this article from the NY TIMES gives us a sign of hope that our polaroid cameras could be back in use very soon! woohoo. check out the “the impossible project”

friends and family documentation….

the pike in long beach, ca


maddy and andy at 9 months


i am hoping to document more and more this coming year. i will be sure to post for friends far and near to see. i am planning on investing in a new canon 40D or 50D soon and take a photography class so i am sure to use the camera to its full potential. everyone likes a good picture, so i am going to delivery it. check out my flickr: www.flickr.com/mathukraine

i need to start utilizing www.matthewcrane.com more. i have been extremely lazy about posting while friends jake and josh have encouraged me through their consistent updating. it has become a new years resolution of sorts, its only a couple days late.

today i was driving home from work and was enjoying NPR, and i heard an interesting story about a man in Paris. every sunday, he opens up his home for dinner to anyone. you have to RSVP and there is limited seating, but anyone can asked to be invited. i thought this concept was great. i have talked to my sister jen before about this sort of thing, and if we ever opened a restaurant we would have a family style dinner once a week. i am stoked to visit Paris again and RSVP for his dinner party.

here is the full story from NPR….

Every week for the past 30 years, I’ve hosted a Sunday dinner in my home in Paris. People, including total strangers, call or e-mail to book a spot. I hold the salon in my atelier, which used to be a sculpture studio. The first 50 or 60 people who call may come, and twice that many when the weather is nice and we can overflow into the garden.

Every Sunday a different friend prepares a feast. Last week it was a philosophy student from Lisbon, and next week a dear friend from London will cook.

People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn’t be better. I love the randomness.

I believe in introducing people to people.

I have a good memory, so each week I make a point to remember everyone’s name on the guest list and where they’re from and what they do, so I can introduce them to each other, effortlessly. If I had my way, I would introduce everyone in the whole world to each other.

People are most important in my life. Many travelers go to see things like the Tower of London, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower and so on. I travel to see friends, even — or especially — those I’ve never met.

In the late ’80s, I edited a series of guidebooks to nine Eastern European countries and Russia. There were no sights to see, no shops or museum to visit; instead, each book contained about 1,000 short biographies of people who would be willing to welcome travelers in their cities. Hundreds of friendships evolved from these encounters, including marriages and babies.

This same can be said for my Sunday salon. At a recent dinner, a 6-year-old girl from Bosnia spent the entire evening glued to an 8-year-old boy from Estonia. Their parents were surprised, and pleased, by this immediate friendship.

There is always a collection of people from all over the globe. Most of them speak English, at least as a second language. Recently a dinner featured a typical mix: a Dutch political cartoonist, a beautiful painter from Norway, a truck driver from Arizona, a bookseller from Atlanta, a newspaper editor from Sydney, students from all over, and traveling retirees.

I have long believed that it is unnecessary to understand others, individuals or nationalities; one must, at the very least, simply tolerate others. Tolerance can lead to respect and, finally, to love. No one can ever really understand anyone else, but you can love them or at least accept them.

Like Tom Paine, I am a world citizen. All human history is mine. My roots cover the earth.

I believe we should know each other. After all, our lives are all connected.

OK, now come and dine.

Independently produced for All Things Considered by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

screw the iphone…

please LA city council, mayor, people, lobbyists, and jesus pass this:

more information: www.subwaytothesea.org

i want these shoes. one for each foot.

the desert boot in mustard yellow by opening ceremony at tres bien shop



zip boot by common project at blackbird



generic man’s white navel boot at oak nyc

this weekend i headed down to san diego to celebrate the remaining days of john-david collins’s bachelorhood. daniel collins organized a chartering of a sailboat around san diego harbor. boat, beers, boys, and captain fred. it was an adventure and a great day on the water. i would highly recommend this day of fun to anyone. also, i am now seriously considering sailing lessons.

more pictures on my flickr!

Another run at biking in L.A.
Before the freeways, the bicycle ruled the road in L.A. It could be that way again.
By Robert Gottlieb
June 15, 2008
Five years ago today, thousands of bicycle riders and pedestrians converged at the entrance to the Pasadena Freeway at Glenarm Street and Arroyo Parkway for an extraordinary event: ArroyoFest. Although it seemed improbable, the freeway would be off limits to trucks, autos and motorcycles for four hours so the crowd could ride and walk on the road.

In one sense, the bikers were reclaiming what was once theirs. At the turn of the century, Los Angeles was considered the bicycle capital of the nation, and portions of the route taken by the Pasadena Freeway had been a bikeway. For many bikers, the experience that day was revelatory: Riding a bike not only provided pleasure but it also represented a viable form of transportation. Several bikers who traveled the entire 8.5-mile stretch of the freeway between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles reported that they completed the trip in less time than it had taken them by car during the previous week’s rush hour.

With traffic congestion worsening and gasoline prices continuing to rise, it’s no longer necessary to stage an event to show that the bicycle is a serious transit option. Dozens of newspaper articles and blogs report that an increasing number of commuters across the country are leaving their cars in the garage and using other forms of transportation, especially bicycles, to get to the store, school, bus or rail stop, even to work. Members of the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition, for instance, say they are getting dozens of inquiries requesting information on the best bike routes to various locations across town.

Meanwhile, several dozen new bike groups have formed in Los Angeles to increase biking opportunities for commuting purposes as well as recreational. These groups see the bicycle as an especially efficient transportation option for trips of less than a mile. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Caltrans and the city of Los Angeles’ Department of Transportation all have bike coordinators, and a new bike master plan for the city, the first in more than a decade, is near completion.

And bike riding is becoming more visible in the urban landscape. Midnight rides, many organized spontaneously and sometimes willing to be disruptive to lay claim to the streets, have become a monthly occurrence in some neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. In addition to providing route information, organizations such as Bike Oven and the Bike Kitchen fix bicycles and offer places to store them.

Unfortunately, the increased interest in the bicycle as a commuting option exceeds the city’s capacity to handle it. L.A.’s bike-riding infrastructure — bike lanes and dedicated bike boulevards — is abysmal and compares poorly with those in cities such as Portland, according to a recent Urban and Environmental Policy Institute study, a research and advocacy organization based at Occidental College. For instance, about 6% of Portland’s 3,949 miles of street lanes are for bikes, compared with just 0.6% of L.A.’s 28,000 miles of street lanes.

For a bicycle to become a viable mode of travel in L.A., we need to do a number of things. First, we need to build more bikeways, create more bike lanes on surface streets and install more bike racks near transit stops. Transportation planners need to more fully integrate biking with public transit. Land-use decisions should aim to encourage biking as an option. To explore these and other issues, a bike summit organized by bike groups, researchers and policy experts is in the works in Los Angeles.

If bike riding can reassert its place in Los Angeles — as it briefly did five years ago — we can begin to reduce our dependence on the car. Imagine a city in which Griffith Park would be car-free, in which the Los Angeles River had a bikeway stretching its length, in which there were dedicated bike boulevards connecting Pasadena or Santa Monica to downtown. We could call the bike ride the “pleasure ride,” as the car ride on the Pasadena Freeway, the first freeway in the West, was once touted.

Robert Gottlieb’s latest book is “Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City.”

NPR-

Bicycle Activists Take to the Freeways in L.A.

People tend to think of Los Angeles as the natural habitat of the automobile, a land where giant on ramps and multilane freeways determine the course of life.

But for three cyclists in Santa Monica, Los Angeles is a bikers’ world. Morgan Strauss grew up riding bikes around L.A. Alex Cantarero grew up riding local buses, even celebrating childhood birthdays aboard, before making the move to pedal power. Rich Totheie moved from New York City a few years back, having never much used a bike for transportation.

In November, the three bicycle activists began dreaming up ways to make their point — that two-wheelers deserve a place in the transportation network. They say they’d grown tired of playing cat-and-mouse with Santa Monica police at monthly Critical Mass rides. Instead, their group, the Crimanimalz, began protests like bottling intersections with endless, lawful rounds of Crosswalk Craps.

Strauss says their events drew little notice. Then, one day, the three riders had a brainstorm. “The idea just kind of hit us,” he remembers. “Let’s ride on the freeway.”

The Crimanimalz drew up fliers and posted on local cycling sites, looking for cyclists willing to pedal up an on ramp during a Friday afternoon rush hour and just keep going. On April 18, a dozen bikers joined them in a park by the freeway. After a few nervous moments, they set off. “We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Cantarero says. For a cyclist, riding on the interstate is utterly taboo.

Drivers scarcely looked up as the riders passed. Many were too busy texting messages on their cell phones in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. The riders grew bolder, weaving in and out, riding faster and faster. They had sent scouts for an initial stretch but decided to extend the ride. Two miles and 15 minutes later, they were back on city streets.

Some in the cycling community criticized the ride, calling it a crazy stunt destined to alienate the nonriding public and end with injured cyclists. But twice as many activists turned out for a second ride in May.

The California Highway Patrol says the Crimanimalz are clearly breaking the law, namely by failing to obey the sign at the freeway entrance that says no bikes allowed. The violation comes with a ticket north of $100, says Officer Heather Hoglund, a spokeswoman. More importantly, Hoglund says, the riders are putting themselves in danger. “The people doing this are thinking, ‘I’m not going to get hurt up there. The traffic’s moving slowly,’ ” she says. “But you tip over, and, I’m sorry, but you’re done for.”

The Crimanimalz say they intend to keep riding the freeways, about once a month, on Friday afternoons. They say they’re doing it for a reason. “Why, in a city that’s made for cars, are bikes getting places so much faster?” Strauss says. “People who don’t ride bikes weren’t all that shocked. They were like, yeah, this does make sense. The freeway is a parking lot at that time. There should be a bikeway. There should be a bike freeway. There should be better bike paths. There should be safer routes. And that was really awesome.”