Don’t ask why I decided to use a tartan as the backdrop for a brother eating in a Mexican restaurant. I don’t really have a good answer. I will say, however, that the next time you go to La Penca Azul, order the Naked Chicken Wings (not the buffalo wings, but the naked wings). They come served with the sauce of your choice, and the menu lists a bunch of different sauces to choose from. So far I’m eaten my wings with the first sauce on the list (I can’t remember what it was called), and I’ve also had the chipotle sauce, which was quite different from what I expected but also really tasty.
Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Happy Kwanzaa, and a wonderful solstice! I’ll be posting my first attempt at a Christmas-themed drawing tomorrow. In the interim, I hope you are enjoying the holiiday season.
You may have noticed that I don’t often draw men wearing earrings. The truth is, actually, that some of the guys who have appeared on this blog do wear earrings, but that I sometimes forget to include them, especially if they’re small studs. At first I wondered if this was because earrings on men are now so common that I don’t even notice them anymore. But, the more I thought about it, I realized that it’s really quite the opposite. I just don’t think there are as many men in earrings as there used to be back in the ’80s and ’90s, and there are definitely a lot less guys who are wearing hoops. On the other hand, there are several times as many guys in tattoos. I hope to reach drawing #500 by the end of this year. When I think about what I’d like to capture in the second 500 drawings, more guys with tattoos, more musicians, and more students come to mind.
There’s the guy who wears his 70’s-style afro ironically, and then there’s the guy–like Lenny Kravitz–whose afro is a way of saying “I’m sexy, just like those fly brothers in the Blaxpoitation movies.” Then, finally, there’s the guy in this picture, whose afro is less a statement about culture or style or hotness and more a side effect of his interest in things other than fashion or irony or sexiness, things like–perhaps–discrete mathematics…
In the Bay Area, I rarely see anyone wearing old school rugby jerseys. In the last ten or so years, the loose-fitting cotton shirts with white collars and chest stripes (some call them hoops) have given way to form-fitting, short-sleeve jerseys in high-tech fabrics. Come to think of it, I rarely see folks in the newer high-tech jerseys either. Still, when I see someone in one of the throwback cotton hoop jerseys, I assume he’s one of the rugby faithful. When I saw this guy outside Tomatina’s in Alameda, I wanted to ask him if he played, but by the time I passed by the door of the restaurant, he and his party had already gone inside.
Speaking of people wearing summer clothing during winter weather, this guy at Michael’s was wearing what I can only describe as one of Jennifer Beals’s dancewear-style tops from the movie Flashdance. He had a hoodie tied around his waist, and that indicated to me that he must have worked up a sweat doing all that holiday shopping in the East Bay’s busiest craft store.
I once observed that Michael’s is like Home Depot for women. Of course, there are plenty of women who shop at home; and there are certainly a small number of men who shop at Michael’s, but the general point stands. This is the face of a guy who had just walked into the Michael’s in Emeryville and gotten a look at the checkout line. During the holiday season, the line at this store is absolutely outrageous. It moves quickly, though, and so it’s never as bad as it looks…but when you walk in the front door of the store, the line is the first thing you see, and it looks pretty awful. I say, bring a book to pass the time, or–even better–shop online and avoid going to Michael’s entirely.
It’s a week before Christmas, and Oakland is finally having temperatures that really feel like the holiday season. When I went out to my car yesterday, there was frost on my windshield! That hasn’t happened to me since I moved to California (more than ten years ago). Given that this is the closest to East Coast winter weather than we’ve had in more than a decade, it’s particularly interesting to note the number of people who are still dressing like it’s August. The guy in this drawing was sitting with his back to the window at Noodle Theory, a restaurant so small that, no matter where you’re sitting, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a taste of whatever the outside weather feels like. I was cold throughout lunch, and looking at the man in this drawing, who was wearing a short-sleeved summer polo shirt with a t-shirt underneath, made me feel even colder. He, on the other hand, seemed just as comfy as if he was wrapped in a down comforter.
