Return To Joshua Tree

Recently, we made our annual trip to Joshua Tree and Palm Springs. We stayed at Green Acres as usual, but this time we got to check out the second amazing cabin on the property. The best part was

Take Me To The River

This summer has felt like all work and no play what with moving, and well, working. But last weekend we escaped for the day to a swimming hole a few hours outside of town. We scrabbled over rocks, dipped in the refreshingly chilly snowmelt water, swam from pool to pool between crevices beneath giant boulders and ducked under waterfalls. It was the perfect way to feel far away for a day. In honor of escapes, here’s a summer-day-at-the-river playlist. It’s a little bit rocking for the drive out with friends, a little quiet and contemplative like floating in a river and a little bit of mellow magic.

Talking Heads | Take Me To The River

Fleetwood Mac | Think About Me

Tame Impala | Yes I'm Changing

Steely Dan | FM

Spiritualized | Do It All Over Again

Jane Birkin | Harvest Moon

Jimmy Cliff | You Can Get It If You Really Want

CAN | Vitamin C

The Stone Roses | Waterfall

Steve Gunn | Way Out Weather

T. Rex | Mambo Sun

Nick Drake | Place To Be

Listen via Spotify

Strong Week Links 3

I had a whirlwind trip to NYC and got right back into the swing of things with a busy work week, starting a new ceramics class at the Berkeley Art Studio, going to a wine tasting at Ordinaire, and hanging out with my brother and sister-in-law who are up for a visit. New Brooklyn favorites include: Chuko Ramen (wait for your table at Weather Up across the street) and House of Small Wonder. Here are some favorites from this week:

If you've known me over the last few years, you know I'm basically a bumper sticker saying "I'd rather be in Joshua Tree." I was only semi-joking when I tried to convince Tim we should go all-in on a 13-acre Pistachio farm in the high desert. Until we can pack it in and buy a pickup and take it down to the desert, I'm excited about Wonder Valley Olive Oil.

I'm reading this and really enjoying her descriptions of growing up in LA.

I've been a huge fan of Vena Cava for a long time, and it really bums me out that they're no longer a label. Which is why I'm obsessed with Sophie Buhai's new jewelry and interiors line. It feels like an authentic evolution and the apotheosis of sophisticated LA architectural minimalism. A hewn-in-sterling-silver lining.

I would love to go here.

Linda Rodin is a major style icon of mine, and you can add business icon to the list too. She recently sold her beauty line to Estée Lauder, but at the age of 66 is still involved in the creative direction of her line and has recently collaborated with D.S & Durga (another favorite) on a new scent based on memories of her mother.

I did it the old fashioned way and stayed in a casa particular several years ago, but now you can Airbnb in Cuba.

California's drought got real for us this week when the local water district changed our water source to a higher level in the reservoir that experiences algae blooms — our water now tastes strange and metallic. The drought's gotten me thinking about California's water a lot lately, a subject I'd like to learn more about, but this visceral experience made this great story flood back into my mind.

Jewelry by Sophie Buhai.

Strong Week Links 2

I'm gearing up for a trip to New York this week. I'll be visiting my best friend since middle school who lives in Brooklyn, but I'm looking forward to some Lower East Side shopping here. (In middle school I would've been more excited about this place right around the corner.) Any favorite recommendations?

I'm loving @puppethorse, the Instagram of sweet stylist Georgie Perrins (who I helped out on a few shoots a while back). She's so good at capturing a certain LA scenery look - palms and vegetation plus iconic Southern California architecture in a quiet palette with dramatic lighting. 

Bemoaning the fact that your cart is like a sieve on the Mansur Gavriel site the day of the relaunch and restock of their uber-coveted bucket bags. I'm entertaining other options, like this. 

I'm digging these shoes.

Speaking of shoes, even though I love the Charlotte Stone sandals I got at James Rowland Shop last summer after I ordered a pair of Birkenstock Arizonas and thought they looked weird, I kinda want to give Birks another try. After all, "You try to survive your first visual influence. It is love on second sight."

Photo by Darcy Rogers.

Big Sur

2015. 33. To ring it all in, we took a trip to Big Sur, a place so close and so beautiful I can't believe I'd never really been. The weekend was unseasonably, freakishly warm, and the drive down was a bit like a dream. 80 degrees, sunshine, the glinting Pacific, and whales. Tons of them migrating. You could see spouts everywhere. At one point we pulled off at a roadside vista where we stood with an older couple with binoculars and an aging hippie fixing his moldering VW. We watched whales pass by, announcing them to each other, and saw dolphins playing in the surf while we listened to sea lions bellowing below.

We stayed at Deetjen's, a very cool old collection of wooden cottages from the 1930s originally built by Helmuth Deetjen after the style of buildings in his native Norway. Inspired by the room they offer with a record player (it wasn't available), we brought our own along with a tote full of vinyl. The restaurant was just as charming as the rest of the place, and we had an evening drink at the bar as well as a great breakfast in the indoor garden-like dining room.

We spent our nights at Nepenthe, which is like heaven. It's hard to imagine a prettier place. Our fears that Big Sur in January might mean freezing wind and rain seemed laughable on warm nights drinking rose and watching the sun set into the ocean. I liked to snag a seat at the back deck for sunset and spend the rest of the time at the long wooden table overlooking the southern coastline.

Instead of the ambitious hike we'd planned on Saturday we did the short walk to McWay Falls and part way up the Canyon trail on the other side of the highway. There we found another waterfall, a stream, and plenty of beautiful wooded spots with rays of sunshine beaming through the forest.

Other must-dos were Big Sur Bakery in the morning for pastries, coffee and people watching (we also had a great, cozy dinner there) and the Henry Miller Memorial Library. Apparently they've stopped doing shows there for the time being, but you can stop in to browse and buy a curated selection of books and records, and wander around the quaint grounds of what was once the house of the author's best friend.

We found so many places I can see becoming favorites. I already can't wait to get back and do it all over again and explore what more Big Sur has to offer. Next time: bring binoculars for whale watching and call Esalen at 9am sharp to get a night bathing reservation. More pics over on Instagram.

Joshua Tree

For the third time in as many years, we drove to Joshua Tree for a much-needed high desert getaway. We stayed at the same cabin as we did last year, a special spot rife with weird, wonderful, decorative details the owners have put into the place. It was originally a chicken and turkey ranch until it became a full-on hippie commune in the late 60s and early 70s. According to Green Acres’ owners, Gram Parsons (whose specter and Cosmic American music still casts a near-spiritual vibe over J Tree) and Keith Richards spent time hanging out at the ranch. A fact like this is impossible for me to ignore and imbues the place with even more mystique than that provided by the otherworldly landscape and sound baths at the Integratron. This year I read Keith Richards’ autobiography Life as a companion piece to last year’s Gram Parsons biography Twenty Thousand Roads.

I wore my new Flax by Jean Englehart dress, we ate seitan sandwiches at our favorite restaurant in town, Crossroads Cafe, and I stopped by the new and more visible location of bkbceramics where I picked up a small ceramic dish and a post card by High Desert Test Sites. A non-profit organization with an inspiring mission to enact temporary, intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant conceptual art in the high desert, HDTS seems to embody the draw of this place and to gather the people drawn by it.

During the day we passed red barrel cacti on a hike to the beautiful and serene 49 Palms Oasis before heading over to Pappy & Harriet’s and spending the afternoon traveling down dusty unpaved roads in search of the real estate listings I stalk year-round. At night, we shut off all the lights, stretched out on outdoor lounge chairs and hunkered down under Mexican blankets and in my case, a newly acquired vintage Levi’s shearling jacket, to stargaze. It’s easy to forget what darkness looks like living in a city — a fact thrown further into relief when we got back and I listened to an interview with the author of The End of Night, a book which explores how little darkness is left on Earth and the impact it has on its inhabitants. We saw some of the biggest, brightest shooting stars we’d ever seen.

On the way to our second stop in Palm Springs, we drove through Joshua Tree National Park stopping at Cap Rock and Cholla Cactus Garden and watching the high Mojave desert turn into the low Colorado.

Heidi Merrick Summer 2014

Once in while, something jolts me into thinking about how Californian I am. Brief daydreams about moving to New York, driving along Highway 1, suburban shopping malls, the memory of scraping ice off of my car with a flip flop during my year spent in Chicago, a childhood full of showering off sand after entire days spent at the beach — all of these make me realize how my location, for the most part, has been (beautifully) one left coast note. So I can relate to Heidi Merrick's designs.

She's the daughter of a renowned surfboard shaper, and her collections are inflected with a native-Californian accent (insert 'like' here). Gauzy blouses have a Mexicali vibe and vegan leather bikini bottoms and pencil skirts add a bit of urban edge to beachy, nautical striped shirts and glamorous, grown-up halter dresses. Not too dressed-up, they're perfect for wearing to the beach or hitting the city streets. Very LA. Of course, no one's going to sue you if you wear them east of Silverlake, so why not translate a bit of West Coast style to wherever?

California Roadtrip: Yosemite

There's something shameful about being a native Californian who's never been to Yosemite. How I never made it there in the back seat of my parents' car is a total mystery to me given how many California peaks they climbed, how much they loved classic camping spots, and how many miles I did travel in the back seat on road trips to other destinations. I would unwillingly pile into the backseat, only contented by listening to cassette tapes on my headphones, and try to ignore my mom excitedly pointing out cows. But those trips were proverbially, ineluctably life-shaping, and an appreciation for long stretches of road, improbable geological features, road side stops (especially gift shops), and Western destinations seeped osmotically into me. Now I dream of them. I would love to retrace some of the trips we made while I was growing up and I'm definitely excited to pull up to towns and places I've never been. Yosemite seemed like a necessity.

Spring is a great time of year to visit because the snow is melting, which means major waterfall action. They're mesmerizing moving aspects of the landscape from afar, but you can also get up close enough to feel their icy mist.

We stayed in a little cabin in Curry Village that was old but maybe passable as vintage (it seemed they were in the process of updating and rebuilding these), and tried not to think about catching the hantavirus. In the evening, we headed over to the Ahwahnee Hotel for cocktails and dinner in the fancy dining room. I've always wanted to go there, and it was beautiful but dark (literally and sort of vibe-wise — it inspired the Overlook Hotel from The Shining), so it was hard to get any good pics.

The next day, we hiked up to Artist Point. I found our route on one of the first internet lists of Yosemite hikes I came across, but somehow not many of the Yosemite workers had heard of it, and it seemed relatively untraveled. We had the trail almost to ourselves the whole time, which was eerie and cool. I secretly hoped to see a (peaceful) bear. Once we got to Artist Point, it was just us and the view the entire time.

At the scenic point, we hid a secret message for my brother and sister-in-law who were on an epic California road trip of their own, and had plans to visit Yosemite later the same week. I've been tweeting them clues, and I don't know if they'll follow the same trail, but I hope they find our analog geocache if they do!

This was a great first trip to Yosemite, and I hope to go back for more. I kept saying that next time I want to hike Half Dome when the cables are up, but after spying this book in the Ahwahnee gift shop, I'm thinking twice. Would you do it (or have you)?

Trench Appeal

See? False spring. It's stopped raining for the moment, but the billowing grey clouds signal it's not over yet. Perfect time to bust out the new-to-me vintage trench.