Admittedly one of the biggest perks of blogging is getting invited to fantastic press events. A few weeks ago Scion was kind enough to fly myself and several other lifestyle bloggers down to Manhattan Beach to take a peek at their new car. During the whirlwind trip I found myself talking to the singer from Devo, surfing, driving the smallest car I've ever been in, and best of all, checking out some famous SoCal Case Study houses.
Read on for the whole story, and more pictures...
First off the car. Those that know me, know that I am a bit of a car nut. In fact I've been described as having car ADD, rarely keeping one for more than a year. My personal taste leans towards european sports cars, so I admit I wasn't overly enthusiastic about driving a sub 10' Scion IQ. I did get a little more excited when I learned that Aston Martin rebranded the IQ in Europe as a luxury micro compact. Branding aside the IQ was a surprisingly comfortable and solid car for the size. Even 6' 4" Tyler from Plastolux seemed pretty comfortable in it.
Scion is an interesting brand, and puts a surprisingly large amount of effort into supporting the arts, and more grassroots style advertising. For this event they had pulled together a wide swath of lifestyle bloggers, so it was interesting to get to meet other people "in the industry". I even had the chance to make be "real life" friends with some facebook friends I've had for a while, like the lovely Erin Loechner from Design For Mankind. I have a total design crush on her...
During our dinner Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo spoke to us. I'm admittedly not that big of a Devo guy, but I did recognize him as that awkward artist from Yo Gabba Gabba! Turns out her really is an incredibly accomplished musician (outside of Devo) and artist. Go figure.
Between surfing sessions, Tyler and I rented a car to search out some of the iconic Case Study houses. We didn't have appointments for the Stahl house (Case Study #22) but the son was gracious enough to let us peek through the gate. It was AMAZING! From the street, it doesn't look like anything at all, but as soon as you poke your head through the gate you get that amazing view that Shulman captured so well.
Our next stop was the Eames Case Study house #8. It's been on my bucket list for a long long time to go and check that house out, so it was incredible to be there. They are in the process of moving the majority of the interior to LACMA for an upcoming exhibit, but the place still looked amazingly intact and original. In fact if you have ever seen the classic Eames film "Lucia Chase Vignette" it looked like nothing had changed at all in 40+ years since it was filmed.