punk art:an eye view of "flyer" culture

I was driving thru Hermosa Beach one day and passing by what was once my old jr. high school, Pier Ave. It's now called the "Hermosa Beach Historical Society" and there's a historical museum. What? My old school has a historical museum? So I looked it up on-line and much to my surprise, there was a retrospective of punk rock flyers from the South Bay area. Cool! 


I was thinking maybe the museum was in the former school gym where I once served up disgusting mushy green peas and mashed potatoes donning a stylish prison-like hairnet, bet on horse races, talked about yesterday's episode of 'Dark Shadows" and where they filmed "Carrie". Yup, that "Carrie"...scary "if you wanna f*k with me I'll show you", Carrie!


The exhibition was in the old wood shop, below the cafeteria, next to the where the girls locker room was, now a surf museum. I found it quite interesting that there's was this huge punk rock scene in the South Bay area. One always thinks of Orange County bringing forth this massive punk rock genre. But this exhibit was pretty darn cool...two rooms of flyers, concert photos, album covers, gold records and other memorabilia from Black Flag, Circle Jerks, The Descendents to Pennywise. The images shows the history and importance of punk rock music and it's movement in Hermosa Beach in a span of 40 years. Viva Punk Rock!

chinatown

flower-eating snail

stormdrains leading to the local watering hole

2010 spring fashion in los angeles

angels flight railway

the victor clothing company

This mural of Anthony Quinn (portraying "Zorba The Greek") was a dedication by Paul Harter, who owned the Victor Clothing Company. Harter wanted a a mural of Quinn since he performed at the Million Dollar Movie Theatre as a young man. Elroy Torres who initially designed The Victor Clothing neon sign for Harter, later designed the mural of Quinn for Harter using two techniques for painting the mural:

"He painted Quinn by adopting the method Kent Twitchell developed with "Bride and Groom". A cartoon was prepared, and slides of the cartoon were then projected on sheets of paper taped to a wall. Lines projected on the paper were drawn on the sheet and spaces between the lines were color coded. Torrez applied graphite to the back of the paper sheets and taped them to the wall at Victor Clothing. Finally, he pressed the lines and color codes into the wall and then painted by the numbers. The second technique Torrez used--enlarging the sections of a grid placed over a cartoon of the work--was applied to the background and floor in the rest of the mural". 

(you can see the magnitude of the mural by looking at the woman in the lower right hand corner walking by).

a downtown afternoon