Interview: San Francisco Bay Area Sign Painter Ken Davis

Sean and Ken (a.k.a. @coolhandken) complain like two old grandpas about technology, social media and why painting signs is awesome.

Transcription:

Coming to you from Star Studios in Denison, Texas, this is Coffee with a Signpainter, a weekly podcast hosted by sign painter, Sean Starr, that consists of interviews with other sign painters and some of the customers and characters Sean comes across while running his studio. Hello there, and welcome back to Coffee with a Signpainter. I'm Sean Starr. And today we will be speaking with, Ken Davis, who's a San Francisco Bay Area sign painter. He's been out there for, quite a few years now, I think.

I don't know Ken directly. We know a lot of the same people, but when, when I had my studio in San Francisco, we never seemed to have crossed paths. But, very familiar with his work. You can see his work on Instagram at, cool hand cool hand ken is his, name on there. So give him a check out on there and see what he's doing.

So, yeah, we're going to talk to him. We're going to find out how he got into sign painting, what his motivations were and what kept him in sign painting and all that good stuff. So, yeah. Let's get into it. Let's talk to Ken, and, here we go.

So the the sound quality is good. Okay. Good. Yeah. It's no longer a a spotty cell phone reception like I'm in a tunnel?

Yeah. Yeah. What are you what are you doing with that plain white mug when there are coffee with a sign painter mugs available? I I have this Ollie's waffle shop. Oh, you'd love this.

Look at this weird design on the or a whole source. Up higher. Oh, that yeah. That's cool. That's freaky.

Yeah. Is this bent back like that? I don't know. It's it's one of the oldest, waffle shops in Alameda, which is at East Baytown. And they I don't know.

They end up this is with the last one. They reprinted new ones with a different he kinda just looks like one of those corny, you know, nineties retro fifties looking guys. Yeah. So I wanted the weird bent over backwards. I don't know.

It just seems like he should be holding waffles, but he doesn't. Instead, he's just bending backwards. Yeah. It's kinda kinda creepy. Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. It's a but I'll get out coffee with a sign painter mug. We'll we'll figure it out. It sounds like a better mug than half in my collection.

Yeah. Laurel birch mugs and stuff. You know? I don't know what that is. Oh, it's a I'm sure they're huge in the Southwest.

It's all the the old, like, uppity old ladies have these big colorful cat umbrellas and big sweaters with giant cats on them. Okay. Okay. So so, what is that, the painter of light guy? It's kinda like the merch version of that stuff.

Totally. It is. It's the, yeah, the, Thomas Kinkade. They have one of the town I live in. Terrible.

Yeah. And a little bit of me dies every time I see it because he has this most atrocious sign on the window. Yeah. Well, that was just a marketing explosion of terribleness. Yeah.

It's a pet rock of oil paintings. Well put. Okay. So you're Ken Davis. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You go you go as cool hand Ken on Instagram. Are you on anything else, or is that where you're at? Instagram is pretty much my, only Internet output other than direct email.

And and then, you know, I have a Facebook account. I don't really keep in very heavy contact with it. Just I don't know. I kinda only have enough mental capacity for one social media outlet. Yeah.

You know, I kinda created a a monster for us because when we got started, you know, we we were starving, you you know, when we launched in San Francisco. And so I just figured, well, I'm gonna get as much exposure as I can and get all this social media stuff going. And now it's just I call it feeding the beast, you know. You gotta like, post stuff and, you know, cross post and all this stuff or or, you know, you start, people losing interest. I've even had people email me, like, angry emails.

You haven't posted anything in a week. Like, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was my job description to entertain you. Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't know entertainment director came in the bids for all my clients. Yeah. It's really it's it's a strange dynamic. You know, I've talked about this with some of the older guys that, you know, when we all started, there were no the Internet was just kinda getting formed and was clunky, but there's definitely no social media. And when we took pictures of jobs, it was like we took pictures of maybe one out of a 100 jobs.

Yeah. And it was either because it was turned out really good or it was something that we were like, okay, if we show this to so and so, maybe they'll we can talk them into letting us do something similar, you know? But but now people are, like, posting pictures of, like, this really like, don't post pictures of that, man. Wait wait until you can do it well. Yeah.

Definitely. The the enthusiasm. I actually had this exact conversation with a friend of mine who's a tattooer that has the same thing happening in his industry. Okay. And he's, you know, the tell me, yeah, that I told him the enthusiasm or the skill has not caught up with the enthusiasm for some people.

Mhmm. And, you know, I mean, bless their hearts. That's, you know, if that's what you wanna do, keep going at it. But I don't know. I mean, for me, my two three years of painting signs, I hid everything away from everybody except the only people I showed were people that I knew would tell me it sucked and why it sucked.

Right. Right. Yeah. So Yeah. It's, you know, I've I've mentioned it before.

I just I've got this love hate relationship with social media. I I love it when I get a call from somebody. It's like, I've been following your Facebook for the last year, and we're ready to open up whatever, and we want you to do the work. That's when I love it. Yeah.

The rest of the time, I hate it. You know, it's it's funny because it's guys it's guys like you and that make me actually want to go on Facebook and, you know, catch up over all of the social media. Don't do it. It is. It's it's hard.

It's a it's a rabbit hole. And then, you know, hours later, cumulatively, I I see friends of mine spend two hours out of their day going back and on Facebook, and it's just it kills me personally because I know I don't know if I've had hours in the day to actually accomplish what I need to in my little And it's not healthy for the human spirit. I've I've come to be convinced. It's like we're supposed to sit down and talk and, you know, share experiences with the nuances of facial expressions and, you know, all of the other things that we probably don't even know about that happens in a one on one interchange. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Absolutely. And all of these little digits, it's like that that's the whole concept of, artificial intelligence and all that that they're trying to push with that. I'm like, you guys are idiots. You're gonna screw up everything.

Leave it alone. No. I I totally get it. And, you know, I I used to get made fun of at the shop I was working at here and there, like, little jabs. Like, that was grandpa Ken was that that was my little nomenclature because I just, you know, something like that would come up, some sort of tech tech thing would come up, and I just automatically just go, you know, just start palling it on the brush extra hard and painting.

And I don't know. I sometimes some days I wake up and feel like everything I feel is true and good in the world that is dwindling, that I'm full of, you know, I'm I'm full of it for not for for not going along with the crowd. And then other days, I talk to people like you, and I'm like, okay. Cool. So I'm not taking crazy pills.

Yeah. No, man. I mean, I guarantee you if you went around and pulled, you know, just John Q Public, I mean, nobody really likes social media, I don't think. Whenever I bring it up, everybody's like, oh, yeah. Blah blah blah.

They're still doing it. It I think it's like an addiction. I really do. I think people are hooked on it, and they what scares me is young kids that are raised this way and grow up with it, like, they're gonna be the most socially retarded, out of touch people on the planet. You know?

Oh it's so happening I have I have so many friends that have teenage kids and there's just the the teenage teenager right now imagine like you know all the insecurities and and just sort of questions that we all had as teenagers that were being answered face to face with other people. Mhmm. They're getting their answers over over a glowing screen with hand information. We got hand information verbally, though. So you could tell if someone was kinda full of it with their eyes.

Right. People are you know, teenagers are going, man, what's this shirt's pretty cool. Oh, look. Hey. So and so is wearing it.

That's that makes it totally cool. It's like a weird advertising blitzkrieg. And the corporations are like, you know, mister Burns on the Simpsons. You know? You know, they they know how to manipulate all that nonsense.

They've been doing it for years through television. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. I was, what was it?

There was this expose on, what is that that movie thing? I haven't even seen them. The the Hunger Games. And they were they were showing how they have these crews that, like, work twenty four hours and they're like these marketing guru guys and, like, how systematic they are putting out posts and all this on social media. But, like, they try to make it look kinda like kinda a little bit crappy, like somebody just, you know, a fan made it on their on their, you know, Photoshop, and it's not really quite right.

But how, you know, millions of dollars go into that effort to make it look like, you know, oh, it's just some fans doing this. It's so messed up. Yeah. It's that's scary as all heck. Yeah, it's, it's interesting too, because then you have the other side of it too, where, you know, a, a spirits and liquor distributor will hit up somebody that has extra amounts of k followers on his, you know, Twitter or something and go, hey, if you just casually mention this a couple times, we'll cut you a check for $5.

Mhmm. You know? Yeah. It's just it's oh, man. It it's it's corruption at a whole new level.

It is. Corruption of corruption of the of humanity even more than, you know, like some, you know, political or something corruption. It's people are getting corrupted on a new level now. You ever seen that film Brazil? Years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. It's I I just Terry Gilliam. Right? Oh, yeah.

One of the scenes that I just remember most is, like, paperwork everywhere just flying out of the vents almost to a comical state. And I, you know, I look at the social media as this digital paperwork flying out of vents everywhere you go. You know? You go to a bus stop, and you see all those little, icons. You'll be like, oh, okay.

That new Levi's. Oh, look. I can follow them on every single icon. There's 15 of them at the bottom of the ad. Neat.

Yeah. Yeah. And and what are you following? You will then get barraged with a nonstop series of advertisements to buy their crap. It's bizarre.

It's not like, you know, we've got this, social media. Let let's say we got a Facebook, and all we post on there is the history of of denim, and how they make this or that, little videos, that would be like, okay, well that's, you know, giving me some information that maybe I'm interested in that, and I wanna see that stuff. But it's like Yeah. 8% off, only this Friday, you know, and people subscribe to it. It's insane.

Yeah. I feel like a jerk on Instagram sometimes because I am vast I'm 80% producer versus consumer on Instagram. I I I will find a Saturday morning when I'm particularly devoid of anything to do, and I will start flipping through and searching out people I know and looking through they do and just barrage them with likes. But I, you know, I I just as far as consuming it, I I can't see those images going down because I don't feel like I'm giving them the benefit of absorption. You know?

Yeah. I can tell you. I I I've learned my habits and long range tendencies enough over the years. I will one day completely drop out. Probably unannounced, I'll probably just disconnect all of it and say, peace out.

I'm done. But, you know, the damage has been done in a good way in that now it's you already have established yourself as a maven on social media for sign painting. So the you drop out, people will freak out and just be like, wow. I actually have to call this guy or email him. This is insane.

I don't know how to talk on the phone. Right? Oh, man. Yeah. It it's a trip.

Okay. So let's talk about you. Okay. So we have a lot of mutual friends and contacts. But even though I had my studio in San Francisco and you're you're where exactly?

I'm in South Hayward now. I'm in a, yeah, nice little off the grid spot or large space, considerably lower rent than San Francisco. So So for people not familiar with the Bay Area, like, where where is that in relation to San Francisco? So South Hayward or I'd say it's Hayward in general. Hayward is about twenty to forty minutes south of San Francisco, maybe even two hours depending on traffic.

But it's, You can get there on the BART. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a definitely it's it's very accessible to BART.

It's, it's more or less a old working class sort of canning town that blew up and then busted when all the industry left. So there's just a lot of nice little area for people such as us that just want a lot of, a lot of space for cheap to work and, you know, the work comes to them through whatever avenues. Yeah. It's, I don't know. It's it was what I needed after San Francisco is such a wild place to paint.

It's it's the West. It's the Old West when you're painting out the tenderloin and, you know, I just kind of needed a space that I could I could ride my bike to and, you know, have a nice hour long bike ride, sit in the shop, work, go home, and or go on-site when I needed to, but just not have to deal with the assaulting sensory barrage that is San Francisco. Yeah. I, you know, I spent, gosh, I don't know, maybe four years there, I think. Yeah.

And, there there were things that were just phenomenal about it, you know. Yeah. As everyone knows who's who's been there. But, as far as living and working and doing business there, ugh, never again, man. There's just too much to deal with.

It is. It's insane. It's, but at the same time, you know, San Francisco is an epicenter for just creative thought and craft, at least, you know, from the nineties, even before that. But the nineties was really a big time for that because it was post earthquake. People were still kind of shook off living there with money.

So they it was a big artist and music area. And then early two thousands, it's really started just bubbling and getting really, really big for that, and it started bubbling over to Oakland. So right now, the Bay Area San Francisco Bay Area is a really good place to be a sign painter because there's just so much enthusiasm for craftsmanship. I mean, everybody I know, everybody I I work with, you know, from barbers to woodworkers to people that make craft beers or, you know, have have those really fancy restaurants. Everybody's doing great out there because people out here out here kind of really appreciate the time and effort that goes into something, and they're willing to pay accordingly.

Yeah. So you're not really getting as lowballed as you are. You get some of those sort of folks that, you know, have champagne entitlement on beer cash, but, you know, you just weed through those. But it's a good place to be. It's unfortunately, you have to deal with the population, you know Yeah.

Traffic and such. Yeah. It was completely unplanned on my part, to move there when I did and and open the studio when I did. I mean, I basically was just trying to kick start my life after a divorce and just try to sort out my crap in my brother's garage, you know? Yeah.

But it was just perfect timing because what I put out there was embraced immediately and that gave me the momentum to really get it going. Yeah. I think a few years earlier, you know, it might it might not have worked out that way and I might have just been discouraged and been like, you know, I'm gonna go, you know, paint cars at Mako or something. I don't know. You know, it's it's true, and that's I mean, timing is everything in the creative industry.

It's, you know, it's it's like you get these these, outliers that come together, and one person may have been a year early and had to fold up shop because nothing worked for them. Yeah. And then are just too beaten, discouraged to try again. I've I've met some of those guys. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I remember, you know, I've known I've known Derek over at Golden West for a long time, and he seems you're doing great now. And I remember the time I met him, he was, you know, he was doing really good at it at a, at a sort of, like a event at the Oakland Museum where he was painting signs. It was awesome, you know, super enthusiastic.

Next time I met him, he had he had a Stabilo that was literally the last joint on his pinky. That was the last Stabilo he had, and he had to use that until he got paid for another job. Yeah. You know, and it's that whole, what is it? I mean, if someone's vegan, it's obviously not a steak dinner.

But, you know, it's like the steak dinner and pickle sandwich the next week kind of thing, the sign painting. And you just have to I when last week talked, they were talking about people that do this full time and, you know, people that are that are that are retarded enough to do it full time. And it's like, you have to get used to that. You have to get used to the fact that, you know, that, that you're not getting a consistent amount every time. Every time you pick up a brush equals money, but every time you finish a product really equals it.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. And I I've been doing this over twenty five years now, and I'm still not used to it. You know?

It's scary. You watch the the bank accounts, it's like a, you know, roller coaster. Yeah. And you're just like after a while, you finally learn to just kinda live in at the middle or below that roller coaster peaks and valleys deal. But, you know, it it's it's not it's not fun on that aspect of it, of trying to juggle everything.

And then, like with with us, well, with most everybody, I mean, we just just got clobbered with taxes stuff. Okay. And we we had miscalculated and we didn't send in a couple of the, estimated payments. So now we're like, oh, crap. We gotta catch up.

And they they don't have you know, this is weird to me. In California, which taxes everything you do, there's you don't have to pay sales tax when you have someone design something or paint a sign. But in Texas, of all places, where nothing is taxed like it is in California, we we have to collect sales tax for everything we do, which has been a nightmare since we we came here, of just that was never anything we had to deal with either when I was in California or Washington state. And so now I'm like, we got this quarterly nonsense where you gotta figure out, okay, how much did you do, what's the percentage, send the state some money. But I guess, comparatively, it's it's not a bad thing.

Yeah. I mean yeah. That my, the gentleman that I really good friend of mine that I sublet my space from in the warehouse, He just had, you know, he just got basically I don't know. He he got hit with, like, a 35% of his of his income he made that year because he had a really, really good year sandblasting glass. Yeah.

And it was just like, oh, man. That gave me anxiety. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

We we got clobbered, from last year. It it's considerably we owe considerably more than we ever have, and it's because we did all of this work for this, world class car collection in Fort Worth last year. And that was over and above all of the normal work we did. Sheesh. But I didn't factor that in the way I should have.

And our accountant our my my accountant is in California, and she texted me, and she's like, I'm afraid to call you. Yeah. I'm like, oh, this is not good, but we'll dig out. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that money's cyclical.

And, I mean, I've been I've I've been literally down to the last $5 in pocket change in order to get me on a BART train to pick up a $40 deposit. And that was it, you know, and, and then I had to work for the rest of the week. And then, and then I've had, you know, a wall job that I, you know, I had a wall job that pretty much, like, handsomely paid me with with an assistant because of the hours spent. And You can eat you can eat off that for a month. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's just, you know, toil builds character. And that's I wouldn't trade how I'm how I've chosen to live my life for, you know, anything.

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and go, man, it'd be so awesome to just just box up power supplies for its cell phones and then, you know, clock in, kinda make some Facebook posts about how bored you are and how much you hate your job and trying to get fired, and then go home and have a, you know, have a beer and watch Game of Thrones reruns. But I just I don't know. I'm not wired that way, and I really love I love the fact the independence that comes with something like what we do. It's just beautiful. It it's, it it's a little concerning to me how rare, that mindset has become though.

Because there you know, especially it was like two years ago that it started where I just started getting bombarded with people asking to be an apprentice. You know, all this kind of stuff. And at the time we were in Denton, which is a, you know, it's kind of like a little Austin. It's a college town, lots of music, lots of creative stuff. And so these college kids would come in nonstop and, you know, oh, can I work here?

Can I apprentice here? Can I do this? Can I do that? And a couple of them, you know, were relentless enough that I was like, okay. I'll tell you what.

I'll take you on this job with me, and you can give me a hand, and I'll I'll, you know, pay you something and buy you lunch. And they get out there, and it's Texas heat, and it's, you know and you're climbing up ladders that, you know, like the little giants, the big ones. I mean, those things weigh, like, 50 pounds apiece, and, you know, you're you're beat at the end of the day. And you could just see this, like, enthusiasm in the morning where they're posting all the photos and everything else. And it's like, you know, like they're backstage, you know, at some concert or something.

And then, man, by the afternoon, they're just miserable and you never hear from them again. You know, you bring me the you bring this great like, yesterday, I I haven't had an a real on-site job that just zorged me in a while. It's been a couple months now, and then I had a I just started doing some window work for a barbershop that's opening up. And, you know, it's just really cool guys that just they have a no nonsense, no frills barbershop. So, of course, you know, they want, single stroke gothic.

Mhmm. If they're script, we want this single stroke, you know, script, but not casual, just blocked. So it's just commands attention. And, so I was like, yeah. You know, this will be simple enough.

And even though I know, you know, like, gothic aid you know, gothic isn't as simple enough as people think it is sometimes. And hours on Windows, especially when you spell out each day, that becomes a little bit more intensive than you give it credit for sometimes. That's my least favorite thing to do. Yeah. It's it's it's it is.

It's a it's a task. So I, you know, I lettered it on and, you know, six hours later after everything I put down, I just was zorched. I was like, man, am I out of shape? This is terrible. I realized, okay.

You know, you're in the sun. You're in a window. You're lettering. You're also there's that finite there's that finite wall between how you can accomplish a sign in the studio versus how you can accomplish it on-site because of contortionist yoga positions you get into to do a window. And then I was like, okay.

Cool. Alright. I'm not I don't have some sort of weird degenerative disease. This is fine. You know?

It's No. It's challenging. And, you know, one of the things I, I I think I've narrowed it down to is when you concentrate for hours on end, I think that's more you end up more physically exhausted from that than anything else, you know. Like, if you're lettering in a window and it's a lot of detail, your your eyes are focused, your body's hunched over, your your hands, you know, you're focused on making them work. And, you know, your your body just gets wiped out.

And it's even worse for me on, if I'm doing all of that and on a ladder. Because Yeah. Then your body is, like, constantly trying to compensate and balance and and everything. You don't even know it's you're doing it. But, man, at the end of the day, you're just like, okay.

I wanna die. Yeah. It's yeah. Pretty much. I I equate it to jet lag almost where, but on paper, you should be very rested.

You're in a you're in a sedentary position for multiple hours, and you can go to sleep if you want and all this, but you get off the plane and you're just exhausted. Mhmm. You know? It's something to be said for what you just, you know, discussed, which is that, yeah, it's just it's uncomfortable for extended periods of time and you it's it just zorches you. It takes you out.

Yeah. Yeah. It really does. But at the same time, it's like, man, it's Yeah. It's also the greatest thing ever.

Yeah. It is. It it really is. And then, you know, the hours that you spent are somehow you can't remember. You look at you look at that flourish and be like, okay.

I remember doing that flourish, but all of a sudden you're like, but I don't remember any of what I just did. It just kind of seamlessly exuded out of me through some sort of, you know, reaction, you know, and Yeah. Cynics. I I I don't know if you've run into this, but, I have what I call hitting the wall, where if if if I'm pushing too hard too long, my eyes will stop focusing. Mhmm.

Mhmm. And, you know, the fatigue just sets in. And when when I when I hit that, I have learned to stop and come back the next day because, once you reach that point, your your coordination starts going out the door, and you start painting things, and you look at it and you're like, that ain't right. You know, It's, you know, but your body just gets over fatigued and shuts down. And it's funny because people, I think, in their minds, you know, they hear sign painting and they picture you sitting in some little corner with an easel, you know, on a board and just painting these beautiful details and, you know, sipping wine listening to, you know, Pavarotti or something, and it's like, Oh, man.

You know, your forehead's, like, sizzling and bubbling, you know, in the reflection of the window, and, you know, you're you're getting pinker and pinker. You know? It's like there there there's a lot going on there. Yeah. I mean, it's a a it's, it was it was told to a good friend of mine that, you know, when he was starting, he, he asked one of his, one of his extended friends who's been painting in Seattle for, you know, over, probably like a decade or something.

Guy is just as a monster at painting signs and he goes, hey, man. So I'm gonna get into sign painting full time. He's really excited to tell him this. You know? And his exact reaction is, oh, yeah?

Well, just know this. It doesn't know what it's cracked up to be. And then just goes off and smokes a cigarette. And, you know, there's But that's it in a nutshell. I mean, it's right now, it's romanticized.

And, you know, the the sign painters movie came out and contributed to that, and then social media and all that. You know? So there's this romanticize I don't know what that's a word. It's romanticized. Let's leave it at that.

And so people get enamored with it, but it's like it it it in a in a way, it's like being a plumber or an electrician. I mean, there's there's some aspects to it that are just hard work. You know, and and after I heard that for after I heard that, I kinda changed it up and, you know, sign painting is what you make out of it. I mean, there's people that do it for, you know, thirty, forty years, and they stay a hack for thirty, forty years. Yeah.

If there's people that, you know, pick up a brush like this this, you know, one guy that I ran into, he's in his twenties, and he did it right. He's in his twenties. He goes, you know what? I need to do something with my life. I'm gonna go to LA Trade Tech and learn sign painting.

Goes out there, comes out of LA Trade Tech, and, you know, he just gets it. He understands what you know, that every time you do a sign, you get the opportunity from a client to represent them through something that you created, that you don't take that lightly, that you try and do the best you can. Even if they want something simple, do the best simple you can. When when you are, putting together someone's storefront, let's say. Okay.

For instance, there's this, lady on Main Street here in our little town, and I'm redoing her candy store. You know, that's her livelihood. That's like how she's gonna pay her rent and and pay her, you know, put gas in her car and everything else. And so if you are prematurely or just lazily, or out of an inflated ego going out and and doing work that isn't ready for commercial consumption, you know, you're putting people in harm's way. I mean, it it sounds like it's dramatized, but it's not.

Oh, it's not. And that's that that is something that I don't take lightly and I find vaguely offensive when someone has a great a great possibility, good potential to do something, and they rush through it either through lack of knowledge, lack of research on on layout, or lack of just just being rushed while they're painting. And you can tell you can tell a rush sign. Someone that, you know, someone that, has never picked up a sign brush in their lives and actually doesn't know anything about art or anything anything of that nature, they can tell. You know?

It's a Well, here here's a good, gauge is no matter where you're at, you know, you'll come across in in your town, you'll you'll occasionally come across some old painted sign that was done terribly, you know. Maybe maybe in the seventies or even the sixties or earlier, and you can see stuff and you're like, okay. You know, those letters are are out of whack. They didn't do them right. Think of how many years and how many visual impressions have looked at that and said, Oh, that's stupid looking.

Yeah. Think of the damage done to the person's reputation. You know, and you would hope that the business owner would put his foot down and say, I ain't paying for that. You know, fix it or whatever. But, you know, people don't, and then it just sits there year after year after year, kinda like mocking the business owner and the sign painter.

No. That's that's the thing. There's there's a good quote given to me by a buddy of mine that pulls squeegees for a living and makes gig posters. And he's the guy that people will hit up and be like, I got a show in two weeks, and I need the artwork and I need a run of 500 made. And just be like, I can't do it.

Well, why not? You can't you can't rush it. And he isn't this is his quote, and I'm taking it from him is that if it took longer than you expected, you won't remember in two years, hopefully. But if it sucks, you will remember forever. You know?

No. I I tell people something very similar. If if they start putting heat on me to push it faster than what the pace that I'm going, which I'm totally comfortable being at this pace that I've worked at for years now, I'll just tell them, you know, this is gonna represent your business for ten, fifteen years. You can wait an extra week for it to be right. Yeah.

You know, this this is crazy that you're trying to shove this out there, you know. Just step back. Let me do my thing. You won't regret it. And like you said, you you know, a year from now, you won't even remember that you were trying to get it done faster.

Yeah. It's it's a a it's definitely something that, like, not to be taken lightly is the opportunity that an individual gives you to create something for them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a it's a scary thing for them, you know, because what what what if you're hungover that day and you just or you're pissed off at whoever and you just decide you're just not gonna put any real effort into it, and then that's out there representing them for, you know, the next five years?

Oh, yeah. That's that is a very that is an instant policy I tell my clients in our meeting stages is that doors of your business to paint for you is gone. I make sure of that just because I've I've take I don't take that lightly. It scares me because when I was younger and I didn't really think about it, I just kind of you know, when you're younger, you just have those blinders on. You just I got a job to do.

Get it done, and I'm gonna do the best I can. But then a friend of mine came up to me, and he goes, I really, really envy what you do. You go into people's dojos and show them how to do a jump kick and then leave. You know? Like and, essentially, it's kinda what you're doing.

You're going into someone's living room. You're you're leaving your personal mark on their living room and and then, you know, going away. And when it was put that way, it's it kind of freaked me out and really, really set things in perspective. Like, okay. So, you know, I'll I'll not be a feral human being in your business is what I mean.

No. It's it's true, man. And, you know, that's, that's, I think, the danger of the dabblers, you know, that that are, you know, popping up is it's like a lot of these people aren't committed and, you know, especially, like, design students who are putting together these graphics that, you know, look handmade, and not in a crafted way. You know, I think all the time, you remember that movie, Juno? Oh, yeah.

Okay, remember all the title sequences in that? It was all, like, sketched on, like, a note book paper or something. Yeah. They see so much stuff. It's like these kids that grew up on movies like that, they think that's the that's an aesthetic, like but that's drawing on notebook paper in school.

That's not advertising a a business. You know? It's like, this is not good. No. I mean, they all look to me, when I see a business logo design identity from a storefront that looks like that, I think they must sell, you know, dog toys, like high end dog toys or, you know, children's.

And then you go in there and it's it's some place that's trying to sell a $90 button up shirt to a man. And you're like, how is that? Yeah. I just I just, well, I ain't gonna name names, but I I did a project, last year. Though it's exactly what you're describing, and they're they're selling these, you know, hipster lumberjack shirts that are, like, $300.

And I'm just like, oh, this is bad. I think about this is bad. He knows. And this guy as I'm working on the door, this guy pulls up in, like, some meticulously restored Land Rover. But, you know, that's like he but he's slumming it.

It's like an old one, you know. So he's slumming it. But it's this, you know, probably worth a fortune. And he gets out and he's got, like, you know, leather work boots that are completely immaculate, and his pants are folded just right. And it's just this bizarreness of trying to look like this masculine lumberjack look, but, like, but you're put together, like, pristinely.

It's like, what are what are you doing? It's a weird aesthetic. I don't get it, man. In place of the in place of the ax as an iPhone. Yeah.

Yeah. It's it's an interesting thing. There's this there's this one this one guy that he's a designer that I've I I don't know personally, but I know I know that he's gotten all of these accounts because it just it all looks the same and it all it's all in influenced by hand lettered and hand laid out things or hand laid out, type, but it's it's just too plugged in too perfect. And then Too crisp. Yeah.

Yeah. Too crisp. And then things will come into it where, you know, the design will have instead of a single or a solid drop shadow, he'll do the drop shadow in just lines, like tick lines. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That that's always cracked me up, where designers will make it, you know, they'll even, you know, do it in the context of, like, sign painting. If they're doing stuff like that, it's like, there's no sign painter in the world that that is masochistic enough to to put that together because they'll be there for four days painting little ticks. You know?

Man, he came out, he came out while we were painting the windows, buddy of mine and I. He goes, I just wanted to see how it looks. And I just was in one of those grandpa Kenbu and say, sir, I have a question. Do you even like us? And that might have said that, but whatever.

Makes a good story. Yeah. No. It it's, it's a strange, strange world now because, you know, when I when I was, you know, way back in the day, we were pinstriping cars and doing custom paint with my dad's company. It's like the only people that we interacted with during the work day in our circle were car people and a few other people that did what we did.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, you you you would never have come across an ad agency or a professional designer. They didn't I don't really even believe they existed back then, you know? Because the Art Institute of fill in the blank all over the country just pumped out tens of thousands of, you know, all of a sudden it's a new thing, your graphic designer.

And it's like, you know, I look at it now and it's bizarre to me, the the people that I that I deal with on a daily basis. It's like and why do you have input? You know what I mean? Like, why why are you telling me about this? What where where do you come into play?

No, totally. It's a bureaucracy or bureaucracy of opinions that we have to deal with sometimes, you know, or especially the bigger the company. I I've had two potential good jobs for a company fall through because we had 70% people on board. It started off as a 100 and then all of a sudden someone in a cubicle over there that, you know, has has some sort of input, wants real input on it. And then also going, I don't really think that's gonna be all right, after representation, maybe we should change it a little bit.

And then, you know, because pre prior to this, this phenomenon of a of a actual graphic designer, the sign painter made the decision and everybody trusted the sign painter. And then there was the designer, but the designer had a very finite knowledge of sign painting as well because it was all in the same wheelhouse. That designer would never even come into contact because the designer designed it years ago and sent it on down the line into a little booklet that says, okay this is the the graphic that needs to be painted here are the proportions don't screw it up. Yeah. You know that and that was the end of it.

Yeah and it it's just it's an incredible amount of of people's feelings and opinions that we have to deal with now and it's weird. But I think social media is a big a big cause of that. Is everyone feels that their opinion is, like they demand that it be heard. Yeah. Because they can make it heard on social media.

Even if no one reads it, they can type it in and hit go, and now it's there on the feed, you know. But I've I I maybe I'm just turning into an old fart, but I I have reached a point where I will not work with a committee anymore. I've turned down a lot of projects where I'm like, who's involved? Who's the decision maker? And, well, the six of us will have to, like, sit down and, you know, discuss your work before it can move forward.

See you. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I can't deal with that. Well, it's really cool.

The town that we've moved to, it's a you know, there's like 30,000 people in this town, Denison, and it's still small enough that, like, I just, we just got hired to do all of the branding for this music event, this music series, concert series over the summer. And it's really cool because they're like, we really like what you do. We trust you. Can you take care of this? Tell us when it's done.

Yeah. I'll do that. Oh, yeah. That's beautiful. If you want me to come and do a slide presentation and deal with, you know, eight people, half of which are, you know, 70 years old or whatever and have no idea what a responsive website is or whatever.

Nah. I ain't dealing with that. That's crazy. No. Totally.

It's something too. I love the fact that you that you're based out of a a small town and you're you're owning you're you're owning it as, like, as a sign painter about town because that's, you know, sometimes that's a little lost right now because people, there's this cult of celebrity craftsmanship that has happened in, you know, restaurants. It's happened in Tattoo. All Yeah. Yeah.

And it's corny. It's, I mean, it's it's very cool because it enables somebody to do what they love for a living and potentially become a millionaire at it. But At the in the grand scheme, it's meaningless. Right. That's if you're a million Thomas Kinkade's a millionaire, multimillionaire.

Who cares? Yeah. Look how look at his clientele, how stoked people are with him. Right? You know?

Yeah. No. I it's it it I keep referring back to this lady with the candy shop. That to me is like what it's all about, quote unquote. Because it's it's, you know, she she retired and opened up the candy shop.

She's got, you know, some health challenges, and that's one of the reasons she decided to do it. It's in this old 1880 something building that she lives in, in the loft above it. And it's her whole life is this candy shop, and she she doesn't have the background to even know where to begin to make it look the way she wanted. And so, she's just kinda like, This is what you do. Can you help me?

And so, I'm able to just, you know, I keep adding things and everything, And it it's like, seriously, to me, this is what it's all about. It's not only being able to do what I do, but it's gonna benefit her. It's gonna benefit the town. It's, you know, making, things historically accurate, which for me personally, I'm a big buff on that. And it's just like, it's on all levels, it's why I get out of bed and keep doing this.

And I get calls daily out of Dallas where another hipster is opening up another overpriced coffee shop or an overpriced boutique or whatever, and it's like, I don't wanna even help them. That sounds terrible, but I don't. No. It's a beautiful thing that we have the opportunity to do, which is even the playing field for the small business that wants to compete against that chain of Styrofoam buildings, you know, that are in a row at every freeway exit. And someone goes, you know what?

I've been working really hard my whole life. I've been stacking my pennies and I I I hate my job, but I don't wanna just get fired and be an idle person. I wanna I wanna contribute and start off on something new. And they just they get all their ducks lined up. They start their business and they come to us and say, you know, you're you're a piece of this puzzle.

I would like like, for your candy shop to do a historically accurate storefront. And you do it, and it's it's cool. It's really it's it's an honor to be able to help even the playing field for small businesses versus these bureaucracies that don't really care about the customers. Yeah. And and I I see it personified too in, we do we do a decent amount of work for tattoo shops.

And there there's, like, two types of phone calls I get. One is, like, the bro. Like, you know, it's all about posing, and I'm I'm bad. I'm a tattoo yeah. Exactly.

Pushing down his hat, and, you know, so there's that guy, and that guy immediately gets sloughed off because I am not dealing with that. But then, you know, you've got, you know, we're we're doing a project, for a company called Davis Street Tattoo, and the guy's super humble, super chill, super talented. You know, he's like but he's he's a good guy and this is really important to him. And then this other guy, Josh Hall Tattoo, we became friends couple years ago when I started doing work for him, and he's one of those guys. Like you're saying, it's like, you know, he worked in other shops for years, saved up his money, and and had this concept that he wanted to do like an old timey gentleman's tattoo shop, and he went for it, and it worked.

And so now he just called and they're expanding, so we're taking over more of the building, and so I'm gonna be designing some new stuff. And, you know, those are the people that it's like, okay, this is a good experience. You know, this is something that adds meaning to my life, you know, dealing with these people because they're also artists and they're humble about it and they're doing great work. Yeah. But when you get that call from that guy who's just like, hey, bro.

Got this tattoo shop. It's really cool. Yeah. You should come on down. See you later, man.

Yeah. Yeah. We're we're we're gonna tell it's scout for a TV show. It's gonna be on, like, TLC or something, bro. Exactly.

Exactly. It's like you know? And and I I'm really pleased to see, that even with the exposure with the the sign painters book and movie and some of the other stuff that's happened, I've yet to see the prima donna emerge. It's it's definitely an existing thing but it's also been existing forever because you know let's face it there are we're in a craft that also doubles as an art So some of the some folks do have this artist ego about them. You know?

They kinda walk. I you know what? I guess what I'm thinking is, like, I'm glad that we have not seen, a, a reality show begin. That'd be disgusting. And, b, you know, that, like, LA ink kind of, you know, guy emerge as, you know, representing sign painters to the public.

I'm so glad that has not happened and I I hope so badly it doesn't because it it will it will immediately a lot of us, I I think, will immediately cringe and wanna hide the fact that we're we're not associated with that thing over there at all. Totally. That's not why we do this. I I'm already just picturing and I'm picturing a I'm picturing, like, basically that guy you described coming out of that Land Rover to a tee, but giant beard and respirators. So it makes no sense.

Okay. Okay. I'm glad you brought this up. What the heck? I don't understand it.

I have talked to so many other, like, old timers. I'm like, do you understand the respirator mask thing? And they're like, I've never seen that in my life. What what is that? Alright.

So in the interest of of, Internet transparency and podcast transparency, I was guilty at one point because I knew no better. I was I was younger, and I was like, you know what? These fumes, maybe I should think about my health and, you know, I'd wear a respirator, but then I stopped and it I feel just as retarded at the end of the day without one as I did with one. There I've known many sign painters in their seventies and eighties. Yeah.

They didn't have, you know, lung problems. They didn't have cancers. It's like, what are you thinking that's gonna do? Do you do you know the physics of what a respirator mask does? See.

Now I It captures atomized particles that are in the air from spraying them. It doesn't stop fumes. What are you talking about? You know, and this is the funny thing about it is that one of the main you mentioned the older sign painters. One of the main reasons I realized how asinine what I was doing was is I look at I met this gentleman.

He's no longer with us, but Ray Giese. He was 93 was the last time he picked up a sign painting brush. Mhmm. Six to seven days a week, he painted his whole life from 14 to 93. And, you know, he was fine.

He was totally cool. He was he was sharp as a tack. I visited him in a convalescent home when he was getting help for some sort of heart problem, and he was wittier than the nurses that were, you know, like, a fraction of his age. Yeah. Yeah.

No. I the the the time I saw the respirator thing, I was like, I don't understand. Like, is somebody spraying, you know, some automotive paint next to them while they're I I, seriously, I was like trying to figure out, well, what's the setting? And then I saw it more and more and I'm like, this makes no sense. What are they doing?

I think it's the I think that it's the graffiti, the graffiti mystique boiling over into sign painting, which we know is happening because Yeah. The graffiti writers, they'll take those nice little self shots of them in front of what they painted with like a kinda poo poo face on their eyes, and they got the they got the, the respirator on. So it's almost like they're a bandit in the old web. Yeah. Like a villain.

Yeah. Tech villain. But or some sort of, like, raver is what I see it as. But, you know, I think that that is a spillover from that. Like, oh, it's I should wear a respirator when I paint too, you know, blah blah blah.

But it's it was very quickly told to me by everybody that I held dear and signed painting that this is the stupidest thing that you've ever thought of doing, dude. It came up with this one. Yeah. It it's really strange. It it's been the subject with many a phone call with me and some of the other older guys.

It's just like, you know, it's it's always comes up to to a couple of things. One is the complaint of amongst whoever of us about being pigeonholed and having to paint a certain type of sign over and over. Yeah. Because you're like, I'm so sick of painting tattoo signs. I wanna paint something else.

Or it's, can you believe this, you know, really crappy design work that people are putting out that looks so childish? Or it's what in the world does the deal with the mask? The the man behind the mask. It's like that cramps song. What's behind the mask?

The cramps. Okay. Okay. You did it. You brought up music.

So Yes. So let let's talk music. Obviously, you're an eighties punk fan. Yeah. I'm a fan of really anything.

It's insane. Like, I I do love eighties punk. That's a that's a very soft spot for me, but I'll listen to pretty much anything of quality and horrible stuff too. Well, give give examples. All the notes, let's see.

I'm not quite on the Steely Dan Foley wagon like, my girlfriend is. She loves that. But, you know, I don't know. I have I just have loads and loads of records, and I have this mental hank about not paying for music. I have to.

If I want to listen to something, I have to buy the album because I can't really, like, live with myself of getting what someone spent time to create for free. So so it's the ethics thing, or do you like to physically hold a record or a CD or something? It's an all encompassing thing. It's it's the ethics. It's physically having that album and looking at, you know, the design of it and That was one of my favorite things as a kid, you know, because, you know, I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and when you would get an album that had the liner notes and the little artwork, and that sometimes there'd be, like, really tiny little drawings between, like, columns of of lyrics and stuff.

Yeah. It was so cool and creative, and, you know, now it's so stale. You know, I mean, most of the stuff at this point that I listen to, you know, I'll I'll pull up Pandora and just put on something and let it run all day while I'm working. You know? And so you all you get is this tiny little square of, you know, the album cover or whatever.

It's not the same. No. It's not. And it's funny too because album covers I feel like are going there's a resurgence in quality album artwork. But for a while, it was a very dark age kind of like movie posters are right now where there's a documentary on Drew Struzan, who's the guy that did basically every movie poster that we look at going, wow, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Big Trouble Little China.

And they're interviewing friends of his, and I think it was a Guillermo del Toro, which I'm sure it pronounced amazingly because, you know, given my, my background in speaking Spanish. Yeah. Anyway, he's he's just I'll take out the expletives, but he's just just talking. He's banging on Hollywood movie posters now talking about how everybody looks. It's, you know, it's a row of the all the major stars in a row, like a lineup in a Uh-huh.

Or it's an angry, you know, angry hero with a gun looking like a GQ shoot. It's, you know, there's no art into it anymore, and there it was like that for album covers for a while. It was grim. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. No. There it it it's in a very similar way what happened with signs, when computers took over. Everything became it lost its soul, you know? And you're you're slowly seeing it come back.

Like the the Dave Dave Smith, cover for what's that douchebag's name? John. John Meyer. Yeah. The only reason to buy one.

Yeah. I know. But that that artwork is amazing. And so, you know, it's it's it's cool that he was willing to, you know, get outside the box and hire someone like Dave to do it. But, you know, I just Yeah.

It it's, everything is so, it it it is all about the money at this point. And anybody who who wants to believe otherwise is very naive. You know, I I I love the fact of the idea of having that LP in your hand and you put it down, you put the needle on, you go paint, you know, and then you have to flip it and it gives you an opportunity to rest your eyes, stretch, go back to what you're doing with a clear head. You know, that's that's the reason I don't, you know, I don't subscribe to iTunes and have a, you know, a cast system through my through my, studio. I just it's I love that simplicity and that sort of step away, rest your eyes, stretch your back so you don't get freaking out on your piece.

You know? Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of things in life like that that, like, for for instance, you know, I I really enjoy good red wine. Or at least good in the context of what I can afford, which is basically cheap red wine. But, the process of, like, you know, opening the bottle and, you know, pulling the cork out and all that, it's like the it's just this timeless romantic, you know, awesome thing that it's it's this mini ritual.

Yeah. And that that's, I think, the appeal of, like, the old LPs and stuff is it's it's the ritual you've got, like, the the shelf with your albums. You pull the album down. You pull it out of the sleeve. You put it on the record player.

You drop the needle. I mean, that's all. It it's a it's a little ritual, and I think that's what's missing with all the technology stuff. Like, you you hit a a button, and all of a sudden, it's everything's opened up and, you know, you do do do do do do. You're just fast paced doing all this nonsense.

Yeah. I have a friend that's a professor at, at a college that he has a screen printing class. And if he can find on Google image search the reference that you used for a project, he will just he'll give you a d minus. He'll essentially fail. He's just yeah.

And and he he doesn't just do that. He's not just some, like, you know, tyrant. He'll he gives them ideas and options. Like, he'll take them to the San Francisco Library on a field trip and go go through books, look at books. You know, you it's instead of biting something that you saw on an Instagram post or a Google image search, you could use that as a for as a kind of like a forward step and look at it and go, okay.

So what do I like about that? I wonder where that came from. Maybe I should take a couple steps away from what I really like about that or what I what I like about that and see why I like that and get my own take on it. Yeah. Yeah.

Really No. That that's, that's great. You know, I I did this, I don't know what you would even call it. I did this thing at Texas Women's University where a bunch of students came in, and we did drawing exercises, and I did some slides and stuff. And one of the slides that I put up there, you remember about ten years ago when you saw it everywhere, it was like the silhouette thing and, like, acid green and, like, scrolls and all this stuff?

Yeah. The early two thousands. Yeah. Yeah. So I I put that up on one of the shots, and I'm like, don't ever do this.

And and it's not just that this is really ugly. It's it's just a derivative of 80,000 other people who've done the same thing. You see the same thing right now with that that it's, you know, the logo design that's either an x or it's two arrows crossed and they put little elements in between it and then charge someone and say, I designed your logo. What are you talking about? You know, this is retarded.

There's like there's, like, 50,000 of these floating around. Or the poorly executed Tombow brush casual logo with nothing around it except for the Tombow brush name vectored and given to them for, like, you know, some price with a comma in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Took you you ten seconds, and there you know there was no revisions in that. Yeah. Yeah. And and no thought. No.

No. It's more like, okay. I saw some dude post a little Instagram video on how to do that. That's a great idea. That is that's a moneymaker.

I'm gonna do that. You know? Uh-huh. Yeah. It's it's a cash like you said, don't don't be fooled.

Everything's a cash grab right now. Yeah. And, well, that opens up a whole different episode. No. But I I did wanna talk to you about, though, because you mentioned the tattoo shops.

And so when you look at traditionally, tattoo shops have the vertical sign that just says tattoo vertical. Yeah. And, you know, I painted enough enough signs of the word tattoo in them to come up with this theory on why they're predominantly vertical signs. And as a history a historian of sign paint, I was wondering if you knew any of this. But my theory is that tattoo signs are predominantly vertical because tattoo is a word horizontally is hideous, you know, as far as the o's and rendering and kerning everything.

It's one of the most awkward words I've ever come across to design to design well. Because it's, yeah, you know, you've got, multiple t's, multiple o's, and, you know, the the o's don't roll out well. I mean, I I will put more time into designing something tattoo related. I you know, probably quadruple anything else just because of that word is so stinking hard to make look good. Absolutely.

It is. It's you know, I had to I'm doing a glass sign with, it horizontal, and I had to I was thinking, like, how am I gonna throw this you know, how am I gonna make this easier on myself? And my only reaction was, okay. Well, if I arch it and kind of give it a sort of a banner arch to it Mhmm. As opposed to a perfect sun arch, you can kinda get around that because by nature, it's gonna break your eye up through it.

But, yeah, it's it's a Yeah. That's why, there's a couple of people. Gary Martin's one of them. Yeah. There's a couple of people, Gary Martin's one of them Yes.

And, the DeBell brothers. Yeah. If you look at their tattoo signage, it's always out of the park because they've they've figured out some ways to to roll out those words that make sense. But, yeah, it's very challenging. And as far as the vertical goes, I don't know exactly what the history is, but my assumption would be, you know, if you look at a lot of the old photos of old tattoo shops, you know, they're a lot of them are like on a main street type setting or whatever, and they've got all the mom and pops next to them, and I think they probably switched to those verticals just to really stand out.

Because above all of the old mom and pops, there's that inset, you know, in most main streets of, you know, this is where the sign goes, basically. Horizontal, rectangle. So that's my assumption on why they started doing that. It's just so it would be, like, anti establishment looking, I guess. Makes sense.

Don't know if that's BS or not, but that's my theory. Alright. Cool. Kinda like a barber pole how, you know, the you're just the stripe pole. Yeah.

Just something completely, different than, you know, Joe's Bakery next to you. That makes yeah. That that works too. I think that's a good a good assumption too. I'm gonna look into this, and maybe we can figure it out together.

But it's something that interests me just because tattoo shop signs are by far some of my favorite things to paint. Yeah. It it's funny too. If you look back at a lot of the old stuff, a lot of it was pretty uncreative. Yeah.

And a lot of the newer tattoo sign work is where you're seeing the creativity. So it's kind of an interesting, you know, twist. I think when when someone like us thinks tattoo sign, we immediately start, you know, thinking of ornate borders and, you know, specialized text and all this stuff. But when you look at the old pictures, a lot of it was just basically block lettering and pretty plain. Yeah.

But forget that. I'll go for the other. Oh, absolutely. And I I love it. I love working for tattooers because like you were saying with your, your tattooer clients that you've had is they're just the ones that you get to work with are humble, extremely talented, have total faith in the craft that you're bringing.

And it's cool. It's it's it's a good environment to be in. Plus their work ethic is phenomenal. The good ones are just great with people fast and do great work. And it's it's an inspiring area to be in while you're working on your respective thing.

Yeah. I the the thing that I get most excited about with doing tattoo stuff is, the guys that I'm willing to work with, they'll they'll say, I love what you do. It's all yours. I know what it's like to be micromanaged. I don't wanna do that to you.

So I'm just gonna step out of this, and I know it'll be good. And, you know, those are those are the people that it's a blast to work for. Because those are the people you end up bringing something you you end up giving them a 150%. Yeah. You know, you go way above and beyond because you're like, okay.

They're they're respecting my background and what I do, and I'm gonna knock it out of the park for this guy. Absolutely. And, they also come up with some really fun remarks almost as they come up with some of the better sign ideas. Like, two of my favorite signs of air painting were for this shop in Portland called Atlas Tattoo. And he wanted just two simple signs, like nine by 12.

One says artists pay double, graphic designers pay triple. Awesome. Yeah. I just thought, man. It's brilliant.

How would a sign painter not think about this? Yeah. Yeah. There there's a lot of great one liners in the tattoo circles. I like that too.

Yeah, man. That was, I don't know. So have you had any embarrassing mishaps you can share? Yeah. Actually, I've had a few.

Let's see. I have PTSD from painting in San Francisco, and I think that, you know, there's there's enough of those experiences that I can totally share a few of them because now it's been long enough that it's funny. Yeah. So there's this one where, my mentor, Josh Luke, and I were we were, we were set out to paint this late afternoon on a Friday job, and it was just omen after omen. We're driving up there and some guy does some crazy move and we almost crash and, you know, luckily didn't, then we get there and we have it's basically, it's a, an enormous logo in fluorescent in one of those offices that is immaculate with some expensive carpet.

Like you've never seen anywhere else. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And we just were walking up the stairs and the thinner jar falls out of the out of the bucket and hits the cement stairs and explodes.

We're gonna get, well, guess we don't really need dinner. Right? Oh my god. So we go up there, and we hadn't we hadn't really used fluorescent paints for a while. So we're rolling it out and rolling it out.

Like crap. Oh, horrifying. And it it's flicking fluorescence everywhere. We have our drop cloth. But from the pressure just flicking it, all of a sudden I look behind us and there's little spots of fluorescent pink on a natural rug, natural color rug.

Just so, basically, we had to do divide and conquer shifts where one of us was painting, and the other one was taking a rag and cleaning it out of the Oh, man. Yeah. By far, the one that, like, that comes to me the most is we're in the Tenderloin, and this is how every great story starts in San Francisco, San Diego. For people that don't know, the Tenderloin is where there are literally junkies and prostitutes on the street. Yeah.

And, I mean, I've had my fair share of weird experiences being the in I call it the fishbowl effect where you're on the other side of the glass, and you're just watching people zone out on this because they're high on whatever, you know, designer or not designer low rent drug they're on. And, and I've had people just prank me by pulling their pants down and throwing their, you know, their nether regions against the glass and then Oh, yeah. Giggling. You know? And, I had some guy tell me, you're mean, and then punch the window as I'm painting it.

Didn't break, but, you know, what do you do from that other than laugh? But the there was there was, four of us painting, two of us up on on ladders. And then I think one or two might have been three but basically one, one of the painters was painting a reverse glass wind or reverse glass sign above a bullet barrier on a piece of on a window for this, children's place in the Tenderloin. Mhmm. And so we're on ladders painting, and we have cones out.

And it's down a hill, And this guy walks by and just goes, hey, man. You should you should really put out some caution tape or something. And I'm like, well, we got cones, and I'm just being dismissive because I'm in the zone painting and be like, let's get this done very quickly. And and, it was right around the time that the methadone clinics were getting out. And this guy, I kid you not, he had one eye, no eye patch over the socket, in a motorized wheelchair Oh, boy.

Gets my ladder and just gets my ladder to a a You were attacked by a man in in in a wheelchair who knocked your ladder over for real. He didn't he didn't knock it over. It was pretty much he hit it to a stage that I couldn't get it back. And the other painter was on the ladder. I couldn't help.

The guy inside essentially saves me because this is all plate glass that we're about to go into Uh-huh. Or I'm about to go into. He jets out and catches the ladder and then supports it while I get down. Meanwhile, the guy is still sitting there, and I don't know if it was there trying to do some sort of insurance grab to hustle on us or something that but, basically, the guy just ran its his wheelchair into the ladder high on the and it was ever since then, you know, it just it's it's like surfing alone. You just don't it's not a good idea.

You know, going out on a ladder alone at the Tenderloin, not a good idea. No. Yeah. We, we had a handful of weird experiences there. I had I had a a guy in the Castro, who was being very forward with my wife standing there.

I'm like, what are you doing, man? Very strange. Anyways Yeah. So okay. Well, I think we're gonna wrap up.

Absolutely. Okay. But, this is cool. I'm glad we were able to talk and get to know each other and Yeah. Definitely.

All that good stuff. I I think we would probably have have hit it off if we had met in San Francisco. Yeah. I truly enjoy it. And, I mean, I I'm planning to go to Texas at some point in the future just to visit, and, you know, I'd love to look you up and maybe We're we're not really close to anything.

We're on the Oklahoma border and Oh, perfect. My family's from Oklahoma. Not anymore, but from Okay. Yeah. Reservations and such.

Ah, okay. Yeah. There's there's lots of that up here. Okay. Cool.

Well, if you are ever in the area, come on by. Alright. Thank you. We'll we'll make up something to paint while we're here. That'd be fun.

Thank you very much, Sean. I truly appreciate your time. Yeah, man. Nice talking to you. Alright.

Likewise. Well, there we go. That was nice. I enjoyed getting to meet and talk with, mister Ken Davis, also known as Cool Hand Ken. So that's it.

That's the episode for this week. Thanks for tuning in. Really appreciate the support and the thumbs up that I've gotten this week. I got quite a few emails and messages through Facebook of people expressing appreciation for the show, and I I appreciate that a lot. Also want to, thank Full City Rooster Coffee Roasters for their support.

And, if you haven't already heard, there is the sign painters blend available on their website. You can get that at fullcityrooster.com and I'm being told that they are shipping worldwide. So if you don't already have a bag of Full City Roosters sign painters blend, get some. Alright. We'll see you next week.

Thanks. Today's episode of Coffee with a SignPainter is brought to you by Full City Rooster Coffee Roasters in Dallas, Texas, roasting distinctive coffees from around the world. Sean drinks Full City Rooster Coffee every day in the studio. You can order their coffee online at fullcityrooster.com. Thanks for listening to Coffee with a Signpainter, hosted by Sean Starr.

You can find all sorts of info about the show and sign painting, including previous episodes at our website, seanstarr.com.