Comment: I took a break from crocheting baby booties on the veranda to strap on the spats for some creative adventure deep in the wilds of the West Oakland art frontier-- the grand opening of LoBot (Lower Bottom) Gallery. Word-of-mouth was key, and lots of it, because the spartan largish warehouse space was packed, 8 bucks to get in, parking was at a premium, and the music hadn't even started yet. The anticipatory buzz and impending excitement reminded me of my swashbuckling roustabout scoundrel days, drifting from town to town, juke joint to juke joint, punchin' cattle, working the rigs, bedding down bar babes, and eating too much strudel. But enough about my postdoctoral thesis.

The art was decent for the most part, reasonably priced; young talents, perhaps some future prime-timers in the making. Several pieces caught my eye including a rustmobile painting, a recycled wood checkerboard, a couple of crassly colorful mixed media wall sculptures, and a pizza-with-everything flying machine suspended in the middle of the floor. I'm not sure what LoBot's hours are or what the rest of the neighborhood's like, but there appears to be some good stuff going on in this edge-of-civilization ecosystem, primed for artistic reconfiguration.