I knew I liked Paul Madonna when I saw this piece he did for a yearly publication he’s doing called “Album”—in Paul Madonna style, it’s incredibly simple but it hits so deep. The painting is a sketch of a fanny pack that wryly states: “In What Era Will You Get Stuck?” The first time I saw it, I sat there gazing at the rather beat-up, incredibly familiar lime green fanny pack, thinking, Wow. I get fanny pack. I know fanny pack. I am the product of generation fanny pack. I knew it when it wasn’t ironic.
Subtext: I’m getting old. (Damn you Paul, for playing on my mortality and reminding me of my sentiment for 80s icons, like the other Madonna. I will embrace lace fingerless gloves when they come back. And they will.)
I was not surprised to see that Paul was born in 1972, the year after I was was.
I was first introduced to Paul’s work by way of his weekly comic, “All Over Coffee ” that’s been running in the SF Chronicle since 1994. The second time came when Joe and I were pondering what to do for the artwork at Tacolicious and he brought up Paul as an idea. He’d admired him from way back.
We didn’t know what exactly we wanted Paul to do, but I think on some level we knew we wanted him to evoke a nostalgia for the food we’re serving. To pay homage to the San Francisco taqueria.
So Paul drove over one day with his wife Joen from their Mission District home. They’re an incredibly nice couple and we talked tacos and explained our concept for Tacolicious. We showed him our favorite pickled jalapeno cans (designed with a Salma Hayek look alike, her head afloat in a bath of chilies) but other than that, we gave Paul carte blanche to do what he wanted.
What he came back with, you’ll now see on the walls. You can’t miss the larger than life bottle of Tapatio which just cheers me up, and he followed our lead with the canned jalapenos. But what I think might be the most genius of the four pieces he did for us is the painting of a stack of those mundane little plastic to-go containers filled with things like salsa and limes that are always sent home with your burrito or taco or whathaveyou.
It’s a classic San Francisco icon that I never realized had any meaning until I saw it illustrated and hung on our wall. It evokes all sorts of taqueria things for me, from the Banda music on the juke box all the way down to the grease from the chips that soaks through the bag your burrito is sent home in.
However, unlike my conflicted memories of the age of the fanny pack, the taqueria era is timeless, and one I’m proud to be stuck in.