Teddy, Tacos and Talk

One man after another, talking and talking. The tacos were fantastic and Teddy Cruz must be thirty times more tired than I am. What energy and passion that man puts out, bilingually and all over the map. At the start of our journey from LA, Teddy noted our tendency to “hide beneath weird complexity.” It just stayed complex for the next four days…fascinating, frustrating, and fragmented. Probably no other way it could have gone, with 120 people trailing after Teddy’s enthusiasms. Metro, train, trolley, walking, buses, and more walking. Definitely the weirdest for me was the Haudenschild Garage in La Jolla. Suzanne Lacy said she collected “language”–phrases like “archipelago of enclaves” and “critical insertion.” I met Ava Bromberg, New York-based urban planner Al Wei, CCA architecture student John Manzo, Tijuana architect Rene Peralta (who contributed to Here is Tijuana), Emily Scott of the LA Urban Rangers, Christina McPhee, Christina Ulke of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, many of Suzanne Lacy’s students, and enjoyed time with Sarah Kanouse, Nick Brown, Monica Mayer and Suzanne. Almost as a corrective to the train ride from Los Angeles to San Diego, and the party that night in La Jolla (which was over the top), was my bus ride across LA on Sunday, on the Number 33 city bus along Venice Blvd. It felt everyday, and slow…19.62 miles according to Mapquest.