Fake Streetsigns

HELLOFREAKS

Naoshii

Tsuyatsuya

Devilrobots

There's an awesome project that recently took place in Lyon, France with tons of creative artists called PANOS 2013 FAKE STREETSIGNS. A collaboration of artists from all over the world came together to place their artwork on fake road signs. What came of it was a "delightful sense of humor, lots of playful absurdity and a wonderful scale". Now if only we could see some of this happen in the city with artists like Barry McGee, Sam Flores, Andrew Schoultz, and more; I'm sure there would be a great response. In the meantime, these were some of our favorite fake streetsigns.

Here, Read This!

We're totally stoked to hear that one of our favorite graphic novels, Scott Pilgrim, is going to be turned into a film! First thoughts were "Ah, man!" (in a bad way) because we read that they weren't going to animate the film, but then we looked at who was going to play Scott Pilgrim, and our reaction was "Hell yeah!". So who is going to play Scott, Michael Cera!

photo from: comicfoundry.com

On his website, Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim, has told everyone not to get too crazy yet because filming hasn't even begun. But to nerds like us, there is much to be excited about! For those of you that aren't familiar with this series of graphic novels, the story revolves around 23 year old Scott Pilgrim, his rock band, roommates, and his relationship with dream girl Ramona Flowers. The series is up to volume 4 now, so go grab your copies and catch up! They're fast reads because they're so entertaining and hilarious. Kinda makes you want to be an irresponsible young adult again. There's a great article/interview for more of the story behind Scott Pilgrim here.
 

Just Around the Corner

photo from flickr:Don Cesar

We're about to start October in a week. That means it's time to start thinking of how creative and original you're going to make your costume this Halloween! We've been thinking about ours, but that shall remain a secret until we actually put something together to share. Right now we're all talk and ideas. 

I used to be really pumped for Halloween. I'd shop the local Party City on the days closest to Halloween to get all the sales, but always wound up with the plain cat costume, or ugly witch. I think I started to give up on dressing up when I considered that dressing up like Winnie Cooper would pass for a costume. 

 

Hmmm, kinda reminds me of Andres and I...

Since I've known Andres he's been obsessed with Bomberman and has tried numerous times to get the both of us to do a Bomberman pair. Maybe this will be that year (since he did get me into playing the xbox online version!)

 Start thinking about those costumes, or else you'll end up the plain black cat with cardboard cut-out ears, or the ugly witch with the wig that's impossible to untangle!

-Junia

We all come from somewhere

We went to high school with a group of guys that tattooed the city's logo on the inside of their arm. Just today I was reminded of them, and got to wondering, why the Chula Vista logo? Take a look:
It's not bad. Simple design. Clean. I get it. We all come from somewhere.

Then I just got curious as to the design a city takes to represent itself, and here are some of the more interesting logos I came across:

This logo belongs to the city of Seattle. Pretty badass, no? I'd rather have this one tattooed.
This one to Calexico, "Home of The Mariachi Festival Sin Fronteras", and where "California and Mexico Meet" (as stated on their dot gov page). I partially chose this one because I grew up taking a two hour long drive to El Centro every other weekend, just minutes away from Calexico.
This one to Wilsonville, Oregon, which according to Wikipedia was originally in black & white, but later Photoshopped to appear mint green. You'd think Wilsonville to be full of greenery and cute mom and pop shops just from their logo, and you're right! Based on the fotos I came across, I actually wouldn't mind taking a much needed stress-free vacation there. 

Treasure Island Music part 2

So I know you guys are DYING to know how our saturday at Treasure Island Music Festival went! Maybe not, but we like to share our thoughts anyways. We wanted to get there early so we could enjoy the vendors and scenery of the festival before it got too crazy. Since festival food is crazy over-priced, we made a first stop here in the neighborhood at Andronico's. This super market is notorious for ridiculous prices. They try so hard to be upscale that it's actually more expensive than markets in the Marina or PacHeights. And we're in the Sunset mind you.
So we go in to grab a sandwich for our lunch later in the day, but we walked out empty handed since the cheepest sandwich was this:



THIS IS A 7 DOLLAR CHEESE AND BREAD SANDWICH! Cool right!? I mean, why buy a whole load of bread, a brick of cheese and maybe some lettuce or something when all I want is just one sandwich?
So after laughing out loud (or LOLing) in the Deli isle we took off and just stopped at Quiznos before we hopped on this awesome FREE limo bus:

First stop we made was with SF Zinefest's Francois Vigneault who was hanging out at their outdoor reading lounge. Oh yeah, thats Andrew Schoultz painting a mural behind Junia and Francois. RAD!

As we were browsing the many vendors we stopped into Oakland's Nopal and met Daniel Sanchez Glazer, the artist behind Nopal. When we were walking we caught the name and what looked to me like Billy Holiday on their banner and knew we had to check them out. They had a few items that definitely made Popote's wish list. One being a shirt with Nopal printed large on the front (which they don't have on the site!) and the other a print titled La Paloma

We made another stop at Vivi Dot's booth where Junia, who happened to need a hair clip that day, found a super cute one. Vivi Dot takes old fabric and paper patterns and uses them to make buttons and other various circular thingies with them. 

A very cool part of the whole festival was it's green-ness. Behind the compost/recycle/landfill bins in this pic, you can see 2 large solar panels that powered the stage! It was funny because every now and then there would be some sound malfunctions, but everyone seemed ok with it. I think it added to the whole experience. Especially this being an indie-music-with-indie-music-fans festival, there was definitely a great feeling of understanding, acceptance, and calmness that flowed throughout the day. 

I think the highlight of the day for Junia and I was (Nortec's) Bostitch + Fussible's set. Even though it was only 30 mins, by the end, the whole crowd was chanting "OTRO!" and "CULERO!"  Of course we were chanting up front next to a guy wearing a Mexican flag! The set, although awesome, definitely felt too short. I loved that everyone was going nuts over this accordian player!

Here are some more photos of the day. All in all it was a good day. We didn't stay for Justice. TV on the Radio just wasn't doing it for us since we weren't up close, and I didn't feel like pretending CSS was any good. So we decided to book it and relax in that awesome limo bus again! Can't wait for next year!!

Junia's getting hit on by that awesome accordion player!! He's like "OYE MIJA!".. JK!

Foals was great! they almost convinced us to leave and see them again at the Mezzanine after the festival!

The crowd during Goldfrapp

Goldfrapp trying to pretend she wasn't cold as hell up on stage in that cool streamer nightie.

This Ferris wheel had a long line alllllll day. We didn't get a chance to experience the great view of the bay and downtown SF from up top. Next year!

Treasure Island Music

Junia and I are about to head over to the Treasure Island Music Festival today to see some of our current musical favorites perform! The sad thing is, is that those musical favs have the shortest performance times in the whole 2-day festival! LAME!! Personally, I'm excited to see Bostich + Fussible and Foals, both of which only have 30-min sets! It's an outrage. All in all, I'm hoping to walk away from today feeling satisfied from the whole experience. Here's the list:

Bostich + Fussible

Foals

Hot Chip

Goldfrapp

TV on the Radio

Aesop Rock

Justice

Lovely Dancers

Here are a few shots of Squid Dance, the new Popote card up at our shop!

Junia and I have been wanting to come up with another squid design ever since we completed our very first card, Squidigree. We wanted to come up with a design that could be used for any occasion. We had "wedding card" in mind but also had "happy birthday". As you can see (from these lovely photos we took in our back-slash-front yard) we decided to use the mint on copper color combo as a happy birthday card while the other more neutral color combo, was going to be left as a blank card.

Vamanos Popote!

Kalandraka-libros para sonar

I worked as a third grade after school teacher in the Mission for a good chunk of time.  The program I worked for received tons of children's books donated from different presses. I'd skim the bookshelves and judge every book by its spine. 

To the point, I fell in love with Kalandraka Press. Based out of Portugal, this children's press publishes the most interesting, one of a kind illustrations and short stories. In fact, this collection, Kalandraka + Mexico is running the theme,  Libros para sonar- books to dream to. Each book in Kalandraka's collection is filled with rich folklore in addition to its amazingly odd artwork. These are definitely books that you should collect for your children, or just have for a fun read (if you can read Spanish!). You can also check out their blog here to get more info on the artists that put together these wonderful books!

Clamshell iBook

I know I know I know, those pictures we have on our Etsy shop are a bit cheesy. You might be surprised to know that we don't actually know those people we have in these product photos. 

But here's the real deal! We covered an Apple iBook with our Clamshell decal. The process was quite easy and only took a few mins. I love vinyl because you can chop it up and piece it back together with out really noticing. It bends and won't lift unless you really pick at it. A few days after we put the decal on, we happened to be at a local coffee shop here in our neighborhood and definitely got some looks! We've got more home decal designs coming soon!

And remember, if you buy one of our decals, we always send you a tester so you can test it out on your surface and make sure everything will be OK. 

Happy Birthday Mariachi!

Hola friends. We just put up our new birthday card on the etsy shop. 

Click here to see more of the card pics. Here's the etsy description:

"Bring the banda to the next birthday party with this chiquito Mariachi! This birthday card is a modern throw-back to birthday traditions and no matter who you are or what culture you love, this card will put a smile on that birthday friend's face!"

Junia and I were inspired by our last trip to Chula Vista to visit our families. My dad's uncle was having a surprise 90th birthday party in Imperial Beach and we got to have some fun with a mariachi band that performed. I grew up going to weddings and quinceneras in Tijuana and SD and no matter how much I pretended to hate Mariachi music when I was a kid, there's was no denying the pure fun and tradition that the band brings to family events. Here's some pics we took at the party with our trusty Diana cam!