This is one of my favorite drawings, of a friend I will refer to by his online pseudonym, Atypical. This year was Atypical’s 28th birthday, and his partner commissioned this portrait as one of his gifts. He was a pleasure to draw, and his great smile is just a reflection of his warm spirit. Plus, he’s into robots, which is one of the coolest things I learned about him in the drawing process.
Happy belated birthday, Atypical!
Ajuan Mance
Starbucks Cafe, Rancho Cordova, California.
Ajuan Mance
This is a portrait from an overnight trip I made with my fabulous partner to Rancho Cordova, a small community outside of Sacramento. The area felt both rural and suburban, at the same time. I had the feeling it was mostly a community of 9-to-5 working folks, because the sidewalks were empty, and even the Starbucks was mostly deserted. It was nothing like San Francisco, where shops and cafes are full at all hours of the day.
Of the people I did encounter, few of them were Black, and so I felt compelled to draw at least a couple of the Black people I did see. I started my day at Brookfield’s, the kind of classic, old school family restaurants that attracts classic, old school patrons.
Ajuan Mance
Telegraph Avenue, near Cafe Flora, Oakland, CA.
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Every Black man I see in a hoodie looks like a hero to me.
Ajuan Mance
Strand Bookstore, New York, NY, April 2016.
Ajuan Mance
Christmas shopping at Stoneridge Mall, December 2015, Dublin, CA.
Ajuan Mance
On the New York Subway, April 2016.
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I love riding commuter trains, whether its BART in the San Francisco Bay Area, the subway in New York City, the T in Boston, or the Metro in Washington, DC. I like it because riding public transportation is often easier, especially if you don’t enjoy circling the block in search of parking. It also provides me with a block of time in which the wi-fi is either spotty or nonexistent, so I can do nothing but read or listen to music.
The main reason I like commuter trains, though, is because riding them makes me feel like a grownup. That might sound peculiar, coming from someone who is less than two months away from turning 50. But, if you grew up on Long Island, like I did, it might make a little more sense. You see, when I was a kid, the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) was primarily a commuter pipeline, shuttling working men (and I use the word men quite literally) from the bedroom communities of Long Island to their offices in Manhattan. Unlike its bigger sister, the New York subway system, which really, truly served the masses, kids usually only rode the LIRR on fieldtrips to Manhattan; and when we got on board, we were surrounded mostly by men in their business suits, briefcases at their side, reading the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times on their way to work. For me, riding the LIRR into Manhattan, carrying a briefcase, reading the paper, and looking very important and serious was what adulthood was all about. Because he worked on Long Island and not in The City, my dad didn’t take the railroad, but, every morning, after reading the paper over breakfast, he would pick up his briefcase, put on the last piece of his suit (the jacket), and head out to the car to do the other thing that felt really adult to me, drive the Long Island Expressway to work.
Luck would have it that I’ve never lived more than two miles away from any place I’ve worked, and so I’ve never really had a commute of any kind. Maybe that’s why I can romanticize the idea of depending on public transit. It still feels to me like the people who pick up their briefcases and hop on the train to get to their places of work are having one of those singular adult experiences that I have not. This is not to say that, living in the Bay Area and seeing the stress and the cost of commuting, I actually want a longer ride to work. I know how good I have it, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Still, it’s fun to hop on the commuter train and feel like a real grownup, every now and then.
Ajuan Mance
Here’s another portrait from outside the Honey Bistro Restaurant. While the brother in the previous post drew my attention because of his audacious style of dress (fake fur on a not-particularly-cold day), I was drawn to this guy’s nerdiness. It felt so very relatable, Indeed, looking at him with his glasses, his double chin and his Eisenhower jacket was a little like looking into a slightly warped mirror.
Ajuan Mance
The last few posts were portraits I made in New York, and now I have a couple from San Francisco. I was walking down one of streets on the edge of SOMA and I saw this man sitting on the benches outside the Honey Bistro Restaurant. The backpack, fake fur hat, and fake fur coat posed an interesting challenge, in that I wasn’t sure I could easily capture their texture in a simple line drawing. I contemplated using comic dots or cross-hatching, and then I realized I’d prefer to keep the figure simple and monochrome.
Ajuan Mance,
While online reviewers go back and forth about which Harlem buffet is the best, Manna’s Soul Food is my hands-down favorite. From a church picnic-style lunch to jerk chicken with all the fixins, Manna has the western shore of the African diaspora on lock.
Ajuan Mance