AWESOME article about CultureSurfer.com

Thanks, Maria!

Riding the TUBE with CULTURE SURFER
Written by Maria Guadalupe Massey
Monday, 02 March 2009

Doing a lot of living in the brain these days, working at home while the two big kids are in school and the toddlers play, I greatly crave my connection to the creativity, excitement and underground connection to the St. Louis Art scene and the thriving international culture. I find through reading calendars, press releases, that I am able to explore the arts of our metro-area vicariously. I help keep the flame of creativity burning bright and stay in touch with creative friends and events through myspace bulletins from friends like Zed Naught, Chris King, the Way Out Club or St. Louis SLAM poetry, announcements from the Eugene B. Redmond Writers' Club or First Civilizations announcements from Ira Jones or e-mails from La Morena or the Angel Heavenly Breeze.

Still with all these wonderful venues for discovering and viewing the fabulousness of the Metro-Area, from the Mississippi Valley to the foothills of the Ozarks, I am so delighted when I discover something on the internet that helps me applaud and enjoy the creative world outside my own little sanctuary, have something wonderful to share and pass on to friends and a way to support it with my cyberspace clicks. So in case, you all haven't already found this wonderful cyberspace hangout, I highly recommend you visit CULTURE SURFER . com with the fabulous videographer Naomi Silver.

Just yesterday having joined her growing number of fans, I was able to prowl the St. Louis multi-cultural art scene and feel a vibrant part of it all. I caught interviews at this years Naughti Gras with artists Rich Brooks and Melissa Schramm while viewing his creation, a multi-color torso & tits bejeweled in glowing lights, and I could sense the vibrant energy of the crowd in the background. I also viewed one of Schramm's photographs of a lovely nude showing only the piercings she'd acquired at ChpTrx; the silver rings ran along her spine on both sides so that with drawstrings they created the effect of a corset on the skin.

Later I visited a Chinese New Year celebration "Dance on Clouds" for the year of the Ox, a fashion show called "The Plastics" from 2008, a Latin fashion show benefitting LA CLINICA, and a glass pull demonstration at 3rd Degree Art Factory. Silver also shared a short film with us by Romanian artist Balanescu "Luna Asleep" choreographed with haunting strings & bells to music by Yann Tiersen, "Amelie". Before my tour of St. Louis was over, I even got to meet Australian graffitti artists who while passing through St. Louis held an art show and had a few moments for a frank exchange with her about grafitti in the suburbs of Melbourne and a concert of sacred music from the Choir of the St. Louis Bosnian Islamic Center of South County, Ferhadija, Harun Mehmedinovic directing.

I know I barely rode the wave with Culture Surfer with these few offerings; as she has an archive of St. Louis footage covering celebrations from all over the metro area going back at least as far as 2007. I highly recommend you look her up on myspace or the web and follow her colorful coverage.

http://www.incitynews.com/wordwitch-/wordwitch-/riding-the-tube-with-culture-surfer-3.html

Why I haven't blogged in a while

Naomi and Charlotte at THE U, UMSL radio station

Why I haven't blogged in a while
Sorry it's been so long since I last blogged. My excuse is that I have been working, working, working on CultureSurfer since the middle of December when I lost my video players. I don't mean "lost" as in "Where did I put my keys?" but rather lost as in my video players that were free were about to cost $500 per month. Yikes! So I spent about 3 weeks doing tons of research looking for a comparable video player. Then, I had to spend two more weeks re-building CultureSurfer. And I'm still not happy with the video players. It turns out you can't embed or link to one specific video. Not cool! So I am considering redesigning the site (but I need free help from a tech person if you know anyone) to re-create CultureSurfer.And I'd like to host my own videos, in order to be free and clear of any video hosting sites. Those people irk me. And of course, we've been filming. A lot. So we're slowing it down a bit so I can deal with umpteen tech issues that I would like to resolve and I am busy working on a business plan. Ok, end of whining.

UMSL radio interview
I finally got some local media coverage!!! Charlotte gave me a great interview at the University of Missouri's radio station, The U, last Monday. We spent an hour talking about CultureSurfer, player a few of the videos, and chatting about the incredible talent we have here in St. Louis. I'll try to make the sound file available on CultureSurfer when I get a copy of it.

So in short, I will try to blog more. I'll try to give you more regular updates on how the site is going & what cool stuff we'll be filming in the future.

Additions/changes to the site
I've added both articles and movie reviews? Why? The site just seemed too image-heavy and that's not cool where Google is concerned. Google likes text to crawl in order to increase a site's visibility for people searching. Also, I personally love to write movie reviews since I watch 1-2 movies per week (that's my escape from reality), and I thought it would be nice for people to contribute articles on all of the various topics I cover. You'll be seeing articles from contributers soon. You're may also be noticing more photo galleries on the site because I've asked St. Louis galleries to send me pics of their openings.

I moved the cycling videos to their own site, STLbikegeek.com.

What we'll be filming next
To start with, there are so many art openings that I can't even believe it. So I'm sure in the next few weeks, we'll be filming one or two. But the big deal for March is Saint Louis Fashion Week. Jeff and I will be there along with Dan, our photographer, and a contributor who will be writing about some of the fashion. I can't wait to see what creations the various designers have come up with recently.

CultureSurfer.com will live to see another day

Ok, so it's a bit late to be announcing videos that went online a few days ago, but better late than never. All of the following videos can be found here for the next few days. After that, you can find them on the appropriate pages of the site.
Enjoy! Naomi

FOR THE BIKE GEEKS
Bubba in the Dark-Parts 1-2-Even if you aren't into cycling, you might be into these videos. Cyclocross alone is a pretty funky version of cycling because there is none of that riding around in circles (or in a rectangle as is usually the case) like in road racing. These guys (and gals) have to be strong enough to ride like crazy through sand and pick up their bikes to get over obstacles & run up stairs with them. I have yet to see cyclocross myself & can't wait to finally check out this more wild side of cycling. Dan Elavsky shot these cool videos. Oh yea, and these cyclists are crazy enough to do this annual event in the dark in the middle of winter!

Bubba at Creve Coeur Lake-More rough and tough cyclocross, but during the daytime.

Stage 7 Race-The final day of the 2008 Tour of Missouri. By the way, the Tour of Georgia is no more, so that upgrades the status of the Tour of Missouri. Hoping that even with the current economic climate that is definitely having a detrimental effect on the world of cycling, that the Tour of Missouri continues for many years. The 2009 Tour of Missouri is already being planned & we will be filming it.

Bike Surgery-Watch Jeff & his friend, Quinn, re-assemble Jeff's bike after the untimely demise of his bike frame. Do NOT try this at home (especially the part where Quinn saws towards his hand instead of way from it-lol).

FOR THE ART FIENDS
Danielle Corelle & Deanna Chafin-These two ladies have not only been some of the most supportive art community members when it comes to CultureSurfer.com, but they also do a tremendous amount for the art community. Check out their interviews at the gory Jack's Show (these are the final Jack's show interviews).

FOR THE FASHIONISTAS
Latin Fashion Show-Parts 1-2-El Mundo Latino is one of our local Hispanic newspapers & they decided to help out the local, free Hispanic clinic, La Clinica, with a benefit fashion show. What's amazing about this fashion show is that all of the clothes are from Goodwill. Very cool and very green.

The end of CultureSurfer.com?

As all of you know, I've been struggling with the site for 14 months now. The additional stress of Brightcove pulling their free players as of December 17th has made a stressful situation unbearable.

I began this project as a way to work for myself, to express myself, to create something to contribute to the world. But it has turned into a nightmare. Although I have received encouragement from my friends at Opera (and am very grateful for this) as well as bits & pieces of support elsewhere, I have received virtually no encouragement here in St. Louis, the city that I promote on the site. Nor have I been able to find an investor willing to sustain the site. Numerous attempts at obtaining grants have also failed.

I have spent the past month researching new videos players, thought I had found one, but now cannot use that one due to the lack of comprehensible instructions on the site & lack of timely customer service. I also tried a slightly more advanced version of the software I use to build a new and improved site but that has also turned into a fiasco because it's too advanced for me to understand. And I can't find any information online or in a book to help me understand.

Even if I could overcome all of these technological obstacles I have to ask myself, why create something like this if I receive so little in return? Why should I work this hard & not be rewarded financially? Moreover, I have a creative mind, not a business mind. Without a business partner, I don't see the site making any money for me.

Everyone knows me as a very, very persistent person. But this has come to the point where it is doing real damage to me, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I believe there I have crossed the line from persistence into stupidity. Nothing, not ambition, nor the need to create, nor the desire for recognition, is worth the cost that I have now paid.

I still have not made my final decision, but I am leaning in the direction of letting go of the site. I would rather overcome the disappointment and shame of failure than continue to work in vain like this. After all, if I am not happy, then what's the point?

Escape from your relatives with CultureSurfer.com

Painting by Eric Albers.

ART
Eric Albers-Eric's creations look like something out of Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas." This guy is seriously talented & seriously humble. I LOVE his work!

Glass Pull-This is totally cool. Watch glass artists compete in a contest to see who can pull liquid glass the longest distance without breaking it.

FASHION/BEAUTY
The Dillard's Show-Part 3-More cool fashion trends for Fall.

Navan-Learn about this vanilla liqueur at the PrettyCity.com event held at Mandarin Lounge.

MUSIC
Dare For Distance-By the adorable Never Shout Never at the 2nd annual PlaySTL Indie music festival. How can you resist this kid?

CYCLING
Richard England-The Team Bissell rider talks about his final race with Team Bissell.

Attempting to Return to Sanity

It's been an interesting past two weeks here at CultureSurfer.com HQ. Since Brightcove announced that they are no longer going to provide my video players for free, I've been searching and searching all over the internet for a good replacement. The players now cost a mininum of $6,000 per year. Yikes!

Life as a web mistress has been just a bit stressful. I've come up with two possible solutions, neither of which is ideal. Bliptv.com is the easiest solution, but that would mean visitors would no longer be able to link to the videos on my site. But the upside of Bliptv is that they will host all of my videos & I'll have stats on how many times each video has been watched.

The other possibility is to embed my very own players in the site. The best one I've found so far is from WebStunning.com. It's a pretty cool player, but I am not sure if I will get stats on it & there is no way to add descriptions or tags to the videos. This leads to the question of how searchable the videos would be by search engines, which I absolutely need.

I seem to be stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

And both of these players entail yet another (OMG!!!!!)site redesign. Yup. that's gonna be something like number 8 (I have to check) in 14 months. Here's why: I can't find a good player that I like which has channels on it. I will have to create a separate player for each channel on the site. We're talking something like 50 players.

Fun times ahead. But one very good piece of news. We should have about 10,000 visitors on the site this month. w00t!

New CultureSurfer videos for November 17, 2008

"Insight" by St. Louis artist Liz Steltzer

FASHION & BEAUTY
http://culturesurfer.com/Fashion.htm

The Guys-For all of you Dino fans out there(the model with the long hair), here's your chance to meet him.

The Dillard's Show-Part Two

R Bath & Body-Wendy & her husband have launched this business together & their products smell amazing. Seriously!

MUSIC
http://culturesurfer.com/Music.htm
Back Porch byCharlz Newman (combo of two of the band member's names)-This indie band is out of Minneapolis and is seriously good. We filmed them at the PlaySTL fest back in September.

ART
http://culturesurfer.com/Art.htm
Liz Steltzer-Liz is a very talented artist, super cool & smart lady, & she used to play pro softball. This is her interview from last month's Jack The Ripper art show.