Eva Recinos

See also:
*Top 10 Weirdest Stores in L.A.
*10 Best Vintage and Second-Hand Boutiques in L.A.

Do you ever sit at home wondering where you can find a set of Shepard Fairey-designed playing cards for your next poker tournament? Or maybe what store carries those 24-karat gold Karl Springer chairs you ache to add to your dining table?

Well, it seems the folks at Hammer and Spear somehow heard your crazed mumbling. Power couple Scott Jarrell and Kristan Cunningham -- you might recognize the latter from HGTV's Design on a Dime -- bring their flair for design to a new store downtown that offers all sorts of unique objects.

The store's interior looks like something out of the pages of Dwell magazine; expect to spend a good amount of time just roaming the many sections and finding little treasures in every square inch.

Hammer and Spear opened to the public March 15 and the surrounding neighborhood gave it a warm reception. "We're still racing around and remerchandising since selling quite a bit of product in the first few days, but it's a great problem to have, and we're grateful for it," says Cunningham.

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Distinctive Assets

The goodies in the gift bag for the "losers"

Each golden Oscar statuette costs about $500 to make, although of course its monetary value ends up being more than that. But for those nominees who don't get that particular golden ticket, Los Angeles-based marketing firm Distinctive Assets will give them something pleasant to wake up to -- a swag bag worth $45,000 will be waiting on their doorsteps Monday morning. (This is in addition, of course, to the scores of "gifting suites" that take place in fancy hotels in the days before the Oscar ceremony, in which celebrities -- or their handlers -- can pick up thousands of dollars worth of free goodies...just because.)

"This is designed to be the ultimate consolation prize for those who don't go home with an Oscar Sunday night," says Lash Fary, founder and president of Distinctive, which has been crafting the "Everyone Wins" gift bag for 11 years. Twenty nominees (the four losing nominees in the best actor/actress, supporting actor/actress and director categories), plus the host of the show, will receive the goodies (sorry, sound mixers).

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Liz Ohanesian

See also:
*Clockwork Couture, L.A.'s Premiere Steampunk Fashion Spot

You've reached the holiday shopping homestretch, but there's one final gift that's driving you mad. Maybe it's for your sibling, or the co-worker whose name you pulled in Secret Santa. Regardless, it's for someone whose known interests include listening to Bauhaus, reading Neil Gaiman and swooning across the dance floor. You're looking for the holiday goth gift.

Don't worry, picking up something special for the goth in your life isn't quite the intimidating task you might think it is. Below, I've compiled a list of stores in and around L.A. that cater to darker tastes. As a bonus, all of these stores are located far from the city's malls, so you can shop without the mob of procrastinators.

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Brandon Roosa

Canvassing LA

See also:
*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Our Best of L.A. issue and our Best of L.A. app

What do you get someone who has everything: a beautiful home, great food and legal marijuana? From endless gift certificates to countless books and DVDs, there's no shortage of things to buy that special someone who lives and/or loves the City of Angels, even if that person is, well, you. In fact, it can all get a little overwhelming.

So instead of turtle doves, French hens and a partridge in a pear tree, we've compiled a wish list of 12 items people can actually use -- just in case the ladies dancing and maids a-milking have a casting call.

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Tanja M. Laden

Fraggle Rock

When she was 12 years old, Beth Barrial had a life-changing experience in a park after dark with some friends.

"A scent passed me by that sparked a strange, unfocused memory from early childhood," she describes. "I had a sudden recollection of one perfect moment of joy and complete freedom, unfettered by worry, responsibility or care, and it was truly a moment of contact with the sublime."

Not unlike in Marcel Proust's famously extended account of eating a madeleine and drinking some tea in his early-20th century work Remembrances of Things Past, Barrial realized that the scent is what triggered her memory, so she immediately became enamored with the sense itself: "I pursued my interests in fragrance the old-fashioned way -- through apprenticeship. I had no intentions of turning my interest in perfumery into a career. It was something I loved, and something I wanted to learn and experience for the sake of that love."

But she has turned it into a career. Together with her brother Brian Constantine, Barrial started Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in 2000 in the back room of her then-boyfriend Ted's Echo Park apartment. That boyfriend is now her husband, who's since launched Black Phoenix Trading Post, which deals in dry goods, beauty products and other stuff related to the fragrance line. Together, the trio still runs a family-owned business that specializes in making one-of-a-kind products inspired by specific memories, pop-culture icons and a wide variety of other unusual sources.

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Courtesy of Blu Homes, John Swain Photography

Blu Home exterior

Could prefab be making a comeback?

Prefab, or prefabricated buildings, are typically manufactured in component parts, typically in a factory, then shipped and installed on-site. Pre-housing bust several developers specializing in prefab lauched in SoCal, including Marmol Radziner and LivingHomes, delivering mass-produced modern homes. These homes, while having a high design quotient, were often not much cheaper than a custom-designed home on a per square footage basis. Enter Blu Homes: the latest entrant into the prefab space focused on sustainable solutions aiming to provide affordable housing.

One of the earliest prefab innovators marrying architecture and manufacturing was Michelle Kaufmann, who launched her eponymous architecture firm in 2002 in the Bay Area specializing in green homes that used modular, prefab technology. While her firm closed in 2009 due to the tanking housing economy (she later opened a new design firm), she sold several of her designs to Blu Homes. This past weekend, the first Blu Home in SoCal, set against the alien-esque desert backdrop of Joshua Tree, was open to the public for a tour.

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Phil Chang, Scan of Kodabrome & Photograph of Laser Prints, 2011; courtesy of the artist and Pepin Moore, Los Angeles

Holiday art doesn't have to be snowy.

Art. The greatest gift of all. Forget those cheese 'n sausage gift baskets, and get your loved ones something that won't rot their guts, like limited edition prints.

And besides, art is good for you. I'm sure some scientist somewhere is even now discovering the health benefits of a daily dose of it. Check out these upcoming art fairs, shows and auctions to get some quality work for your loved ones (including yourself) this holiday season.

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