LetGo Magazine Vol. 4

More Than a Fix

PhiltheCoffeeGuy

Lets see… what are the ingredients for a modern day sub-culture? Magazines pertaining to the subject, check. Online blogs and social network sites, check.

Enthusiasts that gather globally for this cause also belong to the mix. All for the love of coffee. ¶ Those who want to gear away from the corporate green giant

turn to specialty coffee. Much dedication and passion go into quality improvement so we can consume a cup that turns out to be much more than a caffeine

fix. Those that are not tuned into the world of coffee are in awe when they find out that it’s not farfetched for someone to be studying the method in which

a world barista champion tamps his espresso (alternative…not farfetched that someone somewhere is sitting around a cup of Ethiopian, not drinking it just

yet, waiting for its blueberry notes to become floral.) Ultimately the barista adds flare to the preparation of coffee but it is also in their job description to be

knowledgeable about coffee and be passionate about the craft. ¶ Just like any other obsession, it takes hold of you and consumes your thoughts. My foray into

the barista world happened unexpectedly. A fellow barista emailed me a few months ago inviting me to start a profile on baristaexchange.com. Not so much

of a surprise now, though before I began taking coffee seriously I laughed when someone handed me a copy of Barista Magazine, one of the few magazines

dedicated to improving the coffee experience. A gentleman that looked as if he got out of teaching an English class adorned the first cover I’d ever seen. This

was intriguing but only with the next issue where a good-looking barista from Iceland captivated my attention. I decided to give it a chance, the articles gave

me new insight, further dismissing the thought of, “its only coffee people.” In my free time I’d find myself shamelessly flipping the pages. The enthusiasm of a

new discovery took hold. This made work all the more enjoyable. ¶ Soon enough I took to the fulfilling task of perfecting espresso shots and steaming good

milk, something I find myself always working on. Depending on the coffee, the barista is able to pull “notes” of the beans such as fruit and chocolate. When

I first had a little taste of blueberry and citrus in one, a smile lit up my entire face. From this point on there was no turning back…I had become a coffee geek.

¶ Then came a deeper appreciation of the camaraderie within the coffee community that anybody can appreciate. It’s the dedication of others, those who initiate

movements to improve experiences of individuals is what pushes the barista. Its the youth of our communities that start out being a barista as a side job while

going to school or just before making it as a rock star but luckily many have stay put. Those who continue their journey with coffee eventually begin roasting

or become involved with other facets of it. The main thing to remember, specialty coffee houses provide an alternative to the burnt taste of the corporate coffee

chains. ¶ Those wanting to seek out better coffee can go on the site espressomaps.com. Red markers pinpoint the country’s top-notch coffee shops. Enthusiasm

mixed with a caffeine kick ties in well with personalities of most baristas who will gladly help spread the knowledge. At one point I have gotten a shrug of the

shoulders and a roll of the eye when I got a premium type of coffee in a paper cup. This can confuse a newcomer. From the coffee enthusiasts view point they

don’t want to taint the coffee with any hint of paper taste. A sense of snobbery could be felt. Initially disappointed, I gradually began to realize these people care

so much about their craft and they want it represented correctly. ¶ As for the drinks, the main focus; espresso, brewed coffees and the simple espresso based

drinks with frothed milk. Brewed coffee seems to be getting better with the advent of new technology. Many coffee shops even have specialized machines such

as the clover. This $11,000 machine, developed by Stanford graduates pushes coffee enthusiasts closer to achieving perfect extraction. This type of production

caters to high-end coffee shops. ¶ The fact of the matter is you don’t need five figures of dough to brew coffee at home. French Press is most common and sold

at just about all Starbucks and Coffee Bean. Still accessible yet less common is the siphon brew method and chemex. Using fire to get a caffeine fix will conjure

up excitement to anybody that still has a little bit of their inner child left in them. There are two chambers; at the bottom, a bulb-like glass contraption where

water resides and another that fits into the bulb where the coffee sits. From one chamber water sits over a fire until it is vacuumed up into the other containing

the coffee. With the water vapor and heat pressure increasing there is no escape but upwards into the top chamber. So water is forced upward mixing in with

the coffee, this is where the flavors get extracted. Different type of coffees will extract differently. When the flame is turned off and the siphon cools, water

from the top chamber will trickle back down to the bottom and a cotton filter will keep the coffee grounds from following. Each individual has his or her own

methods but to get you started, coffeegeek.com is a great site to visit, offering guides. This sensory experience begins as soon as the aroma hits the nose. Then

as the coffee conquers your taste buds you realize how clean your coffee will taste from this method.

(to be continued) Continuethestoryatletgomag.com

There are nearly ten thousand cheeses in production today but only

a handful make it to the big leagues. Many cheeses are good but

I wonder what it is that makes a chunk of putrefied milk fat gold.

What is it that makes a cheese worthy of a cult status? Here are

a few cheeses that I go geeky for. Hopefully this sheds some light

on the subject.v

So what makes a cheese geekable? It’s a combination of great

marketing and artistry. Or is it a game of sheer word play and of

impulsive gullibility. It is the cheesemongers ability to spin a tale

that draws a crowd to a certain chunk and leaves others to hang and

dry. The geek in every cheeseman is the milk that flows through the

udders of society, pumping furiously towards the suckling mouths of

the uninformed. Drink you gullible saps! Drink!

–mac of cheese

Stinking Bishop

With a name like that this

cheese better stink, right?

It does. Funky and hard to

find. A perry washed double

gloucester from Laurel

Farm in Gloucestershire,

England, Stinking Bishop

is one of the geekiest cult

classics I am aware of. The

perry, or pear cider is made

from Stinking Bishop pears

named for the ill tempered

pear breeder, Mr. Bishop.

Bishop who used to shoo

children off with strong

words and shoot skillets that

weren’t hot enough. Need I

say more? A steep interest in

the cheese was peaked after

a brief mention in Wallace

and Grommit: The Curse of

the Ware Rabbit. That kind

of information makes this a

geekworthy cheese. People

love back-story.

Ski Queen/Gjetost

This carmel colored

norwegian cheese is one of

the most hideous things I

have ever put in my mouth.

It’s peanut butter flavored

wax. It sticks to your teeth

with the might of Thor! I was

astonished to find that people

actually enjoyed the stuff but

certainly offered it a second

glance and found a cult-

like following for Norway’s

Ace-in-the-Hole. Without it

Norway would be left high

and dry in the cheese world.

The only crutch they’d have to

stand on would be Jarlsberg

and Jarlsberg is a busted

old crutch. Gjetost certainly

qualifies for geek status in

my books.

Cavatina,

Andante Dairy

It’s been said (by a geek)

that what Cypress Grove

does for California Chevre,

Soyoung Scanlan has done

on a microscopic level. A

one woman production

from Petaluma, California,

Andante Dairy has certainly

received wide acclaim

for producing pleasingly

harmonious cheeses.

Soyoung, A biochemist and

dairy scientist, also brings

her musical interests to her

cheesemaking. She views

each specific recipe as a

composition of notes. A rare

find, all of the Andante Dairy

cheeses are highly prized

among geeks. My favorite is

the mold ripened Cavatina

with its droopy rind that

eludes to a slippery fondue

that cradles the earthy

chevre interior.

Vacherin Fribourgeois

A prehistoric gruyere-like

cheese that begs to ruin the

peace of your daily routine.

A real cheese geek cannot

resist the rich, raw, nuttiness

of this washed alpine cow

cheese. The flavor profile

is directly connected to

the diet of the animals and

the bacteria that the milk

is inoculated with. A brine

bath and cave aging are true

testament to alpine cheese

production. Purity is the

key to this cheese-goober

classic.

Cheeeeeeeeeese!

HenryT.Cram

Circus Freak

HenryT.Cram

Adriana in Spandex

the idea of having a big production, something grand and vast. i’ve kept the performance so minimal for so long. expanding it will be refreshing for me.

Any favorite “traditional” instruments? It is known that you began playing the trombone. Why did you stop playing? i still play trombone a little bit. i play it on the new album. i stop playing it often because i switched to tuba. i wasn’t very good at the tuba and i lost interest in brass instruments for a while. im trying to play more again.

Are there advantages of using electronic or recorded sounds versus acoustic? of course there are. but there are an equal ammount of disadvantages.

How do you gather sound?with my ears

Tell us about your first show ever? When did you decide to start performing?first show ever. hmmmmmmm. thats a tough one to hammer down. in college i played a lot of shows before i figured out what i wanted to do. it was like starting and breaking up one man bands for a while. i guess my first show some

Where is your favorite place to perform (geographically and physically)? Why? i guess my favorite city to play in is dublin. i’ve never had a bad show there and the audiences are just amazingly to play for. i’m not sure what you mean by “physically.” do you mean the venue? great american music hall in sf was really great. the pilot light in knoxville is a wonderful place. homes are the best. How have crowds differed since you began performing?they show up now.

What about the performance/ performing is preferable to composing and playing without an audience.again, i don’t really know what you mean. what about playing music is better than composing? i that whats going on here? they were two very different things, i couldn’t compare them. it fun to talk and its fun to write things down.

Inspiration? Can you explain where your inspiration comes from?interviews like this

What are you excited about, regarding performing or music wise?i’m excited about working in a larger scale. i like

letgo

deacon

time in 2003 at suny purchase. it was a series of improvized pieces for vocal and floor tom while a computer ran a QBASIC program that i wrote to generate random pitches for random lenghts of time for a random lenght of time. i blew the PA but i sold a lot of CDs.

With so many sounds, techniques, and visuals, can you tell us if/how you feel your shows are different from performance art?i love how many /’s you use. its very much performance art.

What was the most memorable thing a fan has done for you/ to meet you? a guy dan smith proposed during my set at the metro in chicago. we worked out a plan where he lowered a rope down the the balcony, then i tied the microphone to it, he rasied it up and fucking proposed. it was awesome. about a year later he gave me his whammy pedal cover in spiderman collages he did. it was awesome.

What is your favorite childhood memory?i’d rather not have that printed in a magazine. sorry.

Did you have therapy as a child?nope.

What type of girls do you date?living ones.

Can you give us a word, sentence, phrase... the first thing that comes to mind. ed schrader How are your music videos created?my firends make them. i’d like to make some of them myself but it takes a long time and i’m really busy most of the idea.

Are you more afraid of an army of 69 leopards led by a pussy or an army of 69 pussies led by a leopard? no fear.

thanksyou got it!

I looked at the word geek and felt comfortable with it. To me it described people or persons like me; in love with what they do for a living. I soon thought of the

world in a larger sense and the people in positions to help improve the conditions of our environment. The scientists who take on the great challenge of fighting

global environmental problems and how exciting, creative and passionate these science geeks have to be. With my illustration, I want to convey a hopefulness.

With love in the hearts of the scientists to keep on track as they produce mechanical solutions that are eco-friendly. Believe in the geeks to harness the wind and

sun for the good of mankind at this very pivotal moment in our history.

Elbino

AnthonyCioff

Steven Lawrence

The Valley

TheWorkofDavidCroy

Was this a week long endeavor and or a year long? How much time did you put into creating this piece?Overall I’d say it was a matter of several weeks. I started with rough sketches of all the actual things and then redrew them on the computer to get everything into the axonometric view. Except for the cars. The cars were based on photo reference. But I drove everyone nuts stopping every time I saw a new (to me) model of fire hydrant.

What compelled you to to work on this project?I hadn’t thought about it until you asked, but it got me thinking. Shortly after I moved to Boston, years ago, I filled a sketchbook with a wordless narrative thing that involved a placeless place filled with brick buildings, and looking back I think that must have been a response to being in this older, dense, urban zone, after all that time growing up in Missouri. After Boston, I ended up here in Los Angeles. And I think it was a similar reaction. I have a feeling that that much new visual stimulus is like gorging (unpleasantly) on sights, on the environment, and this was another instance of my sub conscience, like, vomiting it all back up, in lieu of somehow digesting it. Which might be impossible anyway.

If this is a particular place in the 818 (Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley), where would it be? Is this a commentary on the 818? If so please explain.It’s nowhere in particular. Which is probably the commentary. Everything in the San Fernando Valley looks similar enough that it could be anywhere else in the Valley. That idea, I think, informed the stylistic choice, of drawing everything in the generic and patently contrived axonometric perspective of a technical diagram. The other element of commentary—which I don’t think gets across as well as it should—is that this is our world, but none of it is accidental. We live in this environment—car washes, 7-11s, garbage, c.m.u. buildings—that was built intentionally (in that somebody had the idea to develop whatever they were developing, sold that idea to a bank, hired engineers and builders and real estate agents, etc). But there seems to be a total lack of intentionality on the other hand. I mean, it just looks like shit out there—anywhere, in any urban or suburban area. And we’re all complicit in having made it look like shit, I think, because we just don’t see any of it anymore: we go from

watching tv to the elevator and into our cars, to another parking garage and into the workplace, and then the reverse at the end of the day. Which isn’t meant as an insult -it’s our modern world of today. But I think this is why our worlds look like they look—because no one’s really looking around. We don’t care (and maybe we shouldn’t).

But that’s why it ended up so detailed—if I could take the everyday invisible and put it into a context where it would be looked at, as it first made me really look, then that maybe would introduce somebody else to looking more closely at their real environments.

The amount of detail you put into this project could be considered obsessive compulsive. Do you feel this working model is an obstacle or an attribute? Do you feel it hinders your productivity or is it preference for quality? Please explain.I don’t really think about how something is going to be done, regarding the amount of detail. There’s something that’s got to come out, and that thing will make its own demands. I know that’s kind of ineffable, but maybe that’s the ineffable quality of art.

It definitely hindered my productivity in every other area of my life! I was straight up OCD on it for awhile—working 20 hours a day, not sleeping, all that. But—and I don’t know how anyone else is - it’s kind of beyond obstacle or attribute. It just happened, and you gotta go with it while you’re feeling it. For me, “inspiration” doesn’t come in the form of a novel idea: it’s more a feeling of having to get something finished the way it demands to be finished. I’m just fortunate that I had a fluid-enough schedule that I could go with it.

But overall, I think people fall into roughly two camps—you either burn through something in huge chunks (like me, on the Valley piece), or you wake up every day and paint or write for four hours and keep a completely regular schedule. Whatever works.

As this exists in the “web world” how do you imagine it existing in the physical? How large would it be?I originally intended for it to be printed on vinyl, like the outdoor banners you see in the real Valley, or like billboard wraps (another reason for the

limited palette). So it was drawn at 90x90 inches, which is how I’d like to see it still. Unless a patron drops out of the sky, it’ll have to remain virtual until I can get the money together to have it produced like it should be.

The web thing, though, is kind of great. I’ve had this thing done for years, but with no way to present it. And now, there it is—totally free for me to implement, and free for everyone else to look at. Of course I’d like to have Saatchi give me eight jillion bucks for it, but barring that, I’m just glad that it’s out there. Might sound pollyanna-ish, but there you go. Do you see yourself creating another detailed cross section of a city any time in the near future? If you had all the time in the world,what would you imagine accomplishing?I don’t know that I’d do it again—maybe I should move somewhere new and see what happens, see what gets vomited up next time.

I’m working on some new stuff, ideas that have come out of my work in graphic design, but that sort of relate to the Valley work in that I’m investigating why things look the way they look. How do typologies develop, and what, if

anything, do they mean? The pieces are similarly detail-intensive but completely different.

And if I was stuck in Groundhog Day, I’d probably want to be something like Von Dutch, minus the anti-Semitism. To have the time to develop pinstriping and hand skills to that kind of level would be great. I can draw fairly well, but to be able to have that kind of control in something that allows for so few errors—that would be kind of awesome.

letgo

croy

Raymond Dang

PhotographybyPaulRodriguez

www.paulrodriguez.tv