BlackBook

Blind Barber (Culver City) - A shave, a cocktail, and a grilled cheese.

Odd Future: 1, Protesters: 0

Careful what you wish for.

There are still some days at this job where everything feels surreal, not yet normalized or rendered unremarkable by me doing it. Tuesday was one of those days, when I shot the Hysteric Glamour campaign with Ellen Von Unwerth. For those of you who don’t know (I didn’t, my mom did), Hysteric Glamour is a Japanese streetwear line. My day began thusly: Jonathan, a camera and production assistant with a taste for experimental films, picked me and the other model, Sophie, up in the city to take us to the Clinton Diner in Queens, home of the famous diner scene in Goodfellas. We arrived to a big production. There was an RV in the parking lot, which housed a delicious breakfast, beverages, plus all the Hysteric Glamour clothes and everyone’s personal belongings. Inside the diner, three adorable children were getting their hair and makeup done, as they were shooting the campaign for the kids' line. Since they were feigning a birthday party, the restaurant was replete with appropriate props: oversized ice-cream cones and burgers, a piñata, bags of candy, birthday cake--I should have been a child model! I mean, we do get some great catered meals, but these kids walked away with a candy loot comparable only to Halloween.

The best of the fest, in picture form.

● Beauty Bar (Ukranian Village) - NYC beauty shop/cocktail lounge makes its way to the Windy City.

It's just about that time in Texas when mad amounts of people invade for the annual music and film conference known as SXSW. For those unfamiliar, it's a week-long party consisting mostly of music and booze and then more music and then some more booze. Should you find yourself here, which I highly recommend even if you don't have a badge, here are some places I would hit up.

One thing I love about Los Angeles is that everyone comes here, and I don't have to go anywhere -- they come to me. Case in point: Joey Arias, the drag diva who first made a splash in New York's underground drag scene and then went on to infamy at Cirque du Soleil's sexytime Zumanity in Las Vegas, is here in town. I can go see him without jumping on a 3,000-mile (or 250-mile) flight for the next few weeks, in "Arias with a Twist." The name stems from the collaboration with Basil Twist, a puppeteer who conjured the fantastical set that Mr. Arias performs on.

Here at BlackBook, we pay a lot of attention to where cool customers go out -- bars, clubs, restaurants, shops, hotels, you name it. So why not flip the frame and let you see where we go out? Here's a periodically updated, exhaustive list of hotspots currently favored by everyone at BlackBook, from the mighty bosses down to the humble interns, from the charming local lounges around the corner to the jet-setting temples of luxe living.

After escaping unscathed from a Midwestern car crash, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead is back on the road (bus engine and trailer repaired), heading home to Austin to play SXSW (March 21 at Emo's). As festival veterans and Austinites, Trail of Dead is in the position to give rookies and tourists advice on where to eat, what to do, and how to survive the orgy. While en route to the Echoplex in Los Angeles, Jason Reece took a few minutes to discuss which bands he plans to decapitate and the charm of a gun-crazed, pig-blood-covered, PCP-fueled last stand at SXSW.