Mission Valley, San Diego

This is a wall mural under Friars Road in Mission Valley which geographically is pretty much at the heart of the city. Rather than the drab and deathly appearance of gray concrete, we are treated to a vividly colored mural featuring the San Diego Trolley–a handy thing but really more of a “too little too late” sort of solution to our public transportation woes. But that is not what I’d like to bring to your attention. Is it me or is it saying something that all the people are painted in black? Is the artist inept in coloring people as well as that palm tree? Or are we to take from this that people just don’t matter in comparison to the scenery and the technology? Even the potted plant gets a particular identity here. Are we all just faceless figures that don’t deserve the dignity of distinctive identities?

I took this picture while working for a reprographics house that specialized in printing for the architecture and engineering field. In the mock up drawings of proposed buildings its usually the same there too–the building is glimmering in mirrors and steel, or is in earthy tones native to brick and tile and wood. But the people are always depicted as some grayed out or blacked out shadow figure, and usually there are a minimal amount of human figures milling about. Its almost to say, ‘People will actually come to this place. Really!’ But it almost seems that people are an afterthought; that the real glory goes to the engineering and design of the buildings and grounds themselves.

So back to the mural itself… The joke is on us, people. The bridge where it is painted is in one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places in the city. (Once upon a time I walked a couple miles through Mission Valley and it was treacherous.) And while the trolley does indeed cut through Mission Valley after years of waiting, it is still minimally effective in cutting traffic–you can be sure there is a flood of traffic in and out at rush hours as the I-8 freeway bisects the city and allows all the eastern dwellers to come and go to work. And here is this mural, mocking us in its way by vaguely celebrating the urban life, with people milling around (maybe having a good time) but it can’t even be bothered to render the human figures fully!

This is from the side of a Jeep Liberty. It apparently is the “limited edition.” Welcome to America of 2008, where liberty is limited. Sort of like Dubya who said, “there ought to be limits to freedom.” That’s why he aint my president. The founding fathers must be rolling in their graves now.

Now this is pretty ridiculous. The bottom of this guy’s tow hitch bracket was about to hit the ground in the parked position! The guy loaded all the wood in the trailer, but the van was empty. You can’t tell from the picture but the tires all around were groaning under the weight. Maybe he needs this trailer full of wood because his van might be running on a wood burning stove, sort of the way locomotives ran on coal that was shoveled into the furnace.

A Shopping Center, San Diego County

In the fall and winter time I do some work on a crew that hangs banners and then takes them down after the holidays are over. Some of the banners that malls or chambers of commerce use are ridiculous in ways not intended. This pic is from a suburban shopping mecca that happens to sit astride the general course of the El Camino Real–the path that once connected the Missions in California. The name means “the royal road” essentially, pointing to the majesty of Christ and that the road connects one outpost for Christ with all the others in the state. But these days, El Camino Real is mostly built out as suburban garbage–malls, bedroom clusters, freeways and boulevards and so forth. The nomenclature of a lot of developments tends to pay lip service to something of the past, with a nostalgic or historical tone to it. In this case, the early Catholic presence in California–the founding efforts of Europeans in this part of the New World. San Diego is littered with Catholic place names or names that evoke the early Catholic presence here–Mission Valley, Mission Hills, San Diego, and so forth…

In the past, the word “mission” clearly spoke of an effort to convert people for Christ–the native population had to be saved, so the reasoning went. It was religious imperialism, really. But that was sooo…yesterday. Now the word “mission” is used in another way, and in this case, it is still linked with the idea of saving. Clever, eh? Once upon a time, the idea was to save souls for Jesus. Now its to save a few miserable bucks, only to be spent a few days later at the mall! I might also draw attention to the actual statement presented on the right banner, and the way it draws the line in the sand between one mission and another. It makes sort of a dialectic; the old idea of a mission giving way to a new one, and this banner declares the er, mission statement: to provide great shopping. This hearkens back to something I’ve heard Joseph Campbell say about the size of buildings reflecting social values: the great buildings of an age reflect what society values. In some ages, the churches and cathedrals were built taller than any other. In the Enlightenment, buildings were monuments to political, scientific, and philosophic thought. And now? We have Wal Mart big box retailers, skyscrapers filled with financial offices, and so forth–the houses of commerce. The World Trade Center once epitomized this idea.

It sort of makes me wonder what ultimately does more harm. What are the results of Spain and the Catholic Church pushing itself onto native populations? And then now, what are the results of suburban consumerism?

America in the afternoon of her greatness has given me some good material to poke fun at and make comment on. These are the images that I collect in my travels. As I reflect on them, they come from more places than I realized. A number of these are turning up from my cell phone camera. I’ve had a few of these in the blog for a while but they get lost in the march of time, so here they are, all in one run-on list, with captions to boot. Enjoy.

Ray Kroc Middle School, San Diego, CA

I once went to this very school and hated it, although not because of such principled ideas I have now. In fact, my Kroc experience was the nadir of my educational experience. It was the only time I ever got a “D” average. Well, these days, I live a little further away from there and my academics are doing far better. Well enough then to recognize the social evil that lurks in this banner on their front wall. Sure, I get the obvious statement; keep the kids in school or you aint doing your job as a parent. I’m all for school (though this school would be a good target for a hurricane or something), but the imagery is pretty depressing. The kids get to go to some nostalgic looking school that looks like its from a century ago, and the parents get to work in the twin towers, or what looks to be a shop that sells munitions, or perhaps some nameless, faceless, sterile office building/factory/prison. Either way, your path in life is to go from one institution to another where your mind is fed what is deemed proper by some distant authority or invisible force. You, as a parent, are to get the kids to the one institution that will form the groundwork for future success in the Great Industrial Machine.

Office of an ultra slick property developer-manager, San Diego, CA

In the age of postmodern everything, it seems even the lowly bench has to be reinvented in such a way as to part with the preconceived notions of what goes into its form and function. So, what better could you do than to make a bench which declares itself to be a bench. The maker had to work the word into the design because if he hadn’t, you might think it was just some steel that was stamped and bent funny.

Livermore, CA

It seems that this cluster of signs is emblematic of the problem of how communication is increasingly reduced to child’s play. There is not one English word on this sign, but the sophisticated viewer knows what it all stands for:

Fattening food, anti-union, empty calories, war-as-foreign-policy, ill treatment of workers, rampant growth, nostalgia, factory farming and agribusiness, unsustainable practices, idolatry of cartoon characters, caricatures of real people, commodification of everything… and maybe more.

San Diego, CA

I’ve seen this guy driving around my old stomping ground in the Clairemont area of San Diego. I actually used to work at the very same Domino’s that this guy drives for. It was a hell of a good paying job for me when I was, oh…24 and pretty reckless and carefree! But this guy is in his late 40s and he is driving for Domino’s with a bumper sticker that reads “Live Better. Vote Republican.” Can it be that we have sunk so far that working for Domino’s constitutes living better? Granted, I raked in a nice bunch of tips each night back in 1998, and it took a few years before I ever made as much in a month as I did at Domino’s but I would never consider it “living better.” Oh well, to each his own.

Commerce, CA

Commerce is a place you drive through on your way to another equally horrid place in the greater LA area. The city fathers evidently felt that a sign that declares that city to be a “model city” would make it so. Actually, it is a dump, on the whole. If they had to admit that to themselves, they just might want to shoot themselves! The city was designed to be a place where business is done. It has special tax conditions apparently that make it a favorable place to be for a company that wants to make money (is there any other sort?). Other than that, it is a shithole that you can’t get through fast enough on your way to another place of no consequence.

Yours truly, standing at the entryway of a Target store, looking out. I’d like to think this picture offers at least a partial solution to why Americans are mad with neurosis. Our choices are just too perplexing to fathom.

East San Diego County

I can’t help but think that this woman had to have been the …er… butt of all sorts of juvenile humor in school. I’d just change my name when I turned 18!

San Marcos, CA

The race to cover the earth in suburban dreck-as-architecture is coming along just fine, thankyouverymuch. In fact, it seems that almost anything is good enough material to be construction material now. This photo was taken at a garden-variety strip mall in the horrendously offensive Tri-city area along the 78 freeway in San Diego’s North County. What awful shit. The whole area just offends me. For now, what you are looking at is a chunk taken out of one of the pillars at one such place. What looks like it might be a plaster-over-brick or stone tile piece of work is actually molded styrofoam with what seems like a fiberglass shell over it. Good riddance. What shit, and what a distorted sense of what constitutes property value. Things like this beg to be burnt down. Hell, even pouring gasoline over this hole would melt most of the rest of the foam.

Downtown, San Diego

I can see the public service TV advertisement now on how to form a family disaster plan:

“Johnny, you get a drug addiction! Dad, you get thrown into prison after molesting young boys shortly after losing all your money in Vegas! Mom, you get with your massage therapist, get pregnant then find out he’s gay, and Jimmy, you go out and get in a car accident after drinking too much, and kill someone in the process! And gramma, you fall asleep with a lit cigarette and burn the house down while you babysit for Jenny’s baby!

How’s that for a family disaster?

Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego

One of the gigs I did had this sign that was just too funny, but sad too. Its for a lecture or class, but it looks like all you need to do is just line up all the grandpas and grammas of Rancho Bernardo and take them to the processing plant. RB is known as the home of the “newly-weds, and the nearly-deads.” Its all a huge retirement suburb that has been partially filled by the young people who take the old people’s places when they kick it. The place is classic detached suburban garbage-as-city planning. I delivered meals to old folks there and the places are so far apart from each other and useful shops and cultural centers, it would be little surprise if the place did a collective elderly suicide from the loneliness that results for the people who don’t drive or have good family connections.

A fire-truck. I saw this one day as I returned the rental truck I was driving for the company I was working for. I hope that poor dude got the insurance plan.

La Jolla, CA

One of many such shots I took for submission to FUH2.com. Hummer drivers might be human, but they obviously choose to use less of their brains and less of their hearts than other drivers. For one, they basically bought a glorified Chevy Tahoe at nearly twice the price. That shows less brain. And then they also gallivant around in their gas guzzler during a wartime situation, fought over dwindling supplies of oil, their choice of vehicle reflecting a great lack of concern for the real price in blood that must be paid so that such oil can get them to the gym and the grocery store.

Norco, CA

I reserve similarly harsh judgment for the evil empire of Wal Mart, doing a fine job of destroying America, one microwave and sweater at a time.

San Diego, CA (Linda Vista)

My home delivered meals job took me to many side streets in my hometown that I may never have discovered had some poor, elderly folks not needed cheap food on which to survive. I carried my camera on my runs from time to time, and found that certain parts of town have interesting dichotomies that probably only exist in America in the age of sky high housing prices and still rather lenient and liberal lending practices that let people buy cars. Sometimes, I noticed a really nice car, all dolled up in aftermarket parts and exciting paint and wheels, parked just outside a totally dumpy ghetto shack. This is just one such instance. I wonder if this person’s kids get fed good food, or if that money goes to the bi-weekly auto detailing job and the payments on all that customized thisandthat.

San Diego, CA (Clairemont and Linda Vista)

Here are a few indications of how America holds a special place in its heart for Christianity. Some dude evidently found the lord and decided the best thing he could do is make a 10′ high trailer-billboard that would urge the rest of us to follow his lead into declaring Jesus our personal lord and savior and then be swept up to heaven in the rapture. I hope he has insurance, because I would hate for some schmuck to have his conversion experience, get raptured out of his car just ahead of me and then leave me only to hit it or swerve and hit a pedestrian!

The next two show what high regard is spared to show love of Jesus and his dear old Pops. I think this person must be very insecure in his or her faith if he or she must put constant reminders on the trash can. I’d hate to see what the toilet looks like!

Oceanside City Hall, CA

Aint it great how the civic center can be just so…civil? There was no bell in sight. But mercifully for me, I was greeted by a halfwit city worker who, when asked for his signature to receive a delivery of plans, huffed and sighed and fed the invoice into an automated stamper machine. Man, if I worked in a place as dead as the Oceanside city hall, I’d forget who I was too!

Temecula, CA

There has been talk that America has left its manufacturing economy behind, and that now we are an “information economy.” Allegedly, we can make an economy that is predicated on essentially moving words and numbers around instead of building anything of real worth. Well, here it is, folks. The INFORMATION ECONOMY is alive and well. You’ve seen it already–sign spinners showing you the way to the latest subdivision or cell phone shop. What other way so clearly shows how our economy is just about moving words and numbers around? Of course, as you can see in these pics, even a sign spinner is able to be innovative and put his sign up on a stand. Well, they are a lot easier to read that way… But what if you take the “spinner” part out of the job description of “sign spinner”?

I like this form of advertising just slightly more than the sort that simply uses a truck to drive around town as a roaming billboard. (Imagine the religious nutjob with the trailer above, towed by a new F-150, but instead of selling God, he’d be selling spa treatments, more new subdivisions, or dog food. Talk about total cluelessness in the age of peak oil–driving inefficient trucks around solely for advertising, not even moving people or anything of value.)

Murrietta, CA

Ah, the exurban good life. Because a 20 mile traffic jam is a good thing compared to paying a few bucks more to live 50 miles closer to work. I shit you not, this traffic jam went on for nearly 20 miles on the I-15. One truck rolling off the road and catching on fire was all it took to shut down the few lanes of traffic. The suburbs between northern San Diego county and Riverside or Ontario are few and far between–they are exurbs, really. They just aren’t totally connected yet like San Diego or LA suburbs are. There is just the I-15 that traverses the area, so if you can’t get down the ‘15, good luck!

San Diego, CA (Clairemont)

Good grief. This totally junked file cabinet in the alley of a shitty part of Clairemont shows what force materialism exerts on people. There was hardly anything left of it, but here it is, in the sun and rain, unshackled, and YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!

Ontario, CA

There’s only one. Let us pause to reflect that maybe that is more than enough. This Jeep is just too new to have the “W-’04″, “NRA” and “Support our Troops” stickers on it, but its easy to envision them. Frankly, I get tired of any nationalistic bullshit, but particularly after 9/11, it just grates. Nonsense like this is going to accompany us all the way down, same as Germany.

San Diego, CA (Linda Vista)

I’ve noticed this trend in recent years toward name brand gas stations closing their doors for a year and reopening with a new name, seemingly independent, and always with some sort of nostalgic or nationalistic connotation to it. I think its a diversion tactic by oil companies to make it seem like oil production and consumption thereof is just fine, and please carry on like nothing is the matter. Nevermind that peak oil already happened 36 years ago in America, and is about to befall the entire world in a very short time. No, its okay to keep driving, and better now, after 9/11, and even more so now that gas stations are called “Eagle”, “US-66″, and one so boldly called “Homeland Petroleum.” Ahem. Its like the Wizard saying, “pay no attention to that [oil company propaganda trick] over there!!!”

San Diego, CA

“And never pay too much for gas.” Yeah, like we have a choice in the matter… Well, to some extent we do, but to do as I do–to drive less overall, to sacrifice a certain highly automotive lifestyle–is something that is mostly out of consideration for most people who utterly can’t imagine doing anything but driving everywhere. I do probably the same as any other driver when I seek out the cheap stations, but I try to really watch my driving habits, and in that way, I can sort of avoid paying “too much” for gas. It bugs me that an ad like this presumes our weakness and nearly hopeless addiction to driving. At this point, paying $3 a gallon seems to be cheap compared to the $3.50 that it has sometimes reached in 2007. Ah, inflation…

San Diego, CA (Clairemont–about 3 blocks from my childhood home)

Okay, I did not do detailed market analysis on this house to arrive at that price. This is just a blanket statement on the ridiculous sums that houses go for in Sandy Eggo now. This was in 2003 or so when I was delivering meals to old folks. I think that house was a meth house. But you know how it is… strip it down to one wall and rebuilt it, totally re-landscape it, and its worth more than half a mil.

Claremont, CA

The history of tanning in America:

1) Work hard outside with minimal clothing, face the elements, do things the really hard way.
2) Work at a job with clothes on, but take time to get out and get some sun the old fashioned way even if your work does not place you among the elements except between parking space and front door.
3) Work at a job during the day, a second job during the evenings, then go to a tanning salon to pretend you have a life of leisure that would let you lie in the sun for hours.
4) Too busy working for survival, don’t have time to actually do the beach thing nor the bed thing, you find that in a few short minutes, you can carry on with a spray-on tan!

The history of tanning in America parallels the history of many other parts of American life, in that now we engage in a pale, commodified representation of a clone of a shadow of what used to be the real thing.

El Cajon, CA

I’ll bet there is an “R” hanging up in some band rehearsal room or meth lab in El Cajon. I might also ask how they can sell T-shirts at that rate…hmmm, sweatshop labor, maybe?

Inside a Costco store, in the middle of September.

Anytime is a good time to start selling Christmas junk! This one wins the “earliest Xmas display” award for 2005.

Geneva, Switzerland

An early dose of political enlightenment, in June of 1991. This was painted on the side of a watch shop or chocolatier in Geneva. I don’t know who painted it but it was likely a response to the Gulf War. I am embarrassed to admit that I cheerled for the war that year, but I have since done my penance.

San Diego, CA

We’ve had stickers like these for a while in the late 90s, but usually the second part asked about a library instead of a ball park. I’ve only seen this one once. Maybe this dude needs to have peak oil explained. I can agree with the anti-ballpark sentiment, but the rest of it shows a good lack of awareness on the energy issue. We did end up getting one built up in Escondido, about 30 miles out, and supposedly that might help, but really, the energy grid is straining more and more, and capacity is being reached more and more, with no significant promise of new finds that will pave the way for a glorious future.

San Francisco, CA

I did a gig up in SF and ended up babysitting my 24′ rental truck across the street from this shop–for 6 hours. The person who named the place may have been an immigrant butcher. I’ll go easy on the guy because maybe English wasn’t his strong suit. In times like this, (assume the Clint Eastwood voice) “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya PORK???!!!”