26 Questions for Sean Bonner

Sean Bonner is the co-founder of Metroblogging, which is the largest network of city-based blogs on the entire Interwebs -- with 50 cities under their masthead. When he's not launching new web ventures or contributing to blogging.la, he's running the Culver City art gallery sixspace with his wife Caryn, being Vegan, or riding his mountain bike while humming Ice Cube tunes.

1. name:
Sean Bonner

2. birthplace:
Washington DC

3. LA neighborhood you live in:
Silver Lake

4. how long have you lived in LA?
Since mid 2001 - In early 2001 my friend Coop talked Caryn and I into coming out to LA for a visit. We were in town for 3 days and completely feel in love. We decided on the plane back to Chicago that we were going to move, put in notices at our jobs, and 4 months later we had an LA address.

5. other than your own, what's your favorite LA neighborhood?
Having spent a good portion of my life in totally flat cities, I'm still pretty enamored with hills of any kind so any neighborhood with some elevation makes me dreamy eyed, but at the same time the more I ride my bike around LA the less I like having a hill in between me and where ever I'm trying to go. The thing I really like about Silver Lake is how non urban it feels, yet any urban thing I could want is only a few minutes away. Overall I'm still very much in love with the city, and short of beachy 'hoods which I got my fill of living in Florida, I haven't seen a neighborhood yet that doesn't have some kind of appeal.

6. what film has captured LA the best for you?
There is no one film that could capture it as far as I'm concerned, but movies written and directed by people in LA definitely portray the city in a very different light than those that aren't. Tarantino's LA stuff has always felt very realistic to me, but so have certain scenes from The Big Lebowski, LA Story and CB:4

7. Angels or Dodgers?
Kings

8. your favorite LA band?
Ever? It's gotta be a tie between The Germs, the Adolescents, and NWA.

9. who was your favorite fictional character of LA?
Both Jeffery Lebowski and Fletch were at the very top of my list.

10. what really prompted you to start Metroblogs?
Demand really. When Jason DeFillippo and I started blogging.la it was because there was no site like it in LA and we both really wanted there to be, so best thing to do was just create it. We expected it to be useful and interesting to people in LA, but never anticipated the popularity it would have outside of LA. Both of us were getting e-mails from people saying how much they wished there was a site like it in their city so we only had to hear that so many times before deciding to make that happen.

11. about how many hours a week do you spend on the computer?
All of them? I very rarely am not connected in some fashion.

12. what city for sure will never have a Metroblog?
Any city with the desire and ability to support one will get one, so that rules out ghost towns where no one lives any more, or cities where there are no computers/connectivity. Otherwise everywhere is on the to-do list.

13. other than blogging.la and LAist, what's another LA blog that you admire?
Losanjealous has been on the top of my daily reads list for a while. Ryan and those guys are clearly enjoying themselves with that site and it shows through in their content. I love it.

14. is Kobe a cancer to the Lakers?
I don't know about to the Lakers but he's a cancer to the Tom Lykis show, that exit clip drags on forever.

15. how many miles do you bike in a week?
Between 30-40 on average, if it's the week of Midnight Ridazz add another 20 to that.

16. if you were Mayor of LA what would you have done with the South Central farm issue?
I'm not a fan eminent domain, or of government sticking their nose into private or personal business. I'm also not a fan of politics that change when it's convenient.

17. favorite LA bar
I don't drink so bars aren't really my thing. That said LA has never come off much like a drinking town to me, perhaps it's because in cities that I do think of as drinking towns, Chicago, New York, Philly, SF, etc people can stumble out of bars and be home after a short walk or train ride. In LA you have to drive so that cuts into it a bit. The kind of bars I've been fond of in the past are the more rough around the edges neighborhood bars where everyone knows everyone else and passers by are afraid to look into. There is a bar in Chicago called EXIT that some cab drivers will try to talk you out of going to, that was a fun place. LA comes off as more polished cocktails and things, but like I said I don't drink so I could have no idea what I'm talking
about. Caryn likes Backstage in Culver City.

18. there are so many burger places in LA, which one is your favorite?
And to make myself sound even less fun I'm vegan, so I don't know dick about what Burger places are better than others. They have vegan burgers at the Astro on Melrose so I guess that's a good one.

19. at some point AOL or Microsoft or Google will probably want to buy your empire. Is there any corporation who you would absolutely not sell to?
I can't answer that question because whoever I name will no doubt be the most interested and that will just get people pissed off at me. However by nature Metblogs is anti-censorship and pro-free speech. Some policies and past actions of some companies certainly don't jive with
that standpoint. Maybe they will tomorrow, I don't know. The whole idea behind what we are doing is giving a voice to people who didn't have one before, so it wouldn't make sense to get in bed with anyone who wasn't behind that idea.

20. summer is almost over, what was one really great blog post on blogging.la this summer?
I think this summer has produced some of the best stuff on blogging.la ever, but if I had to pick just one thing I'd have to say the Greatest Fictional Angelenos series that we all worked on together. Process and result were fantastic.

21. what current artist would you love to have show in your gallery one day?
Well I have little say in this, as the gallery is Caryn's thing from start to finish. I just help out where I can, but it's her baby. That said I'd crap myself if we were ever able to show Kaz Oshiro.

22. boing boing, slash dot, or metafilter?
BoingBoing for sure. I've certainly had my moments with the other two over the last several years but BB is the one I always read and always come back to.

23. what reality tv shows do you watch?
I haven't had broadcast TV in my house in more than three years so I've missed a lot of the reality TV thing. Caryn has been a big fan of America's Next Top Model which we've watched at a friends house so that's the only thing I've really ever seen more than an episode or two of.

24. what local tv news team are you down with?
Again no broadcast TV in the house messes with my scope here but I've always gotten a kick out of Hal Fishman.

25. whats the first thing you do every morning?
Check e-mail, get cereal.

26. first there was the blogosphere, then MySpace, and now YouTube... what do you think is the next big thing?
Big things are boring, I want to know about the next little thing.

top photo by Jason DeFillippo, above photo by Wildbell, photo below of Sean and Xeni Jardin by Mr. Bonner.