The last thing you ever want to see during construction

An empty inspection card means no approvals, or no work, or no inspections, or all of the above! Actually, this is from a week ago. I think there may be one or two new little scribbles now. But we still need more!!!!!

Sket One has finally landed in LA! Can you paint our walls now please???

You've probably seen Sket's retro 50's style pop art gracing the boxes of KidRobot's 2010 Dunny series, and he's finally made the migration to the Westside. Not only is he a talented artist and entrepreneur, but he and us at California Shabu have a common thread through our involvement with the non-profit organization Stoked and love for art.

Sket, now a KidRobot veteran, also has art, clothing, and dozens of vinyl characters to his name. Hopefully he'll have time in his schedule to bomb our walls!

I first met Sket after purchasing a piece of his at the 2009 Stoked auction thanks to Rita who put us in touch. He has a lot lined up for the year, and hopefully you'll be seeing some of his art on our walls soon.

WMD/RED

Electrical 101

400 Amps!! Its still barely enough. We don't even have enough extra power to get an extra outlet in the camera room!?

Hmm, one computer, one monitor, one DVR, one music receiver... one outlet?! We're going to need a very expensive surge protector. :{

Walking through the site and seeing incompletions everywhere can be depressing, and you feel like the project will never reach the end. Abandoning all hope...

Sometimes it can be so stressful seeing missing pieces of the build, made even worse by the lengthy planning delays. Finally seeing the wiring go in was somewhat of a feeble relief. We are still so far behind schedule, but at least John the electrician did a bad ass job! It was like an oasis amidst a sea of trash and chaos. Sexy! I wish my panel at home looked like this.

3D 4 Real

Main Front High Bar

This is the first time we've ever had real 3D renderings that actually looked ultra-realistic, and also the first round of interior design mockups. I'm sure it looks a hundred times better than real life, but it definitely sells itself on paper.

Middle Counter Bar

Entryway

Since the floor level of the restaurant is slightly below the street elevation, we lose quite a bit of square footage addressing the level drop. Why couldn't it just be flat?

Facelift Definitely Needed

Even though the retro 80's are back, doesn't mean our exterior color scheme should match! This brings us to yet another city application; exterior signage. Approvals take 4-6 months on average, but we couldn't risk the back and forth jeopardizing our main restaurant build, so we'll have to suffer the peach/cream and teal trim color palette until someday when the city approves us... Maybe we'll just make a really big vinyl banner and just use that forever.

If visiting MOCA, PLEASE READ FIRST...

Hopefully nobody is getting overloaded with art, because there's more coming. After visiting the MOCA show again, I found "street art" on the streets!! Whaaatt???!! But I stumbled upon it by accident, and don't think the museum really publicized any of this work. About 3 short blocks away from the museum in the area surrounding 3rd and Traction, there are art and graf pieces everywhere you turn. If you have any trouble finding the area, just search for Sci-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) on your phone and just start wandering their parking lots.

The Evolution of a Floorplan

By some absolute sheer stroke of luck, the prior tenant had been an attempted shabu restaurant, so we were able to reconfigure and salvage some of the partially built systems. Still, the meat and bones of the build had not yet been completed.

The biggest challenge by far has been our ventilation shaft which requires cutting through each of the 3 concrete floorplates. Its an engineering nightmare. The building was never built with a shaft, and isn't making it easy to shoehorn it in. Above is the original semi-existing floorplan from the old tenant.

Part of the reason this project has lagged for so long is the somewhat numerous plan changes we submitted to the city. The picture above is actually only the second half of our interior layout design process. The floorplan really morphed over time in our attempt to get the most out of the site configuration. Here's our final plan: