“No Pulisic? No Problem!” USA on G Street

June 28, 20261 Comment

“USA! USA! USA!” they were all singing. It was just after lunchtime, the Juneteenth holiday so we had the day off work, and the pedestrianized block of G Street in downtown Davis was full of soccer fans, most of them dressed in USA gear to cheer on USMNT in their group match against Australia. Win this, and they go through to the knockouts. There was a big screen set up, and loads of people on their lawn chairs, which every soccer-mom and soccer-dad has in the back of their car. It was hot, and very sunny, so I sketched under the cover of my hat and some hastily applied sunscreen on the back of my legs, drawing on the last page of my sketchbook which I had pre-splashed with some ‘Inktense’ paints. I had to change positions a couple of times, and then just headed into the shade completely. There were some Australians, but the US were playing in front of a soccer-crazy Seattle crowd and were pretty dominant, even though their Main Man Christian Pulisic was not playing; “No Pulisic, No Problem!” announced the excited commentator. When they scored, a massive cheer erupted, and chants of “USA! USA! USA!” echoed across downtown. I wondered to myself if anyone would start replying “USB! USB!” and thought that might be a good thing to sing at a Chargers game, and then the US got a second goal, scored by someone called A. Freeman, the #16. I thought to myself, they have missed a trick there, A. Freeman should have been Number 6. (As in “I am NOT a NUMBER, I am A. FREEMAN!”). Someone I know (Adie) was wearing an Alexei Lalas USA ’94 shirt, #22, so he had to go into the sketchbook. He had not grown the beard (funny story, right, I actually did grow the beard back in 1999 mostly as a laugh but also partly to annoy someone). I always wanted that kit back in 1994. I did consider wearing the one USA national shirt that I own, the very smart one from 2006, but the thing about shirts from the 2000s is they don’t really work on 2020s Pete. It is curious that my football shirts from the big and baggy ’90s still fit me but nothing from about 2002-2010. Oh well. We didn’t actually stick around for the second half, instead going to McDonalds for some massively overpriced chicken nuggets that came with commemorative World Cup cups with players on them (We got Pulisic and Lamine Yamal). We watched the rest at home, but it was a done deal and the USMNT topped their group with a game to spare in this unusually designed World Cup format. They would go on to play against Turkey and lose late on, but it was a meaningless match, if any game is really meaningless. They will play again in the Round of 32 on Wednesday against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the big screen will be out on G Street again.

I had gone down to G Street a little early, to check out the Davis Soccer Fest. This has been set up to happen before the US games, and also before the World Cup Final, where there are lots of soccer related activities, including a big dartboard where you can kick a ball at it to score points (I didn’t give it a go but I sketched it). It is organized by Davis community Soccer, who are a new group in town run by many of the same people who have run soccer in Davis for a while now, from the AYSO and AYSO United organizations, of which I was a member; I coached for years and was one of the original coaching team for United but retired in 2022, though I am still on the Davis World Cup committee, and design the World Cup logos and medals. Davis Community Soccer started this year, though it was a surprise to me (since it is effectively replacing Fall AYSO this year, though Davis AYSO has said it’s not going away) and I’ve not had a chance to talk to anyone involved about it all yet, but good luck to them, I hope it’s a success. I like their logo, it reminds me of the one I designed for the 2022 Davis World Cup a bit, I like that retro font. It’s nice to see them create fun stuff like this as well, and so as I sketched I did get a chance to chat with Sam and Adam who I’ve not caught up with in a while. They had a tent pitched up where kids could get soccer tattoos. It was a really fun event for kids, with others playing soccer tennis further up the street.

Here are some more of the crowd. I drew the USA fans there while I was stood in the shade on the sidelines. That reminds me, the USA will celebrate its 250th anniversary this July 4, I don’t know if you heard. I may actually try to sketch the fireworks this year, to mark the occasion, I will need some more gel pens to sketch on dark paper. While 250 doesn’t seem that old to a Brit, it’s worth getting a nice cake for, and I never liked it when I would turn 30, 40, most recently 50 and there is always someone older going, hah you’re so young, wait until you’re my age. For July 4 I might even try to squeeze into that 2006 USA shirt if I can. Below, some of the other shirts on display, a Scottish fan in a kilt waiting, Scotland were playing later that day (spoiler alert, they lost the game, but they won over the city of Boston, and that’s what really matters). There was a young lad in the 2002 Brazil shirt, I think he was a USA fan but that’s a great top. The guy next to him was in a red USA away kit from about 2011, that was a nice one. There were a lot of other kits on display, but overwhelmingly the current USA home kit was most common, the one with the red wavy horizontal stripes like a flag. Will they win it this year, the actual World Cup? I mean, nobody really thinks so, because they just don’t do they, but well, they could. Their group was not hard, and their route to the quarter finals is not exactly filled with heavyweight teams, and with the big West Coast crowds chanting “USA! USA!” (except for those few confused LA Charger fans singing “USB-C!”) they just might pull it off. The Women’s team have done it enough times. If they do, well it’ll be ‘Hydration Breaks’ everywhere. Maybe when they have won ‘FIFA’ as they call it, they can get rid of penalty shootouts and replace them with that thing they used to do in the early years of MLS, when they would have someone run from the halfway line to go one on one with the keeper, the best Americanization sport has ever seen. But that won’t happen because as we all know deep down, this year, 60 years on, Its Coming Home.

Watching Haaland in Soccer and Lifestyle

June 28, 20261 Comment

The World Cup continues. Still during that first round of group games, I went to the local football shirt shop, Soccer and Lifestyle, to watch the second half of Norway vs Iraq. I sketched the store; the last time I had sketched inside was in the previous location was also during a World Cup, but back in 2014, twelve years ago. That is a long time ago. I drew this all while the game was going on, but coloured it in at home. There was a woman in there wearing a yellow and green Mali shirt, with ‘F Kanoute’ on the back, which I though was incredible. I really liked Freddie Kanouté, who played for Spurs for a brief period in the mid 2000s, and I told them I actually saw him play and even score, at White Hart Lane in 2004. There are a lot of good shirts in that shop. I bought my shirt for the tournament there, the Japan away kit, a couple of weeks ago. That one is white with a black collar but has really nice colourful pinstripes. They were out of the USA shirts already, they had sold out before the first USA game. There is a ‘Soccer Fest’ on G St before every US game, and a big screen is set up to watch them. We saw the second game there (I’ll post the sketches later). The USA home shirt this year is a zany affair, red and white made to look a bit like the flag waving, and be reminiscent of the amazing 1994 kit. I don’t like the 2026 one much, but if they do well, it’ll probably end up iconic. The game that I saw in the shop was a bit one-sided, with Norway being the one side, not surprising since Haaland is on the team.

So, flashback to twelve years ago, watching France vs Switzerland…

Hop you are enjoying the World Cup. It’s big and bloated and there are too many games, and I hate the ‘hydration breaks’ which are just blatantly obviously advert breaks (well done America, you broke soccer), but there have been some good moments already. Messi closed out the group stage with goal #6 for him, and DR Congo won their first World Cup game (against Uzbekistan admittedly) to qualify for the knockouts. The ‘Round of 32’ started today, and Canada beat South Africa with a late winner. There are a lot of games still to come, a lot of ‘hydration breaks’, a lot of Beckham and Messi adverts…

World Cup on the box

June 26, 2026Leave a comment

Summer is here already. As I write, we are already two weeks into the biggest World Cup ever. That is, the biggest FIFA World Cup ever, because the Davis World Cup as we know has more teams and games and a much better logo. In case you haven’t heard, it’s being held in North America, co-hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico, who’ve all been getting on great the past couple of years. There is a lot of noise around this World Cup, even more than the last ones, and as a blatant massive cash-milking machine it’s made me feel very uneasy and I definitely didn’t want to spend thousands going to any of the games, just to watch a dead-rubber 0-0 (I’m looking at you, Paraguay v Australia in Santa Clara). Despite all that, I’ve been a sucker for the World Cup since I was ten, watching Maradona and Lineker and Platini and JOSIMAAAAAR at the 86 World Cup. I’ve watched almost all of the games so far (I had to give some of them a miss, looking at you Australia v Paraguay), and I have a lot of complaints, none more than these bloody ‘hydration breaks’, but also the head-to-head rule, the far-too-many-teams thing, and the amount of adverts with Beckham in them. I’ve enjoyed a lot of the games, I have all the flags up, I got a new shirt as per tradition (Japan Away), and even got the Panini sticker album, why not. I made a massive wallchart, one for home and one for work, and made little plastic flag ornaments to hang up and take down once teams get eliminated. Time to start doing that, because teams are dropping out now like British Prime Ministers. I have done a fair bit of sketching this time, but not drawing the players , it’s the old ‘draw the TV and some of the room’ with lots of random bits of commentary written all over the place. I wasn’t going to do that so much this year, but I can’t help myself. On the first Saturday while watching Morocco vs Brazil, a big game this early, I thought I’d get playful and use that big box of Prismacolor pencils I have had for a few years but never use. And why not draw on the back of a cereal box, like I saw so many sketchers doing in Poznan last year (those who took Peter Rush’s workshop), so I got a book of Raisin Bran Crunch and sketched the World Cup, definitely not sponsored by Kellogg’s. Yeah, bit of a slog, and having to keep changing pencil, what a time waste. Still it was a fun outcome, maybe. The game was good too, and ended in a 1-1 draw.

Before the World Cup started, we all made our predictions, our tips for the golden boot, and our dark horses. I predicted France to win it (with Spain and yes England as my 2nd and 3rd tips), and Harry Kane for the top scorer award. Morocco were my dark horses, with Norway and Japan as my other “who knows”. So far that’s been playing out, except that guy Messi is scoring for fun still despite turning 39 this week. It’s been interesting watching some of the ‘smaller’ teams, and the countries you don’t usually get to watch. Curaçao were fun, Uzbekistan a little less fun, though everybody fell in love with Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) and their keeper Vozinha when they drew with Spain, and then again with Uruguay. My African team this time though is DR Congo (and yes I do keep saying Doctor Congo), big fan of them and their superfan, Lumumba Vea. Above though I sketched New Zealand vs Iran, which was another entertaining draw. I drew that on the same cereal box, but this time in a blue Marabu Aqua Pen Grafix marker I must have gotten at one of the Symposiums. I used my usual and more trusty Staedtler aquarelle pencils for the action on TV, and the flags. which are hung around my living room.

And here is the first game by England, an adventurous effort for them, beating Croatia 4-2. Croatia are finally tired after 2018. We were all at home that afternoon, I sketched on the iPad this time, just in the second half. My old 2010 England away shirt, the only one I ever owned (and it is a bit tight on me now), is hanging up on the wall. I have a funny relationship with the England team because I both support them and don’t support them, it’s one of those things where both can be true; when I was a teenager, Ireland were my team, but I suppose England after that, and they usually ended up letting me down. I also never liked ‘that’ element of the supporters, but I know they ain’t all like that. I find that I don’t get excited for England, until the game is actually on, and then I just get my lack of excitement from the way the team plays. Maybe this time it’s different? I always want the British and Irish sides to do well, and so I’ve been well into Scotland this time around. I even bought a Wales shirt, because they went half price after they failed to qualify. I know what will happen with England, I’ll get sucked in as they go along, and Kane starts doing well, and then they get to a point where you think, maybe, maybe this time? You remember those times when you didn’t just roll your eyes about them and you start thinking, is it coming home? It is isn’t it, it’s coming home, it definitely is this time. England are the Spurs of international football, maybe for once they can just give us something. And then they lose a semi, or a quarter, and you feel grumpy and dejected for ever believing, and the years-of-hurt-o-meter keeps on ticking. At least the Women’s team win stuff. This time though, they look…good? They did in this game, a good start, let’s see how it goes, we might just be too exhausted to care by the end. It is a long, long, long World Cup…

there’s never enough time for all the time in the world

June 25, 2026Leave a comment

Hello everyone! I am so far behind on posting, it’s hard to know where to start. Going from where I left off would be a good idea, I suppose, but maybe not. I was hoping to have caught up by now, but I have been finding it difficult to sit and concentrate long enough to write posts to go with all these sketches, and I’ve not slowed down on sketching, not on your nelly. I also want to be writing about this World Cup that is going on right now, draining all attention and giving me headaches, but we are already near the end of the group stages. In the past I would have done a run-down of every team with a little drawing of their kit, but there are so many teams, I did not do that this time. I did make a lot of decorations including a big detailed wall chart. But for my own purposes, I’ll list here what I need to catch up on posting before I do all of that, in or out of order. This feels a bit like an annual appraisal, like I have to do at work, but it’s good to organize myself and remember what I’ve done. So where was I last, I was in Pasadena last September for the big Oasis show. So after that…

September sketches in Davis
Fall 2025 First-Year Class on Urban Sketching
October sketches in Davis
Oregon trip October 2025 (Corvallis, Portland, Multnomah Falls)
November/December sketches in Davis
Christmas 2025 sketches
Also, my 2025 Advent Calendar
San Francisco January 2026
January sketches in Davis
London February 2026
Cotswolds February 2026
February/March/April sketches in Davis
Picnic Day 2026
Art Brut SF show April 2026
Pence Gallery Urban Sketching Course May 2026
May/June sketches in Davis
Montreal / Formula 1 sketches May 2026
Pride Sketches June 2026
San Francisco June 2026
Various Let’s Draw Davis sketchcrawls
World Cup 2026 sketches

Doesn’t seem too much to catch up with! Ok, this will be my planning list. That’s quite a lot actually. It’s just that this summer I am going to the Urban Sketching Symposium in Toulouse, another big adventure, and I always come back from those with way too many sketches and buckets of inspiration to draw more. Anyway to start off with, here is one of the first sketches I did after the Supergrass/Oasis weekend. It’s the Natsoulas Gallery on Russell Boulevard, the one with the big cat and the big dog outside.

Passing through Pasadena

May 31, 2026May 31, 2026Leave a comment

I had a lie-in after watching Oasis at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, I had a walk around the area before heading to Burbank Airport. It’s a nice area, Pasadena, and I stopped opposite the City Hall to draw that. Headphones on, listening to Oasis after the night before. I like being in the LA area, and wish I’d had a bit more time to maybe go back down to the museums and sketch more dinosaurs, but summer was nearly over and it was time to get back to work. I was genuinely sick of airports by this point. Still I am glad I got a good sketch of Pasadema before I left. After lunch, while waiting for my Uber to the airport, I also did s quick sketch of a fire hydrant which I finished off on the plane, another for the collection. And so we march on. I think I might post my sketches from between Sept 2025 and May 2026 nonlinearly, for a laugh. As long as i am all caught up by the time I leave for my travels this summer – better book that ticket, Pete – then maybe I can breathe this sketch-blog back to life. I need to take the time to sit and write about things, and that involves thinking and decluttering the mind, which has not been easy lately. It’s what I do when I am sketching, but is getting harder when I am at my desk at home. Maybe I need a new desk, we’ve had this one since, well my wife has had it since before we met so it is probably from the late 20th century, and looking worse for the wear. Right, my plan for 2026, get a new desk. No, not another guitar, not more football shirts, a new desk. And a new chair.

Oasis at the Rose Bowl

May 31, 20262 Comments

I’m getting further behind with my posting, and really need to catch up. It’s a bit overwhelming when I have so many sketches, and want to tell lots of stories, but struggle to sit down and think as much this year. Let’s see I’ve got the whole of Fall 2025, including a trip to Oregon in October, and then 2026 started and I turned fifty, and went to England in February, and then since then I’ve just been busy, up to last weekend when we were in Montreal for the first time to watch the Formula 1. I really want to get to that bit so I might just jump around as I spend the next little while trying to catch up before the summer travels (for which I still haven’t bought my plane ticket). So let’s get on with part two of the previous post. After Supergrass in San Francisco, it was time to get back on the 90s trail and fly to Los Angeles to see Oasis at the Rose Bowl. I’m writing so far after the event now that I can hardly believe it is real. Certainly two days before it I had no idea that I would be going. I was still a bit jetlagged after my flight from London the weekend before. I left my crap hotel near Union Square, had an unhealthy breakfast at a diner, and went to SFO. Of course I sketched the plane ride. I was in my Adidas hoodie like a true 90s geezer (I did have a long sleeve black Adidas top back in 1995 that I wore for years until it got so faded and baggy). I was a bit apprehensive going on my won, despite all my recent solo travels, because I’d have liked to have been going to this gig with someone else, but I couldn’t get two tickets together, and my wife’s not really into Oasis. Still it was going to be an adventure.

I landed at LAX and took the FlyAway bus to Union Station, and caught the Metro out to Pasadena. It took a little while, LA is big. I really enjoyed my trip here the year previously, before I went to that conference in Riverside, when I spent the Friday night at the Scum and Villainy Cantina and spent all day Saturday at the Natural History Museum drawing dinosaur bones. That was a good trip, two years ago now. I like LA., there is a lot to explore, but it’s so big. Anyway I found my hotel, I was super lucky to get a room (or rather, my wife had found the room and we booked it on points). It being one of the biggest hotels near enough to the Rose Bowl, it was full of Oasis fans, and they had a big cardboard cut-out Liam and Noel that you could take photos with. I had someone take a photo of me but it turned out crap. I didn’t have a lot of time to settle into my room (the carpet was still damp from being cleaned just recently) before I had to leave and somehow find my way to the Rose Bowl. There had been Oasis fans on the Metro headed there early, and much of the hotel was already clearing out, it was like a mass exodus of adidas. I headed into Pasadena, apparently you had to go to a parking lot where there would be free shuttles to the Rose Bowl. It was a long walk and I had some ‘fast’ food on the way, but had to wait for half an hour for them to cook it. Pasadena is nice, pretty upscale, but I didn’t have time to check it out. I followed the bucket hats towards the shuttle buses, and found myself at the end of a massive long line. It reminded me of the one they had in London when the Queen died, even though it was nothing like that. It moved fast, and everyone was talking to each other in the queue, it was very convivial, and everyone was excited. They had loads of buses to fit everyone in, and on the coach it felt like the Magical Mystery Tour, heading off into the Pasadena hills. This was my first time ever seeing Oasis, ever since I first heard them back in 1994, and I was nearly there.

Rewind a little bit. I can’t say exactly when I first heard Oasis but I remember that early appearance on The Word playing Supersonic (because I used to watch The Word every week, Terry Christian and Mark Lamarr and Katie Puckrick and all that utterly mad 90s neon nonsense, it was an atrocious TV show that I kinda hated but kinda loved so would always watch. They didn’t register more than any other band playing on that mess of a show. Anyway I remember being given one of those compilation CDs in late 94, maybe for Christmas, probably one of those ‘Now! 1994’ albums, and it had Cigarettes and Alcohol on it. All the other 1994 music, your Suedes and your Blurs, and your bloody Wet Wet Wets and your Take Thats, I was like yeah fine, but what is this? The opening fuzz, the riff obviously ripped right off of T-Rex, and that loud scream of “Myyyyyy Imag-ee-na-ti-on” that instantly made me think of a hybrid of Lennon and Rotten, despite hearing all these things before in some way, I’d not ever heard anything like it. It was familiar in a strange way, it struck something with me (and it wasn’t the song title, I was into neither cigarettes not alcohol, and had no idea what the white line was supposed to be, presumably something to do with roads) but it just sounded like the bricks of terraced council houses and the park down the end of our road and the towers of the housing estate with piss in the stairwell. All very familiar to me. I sat in my bedroom that night and played it on repeat, over and over and over, strumming along on my guitar, getting the riffs wrong, and I still get them wrong but that’s ok. I had left school by this point and was in college, but it reminded me of this band I’d had at school. We were terrible and I couldn’t really play but I had this sound in my head that I could never get out of my guitar (because I didn’t own an amplifier), and this was it. I got their album Definitely Maybe and got hugely into Oasis, though I never picked up the clothes or haircut or that stupid laddish walk. In fact I was never into any of the laddish stuff that Oasis seemed to be about, I hated it in fact (I was more like Pulp), but was just so attracted to that sound, like it was personal to me. It is not everyone’s cup of tea and they were and are polarizing, but I couldn’t get enough.

I never got to see them live though. They were always in the magazines, and went from small to gigantic in the blink of an eye. I considered going to the massive Knebworth shows in 1996, but I didn’t want to sit on the phone in the hope I’d be lucky. Plus I worked at Asda on the weekend. One of my coworkers in the coffee shop there, I can’t even remember her name, but she went and came back telling me how amazing it all was. They all started to go a bit off in the years after that, their televised live gigs sounded awful, and then when I was in Belgium I got tickers to see them in France in 2000, a show that ended up being cancelled due to that Liam and Noel having a big bust-up in Barcelona. I was kind of relieved, partly because I didn’t want to finally see Oasis for it to end up being a bit shit, but also because I had absolutely no idea how I was going to go to this town in France and get back to Charleroi, being so utterly skint. So fast forward all these years, they break up for a long long time, and then announce these big 2025 shows. Again I did not fancy the whole nonsense of trying to get a ticket to see them at Wembley, especially after the whole ‘dynamic pricing’ business came out, so I was like you know what, I’ll leave it. And then a couple of days before LA, well it all happened in the end and so now I was in the Rose Bowl with thousands of other people in Oasis shirts, of all ages, and in the end it turned out to be absolutely brilliant, and well worth the wait. The Rose Bowl was an epic location, this is where the 1994 World Cup Final took place! Baggio’s ball still floating up there somewhere after his penalty miss. I was impressed to see so many football kits, from all countries and era, not just lots of baggy Manchester City shirts from 1995. I wore my 2018 Argentina away shirt, the black one which is classic. I chatted to a guy in a 1993 Umbro Brazil shirt who had actually been at that final in 94 right there. A guy sat in the row in front of me had the Portsmouth kit from the 2008 final. I spoke to a lot of people, I even stood in line for the t-shirts for about 45 minutes talking to this one guy originally from Britain who had been to both LA shows and we talked about London music venues from the 90s, he even remembered David Devant. He told me there were some laddish idiots in the crowd the night before getting over-excited, but on the whole the atmosphere on both nights was really chill. It was a fun evening. I caught the tail end of Cast, looking like old wizards now, playing Walk Away, reminding me of the end of the 1996 England-Germany penalty shootout.

Oasis came out and the big screen behind them hyped it all up so much, but in that Rose Bowl it sounded acoustically incredible, underneath a warm Pasadena evening sky. I live in California but this felt like being on the other side of the world somehow. They played all the classics, and we all sang along. 19 year old me was very thankful to 49 year old me. I played along to the guitar in my head, which always sounds so much better than the one in my fingers, and it was a long entertaining show that ended with a big firework display. I’m super glad I actually went. It took a while to get back; I stood in another long line waiting for the shuttle bus, but it was a line that was moving and people to talk to. I befriended (and sketched) a guy called Omar from Mexico City who had flown up for this show, since he couldn’t get tickets for the show in Mexico a week later, and I also chatted with a group of people from Ely in Cambridgeshire, I had a friend in the 90s who was from Ely and she was into Take That and the Spice Girls while I was into Oasis and Pulp, and we both used to talk about them a lot. The bus back took forever too, and everyone was chatting away to each other about the show, and about other shows they had been to. The bus dropped me off about half an hour’s walk away from my hotel so even though the show finished at 11pm, I didn’t get to my room until about 1:20am.

I flew back next day from Burbank Airport, yet another plane, and the terminal was full of people in Oasis shirts. I had to sketch the guy in the bucket hat fast asleep with his mouth open, sorry mate. I was pretty exhausted, it was a Monday and I was on vacation from work, but it was still technically summer so I knew the upcoming work week would not be too hard, unlike in a few weeks. As a way to close out the busy summer, this was a good way to do it, Supergrass and Oasis. As I write, it’s almost summer 2026 already, and the World Cup is coming up, sadly not at the Rose Bowl this time.

supergrass in san francisco

April 10, 2026Leave a comment

I’d been back from Europe for less than a week and I was off again, this time down to San Francisco to see a performance by the band Supergrass. I had been planning this for ages, and would be staying overnight in the city. I got into Supergrass back in 1995 when I was still just about a teenager, but in all those years I never got to see them play live. They were doing a special tour playing their first album I Should Coco, the mark its 30 year anniversary. Now is the real resurgence of the old 90s Britpop bands, coming back out and playing again; we saw Pulp for the first time in 2024, then they brought out a new album in ’25, but the big news comeback was the massive reunion tour of Oasis (another band I was well into but missed seeing live). I knew there was no chance I’d get to go to that tour, since it sold it out so quickly, and tickets were astronomically overpriced. Supergrass though was such an exciting prospect for me, I loved that youthful optimistic first album, but I was massively into their second album In It For The Money. My friend James in England (fellow Supergrass fan when we were at uni) saw them at the Roundhouse (and was standing next to James McCartney at the show) and had told me how good it was, that they also played a bunch of other classics as well as running through the album. So I was well looking forward to it. Then the night before leaving, I was talking to my wife and she said that, well you know Oasis are playing in Los Angeles this weekend, there are apparently still some tickets. Yeah, but I’m going to San Francisco to see Supergrass, I can’t do both. Why not, she says. We looked, there were still some good seats at the Rose Bowl on Sunday evening. Sure, but where would I stay at this short notice? Flights would cost so much, too days out. As it turned out, I had a Southwest credit from a cancelled trip to Vegas earlier that year (I had planned to fly down meet my friend in Vegas, who was participating in a big poker tournament, but he had to cancel due to illness). My wife was able to find a room at a nice hotel in Pasadena on points, and so I booked the ticker… this was going to be the big 90s Britpop weekend, Supergrass and Oasis, 19 year old me would be freaking out with excitement, and it only took me thirty years and a lot of mileage to finally see them. Sure I was still exhausted after the long summer trip but as they say, here we go.

I took the Amtrak down, sketching the view from the window. I planned to hang about in the city during the day before checking into my (cheap) hotel, and going to the show. I’d be getting up next morning to fly from SFO down to LAX, but as always I try to fit in as much extra sketching as I can, because there’s NEVER ENOUGH SKETCHING is there. I jumped onto the Muni, and headed out to the Inner Sunset area around Irving Street. I like it up there. I drew some of the colourful shops (and then didn’t even colour two of them in). Sketching in the bigger portrait format like this I tend to do larger drawings, and they tend to take a bit longer, and I tend to get bored drawing them. But I enjoyed standing out on this street watching everyone go by and drawing these buildings, I know I have sketched this row before (see how it looked in 2010 when that ‘Easy Breezy’ cafe was a placed called ‘Tutti Frutti’). This place must have a contract that when it becomes something new, it should still have a rhyming name.

I had some lunch in Crepevine on Irving Street, and sketched a couple of people chatting in my little brown book. I just liked the pinks and greens.

Later in the afternoon I went over to the Little Shamrock pub, opposite Golden Gate Park. I have sketched here before; they still have one of my drawings on the wall, which I did back in 2013. It is one of the oldest pubs in the city, established in 1893. I sat on one of the little benches outside and sketched in pencil, but regretted the pencil I was using and wish I’d drawn in pen. It’s this two-page portrait format, it seems like a good idea, then I get bored and impatient with it, the bigger size. Still it’s good to sit and observe. I was being observed by the people at the bar, who would occasionally come out to have a look.

When I was done, I came in for a pint. It’s cash only, I rarely carry cash any more. I do like the interior, there is a lot to draw and usually a good atmosphere, on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve never been in the evening. I sat and sketched this interesting little corner, and then turned and drew the bar area. I used my fountain pen this time. I think I was a little conscious of time, and unwilling to really dive into too many details. I still had to get back to Union Square and check into my hotel, eat something, then head to the Supergrass show.

So I did that. My hotel was the King George, and it was a bit crummy to be honest, the room was pretty grim. I was going to stay in the nice new hotel next to the Warfield, but figured I was not going to be there long enough to need anything nice. In hindsight I wish I had; the couple of blocks or so between the King George and the Warfield were, well very sketchy to say the least, classic Tenderloin. It did not feel very safe walking down there during daylight, and I’d have to come back this way after dark as well. A lot of very dodgy people hanging about, it’s not a great place to be by yourself. I got to the Warfield early; it’s a fantastic venue. I last went there in 2015 when we saw Noel Gallagher, and the acoustics were very impressive, like being inside a gramophone. A lot of famous bands have played here over the years. My seats were good. There were some Italians seated next to me; I was wearing my AS Roma shirt. The opening band were pretty good, I did do a quick pencil sketch of them singing about the A1 road in England (or maybe it was a song about European paper sizes, I don’t know). Then Supergrass came on, and I was 19 again. Well no, if I was 19 I’d have been pogo-ing about down in the crowd and not wearing glasses. They were really good, for being older (they weren’t very old when they first started so we’re about the same age; singer Gaz Coombes is a month younger than me, the drummer Danny Goffey shares my birthday but is two years older, the bassist Mick Quinn – not the former Coventry and Liverpool striker – was born in 1969 so he is ancient). We all look good for our ages I think. Supergrass had a lot of fans in San Francisco, mostly of a similar age to me. They played the whole of the I Should Coco album, including my favourite track from that, Sofa of My Lethargy, which I used to listen to over and over in my old bedroom in Burnt Oak. They stopped and started on a couple of tracks, maybe a bit out of practice, or maybe some of the album tracks are just well difficult to play live, they were really creative with their switching of time signatures and interesting chord sequences. This was live music though, man, and it felt pretty real, hearing these songs I only knew from my old CDs being played in real time. Watching the drummer put in a proper shift. It was great stuff. They played a few other classics, including Richard III, which I rocked out to in 1997, Late In The Day, and Sun Hits The Sky, which definitely had a different element to it as a live track. There were no fancy theatrics, just really good live music. They finished with Pumping On Your Stereo, which was never my favourite of their singles but had a fun video, and was a feelgood way to round off the show. Well enjoyed it.

I didn’t enjoy the walk back to the hotel. Market Street after dark was not somewhere to hang about, and there were plenty of spaced-out unpredictable people outside the venue. I took a slight detour away from Mason Street, which was dark and foreboding but was the quickest route to my hotel, and grabbed a chicken burger in Carl’s Jr a block away, though that was a fairly scary experience itself, like I was stuck in a scene from Blade Runner. When I finally got my greasy tasteless food, I left the grotty fast food place and headed towards the hotel. There’s an Irish pub on the way that I remember going to once (with my Mum, when we stayed down here years ago; she actually loved the Tenderloin), Johnny Foley’s, so I popped in to have a post-show beer and sketch. There was a band playing old 60’s numbers, they were really good. I sat at the bar and sketched it, while tourists from China came in and drank pints of Guinness next to me. It was then time to to go to bed, because I had a long day ahead of me on Sunday – Oasis in Pasadena.

back again, late summer

April 3, 2026Leave a comment

When I’m so far behind with posting it feels like I’m telling stories about a time I don’t remember any more. End of summer 2025 seems like such a long time ago, the world just keeps getting further into horrible history. Up is down and right is wrong and who knows where it ends. Still, I go into my sketchbook to try to understand if not the universe or the world, then just the place that is right in front of me. I was pretty tired after that long trip, and eager to get back to routine. September is still very hot in Davis, so I sat in the shade on a bench outside the Varsity Theatre and drew that. I hadn’t come back from my big sketching trip with some sort of new insight into sketching, so this is just the usual say-what-you-see, I have to draw something type of of sketch. Work is still quiet in early September, it’s the tail end of Summer, and Davis isn’t that busy again yet. I did see an interesting car on D Street painted in DHL logos, so I started to draw that, but ended up taking a photo and doing the rest later, as the owner came and drove off. It looked like a large toy car. It reminded me of the story told by Eddie Jordan, the late great Eddie Jordan (he died just last year), former Formula 1 team boss, whose team Jordan Grand Prix used to race in a distinctive yellow livery. In 2002 DHL started sponsoring them, and in those days DHL’s colours were white and red, but Jordan raced in yellow, due to a contract with a previous sponsor, and they didn’t want to change their colours. So DHL instead changed their branding colours to match Jordan, and the famed yellow and red DHL branding you see today is apparently a result of that.

leaving london again

April 2, 20261 Comment

Here are the last few from my trip to Europe last summer, starting with the sketch drawn on the flight home. It’s like if I don’t sketch on the flight now I can’t tell if I flew or not. It does relax me on the flight though, helps pass the time rather than watch some silly movie, which I do anyway. This particular flight took off late, which is always fun as I love airports so much. This was the last page of that Moleskine sketchbook I really didn’t like much; you can see a few paint swatches from the Aquarius Watercolours that I got at the Symposium, plus a few others I was trying out there. I was definitely ready to go home by this point though, real life was calling, and as much as I love London it was starting to get on my nerves. I had a 5k race to run the next morning in Davis too (the Labor Day Run; I did pretty well too), and it was super nice to be back in Davis, back to routine, back to my own bed. There were a couple of sketches from my last Saturday morning in London though, as I decided to jump on the tube and head down to Oxford Circus for some very last minute shopping. I went to Liberty’s, they had their Christmas stuff up already (it was August!), and then found the Oasis ‘Live 25’ pop-up shop and bought some merch, and a nice black Adidas long sleeve shirt. I then sketched the church with the very pointy steeple just past the top of Regent Street, All Soul’s Langham Place. I remember years ago, when I was an open-top-bus tour-guide, we’d go past this and I’d say it was the sharpest pointiest church in London. It was designed by John Nash, who built Regent Street and also a lot of the buildings around here that date from the Regency period. You could say he suffered from Regency Bias. (Damn, I wish I had said that on my tour).

Then I walked down Mortimer Street, and started a sketch of the buildings below, which caught my eye. I started drawing the windows, and outlines, but then decided it would have to be finished later as I needed to get the tube back to Burnt Oak, as I was going up to Watford with my mum. So I walked down towards Goodge Street; as I was about to cross Charlotte street, one of those guys on a delivery e-bike zipped in front of me, Deliveroo, having jumped the red light. I said instinctively “he just went through a red light,” and went on with crossing the road. But the bike man stopped, and yelled back at me, “yeah does it bother you?” I was a bit shocked but he kept yelling that at me. I responded yes it bothers me, you went through a light as I was crossing the road. Anyway I kept walking down Goodge Street. Next thing I know, he is right behind me, on the pavement on his bike, saying “I’m following you on the pavement now too does that bother you?” He was pretty aggressive, and started to threaten me and ride in front of me. After telling him to leave me alone he kept on, to the point where I realized he wants an argument here and probably more, so I just decided to ignore him completely, and walked around the back of his bike and across the street. I could hear him still when I turned into Goodge Street. I was a bit shaken about it, but not much, maybe I should have reported it to the delivery company but what’s the point in that. There had been so many times going around central London where those bloody e-bike delivery guys have cut in front of me as I’m crossing the road, it’s dangerous, and there are some not very nice people with tendencies towards aggressive behaviour out there. I got on the tube and back up to Burnt Oak.

After a month away, I was ready to get back home, and I was so done with London for now. I love London and won’t have people knocking it, but it can be exhausting and I’m often glad I don’t live and work there any more. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of those e-bike delivery drivers, add that to the list, but you get them everywhere now. While it was sad to leave my London family, it was nice to get back home to my California family, and do that 5k run while still jetlagged (easy peasy). Anyway a week later I would be off again to San Francisco to see Supergrass play, and then, though I did not know this at the time, flying off to Los Angeles to see Oasis. I’ll save all that for another post…

Some Time in Soho

March 27, 2026March 27, 2026Leave a comment

Back in London from Berlin, I rested for a day before heading down into central London on Friday for some more sketching before heading back to California. I had a standing ‘groundling’ ticket to see Twelfth Night at the Globe Theatre, but since it looked like rain and I was not up for a trek to the South Bank, I decided to go down to Soho and sketch around there before meeting up with my friend Roshan. If I’m going to stand for a few hours I may as well be sketching. I like exploring Soho. I made my way to St.Anne’s Churchyard on Wardour Street. I always liked the steeple of St. Anne’s. Many years ago when my mate Rob lived in Soho at the end of the 90s we could see the steeple from his living room window. It reminded me of a Teletubby. They have those big round ear things, if you remember, I didn’t really watch Teletubbies. I stood in the Churchyard and sketched the colourful bunting, love a bit of bunting, especially love the word ‘bunting’, it’s so ‘England’. Takes time to draw though. While sketching, two women (Romanian I think, I recognized some words) came in and sat in the churchyard dragging oversized suitcases with them. One of them was very noisy, yelling at the other in a loud raspy voice. It was a bit distracting, but you don’t really expect silence in Soho. I stood next to a tree, and soon an old man came up and started throwing bird seed on the ground, right in front of me. I didn’t think I thought I was a bird, but right away several dozen pigeons came out of the trees and surrounded me. This would make a good magic trick in a story, I thought, the old man throws birdseed, you are surrounded by pigeons and then VOOM you are gone, transported to a pigeon dimension. Actually that would be quite a bad story, the sort of one that would have been made in the 1970s and replayed right up to the 90s in the 5:10pm slot on BBC1 kids TV. I’d still watch it. At least no pigeons pooed on me. I was going to say ‘SHOO’ but remembered that this is an anagram of ‘SOHO’ and I thought, better not, magical anagrams and all that. It didn’t rain, a few droplets, so I drew the steeple as well. It doesn’t really look like a Teletubby, now I think about it. I looked up their website; St. Anne’s was built by William Talman, who was ‘clerk or works’ to Sir Christopher Wren, and consecrated in 1686. Then the Blitz came and destroyed it in 1940. It was rebuilt in 1990. I didn’t go inside, but being outside under the bunting was enough, like being in a village churchyard.

I remember coming down there as a teenager in the early 90s wandering about exploring London, when I would occasionally sketch but mostly just explore the city, make a map of it all in my head. This corner of Soho was a bit like stepping into a different, dangerous world, a Dickensian London but set in the 70s, all sex shops and seedy cinemas and prostitutes openly hanging about on a Saturday lunchtime. The corner below, leading into that little alley of Walkers Court just off Brewer Street, was one of the seediest spots, I remember being shocked at all the neon lights and dark doorways leading to god-knows-what, it was a world that I wasn’t part of and definitely didn’t want to be. Rupert Street facing it had market stalls and newsagents alongside shops selling bondage gear and ladies of negotiable affection calling out to passers-by, and passing down the narrow Tisbury Court back up to the relative normality of Old Compton felt like a brief passage through a frightening dimension. I found it fascinating that this was a real place in the middle of the city, and yet also just another neighbourhood where people lived their normal lives. I remember at school, we were tasked with doing a project about ‘community’, and I struggled for ideas, but I remember walking through this area (I think it was with my uncle who was going to a cool movie poster store down the street) and realizing there was a community living in Soho, even here in this bizarre world of neon lights flashing ‘girls! girls! girls!’ and shifty men in doorways. Soho is a blend of communities but it is and always has been a residential area, a village in the middle of the city. London has a lot of those. A few years later when I was at university and my mate Rob lived on the corner of Rupert Street and Winnett Street with his girlfriend, it was still an area of sex shops but already seemed less scary, and we would pass through Walkers Court on the way to the supermarket to buy milk and tea, not paying any mind to the red light district we were passing by. I remember that we stayed up and watched the whole Star Wars trilogy (back when there was only one trilogy), while from his kitchen window you could catch a glimpse into other windows, where there were other fantasies going on, some in full view (did these windows not have curtains?). These days, this part of Soho feels quite different. There are a few sex shops and the big green Soho’s Book Store on the corner of Walkers Court feels less like a seedy emporium and more like a cheeky part of Soho’s adult-themed heritage, but this mostly this area feels like it has gone upmarket now with fashion stores and such. Raymond Revuebar, the big theatre and strip club that I felt was the centre point of Soho, opened by Paul Raymond in 1958 but finally closed in 2004, having stood lighting up this corner for decades. I vaguely recall going to a gig there in about 99 or 2000, or maybe that was at Madame JoJo’s next door. When my friend lived around there he actually met Paul Raymond, and said he really was the King of Soho. There’s a fashionable clothes shop there now. I stood on the corner of Rupert Street to sketch this, thinking about all of this past, and how everything moves on.

Below, the spread of Wardour Street, just a few steps away from the last sketch. I feel like I spent a lot of the 90s down this street too, a busy but relatively narrow thoroughfare splitting Soho in two. I stood in a precarious location to draw this, a traffic island that has been converted as a parking spot for those electric bikes you see all over the place, with a narrow bike lane to my right. As I took a quick picture of the scene before starting to sketch, a policeman came up and said, “ello ello ello, what’s going on ‘ere then, you gotta be careful sah, there is ‘orrible tea-leaves on bikes who will nick your dog-and-bone, sunshine”. Actually he didn’t say it like that, my head was still in old 1970s films. He just said to eb careful taking pictures with my phone as there are people on bikes who will snatch it from my hands very quickly. I knew this is a particular plague of London these days and have been quite careful with this, though especially here you can’t be too careful, and I actually smiled and felt genuinely grateful that there are police out there watching for this and warning people. Though what I said was, “oh it’s ok, this is my old phone”. which it was – I used my old phone when out and about in London, just in case – but I was grateful and thanked him. Still, I held tight onto my sketchbook as I drew the scene, out of the way of the e-bike bandits. Wardour Street was always one of my favourite streets, and it contains The Ship, one of my favourite pubs in London. It used to contain The Intrepid Fox as well, the best rock pub in the city, where I sometimes would meet up with my friends from the Hellfire Club (on Oxford Street) and attempt to listen to figure out what each other was saying over the loud heavy metal music. It was sad when that place closed (it actually moved to New Oxford Street before closing for good). For a little while in ’96 I went out with someone from Italy, and she used to work in an arcade further down Wardour Street near Leicester Square, before she switched jobs to work in Las Vegas, not the city but the arcade on the left of this sketch, which still has the same sign as it had 30 years ago, a Soho relic. Cinema House is next door; this area is at the heart of the British film industry too, or at least it was (Cinema House has a fashionable clothes store now, because there aren’t too many of those). What was the Intrepid Fox next door is now a steak house, but you can still see the old stone sign of The Intrepid Fox on the outside corner. The sky was looking nice, above Oxford Street in the far distance. You can just about make out the Telecom Tower poking through on the right (follow the arrow). For some reason I remember being about 19 or 20, walking down here on a late afternoon having been to the Virgin Megastore, where I’d bought myself the Beatles Complete (Guitar/Vocal Edition), a massive book with all the Beatles songs in it (which I still have), and treating myself to a pastry and some tea at a nice cafe as a self-reward for finishing up all of my college projects and homework, and that being quite a nice moment down here. It often feels a little too busy or a little too cramped to stop and sketch on the corners around here, but I’m glad I spent the time looking at it again. Soho is always worth sketching. I’ve been back to London since this trip last summer, and I was in Soho sketching again just last month. By this rate I post my sketches on this blog, those will probably be up by about 2028. Click on the image to see it bigger.