My friend Chris Holmes works on some of the most creative and cool projects in this town, DJs some of the best parties, and has an insane list of friends. Last night ?uestlove hit him up and asked if it was cool to spin a set at Tropicana…

My what the fuck?! moment of the night was walking up to Quest and saying, “Hey whats up, I’m Steve,” and him responding, “Yo I know you, I see you in all kinds of pictures.”

I shot this photo of C.C. before her performance at Playhouse last week. After the show we hit up our friend’s crazy party at the Roosevelt. Go check out C.C.’s tumblr.

Forrest & Bob goes to Hollywood (SS10 Campaign) by Henrik Adamsen (via)

I’m watching Visual Acoustics (a documentary about the photography of Julius Shulman) right now and I can’t remember the last time I was this inspired. The photography, the style, the architecture, los angeles… it all comes together so beautifully.

She’s cute as a button! And I love her blue ray bans.

I shot this photo of Brad Elterman with my friend Hanna Beth last night at Trousdale. It’s a really small world so I knew it was only a matter of time before our paths crossed, and Friday night brings out the perfect crowd for both of us - fame whores, celebrities, the sons and daughters of the rock idols that Brad shot decades ago - all beautiful people who love to get wild.

I live here… and I love it (click to see it big).

HOLLYWOOD, 2008 - Gary Simmons

I’ve talked about Gary before, he’s a good friend, a great mentor, one of my favorite artists… add to that gossip news celeb.

A few weeks ago a guest at Russell Simmons’ exclusive house party partially erased one of his chalkboard pieces worth $100,000 - that’s probably less than Kimora’s monthly velour allowance, but was enough to change the way Russell displayed his personal art collection, and land Gary in the NY Post, NY Daily News, even the antithesis of culture and art, Perez Hilton.

“The Cobra Shop is a fully functional vintage clothing store featuring the hottest pieces from the Cobrasnake’s personal collection, an exclusive selection of new merchandise from the coolest brands on earth, limited screen prints from Shepard Fairey, jeremy scott archive peices ,special awkward family photos installation, Steve Aoki’s favorite shoes, Vespa imaginary test drives and the world’s best selection of weird and unique items personally selected by the Cobrasnake for your shopping pleasure.”

— The Cobrasnake

I shot a lot of the photos for the opening of the Cobra Shop at Hollywood & Highland tonight. Click on the photo to go check them out!

In Context

Less Than Zero

It’s kind of hard to explain why I love Less Than Zero, and what it means to me. Bret Easton Ellis wrote the novel as a teenager, it was published when he was still in college and immediately became a critical success, considered a generation’s Catcher In The Rye (which itself was a manufactured classic), but in a way that the literati were like Clement Greenberg discussing Abstract Expressionism; their attempt to intellectualize it, to rationalize it for outsiders is the antithesis of what it’s about and shows a complete misunderstanding of the work.

Ellis didn’t use minimalism or nihilism as literary techniques, he was writing fast and hard like a 19-year-old because he was nineteen, it was that fire and ego in a kid that you never get back, the way Flea played bass as a teenager, the way Larry Clark shot Tulsa… Henry Rollins said something like, “punk didn’t die, we just learned to play our instruments,” and that’s valid, young artists develop and grow and can go on to create amazing work, but you can never really regain the speed and ignorance of adolescence, so it’s incredible when that can be filtered into something like Less Than Zero.

I love it for that reason, because it’s raw and unapologetic, because it doesn’t make allowances for “tourists,” it’s not injected with morality or regret (the film does and is, but it’s still a classic), it doesn’t attempt to hold the reader’s hand and guide them through a seedy, exotic world like so many other verbose books filled with clichés of ‘Bolivian soldiers marching through your nasal passage’ and ‘the emptiness you feel waking blah blah blah.’ You either get it or you don’t, if you know the feelings those words are attempting to describe you also know how remarkably they fail, you can choose your own adventure, and maybe the goal of great literature is to immerse you in a vivid world that you would otherwise never experience, but this world within Less Than Zero, the life is so fleeting and chaotic and angsty and visceral than an attempt to internalize it through an author’s adjectives and metaphor would be contradictory.

So it’s strange, reading the book or watching the movie… it’s a life I never sought out, never imagined for myself growing up, becoming part of a fantastical world of lascivious, filthy, wild, vacant excess - sometimes as a spectator, sometimes as a participant, but always aware. When I look at this photo I see different faces, when I flip through the sparse pages of the novel, I see different names but it’s real, it’s the Hollywood I know and love and hate… the life I live and the people I love.

Teddys with Hanna last week