Family in RVCA in San Francisco

Sammy and I just returned from San Francisco, where we were setting up our section of the brand new RVCA store. It's on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, in the place of the GAP. The window display has a multracial manniquin couple in silver space suits on some alien planet. The gallery isn't set up yet, but without revealing anything, the first exhibition is going to be mind blowing. There are four monitors at the back with headphones, looping dvds we chose. We're starting it off with Street Trash, Paper Rad's 'Trash Talking', 'The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda' (the only psychadelic movie ever made according to Jay Babcock), and the latest 'Wholphin'. We'll change them monthly.

Here's Sammy, very stoked that he can now watch Street Trash over and over without pressing anything.



They were bulding bag check shelves, with each compartment featuring a different cover of ANP quarterly, the magazine RVCA publish, edited by our pals Ed Templeton, Aaron Rose, and Brendan Fowler, also featuring the cutting reportage of our own Nate Harrington.







The street is a healthy mix of teenage runaways in Grateful Dead shirts, and white-bearded men in leotards, our exact demographic. If you live in SF, stuff is arriving daily so be sure to pop in often.

While we were in town we dropped by the Mcsweeneys office to say hi to the discerning editors, Jordan Bass and Andrew Leland. It's a humble working place for the greatest literary journal ever. Everyone was sharing one boardroom table.



Jeremy Crown, who runs Little Otsu, the deluxe stationary and book publisher/boutique in the storefront section of the office, was raving about the new issue, gushing it's the best one yet. They gave us one to take home. It looks totally awesome. It opens in different directions at the back and front. I don't really know what to call it - Double spined?



Plus - Jordan and myself have the same glasses. Behind me are the shelves that a bunch of art school kids built for Mcsweeney's for free.





We stayed at Alvin Buenaventura's house, the man behind Buenaventura Press, publisher of such amazing books as Kramer's Ergot 6, Johnny Ryan's Comic Book Holocaust, and Comic Art magazine, to name only a fraction. His office is in his house and the whole place is a museum of amazing artwork.