She Mob LIVE at Up the Creek Records

She Mob is playing a dinner show, 6 - 7:30 PM! There will be no dinner, but plenty of records and art and tchockes for sale at Up the Creek in Walnut Creek (California).

Note: there's an actual Walnut Creek in Walnut Creek, so quit making fun of its bucolic-suburb fake-sounding name! It's a former orcharding enclave with a hundred-year-old downtown that used to be a railway stop during the ranching era of Northern California land-use and settlement! That railway is now the Ironhorse Trail—a fine bike and walking trail, so be proud, Walnut Creek. Bicyclists know the score.

Up the Creek Records is in a split-level strip mall—the best kind of strip mall. 1840 Tice Valley Boulevard in BADASS Walnut Creek, California. 6 - 7:30 PM. It's a fun little shop and there's lots of live music there weekly, so check the calendar for future events.

Update: Our friend Debi took these shots of our show—thank you Debi! Great fun was had. We'll play again. Hopefully before we turn 60.

March For Our Lives 2018 - Walnut Creek, represent

It's been noted that the SF Chronicle has failed to report that an estimated 8,000 people marched in Walnut Creek, California for #MarchForOurLives on March 24, 2018. So I will be a citizen reporter and document the event here. March For Our Lives Walnut Creek was organized by a small group of high school students and co-sponsored by Book Clubs 4 Change—it was the students' first time putting together a political march and they did a fantastic job. From their Facebook event page:

Enough is enough. We march to support the students of Stoneman Douglas High School and the National #MarchForOurLives movement. We march for common sense changes that will make student lives and safety a priority and for an end to the epidemic of mass school shootings. The time is now. 

My sign is in the public domain if you want to use it

There were volunteer signups, a donation site, sign-making parties, porta-potties , registration and pre-registration for voters, ages 16 and up, and many great speakers before the march, including local students and Congressman Mark DeSaulnier,

Thank you for marching or marching in spirit, everyone. Make sure you're registered to vote and that you vote in EVERY ELECTION from now on, whatever your political affiliation. Sixty percent of Americans, which includes gun owners, favor stricter gun policy from the Federal government. If we all vote, we outnumber NRA-backed political candidates overwhelmingly. Use your power and vote them out. Make this nation a safer, healthier, less deadly place for children, for everyone.

The Skull Show - Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA - 2014

Do you like skulls? How about art? Do you like skulls as represented by artists from multiple disciplines across time and space? Then, make your way to delightful Walnut Creek, California where the Bedford Gallery is curating the skull show to end all skull shows. What could be more universally relevant than a skull? We've all got one, that's for sure. Celebrate your skull from June 12th to August 31st. Contemplate the artful possibilities of the cranium, while reflecting on our impending mortal plane. It's refreshing, morbid and terrifying all at once.

A sampling of skulls, most of which are for sale, but not at bargain-rate prices. Skulls are precious and don't come cheap, ya know. Here's a few skulls that caught my eye. The exhibit itself is really extensive (90 artists) and afterwards you'll feel like you just toured a freaky psychedelic mausoleum. You'll contemplate some deep issues, is my guess, and then you'll laugh it off and get yourself a chocolate milkshake or something to celebrate life. But the show will linger in your consciousness, won't it. Yes, it will.

Eye-catching, isn't it?

Laurel Skye - Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride (2014)

Derik Van Beers - Angel Headed Hipsters / Thanks Allen (2012)

Maureen Shields - a collection of ceramic plates with skulls (2014)

Molly Hatch - Spk Outa Turn and Don't Gotta Listen (2012)

Andy Stattmiller - He-Man Master of the Universe nesting dolls (2014)

Pete Hickok - I Wish This Night Would Never End (2012)

Jim Skull - Mr. Smith (2008)

Fred Einaudi - Patriot (2008)

Noah Scalin - selections from the Skull-A-Day project

Ester Hernandez - Sun Mad (1981)

Here's a detail from Enrique Chagoya's My Tattoos (2012). What I found interesting about this was that I have this particular tattoo myself, or at least a similar one. Chagoya added the skull in the dragon's mouth and played with the original image, which I found many years ago in A Coloring Book of Incas, Aztecs & Mayas and Other Precolumbian Peoples, published by Bellerophon Books in 1988.

Here's my tattoo, from the early 90s, when all us girls were starting to get them. I got mine at Lyle Tuttle's shop in San Francisco. The artist, whose name escapes me, had plenty of Precolumbian artwork going up his arm, including a very fine Olmec head. This convinced me to hire him. The image is a mystery to me because out of all the illustrations in my coloring book, it's the only one that's unlabeled. It's also tiny-sized, printed in the corner of a page of Mayan ball players, as if an after-thought. Where did it come from? Does anyone out there know? Enrique Chagoya and I want answers.

 Chagoya's My Tattoos monotype in full:

A final skull in this post.  Joshua Harker's Crania Geodesica skull installation with light-projection mapping. It really belongs in the dark at a dance party with techno music. But I put some She Mob music over it, because the song is live, it's called Party, and I think it's appropriate. Maybe this will get its proper environment during the Bedford's Arts & Craft Beer event on July 31st, 6 - 8 pm. 'Til then...

Diablo Valley Railroad - Model Trains and Miniatures

The Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society has opened its doors to the public, this weekend and next (otherwise open most Friday evenings throughout the year while members work on the line) and is a good experience for all ages. I've written about this permanently housed model railroad before, so this is mostly a photo post. I am such a sucker for a finely detailed miniature world. And this HO scale railroad line is teeny-tiny and very detailed.

First, the layout. I don't have the most advanced of digital cameras, so my flash tends to blow out foregrounds on wide shots in dark spaces (what a fascinating sentence to draw you in). Anyway, this is just to give you an idea of the space. You circle around the building to see the entire layout (4,300 feet of track) and at one point enter a tunnel-like hallway (where little trains tunnel along the wall with you). The other side of the building has a Jurassic Park diorama and a model of the only "real" place represented, featuring a miniature of the only electric train ferry to exist in the U.S., once based in nearby Pittsburg, California.

Guys up in the mezzanine running the show, like model train Gods.

I was really drawn to the teeny-tiny circus with working Ferris wheel and carousel. I think they've added more circus-parade train cars this year.

 

Feel free to use this close-up of "The Largest Blood-Sweating Hippopotamus" as your Google+ profile banner. I'm putting it out there in the public domain.

Yay! Going to the tiny circus!

Tiny sideshow!

Tiny elephants!

Every half-hour on the hour, the overhead lights slowly dim until it's "nighttime" on the set. Lights come up in all the tiny railroad towns and lightning and thunder effects start happening. Then it rains on you—for real. Water pipes overhead drop rain down. It really surprised me, especially when it landed on my camera. The circus looks like this at night:

Hey, let's go to town.

Town during the day.

Town at night. The Olympic Theater marquee advertises My Little Chickadee, starring Mae West and W.C. Fields. My kind of town.

I noticed a little building off the beaten path during the night sequence. All its windows were lit red. Is that what I think it is?, I thought. Come the daylight a few minutes later, I had my answer.

Yes, it's a tiny whorehouse—The Scarlet Slipper. And it looks to be a popular destination for tiny-town dwellers, even though it's tucked away outside town limits, and there's no visible road leading to it. Hey, every little western town had at least one, and more likely half-a-dozen of these. Don't kid yourselves.

Turn away, children!

Where are more family-friendly environs? How about Jurassic Park for camping, fishing and hiking aplenty.

Another great potential Google+ banner from me to you. Happy holidays.

Stay on the path, Timmy.

Train guys behind (and underneath) the scenes, doing their engineering.

I think the railroad baron lives in this tiny castle. Either that, or a tiny vampire.