Hostel Stays in LA: Tips for a Good Night’s Sleep

Posted on by Diversions LA

hostel 2As we approach holiday season, out of town guests may be heading our way and looking for accommodations. When hotel rates are simply too high and there’s no room at home for visitors, hostels can make a great option for a stay. 

Of course, some travelers will complain about the difficulty of getting a good night’s rest at a hostel in a city as busy as Los Angeles, but sleeping soundly at a hostel is hardly impossible. In fact, getting the right amount of shut-eye is perfectly doable if visitors follow a few simple tips.

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Avoid Staying at a Party Hostel

All it takes is a little research to avoid party spots. Checking online reviews goes a long way toward determining whether a hostel is a quiet spot or a great hangout for partygoers.  USA Hostels Hollywood, Surf City Hostel, and Banana Bungalow West Hollywood are all known as lively, fun spots; but a quieter option is the Orange Drive Manor Hostel, described by Trip Savvy as a 1910 manor home with a serene vibe, yet located in walking distance of Hollywood attractions from the Capitol Records Building to the TCL Chinese Theater.

Tire Yourself Out

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Yes, one sure way to get a good night’s sleep is to be tired enough to sleep as soon as you hit your hostel’s pillow, according to travel blogger RachelRTW. With so much to see and do in LA from cutting edge art galleries and museums to taking a surf lesson at the beach, hiking the trails of Griffith Park, or visiting all the area theme parks, it shouldn’t be a problem to get ready to drift off into dreamland.

Bring a Sleeping Kit Wherever You Go

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Veteran travelers in the know keep this travel essential handy wherever they go. A sleeping mask keeps light away and comfortable earplugs mean unwonted noise can be easily kept at bay. Can’t sleep without music? Then ear plugs save the day. Keep an extra pair to listen to your favorite tunes, or perhaps white noise relaxation, such as recorded sounds of rain or ocean waves.  If you’re sharing your hostel space with other guests, this should take care of extraneous light and sound.

Avoid Alcohol

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Sure, Los Angeles is known for its craft brews from Angel City Brewery’s eclectic scene downtown to the wide array of tasty IPAs and ales in Torrance breweries like Smog City and Absolution. We even have our own whiskey distillery downtown. Not to mention the altogether awesome club scene from trendy speakeasies to revolving rooftop hotel bars. All the same, to get a good night’s sleep you might want to try an organic soda or sparkling water instead of these tempting alcoholic treats, at least close to bedtime, for a more solid night’s sleep.

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According to sleep expert Lisa Scotti in her better sleep guide, it’s wise to avoid drinking alcohol within four hours of your bedtime. It might be tempting to consume alcohol, but to get a good night’s sleep it might be worth considering avoiding it especially if you’re staying in a hostel. While drinking can help you doze off initially, the effect is only temporary, and you’ll end up restless, possibly waking several times for toilet breaks.

Turn Off the Lights

Sleep studies have shown that lights can make it hard for people to fall asleep. And this doesn’t just mean turning off that overhead light or your bedside lamp. Digital devices include light, too, and they can also be overly stimulating. Put the iPhone or Android away, turn off that laptop, and save Netflix for another time. And if there are others staying in your hostel dorm room and you get to the room first, follow this slightly sneaky but sweet tip from Indefinite Adventure –  turn off the main light but leave a side light turned on. Having a dim light burning encourages later arrivals from switching on the overhead light. They can still see their way around, and get the message that someone else is already resting in the room.

In short, whether you’re seeking a good night’s sleep and economical accommodations – or you have guests in town staying at a hostel, it’s entirely possible to get a great night’s sleep. And because hostel guests spend less money that those who stay in a hotel, there will be more to spend adventuring in Los Angeles.

  • Guest post, curated by Genie Davis; Photos: Genie Davis, Flickr, Pixabay)

 

Lauren Mendelsohn Bass: Art Noir

Posted on by Diversions LA

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The work of Los Angeles-based artist Lauren-Mendelsohn-Bass feels uniquely, passionately a part of L.A. itself. Perhaps that focus is due to the strong noir style of her figurative paintings. Film noir is deeply embedded in the culture of the City of Angels, and her art, with its noir narrative focus, is equally emblematic of the artist’s hometown.

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Mendelsohn-Bass has a sleek, seductive, highly sensual style to her work, and in each piece lies a wonderfully furtive element. It’s unusual and absorbing to see the way in which the artist creates a sense of tension and conflict, evokes a story that begins, as with any good noir screenplay, in the middle of things. Secret glances, the arch of a brow, the clasp of a hand, all of these convey psychological heft, the internal conveyed through external actions. This is the stuff of noir and of Mendelsohn-Bass’ lush, large scale art.

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Working in oil on canvas, Mendelsohn-Bass most often shapes works that are a combination of images, a consolidated, single-canvas triptych reminiscent of individual frames of film. Sometimes images are monochromatic, others are full color. There is a recurrent use of bright food images combined with darker images of people, sometimes in motion, sometimes in conversation. To unpack all of the visual metaphors in each of her works takes repeated viewings.

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Take “Preparations,” below, with the top of half of the work featuring four women. Three are sepia-toned, softly realistic figures; the fourth is the most dominant, a highly stylized, comic book-like black and white image. In each case, the women are in motion and in profile. The realistic renderings are in various stages of undress; the cartoon image is busily scrubbing a pan, frowning. Each of these women is preparing for something just out of sight, whether concealed visually by the artist or hidden, internalized by the subjects. The lower portion of the canvas is in full color. A plate of partially hidden, and in their own way, equally mysterious, cupcakes. A woman diving deep into blue water. What appears to be chocolate cake, with one slice missing.

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To the viewer, all but the cartoon-like image of the woman scrubbing her pan are sensual. The semi-nude renderings of the women painted in sepia tone, the curve and shadow of the female swimmer, the lush imagery of the desserts – all are a physical manifestation of longing, desire, reach perhaps exceeding grasp.  That dominant image, the black and white comic-book-like woman is scrubbing what exactly? Just a pan? A blood stain? The longing for more from her life? Is she removing the memories of the other images?

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Above, “Pick Your Poison” follows a similar artistic trajectory,  juxtaposing four images, interconnected.  A softly focused, sepia-toned man reads a newspaper, smoke from an unseen cigarette resting in an unsettling cloud around him. A comic-book-style image of a man writhing on the ground, his form almost immediately raising the specter of unseen bullets or a hard fall. Empty thought bubbles emanate from his frame. Here the dominant image is a full-color cup of coffee being poured,  next to which the profile of a sepia-toned woman offers a tentative half smile, as if daring the viewer to ask her what exactly she is up to or what is going on here.  The correlation between reading the news, smoking, an injury, coffee, and the seemingly benign glance of a woman is up to the viewer: perhaps the woman is pulling all the strings here, or perhaps it is an unseen woman, one whose manicured hand is pouring the coffee, who is the ultimate in hidden puppet-master.

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Above, with “Full Service,” we have again a mouth-watering dessert, this one lemon meringue pie, an unseen woman – here, with her hands wrapped around a partially observable man’s neck, and a tray of realistic cocktails born by a stylized black and white comic book character. Would the full service of the title represent dining service from cocktails to dessert? Or would it include the potential homicide of the man?

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With “Call Me,” above, the artist’s intent seems entirely clear – a woman is cajoling a phone call from an unseen suitor with her friendly if a touch avid profiled smile, her seductive legs, her Marilyn-esque face and nude body, and center-stage, a very noir-era dessert, what appears to be Cherries Jubilee.

As with all Mendelsohn-Bass paintings, the urge to decipher them from the clues she leaves is as strong as the urge to simply admire, take the work in, appreciate the restlessness and desire her art captures. The noir in her visual stories is based around relationships; she is the hardboiled detective uncovering the detours and illusions of a case, the subtle and not-so-subtle actions of a femme fatale, the idea of what a femme fatale is, and the role’s feminist implications.

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As in her “Untitled” work above, Mendelsohn-Bass uses the female form, vibrant desserts – which have a highly sensual quality, and images that both literally and figuratively “dive in” to new psychological territory to examine the nuances of relationships. Of very LA-relationships, with our obsessions about the perfect body, the perfect appearance, the ultimately sinful dessert.

Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett – eat your hearts out.

Mendelsohn-Bass may very well be the quintessential purveyor of contemporary noir story telling, with one picture being indeed worth a thousand words.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by Kristine Schomaker

WeHo Artes Starts “In West Hollywood”

Posted on by Diversions LA

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The City of West Hollywood is celebrating the Getty Foundation initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA with WeHo Artes.  This special program encompasses exhibitions funded by The Getty, and additional original projects featuring Latin American and Latino art presented by the city of West Hollywood. Celebrated throughout West Hollywood, WeHo Artes events are about to start soaring. With an exciting exhibition of works by Ramiro Gomez and David Feldman, presented in association with the Charlie James Gallery, and an interactive, site-specific theater piece, Señor Plummer’s Final Fiesta, as centerpieces, there’s no lack of fantastic arts events in the program, which is presented with the support of the City of West Hollywood’s  WeHo Arts  program.

On Wednesday the 23rd, WeHo Artes events kick off with the opening reception for In West Hollywood, the work of Gomez and Feldman.

In West Hollywood is not Gomez’ first project with the city of West Hollywood. In 2012, the artist worked on Install: WeHo, an LGBTQ pop-up art village that included the artist’s creation of large cardboard cut-outs that included movers, a couch, and a valet. Even before his official collaboration with the city, Gomez had made visual waves placing cardboard cut-out figures around West Hollywood, art focusing on the “invisible” workers such as gardeners. After installation, Gomez left the pieces where they were placed, symbols of the forgotten work of domestic laborers. A West Hollywood resident, the artist is well known for addressing immigration issues, and illuminating the domestic labor forces around Los Angeles. Photographic artist and filmmaker Feldman, his collaborator on the upcoming In West Hollywood, documented the cutouts, and these unique photos are a part of the new exhibition.  Feldman’s  short film Los Olvidades covered Ramiro Gomez’s creation and installation of a work in Arizona’s Sonoran desert, and was the winner of the Oxford Film Festival in 2015.

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Above: (c) 2015 Ramiro Gomez, “Mulholland Drive: On the Road to David’s Studio (after David Hockney’s Mullholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, 1980)

With Gomez and Feldman’s work presented together in this new exhibition, the installation serves as a powerful and impactful statement on the influence of Latin America in the culture and art of Los Angeles. Included in the exhibition will be a never-before-seen commissioned painting from Gomez. Adding to the reception celebration is the live music of Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles, the world’s first LGBTQ mariachi group. The reception and exhibition will be held at the West Hollywood Library.

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Photo credit: Otis Woods

Another WeHo Artes highlight is the commissioned performance of the Rogue Artists Ensemble’s interactive, site-specific theater performance, Señor Plummer’s Final Fiesta.  Using a heady mix of tall-tales, puppets, masks, and music, the play celebrates the 75th anniversary of the 1942 book Señor Plummer: The Life and Laughter of an Old-Californian.  Written by former Los Angeles Times writer John Preston Buschlen, the book documents interviews with Eugene Plummer, or Don Eugenio, a Spanish-American pioneer whose family once owned 942 acres of land in the area. Considered West Hollywood’s first resident, Don Eugenio is a fascinating, larger than life figure. Rogue Artists will workshop the play with an open rehearsal on August 19,  and offer performances with full readings, sets and costumes August 24-26th in Plummer Park,  the site of Don Eugenio’s last residence.

Of course, WeHo Artes offers other stellar programming as well, with PST LA/LA Getty Foundation-Funded Projects sited in West Hollywood presented by LAND, LAXART, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.

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Photo credit: Sense of Place Artist Render, Estudio Jose Dávila, 2017

Jose Dávila’s Sense of Place presented by LAND, the Los Angeles Nomadic Division, is a commissioned work by the Guadalajara-based artist, a multi-site, large-scale, public sculpture exhibition which invites viewers into an experiential view of LA’s diverse urban landscape. The work paints a portrait of the city’s experiences, geographies, and histories.  A nine-foot square interactive sculpture made up of 40 unique modular forms will be installed in West Hollywood Park, with an opening on September 16th. The sculptural work will be disassembled and reconfigured at three different public sites during the exhibition, which runs through May 2018.  With each reimagining, scheduled for November, January, and March,  the piece will take on a changed functional shape. It will return to both its original whole cube shape and the West Hollywood Park location in April 2018. The piece is Dávila’s largest public work, and his first major exhibition in Los Angeles.

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Pável Aguilar, Retransmisión (Retransmission), 2011. Color video. Courtesy Pável Aguilar

LAXART presents Video Art in Latin America, the first substantive U.S. survey on this subject, moving from the late 1960s to the present. The exhibition will be held at LAXART’s Santa Monica Blvd. location. The show moves from early video experiments in South America expressing dissent in an era of repressive military regimes, to the ways in which contemporary video artists discuss subjects such as labor, ecology, migration, and issues of identity and the consequences of social inequality. These single-channel video programs will be accompanied by a selection of dimensional environmental video installations.

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Photo credit: ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Gallery

Also on tap for WeHo Artes will be Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA, presented by ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Gallery at the USC Libraries and exhibited at the ONE Gallery, West Hollywood and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles’ Pacific Design Center September 9 to December 31, 2017. Co-curated by C. Ondine Chavoya, professor of art and Latina/o studies at Williams College, and David Evans Frantz, curator at ONE Archives, the exhibition features over 40 LGBTQ and Chicano artists with experimental works in a variety of mediums. Pieces created between the 1960s and early 1990s include works by LGBTQ and Chicano artists, many of whom passed away due to the AIDS crisis. Artist Edmundo “Mundo” Meza (1955-1985), who collaborated with many of the featured artists, will be a focal point of the exhibition.

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Photo credit: MAK Center for Art and Architecture

And at the Mak Center for Art and Architecture’s Schindler House,  How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney’s Latin America and Latin America’s Disney will be presented by MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Luckman Gallery at Cal State L.A. Over 150 works by 48 Latin American artists challenge nearly 100 years of cultural influence between Latin America and Disney. The exhibition, curated by writer and filmmaker Jesse Lerner and artist Rubén Ortiz-Torres explores the idea that there are no clean boundaries between art, culture, and geography. The large scale exhibition will have its reception at Schindler House September 9th, and will be split between that location and the Luckman Gallery on the Cal State LA campus.

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Photo credit: MAK Center for Art and Architecture

The Chase, a large-scale multi-piece sculpture is created by Los Angeles-based artist HACER, and will be installed on Santa Monica Boulevard east of Doheny Drive; and later in the year, Queer Califas: LA Latinx Art, will open in November at Plummer Park’s Long Hall.  Both projects are part of the City’s Art of the Outside public art program. 

For more information on WeHo Artes: http://weho.org/residents/weho-arts-and-culture/west-hollywood-celebrates-pacific-standard-time-2017

For more information on PST LA/LA, an inclusive and wide-ranging exploration of Latin American and Latino art in Los Angeles held throughout Southern California, and supported by the Getty Foundation, visit: http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/ 

In West Hollywood, an exhibition of works by West Hollywood-based artists Ramiro Gomez and David Feldman will be shown at the West Hollywood Library (625 N. San Vicente Blvd., 90069) The opening reception will be August 23 from 7-9PM; the event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are required; to RSVP, contact: nschonwetter@weho.org.

Señor Plummer’s Final Fiesta will be performed at an open rehearsal August 19,  (drop in anytime between 1-4PM), and performances with full readings, sets and costumes on August 24, 25 and 26 at 7PM in Plummer Park(7377 Santa Monica Blvd., 90046) – the site of Don Eugenio’s last residence.  Seating is limited; to reserve tickets RSVP at https://www.rogueartists.org/senor-plummers-final-fiesta – guests are asked to pay what they can to join the fiesta, with a suggested minimum donation of $5.00.

  • Genie Davis; photos courtesy of the city of West Hollywood

Sona Van: The Art of Poetry

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Poet Sona Van has published four books translated in over a dozen languages, and with her latest work, Libretto for the Desert, she has crafted a potent, prescient collection for our time.

The work is a powerful testament to survival and all that this entails – the legacy of grief, the passion for life, the desire to express herself – and to make others understand what intolerance and politics can shape.

A native of Yerevan, Armenia,  Van has lived in California since 1978. She’s been awarded gold medals from the Armenian Ministries of Culture and Diaspora and from the Golden Apricot Film Festival,  awarded a Woman in Literature prize from the California Chamber of Commerce; and in the same year, Van received the Armenian Presidential “Movses Khorenatsi” medal for her contributions in preserving the Armenian identity abroad. The poet also co-founded the literary journal Narcissus in 2006 with the late poet and playwright Vahan Vardanyan.

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But Van is not writing for recognition, nor is she writing to, as she puts it so viscerally, “to still my ranting muse. But instead, it is written to speak for the silence of the skulls, jaws filled with sand for a hundred years, unheard save for the murmuring river of their blood.”  Van’s subject here is the Armenian genocide, also known as the Great Catastrophe, which sent her grandparents and parents into exile.

Her work tears through the horrors of this time and transcends them, translates them into a universal experience: the suffering of war, the pain of loss, the loss of children, the longing to literally eviscerate those who create war, persecution, intolerance, and pain.

Written in a highly contemporary and contemplative, style, Van’s collection of poetry here sears and soars, harsh and delicate at the same time. It is the episodic yet connected history of a woman opposed to war and violence, a witness to suffering, a descendant of holocaust. In fact, 1.5 million Armenians were systematically massacred; a death-march across the desert was but one part of the killings.

Sona desertVan uses the desert itself as a character in her poetry as much as a place; a location of horror, a location of longing. As Van writes in her latest book’s introduction, “After their escape…it seemed the family would find security and the possibility for a dignified life on the other shore of the River Arax, but ‘the ghost of the barbarians,’ had authored many tangible and intangible wounds. These wounds had crossed the border with them, hidden in the folds of their memories. Each member of my family had to wrestle with this horrific ghost their entire lives.” She adds that “To this day, people continue to experience the Catastrophe.” Her grandfather, who was spared the worst due to the intervention of a close Muslim friend, may have summed up what Van herself seeks to exorcise in her poetry, “As my grandfather wrote ‘. . . I got my share of the catastrophe in the form of salvation.'”

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In her poetry, Van writes:

We were facing each other again in a dream

me and the devil of war—

the city has pushed its nipple

into my mouth

interrupting my complaint

to time

here

latched onto the wet nurse’s breast

I am afraid of everything—

And yet, Van is a fearless writer. She is kind to dreams and memory, but she does not shy away from her own anger, the ugliness of people, of war, the loss of control, the falseness of modern life. She knows love, but loses it, she longs to control the outcome of the world, to trade swords for plough-shares, to resurrect and find redemption, but her mind is more cynical than her heart.

“Indeed how short

are the days of love on Earth—

do you remember darling

how you used to throw

your boots

carelessly by the bed

in the room full of pheromones

the wine

and our synchronous movements

under the sheets?

Now you are gone . . . dead

in a city

that can’t be found on a map

I recall your footsteps

in the snow

and cry

(I am a crier don’t you know?)

while the dog

howls sadly

cursing God

the moon and everything else

that exists

up there in the sky

you know I resurrected you

in my dream

from the snowy pattern of your footstep

branches on your head

then you died again

in our room

on my knees this time”

Van is a voice howling in the wilderness, a distinct, passionate, profound voice; a teller of tales too terrible to be forgotten, a weaver of images both inchoate with longing and ripe and fecund with imagery. She takes us to the desert of our desire, of our lusts for power, sex, conquest, and sings of a mother’s love, a mother’s wailing loss, a lover’s lament, a woman’s strength.

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Van has said of her work “…Literature is not an abstract value in our days of chaos, but a reality…through which people’s souls may link.”

This is music to be felt like the dry wind of the desert, felt on the skin as if a bullet had just skimmed by, barely missing the beating heart.

  • Genie Davis; photos courtesy of Van; desert: Genie Davis