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Von Franco
Von Franco (born May 29, 1952) is a self-taught American artist associated with the Lowbrow art movement and Kustom Kulture. He became involved at an early age in the burgeoning hot rod and Kustom Kulture scene of Southern California. His skill at drawing hot rod and monster art, popular in Kustom Kulture, caught the attention of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, for whom Von Franco later worked. Von Franco became a builder of custom automobiles, gaining notoriety for building clones of Norm Grabowski's Kookie, Kookie II and Lightning Bug t-buckets, as well as a clone/expansion of the Golden Rod. Von Franco is also known for his distinctive pinstriping and hand-lettering techniques. He was also the guitarist in the surf band The Bomboras and played the vibraphone in The Hyperions. He designed two bicycles for GT Bicycles, The Von Franco (orange) and the Taboo Tiki. He is a member of the Beatniks Koolsville car club. Von Franco was featured in the 1995 documentary ''Desperate Generation' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lowbrow (art Movement)
Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1960s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, tiki culture, graffiti, and hot-rod cultures of the street. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art often has a sense of humor – sometimes the humor is gleeful, impish, or a sarcastic comment. Most lowbrow artworks are paintings, but there are also toys, digital art, and sculpture. History Some of the first artists to create what came to be known as lowbrow art were underground cartoonists like Robert Williams and Gary Panter. Barry McGee, Margaret Killgalen, Dan "Plasma" Rauch and Camilla Elke were amongst the first to pioneer Lowbrow as a street art, zine, fashion, graffiti, and counter culture movement. The purpose of the lowbrow movement was to take an unorthodox approach to art and to completely defy its "rules". This resulted i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kustom Kulture
Kustom Kulture is a neologism used to describe the artworks, vehicles, hairstyles, and fashions of those who have driven and built custom cars and motorcycles in the United States of America from the 1950s through today. It was born out of the hot rod culture of Southern California of the 1960s. In the early days of hot rodding, many fashions and styles developed. Over time, each of these distinct styles of customizing have blended and reshaped our everyday life. Artists such as Von Dutch (Kenny Howard), Robert Williams, and custom car builder Ed "Big Daddy" Roth; along with Lyle Fisk, Dean Jeffries; hot rod and lowrider customizers such as the Barris Brothers (Sam and George Barris); along with numerous tattoo artists, automobile painters, and movies and television shows such as ''American Graffiti'' and ''The Munsters'' ( The Munster Koach, DRAG-U-LA) have all helped to form what is known as Kustom Kulture. Kustom Kulture is usually identified with the greasers of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hot Rod
Hot rods are typically American cars that might be old, classic, or modern and that have been rebuilt or modified with large engines optimised for speed and acceleration. One definition is: "a car that's been stripped down, souped up and made to go much faster." However, there is no definition of the term that is universally accepted and the term is attached to a wide range of vehicles. Most often they are individually designed and constructed using components from many makes of old or new cars, and are most prevalent in the United States and Canada. Many are intended for exhibition rather than for racing or everyday driving. The origin of the term "hot rod" is unclear. For example, some say that the term "hot" refers to the vehicle's being stolen. Other origin stories include replacing the engine's camshaft or "rod" with a higher performance version. According to the Hot Rod Industry Alliance (HRIA) the term changes in meaning over the years, but "hot rodding has less to do w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban agglomeration in the United States. The region generally contains ten of California's 58 counties: Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties. The Colorado Desert and the Colorado River are located on Southern California's eastern border with Arizona, and San Bernardino County shares a border with Nevada to the northeast. Southern California's southern border with Baja California is part of the Mexico–United States border. Constituent metropolitan areas Southern California includes the heavily built-up urban area which stretches along the Pacific coast from Ventura through Greater Los Angeles down to Greater San Diego (the contiguous urban ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth (March 4, 1932 – April 4, 2001) was an American artist, cartoonist, illustrator, pinstriper and custom car designer and builder who created the hot rod icon Rat Fink and other characters. Roth was a key figure in Southern California's Kustom Kulture and hot rod movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. Early life Roth was born in Beverly Hills, California. He was the son of Marie (Bauer) and Henry Roth. He grew up in Bell, California, attending Bell High School, where his classes included auto shop and art. At age 14 Roth acquired his first car, a 1933 Ford coupe. He studied engineering at a Los Angeles college, then served in the United States air force, and, by the early '50s, was experimenting with fibreglass modelling. Career Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures — typified by Rat Fink — depicting imaginary, out-sized monsters driving representations of the hot rods that he and his contemporaries built. Roth bega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norm Grabowski
Norman Grabowski (February 5, 1933 – October 12, 2012) was an American hot rod builder and actor. The heavy-set crew cut-wearing Grabowski appeared in minor roles in many films produced by Albert Zugsmith and Walt Disney. He was Polish-American. Biography In 1952, after leaving the US army on a medical discharge, Grabowski built a hot rod based on a shortened 1922 Ford Model T touring car mated to a similarly extremely shortened Model A pickup truck bed. With a powerful Cadillac overhead valve engine that came from his parents' sedan, the vehicle that resulted had a unique appearance and stance, which inspired many hot rods created afterward. The car was first featured on the cover of the October, 1955 issue of '' Hot Rod'' and then underwent further modifications, including a greater rake, tilted windshield and blue paint with flames when it famously appeared in color on the cover of the April, 1957 issue of ''Car Craft'' magazine, as well as in the April 29, 1957 issue o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinstriper
Pin striping (pinstriping) is the application of a very thin line of paint or other material called a pin stripe, and is generally used for decoration. Freehand pin stripers use a specialty brush known as a pinstriping brush. Fine lines in textiles are also called ''pinstripes''. Automotive, bike shops, and do-it-yourself car and motorcycle mechanics use paint pin striping to create their own custom look on the automotive bodies and parts. Motorcycles Pin striping can commonly be seen exhibited on custom motorcycles, such as those built by Choppers Inc., Indian Larry, and West Coast Choppers. The decorative use of pin striping on motorcycles as it is commonly seen today was pioneered by artists Kenny Howard (a.k.a. Von Dutch), Dean Jeffries, Dennis "Gibb" Gibbish, and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. These artists are considered pioneers of the Kustom Kulture lifestyle that spawned in the early 1950s, and are widely recognized as the "originators of modern pin striping".St. Antoine, Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surf Music
Surf music (or surf rock, surf pop, or surf guitar) is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental surf, distinguished by reverb-heavy electric guitars played to evoke the sound of crashing waves, largely pioneered by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. The second is vocal surf, which took elements of the original surf sound and added vocal harmonies, a movement led by the Beach Boys. Dick Dale developed the surf sound from instrumental rock, where he added Middle Eastern and Mexican influences, a spring reverb, and rapid alternate picking characteristics. His regional hit " Let's Go Trippin', in 1961, launched the surf music craze, inspiring many others to take up the approach. The genre reached national exposure when it was represented by vocal groups such as the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. Dale is quoted on such groups: "They were surf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bomboras
The Bomboras are an American all-instrumental surf band from Los Angeles, California, United States. The band was formed in the summer of 1994, sharing a love of 1960s surf and garage music such as The Ventures, Booker T, and The Sonics. Donning Day of the Dead regalia onstage, the fivesome tempered their retro-stylings with an update by way of The Ramones, The Pandoras, and Nuggets. Accompanied by frenzied Go Go girls, spitting flames, stage-diving, and destroying their own equipment, the Bomboras’ livid funhouse take on surf rock became an object of fan adoration, albeit a worry to the local fire department. The Bomboras took their name from a classic surf instrumental by the Original Surfaris (not to be confused with a different song with the same title, "Bombora," by the Australian surf combo The Atlantics) and released several albums on Burbank-based indie label Dionysus Records between 1995 and 1997. In summer 1997 Rob Zombie took notice of the band and signed them to his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GT Bicycles
GT Bicycles is an American company that designs and manufactures BMX, mountain, and road bicycles. GT is a division of the Dutch conglomerate Pon Holdings, which also markets Cannondale, Schwinn, Mongoose, IronHorse, DYNO, and RoadMaster bicycle brands; all manufactured in Asia. GT was founded in 1972, by Gary Turner and Richard Long in Santa Ana, California, and was noted at its inception for spearheading the prominence of BMX bicycles, later for developing a range of bikes around its "triple triangle" design, and at the end of its independent history, winning a commission to manufacture a $30,000 carbon fiber "Superbike" for the 1996 Summer games. GT sponsored numerous race teams and individuals, including noted riders Rebecca Twigg and Juli Furtado. In 1998, the company went public and subsequently merged with Questor Partners, then owner of Schwinn. The conglomerate went bankrupt in 2001 and was acquired by Pacific Cycle, which was in turn acquired by Dorel Industries i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. It is now owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon. the database contained some million titles (including television episodes) and million person records. Additionally, the site had 83 million registered users. The site's message boards were disabled in February 2017. Features The title and talent ''pages'' of IMDb are accessible to all users, but only registered and logged-in users can submit new material and suggest edits to existing entries. Most of the site's data has been provided by these volunteers. Registered users with a prov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Levi's
Levi Strauss & Co. () is an American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's () brand of denim jeans. It was founded in May 1853 when German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss moved from Buttenheim, Bavaria, to San Francisco, California, to open a West Coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. Although the corporation is registered in Delaware, the company's corporate headquarters is located in Levi's Plaza in San Francisco. History Origin and formation (1853–1890s) German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss started his trading business at the 90 Sacramento Street address in San Francisco and then moved the location to 62 Sacramento Street. In 1858, the company was listed as ''Strauss, Levi (David Stern & Levis Strauss) importers clothing, etc. 63 & 65 Sacramento St.'' (today, on the current grounds of the 353 Sacramento Street Lobby ) in the San Francisco Directory with Strauss serving as its sales manager and his brother-in-law, David Stern, as its manag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
