Come one, come all to our 2nd ever Awesome Foundation Los Angeles party to celebrate our new grant recipient, Jail Door Guitars! We definitely had a lot of fun last time (incriminating pics here). Details about the Fresh Bruises party can be found here and make sure you RSVP here. The $5 cover goes straight to the bands performing and will get you in for an open bar all night long! The fun night is hosted by our friends at Family Industries and sponsored by Brand X, Indigenous, and FILTER magazine. In addition to a ton of awesome live bands playing (Tape Deck Mountain, Handshakes), there will be live screenprinting, an art gallery, Grill Em All food truck, AND (everyone’s favorite) a hosted bar with drinks all night long from PBR, Red Bull, Alexander Valley Vineyards, and Jarritos! We love seeing ya’ll out there so please join us for this awesome event!

Drumroll please…Awesome LA has decided to award our 2nd grant to Jail Guitar Doors! Jail Guitar Doors USA is a non-profit that believes in providing new solutions for prisoner rehabilitation. They provide musical instruments, public concerts, and outreach programs to inspire hope and creativity in prisoners who have taken an oath of non-violence. In just 18 months, they have delivered over 30 guitars and various amps into 6 different prisons in California, Texas and New York state! Here’s how it all began (according to the Jail Guitar Doors website): In 1978, The Clash released the song, “Jail Guitar Doors.” The song tells the story of the imprisonment of their fellow musician Wayne Kramer. In 2007, to honor the life of Clash founder, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg launches an initiative in England to provide musical equipment used to rehabilitate inmates serving time in Her Majesty’s Prisons in the United Kingdom. His initiative is named for that very same song, “Jail Guitar Doors.” In 2009, Wayne Kramer partners with Billy Bragg to found Jail Guitar Doors USA. Together, their combined effort continues the mission for prisoners in America. The circle is unbroken. This Awesome grant will go towards their next visit to the… read more →

Turns out there’s a lot of awesome in LA. And after wading through dozens of applications, the Awesome Foundation Los Angeles is awarding it’s first 1K Awesome Grant to Dave Green, creator of Mystery Trip LA!! What’s Mystery Trip LA? Let Dave (he’s the third from the right) tell you! Mystery Trip started out as a summer camp tradition.  Whereas we usually knew where we were going before getting on a bus for a trip, one day a summer, we headed out and had no idea the destination until we got there.  Sometimes it was to a dinner theater, a disco or even roller skating.  It was always fun, even if a bit corny, because we were with friends.  Years later, it has morphed into a unique event that takes Mysterions all over Los Angeles to experience the fun, unique and quirky people, places and events in our city. Mystery Trip is meant to bring you and your guests back to a more innocent time where you could put their faith into someone else’s hands and trust you were going to have a good time. Dave’s LA Mystery Trips started out as a goof for his friends, bussing them around… read more →

Are you in SoCal with an awesome idea and need a $1,000 to make it happen? The fresh-out-of-the-oven LA chapter of the Awesome Foundation is here to help! We are a group of awesome-loving Angelinos who, once a month, will each put $100 in a brown paper bag and give the collective $1,000 to someone doing something awesome. For real. No strings attached. Your idea/project/passion can be creative, important, ridiculous, or rad – or all four – just as long as: it’s awesome. it’s local (OK, local-ish. OK, just somehow connected to LA). it’s at the tipping point, and could really use a thousand bucks to push it over the edge to reality. The first deadline is November 15 — fill out the supersimple Awesome Grant application, and read more about the origin of the Awesome Foundation. And follow us here and here. This is it, Los Angeles. We’re on the roof projecting our Awesome signal into the night sky. We just hope Awesome sees it…