Wendy Gilmartin

Google headquarters

See also:
*More tech stories from L.A. Weekly
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.

Since the arrival of Google in Venice last year, westside beach communities like Santa Monica, Playa Vista and others have seen an influx of tech companies, startups, investors and software businesses of all kinds burst into the neighborhood now dubbed "Silicon Beach."

As they scramble to get a piece of what many think will be the next big boomtown, companies are snatching up all the commercial real estate they can find. But this is L.A. and appearances mean everything.

LA Weekly explains what a handful of companies' choices in office buildings -- essentially their outward projection to the world -- says about their style in general.

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Alex Gray

Alex Gray is a wave chaser. The 26-year-old professional surfer is more than comfortable riding some of the world's most consequential waves, coming out of every session with a smile on his face. But what would drive a man to such extremes as paddling into 20-foot barrels and 45-foot behemoths?

He's just trying to relive the elation of any surfer's first ride. Like an addict, it takes more and more for Gray to get that first rush of the initial experience of standing up on a surfboard.

While volunteering at an awareness event for cystic fibrosis last month, Gray helped kids catch their first waves, learning something about himself in the process. "Here are these kids, in inch-deep water, doing this dance like surfing is the greatest thing they've ever done," he says. "Here I am, traveling hundreds of hours on planes and spending all of this money, just to get that first feeling again."

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Lallande

Lakey Peterson, 17, tastes the glory.

Over the past nine days, hundreds of thousands of fans, more than 100 professional surfer and dozens of pro skateboarders descended upon Huntington Beach for the Nike U.S. Open of Surfing, an unapologetic ode to Southern California culture complete with plenty of sun, skin and sex appeal. Equal parts raw athleticism and populist beach festival, surfing's biggest contest of the year saw a sea of bikini-clad girls soaking up the sun, posses of preteens with hormones gone wild and a mix of families, media and more packed along the sand where bleachers, tents and retail stands teemed with activity.

"This is the Super Bowl of surfing," said industry veteran Sal Masekela, who has been hosting the event since the late 1990s, and will emcee the Red Bull Signature Series telecast Sept. 15. "If you win the U.S. Open, it's a place where dreams are made.

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Nanette Gonzales

Matt Shubin demonstrates the art of the paddle.

As a kid growing up in Malibu, Christian Shubin eschewed the surf industry and all it stood for: commodifying something pure, selling it to the masses and giving everyone a little "slice of paradise."

"It's part of the selfishness of surfing," he says. "You want to be the only good surfer, or the only person enjoying the waves, and you see it's being sold to everyone else, and it waters it down."

Decades later, Shubin's perspective has changed. As co-owner of Poseidon Stand-Up Paddleboards in Santa Monica, the 37-year-old has not only embraced the idea of selling his passion but also has become one of Los Angeles' greatest proponents of stand-up paddling, or "SUP," in industry parlance.

Developed by pro surfer Laird Hamilton as an exercise alternative when the surf is flat, SUP is essentially a hybrid of surfing and kayaking: Participants stand on a large, stable board and propel themselves across the water with a long paddle.

While Hamilton began experimenting with SUP almost a decade ago, the sport's popularity in the past two years has skyrocketed worldwide, exploding with new enthusiasts, new genres -- from SUP yoga to SUP adventure tours -- and a free-for-all of new businesses elbowing their way into the ocean.

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© Eugenia P. Butler Estate

Eugenia Bulter Jr. showed Electric Cord Piece (1967) at her mother's gallery

The best art this week is all in Hollywood, where major-leaguers look like superheroes and an eccentric 1960s gallerist makes a thrilling comeback.

5. Sunglass art
Artist Alex Israel, who makes surreal installations out of Hollywood props, also designs sunglasses for his L.A.-centric brand Freeways Eyewear (John Baldessari's quote "I will not look at any more boring art" is on a new pair). Israel's new Abbot Kinney mural isn't a sunglass ad but, intentionally, it has that crisp, seductive feeling of a beachside advertisement minus a brand name. Will you be able to spot it as art? And does it matter if you can't? 1212-C Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice; up indefinitely. (310) 426-8040, vsf.la.

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Flickr/Mats Haugen

Kiss your whites goodbye -- Labor Day is nearly upon us. To some of you, that means the end of summer; to others, the beginning of Indian summer. Either way, it's time to reflect on the calendar months traditionally associated with sunshine. To that end, most of you will spend the weekend drowning in beer and barbecue sauce, but for a waistline-friendly alternative that will leave you not so sad about the passage of time, here are 10 annoying things about summer in L.A...

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Rendering courtesy the City of Santa Monica.

The setup at each bathroom is unique, with the intention of creating a welcoming place.

Crowded in your bathroom in the morning? Can't get your girl outta the shower? Try sharing sink time with millions -- and you've got the setup at the City of Santa Monica public beach bathrooms.

With high user numbers and harsh-on-materials weather conditions such as the coastal environment's wind and salt, it's no wonder that durability was the key word when it came to designing eight new beach bathrooms, which began to open in the area at the end of July.

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