Image courtesy of criminalatt at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Fashion = art museum: Fashion label Guess is known for its jeans. And now for its art. The brains behind the brand–Maurice and Paul Marciano, plan to renovate the vacant Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Wilshire Ave. and transform it into a mecca of contemporary art. The temple was designed by Millard Sheets, whom the L.A. Times calls “one of Southern California’s best-known designers” and who we at Fairplex call an influential component of the L.A. County Fair.
Millard Sheets served as the director of Fine Arts for 25 years at the L.A. County Fair and played a huge role in developing the first major gallery dedicated solely to art in Los Angeles County–now known as the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts at Fairplex.
As the Marcianos begin to move their extensive private art collection into the building, they plan to keep Sheets’ original architectural design.
U.S. Open ends with violent finale: The Vans U.S. Open of Surfing event came to a close on Sunday in Huntington Beach. The event itself was a smashing success: guests flocked to-and-fro from BMX and surfing competitions to vendors to restaurants and bars. But as the event came to a close last night, riots broke out. Large crowds began turning over porta-potties, fighting, and even smashing store windows and robbing retailers. Police are still trying to identify what started the riot.
Oh, Chipotle: In a marketing stunt for it’s 20th anniversary (7/25), Chipotle fake-hacked its own Twitter account, garnering thousands of new followers and even more retweets of the hack posts. A number of bizarre and unrelated tweets went out in the space of an hour as part of the campaign. While most consumers seemed to enjoy the joke, others weren’t pleased with the prank. Social media allows brands to personalize their voices and come face-to-digital-face with consumers in a way that emails and phone calls cannot. This also gives the brand leeway for pranks such as the one pulled last week. How would you feel about being punked by a brand?
Bye, Madison Square Garden: Madison Square Garden–the equivalent of L.A. Live–is being told to move. That means the Knicks, the Rangers, the Ice Capades and a circus will have to find a new home. Madison Square Garden was given ten years to find a suitable location and to evacuate in 2023. The reason? The Pennsylvania Station expansion. Read the full story here.
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