"Cuatro tacos al pastor, por favor."

At night these little taco stands pop up around Lincoln Heights. This one at Ave. 26 and Humboldt seems to be there the most consistently. I finally tried one of these spots out. It was awesome.

-Bryan

A few minutes too late...

This sign belongs to the oldest still-operating McDonald’s restaurant, located in Downey, CA. I think I’ve kind of become numbed to just how impressive this thing is after living next to it for so many years. It’s too bad it’s been a while since everything on the sign worked properly.

I showed up to do this “magic hour” shot about 10 minutes too late. I wanted to get better balance between the neon lights and the sky light so that the neon wouldn’t be so blown out overexposed. And it would have been nice to have retained some detail in the moon up there instead of having it turn into a burned out white spot. Just a couple of minutes makes all the difference! Oh well. It wasn’t exactly the most amazing sunset today anyway. I’ll try again a different day.

-Bryan

"we have sold 500 million"

Part of the cool animated sign at the old McDonald’s stand in Downey, CA, a location so old that it actually predates Ray Kroc’s involvement with the company. Not a very good pic today, I shot it lazily from inside my car and it’s not even in focus. Oh well, one pic a day, good or bad, right?

I should get better pics of this later since I live right next to it. Although I did also shoot the picture that’s on wikipedia — but I’ve been wanting to improve on it with a nice “magic hour” shot. And it’s not like I haven’t had plenty of opportunities.

I also have this clip of this sign in motion which was originally shot on Super 16mm a few years back when it was in good working order:

Whenever I see the “500″ it always makes me feel like I’m inside of an episode of the Price is Right or something.

-Bryan

Norwalk, California

Another picture of an old neon sign in the suburban sprawl of southeastern L.A. county. Pretty soon I’ll have a pretty good collection of these.

-Bryan

Good old Pioneer Chicken

Pioneer chicken locations have all but disappeared but there are still a couple around, like this one at Florence and Garfield in Bell Gardens that I frequent. Let me tell you, I love fried chicken with a passion and there is no crispy, crunchy, juicy, delicious fried chicken skin like Pioneer. The secret is the artery-clogging fat they fry it in, one of the last bastions of the old way of doing things before anybody heard of trans fats or “good cholesterol”

Yum!

-Bryan

Umami Burger + Film Screening

So tonight I went to an outdoor screening of two short films, one of which happened to be the first public screening of “Middle of Nowhere” which I shot with director and old classmate Michael Carreño almost a year ago. And it happened to take place at Space 15 Twenty adjacent to Umami Burger right across from the good old L.A. Film School.

This was the tastiest burger I’ve ever eaten in my life, and that is saying a lot considering how many hamburgers I’ve eaten in my life (what can I say, burgers are my favorite food!) — I highly recommend it to all burger connoisseurs.

It was great to reconnect with all the actors and crew and also the space — I hadn’t actually been to Space 15 Twenty since it was just a bunch of old run down warehouses where we shot a lot of After Midnight. Back then it was dirty and full of homeless poo… now it’s full of hipsters, haha.

-Bryan

My friend (and talented key grip) Dwight Stone really loves In-N-Out and has taken on a little project to show his appreciation for the company. I joined him earlier tonight on one leg of his mission. Check it out:

I actually understand his love and ability to eat burgers day in and day out, and I joined him even though I ate at In-N-Out the night before, too. That’s because the cheeseburger is pretty much my favorite food in the world. But that’s a different post.

-Bryan