far flung/down home: New Computer, New Year, New Painted Utility Boxes

After just over a month away from SD for business (what kind of business, you may ask? The exciting kind. The kind where you get paid so you can fly places to visit family. That kind.) I returned to a veritable smörgåsbord of good things. Not only did we just get an awesome hand-me-down laptop to replace the old hand-me-down laptop that committed a slow and dramatic electric and electronic suicide therefore rendering Far Flung updating impossible, but I ALSO found a bevy of previously unphotographed utility boxes. What a delight!!!

All utility boxes were in North Park and photographed at night while IQ patiently accompanied me while I ran block to block squealing with glee upon discovering each new utility box. Just try to diagram THAT sentence. I dare you. Hope you enjoy these latest additions to the collection as much as I do.

This one is super'80's boom-box retro. I love the cassette motif. I wish that they had painted the adjacent utility box to look like a huge boom-box, but no such luck.

This one combines the city's seaside identity with some excellent bold color and simple graphic repetition. Well done!

This one was probably better left as a doodle on a teenage girl's trapper keeper.

The side shows a weird lack of continuity in style and theme. Only the colors used in the piece tie the two sides together.

Very cool color wash under intricate pen and ink style outlines. I love the shape repetitions and loose geometry of the constituent patterns.

Another Miro-esque theme. This town loves it some Miro.

This one shows a San Diego landmark: the water/gravy tower in North Park (reputed to be the gravy receptacle for Chicken Pot Pie shop which is just across the street). In my imagination, the fish in the bottom of the painting are worshiping the water tower full of gravy. I love how this utility box has faded and peeled. The resulting texture is striking and lovely.

Mountain scene. Maybe Provence, maybe Poway. Wherever the inspiration for the scene, taggers could not leave well enough lone. Savages. Miscreants. Teenagers.

Kind of a blurry photo, but cartoonish and funky representation of SD. The bridge is probably the bridge to Coronado.

Saxophone is not shown to scale.

This one pays homage to Bird Park, a sweet little neighborhood patch of greenery and fun in North Park that hosts summer concerts. Bird Park also has some really really fat squirrels that are not portrayed on this utility box.

Bold florals are a pretty safe bet. Kind of a loose nod to Warhol's flowers.

This was a very large utility box. And yes, that is a purple fake fur jacket I am wearing. It actually dropped below 70 degrees here.

A+ for theme. C for execution. Bowling is a pretty great theme. There is no Bowling Alley called Aztec bowl that we know of, but I think this was a play on the SDSU Viejas Arena also called the Aztec Bowl. No bowling happens there, but you could see a basket ball game or a Judas Priest concert (not shown on utility box).