I am proud to announce a new mural on the Bryant St. facade of CELLspace. Dia del Toro graces the entrance to the ACT prop shop at 2060 Bryant St. and was painted by Dia and Toro.

For years, fading graffiti filled this panel as a a ficus tree grew huge and blocked the street view of this part of the facade. While I facilitated the half panel piece that Dia did for CELLspace earlier this year, I shot the idea to him about taking that panel too. He initially had the idea of painting a sailing ship getting pulled down into a stormy sea, but he used that concept for a gallery piece. Once Dia found time to work with CELL’s miniscule budget and paint the panel for free, he had met Toro and decided to paint a defeated bull as it took its last breaths.

In the first phase of making the panel, Dia and Toro worked on the overall layout. Toro then painted “DIA TORO” in graff letters for placement. Dia then sprayed a white outline of the bull and then painted the details with brushes and black paint. He sprayed a few other details. Finally, Toro came back and did the final graff lettering and details. Blood on the sword punctures and in the mouth of the bull were the final details added to the animal image.

Dia del Toro was the final panel on the Bryant St. facade, following Stencilada and the halved panel by 2048 Bryant. Now that this is done, energy will be focused on the Florida St. Mural project. Currently with no funds to budget the artwork, things move slowly back there. I’m currently working on the RIDE TOO! benefit for next Friday, of which some profits will go towards the Florida St. murals. The Bike Kitchen is still moving forward with their panel back there and will be at the benefit.

Enjoy the photos of the Dia del Toro mural that I took over the course of its completion.

Tags: cellspace, murals, photos
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SOMArts (South of Market Cultural Center)
934 Brannan Street (near 8th Street)
San Francisco, CA. 94103
6:30-9:30 pm
Admission:  general $35, VIP $50

For more information please visit our website

I’ll have my autograph pen there this Saturday, along with a pile of artists, authors, and photographers in the Mission Muralismo book. Not cheap, but the money goes to a great cause: MURALS!

Tags: mission muralismo, murals, Thoughts
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I spend a lot of time walking/biking around urban landscapes, looking at space and photographing art. If you’ve followed my travels, you’ve notice that this is something that goes beyond hobby. This search isn’t a job either, but I have been paid for my efforts. For me, walking through a living system where humans work, play, eat, sleep, etc. brings rewards beyond a systematic point of reference. It is hard to label it as work, hobby, etc., when the urge to wander and look for art is a deep way of living for me.

This Saturday, I went for a walk, thinking a bit more about space. I reflected on the potential that space has to present art. The way people relay their feelings in more creative ways. And the lost histories that surrounds us in the neighborhoods we live in.

The following photo essay are the images that made me stop, stare, ponder, and snap. We all live in a world full of many colorful possibilities. We also live in a culture that doesn’t tolerate certain opinions, while letting others flourish. These photos touch on all the ideas I carry with a passion, and might help add context to why I constantly “stencil hunt” in the urban wilds of the USA and beyond.

Tags: murals, photos, stencil, Thoughts
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Why do I read the news anymore? Well, why do I read news headlines? I have good sites to go to, but they still spin the schlock people want to read most. The past few days, I’ve been watching how the right-wing spin-mongers have totally wound their panties so tight, that their eyeballs are popping out. I just Googled “obama socialist” and got a pile of hits on this meme. Which makes me laugh since Obama isn’t really anything unless the Democratic corporate backers tell him what he is.

I got angry today when I saw the NY Times spin the Obama school address non-issue on their site. In the lead off paragraph, which is about all anyone reads these days, the Times said that the address “has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas.” Last night, on the Huffington Post, I watched as current media darling Glen Beck connected Obama to the Rockefellers to socialists and fasciscts via all the artwork on the Rockefeller Plaza by way of Van Jones (the current punching bag for the right wing mudslingers). Beck’s main piece of art was a Diego Rivera mural that is no longer in the Plaza, which most Americans have never seen in person. Finally, on the Drudgereport tonight, a link to a local news site stated that elected official U.S. Rep. Paul Broun “told a meeting of the Morgan County Republicans on Wednesday night that Obama already has or will have the three things he needs to make himself a dictator: a national police force, gun control and control over the press.”

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Tags: politics
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PSPrint has a 50% off deal, so I am going to print a pile of these to pass around….

…feel free to post this jpg up where ever you wanna….

Tags: Bike Kitchen, Creations, Ride
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If you didn’t notice the link to the page “RIDE TOO!” up on the top masthead of this site, then here’s the info in the RSS feed. All the bands just confirmed and locked down for what looks like a great night of bikes, bands, and beer! Well, there’s a bit more than that, but that’s how I keep pitching it to folks.

Two January’s ago, CELLspace needed a huge help from the community. I’d been away from CELL for a few years, doing my thang, and bikes and bands were a part of that. So I concocted RIDE! and got a nice list of bands to hop on board for the night. Turns out my captive audience, Critical Mass, was totally rained out that night. But my planted promoters got most of the ride to come to CELL, soaking wet. Then Mike Hoffman and David Sartore’s band “Bring Your Own Laser” brought a smoke machine that set the fire alarm off! Quiet a crazy night for a low-attended event. But the thing is, which still amazes me, is that the event still made $$ for CELLspace. Not a bunch, but between the beer and the lemon squares, we pulled in $150 for CELL! Amazing, so I still call it a success of mythic proportions.

If you were there, you remember and smile with nostalgia…..

So I invite you all to RIDE TOO! More of the same, but a whole lot better! (flyer jpg coming soon!)

HappyFt presents
RIDE TOO!
a benefit for CELLspace and the Florida St. Mural Project

Friday, Sept. 25, 2009
8pm to 2am

CELLspace
2050 Bryant St. (b/t 19th and 20th Sts.), SF, CA

$10 to $20 sliding scale
21+ (beer and wine for sale)
(more…)

Tags: Bike Kitchen, cellspace, Creations, Sound
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Tags: photos
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Went to a puppet show yesterday and met a puppeteer visiting from Arizona. We started talking about the local Bay Area puppet scene, and I directed him to the links on this site for further connections and research. Late last night, I clicked through some of my puppet links and found many of them gone, outdated, or moved. So I went through them and did an update.

Today, I went through the rest and cleaned them all up. As I deleted dead links, searched for new links, and added links that weren’t on the list, I had a good time checking out my larger spheres of connections in the Bay Area and beyond. And I got to update my new causes and angles on the topics that interest me. Made sense that the Culture Jammer section is the most up-to-date. Need an online presence if you’re going to jam mainstream culture, right?

HappyFeetTravels.org has always had a links page. You can visit a 2004 version on the old archived site to see the early spheres of connections. I initially set up this site for East Coasters to share my life’s influences, visions, new friends/communities, and the City that became my home. I still see the links in 2009 as a way to express what is happening here in San Francisco and beyond. I also like to keep the links on here as a personal bookmark list of sites I like to refer and go to often. A one-stop click through of things that feed my soul here at HappyFt HQ.

So click away on the left colomn’s list of community goodness. I do add new links on there from time to time. And if you aren’t on the list, please let me know and I’ll add you. Some of today’s new links include: Michael Rauner, subMedia, Black Mesa IS, Eleni Gekas, Infoshop News, NORML, Just Seeds, Christine Marie, Noisebridge, Chicken John, and many others.

And if you want any stencil links, they’re all on Stencil Archive.

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Steeped in Metaphor

I like the hearse on the new book jacket for Thomas Pynchon’s new novel Inherent Vice. It’s a surf bum hearse, with painted pictures on top of the paint job. I have a hearse on my book shelf, reminding me of my father. Getting ready to start a new fiction story gets me excited for the new metaphors within the pages. The first line of the book, perhaps Pynchon’s set-up for a good joke, is the quote “Under the paving-stones, the beach! - Graffito, Paris, May 1968″ If that’s the beginning of the gag, then I’m already in on it!

I just watched a movie where an unwitting hero battles a well-armed military-focused corporation in the slums of South Africa. This guy’s a dupe for the corporation, which is power-hungry for using their conventional technology and hopefully getting more from the aliens. The government barely exists in Johannesburg, and Nigerian thugs make seem to control District 9. They make a living doing a brisk trade with cat food.
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Tags: distractions, nature, politics
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Had to head down to the Shoreline a few weeks ago to check out the 3.0 version of my favorite 1990s band Phish (they’ve broken up two times prior to this). They’re much better than the last time I saw them (the mud-mired Coventry, VT festival), mostly in part to lead guitarist Trey Anastasio’s going clean and sober (addicted to Big Pharma pills). Delicate show that kicked out the jams, and played the one song I wanted at the top of the show (Golgi Apparatus).

Josh Keppel, a photo-journalist from a local NBC Web site, snapped this pic of me for his cheeky “Jam Band Parking Lot” spread. I have to remind folks that “jam band” wasn’t a term when I started going to Phish shows. I think jam bands suck anyway.

Russell Howze from San Francisco wore his hat from the 1995-1996 Phish tour saying, "it's vintage you know," when asked about his ensemble. A fellow Phish fan tried to explain to me the significance of the name "Wilson" embroidered on the arm of Howze's marching band coat, but my eyes glazed over at the lengthy explanation. Something about Gamehendge Wilson...?

Tags: geek, interview, photos
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Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/21/DD1M195294.DTL&type=art#ixzz0OqmbW4QE

Tags: book, cellspace, Creations, mission muralismo, stencils
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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.

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Tags: Bike Kitchen, cellspace, mission muralismo, murals, Ride, Stencil Nation
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