well according the the article that ! posted in the previous comments, the Witches' Market is not completely tourist free.

Bolivians and tourists flock to the Witches' Market, which has spilled into the adjoining streets.

Smiling witches in colorful full dresses and bowler hats—a fashion for women in Bolivia—preside over many of the shops with their daughters and heirs.

and

"It used to be only regular Bolivian customers coming to me for cures to health and spiritual problems," Acho says. "Now much of the money I make is from selling my goods to tourists who take them home as souvenirs. I feel something is lost in being a witch." read more here

Acho can rest assured that her frog is not just a souvenir in this house.

Beck brought me this frog from Bolivia. She got it at a witches' market. Not a touristy place but a real practical place where people shop for their spells and other witchy things. This real (dead) frog stuffed with felt and sprinkled with gold glitter is placed on a bed of coins and has to smoke a cigarette every Tuesday and Friday. In return, she brings fortune. Here she is, smoking a Marlboro.


We spotted this billboard in Tacoma on Sunday. There were actually three of them on the same block. Owned by Clear Channel. The message is so blunt, but I am suspicious. What is this really about? It'll probably turn out to be an ad for beer or something. Or is Clear Channel endorsing and anti-Bush administration campaign?


And speaking of froggies, here is a real one from France who is visiting us this summer. Well right now she went down to SF to meet her hero Howard Becker (say oward), but she's coming back. Flo and Bee are talking on the Glass Bridge under glass creatures made by Chihuly. See Bee's frenchly pursed lips?

Equality?

Ingmar Bergman had such an amazing way of portraying people's relationships in his films. I also love the eye candy cinematography.

Went to Capitol Hill's Block Party yesterday. At first we went to hear Spoon, a band that I've heard about and that seemed to be the headliner. They were playing on the main stage. They were pretty good, the kind of band that you like but catch yourself yawning at their live concert. I actually spotted several people yawning and trying to look interested as we elbowed our way through the crowd looking for Amy. Flo, our friend who's visiting from France remarked that they sound like the stereotypical Seattle band (thought they're from Austin) and I think she was right (at least about what they played at the block party).

So we wandered over to the Vera stage and there it was, a real Seattle band Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, that made us tap our feet and move our butts to the beat. They had all sorts of instruments like several violins, a cello, a trumpet and a sound that makes you dance whether you planned to or not. The crowd was smaller there and people were getting down, no yawning and plenty of room to boogie. It made the $20 entrance fee totally worth it.

Though listening to Spoon's songs on MySpace right now, I'm tapping my foot too.

Mirah was there too but we missed her. She was on early in the day. Gi noticed her stylish turquoise spandex pants in this Stranger Blog picture.

here is another must see video that gi sent me. watch 1,500 men in a Philippine prison dance Thriller!

you must see this video made by a Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra. There are more on her website.

I just found these online tests that were created by psychologists at Harvard. The tests try to assess your conscious and unconscious biases about race, gender, religion, sexual preference, etc. Pretty interesting.

Mellie and Mike had a baby! Her name is Simone Gillian Gregory Meade and she was born July, Fri 13. She already has her own Blog.

Here is the audio file (mp3) of the KUOW Weekday program about graffiti. I was one of the guests. It turned out that being on NPR is not as nerve wrecking as I'd expected. You just sit there in the room with no one staring at you like they do in lecture. Damion Hayes the Gallery Director with the BLVD Gallery in Belltown was friendly, understated and seemed to know his stuff. His cute 7yo disheveled hipster son was watching us through the soundproof glass. Di did a nice guest appearance and graffitied the airwaves with the word "penis". Thankfully, she was the last caller right after the "all graffiti is crap" lady. I'm glad the show ended with Di.

Basically, it was a good experience. It was interesting to visit the studio and see how radio happens behind the scenes. The show host moved things along fast and I was surprised to see him a little disappointed with himself when he ran out of time and just had to end the show abruptly. This sometimes happens to me when I give lectures but for some reason I thought that radio hosts had their timing figured out to the minute. I guess it's just hard to tell when they don't. I am always amazed by people who can just talk without hesitation, have that sense of knowing when to move things along and have the attention to be listening and asking questions and getting everyone involved all at once.

It seemed like there was not much time for a conversation though. I thought that I was ready with some good sound bites, but instead i ended up rambling a lot and never got to the really cool stuff like the Splasher splashing a Banksy painting. I had all these ideas for interesting points to raise but there wasn't enough time. Between 4 people and the callers and the prerecorded bits the hour passed in 10 minutes.

This seating near a bus stop downtown Seattle (Jackson St. and 2nd Ave.) always fascinates me. Each seat is a marble block, no backrest and just enough polished surface for two average sized butt cheeks. No trash accumulates on the slippery tops. In fact, people buff the marble with their butts every time they sit there. Of course this design also takes care of bench squatters, and in this neighborhood someone undoubtedly would be tempted to nap on a bench.

The marble blocks are placed in such a way that everyone has their own 5 ft. circle of space. If you want to interact with another person, you have to make an extra effort like the boy gesturing and the girl who is standing up. On one hand the seats are kind of nice in that, when feeling antisocial, you get your own space unlike with most bus stop seating. On the other hand, they makes it harder to talk to people casually. The whole thing always looks like some performance art to me, as if the people are all actors acting out a conceptual piece about American individualism.

I'll be one of the guests on 94.9FM KUOW's Weekday: Decoding the Writing on the Wall this Monday at 9am. Should be an interesting conversation since other guests will be Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon, Daniel Sims with Seattle Public Utilities graffiti team and Damion Hayes who is Gallery Director with the BLVD Gallery in Belltown. People will be calling in with questions and comments. eeek, I am kind of nervous to be on National Public Radio but it should be a fun conversation about graffiti and about public space!

Meanwhile, check out their Migration Project.

Kids talking about what it's like to be an immigrant.

This is a great story in the NY Magazine about a journalist's hunt for the Splasher, a mysterious figure on the NY street art scene who has been "defacing" work by famous street artists like Banksy and Swoon (image on the left). This is the article David mentioned below. Vikki sent it to me a few weeks ago (thanks V!). Note the mention of Marco!

Graffiti on a wall in Olympia. I spotted it on the wall of the Indian restaurant where our mosaic tile mural is located. I noticed a lot more murals and funky graffiti in Oly this time around. Great to see the city get more and more color on its walls over time. While walking around downtown, Gi and I bumped into JB and he told that the free graffiti wall behind the Capitol Theater is STILL very contested. Some people are still working hard to get rid of it.

This is one of my favorite fountains in Oly. When the sun is out and the air is hot, people cool off in the random spray jets and others come to watch. I love that it's located right downtown with that great view of the Capitol breast in the background. There are benches all around the fountain and murals on the buildings facing it. I love that it's made to play in. More public art should be for playing. Click on the image to see it better.

That's me at the BH marina working in the shade by the bay with the sailboats and the mountains on the horizon. Gi and I set out to complete a writing project and we almost completed our goal. Well...Gi completed her entire goal and I have one more paragraph to edit. Overall it was a success. What a heavenly place. On Sunday we went kayaking to Fish Trap and had a picnic. On the way back, Nina and Yule's row boat got stuck in the current and Don, the owner of the marina rescued them in his motor boat.

And that's Gi filling our jugs with the Oly water. The pipe is located in a parking lot and people planted pots with plants around it to make it look nicer. The official city sign on the right warns you to drink at your own risk. The handmade stencil sign on the left says "It's the free artesian well water." This water is most delicious and it comes from the deep bowels of the earth in the form of a natural ever-flowing spring. All day long people come to fill their jugs. Gi and I stopped to do the same on our way back to Seattle.

Just got word from Beck in Bolivia. Her email from a distant internet cafe was filled with strange words like pampas, caymen, capybara and pink river dolphins.


Here is a quote, "i swam in the river with the dolphins. apparently, those are the only safe places to swim because the dolphins fight off the alligators and caymen with their snouts and they eat the pirrahneas."

and

"in the markets in la paz there are stalls that are miniscule. really. like two and a half feet wide. and the vendor is sometimes curled up inside with their wares. there is nothing like a grocery store like we have at home. la paz is the capital and considered a modern city. it really takes getting away from home to really realize what all we've got. i truly have a new perspective on the USA being the wealthiest country in the world."

She also described getting sick and catching a cold and how coughing and diarrhea don't mix. But overall, sounds like Beck is having a great adventure. Can't wait to see the pictures and hear more stories.

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Meanwhile...turns out that Boston Harbor marina has WiFi. So here I am, sitting at a picnic table, watching all the people go by to go kayaking, sailing, boating, buying fish. I'm writing...writing?? Imagine that, WiFi at the marina. We do live in the land of plenty.

Gi and i are on a writing retreat at Beck's Boston Harbor beach side home while she's away exploring Bolivia. I love walking out of the house and smelling the salty Puget Sound just one block away, then walking over to the marina to see how low the tide has gotten and to hear the clinking of the sailboat masts.

There is a wooden dock with sea anemones and starfish stuck to the sides and no gate so you can go there and hang over the edge and try to touch the sea creatures, but they always look closer than they really are. In the evenings people hang out on their boats, looking at the most perfect landscape with the Olympics edged by the orange of the sun setting and purplish streaks of clouds. You can get a beer or soft serve ice cream at the little store on the marina and sit at one of their picnic tables all day if you want to.

The owners, Pam and Don, have been around as long as I can remember. When I was writing my thesis, I would ride my bike here at the end of every day. I love being out of breath at the end of the bike ride and inhaling deep breaths of this air. It feels like drinking. I can't think of a more perfect place to write.

this "graffiti" is an ad on one of the 7-Elevens turned into the fictional Kwik-E-Marts, as a promotion for the Simpsons movie that's coming out on July 27. Lucas are you done yet?

i just found the website for Anya Ulinich, the author of Petropolis. It was fun to see her illustrations. They weren't in the book. I like the paint box as a reference image.