Dave Raphael

How many times can you watch someone pack a parachute before it gets old?  I dont really know, I’ll let you know when this shit gets old.  There’s just that thing about being around people overdosing on adrenaline that I dont think EVER gets old.

Be it bands coming off a stage, athletes leaving a field or near misses with real danger, manufactured or otherwsie, when you’ve got enough speed beaming out of you, if someone stands close enough, a spectator can catch some of that infectious goodness.

Its these times in life when it pays to be a scavenger, I’ll gladly scoop up them scraps, thank you.  We can’t all be raptors, all the time.

I had sprinted over to the Waldorf Mystoria looking for John in hopes of scoring a poker chip to fly only to find him walking down three o’clock trailing a parachute, fighting the occasional gust inflating the rig hanging off of both his shoulders.

Both hands flew off the handlebars into the air and my heart sank down to the pant cuff bunched up behind my knees.  Fuck.

You just jumped?

His eyes were crazed with that look you can only have after getting into a skydiving plane twenty five minutes ago.

Yeah, but Im going right back up again, here’s your chip.

Yes!!!  Some of my friends are impossibly righteous.  John is one of them.  It’s a short list but damn, is it a good one.

The morning was calm and balmy in the high eighties, we both knew there was a short window before the playa heated up bringing the venting wind and white that can make flying there terrifying/impossible.  No time was wasted getting a parachute flattened, rolled, cinched and stowed so we could both run back to burning sky and get our names on the next flight roster.

The layout of this year’s Mystical Mysfits camp was particularly amazing, but more on that later.  It did lend itself especially well for packing a parachute.  I suppose there is not a lot of irony to be discovered in the fact that the guy packing a parachute in there also designed the camp.  hmm.

The one interesting thing about someone packing a parachute, its not the most common thing for the average person to see.  Sometimes it can draw a small crowd but perhaps with the seasoned galactic freaks at burning man, it takes a little bit more to phase people…

So there’s that thing about burning man: radical self reliance.  Before the first time you go, someone tells you about radical self reliance and you wind up packing at least twice as much shit mostly filled with items not you nor anyone else will ever need.  By the third time you go, you usually get it down to packing twice as much stuff as you actually do need.  The fourth time you go you take exactly what you need and only go home with half a box of power bars, four gallons of water, a handful of batteries and the spare bicycle tube you didnt use or gift.

By the fifth time you go, you start getting creative with the radical part and develop that skill to truly impress some people with having some esoteric tool that someone desperately needs.  None of this explains why my neighbor this year had all his tig welding gear but it does lead to the fact that after you pack and unpack for ten years, there are still some things that you’d never ever think to bring in duplicate.

Often, with adrenaline overdose hands and the recent memory of free fall to the earth combined with the anticipation of doing it all over again in the immediate future you can go ahead and just rip the pull up cord in half trying to get your rig secured.  Or at least John can, at least once.  Well, good thing ten years of radical self reliance taught you to bring an extra pull up tool for all your rigging needs…

Which brings us to law number one of skydiving: its harder to keep your rig closed than it is to get it to open.

FUCK!

Ok, someone at burning sky is gonna have an extra, lets go.

So half packed, we walked to burning sky where in fact someone did have a pull up tool, John did get his chute packed, we did get on the roster, the plane did take off, there are the best pictures ever and you gotta wait for the second half of this story to see them.  psssh.

There is a man.  He burns in one hundred and sixty two days.

NYC.

This is the first thing you see when you crest the story and a half stair centrally located at the house of hoops on west 34th in New York City:

Busy dropping eight thousand feet of altitude inside a tin can in one hundred fifty seconds through the high desert, low lift sky far above the best gathering of superfreaks in north america, I had my hands too full to hop a jet airliner to Australia to see Sara Blake’s first solo show this past September, and I have been chomping at the bit to see her work in person ever since.

Opportunity finally reared its head and…  Succinctly:  holy fuck.  capital f.

I had been hearing about this work for a while and nearly fell over when I saw it.  Was. Not. Expecting. This. Shit.

The checkout register is surrounded on the left and right with these ten foot murals.

You could not possibly ask for better retail placement than this.  While you are paying for your items, you’ve got 180 degrees of Zso, it’s huge, it’s beautiful and it’s insane.  All that wasted time spent at a register waiting for processes to conclude, imagine being able to look at something this insane.  Try to imagine that.  Dare ya.

There are other pieces strategically placed throughout the store.  You’ve gotta see them in person to get the full effect, they are treated with a clear coat that leaves a really trick three-dee effect which in many ways feels, well, looks, cooler than canvas in person.

The top floor of the store has displays split between Zso and a different digitial artist, his work is in two spots in the store behind the sneaker displays.  Whomever is responsible for beautifully laying out this store had the clarity of vision to not obstruct the Zso work with product.  When you have final works this good, how could you?  Big high five to the people who put this together as a team.

What might not be entirely evident in our relentlessly digital age is that all this work is hand drawn.  You know, with a pencil, bones, muscle and heart.  There is certainly nothing special about that, humans have been rockin’ that shit since teenage pharaohs ruled some law on Egyptians in gold leaf.  What *is* special in the truly realized age of Pocket Calculator is having to draw revision after revision, by hand, by hours, by blood sweat and tears, foundation up every time, when clients ask for revisions usually delivered instantly-ish via a few keystrokes and clicks for minor changes.

What you are looking at is all hand drawn, on paper, and anyone that has ever had a commercial client knows, it can often take a lot of back and forth to get everything just right so that everyone involved is seeing the same final vision.  I can’t begin to imagine the work that was wholly involved in any of these pieces.  Its truly staggering to think about.

This is absolutely the type of thing you would expect to enter a gallery to witness, were you lucky enough to witness it at all.  In this case, you get to see it in a sneaker store.  They dont have an open bar at seven on Thursday night, but you can walk out with a few pairs of sneaks and that ties the work here together seamlessly.  All I know is that if Terrence Mckenna ever called me and asked for advice on sports apparel, Id insist he get on a plane from Hawaii and allow me to take him to 34th street, and I know, with no pause, when he reached the top of the stairs his head would turn to me, the sales staff and all the customers nearby would hear, with inter-dimensional clarity: holy fuck.

If you live anywhere near NYC, make it a point to check this out.

Check out more of Sara Blake’s work: hellozso.

Sometimes you just need to drive.  Clear the head.  Clear the psyche.  Clear the plate.

Sometimes you are faced with driving uphill on a bridge and need to sort irrational phobias.  Sometimes you catch yourself being foolish.

The greatest part about living in LA, well, the only great thing about living in LA is that when you need to drive fast, with purpose, you might find yourself in Joshua Tree or Kings Canyon, or Yosemite or San Francisco.  There is no such scenario in NYC.  You drive and you wind up with any of several losing hands, occasionally, you fold and its Philadelphia.

I used to spend lots of time in Philadelphia when I was younger, and then again, passionately, when I was much older and then things change dramatically and then you just dont go back.  Maybe ever.

It had been a while since Id been in Philly, maybe six years and it actually was nice to see the place again.

I needed some kind of subtle, subdued adventure and I knew something just on the other side of the bridge would deliver.

One might be wondering why someone who lives in NYC would go to Philadelphia to eat pizza.

Life sometimes is perhaps best sampled via the local color.  Maybe its the only way its sampled and we just never slow down long enough to realize it.

Walking around Fishtown was the distraction I needed for sure.  As luck would have it, I found myself opening the creaky door to the Milkcrate Cafe and dove head first into one of the addictions I have never overcome: buying records.  This place is pure genius as it’s a coffee shop and a record shop, but when you walk in, it’s obvious that a perfect balance between those two universes has been struck.  The place is MOSTLY a cafe with an unreal selection of new and used records thrown in.

Its the type of place that is just enough right where you might go and not even flip through stacks of LP’s just because the vibe in there is so chill.  The one thing that a great collection of records for sale brings, of course, is the music freaks and this place absolutely did not disappoint.

The biggest drag about living in shitty NYC is paying $19 for a used record that you can buy in better condition in any smaller city in the country for $2.  Yes, literally.  I can’t remember the last time I even bothered looking at records in NYC.  Years.  Maybe ten?  Really.  Any opportunity to buy LP’s when Im somewhere else is always welcomed with open arms and when you find a spot as good as this place, you gotta grab a stack.

After thirty minutes of collecting a small mountain of titles, I plopped my thirteen pounds of vinyl on the counter, ordered a coffee and paid the bill.  Each piece of inventory got hand written into the inventory log book with a Bic, a small stock sticker was removed from each jacket and I was offered a discount if I could pay with cash.  WTF?  Time machine straight back to 1991.  Totally amazing old school goodness.  Princeton record exchange is legendary in my circle of freaks, but Im coming back to this place next time I have some coin to lay out on LP’s.

As Im standing there, this guy (who’s name I sadly can not recall) came bounding to the counter to inspect what I was about to purchase.  Fully out of the blue, let me check out whatchyer gettin’:  Lust for life.  Easy Action.  Hot Buttered Soul.  Highway.  Rocks.  Dream Police.  Ola.  Crash Landing.  The Yes Album.  Chicago.  Flowers of Evil.  Faithful.  Smokin’.  I got the seal of approval and a very cool high (low) five.  He was impressed I had grabbed such an eclectic selection, I was amazed that such an eclectic selection was under one roof.  Free, Rundgren and Hayes, in the same bin for a few bucks a piece?  Yes please.  I’ll be back.

Not before, however, having a passionate seven minutes at the counter, pondering the dollars Todd Rundgren made producing in the 70’s and then connecting all the dots between him, Aerosmith, Zappa and Grand Funk Railroad.  My heart really goes out to the current MP3 generation who will never know about record shop culture.  People want to make a big deal about the album art or the sonics associated with LP playback, which I wont argue, but its the human element of spending time in record shops, meeting other freaks, discovering and celebrating the shared interest in perhaps the esoteric with a perfect stranger.  Thats the magic of life and one thing is for certain, Itunes aint supplying it.

Across from the Milkcrate is Dipinto Guitars

I spent a good part of two hours chatting with Chris Dipinto, its owner and leader, about low wattage tube amps, converting 1950’s micro pa amps into guitar screamers, the ups and downs of small manufacturing and of course, guitars.  Worthy of note: this took place in his shop which is lined with zebra and bamboo wallpaper, lucha libre masks and transistor radio’s direct from a Hawaiian motel.

Chris has a special kind of success story, his retail shop served as a spot to turn over oddball offset guitars and facilitate a repair business, certainly not an uncommon model among mom and pop music stores.  At some point, he designed some bodies and began to manufacture guitars on a small scale and now he has a pretty wide line of models and international distribution.  Awesome.

I sat down to play one and couldnt believe the quality of the instrument he handed me.  Needless to say, I accidentally bought a guitar and an old ampeg cabinet that was sitting in the corner.

Events like this dont usually transpire when you go to guitar mart warehouse.

It was really nice to be in an old school guitar shop, something NYC living really makes impossible.  Profitability of small, independent retail outlets is one thing small to medium sized US cities will always have over a place like NYC.

Going to guitar shops looking for deals was almost a religion when I was in college, the end of each semester always brought a gold mine of deals when everyone was out of money and had to sell the last cool amp they bought under the same but opposite circumstances the semester prior…  It was really really nice to revisit the vibe of an indie guitar shop, it was not surprising that I spent hours chatting with the guy running the place.

If you have some money burning a hole in your pocket and want to lay some of that economic power on some really cool people, Dipinto has a vibe all its own and is absolutely worth checking out.

Packing up the car shuffling around records, a guitar and a speaker cabinet it was immediately apparent how well some local business could be doing in Fishtown because one thing is for certain, I didnt need to buy ANY of this shit.  Walking into these two joints *inspired* commerce.  Mostly overlooked, but looking at how the neighborhood is coming up, its critical not to take that kind of thing for granted.  Its totally cool to see there are some guys out there doing it right, especially with the pressure of today’s economy weighing down on everyone.

Unique, no, maybe not.  But certainly cool and living in NYC, with our outrageous overheads, its easy to miss this type of thing if you ever were used to easy living in some smaller town, better or worse, somewhere else.

Here’s to right ideas, wealthy afternoons and surprise inspiration.  Nice to see you again, Philadelphia.

Check out more of Nick Walker’s work!

Often, if you are the lucky type, you might find yourself walking the streets, lost in your own little universe, tapping out a drum beat on the wallet in one pocket and the keys in the other, congratulating yourself on collecting the coolest friends ever, fantasizing about the critical details of the next adventure; salivating at the thought of the next time you can fuck off and run to an airport with a giggle.  Bounding in time to the breaks of How Many More Times with a leading left foot and pausing with a dot to wonder, how DID I get so lucky?  Eventually you might come back down to earth, either in some kind of graceful glide back to the ground, or the more exciting, standard issue, reckless crash landing and then doubt everything your gleaming self confidence brought.  But every so often, one of the original members of the circus will ring you with a reminder that yeah, you really do have the coolest people ever.

Dave!  what are you doing on Thursday night?

Im flying back from Prague, why?

It’s my birthday, everyone’s coming over and we are going to draw.

Who, in adulthood, would ever expect to hear something so full on righteous as that come out of the ear piece of a mobile phone?  Draw.  Ok, Im there, direct from Schipol, save me a spot at the table.

Look, when I was a kid, this was normal.  Me and my friends, we all sat around and drew on everything.  When we got tired of that, we built universes out of legos, you know, the toy building brick.  But drawing.  That was huge.  Drawing was in the top five with bicycle, swimming, playing in dirt and lego.

And now decades have come and gone AND WHO THE FUCK HAS DRAWING BIRTHDAY PARTIES?  I know the coolest people in the whole galaxy.  I am, in fact, the luckiest motherfucker and need to remind myself of this on a more regular basis.

Unfortunately, by the time I got back from the airport, I missed out on a good portion of the crayon battle that apparently ensued before I showed up, but did get there just in time to see everyone show off their masterpieces.  I swear, sitting here looking at these pictures now, all of us adults, who does shit this cool?

Apparently it is customary for everyone at a Dutch birthday party to bring a cake.

Or its not customary at all and everyone just brought a cake anyway.

Regardless, there were many cakes, which followed the usual awesomeness that comes out of the kitchen at Tos and Eef’s.

At one point a long discussion was had about De Korenwolf and how if a little rodent was good enough to halt real estate development, it was certainly good enough to be Gulpener’s furry mascot.

This evening was also the origin for a later discussion on the duality of the word box and things you can do to drumsticks when your friend sends some: zal ik je hele doos schuren?

All the funnier when the drummer is a girl.  And it’s her birthday.  Yes, we have some laughs…  

This table has been the scene of countless hours of etymology, which really doesnt seem like it would be any fun in any way, but somehow our discussions always boil down to some talk of words and its kinda the greatest thing ever.

Earlier that day, there was a colossal Taschen score which everyone had to get their eyeballs on.

I was also not the only one who had gifted Eef a photograph for her birthday.

I was super lucky to be in Amsterdam for Eef’s birthday, first time I got to celebrate with her and of course, really glad I decided to hang around another week or so for this gathering.

The usual gang was present, replete with my favorite Dutch dog, Nibler, Koning van de Bakfiets.

My favorite part of Nibler is that he has this absurdly large head, even for a french bulldog, and it could possibly be the most satisfying thing in dog world.  His little dog head is like, lusciously large.  It truly is immensely satisfying to look at and flat out exhilarating to pet.  Prominent brows, big bulging eyes, tiny muscle dog body but enormous head.  Nibler rules.

He really is pretty much all muscle, skull and full of love.  Some dogs are fun, others are friendly and then there’s the ones where you are just glad that you got to meet them because they make your life better.  Nibler is one of those dogs.  Unique, completely awesome, proud and full of love.

Makes sense he runs with this crowd, they are all like that…