Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

What’s in a mural. Usually it’s public art that goes unnoticed. This one in San Bernardino of all places is a testament to Japanese Americans. Yes, they’re working in a field and it could be anywhere. It could be almost any Asian ethnicity, but it’s intentionally Japanese American. Why would Carrie Lange want this on her wall? We don’t know exactly, but it’s there. (KCET – JA Wall)
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Fujiya Market which has always looked out of place on Virgil was once in an area of Japanese Americans called J-Flats. No. I’ve never heard of that, and this market at 80 years is still there. The proprietors aren’t the originals, but the space looks classic and great. I made a comment recently about Granada Market on Sawtelle which shares a similar type vibe. It’s old, classic, strange and you hope it won’t close, but it probably will. No kid wants to take over an old market as much as they’d want to own a taco truck. For spots like these, I’d wish there were grants, rent subsidies and so on just to keep them open as historical locations. They do matter in the history of a city. (LA Weekly – Fujiya Market) For more photos, take a look at this flickr page by Guzzleandnosh.
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Japanese American National Museum are collecting Japanese American concentration camp stories from survivors. A three year project is underway to get more of these stories, and organizations everywhere have already begun this process. Perhaps it needs to be smaller in scale and some time of initiative for people to just do this at home is a better way to go. (Mainichi – Preserve JA Stories)
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I’m always following the work of George Takei. The photo below is from a talk we did together. Who has more greys… me?! He’s on Celebrity Apprentice and he’s supporting the Japanese American National Museum and is talking about it on Good Day LA. (The link opens a video) This man is awesome. At bottom, he intro’d the Giant Robot Biennale 2 and I hope he does Biennale 3 for us in September.   [youtube]Ym-4vcnbgNA[/youtube]
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