Here are a few things I was really excited about picking up in LA:

Choegal, bought at GR2

I’ve been coveting this doll from artist David Choe since his Obama cover for Giant Robot and the video of his signing/opening at GR2 kind of hyped it all up. It’s his first full scale toy, made from all wooden mechanical parts with three faces (sad – angry – happy in the photo above) that you can turn with the knob on the top of her hat. I don’t collect toys, really, but this handpainted (albeit by a Chinese factory, not Choe) beauty was too hard to resist.

Promotional (?) booklet of stills from Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046, from GR yard sale

Still not quite sure exactly what it is, but it’s around 100 pages or so of stills from the movie 2046. The images are so beautiful I hope I can think of a way to display them somehow…

Nurse shoes from West Germany, bought at Steven Alan Annex in Venice Beach

Abbott Kinney in Venice Beach was a surprising goldmine of style on this trip, and I highly recommend the shopping there to anyone into Steven Alan, APC, Filson and the like.  I was beginning to think that the only thing people wore in L.A. were maxi dresses before we found this street on the last day of our trip. Anyway, these  sandals, which I admit could be construed as kind of fugly, have a cork sole, are super light and were originally manufactured in West Germany for nurses. All of this adds up to shoes that are super comfortable. No idea how they got to be at the Steven Alan store, but it’s like wearing Birkenstocks, without having to actually wear Birkenstocks. I wonder if the West German nursing shoe designers ever dreamt that their shoes would languish in some warehouse, unworn, until the year 2009, and then end up in a hipster store in America? I guess it would have been hard to foresee the advent of coolhunting as a profession.

…and there’s more. I went kind of nuts at the GR yard sale. I had to use my extra tote-bag suitcase (which is only supposed to be used in emergencies) on the way home. On the other hand, I do now own a almost-working Diana + camera for only a mere $10 plus the cost of some crazy glue.