Archive for August, 2006

Yelp

Monday, August 21st, 2006

Yelp is a website where users rate and write reviews about local businesses and services. It also serves as a local guide. I’ve come across it every now and then over the last year and a half, but never really got into it until about two months ago. I was looking online for a local and reliable auto shop to take my wife’s car to. Somehow I ended up on Yelp. I looked up a few shops, read the reviews, and decided on one. We took the car to the shop we had read about. The service we received was just as we had read on Yelp - all positive.

I’ve since started using Yelp to review restaurants and other services. I also started to write reviews about restaurant I’ve been to. You can read my reviews at http://juandelreal.yelp.com

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Chicano Visions - Art Exhibit

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

On Saturday, July 22nd, I went to see the Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge exhibition at the new de Young museum. It was opening day so there was entertainment, live music, speakers, book signing by artists, and the entrance was free. Cheech Marin was suppose make an appearance, but he didn’t make it due to an illness. The exhibition has been on tour for a few years and it is finally somewhere close where I could go see it. The exhibition actually is comprise of these three distinct exhibitions:

  • Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge as Collected by Cheech Marin
  • Chicano Now: American Expressions
  • Chicano Encounters: Local Places and Global Communities

I bought the Chicano Visions book and had it signed by seven artists whose work is on display. The artists at the book signing were Ester Hernandez, Margaret Garcia, Carmen Lomas Garza,Chaz Bojorquez, John Valadez, Leo Limon, and Gaspar Enriquez. What impressed me most about a lot of the paintings were their size. The majority of the paintings are really big. I had seen pictures of some of the paintings on the web, but I had no clue as to their actual size until I saw them in person.

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