as seen in nylon magazine

thanks to diane over at bunnyshop.org, popote has been featured in the november issue of nylon magazine! our 8-bit love card is gracing page 134 in a section devoted to the "country's finest". popote is featured  with fellow esty-ers: yokoo, rovakada, tumbleweed bead co. and michelle antonisse.  we are all so excited to be a part of the issue, and to be featured with some truly talented people.  and the best part, we can now say as seen in nylon magazine! so go out an buy a copy, it's the one with paris hilton on the cover.

Popote for Pop

Something I have been dying to do for Popote's blog is post about the music we're currently listening to. I'll be posting our current musical favorites frequently, so all of you who love music, be sure to comment and give us some other good bands to check out!
For the first post, I've decided to go with the "Pop" in Popote. These albums were on heavy rotation during the last week while we prepared for Capsule Design Fest. What better music is there than good jangle/twee/freakbeat/indie pop to get you through those late nights with your friends?


Math & Physics Club is a band you have a love affair with. They're from Seattle and just like the good ol'days they have a ton of EPs with only one LP to choose from (since their beginning in 2005). Math & Physics Club always feels slightly like an affair because all of their influences are so obvious, sometimes you wonder why you aren't just listening to Morrissey or Belle & Sebastian. Charles Bert's vocals sometimes sound identical to Stuart Murdoch's (B&S). But that's the point! I love Morrissey and Belle & Sebastian. People are always going to say "they're so-and-so wannabees!." Get over it! This is fresh and it's made for people who love to feel good listening to pop! 

Same goes for This Is Ivy League. They've put out a self-titled album this year that is definitely in the running for one of my top 10s. With all the politics and economic craziness going on, these Brooklynders managed to put out an album that's like that spot of sunshine poking through the gloom. Fans of a Simon & Garfunkel-style pop will love this album.

And speaking of pop icons, here's a must-have for anyone into old 60's garage/mod-rock. Most people here in the States have never heard the name Joe Meek. Back in 60's England he was a producer/song-writer for TONS of indie rock bands. This year an amazing compilation was released called Joe Meek Freak Beat: You're Holding Me Down - 30 Freakbeat, Mod & R&B Nuggets. Here's one of my favorite tracks from the comp from The Blue Rondos.
Finally, we have Lykke Li. Some of you may have heard this song on a Victoria Secret commercial and probably didn't realize it's this wonderful song from Swedish singer Lykke Li. So far this year, Lykke Li is one of the best Swedish imports you can find. She has a great blend of pop, pop-electro, and indie-pop in her album that's been on rotation for weeks here at Popote. I look forward to posting more tracks!

Math & Physics Club - Baby I'm Yours

This Is Ivy League - Love is Impossible


The Blue Rondos - Little Baby


Lykke Li - Little Bit

Thanks guys!

Sunday at Capsule went better than we hoped! Thanks to the awesome crowd at Capsule, those few sweatshop nights before Sunday were not in vain! The day went super smooth (except the caca weather) and in the end we were very excited at how well we felt we were received. Next time around we're definitely going to register early so we get a good spot (hopefully as close as we can to either La Boulange or Frjtz!) Here's some pics!

Set up! After stopping at Four Barrel Coffee to get one of the BEST cups of coffee I've had, we made out way over to our space and set up our ez-shade tent! (btw, thanks to Rene from Scribble n Scratch for letting us borrow the tent!)

That's Annie and Adrian, our Popote partners setting up.



This guy was probably our favorite customer of the day! Thanks for your buy!



As you can see, we had some NEW cards at the event! look for them soon on our shop!



Sweet Calavera was our best seller! We actually sold out! Sorry to those trying to find it on our shop, we will be making some more very soon!

Capsule Design Festival

Sunday, October 19 is the Capsule Design Festival, and guess who will be there? Us! We're hoping for a sunny day and big crowds, so bring all your friends. There will be about 200 venders with lots of creative goods, so bring your pockets full, as it will be the perfect place to get some early x-mas shopping done. The festival will be held in Hayes Valley, so also come with an empty stomach because there are a ton of places to chow on some good food.
Make sure to stop by and check out all the new cards we've been working on! See you on Sunday!

Popote Design

We're working on some new business cards and we thought we'd share a sample board for you. 

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!