Lots

We thought we were being clever with last year's virtual homage to Ed Ruscha's Thirty Four Parking Lots, but it seems we're not the first, and others have even been to the trouble of finding the original sites (thanks J+MB).

Eric William Carrol has used Google Maps to create this flickr album, and now there is Pascual Sisto's automatic version, which rolls through all 34 locations live from google without you needed to so much as click a link. Nice.

Image: Eric William Carrol's Lot 32.

Nine Swimming Pools

As I flew over San Bernardino and looked down and saw the swimming pools and the houses and everything in the sun, I was more thrilled than I've ever been on arriving at any city...

David Hockney, 1970, quoted in the catalogue for Stella Brennan's Wet Social Sculpture, 2005.

Having spent some of the weekend observing the suburban excesses and follies on view in real estate guides, I found myself wondering if owning a swimming pool has the same status it did in the 1970s and 80s when Para did a roaring trade in kitset luxury. Perhaps it's the circles I move in now but I can't think of a single close acquaintance who currently owns a swimming pool. Checking the satellite-cam, I see the large circular hole that accomodated one of these (dug in the family BACK YARD by my father and assorted helpers in the early 80s, displacing a large dirt mountain that I found far more entertaining) has long since been filled. Perhaps there isn't much call for pools in Hastings now that the local mini-Disneyland, which was a crumbling shadow of its former self in the mid-90s, has been flooded to be rejuvenated as a WATERPARK. Assuming they can afford admission, this will spare kids the idignity of having to climb the fences of local school swimming facilities for after hours and holiday access.

Earlier this year I read in the paper that British police are concerned about a new trend in which young people are using google maps to locate swimming pools where they can have daytime parties while the owners are at work. Although I can find no trace of it online, the original 2005 incarnation of Stella Brennan's Wet Social Sculpture at St Paul St included an aerial photograph of a chlorine-rich suburb, one of those leafy areas Brennan refers to in the catalogue as the swim-zone.

This all sounds like a good enough excuse for another tribute to Ed Ruscha's book works, this time in the spirit of his 1968 Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, at least one of which appears to have been photographed by climbing a fence. Here's a nine-stop tour of Auckland's North Shore, preceded by a quick visit to the PARNELL BATHS, currently featured in the exhibition and publication Long Live the Modern.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Or, for a sense of what Hockney and Ruscha were talking about, you can zoom at random on any of THESE BLOCKS in Beverly Hills - and here's a quick peek in the PLAYBOY Mansion.

Image: Stella Brenna, Wet Social Sculpture, 2005, installation detail

Free parking

A recent post on Cheryl Bernstein's blog reminded me that I had been admiring the turf at DODGERS STADIUM recently and had been planning to do an exploration of carparks. This ONE CAR, parked as far as possible from the stadium and nowhere near anything else, has me intrigued. And I love the layers of LINE WORK these images contain: palimpsest heaven HERE.

Photographed from a helicopter on a Sunday morning in 1967, along with 33 other LA parking lots, Ruscha lays bare the city's car-focussed infrastructure for his book Thirtyfour Parking Lots. As J G Ballard said, “Ruscha’s images are mementos of the human race taken back with them by visitors from another planet.” (quote and commentary found at the bottom of this page)

To make up for the lack of activity around here lately, for your viewing pleasure over the weekend, here are another 33 gathering places for cars, as found in the 'City of Angels': 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Images of Ruscha's original carparks, and their locations, can be found here. A prize to the first person to provide google links for all 30.

Image: Ed Ruscha, Parking Lots, 1967/99 (#291 LA Dodger Stadium), Gelatin silver print, 15 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches, Edition of 35. Appropriated from here.