But first, I found the Watts Towers. They are smaller than I expected from being called towers but much larger once one realizes that Simon Rodia carried every bucket of concrete up the 99 feet to the top by himself. I drove right by them the first time around and had to rely on my Google Maps app not crashing in the middle of the ex-ghetto in order to circle back. Very excellently swell:
Plus there is a cultural center next door with two large galleries devoted to work by other artists -- this time a retrospective of the local assemblage sculptor Charles Dickson. His work is quite amazing ( I took a couple of illicit pictures but promised not to disseminate them). Then I ended up talking with the galleristas for some time about the history of assemblage, realizing -- duh -- that, while Duchamp and Picasso may have introduced it to European high art, it has its source in, mostly African, folk art.
On the way back 'home' I made the hadj to my first home near Exposition Park, only to find that the address I have doesn't exist. I have 4132, but the numbers jump from 4130, across an intersection, to 4150 -- so maybe I did grow up in the middle of the street. This could explain why my drain bramaged Android tablet map program crashed every time I tried to find the house before finally coughing up an estimate of the actual location this morning. All this time I thought it was just incapable of finding anything that didn't have a paid commercial tie-in...but it must have been user error after all.
And then off to Melrose Ave -- trey uber naturlich -- for dinner at Ink with my old friend Jay. He paid, so it went pretty well indeed.
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