Seoul

• Gang-nam, the district of Seoul where I’m staying, is the newest development of mega-consumption. The main street is 10 lanes… so it’s kind of like if you just put a shitload of stores on each side of a freeway. Consequently, the traffic is nuts half of the day and relying on the subway is a must.
• The Seoul Metro subway system is excellent and modeled after New York’s subway. You can learn how to use it in like an hour; less if someone explains it to you. Cell phone’s have full bars in all subways.
• Aside the main streets (usually where the subway stops are) are always tons of snaking, crazy unmarked alleys. Each alley is typically filled with restaurants, cafe’s, Hof bars, and conveniece stores. If my Dad (a city planner) ever saw these alleys, he’d flip a shit trying to wrap his mind around how public services actually get done here.
• The weather right now (spring time) is extremely similar to San Francisco: high 60′s to low 70′s with mild winds. It’s very comfortable weather.
• Korea is absurdly safe. People and businesses leave their belongings outside in plain sight with no worry of theft. You can walk around in any area at night without worry of being mugged.
• It’s hilarious that it’s a rare and noteworthy moment when I run into another white person here. Passing by, we make eye contact almost every time in some weird, mutual understanding kind of way.

 

Koreans Here

• Everyone I’ve met here is incredibly nice. Service in stores and restaurants, big and small, is top-notch.
• English is understood decent by most younger Koreans, but they are often frightened to reply back… not so much by the older crowd. Still, expressing complex thoughts or using higher than gradeschool-level vocabulary is not possible. Walking around with Jason and his friends is much better, since I can ask them to translate a complex statement or question to Korean quickly.
• Taxi-drivers can and will rip you off if you’re obviously not from Seoul. Even Jason gets trolled sometimes. Luckily, you can bitch out the cab driver and get out to find another cab, as they are super easy to come by.

Entertainment

• Seoul turns people into degenerate alcoholics. I’ve never drank as much as I have here in my life. You can begin drinking at 9pm at home, goto a restaurant and have soju and beer, head to a club for bottle service, and then top off the night with food and beer at an Izakaya (Japanese food place / bar) or Korean restaurant in the morning hours around 5 or 6am.
• There are PC방’s (PC room/cafe), 노래방’s (Karaoke bar), and Billiards/Pool Halls everywhere… like seriously everywhere you look. There are only more convenience stores than these two types of businesses.
• At Pool Halls, all the men play Billiards. Apparently pocketball (pool) is a ladies game.
• You can’t play Starcraft II in Korea at PC방’s unless you have a Korean SSN and buy a Korean license of the game (shit).
• Movie theaters serve beer and have assigned seating that you can reserve in advance. (also: Fast Five was amazing).
• Prices for everything are pretty on-par with America.

Shopping & Food

• Korean food is (obviously) the best here. I’ve never had Korean BBQ similar to here, but surprisingly LA Korean food is more than competitive with it.
• Japanese food (other than sushi which is harder to find) is everywhere as well.
• American food is fairly easy to come by, if you don’t want anything higher end. There are 24hour McDonalds’, Burger King’s, and KFC’s all around Seoul.
• Italian food is also pretty easy to find, as asians are familiar with pasta as noodles and really like pizza.
• Most other types of food outside of those mentioned above are much, much harder to come by.
• Girls clothing stores outnumber mens ones probably 20:1
• There is a cellphone store on nearly every block.
• Guys my size will find it impossible to get clothing… I wear an XL in all types of shirts, jackets, etc. And forget about shoes, all retailers do not cary anything bigger than a size 9 US.
• Korean style is varied from obviously fobby to obviously American. I tried really fucking hard to find some cool shops in Korea, and was able to find only one so far… I subsequently have spent 600 bucks over my past two visits to Brown Breath. More on that below.

Above is Jason and I @ the Brown Breath store with the staff. The only store I’ve found in Korea that has really awesome product. They design and manufacture their own denim, clothing, backpacks, bags, and accessories together into a lifestyle brand. I tried to pinpoint some sort of classification for the type of clothing they sell or what kind of crowd they’re catering to, and the only bullshit description I could come up with is that the brand is for the “practical, utilitarian hipster with a mountaineering look”. I picked up a few pieces of clothing and a backpack. The guys who work there are real nice and kept throwing gifts at me, asking me if I’d come back to Korea to visit… they make you feel quite at home. Check out the bag I picked up:

 

Whew… so that was my longass 1-week update on Korea. Now that I’ve gotten the bulk out of the way I can post smaller updates as the days go on if anything interesting happens. Now for a few tunes because it’s been a while.

Yeasayer released a special 7″ vinyl for record store day with B-sides from their latest album. Get some good headphones on and play this jam loud. It has definitely been my favorite song to listen to on the subway here in korea.

Battles will release their new album Gloss Drop on Warp Records later this year. These guys really define the “math rock” genre if I could pinpoint it at all… don’t let the weirdness scare you, it’s a killer song.

Burial came out with his first new material in four years with his Street Halo EP. This is the 2nd and in my opinion best song on the release.

Never posted about it, but many weeks ago I picked my first Eames piece ever, the walnut Hang-It-All. A coat hanger isn’t exactly the first thing one thinks of when decorating and getting furniture, but now that I’ve got it I realize how much I look at it. For fuck’s sake, SF weather is so harsh that 5+ coats/backpacks/whatever are on deck at any given moment.

I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of a fisheye lens for my micro four-thirds GF1. Yes, I have officially jumped on the fisheye bandwagon and yes, there will be photos soon. I can’t deny I like the way fisheye photos come out… as long as they’re not ALL fisheye shots.

Dusk has been beautiful lately. My deck is the least important priority to figure out. Jesse has suggested some sort of firepit situation, but I’m not sure if I want to take it that far. For the time  being, I’d rather just fill the space up with a lot of plants and figure out the ‘social situation’ beyond folding chairs later.

 

 

Robyn, who I’ve never been that big a fan of, is about to come out with a new album at the end of this month. After a first spin, this is definitely the stand out track. Who the hell can argue with Snoop?

Much more dance floor friendly version of Bag Raiders’ already good track Way Back Home.

 

Easter dinner is up with the family tomorrow… my grandma is as sharp as ever so I’ve got a good feeling. Later on tomrorow evening, hopefully we can hit up will as chang‘s pad in LA for some true schooling on the art of bachelor pads.