing. I saw one sexy-as-hell girl. Oh god Shotwell is there anything you can’t do? My first place in the Mission was at the far North end. It was a railroad flat and it was dirt cheap. That was 1992. Junkies often parked their cars in front and shot up.  But I forgive. My landlord had AIDS. He didn’t make it the 2 years I was there. He was cool and it was sad he left. He planted 2 ficus trees in front.  One night The 20-something chick upstairs had a party. Hipster dufii, drunk and disorderly, swung around the tree and dislodged it from its shallow roots. Needless to say I was pissed. I carefully replanted the tree and re-staked it. I watered it and hoped for the best. It was the least I could do for my old landlord. That tree is now huge. It stands next to its paired tree almost as tall as the old railroad flats. [Above] is the tree. It’s on the left, its partner on the right.

Thanks, ND! Nice work on that tree, and on this comment. And for the record, I did do a post like this, about two-and-a-half years ago: Shotwell Stroll (3/27/2008)

What is the provenance of this peerless napkin? And what possibly supernatural phenomenon is being depicted? S. Pigeon has some theories.

TheBayTaper just put up a stunning video of Realistic Orchestra performing live at Coda Lounge. Realistic Orchestra is a jazz/hip-hop band made up of members of the Jazz Mafia, a super-group collective of San Francisco musicians.

Click the image to check it out, or the mp3 link below if your bandwidth can’t take the 720p.

Realistic Orchestra live at Coda Lounge MP3

The Bay Taper just put up some beautiful clips of a recent performance at the Red Poppy Art House by Erik Jekabson Quartet which I am just loving this afternoon. The group also features one of my favorite guitarists Mike Abraham and saxaphonist Dayna Stephens. You can catch most of these guys regularly every Wednesday at Amnesia‘s Micheal Abraham Session at 10pm.

If you don’t follow the Bay Taper, it’s amazing. I have no idea how one guy is able to so much. Studio-quality recording of live performance, stunning high resolution pictures, and HD video of local jazz shows.