According to this field mouse, the wait is over for the previously announced holiday party we’re throwing at MooShoes Los Angeles with Spork Foods + PETA.

We’ll have complimentary drinks, snacks, deals on holiday shopping, and an awesome DJ, so come on out and party with us tonight 6-9PM, MooShoes LA—3116 Sunset in Silver Lake. See you there!

I’ll be the first to admit—most days, I’m much more a coffee person than a matcha tea person. But, like being a cat person or a dog person, preferring one doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the other. I look to coffee most mornings to help those synapses along in the whole firing + functioning thing, but there’s nothing like a soothing, gentle cup of warm tea when you’re looking for that cozy unwind on a chilly evening or sitting out on your porch taking in the slow, early morning awakening of the rest of the world and not quite looking for the shock-to-life coffee often gives.

So, tea, for me, is more of a luxury; something I don’t have often but, when I do, something that I truly appreciate in a way I don’t think I would if it were everyday for me.

One interesting tea company we discovered early this year and revived some excitement in tea for us is Adventure Tea, who pairs a uniquely captivating product with an organically storied backdrop and wonderful hand-done packaging artwork. As they put it:

“We spent most of our lives seeking awesome experiences to offset the awful experience of our 8-6 jobs (whatever happened to 9-5, anyway?)…. Finally, it hit us: the glowing computer screens, tightly clenched steering wheels and rampant aspirin abuse were the polar opposite of what we wanted our lives to be. We wanted to explore, to create, to seek what the modern world insists is a child’s fantasy.

Just as adventure is created through exploration, memories are built at the dinner table. Our best experiences centered on the joy of sharing food and drink with other people, whether they hail from next door or across the planet. We wanted to create something that could unite people from around the globe in their innate desire to experience the exotic, and tea was the obvious choice. For millennia tea has been the favorite drink of emperors and explorers, poets and farmers; it is the culinary common denominator that all of humanity has always agreed upon. Tea has started revolutions, catalyzed the exploration of the deepest corners of the globe, made and lost massive fortunes, and inspired some of the world’s greatest minds. Perhaps we love tea because when we drink it we can sense the thousands of years of cultural, geographic, and historical identity condensed into each leaf. Or maybe it just tastes good. Fueled by a few dozen cups of Guayusa, we ditched our dead-end jobs and launched Adventure Tea out of a 700 square-foot bungalow in West Los Angeles. Our mission: to bring the exotic to your tea cup, spark a little adventure in your life, and resurrect the identity of a beverage dominated for too long by passionless mega-corporations.”

Again, I’m no expert on tea—at all, really—but the teas we’ve had from Adventure Tea really do seem to tell a story all on their own when you take the time to step away from the hectic nature of your daily life and listen. Along with tasting notes, each tea comes with a backstory as to how the company founders discovered the tea and what makes it special for them.

They also come packed in these lovely little wooden boxes with sliding lids and really well-done handmade artwork specific to each locale (done by the wife of the the husband-and-wife founders we’re told).

Plus you can hide your weed in the used up boxes. Obviously.

So, next time life’s giving you the run-around, as it does us all, and you’re ready to scream, step away, assure yourself that this seemingly insurmountable problem will be there when you get back, and take some time to brew up + enjoy some tea, says this coffee-drinker. My bet is that things will look a little more surmountable when you take a second look.

A few of hundreds, at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits—cooler than you’d think.

Be sure to check out the jungle courtyard in the center of the building if you visit.

Just came across this shot from a photo shoot we did for MooShoes in south Brooklyn way  back in 2008 and it struck me, both in terms of how long ago that now is and how great the light is in these shots.

The light falls so differently on the wets coast than it does in the east, I’ve found. This cool, winter light makes me miss New York and the east coast a little bit.

That winter coat…makes me not miss it so much.

No idea who made that bag or which shoes those are—maybe Neuaura?

Anyway, consider this out Throwback Thursday.

We worked up this illustration—based off of the wallpaper we did for MooShoes Los Angeles—and the poster below for the just announced holiday party we’re holding at the store in partnership with LA-based gourmet food company, Spork Foods.

Owned and operated by sisters Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg, Spork Foods offers organic vegan cooking classes, in-home healthy eating consultations, private cooking parties, corporate trainings and demos, team-building cooking classes, and more. Plus, they’re both super-nice, genuinely talented people to boot.

In addition to a night of in-store holiday discounts and a seasonally inspired menu from Spork, we’ll also have complimentary sparkling lime rosé from Pampelonne, complimentary snacks from Setton Farms, merchandise for sale from our friends at PETA, and excellent tunes from our in-store DJ.

So mark you calendar now, LA—Friday, Dec12, 6-9PM.

Don’t forget to vote today!

If you, like me, happen to be coming off of some hectic months and are just now figuring out both where you need to go to vote AND how you’ll be voting, I highly recommend referencing Planned Parenthood’s voting guide, which is very well designed and, probably more importantly, attempting to help guide us all into making up for hundreds of years of government-sanctioned, institutional misogyny.

It’s especially handy on things like Proposition 46 in California, which is described as follows on the ballot:
“Should California require random drug testing of doctors, require doctors to check a statewide database before prescribing certain drugs, and raise the cap on noneconomic damages in medical negligence lawsuits?”

To which Planned Parenthood responds:
“Because Prop 46 would reduce access to reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood urges a NO vote. The proposition will negatively impact access to OB/GYNs, who may have to reduce services because of increased insurance costs, particularly impacting rural and low-income Californians.”

Nice tidbit of information there.

So don’t get discouraged fellow last-minnute political-crammers, just get help. We can do this.

Also, don’t vote for this guy.

May you all enjoy a very ghoul’d evening tonight and, should you have party plans, we hope they go off without a Hitch(cock).

…puns were never our strong suit, but wishing you all a very happy Halloween! Get spooky, ya’ll!

Saturday night, Katie + I attended KCRW‘s sixth annual Masquerade ball.

We’d never been before, so we didn’t really know what to expect, but we have to say—It. Was. Awesome.

The local public radio station took over the first two floors of the Legendary Park Plaza Hotel (we’re not sure why, but you’re required to call it ‘legendary’ in each and every instance), with DJs and live bands performing in five different ballrooms, roaming marching bands, Elizabethan stilt-walkers, pretty great food trucks in a back lot, and countless top-notch costumes among the night’s guests.

One thing we took note of moving from New York to Los Angeles was the striking difference between the two cities’ prominent public radio stations, WNYC + KCRW. In New York, it’s all Leonard Lopate and Brain Lehrer and Terry Gross and news headlines and politics, all of which we love, but it’s not exactly entertaining all the time. They even took their one music-oriented show—Soundcheck—off the air a couple years back, making Web-aceess only.

KCRW, however, is grounded in a culture of cool, basing nearly all of its programming on music+ entertainment. Draw whatever conclusions you want about those differences and what it means about New Yorkers and Angelenos, but we’ll give you one certainty from our view—they can plan a fucking party in LA. So make your plans for next year now—KCRW’s Masquerade is a must.

Above, our Hitchcock-inspired Birds costumes. If you get a chance, head over to Facebook and give us a like. We could win a costume contest!

Earlier today, NASA did something to up their cool factor in this age of underfunding and zero moon-walking—they opened up their sound archive to the public, copyright-free.

Yes, this means being able to listen to and, say, include vintage ‘one small step’ samples to your next spoken word piece. Cooler yet though—chorus radio waves from the Earth’s atmosphere, beeping Sputniks, stardust from comets, sounds from the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, and lightning on Jupiter.

Oh, and this, which I seriously do not understand. Is it space-centric Christian rock? No idea.

Give some of it a listen below. You can browse the massive full catalog of sounds on NASA’s sound cloud page.

Back, say, seven or so years ago, Katie + I moved from the Park Slope apartment we called our first New York home down to the upper borders of Sunset Park. Lovely apartment but, sadly, not the nicest neighborhood, especially coming from tree-filled, idyllic Park Slope, a neighborhood now often associated with the yup-most yuppie living. We stayed in that new apartment for not even a year before moving up to Carroll Gardens, where we remained until picking up shop and moving west. Sunset Park was, overall, not a great move, but the location had its benefits too, among them, single-handedly turning our private backyard gravel lot into a raised-bed garden, gaining a sun-filled back office that allowed us to grow our design business, and meeting one Mr. David Goldman, photographer extraordinaire and our upstairs neighbor at the time.

Though it’s been years since we’ve all been neighbors, we all remain friends to this day and stay in close contact with David. After an admirable career in music-related photography, David has shifted over the past years to more humanitarian-driven documentary subjects, working with the UN and others to show the work being done to aid those in need in other countries and, more generally, to tell stories of other cultures halfway around the world.

Recently, David announced that he would be raising funds to support a month-long project documenting migrant sugar cane workers in India, traveling “by oxcart with migrant workers from their villages to the factory towns, learning along the way what motivates them and what are the challenges they face both individually and as families.”

We got a chance to talk with friend and gifted photographer, David Goldman, about fundraising for his coming trip, the inspiration behind it, and how he went from rock photographer to true photojournalist.

raven + crow: Okay, first question, friend: Can you tell us—in this day and age of everyone and their mother’s hair stylist hitting people up for money to pursue their new line of jewelry or the cat-themed coffee shop they want to open or their series reinterpreting each and every one of Michael Jackson’s music videos using only magnets and metal shavings—how does your project stand head and shoulders above the rest in such a very, very crowded field?

David Goldman: I suppose I don’t think my project is any more important than anyone else’s. I would hope that if you go through the challenge of asking, begging, pleading for support for a crowdfunded initiative that you fully believe in it. Like all those other people, I believe in what I’m doing. I’ve been lucky enough to do some traveling in my life and with that traveling I’ve realized in living color just how lucky we are to be living in North America. We have the freedom to grow, educate, and thrive with relative freedom. There are those who through no fault of their own face a life of struggle beyond anything that we could comprehend. I do feel we have a moral responsibility to be aware, at the very least, of how others live. If, in our awareness, we can adjust our lives in ways to help others then we are doing something right. I simply want to show how other people live and, in that, hope to create awareness amongst the people who see it. If one person can do something that in turn can affect someones life in a positive way then I will have done my job.

Well-put. So, how did you go from working primarily in the high-glam music photography biz, shooting album covers for Blink-182 and others, to shooting such humanitarian-fueled subjects?

About 10 years ago my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was compelled to help in whatever way I could. Unfortunately, I was living in NY while she was in LA, so I could not be right with her but I created sendyourbest.com. It was a way for people to reach out to her and let her know that she was not alone. Through messages and gifts, my friend felt the love and support of many people both known and unknown to her. She told me many times how all this support really helped her during her treatment. I thought if I could make SYB available to everyone in the world it would be pretty cool. Although SYB did not take off the way I had hoped, it got me thinking about ways as a photographer that I could bring awareness and attention to issues and causes. The next thing I knew, I had an opportunity to go to Ethiopia and do a project about obstetric fistula. I photographed two young women who had both lost their babies to fistula. I found myself helping to get them back to their villages. So, after hiring a driver and an interpreter, we set off on a 1000km drive. It was on this drive that I both shot and filmed a very powerful story. Through that trip to Ethiopia and the images that I created, I was then hired by the UN Trust Fund To End Violence Against Women.

Tell us about the work you did through that trust fund. What were you covering for them?

I was hired to show how the UN’s money was being used by four organizations they supported. I covered a story on dowery related violence in Delhi, then on to Sex worker issues in the Karnataka region, then it was off to do a story on Adivasi (indigenous) people. From there I traveled to Dhaka, Bangladesh to do a story on migrant workers.

What was that like, being immersed in those worlds that are so culturally foreign to our western world?

It is hard to describe to someone who has never been in that environment but you see many many injustices. Sometimes I would find myself getting upset and wanting to almost lash out physically against the men who had so badly mistreated some of the women that I met. Of course, I realize that it’s a systemic problem built into the culture, so beating up some guy would solve nothing and, in fact, he would probably not even understand why it was happening to him.

Yeah, that must have been really difficult + frustrating—seeing what you or I would perceive as individual injustices and not being able to really do anything about them. I know you write on your funding page, “(m)y feeling is that there is more to be accomplished by showing positive and inclusive imagery than divisive and controversial ones which often leave us feeling helpless and depressed.” Do you find that tough to do when you’re covering such unfair, terrible conditions? Do you ever just want to shake people here back west and just be like ‘LOOK at this. Stop what you’re doing and look at the things going on in the world, man’?

I find that a smile goes a long way but you don’t get that smile by just coming into a situation with your cameras out shooting photos like a machine gun. It takes time to build up trust and then to be welcomed into a community. Once you are welcomed you can get on with telling a more full story. If you can tell the full story you will get the positive images of hope. Of course, it does not mean you will not see the tougher images, but making sure that the story is balanced is important to me.

Do you have any favorite stories from that trip for the trust fund or your work in Ethiopia?

When I was able to return one of the girls to her family, the elder of the tribe gave me a live goat as a thank you. That was quite a gift. I understood it to be of great value and, although I had no use for it, I also knew that I must accept it. So we took it and gave it to another family in the village where we spent the night. They cooked that goat in the tent I was sleeping in and in the morning I woke up dizzy and no doubt with some carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ouch. So how did you get turned on to this story of migrant sugarcane workers in India?

While traveling from Bangalore to a small town—after a 24 hour train ride and 2 hour truck ride—on the way to visit the sex workers or the Karnataka health collective, I spotted a tent city on the side of the road in the shadow of a huge factory. This turned out to be where the migrant farmers who worked at the sugarcane factory were living. We stopped for about 20 minutes and I ventured into the area and began to take photos. I shot some portraits and when we continued on our journey up to the sex workers, I was told more about those people. I was fascinated by the efforts they underwent in order to do this work. I felt this would be a story worth telling.

And are you funding your trip entirely through your IndieGoGo page?

My hope is to fully fund it through the IndieGoGo.

So this is all you—no affiliation with the UN or anything on this project?

Correct, this is all me. As a photographer, I feel the need to create and, since I’m always interested in how others live and work, I felt that this would be a great opportunity to push myself both creatively and technically.

Very ambitious of you. Do you have any cool funding prizes for the various levels of support?

For a contribution of 1K, I will give two Skype sessions or, if you are in the Tri-state area, I will come to you for a private photography lesson. For 2K I’ll go anywhere in the US or Canada and for 5K I’ll take your grandmother to prom ( just kidding but there are some cool rewards).

I think you should keep the 5K-grandmother reward. Do you have an outlet in mind that you want to use to get photos out into the world after you return? Gallery show? Book? Broadway show?

My goal is to create a great interactive Web site that shows both motion and stills with written word as well. I’m hoping to talk to Andrew Lloyd Webber about a stage performance for early 2016.

Nice! And are you for real traveling by ox cart?

Yes, I will travel with some migrant farmers as they travel from their villages to the town where the factory is.

How long are you going to be gone for?

I’ll be there for a month.

Wow, that’s really awesome. Is there somewhere we can follow along with you from afar as you go? Instagram? Tumblr or something?

Yes, I’m on social media however, I’m not totally sure as to the internet access I will have. Still, my instagram is dibzy27 and my blog is blog.davidgoldmanphoto.com.

Great. Well, good luck! And thanks for talking with us Mr. Goldman.

Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Crow.

You can read more about David’s coming trip and contribute for the next 9 days, as of writing, on his IndieGoGo page. View more of David’s work on his Web site.

All photos, courtesy the artist.