The Artist Presently Known As Ed

No Dog Pee Zone

I found this in Downtown San Diego while on a delivery. It is posted at dog's-eye-level. No dog pee zone? Because it is new? Is there a corresponding note to pigeons not to shit upon it? Was this posted so that dogs would refrain from relieving themselves onto this wall? Do dogs read? Not supposing so, I passed by the next time and left a note: "I don't think the dogs can read this..."

Costco Employee of the Month

Don't get me wrong, I like Costco. But surely there are employees of the flesh and blood kind that stood a chance, no?

Symbiosis in business

Down in the Loma Portal area of San Diego

Looks like these two places have nice little built in sustainable business model here. Fat chicks who need to work out and then who lapse into their pizza eating when they let down their guard.

Fire Water

Found this at Costco, 2011.

WATER blasts...FIRES up to...

Is is that water now fires? If I get fired from my job does that mean I got hosed with water? Someone bombed English, and it wasn't the Germans.

Daddy's Little Army

Here we go with another Costco gem, from the same day as the Fire/Water and the Employee of the Month pictures!

How wrong is this?

Kelli would usually shred a person who uses the word "crippled" but she wholeheartedly endorsed the use of it to describe this Daddy figure who obviously has some issues. I recall this was just the most outrageous of the stickers on this SUV window, the rest being the usual army/nationalistic/right wing kind of dreck. This one will have to speak for itself.

Bathroom Melodies

Did the Melody company not realize that some smart-ass blogger lapsing into his 6th grade mind would call them to task for this? Melody Bathroom Tissue? A rather unfortunate name, says me.

At least it's made in America. Something we can be proud of? I dunno. Americans wipe their asses with everything else—American or not.

Christmas In September

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.

Bench for dummies

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. It certainly doesn’t invite me to sit on it. It just doesn’t look comfortable.

Confusion at Target

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.

Psycic palm reading

Would you spend your money getting your future told if these people didn’t predict their signs would come back from the shop with a gross misspelling on just one of them? The sad thing is, the bottom sign looks like it was hand painted on both sides, which means that someone had to do it wrong TWICE!

Commerce sign

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.

Alphabet soup

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.

Disaster plan

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 has already left you, 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 pyromaniac bipolar son!”

How’s that for a family disaster?

Oceanside city hall counter

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!

Invisible People at Drummer's Bridge

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!

Seniors gone manic

Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego

One of the gigs I did had this sign that was just too funny, but sad too. It's for a lecture, 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.” It's 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.



Ghetto priorities

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 [before 2008, of course]. 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?



God's convoy

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. He probably isn't responsible for the conversion experiences of other motorists, but 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!

Idiocy on the Right

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Idiocy on the Left

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Blame the world's problems on the death of Jesus.

Spreading the gospel to the trashmen

Maybe this guy loses his faith if he doesn't have a bumper sticker to remind him, so better to cover everything with reminders. Everything.

Don't trash God

This shows 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!

Homeland Petroleum

I don't have all my facts, but about the time I became aware of Peak Oil, I started noticing off-brand gas stations popping up all over the place where the name brand ones vacated a year or so before. The cynic in me also noticed that these off-brand, independent stations always had some kind of optimistic names to them that evoke the good old days of unfettered car use and fuel consumption prior to Hubbert being proven right in 1970, namely that the US would peak in oil production that year: Homeland Petroleum, United Oil, Route 66, and more like that.

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. To illustrate, 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.

Information economy

Temecula, CA

There has been talk that America has left its manufacturing economy behind, and that now we are operating in 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”?

Institutionalization for all

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 farther 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. Oh yeah. The school itself was named after the guy who helped the McDonalds franchise grow with the help of his milkshake machines. The school was named in his honor beginning in the year I began there. The year before it was named Albert Einstein Junior High. Does this speak of the dumbing down of our nation or what? The message is clear: capitalist business acumen is more important than trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe.

Yeah, that Einstein guy asked too much of us.

The joy of exurbia

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!

Laundry

Let’s see here. How many ways can you spell the word “laundromat” on the same bleepin’ building??? I think this is a result of the lower expectations from schools these days.

Limited liberty

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.

How the right lives better

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” in the way this bumper sticker would like to suggest. Oh well, to each his own.

Lucky pork store

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???!!!”



Only one is enough

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.

Styrofoam pillar

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.



Ballpark vs. power plant

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.

Burn calories for the starving

In order to address the deficiency of caloric intake for one group, there will be a race that will show the caloric supremacy of the folks who want to do some help. Maybe they should skip the race and just serve the food. That would be a less condescending display of inequality. The real task would be to ensure everyone has equal access to foodstuffs. That would be the difference between charity and equality.

Nostalgic gas

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. 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. Never mind that peak oil already happened in 1970 in America, and is about to become the fate of the remainder of oil producing nations. But no, it's 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. It's like the Wizard saying, “pay no attention to that [oil company propaganda trick] over there!!!”

Not free junk

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!

San Diego housing deal, 2004

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.

Special KKK

Okay, maybe this was just a mistake, or maybe the Alabama shipment accidentally got channeled to the San Diego Costco… Special KKK?

Spray on tan

Claremont, CA

The history of tanning in America:

Work hard outside with minimal clothing, face the elements, do things the really hard way.

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.

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 lay in the sun for hours.

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.

Tee-shits mart

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?

Never pay too much for gas

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 some of a 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 $4.50 that it has sometimes reached in 2008. Ah, inflation.

Winter beak

Maybe it is time to emphasize spelling again and stop cutting school hours. For teachers and administrators, I mean…

Worthless like cops at the scene

San Diego, CA

A favorite Jeff Buckley song features the line “worthless like cops at the scene of the crime” and that about sums it up just fine. I was driving to work along a street that bottlenecks two lanes into one. A hotshot BMW driver decided to overtake me at the last minute just as the road narrowed and if it had been any later, there would have been an accident. That particular maneuver worked out well enough for him so I let it go. But, less than a mile away, just across the freeway bridge, there was a light turning red and he ran it, knowing full well that he could only do it after it changed red. He accelerated and shot through the intersection. Highly illegal. While I was stopped, I noticed there were cops stationed on each side of the street. Each was working to aim and focus a pair of cameras for the Big Brother photo enforcement system at that intersection. Two cops, and this BMW guy blasted right between them, even as their work was to get the red light cameras dialed in! Shit, this was a ticket opportunity if ever I saw one! But noooooooooo.

Missionary positions

A Shopping Center, Northern San Diego County

For a few winter seasons, I've done 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 Spanish and 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 it's 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 in NYC 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?

Inconspicuous consumption

A couple days before the Christmas feast season I found this man making the rounds in the alley behind one of the restaurants I service. This picture was a little late for what I hoped to capture. When I found him he was hunched over the edge of the dumpster behind the restaurant, stuffing himself of whatever he could reach. He was so far gone that he didn't even flinch when upon my departure I offered him a bagged loaf of bread that was tossed out while I made my delivery. He just grumbled and went on his way.

This is a study in paradigm extremes because the restaurant in question makes its reputation on serving portions so huge that you can feed two in a party or take half of it home, or perhaps leave plenty for guys like this to come and do a second harvest. The restaurant glorifies completely conspicuous consumption. But there is another reality out there. I see it daily, really. But I don't always get the camera in time to show the inconspicuous consumption that goes on right beneath our noses.