I used to perform yo-yo shows all the time, and it was a blast for a while. It’s always an honor to be asked to perform, and the crowd reactions are usually amazing, but over time, the stress and anxiety leading up to each show started to outweigh the fun. Little by little, I began cutting back on how often I performed.
So when I was asked to open for Mei Ehara at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, I decided to say yes…. and to document the whole process of prepping for my first yo-yo show in over five years.
The post My First Big Yo-Yo Show in Over Five Years appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
“Guilt is the teacher, love is the lesson.”
–Joan Borysenko
When something falls apart, the village exists to support you.
“It’s not your fault,” they’ll say, and they mean it.
They make you feel like the hero of your story.
But every story needs a bad guy and the bad guy might be you.
Don’t beat yourself up, but pinch yourself a little.
Friends help you save face, but only you can save your soul.
You must acknowledge your role in failure.
You did too much, or too little. You chose the wrong target. You held the wrong frame.
You are a work in progress
Mistakes are more than acceptable.
You grow by listening to a feeling called guilt.
Guilt is a teacher, not your enemy.
Guilt is an emotion that steers you to the universe within.
Your body’s warning that you did something out of alignment with your values.
(Because misalignment will kill you.)
Guilt keeps action and character distinct: “I did wrong, but I’m still a good person.”
Shame is different and to be avoided.
Shame fuses the feeling with who you are.
“Because I did a bad thing, I am a bad person.”
Shame chisels a mistake into stone and calls it your name.
You are not a singular idea.
Your stories do not always align and it takes figuring out.
You must bring your adversary closer.
Even when it is you.
You have the capacity to learn from your mistakes.
You must find your people to help you see clearly.
But in the end, when the village quiets and the faces blur.
All that remains is you.
A new arcade is coming to San Francisco’s SoMa District in early 2026, and I got an exclusive preview. Indie Darling will showcase incredible video games from indie developers. By “indie” I’m talking about machines like Particle Mace or Cakefoot that can only be found in a handful of arcades in the world.
The owners of Indie Darling are a couple of pinball fanatics who previously owned an amazing restaurant/arcade in the Mission called Outer Orbit. Like Outer Orbit, Indie Darling will have plenty of pinball cabinets on hand along with weekly pinball meetups and leagues.
The space itself is really cool, split into three parts: a basement (currently for storage), the main arcade floor, and a large upstairs area ideal for big meetups or live music performances. On Saturday night, they had a gallery show featuring classic punk rock fliers from the 90s and 2000s. It’s located in a small alley, a block away from Market and 6th Street.
For more information, check out Indie Darling’s website and Instagram.
The post Indie Darling, a New Arcade Coming Soon To San Francisco appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
Spotted at Eisenberg’s
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
–Kahlil Gibran
The designer strives for perfection.
Symmetry, balance, harmony, utopia.
But utopia literally means “no place.”
And symmetry is a myth.
The truth of the world is chaos and viscera
The trees grown askew in fallow soil.
The broadsheet dripping with grief.
The promises toppled like dominoes.
This asymmetry isn’t the problem.
What you call “ugly” is everything you resist.
Confusion. Uncertainty. Imbalance.
But is there really a problem?
Cross-examine your resistance.
You might not have beef with the universe.
Those superlatives might be pure corn syrup.
–Turn complaints into observations, June 5, 2025
Art is the canvas and the frame:
Fire is both the glowing manifestation of death
And the spark that warms the hearth.
Same flames, different frame.
Next time aesthetic disgust scrinches your nose,
Think about what you find beautiful.
You may have recovered beauty where others see none.
So reverse it. Push through the recoil. Rotate the frame.
Rotation is the designer’s actual work.
Change the frame, not the world.
You step into the mirror
And Consider how you might change.
You read a book more than once,
You bring your adversary closer,
You change the plane of conception,
And turn the impossible into routine.
All potential lies in what appears ugly.
Beauty is better made not found.
You are not swiping your way to a match.
You are what you design; what you design is you.
Continuing my annual tradition of documenting local Halloween decorations with my circuit-bent Sony Cybershot camera, here are this year’s shots.
Previous years:
The post Spooky Glitch Photos from Halloween 2025 appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
I’ve always been a sucker for trompe l’oeil style t-shirts, like fake tuxedos, superhero chests, or ribcages printed right onto the fabric. There’s something so delightfully nerdy about a shirt pretending to be something it’s not.
I particularly love collecting skeletal shirts, and thought it would be cool to try making my own. I decided to make a ribcage sweatshirt out of faux leather, inspired by some appliqué embellishments I’d recently added to a Show Me The Body shirt.
The sweatshirt came from a yard sale at the SF Mime Troupe. Apparently, they’d ordered a batch of black sweatshirts for costumes and rejected a few, including this one. Between the rejected-mime-shirt and the discounted white and red fabrics, the whole project cost me less than $10.
I drew some bone shapes on tracing paper, then used those when cutting the fabric. I used a temporary spray adhesive to keep the bones attached to the sweater while sewing, which made the project so much easier. I wasn’t aiming for perfection; I wanted it to look hand-made and a little raw. I used thick white thread and loose, uneven stitches that pop against the black fabric. Letting go of perfection made the whole process way more fun.
I love how the final project turned out; a mix of fuzzy faux leather and messy stitches gives it this Frankenstein-meets-fashion energy. It’s weird, handmade, and totally mine.
The post DIY Skeleton Sweatshirt appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke
History has a direction, but not a destination.
At any point along its river, you can hear its many songs.
It rushes in progress, dribbles in grief.
It is all one river.
You long to know where you are headed,
But all walk backward in this life.
You see only the past before you.
All sight is hindsight.
The past is the stories you chose to record
The parts you could crumb into words and pictures.
A fragment of what happened; much is unwitnessed.
The rest washed away in the flood.
This picture of the past keeps changing,
Like a watercolor unwilling to dry.
New paint daubed with each backward step.
The layers below buried by progress.
The future, meanwhile, is behind you.
You are not entitled to know the destination
Because there is none; only direction.
Tentative backward steps into darkness.
History shapes the potential futures you can step into.
The stories change the shape of the river behind you,
You are a conduit that bends story into possibility.
And you are made of history too: a drip of watercolor paint.
You might find it easier holding someone’s hand.
Painting history together transforms the kaleidoscope.
Disconnected fragments become navigable story,
Which means you must find your people.
You will paint this canvas together.
Toil and trouble
A few cool events coming up that I thought y’all might like.
If you know of others, share them here. There are also some neat sounding events at the York Street Collective (the old Lucca Ravioli spot on Valencia) https://luma.com/ysc
The post Upcoming Bay Area Events appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
There’s been a huge rise in AI-generated posters in our neighborhood lately, and I hate it. Comedy shows, house painters, community events… all rendered in the same generic AI slop style. Even the fonts seem generated, with weird artifacts around the edges and inconsistent letters.
They should check out what other local businesses like Walls, Only and Red Apple Comics are doing to see how it’s done. Perfect design skills are not necessary, and a little creativity can go a long way.
Walls, Only
Live Art Show
I’m even seeing big local events use generative AI for their official art. For example, Fiesta on the Hill, which claims 20,000 attendees each year, plastered AI slop across its banners and social media. Bernal Heights is filled with amazing artists, many of whom are vendors at this event. Why was AI used when there were so many local artists to choose from?
Thankfully, some venues are pushing back. The Stork Club in Oakland, for instance, has a new rule: all fliers must be human-made.
“We don’t care if it’s a screenshot of the Notes app with the show info or a picture of a hand with band names written in Sharpie.” – The Stork Club
Jamie Zawinski says the DNA Lounge added a similar policy to their booking contracts six months ago:
“Use of ‘AI’ imagery in advertising and promotional material is prohibited. Everyone can tell and everyone hates it. We will get complaints.” – DNA Lounge
I LOVE this energy and hope these policies spread to other venues soon.
While it’s great seeing businesses fight this trend, I think it’s important for consumers to be active too. I’m doing my best not to fund businesses that use generative AI in their marketing or final products, and I encourage you to do the same.
I made some stickers to help spread the word. They’re not for sale, but you are totally free to print them out and distribute them however you like.
Creative Commons art by Doctor Popular (CC-BY)
And if you choose not to spend your money with a company because they’re using AI, let them know why. Keep it friendly, but be clear: generative AI isn’t a good way to keep customers. Or as JWZ put it, “Everyone can tell and everyone hates it.”
Here are some other images you can print out to use however you wish. These work great on standard sheets of paper:
The post Don’t Support Businesses That Use Generative AI appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
After a 15-year hiatus, I started our local cell of the Cartoonist Conspiracy back up earlier this year. We meet on the second Tuesday of each month to draw comics and chat at Finjan Qahwa coffee shop. We mostly use fliers and a WordPress site to promote the group, and an email list to keep our members connected.
We use Google Groups for the email list because it’s simple, low-maintenance, and fits the old-school vibe of our group. We have a link to the group on our website, and that’s been running fairly smoothly since 2006, until a new wave of spambots started joining this year.
It wasn’t a sudden wave, it’s only about 5-10 per week, with seemingly authentic Gmail handles and very descriptive reasons for why they wanted to join the group. Each message was different and fairly well written.
Of course, internet spam has been around forever, but this new wave of spam was far more convincing due to their use of generative-AI to write compelling messages that were specific to our group and not just cut-and-paste like previous attempts.
There was no easy way to weed out the real requests from the spam ones. Many of the spammer’s emails were using structures like “firstnamelastname1234@gmail“, but half of our real members use the same structure for their email handles. The written messages varied drastically, too. Some short, some long, but they all looked similar to the real requests we were getting. Sometimes there would be a giveaway, like messages that had quotation marks in them, but most were really believable. Even with my guard up, I still approved a few requests that turned out to be spam.
I’ve been organizing meetups and groups for most my life, and have been using Google Groups for at least 20 years, but this new wave of AI written bots were far more annoying than anything I’d previously encountered. I thought about shutting down the email list all together.
After pausing all sign-ups for a month, I saw a suggestion from Matthew Newell about implementing a “DIY captcha” for artists and decided to give it a try. Whenever someone requested to join the CCSF group, I’d ask them to verify their humanity by either:
It felt silly at first, but I think it actually worked!
A few folks did send back real art, the rest were probably spammers. One of my favorite turtle drawings, shown below, came from Luis. They’ve been an active participant in our comic jams, and I’m really glad I didn’t prevent them from joining the group because their firstnamelastnameNUMBERS email account sounded suspicious at first.
“The internet is chock-full of bots.” they wrote. “Here’s my punk rock turtle cuz I don’t use social media! Thanks.”
punk rock turtle by Luis Booth
The group has been spam free for a few months, so the “punk rock turtle” seems to be working for now, though I do worry that a few of the requests that I rejected were from real people who wanted to join our art group, but felt turned off by my email request (or maybe didn’t understand it).
At some point, the person sending this spam will probably reply with AI-generated art, which means I’ll have to be second guessing everything again.
I often talk about how the rise of generative AI has made things harder for artists and organizers like myself. This is yet another example.
I run these meetups as a way for artists to meet and interact with each other, but dealing with AI-generated spam makes me feel like just shutting down the email list altogether.
And that’s just on my end… I’m sure it sucks to be a local artist asking to join an art group, then getting asked to make free art or share personal social media information.
I have to give props to Matthew Newell on Mastodon for suggesting a “DIY catpcha” as a means of sussing out the spammers.
And to all the Fediverse users who shared their punk rock turtle drawings:
https://mastodon.social/@MichelPatrice/114978907129196851
@yojimbo
https://mastodon.social/@jgilbert/114979107526285114
https://mastodon.social/@dan_kn/114978943424457739
The post Fighting AI-generated Spam with Punk Rock Turtles appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
–Kurt Vonnegut
You order the bartender to make you a drink,
She controls what goes in your mouth.
So who has the power?
It belongs to you both.
You say, “Make it again!”
She says, “Get the hell out of my bar.”
Power is a dance, not a throne.
Sometimes you swing, sometimes you’re swung.
Power is woven of alternating acts of service.
A co-created construct,
Like a hug or a handshake.
There’s no one-sided version.
You may resist the idea that anyone should lead,
But someone has to decide.
To lead is to know what you want.
To lead is to evangelize the impossible.
You may resist the idea that anyone should follow,
But to follow is to live your curiosity.
To be led isn’t weakness; it is being receptive.
It requires presence, and a belief in your worth.
There is a phenomenon called “force”
But that’s not what power is.
Force can seize the moment.
Power endures across time.
Should you choose to lead, you must become a servant.
Like a conductor serves an orchestra.
You keep the score, set aside your agenda,
So others can revel in flow.
Should you choose to follow, you must become a teacher.
Because you show the next person how to trust.
Without your assent, there is no truth.
Without your follow, there is no dance.
The bartender pours you a cocktail.
You sip with full trust.
Sante.
Neither wield the power alone.
Once upon a time, people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today, people are born as individuals and have to find their communities.
–Youth Mode
You have fallen out of love with the ordinary.
To be ordinary is a failure.
To be extraordinary is the norm.
Revel in how weird this is. Now scroll.
No one is awkward anymore.
Unless it’s deliberate affectation or “cringe.”
A child on camera knows their marks like an actor.
Everyone knows their good side.
You are awash in hyphenates and bullshit job titles.
Everyone has main character energy
And says shit like “main character energy,”
Like you’re interning at Bravo.
The robot vomits slop: “When everyone is unique, no one is.”
More like: when everyone is unique it’s damnedable.
You can’t have ordinary shared experiences.
Like enjoying Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
This is not a paean to a swirling plastic bag in a parking lot.
This is not nostalgia or sonder with a hopecore soundtrack.
It is a boombox raised high in the air
For a six from homeroom called Ordinary.
“I couldn’t possibly give up all this novelty.”
What was the last thing you read on the internet?
Who wrote it? Did you savor it? Did you actually feel it??
Or did you taste a leaf in your mouth during a hurricane?
Just about everyone who read Youth Mode got it dead wrong:
Normcore is not performing normalcy in an aspirational way
The promise of normcore is post-aspirational.
It is less about standing out and more about being together.
“Do you mean I can’t be special?”
You don’t need a brand.
A brand is what they used to tell cows apart.
You have a voice, you have a community, you have you.
You are the same as everyone else.
Can you imagine? Maybe it’s OK to just be
A human person in an ordinary world.
You will learn to survive.
I’m hosting two upcoming events in the Mission District of San Francisco:
Saturday October 11th from 2-5pm at 826 Valencia. This might be the last yo-yo meetup I run this year.
Tuesday October 14th from 7-9pm at Finjan Qawha Cafe on Mission Street. This is a montly event.
The post San Francisco Yo-Yo Club and Cartoonist Conspiracy appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
These are the mathematics of attention:
If everyone performs, nobody watches.
If everyone speaks, nobody listens.
You can’t all be the main character.
Because then the story doesn’t work.
You’ve fallen out of love with the ordinary among you.
You mistake your friends’ online presence for their value.
Your platforms reward mind-viruses and assholes
There is no room in your world for the supporting roles.
But any story struggles when everyone’s the protagonist,
You can’t all be shouting catchphrases and kicking dragons.
Life is as much about texture as it is forward motion
Too many chefs, spoil the plot.
There are other archetypes: makers, magicians, alchemists,
Muses, lovers, caretakers, connectors,
Questioners, contrarians, innocents, and jokers.
They make the story too.
A main character needs a crusade and a crusade is crazy-making;
Those in supporting roles can keep their identity fluid.
For their efforts, you deride them as NPCs
But they are the infrastructure that make human connection possible.
God bless the supporters who whole communities together
Who value the group more than the spotlight.
Who are more interested than “interesting.”
Who have become the ones not talking.
You all have multiple roles in life to play
Which is why people must make new people.
To grow is to enable new main characters
And surrender your role in the franchise.
I’ve shared a bunch of my sticker designs on this blog before, but I thought I’d round up some of my favorites here. These stickers are all CC-BY licensed, meaning you can print them and sell them if you like, but please remember to credit Doc Pop as the artist.
Move Purposefully and Fix Things
D.C. Hero
Boy generative AI
Coned Waymo
Everyone’s Welcome Here
The “Everyone’s Welcome Here” design is the newest design in the bunch. I’ve been seeing a bunch of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic stickers in SF lately, so I wanted to design a sticker that I could use to cover up hate.
Folks frequently ask who I recommend for sticker printing. The truth is that I have a bunch of businesses that I really like. These places all do sales pretty frequently, so I’d suggest signing up for their mailing lists and waiting for a good deal to come around.
All of these companies are great, but I have to give massive props to Sticker Ninja for being really awesome folks (read their about page).
Sticker Guy is an excellent option if you are looking for cheap two color (ie black and white) stickers. I find that limitation kind of inspiring, so I might design some more stickers just to print out at Sticker Guy.
Sticker Giant currently has a 25% off discount with code “CHEERS25VIP” and StickerBros currently has a 15% off deal with code “FINALDAYS”.
I don’t recommend StickerMule at all. They sent a bunch of pro-Trump emails through their marketing materials a few years back and they still send emails even after you’ve unsubscribed.
I used to recommend the Sticker Brand too, but they’ve started using generative AI in their marketing materials, which is a huge red flag. I don’t support companies which use AI to market themselves, so I’m no longer suggesting SB to any artists or small businesses who are looking for a good sticker option. Since the comments on Sticker Brand’s AI slop videos are very negative, I’m hoping they re-evaluate who they are marketing to (see screenshot below for the comments).
There are tons of great sticker companies out there, so let me know who I missed. As long as they aren’t using AI in their advertising or flat out endorsing Trump in their marketing emails, I’d be glad to give them a try.
The post Some Free Sticker Designs and Where to Print Them appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
Stumbled upon a delightful exhibit at SFO Terminal 2: “Give Me a Ring: A Telephone Retrospective.” The collection, generously loaned from the JKL Museum of Telephony, traces the evolution of the telephone from the late 19th century through the 1990s.
The exhibit showcases everything from classic Art Deco designs to the iconic rotary phones that once graced every American home. Highlights for me were the Snoopy and Garfield phones (did anyone have that red Lips phone??), the flip phones, and a phone that is also a leather bag.
Magicians do not reveal how the trick is done
Not to protect their secrets, which are cheap.
But to preserve your wonder, which is invaluable
Every magician is an artist and the reverse is just as true.
Never reveal the magic, do not explain it away.
Despite the insistence of the curly-haired rats,
The waste is what works.
You are pulled by the mystery, not the reveal.
Yeah, sunlight is the best disinfectant,
Sure, your podcast “tells it like it is,”
But not everything is solved with a Vox explainer.
Neither your Craft, nor this universe.
“Where do you get your ideas?”
“Is your last song about me?”
“What’s going to happen to the world?”
These questions are not unexpected.
But don’t waste a second trying to answer
You’re better off explaining the shape of a sneeze.
The mortals want to know “Why am I so moved by Chaos?”
When that, of course, was the intended effect.
Besides, you have neither the ability nor the right to explain.
You are not you; you are a conduit.
The artist weaves from Collective Dream
On everyone’s behalf.
You can know your eternal questions.
That’s all a storyteller gets to know.
The listener must know her questions too,
Two shards of curiosity meeting in the prism of Craft.
Ask not about the magic.
Read a book more than once if you want answers
But you’ll mostly learn about yourself.
Which is the “point” were there such a thing.
To craft is to insistently rush into the unknown.
An endless collision of Chaos and knowledge
Producing as byproduct both failure and artifact
And the gorgeous illusion:
That the universe needs to make a lick of sense.
The Summer Forum was willed into existence by our ringleader and European ambassador Zeke. Bringing together now dear friends, it was the first year of the gathering but I doubt it will be the last.
This year’s theme was “Blackout.” Good people, good food, and good fun in a fantastic location.
I can’t wait for the next turn of the wheel.
Never solve a problem in the plane of its original conception.
–George Saunders (after Albert Einstein)
Humans suffered from heartbreak, hunger, and pain.
The reason was God’s will.
The “answer” was Human Science.
The most human of Human Science is known as biology. With a strong enough loupe, biology reveals itself to be chemistry, the study of molecular reactions. Chemistry is addressed with physics, the motion of particles. Physics is math. The deepest maths are philosophy in disguise. And philosophy is best understood by walking in a human body and suffering God’s will.
Never solve a problem where you found it. You must change the plane of conception.
The most profound breakthroughs are betrayals of common sense. To solve disease you need to invent disgusting critters called germs. To grok alternating current you need numbers that don’t exist. You, yourself, are a country nothing like its citizens: the cells of your body. These aren’t contradictions.
Synthesis accretes in dimensions that don’t currently exist. (So Don’t leave out the impossible.) Expect to be confused. All novel dimensions are like the internet to a dog: inconceivable!
Transcending conceptual planes doesn’t eliminate your problems, of course. They just change shape. Once you feared bears. Then you feared the bomb. Now you fear upward scrolling text on illuminated glass.
Each new plane of conception is a step through an infinity mirror—more perspective, more terror. It gets worse before it gets better.
It’s worth slowing down.
Fast-moving eyes must latch to the sticks and stems of the trail; you become stuck to the current plane of reality. When you move as slow as possible, you are able to see more. You might even pause at the base of a tree and climb. A new plane. A different vantage point.
You learn the true shape of the path: it’s a spiral.
You learn the truth about the forest: it’s ablaze.
You notice a beetle on a leaf, and it stares back at you.
The beetle asks you a question, but you can’t understand it.
The reason is God’s will.
Adobe Books is a volunteer-run used bookstore in the Mission District that’s been going strong for 45 years. More than just a bookstore, it’s a community hub for zinesters, poets, and artists… and now they’re raising funds to help keep the doors open for another 45 years.
Tonight (6–9pm), Adobe is hosting a one-night-only Art Fundraiser, featuring work from some of my favorite local artists. Pieces will be sold right off the walls throughout the evening, so if you want to see everything, show up early.
I’m also contributing a piece called Waymo Burning. It’s inspired by the ICE protests in Los Angeles earlier this year, created with pink and blue ink on vintage paper, layered with coffee stains and whiteout. It’s framed, priced at $150 (a steal), and 100% of the sale goes straight to support this nonprofit bookstore on 24th Street.
Come by, support Adobe, and take home some rad local art!.
The post One Night Only: Art Fundraiser for Adobe Books appeared first on Doc Pop's Weblog.
Certainly Strange
Doctor Popular
I Like Turtles
I before E except Gleitzman
Matt Spitz
Monoprinciples
Vivek Sri
Last updated:
November 17, 2025 05:30 AM
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