In two weeks I am heading off to do something I have never done before – I’m hopping a plane to San Francisco to participate in the city’s annual foot race, Bay to Breakers for their 100th year!

The race starts at the north east end of the downtown area adjacent to San Francisco Bay, and runs west through the city to finish at the breakers of the Pacific coast on Ocean Beach. The complete course is 7.46 miles (12 kilometers long) and is not a traditional race by any means.

Participants are known to dress up in all sorts of crazy costumes and some have even run it naked! This year for their hundredth they are enforcing some rules that they haven’t in the past. No alcohol, no floats and no nudity. We’ll see just how much the public abides. There will be 50,000 runners this year!

Since I’ve never done anything like this, I’ll be thrilled just to complete the course. I made it my personal goal to focus on various upgrades in all different aspects of my life to start 2011. There have been many times in my past that I’ve sat at my computer editing 60 hours a week and ditching the fitness in favor of deadlines. As a result of changing that dynamic this year I’ve felt so much happier and more productive on a daily basis.

My training started in January when I began the 4 Hour Body diet, started taking latin based dance classes, and mixed it with training runs. While I haven’t been 100% consistent with my training, I’m really proud of how far I’ve come. I’m lucky enough to have a great partner to run with and support me along the way, and I’m super excited to meet this epic achievement in my life. 8 miles may not seem like a lot to most people, but I have hated running all my life and I’m not a runner by any means. The closest I have come to this has been inline skating 10K races in the past. It’s very different when you have wheels on your feet!

This makes me all the more energized to meet this challenge that I set out to accomplish at the beginning of this year.

If anyone wants to meet up, say hi, or cheer us on while we’re out there, drop a line here or keep a look out for my Danger shirt among the sea of runners. I’ll be deconstructing one of my shirts and representing Danger all the way!!

Here is what the course looks like!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last year I was really inspired by Pipilotti Rist, who created a huge video installation at the MOMA. A lot of her work was seen from a sort of bug’s eye view, and I took that inspiration to do a bit of that style filming on my own at all the beautiful parks in SF. Looking forward to cutting some of that up this week and integrating it into my footage library.

I’d also really like to create a new reel for the hollydanger.com front page, as it is supremely choppy and outdated at this point. The page itself is also unfinished and in limbo, waiting for me to add my entire portfolio to it, and link over here to this blog! Cliche to say, but there really aren’t enough hours in the day. Last night I just finished my 3rd round of package designs for a canadian musician that I’m working for. Things are looking really great, but I’m afraid of how many hours I sit slaved to these machines working on projects! I have a full time 9-5 job during the week editing videos, then I come home to freelance work & VJ stuff on the side. There are barely any hours left to sleep & eat.

Thank god I love to do this stuff, I just wish that I had ways of doing it all faster so I could do more of it.

This week I’ll be receiving my new video controller in the mail!!  I splurged last week and bought the OHM. I should be receiving it in the next two days. Perhaps just in time to learn how to use it, and give it a try at the Monkeytown gig on Apr 3rd. I think I’m also going to drop the dime on a new laptop to make sure everything runs smoothly. It’s about time for a full round of upgrades!

Sunny, brisk, energetic, bellowing light, ocean, colored, gritty city hills, homeless, bold coffee, honey-fruit plates & tea lounges, wine & dinner talking to bartenders and travelers, solo wandering, cameras, old friends, dukatis in the street after ethiopian food, scooters in soma, fantastic fashion & tattoos, geekgasms at multimedia mezzanine show, amoeba, celebrity sightings, architecture, trolleys, parks, love, haight and art gallery hostels with barefoot patrons..

My trip recently fueled a new little video piece, and I wanted to share it here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

 The Haight was breathing with gritty, hot, fantasies that day. It’s a nostalgic place full of history, fashion, and subtle unmentionables. Along the outskirts of dirty memories and coastlines that linger, someone is always willing to tell you stories over scotch in the evening, and put a flower in your hair as you undress the sunlight.

Mostly found footage collected from very many obscure locations, mixed with my textures & experiments.

The song is called Lust, by the Raveonettes.

Photo found on Flickr.com / Tycho Show / March 6th San Francisco @ the Mezzanine

Traveling is one of my favorite things in life.

To begin March 2009, I decided to take a spontaneous journey off the east coast and absorb some California sunshine. The winter has been a long, bleak period for me and while I’ve been keeping busy as well as hibernating, I’ve been deeply desiring spring. I’m feeling all sorts of new flows of creative energy that are bustling and ready to erupt into a thousand colors, but I’ve felt held back by the mundane daily routines, and the weather that keeps me from exploring outside with my camera. I have not enjoyed the cold this year, even having been a snowboarder for much my life. 

To remedy this, I put my cards on the table and booked a flight. I heard that a very special show was happening in San Francisco on March 6th that piqued my interest. My design hero, ISO50, who also makes his own beautiful, ambient music and visuals to go with them, was part of a 10 year Ghostly International anniversary show at the Mezzanine.

 

 

I took a photoshop workshop of his at the OFFF festival in NYC in 2007, and have been following his work for many years. I actually see a lot of similar techniques between how he puts things together and how my creative-brain works.  His ideas always breathe a freshness of vitality into everything he does, and he inspires me endlessly. His show on Friday night did nothing less but overwhelm & excite my senses.

I was elated to the point of geekgasm when he set stage at 12:45AM on Friday night in San Francisco. Not only did he have an amazing stage presence and the crowd worshipped him, but every single person who performed that night was mind-blowing. Ghostly has given me a new sense of inspiration, in a new direction of musically integrated visual styles. I was amongst the best of the best, and am grateful that I had the opportunity to fly across the country to be there.

More words, pictures, video & inspiration to speak of once I am fully re-adjusted to east coast time zones again.

In the meanwhile, here are a few tracks by Tycho.

Tycho – Sunrise Projector

tycho-sunpro.mp3

Tycho – Day Dream

tycho-daydream.mp3