Adrian Iacomi

Occupy LA II

2011-10-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

Police line in fron of the City Hall. Los Angeles

Occupy LA

2011-10-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

Protestor in front of the Los Angeles City Hall. "We are the 99%"

Paint it black

2011-05-29T09:17:00.001-07:00

Inspired by Ana

Cat

2010-12-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

On mount Tai'Shan, China, on the long way to the peak, there was a lonely cat tied to a lonely bench.
It was very quiet there.

Nneka [2]

2010-12-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

Nneka, in CPH, after one of the best live concerts I was to

Nneka [1]

2010-12-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

Nneka in concert, Aarhus

The Amsterdams [2]

2010-11-23T12:13:00.000-08:00

The Amsterdams rehearsal

Not so little red riding hood

2010-11-19T04:18:00.001-08:00

Kobe's shadow

2010-11-17T04:03:00.000-08:00

Long Beach Police

2010-11-11T02:03:00.000-08:00

T.J. 48,
L.B.P.D.
Long Beach, California

Californian rider

2010-11-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

Collins, 34,
California style,
Crenshaw Boulevard, LA, CA

dots & drums

2010-10-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

The Amsterdams Rehearsal

Time passing

2010-10-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

The wall of the old out-door cinema from Mangalia, Romania.
In the windows is written "Today" and "In the future".

After Poker

2010-10-10T11:33:00.001-07:00

model: Valentina C.

Norwegian Airlines and their wonderful customer service

2010-09-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Norwegian Airlines, cheap, scandinavic, pretty decent flights and inexistent customer support. I wanted to be more ironic, but I'm still pissed off and stunned about the way the treat their clients... in not a good way :)

I've flight with various airlines, including them. The experiences have been from decent to very good, but in general was pretty decent.

But about now... yesterday, due to strikes in France, they've cancelled a flight, which can happen of course. And than they did sent me an email and a text message regarding this... not :)). Or well .. maybe it was a thought or a malfunction in their PSP consoles they are using for customer supporting themselves during long cold winters while watching the polar bears play?!?! Nevertheless I did not get any warning so I found myself in the airport, which is not that bad, as loosing an annual conference in Information Architecture :), loosing my hotel bokking fee, loosing my train booking.. or to be brief, loosing a hell lot of money :) Which can make any person happy, happy.

Canceling a flight happens, but not sending a warning about shouldn't happen.

Now, comes the good part: they don't have offices in Copenhagen, they don't have an email address and they phones can be busy 24/24h. I'm trying not to think on the money spent on phones yesterday and today...

So, the only thing I can do is to warmly recommend to all the people I know EasyJet or other real airlines, not a ghost Norwegian scam, and yes they can.. there are scams also in Scandinavia. I just hope all of them are in Norwegian, so I don't meet another one.

Anyway.. Fly Norwegian, enjoy it, pay it.. and stay at home playing on the PSP :)

signed,
and ex-customer of crap-scam-ghost-norwegian-aircrap-and-nocustomer-support-norwegian-shit

BMX rider

2010-09-18T09:41:00.001-07:00

Enjoying the evening

2010-08-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

On Islands Brygge in Copenhagen, two friends enjoy the late evening sun

Berlin sailor

2010-08-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

Behind the German Parliament there's a wall made of transparent glass with the most important articles of the Constitution. Article 6 is about family rights.

Just for the beauty of it

2010-08-13T16:18:00.001-07:00

Model: Valentina C.

Me like photos

2010-08-09T08:22:00.000-07:00

Model: Valentina C.

Traditional fair in Rucar (Romania)

2010-08-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

Love

2010-08-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

Rent a rollerskate in Xi'an People's square

2010-07-25T22:25:00.001-07:00

The brides II

2010-07-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

Rong Rong dreaming

2010-07-13T14:56:00.001-07:00

In Beijing, Art District.

Romanian hip-hop poetry

2010-07-11T02:30:00.000-07:00

Romanian hip-hop by Bean. The first time in many years that I really felt a new breeze in romanian hip-hop.

From http://poemix.blogspot.com/ (Iulian Tanase)

The dream

2010-07-10T14:22:00.001-07:00

The brides

2010-07-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

In Beijing, Art District.
Photo by Adrian Iacomi. All right reserved.

People of Beijing

2010-07-06T02:23:00.000-07:00

The homeless - in the main (expensive) shopping street of beijing they are delighting themselves with the joys of capitalism and some fresh marrow

The master - he was just asking to be in the picture

The family - being in pictures with interesting things behind seems to be the national sport

The twins - in the fashion district

The shy girl - eating on the street is very tempting, but the next day you'll find out how good was the idee to do it

The angry landlord

The freshly married couple

The lonely girl - she moved away from her friends to enjoy another national sport

The player - the extremely popular chinese chess

The dark bride - from the fashion district

(x-treme) Biking in beijing

2010-07-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

“There are nine million bicycles in Beijing / That's a fact” (Katie Melua)

Sounds pretty nice, isn’t it? But the truth is as tasty as appealing as juicy BigMac left for a day in the sun on the beach. Some time ago (when France and Italy were having football teams), Beijing was a bike city, but now, this is just a nice memory and a great subject for making nice t-shirts with panda’s on bikes. From the 9 mil, there probably left less than half, not to say less.
Now, the city belongs to cars, many cars, expensive cars, chinese, german, french, black, with dark windows, blinkysh logos and weird names (Wolkswagen Santana?!). The cars are slowly and sadly suffocating the city, the scarce parking lots and the pedestrian areas.

I’m trying not to be very pessimistic, but the future smells at smog and is quite gray. Biking is a courage and skill test, or the perfect way to get some adrenaline flowing in your veins.
My dormant reflexes (made in Bucharest) were required to cross the street as a pedestrian, as if you don’t have a car, you have no priority… in no situation :))

The bike lanes are generous and well protected (and a little deserted), but you get back to reality when a cab passes in a hurry next to you, or when the inevitable crossroads gets in front of you :) Still, the number of accidents is not as big as expected, as car drivers are careful, especially if they have an expensive car, and you are large enough ;)

The way to take for a date your girlfriend

My conclusion about biking (as a foreigner) in Beijing:
“To cross the street you have to grow balls … inside a car, a big car. But, don’t forget that the police will always have bigger balls.”

The summer was here

2010-05-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

The summer is here, or I should say.. it was, as for one day the blonde girl stopped in Copenhagen, taking from the basement the flip-flops and the lost shorts. And for one full day the sun made her hair glow on the green of grass, in which was hiding a perfect green Carlsberg.

The 18 C were warm and delightful for the CPH Carnaval, but most people didn’t see it as everybody was busy doing nothing in the sun. Today we’re back on the normal weather, but I don’t care, I saw her blue eyes in the sun, so I’m happy, fail/fail can be back now.

Flashback IV - karting

2009-11-09T02:47:00.000-08:00

Karting or go-kart can be seen as a sport for kids in the fun-parks, but it’s much more than that. Some see it or just love to see it as the first step into mono-post racing. Which of course is the dream of any 6 or 45 years old kid - the Formula 1 competitions. For me, it started being a show of colorfull speeding small cars, but in the end I got caught by it. And well.. almost by some karts few times.

Three years of sharing joy, grief, bad weather, sweet, beer and pizza. More than 40000 photos, tens of contests, many days of rain in flip-flops in the swamps of Tg. Secuiesc and too many too warm days in Bucharest. I have to add some very good friends, from Bucharest in special.. and you know who you are :) I prefer to think about friends instead of clients, in this perspective, even if some would think is debatable.

It was also a good moment for me to learn much more than I wanted to about thief midgets from Herastrau. In those three years I’ve seen kids becoming pilots, and grown ups acting like kid, all for the joy of the sport. I wanted to put more pictures here, but I didn’t have enough space to do it.

Before the race, the rules are always discussed - in this case the penalties of hitting the kart in front of you.

Dark clouds are coming closer, should we prepare the rain tires?

Vlad Anghel - How much pressure can a 13 years old pilot can stand before steering a kart at more than 80 KM/h?

Petrut Florescu - First race, 6 years old, +50km/h, 35C+, getting the I place?

Rain and speeding karts, still no casualties (this time)

Tudor Atansiu running out of the platoon

Rain? no problems, the show's just starting!

That day, on the podium, the position was the same, Lucian Moldovan in the middle, on his left Alina Bunica and Patricia Grigorescu on his right :)

Mihai "Tase" Tanasescu taking easy the first place

Victor "Gugu" Nemes was last that day, but still enjoying it. And at the end of the year he was National Champion.

Little Leo won his first race, giving pride to his dad, the multiple National Rally Champion Sandy Barlovan

At the beginning of the racing season Eduard Anton was just dreaming at the cups, with his dad looking from the back, but ... he got his first I place two race later.

Atanasiu Andrei getting one of his many cups.

And in the end, I have to thank you :) Victor, Andrei, Alex, Dragos, Alina, Tase, Vlad, Stefan, Andrei, Mihai, Tudor, Edi, Mihnea, Lucian, Catalin, and many many others. I've removed the pictures with spectacular crashes, as those is better if they remain just in our minds... Catalin at SEEKZ

Note: this is the last Flashback

Flashback part III - people & places

2009-11-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

Istambul

Rainy day in Venice

Normal trafic Jam in Bucharest

2 floor bike parking in Amsterdam

Center Wien Junkies

Flashback part II - '05

2009-10-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

Second flashback - concerts, they took a lot of my time. I lost many great concerts by taking photos and not listening to the music, but the photos still remain.

Munky (Korn)

Cristina Padurariu (ex Blazzaj)

Franz Ferdinand

Nick Cave

Howlin' Pelle Almqvist (The Hives)

Omul cu sobolani

Flashback part I - '04

2009-10-11T04:02:00.000-07:00

Before going forward I've decided to take a look in the past, and see what I was doing 5 years ago...

model: Virginia U.

BMX World Championship in CPH

2009-10-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

The fastest BMX riders of all the world were this summer in Copenhagen.

Caroline Buchanan - 2009 Australian BMX Elite Woman Champion

The crowd

The top 3

Things don't turn so good sometime

The gate

666 - the number of the winner: Ivo Van Der Putten

Snowboarders

2009-10-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

From USA, Russia, Finland, Germany and Australia, they share a common passion: SNOWBOARDING.

Shaun White

Iouri Podladtchikov?! (I'm not 100% sure is him)

Peetu Piiroinen

Xaver Hoffmann

Holly Crawford

CMYK

2009-10-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

I've always worked in RGB, Adobe RGB, three colors workspace or just plain gray scale. So since I've started to re-learn Illustrator I'm interested in CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK).

So I've been playing around on how CMYK colors form and what is there's composition, and how I'm pretty laisy I've just made an matrix an play with it.

In the cube

Pattern

Squares

Explosion

Be Irish (or this is not football)

2009-10-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick's day, no, it is not. There's just one more day when You can be Irish without being Irish, day that is not St.Patrick's day. No need for a green scarf, a silver shamrock, a delicious black beer with a golden harp on it. This time you can get away just with a weird handball-looking ball.

Because I'm talking about the Gaelic Football, and the special day is the day of the European Gaelic Football Tournament, which made a quick stop for a pint of Tuborg in Copenhagen. And suddenly everybody was Irish, irish accent, a lot of green and well.. the beer came, but later, after the tournament.

Now back to the game, it's not really socker, nor handball or rugby.. but it has a little of everything. Struggling, pushing, cursing, hitting the ball and occasionally intentionally the adversary you're passing the ball in the net or over the gate and you score.

And no, this not Australian Football, so don't hit your adversaries in the face, or.. not too obvious. And in plus this football is pretty popular not only trough high testeron male reunions.

I bike CPH

2009-09-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy of Elisabeth Plank

text by Adrian Iacomi

I bike CPH, you bike CPH, we all bike in Copenhagen, because here this is the verb to conjugate at the present as simple as possible tense. If I were to describe my adoptive city with one single one word (except the beer), that is bike. Bike to work, bike to school, bike to the beach, bike in the sun (this one not to often), bike.. In the rain, to the pub, crawling on two wheels back from the pub, to your fist date, to the airport to pick up your lady, to take the kids to kindergarden and back from high school and so on.

In Copenhagen, BIKE is the word. Which even if you don’t like in the beginning, you’ll have to endure it or get used to it. To put it in different way ... if you’re danish and you don’t have a bike you’re weird, or well.. filthy rich so you can afford using the public transportation.

As a foreigner you will be struck by the number of bikes in circulation all over the place. And if you’re still used to the urban biking concept and you’re coming from Berlin or even better .. Amsterdam, you’ll find an awkward over-organized bike road system, and.. Yes.. When people are raising their hand it doesn’t mean they’re friendly or that they want to wave. No No No ... and don’t laugh.. They just signal that they want to stop :).
Probably this is the most striking difference between CPH and the other Top 10 biking cities => in Copenhagen people obey the driving rules and are very peaceful bike drivers, even if they definitely lack some genuine skills, but in their own special way they survive by obeying in a almost boring way the rules. And if you see a danish blonde tall girl just crossing on the red light, she’s dutch.

Still what makes people use the bikes? I mean it’s raining almost all the year, it’s pretty cold and mostly windy. If you’re biking in the city or to one of the secret beaches, you’ll notice that this is the famous (for sailors at least) Baltic sea wind. Which as any demon wind will most likely blow in your face, and buy no means from behind.
So, for now there are not too many reasons to bike around here.
But let’s look deeper into this subject:
Car taxes.. Yes.. These are HUGE, so for the money you’re buying in Germany a new Passat, here you’ll get a forth hand Polo with no genuine leather. And the parking costs a lot, and the gas.. and you got the picture. You’re not very encouraged to get a car around here.
Second reason, and a very painful one, it’s the price of public transport, which is a type of luxury. As in Denmark you have buy far the most expensive public transport from all UE.
Not so many cool reasons to bike until now :(

But, there are a lot of people that are having cars and still they bike, and well .. This is the main reason.. Biking is cool :) yes it is, danes love to bike, it’s healthy and there are plenty of nice bike roads around here. So you’ll start to ride to kindergarden in the seat of your mother’s bike.. and soon you’ll be on your way to work wearing a loose tie and the cute slim MacBook on your back. And yes.. You’ll love it, or at least I do :).
Don’t be afraid of flat tires, rain, cold and the bloody wind ... These will just make you enjoy more all the other days ;)

This what I think and feel about biking in CPH after one year of using the bike almost daily, despite the friendly weather, as friendly as huge noisy fly, blown of course in your face by the warm and cosy wind ;)

romanian version on portocalamecanica.ro

The cycle

2009-09-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

The birth

The search

The friendship

The love

The fall

photos by Adrian Iacomi

show by cOLÉOMuR in Copenhagen

Chasing the dragons

2009-09-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

The red dragonfly -
In some way or another
He likes the evening too.

haiku by Issa

If you have few hours in the Danube Delta, what can be better than to chase after huge dragonflies?

Stillness of a pond.
Dragonfly leaves lily pad.
To become the Dragon

haiku by Marc Andersen

In Japan dragonflies symbolize "martial success," due to similarity in the sound of the word "dragonfly" and "victory" in Japanese.^{[citation needed]} As a seasonal symbol, the dragonfly is associated with late summer and early autumn.^[10]

More generally, in Japan dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in art and literature, especially haiku. In ancient mythology, Japan was known as Akitsushima, which means "Land of the Dragonflies".^{[citation needed]} The love for dragonflies is reflected by the fact that there are traditional names for almost all of the 200 species of dragonflies found in and around Japan.^[11] Japanese children catch large dragonflies as a game, using a hair with a small pebble tied to each end, which they throw into the air. The dragonfly mistakes the pebbles for prey, gets tangled in the hair, and is dragged to the ground by the weight.^[12]

^{(Source: Wikipedia)}
^{photos by Adrian Iacomi}

A rider’s summer dream

2009-09-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

photos by Adrian Iacomi

It’s pretty hot. 35 degrees.. Pfiu.. 40 and raising, cuba libre and a hammock on a secluded beach. You get some pancakes with chocolate and rum, hmm, this is definitely good. And than you get one more beer. It’s a cold one, as it has to be and.. hmm.. cold, that’s a familiar keyword. You start to think and look more careful at the metal can.. suddenly it pops to you! MOUNTAINS.. With snow, yes yes.. That is what is drawn on the can. THIS is what you have forgotten for the past few months. A sweet chilly breeze that just started to sing around you cap makes you think of a soft, creamy blizzard on a Tux peak.

Yup, this was it, this is what you were missing without even knowing for far to long time. :D A huge and satisfied grin starts to crack open on you tanned face. The sea is nice, and so is the turkish coffee, and the cold beer and of course the huge pancakes with chocolate, and.. well.. let’s not forget about the swimming top dropped by a pure and wonderful accident on the towel by your tent-mate. BUT, and this is the big but .. You, and your towel mate were starting to miss something. Now you finally got it.. The winter.

And.. You know.. I’m not talking about Santa Claus, Rudolph, a lot of pork meat, hot wine and the holiday in Egypt for New Years Eve, even if these are by no means bad or to be avoided (except too much pork). I was grinning thinking about snow, pow pow, fresh powder to shred. Come on ;) you know what I’m blabbing about.
Last ride in Tux, stretching the time to get one more descent, one more line before going to the car .. still persist, but I believe it’s time for something new, new fresh memories and snow.

Bzzz bzz.. Bzz.. What the f**. Aham. The wind isn’t blowing anymore. It’s cold just from the air conditioning. I start to get a grip on reality. I’m at work and I’m looking at a long row of grayish glass & steel building filled with overconfident horizontally-challenged people with proud magnetic cards hanging from their necks, and these are not ski-lift cards of course.
No worries, soon it will be 5 and I’ll go home, take a look at For right or wrong, probably I’ll fix some holes in my board done somewhere off-piste in Chamonix, and I’ll adjust my bindings.. This season I would change the angle of my back foot. Should I try a more wide stance to jump better or not, I’ll see.

Tomorrow is Saturday, so I’ll take my DH bike and give it a ride to stretch my back a little. Well, biking is cool, and so is kiteboarding, but I ride, if you get my point, and I’m sure you do :)

The winter is coming back, as does Arnold in Terminator, but hopefully with more style. In New Zeeland is already snowing, so.. just a little more patience is needed. So, forget about pizza and beer, start saving money, cause soon we will ride.

Ps. 1 Now I’m passing over the mountains and I can see some tempting traces of snow on the Alps. There’s not enough to enjoy it, but soon, very soon..
Ps. 2 This was written in mid-august so, the winter is even closer now :D

romanian version on www.snowboard.ro