People who know me know that I grew up in a pretty affluent north Chicago suburb named Highland Park, what a lot of people may not know is that Highland Park and the rest of the North Shore were prominently featured in many of the classic 80's teen movies we all know and love.  From Weird Science to 16 Candles to Ferris Bueller's Day off John Hughes (a North Shore native) prominently featured the north suburban area in his films.  Although he never really mentioned the names of the towns much of the outside filming in his movies was done in Highland Park (Weird Science, Ferris Bueller), Northbrook (The High School in Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, etc.) and Wilmette (Home Alone).  I even have a friend/old co-worker who had a small speaking role in Uncle Buck as the kid in the principal's office when John Candy shows up at his nephew's elementary school. Actually my Cousin's yard of their old house on the corner of St. Johns and Lincoln Ave. W in Highland Park housed trailers during the filming and was visible in Weird Science as Gary and Wyatt are being chased by the cops and go flying over a set of train tracks past their house.

Many would argue what movie in the almost endless series of John Hughes movies was considered to be the best but I find that most people tend to lean on Ferris Bueller's Day Off because of the sheer fantasy of living a day like the one Ferris and Cameron did.  One of the main elements of said fantasy would have to be "stealing" Cameron's fathers Ferrari and cruising the burbs all the way to Chicago while ditching school.  What many people may not know about the movie is that Cameron's house and the famed Glass Case garage actually exist in my home town of Highland Park about a half a mile from my family's house.  Well, that house and it's garage which is built into a Ravine is now on the market.  The two buldings (House and Garage) are made of Steel and Glass and are now for sale for $2,300,000 which is actually a HUGE steal in Highland Park, a town littered with amazing architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright houses) and Sprawling mansions on the lake.

Check it out for yourself on Realtor.com 

I told y'all once the weather broke I'd hit y'all off with a new installment of MUSIC2SKATE2... this time around we trimmed the playlist to only 16 joints, I actually was rocking this playlist skating today as well as playing some 2k and preparing a mixtape cover, so this is just a good overall playlist if you ask me.  Download this, grab your deck and get to movin.

MUSIC2SKATE2vol2 Mixtape Download

This is a compilation I made a few days back when the weather broke and I was able to hop on my board for an extended period of time for the first time this year.  This group of songs is very instrumental heavy with sounds coming from underground super producers MF DOOM, Madlib and Jay Dilla. Of the hip-hop songs with lyrics actually on them my choices were quite schizophrenic. This mix features a dark somber side with music from RZA & The Gravediggaz, Cannibal Ox & KiD CuDi which is balanced with some more lighthearted music from Curren$y, Mos Def & Dom Kennedy.  I also sprinkled in a little Cody Chesnutt for an eccentric R&B flavor which I am sure you'll enjoy. There is NO MIX on this because this was kinda a spur of the moment type deal, and I wasn't gonna bug any of my DJ friends and ask them to mix 71 songs for me. I sequenced this myself though, which was pretty hard due to the amount of tracks, but I gotta say it plays out pretty well considering there is no mix. This is kinda a trial run before I start putting together my 4/20 mixtape which will be titled Reefer Madness. The track listing and download are below the jump

Not much to say about this other than please come out and bring the aforementioned baby supplies. The subject of babies is very dear to the Solemate's family right now seeing as though Brian & Autumn were recently blessed with a baby boy Ari.

If you know me know me, you know I hate TV, but I live(d) and die(d) with the WIRE series on HBO.  Here is an awesome interview with David Simon from Vice Magazine.... 

David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire. If that sounds like hyperbole to you, then you haven’t watched the show yet. It is the most intricate web of character, motivation, insight, action, repercussion, and emotion that’s ever been on TV, and it rivals the grand novels of the late 19th century, when novels actually, regularly, had scope. More hyperbole, but there you go. I and most of its fans are to The Wire as a Christian is to Christ or a junkie is to dope. It’s basically A FUCKING GOD. Too much hyperbole there, maybe. But you’re getting the point, right?


Before The Wire, David Simon was a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. During his time there, he wrote two meticulously researched and richly human books about his city. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991) was the result of a year spent with the murder police of a town where murder seems to be a major mode of employment. The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997, with writing partner Ed Burns) was the result of a year spent among the families, addicts, and dealers of one of Baltimore’s more infamous drug corners. Homicide resulted in the long-running cop showHomicide: Life on the Street, which was cool and everything, better than most cop shows, but also kind of just a cop show.The Corner resulted in an HBO miniseries that was pretty much a direct antecedent to what The Wire would end up tackling.

After The Wire, Simon and Ed Burns, who is a former Baltimore cop and schoolteacher, adapted Evan Wright’s bookGeneration Kill into an HBO miniseries. It stands as the most effective document yet produced on the daily reality of the life of marines in the current Iraq war. 

And now, today, as I type this, Simon is filming his new HBO series down in New Orleans. It’s called Tremé, and it is said to take as its center the lives of local musicians. But I have a feeling that would be like saying that The Wire took as its center the Baltimore drug trade. Sure, it started there. But given Simon’s obsessions with the American city and the decreasing institutional value of life in this great country of ours, we’re pretty much guaranteed that Tremé will have the same reach and impact as The Wire. In other words, I wish I could be cryogenically frozen until the day this show debuts, because I can’t fucking wait.

Simon recently spoke with Vice from the Tremé production offices in New Orleans. This is the longest interview we’ve ever run by a long shot, but come on. It’s the guy who made The Wire. You’re lucky the entire issue isn’t about him.

Vice: I don’t know if the people who set this interview up for us related this anecdote to you, but you and I actually had an interesting run-in last year. I was waiting to get into a Pogues show at Roseland in New York City and—
David Simon: The fucker who cut the line. Yeah.

Exactly.
The guy with Secretary of State’s Disease.

for more of this in depth interview CLICK HERE. You will not be disappointed.