Reyner Banham, working class intellectual, pop professor and historian of the immediate future, has been a much missed member of the POWcityblog's guru cadre for decades now. He also had a horrible beard. The beard lives forever online in an ancient and badly worn print of the 1972 BBC documentary Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles.
Yes, we know that in many respects this doc is hopelessly obsolete. Banham was channeling a charming, anarchic, thankful kind of thing that was far too accepting of his subject's temporary historical up side. RBLLA could not be made today. Comparing LA to London in a loose-limbed manner Banham takes us on a psychogeographic mission of a type that should never, ever happen, at least according to the stricter interpretations of the approach: one conducted from a car! But how better to understand and experience the expanded edge cities? RBLLA watches well next to Will Self's lecture in posting 54. Enjoy the hour with Banham and a cool female automated narrator in his white Ford while getting an overview of a city we all know in bits and pieces through movies and television. Obsolete but valuable psychogeography. Just ignore the beard as best you can.
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