Thursday night I met up with Aaron at the NoHo station to head to the November downtown art walk.

We were meeting two other friends, but they wouldn’t show up until later. The Hive had interesting work as always, including one piece by Chet Zar (a friend of Adam Jones).

Unfortunately I couldn’t get a lot of decent shots because my camera is currently resting atop some SLR lenses in someone else’s camera bag. I went to the beach at night again Wednesday with someone who is a little bit more adept at photography than myself… and I forgot to get my camera out of their bag at the end of the night.

Surprisingly, the Phyliss Stein gallery actually had art by someone who knew how to paint in it this time. Not surprisingly it was not packed with hipster doofuses like it usually is.

At one of the larger galleries there was a “mickey mouse” themed exhibit. As we were entering Huell Howser was leaving.

The big giant room that usually has bands was all changed up this time. They put up wallpaper and drapes on the walls. At the back (opposite the stage – which now has velvet curtains all around) was a full bar serving drinks. What had previously been an open floor (the last three months) was now filled with green chairs and tables. The walls were still lined with art – but now the artists had little tables in front of the work – and the work was decidedly more commercial in nature (i.e. boring). It made me kind of sad to see this previously open and chaotic space turn into a more “ticketmaster” kind of business model.

Outside there are always interesting people. This time there was a guy on stilts dressed in some kind of “lord of the rings wood ent” outfit with twigs and bushes and branches and green stuff completely covering up any evidence that something human might exist up there. Of course he was passing out flyers of some kind – and of course I tossed in the trash without even looking at it.

One of the more humorous moments of the night came when our group crossed Spring at 3rd (or 4th, I don’t remember). Among the throngs was an old African American homeless man asking for money. All four of us passed by and ignored him in turn. A Mexican man, a Taiwanese woman, a Persian woman and a white man walked by. There was no response for my other three friends, but when I walked by and didn’t drop a dime in the bucket I heard “white motherfucker!” I guess he was asleep last Tuesday… don’t l get a free pass now too?

So, here are some pieces that didn’t look too terrible on the cameraphone (from multiple galleries):

That last one was from the Hive. I took several from there – but this was the only one that turned out.

North on 5th street there was a gallery that had a corner sectioned off. Two women were dressed in rags and skirts and were dancing with paint on their feet. This would have been dumb enough, except that the level of sadness blasted off the planet because whenever one of these girls would see someone was taking a video of the performance she would do an awkward Marilyn Monroe “sultry” dance toward the camera. Give me a break.

The art walk is always that. A lot of broad expanses of BS with pockets of true talent hidden in the creases. The gallery that had the “erotic art” up for two months finally changed its theme. Now there are a billion little 3″x4″ abstract paintings that look like they each took about two minutes to create. It reminded me of a minimalist “upscale” restaurant theme. We didn’t stay long.

We didn’t need a map to find our way this time.