image by foCuseD-Photography for The Zentai Project

Zentai is the practice of wearing a full body suit (typically Lycra, though other materials fall into Zentai labels) for private enjoyment or exhibitionism. The suits can be colorful, animal themes or even sinister looking, and personal use ranges from sexual enjoyment to wearing the suits in public for fun and amusement — as seen at The Zentai Project.

While Zentai has been a staple of blog fodder for years as the prime example of far-out fetishes one can find with the click of a mouse, the fetish has had little thoughtful examination, nor has anyone bothered to talk to practitioners to hear the story from their side of the Spandex. At The Daily Beast, Will Doig did just that in his article “Men Who Love Lycra”. While the writeup is dressed with the sensationalism you might expect to someone who’s never encountered zentai (which is not always a sexual fetish), Doig’s piece by far the most in depth and titillating piece on the subject to date. It comes with its own shiny gallery, too.

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poster by Jeff Kleinsmith

The 8th annual Emerald City ComiCon (ECCC), the largest comic book and pop culture convention in the Pacific Northwest, takes place March 13th & 14th at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.

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If your passion was, say, body modification, and you could win a chance to go around the world as an intern for the world’s foremost body mod website… You might resemble our guestblogger Ed Hunsinger. Okay, maybe only Ed looks like Ed. But when BME (Body Modification Ezine) announced their BME World Tour Internship Contest, our Ed entered with hopes to win faster than anyone around here could say “septum piercing.” To everyone’s delight, Ed made it into the #9 spot and was given an “extra credit assignment” to create a ‘day in the life’ video about himself. We knew Ed’s video would be cool and fun, but what we didn’t expect was that it would be its own documentary about Bay Area life within the large-scale, underground machine arts culture — including a first-person tour of life at industrial art space NIMBY and a full demonstration of Interpretive Arson’s astounding interactive project 2pir. And it’s full of fire. We like fire.

Ed’s post features his entry video, photos from a remarkable day, and the call to vote for him includes,

When I got word that I was in the top ten finalists, my heart skipped another beat. Closer and closer to a trip around the world. I could feel my passport tugging on my sleeve, “can we go!? can we go!? please please please!”, but I calmly explained to my anthropomorphized government document that the decision was not up to me. I still had one more assignment to prove I was worthy of such a trip: a blog entry, video, and photos of a day in my life. Luckily the next day had potential to be interesting enough to share with the Internet.

Laughing Squid guest blogger Burstein makes a cameo in Ed’s video.

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Muralist Mona Caron (left) working in the Tenderloin with project manager Lisa Ruth Elliot. Photo: Nick Kasimatis.

I once rode the J-Church in San Francisco with my friend, the muralist Mona Caron. When you ride that train, there’s a brief moment where you can see the tail end of Mona’s first public artwork, the Duboce Bikeway Mural, and as she and I passed we chatted about that project — how she did it, where the funding came from, etc. When the other passengers overheard our conversation, realizing she was the artist behind this epic work, the entire car spontaneously burst into applause.

A detail from Windows Into the Tenderloin. Photo: Mona Caron.

For the people that live near or pass Mona’s murals on a regular basis, her work is a gift that keeps on giving. In part that’s due to her technical virtuosity, which puts her in the company of the very best of the mural tradition in this or any country. She has a rare mastery of perspective, anatomy, rendering and color that gives her work an undeniable authenticity as art, that makes you stand up and take notice. But I think the real pleasure people have in her murals, and the thing that brings them back to view and enjoy them again and again, is the radical utopian vision that animates her art.

You can see that utopianism in her newest mural, Windows Into the Tenderloin, which Mona will be dedicating at a party Friday afternoon:

MURAL DEDICATION EVENT
Friday, March 5th, 3:30pm
Corner of Jones & Golden Gate
Everyone welcome!

Located on the corner of Jones and Golden Gate in the heart of the Tenderloin, the piece is an honest picture of the neighborhood, created in part through hours of community input, and enlivened by portraits of the local characters that Mona has befriended over the year and a half she has been working on it.

Photographer unknown.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Photo: Mona Caron.

The finished work uses virtuoso trompe-l’oeil to open windows on the social life of the area, expressing in art the deep social bonds that always exist, even in the most devastated community. Mona doesn’t sugarcoat a tough situation, but she reminds us that in the Tenderloin, just like anywhere else, good things as well as bad things are happening. Crime, drug use and poverty make life more difficult, but social life goes on —people laugh and talk and eat together, raising children and watching out for each other in countless ways.

Elsewhere in the mural, she peels away huge swaths of wall to reveal the natural ecology that stubbornly refuses to die, even as the urban environment masks it, paves it over.

Photo: Mona Caron.

Mona’s work is epic, but it calls our attention back to the little details, the small signs that life continues, refusing to be crushed or defeated, even in the face of poverty, urban decay, racism, environmental degradation. We can call that vision utopian, but it’s also just a fact, a truth that we all know but that is so rarely spoken aloud.

Thanks, Mona, for this great gift to our city and the world!

Check out more of Mona’s amazing murals and artwork on her website: monacaron.com.

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Nathan Maas has made a mini documentary “I Am A Motherfucker” about Thomas Bruso aka Epic Beard Man who was featured in the video that has now gone viral of him getting into a fight with another man on an Oakland AC Transit bus.

Here’s the original video of the Epic Beard Man fight.

via Sean Bonner

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(To donate to the Save Defenestration fund, go here. S’ cool, we’ll wait for you to come back.)

Perched on the corner of Sixth and Howard Street and San Francisco, a ruined building provides a magical moment for anyone who thinks to look up. Queen Anne tables gallop off the roof, sideshow murals decorate the ground floor, table lamps light the window ledges, and a sofa makes its bid for freedom. Built by world-renown artist Brian Goggin plus a hoard of volunteers thirteen years ago, Defenestration, this famous example of dedicated whimsy, was only meant to last a year.

Housed in the defunct and decaying Hugo Hotel, Defenestration is to undergo some massive renovation to keep pace with the gentrifying neighborhood. Brian Goggin, artist and the piece’s originator, explains:

The building is owned by the city, but they wanted to tear it down in January. My friend Jeremy Sugarman, brother Patrick Goggin and I negotiated with the Redevelopment agency and the local neighborhood council to keep it up. The Redevelopment Agency agreed provided I make the piece safe and restore it or remove it by the end of April. We have made it safe by removing all the pieces that needed serious structural repair. It is looking sparse and wounded. It needs to have many pieces completely rebuilt. To reach the work to remove and replace it we need equipment – boom lifts and cranes. This takes time, labor and money. But we can raise the money and the resources if it is important to enough of us.

Defenestration began its official existence with every music maker and dreamer of dreams in the greater Bay Area and beyond come out to celebrate this emblem of joy and teamwork. The party was so colossal and so quintessentially San Francisco that people still talk about it.

Tour buses stop for it, outlets all over the world write about it, it was made by a community, and now it needs the community’s help once more.

We figure that a world famous, huge-scale art piece that is the centerpiece of a recovering neighborhood, built largely by volunteers and roundly supported by a city that really does know how, would certainly be important enough, indeed.

John Law, Suicide Club member, Cacophony Society architect, and co-founder of Burning Man, has this to say about Defenestration:

“Defenestration is the best. Brian Goggin turned a rambling, spacious, partially wrecked four story residential hotel building into ART. Not only ART, but a f**king tourist attraction, to boot. You can almost separate humanity into the proverbial two kinds of people: those who “get” the piece, and those who don’t. Those who “get it” are basically everyone. What I’m trying to say is that Brian did the nearly impossible: he made FINE ART that ALL people could appreciate.

On top of creating a brilliant piece of sculpture, he ALSO buffaloed pretty much everyone in town at the time into helping him throw the greatest street party that I remember in over thirty years in this town as the opener for the piece. The gypsies, punks, goths, machine art kids, ravers, hippies, “serious art types”, art fags, pranksters, rocket scientists, burners (this was before the pathetic appellation “burner” was in popular use), city politicos, business owners and pretty much everyone else came out for the party. Many of them helped put it on. The organizing crew got permits to hang the pieces on the building, close Howard St. for the show and have aerial and fire performances right there in broad daylight in South of Market. Try to do that now.

In 13 years Defenestration has become synonymous with San Francisco to many. Along with the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, The Cliff House, ChinaTown and Lombard Street, Defenestration is on the tour bus routes and is on display daily as a gift to both locals and visitors to our grand and kooky town.

If there is any plan to convince the Powers That Be to retain this wonderful, goofy, grand sculpture as part of whatever development eventually engulfs the corner of 6th & Howard, we should support it whole heartedly. The facades of several historically important buildings in town have been preserved and incorporated into the new structures that were built within their shells. They could perform a similar engineering feet with Defenestration.

In the mean time, let’s do what we can to support Brian in restoring the piece as the final fate of the building is debated by the City and developers.”

Defenestration is more than just rebellious furniture tacked to a wall. It’s a true icon, a symbol of what we do in this city and what a group of genuinely dedicated and excited individuals can be capable of, given the right impetus. It’s a living, breathing piece of history, something tourist and native alike can marvel at. Stories of its construction abound, from the trapeze artists suspended out the window on opening day to tales of fondly remembered mishap. Eva Galperin, now of the EFF, remembers being a high school student working in the interior:

“My most poignant memory of working on Defenestration – I was working on helping to clear out the building, to get all the plaster dust out. We were having lunch on the roof, and I had forgotten something downstairs. So I come barreling down the stairs, covered in plaster dust, only to realize that there is a 2×4 across the stairs, and I don’t duck *quite* fast enough. Giant scar across my back. I came home, covered in plaster dust still, and across my back the plaster dust was pink. I did, in fact, suffer for my art.”

This author remembers Miss Galperin in class sometime after the incident, bragging about the injury and declaring it the coolest one she had gotten to that point and we should all really come down and see this amazing thing they were building.

Michael Michael, also known as Danger Ranger, co-founder of BurningMan, Cacophonist and raconteur, comments:

Defenestration was one of the first large-scale art projects in San Francisco produced by voluntary collaboration. Many challenges had to be overcome to bring this brilliant idea into reality. Assembling a variety of old furniture and then modifying it into whimsical shapes, clearing massive amounts of debris from an old and long-abandoned building, installing supporting frameworks and lighting, all required heroic effort.

During the several months of installation, there was a convergence of colorful characters from all over the country and the labyrinthian interior of the building itself became a temporary colony of artists working all hours. Donated food and supplies appeared each day to fuel the hard-working crew. This historic project attracted a bunch of unique and creative individuals into what became a community effort that has had lasting effect.

And the incredible block party and circus held at the completion of the project is a legendary event remembered by many.”

Chicken John, showman and erstwhile mayoral candidate, apparently became intoxicated upon hearing the news of Defenestration’s potential demise. When asked for a comment, this is what we could make out:

“Defenestration is the most valuable asset. . .beacon of tolerance and whimsy. . .keeping the idea of San Francisco as a city of Art and Innovation. . . .overflowing with possibility. . . championing unconventional thinking. . .embracing function as form. . .perverted f*ing furniture getting away with murder. . . they move you know. . .a genuine cornerstone of truth in a world gone mad. . .if it was a girl I’d marry it. . . can’t let civic treasure slip away. . . demand you commit to its long life. . .city of arts and innovation. . .the dog loved it. . . doom and cold. . . emptiness. . .pigeons. . .”

We over here at LaughingSquid did the math, and figured that if 10% of the population of San Francisco proper gave $1.00, Defenestration would rise again to amaze and delight. Skip one hour of metered parking in SF! Buy one coffee one size down! Go through your couch to repair the one in the window! All donation are tax deductible through the very generous machinations of the Black Rock Art Foundation, with a handy dandy Defenestration Donation Page available for all your donating needs.

In Addition, the 1:AM gallery is hosting a fundraiser and admiration party
to help raise funds:

Please join us on Friday, March 5th, from 6-10 pm for a very special opening/fundraising event at the 1:AM Gallery, on the corner of 6th and Howard Streets. The gallery will host a month-long exhibit celebrating Defenestration, including examples of restoration work in progress and artwork for sale. All proceeds from the event and exhibit go directly to the restoration project. Visit www.1AMSF.com for more information and updates. The exhibit will run through April 2, 2010.

If you weren’t around the first time, donate – time, money, and energy. Contribute some senseless beauty to an uptight world. Forward the donation site around. Be active, if this is something you think is wonderful, because when we win and the piece is beautiful again, you can tell people to look up when you pass, and you will be able to say “That there, that art piece over there, I did that, we did that, all of us.”

photos by Florencia Alemán

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photo by Scott Beale

Sean tries to maintain the delicate balance with his awesome “Stop Frowning Hipster, Stop Smiling Hippie” hoodie.

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photo by Dave Young

Every Valentine’s Day, quite literally thousands of people converge on Justin Herman Plaza at 6pm to engage in a mass Pillow Fight wherein faces are pummeled, backs are thwacked, and many a giggles had. However, this fun comes at an awful price. Each year tens of thousands bits of feathers, fluff, and foam get strewn across the plaza and they quickly clog the storm drains leaving is toxic debris no other choice but to run into our delicate bay.

photo by Scott Beale

The other hidden cost behind this spectacle of fluffy carnage is this stress it causes on SF government’s relationship to public art and fun. As you may know, some elements in the San Francisco municipal government are waging a War on Fun. While the primary target of the War on Fun has been the clubs and music venues that enrich our lifes, it also includes public art and the very really cost of the Pillow Fight has and can be used justification to stop other events like the Urban Iditarod or lead to further cracking down on other forms of art like the Obama Street Change.

The event has even lead to the U.N. issuing a resolution on Pillow Conflict And Teen Sexual Tension. As Guest Blogger/Part Time UN Commander EDW Lynch reports:

“The United Nations Unconventional Culture Commission (UNUCC) strongly condemns the 2010 San Francisco Pillow Fight and the deplorable attacks on UN pillow inspectors in 2009. A new UN Resolution blames the surge in pillow conflict on an alarming rise in teen sexual tension and the growing influence of radical Talibro pillow extremists, whose testosterone and Red Bull-fueled brosurgency has turned the San Francisco Pillow Fight into a massive melee.”

All of this from some fluff. Ok, a fuckton of fluff. Thus, if you do go to the pillow fight, be aware of its costs and stay to help clean up the mess. Have fun, but don’t be a jerk.

(This message brought to you by the Association of Joyous Tentacles and Mothers Against Drunk Douchebags)

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“Even in your company, I feel so alone.” (Dwell, September 2009)

“Unhappy Hipsters”, a new Tumblr genre blog that documents lonely hipsters in a modern world, which in this case primarily consists of photos from Dwell magazine.

via Coudal Partners

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The film Introduction to Haiti (made in 1942 under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs) gives a haunting snapshot of mid-twentieth-century Haiti including vintage footage of the now ruined Presidential Palace and Notre Dame Cathedral in Port-au-Prince.

Narrated by radio announcer Milton Cross, the 10-minute film focuses on Haiti as a tourist destination and on the freedom that Haitian citizens enjoy. This film depicts Haiti in a hopeful but unfortunately brief moment, when the freedom and prosperity of its general populace was at its peak.

1942 marked a dozen years of rule by democratic leaders in Haiti. But just four years later, the country would experience the first of two military coups. Those were followed by the violent, corrupt regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and then later his son “Baby Doc”–here’s a timeline of the Duvalier era.

Haiti’s history is colorful to say the least. And violent and tragic. The country’s first coup d’état occurred just 2 years after declaring independence. Although they were the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the U.S., our country didn’t recognize them for more than half of a century due to concerns by southern states that their own slaves would revolt as the Haitian people had against the French.

The country has a long history of disastrous seismic activity as well. A devastating 7.5 magnitude earthquake in the late 18th Century also leveled the capital city; although it only killed 200 people because there was a long rumbling preceding it which gave people time to run outside. Another major quake in 1842, exactly a hundred years before this film, completely destroyed Le Cap, the country’s second-largest city.

But there is another aspect of Haitian history that every American should be aware of; it is the debt that we indirectly owe to the island nation for our country’s very existence as we know it.

The successful revolt of the French colony Saint-Domingue, which became the independent nation of Haiti, convinced Napoleon to give up all colonizing in the Western Hemisphere and focus on Europe. As a result France sold off some land that they otherwise would have held onto in a transaction known as The Louisiana Purchase. That little western addition was pretty key for the up and coming United States at the start of the 19th Century.

You can read more about the Haitian revolution on The Louverture Project a wiki dedicated to the era of 1791-1804. For more on the history (and future) of buildings in Haiti check out the most recent episode of KCRW’s Design and Architecture program, which discusses this topic in detail. Finally for a broad overview of the history of Haiti, the World History Archives has a great collection of resources that a professor named Bob Corbett put online, including his own lectures, that cover the area from pre-Columbian times up to 1990.

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A 2004 video of Nate Harrision taking a look at “Amen Break”, the world’s most important 6 second drum beat, from the The Winstons’ 1969 song “Amen, Brother”.

This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music — a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison’s 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

via Retro Thing

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photo by Michael Halsband

Vanessa Grigoriadis writes about “America’s Tweethearts” in Vanity Fair. According to the article, Twitter basically a popularity contest that creates “twilebrities”.

Over at CNET News Caroline McCarthy calls the Vanity Fair article “Twembarrassing”.

Rachel Sklar gives her take on the Vanity Fair article over on Mediaite.

A few of our friends are featured in the article and it’s great to see them in a Vanity Fair spread, but my guess is that they had no idea how off-base the article would actually be when it came out.

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Letterheady is a new blog that showcases interesting letterhead designs. It’s from the same people who run the wonderful Letters of Note blog.

via Neatorama

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If you’ve lost your shirt to TSA and are betting it all on a last-minute standby, why not wander over to Terminal 3 for some true gambling history. San Francisco International Airport is currently hosting, “For Amusement Only: Slot Machines and Other Gambling Devices of the Mechanical Age”. Vintage gambling devices of all make and marvel are on display through May 2010. The machines are behind glass so hold on to your buffalo nickels.

While killing time before an early morning flight, I snapped a few photos of show. The exhibit space stretches along a corridor with a moving walkway. It’s mesmerizing to stare at these things while people seem to float by in the background.

There are more photos in my Flickr set.

The objects are on loan from Joe Welch’s San Bruno American Antique Museum.

Here is the orginal press release.

photos by Josh Ellingson

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Growing Up Heroes is a wonderful new photo blog that takes a reflective look back at the heroes that we wanted to be growing up and how they influenced our childhood.

via Wired (Underwire)

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LG Mobile is running a hilarious campaign featuring James Lipton, armed with a fake beard, who asks you to “Give It A Ponder” before you send a text you might regret.

via Chris Glass & Beard Review

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The November 2009 issue of Paste Magazine takes a look at The Evolution of the Hipster 2000-2009 (here’s a larger version).

via Caroline McCarthy

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guest post by Josh Ellingson

Statistically speaking, you are probably already aware of the “Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School” phenomenon. The caberet informed, rock ‘n roll figure drawing event is now in over fifty cities worldwide and gaining momentum frenetically. It’s so popular that the Los Angeles chapter has recently decided to take the show on the road. Dr. Sketchy’s Roadshow is currently traversing California, spreading glitter and pencil shavings from Sacramento to Alhambra.

The sketch-curious of San Francisco can get their Anti-Art School fix monthly at 111 Minna Gallery. Host Alice Stribling taps into the Bay Area’s wealth of unique performers and original characters for models unlike anyone you’ll find at the local art college. The friendly staff at 111 Minna keep the bar open and if you’re lucky, the model might perform a strip-tease at intermission. It’s easy to see how this thing catches on. The next Dr. Sketchy’s SF features punker/burlesque icon, Eva Von Slut. Here’s the info:

Tuesday, Nov. 24th 2009
7pm – 10pm
111 Minna Gallery,San Francisco CA
21+
$10 General admission
$7 students/teachers with ID
FREE for barflies, so bring your non-sketchy friends!

http://drsketchyssf.blogspot.com/

Visit founder Molly Crabapple’s home base at http://www.drsketchy.com to find out more. Here’s my Dr. Sketchy’s Twitter list for those inclined to follow a chapter near you: http://twitter.com/ellingson/drsketchys/

Big thanks to Alice Stribling for providing photos for this post. There are lots more photos and sketches at the Dr. Sketchy’s SF Flickr Group Pool.

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guest post by RICK!

Artist Spy Emerson is in desperate needs of wooden spoons for her new art project, Pankabestia, in NYC.

SPOON DRIVE
Oct 12th-Nov 12th
Prizes are awarded to top three donators, including a special, private performance from moses+spy. Anyone (or team) can enter email: spy [at] spygirlfriday [dot] com

Spy is collecting wooden utensils to be used in an installation for the exhibition “PANKABESTIA: Punk Beasts of the Swimming Cities of Serenissima” She plans to build a giant representation of the art rafts used to crash the Venice Biennale this past summer, and needs many many wooden utensils to do it.

Ritual Roasters, Lost Weekend Video, Flora Grubb Gardens and Cafe Que Tal will be accepting spoon donations.

OR just slap a stamp on an old wooden spoon, and sends it to:

spy
c/o anonymous gallery
169 Bowery
New York, NY 10002.

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid, subscribe via RSS, Email, Twitter & Facebook.

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guest post by Burstein!

The hackerspace Noisebridge is one of San Francisco’s cultural and artistic gems. Its members have contributed a wide variety of art, hacks and local culture.

Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world. We help people build neat and awesome things.

On Friday, October 2nd, these über-makers and geeks are having an open house for their one year anniversary that will show off what they have done and can do. This alone is worth the price of admission, which is free. Things to see include:

The Brain Machine (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Compass Vibro-Anklet (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Makerbot Robot (which can be used at noisebridge)

Also at the event will be the Reverse Engineering Bar with only the geekiest of drinks and music by DIY-band Corpus Callosum and Cally McMorrow, circuit bender of legend.

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid, subscribe via RSS, Email, Twitter & Facebook.

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