Michael Sieben hits up London as part of the Volcomics show with Mel Kadel and Mr. Travis Millard. Michael saw a pelican!
This blog is about the Volcomics opening that was in London on June 28th at the Truman Brewery. Special Thanks to the Volcom Art Loft for making all of this happen. I probably wrote that in my last blog too, but when somebody flies you to London they deserve more than one thank you.

I didn't go by myself. Mike Aho, Kevin Braden and Todd Bratrud were there also. Hi guys.

Allison Sands, Mel Kadel, and Travis Millard were there too. Hello there.

I forgot to take installation shots before the show opened (when the space was nice and clean), so I took some photos after the opening. That's why there are beer bottles all over the place. Apparently people in England enjoying drinking beer as much as we do in America. Weird, huh?

I was all like "Who's that? Meatloaf?" I don't know anything about metal apparently.

Mel drank all those beers. Hah hah ha.... no. I'm kidding. She didn't drink the Coronas.

Pete Hilicar, Brat Rude and Dan Cates. (Thanks for all of the help, Pete.)

Paul (Monsters) Roberts and Hannah. Nice to meet you

People seemed to really enjoy the comic.

Instead of hanging drawings I worked on an installation for this show. It was titled: "Hey, do we have any beer stashed in the back?"

Did you guys hear that Hammer Pants are making a comeback? No? I didn't either.

I shot this photo right before the opening. We kept saying how it looked exactly like those cheesy band publicity photos. You know the ones, right? Where everyone is trying to look super cool. Anyway, I went ahead and made a flyer out of the photo just in case Mel, Travis and Allison decide to start a band together.

One night only...

Awesome Pushead - Thrasher shirt.

This is an awesome slim line package, but I'd still rather have the extra two beers.

The Afterparty was Out of Control!!!

While we were in London we checked out this skateboard shoe history show titled "Made For Skate." Bratrud designed the postcard, etc. for it.

I thought the concept sounded a little weird, but the show was put together really well. It was more like a museum exhibition than a gallery show.

Not weird afterall, more like rad.

They even had a pair of ETNICS. Etnics?

If you skate then you know there's some drama here.

Outside of the shoe exhibit I saw a cool bike. I think it's a PK Ripper but I'm not for sure.

Wait, that's my line.

This is a little collaborative drawing Millard and I started working on during lunch one day.

It turned out pretty neat. It's an elephant that ate too much birthday cake. Party hardy.

We also did some sight seeing while we were there. That big ferris wheel is called the London Eye. We totally rode it.

I don't know exactly how high up we were so I'm going to guess. Uh... 3 miles?

We were so high up in the air that we could see dead dudes in the park. Which is always radical.

After we rode the Eye we saw Elvis. He looked pretty good.

One afternoon we met up with Fos. He's the art director for Heroin Skateboards and he's also doing the art for that Altamont company. If you don't skate I apologize for ostracizing you. (That's Horsey on the right.)

This is a drawing of a banana that Fos gave me. Thanks, sir.

We got to see this awesome skatepark that was built under the London Bridge. It was a really nice use of space.

That's me with the white blades.

After we checked out the skatepark we ate dinner and then went to the Tate Modern and walked around for a few hours. On the way back to the bus we saw this gnarly drop in. Without hesitation Horsey climbed up into the windowsill and dropped in. People clapped. It was great. And he hadn't stepped on his board in hours. No warm up. I was impressed. I hope you are too. If not then you've been watching too much Mega Ramp.

Travis forgot his camera so he made me take these two photos. Easy on the self promo dude...

This is an awesome sign for an art gallery.

I don't know much about "street art" but I know what I like when I see it.

This is some really old graffiti in the Tower of London. Trip on that.

Again, I don't know much about street art... but this looks neat.

I'm more into "street editing."

At some point during my trip to London everybody went home except my wife and myself. Which was cool because some of those dudes were starting to smell weird.

We were sort of sad to see everybody go home so we went to the park to make ourselves feel better.

In the park we saw ducks.

And a pelican.

I don't think of myself as a mean person, but part of me really wanted to see that Pelican go buck wild on a small child.

He didn't though. He just hung out with some interesting looking tourists.

Man, that pelican totally makes me want to throw up some peace signs too. Crazy ass pelican.

By the time we met this cat we'd totally forgotten about our friends that went home. Check out those eyes.

After we forgot about our friends leaving us, we totally did some sight seeing. That big clock is called Big Bend or something like that.

We're pretty sure that's where Cinderella lived (lives?) Is she still alive?

I took a photo of City Hall seconds before it fell over. Hah hahh.... that's totally not funny. Sorry.

Went to Greenwich one day.

It was totally pretty.

You could see like, really far.

Not a Wal-Mart in sight.

This weird kid kept following us around though so we went back to the city.

And ate.

And bothered people.

And met up with Pac Man at a pub.

The last day we were there an awesome storm blew in.

It made for good picture taking.

And we even saw a rainbow.

I included this photo because I was going to make some sort of a joke about hippies and those crazy glass pipes they carry around in those padded pillow case things. But then I couldn't really think of anything funny about that.

Thanks for reading. Next stop: San Francisco (this Saturday July 14th) at the Space Gallery - 1141 Polk St (415) 377-3325. {moscomment}

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