Global Graphica

The neon Giant Robot “GR2″ sign out outside the store’s second Sawtelle Street location in Los Angeles.

Painting of some plant life on Crosby Street in SoHo, downtown New York City. Note the brown Jack Spade bag in the foreground.

Black-and-white wheat-pasted photo on Crosby Street in SoHo, in New York City. The image shows football (soccer) players who look like they’re Brazilian footballers from the 1970′s. (Can anyone identify these guys? If so, drop us a line. Thanks!)

B’s wonderfully designed Vanmoof bike parked in an advertising agency office in Los Angeles. We love the branding and logotype on the bicycle frame.

Selft-portrait silhouette of Van Corsa at the Geffen at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles.

Wheat-paste artwork of a blue one-eyed monster on a wood utility pole on Sunset Blvd. in Silverlake, in Los Angeles.

Artist Robert The’s clever “book guns.”

The wonderful skull lamp in the mezzanine “bedroom” bar at My House, a club in Hollywood, in Los Angeles. There’s another image of the same lamp in the previous post.

We went to an ad agency Xmas party last night at a large club in Hollywood, in Los Angeles. We imbibed a LOT of cocktails. So many in fact that we have little memory of the evening’s drunken craziness. (And what memories we do have are a confused blur.)

Fortunately, we took pictures with our iPhone. A review of the images fills the gap in our memory and leaves us a little surprised, bewildered and amused. Below is a sampling of these images. The skull lamp is awesome. The faux porn-set and shoot was a bit of a shock. The space was beautiful. And many people danced like fools.

Somehow, we ended up in a Thai bar and restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. watching an indie rock band from Thailand perform covers at 1:30 A.M. while noshing on red-curry with vegetables.

“Robin y el Murcielago” was the Spanish title for the Batman and Robin comic books series in Mexico when it was published in the mid 20th century. The literal translation is “Robin and the Batman.” In the Mexican series, Robin is the bigger hero and gets top billing. Batman appears in his usual costume but is bare-chested. In this poster print,

The wonderful new two-sided business card for the New York City store of influential fashion brand and retailer Opening Ceremony.

Fresh artwork on the billboard space provided by vintage clothing store Eleven at 11 Prince Street in Nolita, near SoHo. The new painting features unmistakable silhouettes of some late and legendary downtown New York City creators: Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Ramones, and Andy Warhol.

Wheat-paste street art in SoHo: A large black-and-white photo of Brazilian soccer legend Pele and Rolling Stones’ frontman and rock legend Mick Jagger meeting in New York City in the late 1970′s.

The beautifully worn “Angel Youth” sign near the intersection of Kingswell and Vermont streets in the Los Feliz / Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles, a few blocks away from our temporary Global Graphica HQ in LA (dubbed our “LA Bureau”).

“X’ed Out,” the recently published graphic novel by Charles Burns, pays homage to (and draws some inspiration from) Tin Tin and his adventures in “The Shooting Star.” Burns’ new book is a haunting, dark and surreal story that may leave some readers gasping at the outcome.

We stumbled upon this vintage Volkswagen van on Glendale Boulevard in Atwater Village, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. The van was parked down the block from the building where the Beastie Boys’ once had their recording studios (G-Son) and offices for Grand Royal records. This VW “bus” is an icon of 1960′s and 70′s California hippie and surfer cultures. The logo is awesome. The form and design of the vehicle is beautiful.

Released a couple of months ago from Swedish interface and technology  design firm The The Astonishing Tribe (a.k.a, TAT, recently bought by Blackberry) …

We’ve started taking lots of pix of the ink stamps we get on our wrists at music venues, clubs and events. We received this wonderful star stamp at The Moth storytelling event held at El Cid, a Mexican restaurant and bar in Silverlake, in Los Angeles. The star-in-circle stamp is only partial, as it was not fully inked. The result is a wrist print that looks like the Islamic half-crescent symbolism found on the  Turkish or Indonesian flag.

Influential, full-of-awesome clothing store Opening Ceremony recently expanded into a massive, multi-floor loft space adjacent to its original New York City shop on Howard Street in SoHo. The entrance is a stairwell with a striking color and design concept. We love the stairs.