AWW..

We got some shout out from our friends over at Sweet Streets...They really are sweet after all!! HA

http://sweetstreetsla.blogspot.com/2010/12/inside-q-pop.html

Super cool time lapse....

My friends Kevin Dart, Elizabeth Ito, and Chris Turnham painted some very amazing murals at the shop. Elizabeth painted the one outside..and Kevin and Chris painted the interior one. The finished pieces are so excellent, please come to the shop just to check them out if nothing else.( Of course, it's nice if you support the shop as well).

Here's a very cool video that Kevin made showing the creation of the murals:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/23/time-lapse-of-mural.html

Also, please note that we carry many products from these incredible artists...and they make great holiday gifts..hint hint..haha

Q Pop is OPEN!!!

Ok...I haven't been updating this blog like I thought I should...but I've been opening a shop..and it's a little crazy!! Q Pop officially opened it's doors on the afternoon of November 12!!Those of you who have stopped by already..Thanks so much for your support. Everyone else, I hope that you will be able to come and see us soon!

The ride getting to this point has been a very exciting one. Insane actually..haha. I thought I might explain a bit about the process. First of all,

it's not like Miki and I had been planning this for years. We had sort of casually mentioned how cool it would be to have a shop/gallery but that's about as far as the talk would go. But a few months ago, Miki and I returned from a vacation trip to Thailand and Japan. Whenever we go, we are always so inspired by all the creative energy over there..this trip was no exception and we returned with a yearning do do something. That something would be Q Pop.

The idea was simple..create a venue for artists to showcase their handmade stuff...to create our own stuff..and to have other cool shit that even if it's not handmade..at least is artfully made.

Ideas are great..but execution is the hard part. The first thing we needed to do was find a space. Where to open? This ended up being more difficult than we thought.

Mostly because of price. Rents arestill ridiculously high in Los Angeles, which would explain why half of Melrose is empty. We thought about Sawtelle, because of other cool shops like Giant Robot but it was also just as expensive. We finally decided on Little Tokyo. Seeing so many japanese people leaving the area..we thought we could return some of the "japaneseness" to this historic part of town. Plus, they have good ramen here. We were lucky enough to find a cool japanese landlord.. Mr. Fujimoto, who has been running a business for more than 30

years.

The space we got was a former bike shop called Routes.

It was...let's just say..the space needed some work. It was pretty ugly. For the task at hand

I decided to ask my incredibly talented friend Justin Thompson to design the interior space. You can read about his process and see his preliminary sketches here:

www.squeakypen.blogspot.com

Having the designs finished..we needed someone to realize the entire thing..That person would be Tommy Wattanakran.

This guy was like superman...seriously..

I can't even stress to you how much this guy did for us.

He built ALL our custom furniture by himself(with assistant Miki).

With his crew, they finished construction in about 2 months.

Originally, we had the retarded idea that we could finish in 2 weeks...yeah right. What were we thinking? Making some of the custom furniture on a budget was sooo time consuming.

It's one thing if you have a laser cutter and a $20 million budget..umm...but we didnt..So it was all Tommy with his saw.

The results are awesome!! I was sooo unbeliveably amazed by how it all came together.

I have to also mention the HUGE amount of help we got from our friends.. Nagi was at the shop until 6 am helping set up the inventory

...My mom was here every day helping out..The Ito family bringing snacks and drinks and helping to boost the moral.

And last but not least, since this place is supposed to be a place where artists convene..we needed some art in it . And we wanted BIG art. For this we got our uber talented friends Elizabeth Ito

and Kevin Dart to paint murals. Elizabeth painted the outside wall

and Kevin tackled the inside wall(with the aid of another superhero Chris Turnham).

The finished pieces are so impressive.

Our first week of business has been very fun and stressed and good. Better than expected but still not where it needs to be for us to actually survive. So we're counting on all our friends and fans to spread the good word and help us get more people at the shop. We really want to keep it going for a long time so that we can celebrate cool artwork and fun stuff!! Come on down and check it out!!

RED!!!

Thanks everyone...for giving us your opinions!! We really appreciate it. After reading everyone's choices and also thinking about what we like...we've decide on RED!! You definitely won't miss it while walking by...hahah...

Exterior color possibilities

Very rough ideas...Windows graphics are not yet designed...edge color detail not explored fully....patterns and textures not explored...these are flat color ideas only which are probably easier to maintain..






Here are the color possibilities for the exterior of the shop..Which one do you like?

When is it opening?

Well, being the first real post on the official blog for the Q Pop shop and gallery..the first question many have been asking is, "When is the shop opening?" Well, that is a good question indeed, and honestly I wish I could say when.haha..Unfortunately, though, starting a shop is a very crazy business, and there are so many things to take care of and variables that are uncontrollable, it's just impossible to figure out an exact schedule. One of the problems was just that the design of the shop is just too ambitious to build in 2 weeks time..Yes, you heard right! Originally we had a lotted only 2 weeks of our prep schedule on construction. I don't really have to say that this was pretty darn mental on our part. So now we are approaching 1 month(which is still a ridiculously short amount of time). And if everything goes as planned, the shop will be open around the 1st of October. YAY!! The way it's looking, it will be worth the wait.

Shop Blog

This is the first blog post from the shop..stay tuned for more info!