826LA: the echo park time travel mart.

Sometimes I come across something that’s so nut-bustingly rad, so pure win, so totally fucking awesome that I’m not sure what to say. This is one of those times. Behold the glory that is the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

826LA is a non-profit writing and tutoring centre whose mission is two-fold: inspire kids to explore creative writing and inspire teachers to make it happen. Part of a national network of chapters across the US, 826 was co-founded by Dave Eggers, author of the brilliant “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius“. Clearly, these guys and gals are thinking outside of the box. That’s why they created the Echo Part Time Travel Mart as the store front to their new free writing lab. Sometimes, a door and foyer just isn’t cool enough…

Having it’s grand opening to the public last week, the Mart is fully stocked with all your various time travel needs:

Yes, you read that right. Mammoth Chunks. A-may-zing. Besides the unbridled fun of it all, the amount of detail and total commitment to fully flesh out each product blows my mind. They’ve also got a series of wines whose names come from the political and social ideologies of the year they were vintaged. It’s a history major’s wet dream. The wines include Nihilism (bottled in 1901), Optimism (1967), Romanticism (1818), Reaganism (1983), Socialism (1866), and Antidisestablishmentarianism (1871).

The crown jewel in this masterpiece is the space-age Slushee machine, complete with time-travelling out of order sign:

Imagine being a young writer and walking through all that full-on creativity before you get down to writing? Talk about inspiration, this makes me want to move to LA just to volunteer. 826 is my new favourite thing. If you’re in the LA area, 826LA is looking for good folks to help out with its tutoring and workshop programs. Send an email to iwanttohelp(at)862la(dot)com.

oslo subway: tunnel of light project.

It pains me to look at this. Living in a city (Toronto) whose transit system (the TTC) lies somewhere on the public opinion scale between being an abomination or a total joke, I can’t even fathom experiencing anything this ethereally beautiful during my daily transit excursions. An “art installation” on the TTC is anytime they manage to put cardboard over the gaping holes in the tiled walls – unless you can consider ceiling drips an aquatic sculpture of some kind.

Not in Oslo, Norway. Leave it to those damned Nordic geniuses to not only have a public transit system that works, but to actually put effort into making it an experience. It doesn’t take a massive amount of effort to create a difference between dragging your ass to work in some dirty grey afterthought and being subtly motivated to go to work and turn your country into a design superpower. They’ve obviously gone for the latter.

Built around an escalator in Oslo’s Nydalen subway station, this 27 metre translucent glass tunnel houses a brilliant shifting light installation created by a team of artists let by the station’s architect Kristin Jarmund.