Mission Mission

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Yeah, China was pretty fun.  Definitely not the human-rights abusing pit of despair you hear about in the news (although the internet censorship is annoying but trivially easy to subvert).  I even heard PBR referred to as “The People’s Beer,” which is just skull-fuckingly brilliant.  Also, if you are ever rolling around Hong Kong, there is a delicious vegan dim sum place on Electric rd @ Lau Sin.  The sesame fried dumplings are off the hook.

And check out a solid HK-based street art group/the best cool-kid culture blog imaginable, Start From Zero.  They even host a yearly ping-pong tournament, which should give this blog some inspiration.

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I wanted to hang out on the beach all day but ended up taking pictures of street art and other random shit while eating ice cream.

Condoms with wings: the rage.

Yeah.  Made this vid about my travels this morning.  Guess it is worth watching.  Still super jetlagged and cannot sleep past 4 am.  English literature is scarce so this is what I did with my downtime.  EPIC.

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No jokes: they actually have PBR in China and you can buy it for $0.07 USD. I wanted to be hella cool so I drank some on the back of the bus. love the back of the bus. I also need a haircut and learn how to take MySpace photos that don't make me look fat.

If you’re gonna be in New Orleans this weekend, do stop in and see former Curbed SF Interim Editor Jimmy Stamp’s new installation. Designed in collaboration with Sergio Padilla and Frederick Stivers, it’s called Orpheus Descending, and it involves projecting multicolored lights and Marlon Brando onto the interior walls of a huge tenty thing over Tennessee Williams’ old pool. It is badass, and part of the week-long DesCours architecture and art event.

Brando’s hands a-gropin’:

P.S. Yep, Jimmy is still the foxiest person at the party, even when he’s wearing some kind of space-age plastic vest.

P.P.S. New Orleans rules!

Wow! Hey this stuff is great! Who votes Kevin stays in China?

I saw a Bender’s sticker on the back of a stop sign in New Orleans this morning and I was like, “Hmm, yeah, I’m getting pretty tired of fried okra and Abita Amber; maybe it really is time to go back to San Francisco.” See you next week!

P.S. Bender’s is still cool, right?

The Wall Street Journal actually produced an interesting piece on how “yupsters” and capitalists made a shitty part of Oakland cool and profitable.  Choice quotes:

Over the past five years, Temescal has become Oakland’s answer to San Francisco’s Mission District and the city of Berkeley, drawing a mix of yuppies and plaid-wearing hipsters. The changing demographics and new businesses have brought results: From fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008, the latest year for which data are available, Oakland’s sales-tax receipts from the Temescal area rose 18% from $294,735 to $348,917, said Keira Williams, retail specialist for the city of Oakland.

The neighborhood still has its lingering troubles. On a recent evening, as young couples parked their strollers outside the Lanesplitter Pub to wait for a table, a panhandler stumbled by, muttering about heroin. Residents say they must be especially wary around Lower Temescal, near 40th Street and the BART station, where empty storefronts and vacant lots dot the avenue.

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(photo by unaesthetic)

Our buddy Alex from Static Fix recently returned from a quick tour around England, Scotland and Ireland. His “I’m back” post sums up each city with a single photo. Above is Glasgow, and the rest are just as good. Link.

Check this: reader Mission Mistaken was just in Paris and stumbled across this museum featuring an installation of graffiti as pop art.  Nothing really shocking here, but it is another check in the column of legitimizing graffiti as an art form.

I was just in Paris and the Cartier Foundation Museum (yes, as in tank watches & diamonds) featured a comprehensive show on the history of graffiti as pop art.  But being French they couldn’t just settle for a tame treatment.  Rather, everything was game for a coating of spray paint.  The building exterior, even the basement corridors and the bathrooms.