THIS MODERN WORLD

In the early nineties, I used to do window displays for The Booksmith, on Haight St. in San Francisco. Recently ran across a couple shots of my late, lamented cat Kato exploring a foam core model of the store I was making for one display.

Somewhere around here I also have a shot of a Twin Peaks-themed window I did for them, because the nineties. (If you were a customer of the store in those days, and remember the giant, hand-painted recreation of the cover of Matilda that was displayed in back for a long time, that was another one of mine.)

There are four days left on the Doggie Diner head kickstarter:

These funny pups are leftover signage from the Doggie Diner, a now defunct local restaurant chain in the SF Bay Area. I and a handful of friends have been bringing these local darlings to charity events, parades, and art happenings for the last couple of decades at our own expense and for the sheer joy of it. I have been doing this because these local icons are the only things I know of that brighten the day of EVERYONE who sees them—every time—and for me, that is worth all the labor and expenses that I have poured into them over the years.

But, twenty years of hauling them around the Bay Area on a rickety trailer and 50 years in the sun has taken its toll, and restoring a vintage, 10-foot-tall, 300lb fiberglass and metal sculpture is complicated, labor intensive, and expensive—and we have three of them! Please help us restore the Doggie Diner heads back to their former glory, so we can continue to bring these mobile Bay Area mascots to civic, community, and art events for free for another 50 years!

They’re a roving landmark, a symbol of the vanishing San Francisco of artists and pranksters. They’ve even shown up in This Modern World a couple of times!

..adding: if they make the Kickstarter, there is a possibility the doggies will show up at my Cartoon Art Museum gig in March.

…update 2: Kickstarter funded! Hopefully we’ll see one or two of the doggies outside the Cartoon Art Museum on March 11!

Poster flash sales are DONE!

Huge thanks to my friends at Topatoco for taking care of logistics and getting us through a coupe of glitches.

And many thanks to everyone who took part. I hope you enjoy your bounty!

So apparently this is the cover of this week’s upcoming New York Times Magazine:

…which inspired me to photoshop this:

The new owners of Urban Tulsa have let me know they’ll be dropping This Modern World, citing a lack of space for syndicated content.