Fat Buddha Store Blog // All the News

Considering I'm flying out today to NY, you're gonna have to cut me some slack on this one. Thought I'd present some of the best of NYC street culture from over the years. Or at least what interests me. Graffiti has its home in New York. Young artists painting trains in the late 70s and 80s probably didn't realise how far it would go: just look at Basquiat and Banksy now. This early rawness of graff is what I love-the spontaneous use of your surroundings and the imitation and mocking of advertising theory. Check out @149st.com. Good site for a quick guide to graff in NY. There's also the Recon store which I'm going to drop in on. At Fat Buddha, we're carrying all the Recon/ Subware stuff online, designed and inspired by original artists like Stash and Futura . I'll leave it to Callum to dig up some good New York videos. In New York, hip-hop also has its home as I'm sure we all know. Artifacts were my favourite New York group-their use of all ...

Anyone you knows me will know ill buy an album just cause this man has produced it, i have been buying his music since '87 when i bought 'Electric' by the cult. Everything hetouches turns to gold, as of late he has been working his magic with the legendary Neil Diamond with amazing results, he also brought Johnny Cash out of the wilderness and made him ubercool again. Dont forget about the Dixie Chicks, that album is fantastic, he won a stack of awards for that record and you can listen to it a gazillion times and it still sounds good. 1987 Electric - The Cult. If you listen to 'The Manor Sessions' and you'll quickly see what Rick Reuben does very well, the manor sessions were the cults first attempt with Steve Jones at Electric, all jangly guitars and OTT vocals, he comes in strips out all the shite and the Cult are now a hard rock band and huge. 'Love Removal Machine' still makes me smile, i played Electric to death and rocked it for a year, this album...

Well here I am three weeks into writing as part of the FB blog team and I've yet to broach the subject of toy customizing, thing is where do I start? There are many aspects to customizing like painting, planning, building etc so I'll tackle them in bite-sized chunks week by week. Today we'll look at a really simple way of creating your own custom, stenciling. This isn't stencil work like you'll see Klingatron doing this is mainly just large area masking. When I do this I tend to use electrical tape. It's cheap, you can bend it easily to make curves and most importantly it doesn't bleed. The only downside is that if you leave it on the Dunny/Munny/whatever it'll eventually start to contract back to it's original shape. It should easily hold out for a day or two though. When using tape I just use it to "draw" on the model and then use a scalpel/craft knife to neaten up anything that needs a bit of extra attention. If you design on paper first...

The legendary sneaker boutique called Footpatrol will make a re-appearance after being bought by JD Sports. JD Sports signed a deal last week to buy the business, Jd Sports Fashion Bigwig Barry Brown said he was seeking a larger location for Footpatrol in central London, and the new store would stock both footwear and clothing. Brown said he had no plans for a major roll-out (aye right), but smaller satelite stores ould open at a later date. 'We want to keep the Footpatrol brand integrity to its highest level' he explained, JD & Brand integrity in the one sentance, not usually found together but im sure he has the brands integrity at heart. Its the old pyramid retailing at its very best, they have JD Sports in hundreds of locations pumping out sportswear to the masses, white trainer and shell suit city. Then they have Size, selling a better mix of footwear, quickstrike ltd edition product and a good mix of clothing, for the more discerning buyer and appealing to the streetw...

This album conitinues where the last one left off, and is sublime, Rick Reuben is a master, if he could only sit Rod Stewart down and perform id genius on him, id die a happy man. Bought this lil beauty in my local Asda, saturday night and im buying Neil Diamond albums & Chocolate ice cream, not the most rock n roll saturday night, but in fairness none of them ever are. If you do edecide to buy an album then it needs to be this one, fantastic sound and some of the best songs this year 80 Hartford Courant Like much of Diamond's canon, these songs are rich with melodramatic flare-ups. 80 NOW Magazine This is understated folk pop, and as a result, some may be disappointed by the lack of big pop hooks. However, for those of us who always found Diamond overwrought and too extroverted, this restraint is refreshing and welcome. 80 All Music Guide Home Before Dark offers aesthetic proof that "12 Songs" was no fluke. This is a much stronger, less "civilized" album. 8...

This throw-up tutorial is brougt to you by Callum, found on the net somewhere. Remember that all your Grafitti supplies can be bought online from either Fat Buddha or This is not Graffiti

Mark here. Leaving a week today for Brooklyn, NYC and cannot wait. Be a shame to be away from everyone for August but...I am going to New York. I suppose that's a consolation. Anyway, I'll be blogging on fatbuddhastore.blogspot.com while I'm over there about a mix of things: New York streetlife , fashion, gigs, basketball and much more jibberish . Thought I'd introduce a little bit of the area where I'm staying-Crown Heights. Above you can see classic examples of "brownstone" style housing common in much of Brooklyn, particularly Crown Heights. Most of this housing was built in the 1880s when Crown Heights was a very affluent area. White flight hit it hard through the 20 th century and it turned into a no-go area for several decades. Now it's regenerating slowly but surely and the diversity of the people coupled with the great but cheap housing means it's surely going to be a great area to live in. It's home to one of the largest Hasidic Jew...

Last week I did a post about one of my favourite UK design teams (Peskimo) and in the week since then a couple of other UK designers have been releasing information of their upcoming releases so I thought I'd give you all a little heads up to make sure you don't miss out on them. The artists in question are Jon Burgerman and the ever tasty team TADO. Most UK toy/urban vinyl collectors have been waiting for this for a long time, they had a little treat when the 8" Dunnys were released a couple of months ago but the blind-boxed mini figure series is arguably the most popular format in collectible art toys and BOTH of these releases are indeed blind-boxed!! They will be out out by Kid robot so they should be in the shop for ordering (I think it's the month after the release date that the UK orders come in). First up we have the Cannibal Funfair minis from TADO released on the 28th of August. Here is the official blurb: "British illustration tandem, TADO, morphs the...

Winner of the 14th Fat Buddha Sketch Battle is Legoland, a truly worthy winner and glad to see this guy win at last. As usual Legoland wins a set of Carhartt 'X' On The Run Markers. Temoets was a close runner in my opinion, this sneaky lil english kid is showing his talents and is one for the watching, his stuff is going to be getting seen and i'd like to see some of his stuff on Fat Buddha T/Shirts.

Little story from yesterdays BBC News , its companis like this that the legislation was brought about in the first place to protect people from, and its still getting abused, tips should not be used to make up peoples wages, a bounus for good service, HARD ROCK SUCK Staff at one of the UK's best-known restaurants are getting paid £2.06 an hour - less than half the national minimum wage, the BBC has found. The Hard Rock Cafe in London relies on tips from customers to lift earnings to the legal level of £5.52. One waiter, who wished to remain anonymous, accused the management of being "downright greedy". A spokeswoman for Hard Rock defended its actions, saying it was doing nothing illegal. "It's an abuse of customers - they are being misled in that they believe they are giving a tip when they are subsidising the actual wage," the unnamed waiter said. "They are manipulating their employees and customers and playing one off against the other." The wage...

Hi, i'm Calum and i work in Fat Buddha. I'm going to try and have a new post ever Saturday, and this is my first one... enjoy. I have searched youtube for hours watching graffiti videos from all over the world, here are two youtubers who have caught my eye, The first is a graffiti crew called Stompdown killaz from Surrey in America, they are a group of guys that love writing and get up everywhere; http://www.youtube.com/user/Stompdown The second is a single writer, called Above he has loads of videos and a few different styles and characters; http://www.youtube.com/user/ubuv Below is a taster from the Surrey boys enjoy.

Addict Clothing, lil history for you below and some thoughts on the brand What initially started with 1 logo, 4 tee shirt prints and a dream in 1994 of creating a British Streetwear brand that could stand shoulder to shoulder with its US counterparts, has slowly but surely become reality over the last 11 years…Addict ®. With its direct approach, it has built its reputation on solid foundations through the consistent production of clean, minimally branded, functional men’s and women’s clothing with fine attention to detail attracting the support of some of the finest stores across the UK and the continent. Now approaching the start of its 11th year the one thing that becomes apparent under closer scrutiny is the quality of high profile collaborative projects that the brand already has under its belt. Limited Vans X Addict shoes, Camouflage Addict X G-Shock watches, Sympatex ® performance outerwear, SPY Optic Snowboard Goggles, and an impressive set of Addict camouflage snowboards with E...

It's Mark here and thought I'd talk a little bit about this fantastic, if very strange book, A Serious Life: The History of Savoy Publishing written by a friend of mine, DM Mitchell. He's written a tremendous introduction to my short story collection, The Outsider , which you may see out on Cargo Publishing sometime in the next fifty million years or so. Not only is that a sleek cover by John Coulthart, but the book itself is a really fascinating read, even for the many of us unfamiliar with Savoy Publishing.  The Savoy was originally a publication by the esoteric book dealer Leonard Smithers, Aubrey Beardsley and the symbolist artist Arthur Symons-all friends and contemporaries of Oscar Wilde. It was designed to publish difficult or shocking literature of the mid 1890s.  The idea was revived again in 1976 by David Britton and Charles Partington  before Michael Butterworth came onboard. The label became a home to avant-garde and difficult novels that struggled to find a h...

Hi, Decided to try a few pieces of Puma footwear, not entirely convinced its as good as it was a few years back but the cabana racer & RS100 are good looking shoes, next years range is pretty top stuff, good use of materials and some nice variations of the Clyde shoe. So watch this space and pop into store to see the puma shoes.  Right thought id treat you to a lil bit of Puma info, brought to from the site that is Wikepedia , now that is some resource, so much info all in the one place, fab. History Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik Christoph Dassler was a worker in Big Dogs shoe factory, while his wife Pauline ran a small laundry in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach , 20 kilometres from the city of Nuremberg . Their son Rudolf Dassler after leaving school joined his father at the shoe factory, and was then called up to fight in World War I . On his return from the front, Rudolf took a management position at a porcelain factory, and later in a leather wholesale business in Nure...

If any of you have checked out my Blog then you probably already know about the Resin Rising Experiment. Initially this project included work by three different artists but I'm very happy to announce that the roster has been increased.... So who is the new mystery artist? Well technically it's actually 2 artists, OK let's just get it out in the open. I'm very happy to announce that Peskimo are the final addition to the RRE season one!! David and Jodie are two VERY talented UK artists so click through to check out their amazing work and be sure to check out their wares and make some choice purchases. I have quite a few Peskimo pieces and prints so I know for sure that you won't be disappointed!! If you check out Fat Buddha Store (either the brick and mortar store or the online side) you'll see the recent Peskimo Bamboo Zoo series put out by Kid Robot. Add a touch of Peski -madness to your day!! There are still a few sets of the 8" Three Bears Dunnys ...