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Street Seen

Buy me love

Locally-made gifts for your boo (or you)

02.05.13 - 7:13 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN You are welcome to spend Valentine's Day as I will this year: corralled onto a dark dancefloor with 200 similar atheists in the face of the love goddess. But as many of you will be happily celebrating with partners (hiss!), I've assembled this four-pack of completely locally-made Valentine's Day gifts. You're welcome (pfft.)Read more »

Noir Faze

Two local streetwear labels come up with distinct fashion philosophies 

01.29.13 - 6:07 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN While larger clothing companies are free to define their brand through glossy print campaigns and billboards staring out impassively over downtown shoppers, the little guys look elsewhere to establish identity.Read more »

Are your friends criminals?

Things get weird at the Zero Graffiti International Conference

01.22.13 - 7:28 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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STREET SEEN Nearing the climax of her presentation at last week's Zero Graffiti International Conference, Vancouver PD's graffiti-fighting specialist Valerie Spicer despaired over graffiti's affects on its perpetrators.

"He didn't die because of graffiti," she said sadly, a deceased Canadian graffiti artist's childhood photo on the PowerPoint screen behind her. "But I'm quite sure that the behaviors he learned in the subculture didn't help him confront the man who stabbed and killed him."Read more »

Denim legends and stained glass socks

Japan blows your mind, via the family-run boutique Cotton Sheep

01.15.13 - 6:46 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN First, I saw the socks. Half sheer, half solid, the pair's blue rose design made me flash on stained glass cathedral. Like a sock-crazed zombie, I turned on my heels and entered the most unassuming, unmarked shop on Hayes Valley's row of quirky boutiques and designer collections.Read more »

The Haight Street Banksy rat is looking for a good home

01.11.13 - 2:43 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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Removing the Haight Street Banksy rat, April 2010. Photo courtesy Brian Greif
Removing the Haight Street Banksy rat, April 2010. Photo courtesy Brian Greif
Removing the Haight Street Banksy rat, April 2010. Photo courtesy Brian Greif
Installing the Haight Street Banksy rat at Design Miami. Photo courtesy Brian Greif
Installing the Haight Street Banksy rat at Design Miami. Photo courtesy Brian Greif

Kerfuffle attended the publication of my Street Seen column on the reappropriated Banksy street art that popped up at Context art fair during Art Basel week in Miami last month.

Hamptons gallerist Stephen Keszler wrote to tell me that my account of him taking two of the pieces from Palestine and affixing $400,000 price tags to the them was so boring that it made him fall asleep in the bathtub (probably just part of growing old, darling.)

But I also received an interesting communique from a man who claimed responsibility for getting the Banksy rat originally painted on Haight Street's Red Victorian hotel and cafe to Miami. He says it needs a home. Read more »

Dapper down

Tomboy Tailors opens up the first genderqueer menswear shop in the country

01.08.13 - 6:46 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED When Ford Models announced that its newest menswear model was a woman — Olympic swimmer and New York artist Casey Legler — in the same month that Yves Saint Laurent chose Saskia de Brauw as the face of its spring-summer 2013 menswear collection, it became clear that men's fashion was opening itself to the fact that not all people who wear suits and sport rugged looks are male-identified.Read more »

The wrong filter

Does the Internet own us now? A look at what Instagram's policy kerfuffle means for artists

01.02.13 - 10:41 am | Caitlin Donohue |
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caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN Remember 2012, the year when Instagram was queen of the social networks? Young creatives flocked to the photo-sharing app in the year of the Mayan apocalypse and Tard the Grumpy Cat, a sleek, pretty substitute to our backlog of thousands of antiquated Facebook friends and their daily lives.Read more »

I sell a rat

Public street art as private purchase? Banksy's Haight Street rat turns up in Miami

12.18.12 - 6:02 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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STREET SEEN Like many of his Bay Area art world peers, the beret-wearing rat that Banksy stenciled on the side of Haight Street's Red Victorian hotel in 2010 was in Miami for Art Basel week.

But sadly, our stenciled friend wasn't available for air-kisses. The rodent-adorned chunk of wall hung behind a velvet rope and its own security guard in the VIP lounge at Context, a new-this-year contemporary wing of the sprawling Art Miami art fair.Read more »

No brand

Japanese retail whips SF into a frenzy -- but are they that much different than the chain stores we already have?

12.11.12 - 6:17 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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caitlin@sfbg.com

STREET SEEN To the casual observer, it may have appeared as if I had taken a painful, rainy early morning Muni ride into SoMa for the sole purpose of eating plastic-wrapped Japanese pancakes filled with red bean paste in a chain store. But to adherents of the Muji phenomenon, I was actually witnessing the birth of cross-Pacific retail revolution.Read more »

Icy hot looks

Get fierce with winter fashion -- club-ready stunners and wet weather must-haves from local stores

12.04.12 - 6:21 pm | Caitlin Donohue |
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On Kelly: Teenplo top, Ambiance; Necklace, scarf, sunglasses, Arcam. Bracelet, Painted Bird.
On Ryan: RTH market tote, Mill Mercantile; Tracy Reece dress, Ambiance; Earrings, Arcam.
On Marie: Fada necklace, Ambiance; Zad bracelet, Ambiance; Icco purse, Ambiance; Dress, Mission Thrift.
On Kelly: Imogene & Willie Overfield shooting jacket, Mill Mercantile; Glasses, clawed gloves, necklace, Arcam.
On Anton: Isabel Lu top, Ambiance; Bag, Freeman's Sporting Goods x Dewar's limited edition; Sunglasses, necklace, Arcam.
On Marie: Pendleton knit muffler, Unionmade/Mill; Patagonia Nano Puff jacket, Unionmade; Pants, boots model's own; Purse, Icco.
On Virgie: B. B. Dakota sweater, Ambiance; Hat, Arcam; Zad necklace, Ambiance.
On Ryan: Billy Reid asymmetrical shirt, Mill Mercantile; Hat, gloves, Arcam; Filson Tin Cloth backpack, Unionmade.
Our shoot stylist: Arcam's Dick Van Dick

STREET SEEN Our stylist for this week's "Icy Hot" photoshoot Dick Van Dick was a little twerked from the party scene the night before, but in order to properly express the fashion aesthetic of his Arcam style collective, he was good enough to indulge me with a single quote.

"I believe in the power of the retrospective fashion sense," the Bay Area native texted me. "Nothing new ever happens. Recycle, reuse, resell." Read: vintage couture, the eternal refuge of the low budget club kid.Read more »