New Year's Eve....Hotel des Street Art, San Francisco

If you are heading to San Francisco for New Year's Eve, then you can't find a better art-inspired hotel than Hotel des Arts in downtown near the Embarcadero which also acts as an art gallery.

Sam Flores, CA

You could be sleeping with David Choe, Buff Monster or London Police. My choice would be Sam Flores ;) But get you minds out of the gutter. I'm talking about the artists who designed the rooms of this boutique hotel!

Book'em Dano Check out the complete list of artists and rooms if you're looking to stay at Hotel des Arts.

Hotel des Arts
447 Bush Street
San Francisco, California 94108
USA

Tel: 1.415.956.3232 or 1.800.956.4322
Fax: 1.415.956.0399
reservations@sfhoteldesarts.com


Find the best prices on Hotels.com

Buff Monster series #1

Today was hot and sweaty. Too hot to be queuing up for limited edition toys, but I was excited to see the line on Melrose and I had some time to kill. Until the Munkey King store dude said there was a slim chance they'd sell out before we got in. There were two lines: one for buying; one for signing. Now that's an operation for you.

I happily went to Monterey Park for dim sum...got there too late, but that's another story! So I'm back on Melrose by 5.30pm and Barracuda has its Buff Monster 'happy ending' show. So, I roll up and see the t-shirts and various toys, but only one boxed set of the whole series #1. $25 @ x12 toys = $300. So I grab it up and start chatting to the Mindstyle business development fella who's there. That's the company that produced the toys through a licensing deal.

Of the 12 toys, there is one of each of the nine toys, including a secret toy. The remaining three toys are repeats. Of my repeats I got another secret toy. A black Buff Monster with horns and a pentagram. You see, Buff is a heavy metal fan! I got him to sign all nine toys plus my extra secret toy.

I get home check on eBay what's happening. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Hmmm. May be I'll be $300 invested in Buff. There were a couple of dunnys up there and a print. But nothing else. Looked like collectors were buying, or was there still stock available from the 4,500 pieces produced. May be there are other promotional events yet to begin...Comic Con is soon too...

But a later check on eBay showed promise. One seller has started to list the toys...the secret toy is ~$100. The other 3" toys are about $35-50. Let's see what develops. Patience...

Merry Karnowsky Gallery ~ 10th anniversary

I got an invite to celebrate 10 years of Merry Karnowsky's gallery. She's got some connections as Jason spotted an Obey portrait of her in the entrance to the gallery just for this show. How cool!

I saw Buff Monster at the spot and we had a good ol' chinwag about the art business. Hmm. Intriguing. He's launching his toy range later this month with MINDStyle who also work with Michael Lau. I skipped Buff's Culver City art show the other month, but expect a little report from me on the toys.