Saturday, October 24, 2009

Metal Flake: It's a Beautiful, Beautiful thing

Call it what you want, it's still totally just glitter for boys.


Triumph gas tank my friend Peter is painting


'62 Chrysler New Yorker wagon


Yes.


"Trixie Tee" bucket


Cadillac at the Billetproof NorCal show in 2008


Artist Trading Card (or ATC) by Mel Kolstad






Protect yer noggin'



1940 Pontiac Deluxe Coupe




1964 Gretsch 6118 hot rod


And in case you want to fake your flake, the dudes at the H.A.M.B. have some good photoshop tips.


Sunday, October 18, 2009

From Tiki Townhouse to Mid-Century Mansion

While cruising around the web for some good images of vintage wallpaper, I ended up on the Apartment Therapy blog, an interior design blog I happen to be familiar with on several levels already (they frequently mention the company I work for and used an image I'd taken at the semi-annual Brimfield Antiques Show in Massachusetts for a post they wrote on the fair and all the amazing junk therein).

The Apartment Therapy post I was honing in on through my search was about two people who I now am insanely jealous of - David "Duke" and Amy Carter - former Chicago residents of McKinley Park and proprietors of Pegboard Modern (a mid-century modern furniture showroom). Their old two bedroom apartment featured in the interview from 2007 is quite possibly the mid-century dwelling of my psychotic retro dreams.


David & Amy's living room (all photos taken by David & Amy)


An assortment of interior photos, mostly of their immense tiki collection.

From these few photos (there's more in a slide show on the Apartment Therapy site), you can tell they created an urban shrine to their retro religion. Not surprisingly, they also wrote a book on their collecting habits, Tiki Quest: Collecting the Exotic Past, documenting their tiki obsession in full four-color glory.

As I continued to look for more info on this admirable design duo, I found another feature on their abode, this one from April of 2009 on the Strange Closets website. By now they have moved to quaint Munster, Indiana with their son and have filled an entire cruciform (that means shaped like an X, basically; four square rooms that intersect in the middle), mid-century modern house with their fab furnishings.




(Photos by Tate Gunnerson from Strange Closets)


Seeing all this stuff makes me excited to finally have a place of my own one day (which is coming soon enough). Having lived with roommates for the majority of my life has made it difficult for me to have full control of the interior designing of my residency, which can be a super huge bummer if you are as emotionally conjoined to your surroundings as I am. It can also be a blessing, because god knows if I'd been living in a house I didn't have to move out of for the last ten years, I would have amassed a wealth of junk courtesy of my antiquing addiction. At least living in expensive, cramped apartments in New York that I have to move out of every two years or so has tamped down my hoarding of vintage knickknacks. For now.

The Carter house also makes me wonder what I must be like for a kid like theirs to grow up in a house like that. My parents never really had any collecting habits, outside of my Dad's brief obsession with Happy Meal toys when we were kids, when he insisted one day they'd be worth "something". (I hope they've all been sacrificed to the yard sale gods over the years.) I firmly believe that this has something to do with the fact that both of their parents had some particular obsessions of their own: my Dad's mother decorated the house with early American antiquities - horse hair couches, marble claw-foot tables, electrified gas lamps - and my Mom's Dad was a photographer, obsessed with cameras, musical instruments and vintage radios, and set aside his entire basement for tinkering and storage of his techno ephemera.

Once, when I came home during high school with a carload of beautiful vintage "junk" (Dad's words) I'd scored that day at an auction, I was excitedly having show-and-tell with Dad, who was making lunch in the kitchen. When it became clear to me he was feigning interest in my score, I confronted his apathy. "Look, Katie. I grew up in a house filled with antiques. It smelled like old people, the couches were uncomfortable, I wasn't allowed to touch anything. I thought it was completely stupid. Why fill your home with old, breakable things when it makes it impossible to live in?? I wish I could share your enthusiasm for "antiques" but I just can't. They make plenty of good dishes and tables nowadays. And if you break them, no big deal."

My Dad works with computers. Not much of a surprise, I guess.

At any rate, I look forward to my residential future, and to one day have a place that serves as both a gallery and an meticulously designed, comfortable living space...but one I can still hula hoop in without fear of ruining anything.

Friday, October 16, 2009

NYC EVENTS: Royal Flush Mag Release Party, Art of Rebellion, Rumblers Side Show

Holy crap! There's a ton of stuff going on this weekend and my liver is throbbing in anticipation of all the free booze that will be going with it. I'm pretty sure nobody gets any useful information about events from my website (because if you are, you should send me an email or post a commment or something, fer christsakes!), but I'll give you the deets anyway...

(TONIGHT!) Friday, Oct. 16th:


Royal Flush Magazine #6 - Release Party


Mark illustrated the "New Blood" section, and my bros at Royal Flush even threw in a photo of Stainboy and I from when he was in town last year for a book release/poster show of his in Manhattan. Whoopie! I'm a fuckin' art star! (I kid, I kid.)

Anyway, official release party is TONIGHT at Crash Mansion!
199 Bowery St (at spring st), Manhattan, NY 10002
212.982.0740

Bands! Booze! Open bar from 8-9pm. (More Details)
"If print is dead, then the ROYAL FLUSH Magazine is rock and roll's superhero zombie, and it's coming back to life. Part pop culture mag, part rock art carnival, part comic book, and all irreverent fun, the annual Royal Flush Magazine experience returns with a bombastically bulging 112-page sixth book. We're celebrating the new issue with four bands, open bar, and a huge party."

Tonight's lineup is:
9:00 - Cinema Cinema
10:00 - Black Water Rising
11:00 - Goes Cube
12:00 - Suicide City


Free entry with Royal Flush Fest badges OR if you RSVP...better do it NOW.

................................

Saturday, Oct. 17th:


Rumblers NYC present: The Sideshow

The Freakbar in Coney Island
1208 Surf Ave
Brooklyn NY 11224-2816
Tel: 718 372 5159
By Train: Take the D, Q N or F train to Stillwell Avenue (last stop).

Starts at 3pm, goes until you pass out!!
Featuring car and bike show, and bunch 'o bands:
The Turbo A.C.s
The Brains
The Arkhams
(my friend Bobcat plays guitar for them)
Black Boyfriend
(Ex Krays, Urban Riot)
The Percs

With DJ Laura Rebel Angel
(from Rebel Angel Productions)

................................


Harley Davidson's
Art of Rebellion Show

October 17, 2009
Time: 8pm to Midnight
608 West 28th Street

New York, NY 10001

"The second installment of Art of Rebellion is visiting NYC October 17th after a successful run in Santa Monica earlier this year. The show will feature renowned gig poster artists showing painted Iron 883 tanks and signature poster art along with photography by Adam Wright and Steven Stone. Pick up a poster or splurge on a tank-either way, a chunk of the proceeds go to the CUE Art Foundation."

Featuring custom painted motorcycle gas tanks by big wig poster artists:
Art Chantry
Brian Ewing
Dirty Donny
John Van Hamersveld
Harpoon
Derek Hess
Frank Kozik
Lindsey Kuhn
Tara McPherson
The Pizz

...be there (something, anything!) or be a huge square.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Rumblers Kustom Kills 2009 Photos!

They're finally here!!! (Again see? Me and the promises thing. BLAMMO! I kept it...eventually.)


Enjoy! Click here or visit our Rods page with all previous car show photos, scroll down a little and click the Rumblers link!

ROD-A-DAY: Maryland Model A

Yes, I know...you probably thought you'd never see another Rod-A-Day again, didn't you??? Well HA - just when you think I've forgotten about my promises, I make good on them. At least for today.

the Greaser Garage Rod-A-Day 1930 Model A sedan
1930 Model A sedan, from the 38th Annual Vintage Tin of Maryland Rod Run in September, by splattergraphics via Flickr.

In other stream of consciousness news: am about to embark on reading Tom Wolfe's "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby"; there are NO hot rod magazines based out of the East Coast (I'm talking made-of-paper old school type magazines...are there?) and I want to design for one someday; and Hair the musical was actually pretty great (fuckin' hippies).

And in a whoppingly good suprise turn of aural events, my sexy piece of man beast just put Man...or Astroman? 1000X ** on the record player (yes, a real record player). I knew there was a reason I liked that guy.

**(Buy it from Touch and Go Records and support your local indie record label, jerkface!!! Buy vinyl! ...Or one day someone is going to spill a glass of water on your cellphone and you'll lose your entire record and video collection as well as your entire personal library!!)


Is it artifical? This gravity is strong...

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

SANTA, BABY...

I desperately need to have these...


Rhinestone glitter flame platform heels, $95.00 (from Bordello by Pleaser).


Make a note of it, bearded one.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

NUT UP OR SHUT UP


That is all that I have planned for my day. I figure after seeing it, I will be in such an awesome zombie stupor that I might not be able to do much else than sit on the couch and say, "Woah."

And much like a fine, fine wine, Woody "Hippie Ass" Harrelson gets better and better with age. His humanitarian hemp self can twist all up into some Ashtanga in my living room any time.

(Side note: I also just realized his birthday is two days after mine. I swear to god, we're kindred spirits. He's living my sustainable vegan dream in Hawaii and killing the shit out of stuff in many of my favorite movies.)

Enough sappy granola-muncher love, here's a video!




Speaking of films, you should also check out Fuel, a movie about - you guessed it! - our country's retardedly crippling dependence on foreign oil.



I was recommended it by another gearhead friend of mind who's exact quote about it was:
    "I’m not a big fan of preachy eco documentaries but this one isn’t too preachy and is actually very practically oriented. It also echoes my point about the whole biofuel movement which is that no matter what the other merits of Bio Fuel, it gets us out of the middle east and then we can let those people jihad themselves/each other all they want. I have a great pitch for the hotrod community to support Bio… here it is: The more Biofuel we get the rest of the country to use instead of oil, the longer the oil will last and the cheaper it will be (less demand the lower the price). Then we can use all the gasoline we want."

Fuckin' A-merica, he's got it totally right.