About five years ago, I started hitting the art scene as hard as I could while working at least two other gigs. The street art scene was very strong and I was intrigued. I met guys like Homo Riot and Pastey White. My stickers were selling well and lets just say some test marketing was in the works outside places like La Luz de Jesus, New Profanity and Antebellum in Hollywood.
Paratransit gives a major advantage to someone working multiple gigs, especially with one in publicity. I could be anywhere in, or on the border of Los Angeles County while on shift. Disneyland? At least once every couple of months. Santa Monica? Once a week or so. The Hood? About once a night. And with every day brings a lunch break, most likely at a Jack in the Box, which are in some of the worst neighborhoods, and they include parking and a bathroom.
Sooo, if I was going to do a street art campaign, I wouldn’t want them to figure who I was, at least right away. Shepard “Obey Giant” Fairy is pretty obvious, but that was a long time coming. And Jack in the Box was edgy enough to a street art campaign, but it would clearly backfire. I mean, what corporate fast food franchise puts stickers for their own company in their bathrooms for street cred. Even Burger King couldn’t get away with it.
I began crafting a sticker design that was barely safe for work, yet over the edge. Customers would think they came from Jack in the Box, and corporate would just be bewildered. There was a very rough pinup sketch, but this got inked in quickly. The idea was these would just keep showing up with different fetish themes. Feminists would be outraged. Guys on the street would be hatin’ and keying every sticker they saw. Employees would roll their eyes at managers and say “I swear! It’s not me!” It’s a puzzle that starts to draw attention, like OBEY stickers and Angelyne.
This would need to be done right, on vinyl, requiring a print run for $100 or more. It needed to wait until I had a budget. And then, money started getting tight. And Sherry got cancer. Then Covid hit, and bathrooms across the county were shut down by the health department.
So this is now permanently shelved as a street art project. I still might do stickers of these for fun, and the art is tight. Mr. Beefy might make an appearance on a t-shirt without the banner. We’ll see. But for the moment, he’s the street art campaign that never was.
Dungeon Net
Hogspy
