Diggin' In The Crates

Carlos Antagony, 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, Oakland, CA

Photo by Jay Unidos

Lake Merritt

Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA

Photo by Jay Unidos

City Super

Chinatown, San Francisco

Photo by Jay Unidos

California Bookstore Day

I picked up the new Cometbus today in Berkeley at Pegasus Books on Shattuck.  It's a Pegasus Books special edition for California Bookstore Day.

Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Kilgallen, untitled, c. 2000, Acrylic on paper, 6.5 x 9 inches.

Deanna Templeton

Deanna Templeton

Check out Deanna's photography blog

Mark Gonzales

Mark Gonzales skating in slow motion to the English Beat

West Oakland

“Homes were razed and families displaced to make way for a postal distribution center. Freeways that promised connection to San Francisco instead surrounded the neighborhood, in effect isolating it. The depot at the western terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad, which had brought a steady flow of cash-flush black porters to West Oakland and sent them back to the South with fresh-cut records, was shuttered.

In the late 1960s, construction of the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s above-ground commuter track drove in a final, deafening nail, sending screeching trains along 7th Street from dawn to midnight.”

— LA Times

Joe Rogan Experience #478 - Eddie Bravo

Lower Haight

Photo by Jay Unidos

Mark Gonzales Cooking To Little Richard

UGZ Speed Trials 2005

UGZ Speed Trials 2005, originally uploaded by JayUnidos.

Getting the club ready for the 2005 UGZ Speed Trials.

Mass Destruction Tokyo

This rare film by Cheryl Dunn shows Barry McGee Josh Lozcano Ed Templeton, and Chris Johanson at a demolition derby in Shibuya, Tokyo in 2001. Shot in 16 mm this special cut of the cars being painted and the derby footage has never before been available online.

AJ Fosik

"Lamplighter to the Promise Land" by AJ Fosik

The show (by the same name) runs through December 8th, 2012 at the Guerrero Gallery. I attended the opening last Saturday and wasn't prepared for the level of detail that goes into these pieces. They have to be seen in person to fully appreciate the scale and three dimensionality of Fosik's work.

Richmond Annex

For today's Throwback Thursday post I have a photo I snapped of Q on a rooftop in the Richmond Annex. He's standing next to one of the characters from a short film we were working on back in the day. Q's holding a Super 8 camera, but we also shot with a 16mm Bolex and a SVHS camera that we borrowed from an art school in San Francisco.

I'm working on a new zine that will feature more photos from that shoot, in addition to some behind the scenes notes and stories about the kind of madness that we sometimes found ourselves having to deal with while trying to complete that film and another over the course of a summer.

Special Delivery

SWAMPY piece at Endless Canvas' Special Delivery exhibit last September.  Check out the video below to see how it all came together.

Reflecting

5/3/12: Thursday morning, and the sky is grey like ashes on the banks of the Ganges.

Fishbone | Thrasher

I spent the better part of yesterday going through boxes of old photos, post cards, stickers, and Thrasher magazines.  Most of those old Thrashers are from the eighties, and I've used for them for reference, especially graphics and design, man times over the years, but more recently they've been hidden away in boxes.  While flipping through a copy of the 1989's San Francisco issue, I stopped at this FISHBONE ad offering an "Ultra Killer Deal" for a yearly subscription to the mag, and decided to scan it.

Maneki Neko

My first post of 2012!  

Soft Serve, Stencil Art, Graffitti Cocktail Shaker, Mexican Chocolate, Maneki Neko, and a Milk Bar Cookie. 

You can now find me on Instagram @jayunidos

Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein

It's good to see Shock G (Digital Underground) and Ricky Vincent (Uhuru Maggot) doing in this documentary from 2006 what they used to do on Vincent's college radio show back when I was kid, and that's discussing the funk, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Parliament, Funkadelic, James Brown, and all things in between. Ricky Vincent's show was called "The Uhuru Maggot's Wild World Of Funk", and the first time I ever heard "Underwater Rimes" was when Digital Underground were his in studio guests. That also happened to be the night that some friends and I dabbled in psychedelics at my pad in El Cerrito. While we waited for the drugs to kick in we cranked up my boom box and crossed our fingers that we hadn't been bunked by the dreadlocked hippy we scored from.

"The Uhuru Maggot's Wild World Of Funk" broadcasted out of KALX's studios in Berkeley, CA, and years later when I signed up to intern at KALX, Ricky Vincent was still there and in charge of the department I was interning for, but being the impatient person I was then, I bailed as soon as I found out I wouldn't be getting my own show any time soon.

Years later I was in Cody's on Telegraph Avenue, close to both the old and new KALX studios, when I saw Ricky Vincent's book "Funk" sitting on a shelf, and it hit me that his radio show had influenced me quite a bit, increasing my knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the funk.