Hey there. Did anybody miss me? Has the webos-cloud of attention moved away from the humble digs of HappyFeet Travels? I can only guess that you all have been sucked into the micro-webos clouds of Twitter and FaceBook. Huh? Have you? So easy to blog in 100-ish characters or less, isn’t it? Simple to throw some links to vids, articles, and pics over on those sites, yes? Beyond bands, has anyone wandered to the MySpace-webos cloud lately? They’ve made it less blinky last I checked, which was a while ago!
I’ve been laying low for several reasons. Getting off of a year of touring and promoting and producing has been part of the reason. Resting, regrouping, and reconnecting has been another. Not feeling like I have much to say that isn’t too personal (I don’t post too personal here) is yet another reason for the blank cal on this site. And just plain coming to grips with life in the microcosm of the reality-cloud we call a crappy economy has been another.
Things here at HappyFt HQ are feeling caught up. The Fall is looking great for potential creative endeavors. Some of them might actually help me pay the rent! On the book front, Stencil Nation is currently “out of stock” while Manic D tries to figure out the future in what is now a glutted street art book category (we were there before the wave crested…. I beat the crowd once again!). I still have some banged up return copies that I’m trying to sell on my site. A few have gone out.
Meanwhile, Precita Eye’s “Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo” came out last month from the prestigious Abrams Press in NYC. I read the whole book, and can say that it correctly expresses the flavors, colors, and attitudes of the Mission District, my home, in it’s colorful pages. Felt good to land home after a year on the road and read a book tha felt like home! I have text and photos in this book, and was surprised to see a great two-page spread of the stencil mural I helped cut/paint at CELLspace. On p. 140.
Two of my current projects are big ones. I am slowly getting artists together to begin to paint murals on the Florida St. side of CELLspace. Me and some CELL wood shop folks hung big, heavy wall-like panels for the plywood to go on in front of the windows. I cut out two stencils and re-did the 633 Florida St. sign on the back. Have a crew lined up to paint the doors, and have spent the past two weeks working with the Bike Kitchen to begin the process for a Bike Kitchen mural on the metal-shop side of the CELL facade. They’re excited about this and working with met to keep things moving.
My second big project is a second RIDE! event. Two January’s ago, I risked it all on having an after Critical Mass CELL Benefit in the middle of the cold, wet winter. The ride and my benefit were totally rained out. On top of that, Bring Your Own Laser brought their own smoke machine. Which set of the CELL fire alarm and got the SFFD out to the joint. With only 30 or so folks in the house, and an obvious smoke machine filling up the place with smoke, that basically ended the night. But Bring Your Own Laser played through the whole SFFD visit, not missing a beat as the fire fighters stood in front of the stage looking for a fire. They ended up watching the show. Anyway, this experience instantly became one of my Top 10 crazy moments at CELLspace. And RIDE! even made about $150 in profit for a broke organization.
So I had to do another RIDE! event. I began scheming RIDE TOO! about two months ago. It is shaping up to be even better than the original. And there won’t be a problem with the fire alarms this time. Promise. Alums the Rabbles will be on hand, even though they cancelled the first RIDE! Mike from Bring Your Own Laser has also been helping out. Al will have more free comics, and Raven will have her button machine on deck. There will still be beer too, and hopefully Laura will bake more sweets to sell at concessions. Read all about it here (info subject to chanage at this point in time).
Off to make calls about murals. And maybe tell the FacBook cloud that I actually blogged over here. Will do more in the coming weeks. Promise!