you terrestrial gastropod molluscs and your guns

August 21, 2015August 21, 20151 Comment

This is another of my son’s toys. It is called a Slug-Terra Blaster, or something like that. It is what they use in the TV show “Slug-Terra”, which he really likes. It’s actually not a bad cartoon, but the premise of it is that they are in some sort of underground world where slugs are not only intrinsic to the society somehow but are used as weapons. Well, they fight on behalf of their owners, a bit like Pokemon I suppose, I don’t know. All the slugs have different abilities, some get really close to their owners, and then they get blasted out of these things, and then it’s all zap, pow and ka-blam. Oh there are evil slugs too. Now these slugs are all different colours and have names, but this isn’t a society of slugs, the people are all either humans (I think), trolls (maybe), or weird mole-folk (I really have no idea). One of those has a comedy Mediterranean accent. Or are the evil slugs zombies? Or wraiths? I don’t actually pay much attention. So you can imagine my son’s excitement when we spotted these at Toys R Us (I always wonder how that store got its name, did they got through a lot of other stupid combinations before settling on that one, “Toys Am We” “Us Is Toys”, “Toys Er America”, “Help”) (I used to call it “Toys Ya Us” because that backwards R looks like a Russian “Ya” (я). This was during the Cold War as well so I’m surprised people didn’t think it was some sort of Russian spy agency, I mean it all fits in the name…Cold War conspiracy theory at slightly higher prices than other stores, I like it!). So, this doesn’t works like a toy gun with a trigger (we’re not really into the toy gun thing, all the Nerf rubbish. Fingers and saying “pew! pew! pew! is fine though). Instead, it has a spring mechanism inside, you pull back the handle, let go and the little slug comes out. He has another blue one which looks cooler than this but I didn’t draw it, so you’ll have to imagine how cool it is (or watch the show! If you watch the show maybe you can help explain it to me).

where the streets have a slightly different name

August 19, 2015August 19, 20159 Comments

This is the midtown Sacramento pub called ‘Streets’. Click on the image to see it in closer detail. This pub was formerly known as the ‘Streets of London’, but they decided to drop the ‘of London’ part presumably in an effort to appear more inclusive to the other metropolitan centers of the UK and indeed the more rural counties. They could have gone further and called it ‘Lanes’ or ‘Highways and Byways’. They have an actual National Express Coach-stop sign outside the pub, and still have a number of British-themed (specifically London-themed) objects in the pub, but not as much as they used to. When I first came here back in 2006 or whenever it was, they had football shirts and scarves hanging from the ceiling. Those are sadly long gone (and you know how much I love football shirts). Otherwise though the pub really hasn’t changed a lot. One TV ahead of me was showing the Giants baseball, another was showing French football (which these days just means ‘PSG and someone else’, you know how much I don’t like seeing PSG). It’s been a long time since I was in here last, but I have wanted to do a panorama sketch of its brick walls and cozy layout for ages. I hadn’t planned on it; we spent the morning in Arden Fair mall, mostly at the Lego store (and you know how much we love Lego). I then took the opportunity to go to midtown Sacramento, to look at all the goodies in the University Art store on J Street. I picked up a ‘Cathedrals of the World’ colouring-in book (and you know how much I love drawings of the Cathedrals of the World). I then wandered about looking for something new to sketch, but by now it was hot, very hot. Very very hot. I considered sketching the historic Governor’s Mansion (which I last drew in, um, 2007) but could not find the right angle, what with all the big trees in the way (stupid trees, providing shade from the oppressively hot sun and the air we breathe). Maybe I will come back in winter.

By this point, the searing heat was giving me a headache, and I had to cool off urgently. So I went back over to Big Brother Comics on J Street, bought the latest issue of ‘Thors’ (one of the very fun and inventive books from Marvel’s ongoing ‘Secret Wars’ event; the ‘Thors’ are like the cops of Battleworld, and this plays like a classic cop drama, but, you know, with more hammers and lightning), and popped into the Streets of London pub to cool off and read. Sorry, ‘Streets’. No more humming Ralph McTell. After finishing ‘Thors’, I thought, ah what the hell (sorry, what the ‘hel’, Thor joke) and started to sketch a panorama. I sketched quickly and drank my two beers slowly (one after the other, not slowly at the same time). It wasn’t particularly busy, but the staff were friendly and the atmosphere nice. At one point a large party of Sunday pubcrawlers came in, had a pint, and left. I remember this being a thing the last few times I have been at this pub. There are a bevvy of boozers in midtown now, and I imagine an afternoon pub-crawl with all your friends on a hot Sunday in mid-August would be quite a lot of fun, but you don’t get to spend long enough in any place to enjoy it before the fastest drinker in your crowd claps his hand loudly and orders you to move on (that’s what happened here). They do have these pedal-powered contraptions now that groups of people ride on, all pedaling, drinking water, being directed from pub to pub, while yelling ‘wooh’ and ‘yeah’. The pub returned to quiet Sunday afternoon peace very quickly, but I had to get the bus home to Davis. I finished off adding all the paint the next day. Another pub sketch checked off the list!

building the pitzer, part three

August 16, 2015Leave a comment

Continuing my series of sketches showing the Ann E Pitzer Center going up on the site of the old Boiler Building. Two different angles a week apart, you can see that the front frames have gone up now, rising like a musical crescendo (is that the word? I don’t do musical terms). Exciting work this summer…

enter the bladecopter

August 14, 2015August 14, 20152 Comments

More Lego, drawn in the book of my son’s stuff. This is the Ninjago Blade-Copter (the what, i hear you ask?), a recent addition from the season before the most recent season of Ninjago. You have to live in this world. So, in season 4 of Ninjago, the ninjas travel to an island to take part in a martial arts tournament organized by the mysterious Chen (who normally runs a noodle shop), where the other participants are all masters of their own various elements (such as the element of ‘sound’). The tournament however turns out to be a cover for a more nefarious scheme (stealing the elemental powers of each ninja). It’s a solid season with lots of characters and makes a lot of fun references. As I drew this last night, ironically, probably the biggest influence of all came on the TV: Bruce Lee’s classic Enter the Dragon. I am a big fan of this movie, and can probably quote all the words if I have to. And do the facial expressions of the hapless guards. If you ever see, I will prove it. Just don’t ask me to do any of the kung fu moves, I’m a tad out of shape. In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee fights in a tournament on an island organized by the mysterious ‘Han’, but the tournament turns out to be a cover for a more nefarious scheme (recruiting fighters to his drug and crime empire). There are a few more parallels (one of the Lego sets is called ‘Enter the Serpent’; the scene where Chen punishes everyone because certain people have been sneaking around the palace at night; the scene where Chen tries recruiting Jay while showing him his collection of weaponry from the past, just like when Han tries recruiting Mr Roper), and in a previous season the ninjas learn the style of ‘fighting without fighting’, a direct reference to Bruce Lee’s chat with the bully Parsons on the boat. Look, you have to live in this world, ok. Master Chen is a pretty silly and whimsical villain though, but Mr Han is a classic supervillain of the highest order. He has a classic supervillain face; he lives in a palace surrounded by utterly useless guards; he is missing a hand (he keeps the skeletal remains in a glass case) but has a series of dangerous attachments such as the one with four-knives (for added “snikt”). Truly, as Mr Williams says, he comes right out of a comic book.

I drew this using a black Pentel pen, which I swear didn’t used to run much with a wash, but actually runs all over the place. Back to Microns for black lines I think. I use the non-running brown uni-ball signo um-151 pen mostly these days (the black variety runs bad). It’s on the Stillman and Birn Alpha paper.

the egg of good luck

August 13, 20157 Comments

Another Egghead, this one is called “Bookhead”, by Robert Arneson (1991). It is located outside the Shields Library at UC Davis. There is a legend that students touch it for good luck. Really. I think that is one of those things that people just say, and then people do because people just say, “it’s a tradition”. It’s one of those things that people say because there are no other interesting stories to tell about it. Yes, I know this old trope, I used to be a tour guide too. “Legend has it the lions in Trafalgar Square will get up and dance if Big Ben strikes thirteen,” that sort of thing. Nonsense with no evidence at all. Or “Charles Dickens used to drink here, even the plaque outside says so,” when he may have popped in for a pint on his way to his next bar; he drank in pretty much every pub in London, it’s amazing he wrote any books at all. Ok, so here’s what I would like someone at UC Davis to do. Have someone stand next to this Egghead and every time someone touches it for luck, have them give their name, and then have them come back with their mid-term results or final term grades, perhaps include their grades prior to touching the Egghead for a comparison, and then do some sort of statistical analysis to see whether touching the Egghead gave them any particular advantage over those who did not, or if it signaled a shift in their general academic progress, and maybe have them indicate if they had won any competitions or survived an accident, or if they had bad luck, like, well the opposite of those things. Then perhaps we will know the truth. In the meantime I am willing to hazard a guess that it does not give any magical gift of luck, and I might even have a sign posted next to it warning people that touching it will not give any guarantee of an upturn in your fortunes, and that UC Davis is not held responsible should your luck be not quite as good as you expected. In fact, just move the whole thing completely, put it somewhere else, on the roof maybe , somewhere nobody will be able to touch it. Then there could be a story behind it, “too many students were using ‘Luck’ to affect their grades that the UC Regents voted to have it moved to ensure academic integrity”.

Or perhaps tour guides could just not mention this obviously misleading legend at all, let it die a death, and perhaps use this opportunity to tell perhaps the most appropriate joke there is to tell when faced with a big egg in a book. What did the chicken say in the library? “Book-book-book-book…”

No? Alright, keep telling the silly ‘good luck’ story. Doesn’t make it true.

i just want your extra time and your kits

August 12, 20154 Comments

Part two of my guide to the 2015-16 Premier League football kits. This is the middle section, the seven teams too good for relegation but not quite good enough to get into the Europa League, much to their relief. The exception was West Ham, who got into the Europa League as an ‘award’ for their Fair Play record, and they responded to this indignity by getting promptly knocked out last week by Astra Giurgiu, with a red card in the first leg and their angry manager Bilic getting sent to the stands. They won’t be giving us the Fair Play Award this year, they said, we’re not going to be tricked into the Europa League again. Astra Giurgiu indeed. But we are not here to talk obscure Romanian teams, we are here to talk about obscure English teams and, more specifically, their kits.

Alright, they’re not that obscure, but I live in America now and most teams are obscure who aren’t Barcelona or Manchester. Yes, I said ‘Manchester’. And so, here comes part two…

PREMIER LEAGUE KITS: PART TWO, THE ‘HAPPY-TO-BE-HERE SEVEN’

SWANSEA CITY

The Welsh club in white have been great since joining the Premier League a few years ago, playing nice football with the right attitude, and long may they stay up. They’ve worn adidas for a few years now, and in Real-Madrid-fashion have played with their trim colour a little bit. They have discarded the usual black trim this year for ‘copper’, which is a reference I presume to Swansea’s heritage in the copper industry and nothing to do with the police. The away kit, like Southampton’s, is a venture into garish green and dark blue. The template used is nice though, but the colours probably look better at a rave.

STOKE CITY

Stoke, like Liverpool, have switched to New Balance following the decision of Warrior Sports to stop making completely bonkers football kits and go back to Lacrosse or whatever they were doing before. I actually really liked Stoke’s Warrior shirt from last year though. The New Balance shirt is alright, run of the mill, while the away kit experiments with breaking its sash into pieces. Black and green. Green is back this year in a big way isn’t it? As for the team, they were pretty good last year under Mark Hughes, and I reckon they are going to press onwards and upwards. Stanley Matthews still plays for them, doesn’t he?

CRYSTAL PALACE

A couple of years ago I couldn’t wait for Palace to get back into the Premier League after so long away, another London club, one that I like, and a nice easy six points for Spurs, I thought. then they got Alan Pardew away from his Newcastle hell and they have been amazing, a team I don’t want us to play because we might well lose. Palace are a very decent team and I hope they can keep it up. Their kit this year, made by Macron (who make smart shirts), are of the classic variety, with the away kit being a nod to their old predominantly white shirts of the past. And they are sponsored by Mansion, too, who used to sponsor Tottenham. Looks better on a Palace shirt, and they are both references to types of big houses.

EVERTON

Everton and Umbro just makes sense to me. Last season their kit was the best in the division, and this season it is another tidy affair, with a collar reminiscent of the 1980s glory period. The shorts have an odd feature, a blue section at the top that makes it look as though a shirt is not tucked in. Other kits seem to have more going on at the top of the shorts or the bottom of the shirt this year, extra bands or unnecessary features. The away kit is nice, with grey bands on the arms. Classy Umbro as usual. Both kits were released by showing a picture of a baby dressed in the kit. O-kay. The third kit is a strange colour, another odd green, albeit more of an army green. The orange along with it reminds me of a bomber jacket. It was launched with a comic-style illustration, but it isn’t clear why. As for the team, well they aren’t going to do much this year, and will probably get worse. They’ll become Martinez’s Wigan, and will flirt with relegation all season before bravely, triumphantly just staying up, because Everton Don’t Go Down.

WEST HAM UNITED

This is West Ham’s last year at Upton Park (the Boleyn Ground, that is). Next year they will be Olympic Stadium residents (cheers, the taxpayer!). To commemorate their historic time at an entirely appropriate stadium before moving into an entirely inappropriate arena, the Hammers have turned to classic shirt manufacturer Umbro to recreate a generic classic shirt from their past (it seems like West Ham do this every single season). There’s no kit exactly like that one though so we’ll just say it’s generic ‘the past’. Similarly their away kit brings to mind one of their original kits worn either when they moved to Boleyn Ground or just before, but with tiny little diagonal pinstripes that weren’t there at the turn of the century. Ok, so West Ham have Slaven Bilic in charge, and on the field will want to round off their time at their home ground with a classic year, so expect them to come, I don’t know, tenth. They beat Arsenal on day one, but see above regarding the Europa League…

WEST BROMWICH ALBION

Last year Adidas decided West Brom didn’t need stripes any more (except those tiny pinstripes), and what followed were years of civil war, rebellion, strife, leaving thousands of lives ruined for ever. Actually that didn’t happen, one year later stripes were back (because there is no ‘forever’ in football shirts, except that West Ham will recreate ‘old’ shirts forever). West Brom have their classic stripes on front and back (wow, Adidas, you don’t do that any more), with a dark red trim which is a nod to their dark red away kit (which, by the way, has the classic “WBA” instead of a badge, just like, you guessed it, the Olden Days). West Brom (or WBA as I called them in the Olden Days) were good in the 80s, I always appreciated the tone of their blue stripes, and as a club are slightly eccentric, nicknamed the Baggies, with fans who do this weird ‘boing boing’ chant (at least they used to, when they could jump up and down in the terraces). I always assumed it was referring to their habit of bouncing up and down between the deivisions, which I’m afraid they will probably be doing again.

LEICESTER CITY

Leicester sacked Nigel Pearson, the hard man with a haircut like the eraser on a pencil, and brought in Claudio Ranieri, a familiar face in English football (the Italian “tinker-man” who was shuffled out of Chelsea in favour of Jose when the Russian money came pouring in). Leicester were relegation favourites for most of last year (despite having a very nice home kit) but pulled it out of the bag to finish mid-table (due to their very stylish home kit). This season’s kit is alright, a little gold v-neck added to the front of the collar, and shadow stripes in the blue. Blue shorts again after the more traditional white, but otherwise nice and safe. WHAT HAPPENED, FOOTBALL? WHERE ARE THE LOUD GARISH FUSSY KITS OF THE 90s? Leicester to be fair have never had loud garish kits. West Brom and their traditional stripes will do well to remember their kit from 92-94 which looked like a hand-drawn barcode. Leicester’s zaniest home outfit of recent times was probably the one worn by Lineker in the early 80s, because it had pinstripes, that’s it. How will Leicester do this year? Well, they’ll either stay up (happy Lineker face) or they will go down (sad Lineker face).

Join me next time for the bottom of the barrel, the three teams of narrowly avoided the drop and the three teams who have been promoted.

going back to cally

August 11, 2015August 10, 20159 Comments

This is Caledonian Road in north London, more commonly known as The Cally. It’s been called the Cally for ever, but they felt it necessary to write it in big bold letters on the railway bridge in case people forgot. The Cally is not the area of London where I am from (I grew up in Burnt Oak), but is very much my Dad’s manor. He grew up around here, living up the near the Nag’s Head in Holloway. When I was a kid my dad would occasionally drive me over here when he had to visit his mates or my uncles, who still live locally. I remember him driving his Citroen full speed around narrow streets, shouting the ‘occasional’ swear word, his tools rattling around the back of the car. I was always scared of this area to be honest, it seemed a lot more dangerous than my neighbourhood (and I’m from Burnt Oak!), so even as an adult I never came down the Cally, except passing through on the bus from Crouch End, where I lived before moving to California. My dad moved from here in the 70s, and I knew several other friends in Burnt Oak whose mums or dads had ’emigrated’ from Holloway. This is still a pretty rough area, despite the trend of Islington gentrification. A couple of months ago though I had to come here for a meeting with a publisher (news very soon!), and so I just had to sketch the place. Actually, I think this would be a very interesting place for a sketchcrawl.

This is HM Prison Pentonville, the ‘big house’ which casts an imposing presence over Caledonian Road. Pentonville was opened in 1842 and has had many famous residents, such as Éamon de Valera, Dr. Crippen, John Christie (and Timothy Evans who was wrongly hanged for Christie’s crimes), Oscar Wilde, and George Michael. I sketched it from a cafe across the road called, appropriately, the Breakout. Condemned inmates were executed here at Pentonville until 1961. Prisons are horrible places.

From the Jail house to the Free House…this is actually at the back of the Breakout Cafe, which looks like it was built in the space of a closed-down pub. This is part of the old pub signage around the corner from the Cally on Blundell Street. My dad actually went to school on this street, though the school is long gone. I wanted to colour this in, but left it as it is.

Now this last one, my pedigree chum, is not on Caledonian Road or even anywhere near it but I’m including it anyway, because it was my last sketch of the day (and of my trip to London, unexpectedly). I got a bus that went all the way down the Cally to King’s Cross, because I still had some of the afternoon left to kill (actually to sketch, just sketching, no killing goin’ ‘ere guv). I was going to meet my mate down in Farringdon for a beer before we were meeting another mate later for another beer. It was an ‘ot summer’s day in London. Rather than get the bus the whole way I stopped in King’s Cross, thinking, oh I’ll just draw St. Pancras, no biggie. Piece of piss. There was definitely a lot of that about. After ignoring a very drunk woman shouting “Oi! Chris Evans!” at me I picked a spot opposite the magnificent St. Pancras International Station and decided actually, no, this is too big and too complicated, and life is too short to stand around King’s Cross drawing the same window over and over again until your hand hurts. Sorry St. Pancras, some other time perhaps. I wandered in a vague southwards direction (the back streets of this part of town are a little uncharted to me), and sketched this pub, the Queen’s Head, on the way. As you can see, I miscalculated the length of the sign when writing the pub’s name in there and so the word ‘Head’ is squashed up, and this is something I pretty much never do. At the end of a trip full of complicated and pretty well-thought-out sketches, I took this as a sign to say, yeah let’s call it a day, and go and have a beer. Until next time, London, until next time!

people fly by in the traffic’s boom

August 9, 20157 Comments

Market Street, San Francisco. Click on the image to embiggen it.

A couple of weekends ago it was the Worldwide Sketchcrawl Day. While many of the world’s urban sketchers were busy in Singapore at the 6th Urban Sketching Symposium, I was in San Francisco, though I didn’t manage to meet the other SF sketchers this time. I arrived in the city a little late, my train (which was packed with Barcelona and Manchester United fans, evidently they were playing a friendly that day in Santa Clara) taking longer than usual. While the sketchcrawl was starting up at Duboce Park I wanted to have a look around Market Street first. This section of it is a little sketchy, but there’s stuff to sketch. A few months ago I came here to see Noel Gallagher play at the Warfield (an epic gig, like being sat inside a massive gramophone, and Noel was excellent), and I remembered that I want to sketch the Golden Gate Theatre at some point. So I stood on the corner and sketched a panorama, fully intending to add colour at some point (until I got struck down with “can’t-be-bothered-itis”). While I sketched, some Christian group across the street started bursting into songs of praise. Not because I was sketching, of course. After a while, a homeless man with a dog decided to stand not far away from me and take that as the appropriate opportunity to perform an inspection of the content of his underpants, which I daresay needed inspection by a licensed professional, but perhaps not so openly on the corner of Market Street. Again, I don’t think it was because I was sketching. Oh, the characters around here. When I was done with this sketch I had lunch at the food court of the Westfield shopping center, and took the Muni Metro up to Duboce Square. I didn’t meet a single other sketcher, but I did do a fair bit more sketching.

Duboce Park is quite nice. It has a very Local Neighbourhood feel about it, though this being San Francisco I’m sure you have to be doing pretty well to join the local neighbourhood these days. I’ve never really been here before, except for when travelling through on the Muni, or that time last March when I wandered about nearby with a couple of friends from England on the way from Castro to the Haight. The park is filled with dog walkers, families, young people laying on the grass reading books. By the way, note that I deliberately said ‘reading books’, and not ‘looking at their electronic devices’. ‘Reading books’ probably makes you think “yes, reading books, as it should be, not on their iPad looking at Facetwit or Spacechat or whatever the youths are into these days, ignoring the amazing views.” You may well be thinking this while reading this on your iPad. Well I’ve said ‘reading books’ to give you the impression that they were all probably cultured individuals, but for all I can remember they were on their iPads, and for all I know they were reading e-books. They may have been reading Kafka or Kundera for all we know, but the world sees ‘electronic device’ and thinks ‘shopping for shoes’ or ‘reading clickbait on Facebook’. Whereas they could be reading a tattered paper book, lying on the grass with their legs lazily crossed in the air,exploring a world of wonder and imagination, and that book might be ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ or a footballer’s autobiography* or anything by Dan Brown. So the moral is ‘don’t judge an electronic device by its cover’, but feel free to judge a book-reader by the trash you can see them reading. So anyway, I was sketching the park, there was a kids birthday party going on nearby (with a pinata), in the dog park part of it dogs were running around and barking and texting, or whatever it is dogs do, and construction vehicles lined the street beside the Muni lines. I sketched the second one from the steps of the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts. I enjoyed sketching here.

My final sketch of the day (not counting the one I abandoned due to getting tired) was another big panorama, this time in nearby Lower Haight Street. This is a very colourful neighbourhood, edgier, more ‘hipster’ than ‘hippy’, and there was some sort of small daytime dance party (or maybe it was a record store with DJs and cool people) a few steps away. I overheard two guys talking, there was talk of this party and that band, all many levels of cool above my coolscale (or below it, depending on your point of view). I was aching standing here, and the wind was picking up (sky was blue for periods, but a lot of clouds and fog rolled in and it got very chilly. A welcome change from the Davis heat I was escaping, but I needed to sit down and relax for a bit, so I walked down to the Toronado pub nearby and got a beer. Sitting down proved much harder, as it was pretty crowded. I had one beer and went home, the end of another busy sketching day in the city.

eye on mrak

August 8, 20157 Comments

I haven’t sketched this thing in ages, but I actually sketched it for the first time almost ten years ago. This is “Eye on Mrak”, one of Robert Arneson’s well-known Eggheads, sculptures that live on the UC Davis campus. Friday lunchtime I decided I needed to sketch it again. This made me hungry for boiled egg.

Here are my previous versions: 2009, 2007 and 2005. 2005! When I sketched the actual ‘eye’ part. That was before I even worked at UC Davis, I had no idea what Mrak Hall was.

new kits on the block

August 8, 2015August 11, 2015Leave a comment

After a summer of boring friendlies, fun Fifa arrests and a pretty exciting Women’s World Cup, the Premier League is finally back this weekend and the football machine cranks into full gear. My team, Tottenham Hotspur, the Mighty Spurs (so called because we Might Be Good This Year, but we Might Not), play the Van Gaal led Manchester United in what is another dawn raid, as the kick-off is at 4:45am my time. That’s too early for me, but at least I can go back to bed afterwards. Anyway, you may recall from the 2014 World Cup I am a little obsessed with football kits (soccer uniforms, as some of you call them, “lol”). I made, if you remember, a definitive guide to all the kits of the World Cup with little illustrations in the old version of MS Paint. It was in three parts, which I’m calling Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. I really liked doing that, and so I am revisiting the idea with a run-down of the Premier League kits for 2015-16, along with a few bonus Johnny Foreigner kits too. I really want that Sampdoria kit.

I wasn’t sure how to organize them at first. ‘Alphabetical’ seemed too boring, Chronological as to when the kits were released was pointless, and while ‘autobiographical’ seemed like the most ‘no f***ing way’ choice it was ultimately impossible, so I went for ‘placement in last year’s Premier League’. Without much further ado, we will start with the 2015 champions.

PREMIER LEAGUE KITS: PART ONE, THE ‘MAGNIFICENT SEVEN’

CHELSEA

Jose Mourinho’s team won the league quite comfortably in the end last year. That pleased Jose. Will they win it again this year? Probably. The new kit is slightly different this year, with a button up collar, and a very thin red and white trim. I like Chelsea having the red trim. I don’t like Chelsea though. They have a new sponsor this year, Yokohama Tyres, whose spelling will confuse and hopefully alienate the American market. The away kit is nice, a pretty simple style, all white except the blue socks. I’ve always loved that Chelsea have white socks in their first kit, it’s almost obstinate, like Jose went back in time and made white socks a Chelsea tradition just to annoy Arsene Wenger and make Arsenal change their socks when they visit Stamford Bridge. More Mourinho mind games.

MANCHESTER CITY

Manchester City. They should be the epitome of the whole billionaire oil barons buying football thing that I hate…but I can’t hate City. For too many years they had it so, so bad, while United gobbled up mountains of silverware. They made Spurs’s fallow years look likethe Belle Epoque. Will they win the league. Yeah maybe, I don’t care. The kit though is lovely. I’m a huge fan of those rugby collars that Nike (and previously Umbro) are so fond of now, and it works best with the white trim. No more black trim please, City. This is a smart kit. The black and aqua-blue away kit is interesting, because the arms feature lunar topography in blue and black, because of the whole ‘Blue Moon’ thing. I like the song Blue Moon too, but it always reminds me of that scene in Grease.

ARSENAL

I’m a Spurs fan, so naturally Arsenal are the enemy, but I have to admit they are looking pretty good for a run – but they wonn’t win the league because they don’t o that any more, not since the mega-billionaires entered the Premier League. I do like Wenger (especially when he is throwing water bottles onto the ground); his time at Arsenal is equivalent to the current tenures of all the managers in England put together, I think. The kits are nice this year, another button up collar (I like those) and a stylish Puma design. The away kit is the classic yellow (gold) and navy blue with funny shiny diamonds. There’s a hint of that awful zigzag away kit from the early 90s if you ask me. Maybe they should bring that back.

MANCHESTER UNITED

United are back with Adidas, who they haven’t worn since before the Premier League started, ie back when they spent years never winning the title. Rather fitting since they are starting a new and probably similar era. Hey remember the old Adidas kits, yeah they were great, Ron Atkinson, Fergie before he was good, Gordon Strachan, Peter Davenport, Paul McGrath, Robbo, yeah great but no league titles. Will Van Gaal drag them and their multi-million pound players back into Fergie-era winning ways? I can’t see it. It’s back to the 80s alright. The kit itself is based directly on their kit from 1983 (they won the Cup that year! Beating Brighton & Hove Albion in a replay!). As of today, hours from the new season’s kick-off, they haven’t even bothered to release their away kit. Can’t imagine it will be earth-shattering.

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR

I don’t have very high hopes for my beloved Spurs this year. We’ve gotten rid of some of the dead wood (Paulinho) and bought more Belgian, but if we are some sort of quiet dark horse, we must be Black Beauty wearing slippers and a gag. We’ll finish about where we have been finishing. I predict young Harry Kane will probably score a few goals. Pochettino will be hoping Daniel Levy has switched off the ‘Sack Manager’ reminder that will come up this November, as it does. I love the kits though. Under Armour are doing a good job of making us look different to all the other template teams. The sash is interesting on the home kit. I will get that one. I like the blue away kit, but my wife doesn’t so I probably won’t get that one, unless I get it in secret and only wear it when she’s out. The purple one is lovely too, but I can’t spend all my money on football shirts now can I. Can I?

LIVERPOOL

Liverpool struggled post-Suarez and did well to come sixth but could (and probably should) have placed lower. Thankfully, Warrior Sports have given up making football kits (last season’s were probably the worst kits I’ve ever seen). So this year Liverpool’s kits are being made by…New Balance. Ok. On the face of it the designs are simple. Not super interesting. White away, black third, bespoke designs but, nothing to write home about. Move along.

SOUTHAMPTON

Southampton did well to come seventh but could (and probably should) have placed higher. The last time they were adidas, they inexplicably got rid of the stripes (Umbro technically did that, though they had white pinstripes if you want to quibble), but worse (in my opinion) was making the shorts red. Red shorts? Southampton? Are you insane? (ok, Umbro were guilty of introducing that too). It looked so many types of wrong, and to top it off they had a gold trim. However for all the outrage, kits only ever last a year and so the next season, adidas were out and Southampton produced their own kits, with stripes, with black shorts, all was right in the world. The kits themselves were rumoured not to be great quality but who cares, the players were great on the pitch (despite Spurs et al raiding their manager and best players before the season). This year they have Jordie Clasie, so I think they will do well again, but adidas are back on board and have given them a bog standard template for their home kit (“you want stripes? Fine here’s some other team’s old kit, we don’t care”). The away kit though is in a highly radioactive shade of green and navy blue.

And there are last year’s top seven*. Next year’s too probably. One thing I’m not doing this year is giving a list of predictions. I did that for years, under the direction of a cosmic entity called Mystic Pete (I was Mystic Pete’s representative on this planet, don’t ask, it was a long story). Mystic Pete was often hilariously wrong (Mystic Pete predicted Newcastle would win the league once, the actual league title), so I stopped asking. But if pushed, I’ll say one of the teams in this list will win the league.

Enjoy day one, footy fans, and I’ll be back with more kits soon. Lots more Urban Sketches first, but then some more footy kits.

*Originally this was the top six. But I forgot about Liverpool originally so this is the top seven. Next post there will be the middle seven, then the last six plus maybe one from the lower leagues. Then it’s Johnny Foreigner.

petescully

postcards of the hanging