Nice, longish clip of some graf writers putting up massive pieces at Venice Beach, LA.

If you look closely you can see the Paris-based artist Invader's signature "space invader" mosaic (inspired by the classic videogame of the same name) on the facade above this bookstore in Santa Monica. (For a detailed view scroll below.) This location is in a highly visible area filled with shoppers and tourists and surrounded by trendy stores like the Adidas Store, Puma, the Apple Store, Urban Outfitters, J. Crew and so on.

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Well-known in the global street art underground, the French artist who goes by the name Invader has left his mark on Third Street in Santa Monica with his iconic mini-mosaic (above) of the "alien" from the classic arcade videogame Space Invader. The name has a double meaning--it not only references the artwork and its source, but is also a reminder that technically, without permission, even putting up aesthetically pleasing little tiled artworks is vandalism and as such makes this artist an "invader" of space, be it private or public.

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There's not much graf or street art in the beach hoods of SoCal. But this combo of surfer messages on a concrete bench at Topanga Canyon Beach, near Malibu, caught our eye. The "locals only" scratched into the bench is a warning from local surfers that outsiders are not welcome at this surf spot. Then there's the "818" illustrated scrawl, written in what looks like blue Sharpie. The number 818 is the area code of The Valley, the nearby suburban sprawl of LA, from where every summer weekend millions of people descend on the beaches of Malibu, Zuma and Topanga, (as opposed to the beaches of South Bay, where most city-dwelling Angelenos go). If you're a surfer from 818, local surfers hate you. Food fight, anyone?

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We revisit The Grove shopping complex in Los Angeles. There we find this example of retro-faux Hollywood art-deco architecture mixed with contemporary, urban shopping-center chic: the The Grove movie theater. We've got really mixed feelings about this sort of thing, but to its credit the facade is an attempt to incorporate historic LA arhictectural cues. This multiplex is across the (fake) street from the Apple Computer Store, so you can check your email and surf the Net for free before seeing a movie or after your movie ends. And, of course, you can look at Apple iPods, G5s, digital cameras, iMacs, etc. In fact, we noticed a lot of theater-goers flooding into the Apple Store after a movie let out, so there's an interesting economic and geographic symbiosis going on here.

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In the previous post, we mentioned the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Many of the stores here are the same big branded chains you can find in any shopping mall in the US, or for that matter in any major industrialized city around the developed world--Starbucks, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble, etc. One shop we're surpised to see here, however, is the Von Dutch clothing/lifestyle store pictured here. Von Dutch is a name that has been around for decades, but as a name purely resurrected as licensed fashion label for t-shirts, etc., its life has been very short and very recent. Von Dutch can be partially credited for the trucker hat trend of the past three years (a trend which seems to be finally, gradually fading out). Von Dutch didn't start the trucker hat trend, but some style-conscious marketing genius quickly cottoned on to it early and commercially exploited it under the Von Dutch label. In doing so helped push the trucker hat fashion past the tipping point and into big-grid Mall-of-America mass popularity.

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Almost every major city of the developed world seems to now have an Apple Store. Tokyo? Got one. New York? Of course. Paris, Yup. Los Angeles? No. "No?" you say. "What?" you ask, "LA doesn't have an Apple Store?" OK, let's clarify: LA doesn't have "an" Apple Store; it has TWO Apple Stores, which makes the City of Angels one of the best places on the planet to hunt down an iPod, iMac or iWhatever directly from the source. Here is a shot of the Apple emporium at The Grove, the hugely popular outdoor shopping mall that looks like Disneyland's Main Street, but planted in Hollywood's Fairfax district. The second LA Apple shop is in Santa Monica, at another outdoor shopping mall called Third Street Promenade, which is a comfortable place to surf the Internet for free, or test drive digital cameras and contemplate that Mac iPod or iWhatever you want so badly.

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The first of a series of graphica images from the City of Angels this past week show the logo painted on the wall of the dining patio at Pink's hotodog stand. This famous LA weiner shack near the corner of LA Brea and Melrose avenues in Hollywood was opened 66 years ago. It's still popular with local celebs despite the tourists who make the pilgrimage here for La La Land's best frankfurters.

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The Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, like at most major international airports, is a massive hub of diverse airlines sporting a wide variety of colorful logos and color schemes from nations near and far, large and small. Looking out from huge windows on the terminal's south end, the tailfins of several jets line up like ducks in a row. The nearest plane belongs to Korean Air. The farthest sports the insignia for Luftansa, the German national carrier. Between them are two airlines with logos we can't identify. (If you know them, please drop us a line at Global Graphica and educate us.)

Ivan Corsa Photo

The address itself may not mean anything to most people or even to most residents of Hollywood, but 1750 Vine St. is home to a 13-storey building that is an instantly recognizable architectural icon of Los Angeles. The Capitol Records building suggests a stack of 45-rpm records on a turntable spindle. The structure was built in 1956, supposedly at the urging of Capitol recording stars Nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer, as the new headquarters for the hugely successful recording label. Architecturally nothing looked like the building then and nothing quite looks like it even now, almost fifty years after its completion. Designed by Welton Beckett, the structure is especially significant in that it is the world's first circular office building and a prime example of futurism. That was a big deal back in '56, but now buildings come in all sorts of un-box-like curvilinear shapes. The tip of the needle-like spire (see image 2 of 2 here) has a light that blinks out the spelling for Hollywood in Morse code into the low-rise skyline. On the south wall, at the base of the building, is a famous mural called "Hollywood Jazz," which includes images of Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday. The star for John Lennon in the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" is set in the sidewalk in front of the building.

Ivan Corsa Photo

The address itself may not mean anything to most people or even to most residents of Hollywood, but 1750 Vine St. is home to a 13-storey building that is an instantly recognizable architectural icon of Los Angeles. The Capitol Records building suggests a stack of 45-rpm records (see image 1 of 2 here) on a turntable spindle. The structure was built in 1956, supposedly at the urging of Capitol recording stars Nat King Cole and Johnny Mercer, as the new headquarters for the hugely successful recording label. Architecturally nothing looked like the building then and nothing quite looks like it even now, almost fifty years after its completion. Designed by Welton Beckett, the structure is especially significant in that it is the world's first circular office building and a prime example of futurism. That was a big deal back in '56, but now buildings come in all sorts of un-box-like curvilinear shapes. The tip of the needle-like spire has a light that blinks out the spelling for Hollywood in Morse code into the low-rise skyline. On the south wall, at the base of the building, is a famous mural called "Hollywood Jazz," which includes images of Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday. The star for John Lennon in the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" is set in the sidewalk in front of the building.

Ivan Corsa Photo