Heads up, Los Angeles—this exists.

Golden Road Brewery‘s vegan mac + cheese in a pretzel bread bowl—new-comer in the world of animal-friendly pub fare, irresistible bomb of a comfort food mash-up, and talisman against all things Paleo.

They’ve got vegan onion rings these days too which are equally irresistible. Ah, Golden Road.

We’ve written these dudes up before, but really—who can beat Mast Brothers when it comes to crafty bean-to-bar chocolate and wonderful packaging. And beardiness.

A sweetly spicy weekend to you all.

Supercute heads up that the exhibit, Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty at Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum, which was originally ending after last Sunday, has been extended through the end of May.

The exhibit is, yes, supercute, but also really interesting in often bizarre ways, especially once you leave the first floor to view the Hello Kitty-inspired modern art. We’d recommend it, especially if you’re entertaining 3-year-olds, as we were. Or not. As you can see, they’ve got something for everyone.

An old Holga from our previously live, now retired photography portfolio.

Taken on a train ride from western Pennsylvania to New York.

Our friend, Lauren, recently brought to our attention this lovely, delicate cover of The War on Drugs‘ “Red Eyes” by Swedish artist, Alice Boman.

Enjoy.

We’re releasing our March mixtape today, and I’ve gotta say, it features a ton of music that’s got us really excited, both from longtime favorite bands and newcomers alike.

Not only do we have a new one from Canadian band, Purity Ring—hands down, my favorite new band in the past five or so years—we’ve also got a new one from other favorite Canadian band, Braids, a group that’s continued to evolve and reinvent itself in truly exciting ways, all in a relatively short period of time. New music too from noise-punk Brits, Joanna Gruesome; Viet Cong, out of (yes) Canada; German trio, Aloa Input (who we interviewed a year back); fun, early Depeche-Mode-esque stuff from Belfast electronic group GO WOLF; and some awesome, very California-feeling music from Tall Tales and the Silver Lining, who just released their debut full-length via Other Music Recording Co and from whom we expect great things.

Check it all out below or on our SoundCloud page; you can access other music posts by clicking the Music button to the right and check out previous mixtapes for January + February.

To the many friends and clients who’ve sent on this BBC story on to us here at raven + crow studio, our thanks.

For those who missed it, it’s worth a read. The gist—a little girl in Seattle makes a routine of feeding her neighborhood crows; they reciprocate by bringing her gifts in the form of shiny objects and other odd trinkets, including one half of a ‘BEST FRIENDS’ necklace:
“‘I don’t know if they still have the part that says ‘friend’,’ Gabi laughs, amused by the thought of a crow wearing a matching necklace.”

Photo by Lisa Mann.

Here it is, nearly March, and—with everything going on of late—we realize we haven’t yet written up this year’s New Year’s cards.

Since 2005, Katie + I have sent out custom holiday cards or new year’s cards (depending on how festive we where feeling…and scheduling). We started off pretty simple, printing  a small run ourselves on our medium format digital printed and cutting + folding ourselves, gradually moving on to more involved designs, like 2006’s squirrel + acorn cards, with hand-cut acorn-shaped openings showing through the design inside the card.

In 2010, we made the move to outsource the production of the cards as our mailing list grew along with our desire for higher quality. We chose to have them printed using a traditional letterpress, which we’d recently moved to using for our wedding invitation work.

Letterpress printing is a type of relief printing—basically creating a surface that presses into the paper or whatever material you’re printing on with ink (or without if you want to create what’s called a blind imprint). It’s the same concept involved in moveable type relief printing presses—the kind originated in the east nearly 1,000 years ago and popularized int he western world by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1400’s; what you’d think of being used for early newspaper printing. Back then, both letters + images had to be made individually out of metal or wood and then arranged by hand. The resulting print—especially on thicker, more impressionable material—is something that differentiates itself from conventional offset or digital printing in both quality of the look and feel.

Today, the concept behind the process is the same, but technology’s made things a lot less arduous. We simply send our design files out to a plate fabricator who uses them to create a flexible relief plate—kind of like a stamp. That plate is then used in a printing press that has paper fed through by a series of rollers.

We had our first letterpress cards printed by a guy in south Brooklyn who used an awesome old, hand-cranked model in a shared space near Bushwick. His quality was superb, but the size and frequency of our orders eventually outgrew his scope, so we moved to press in Ohio recommended by our friend, Jane Buck of the excellent Foxy + Winston.

Following in the footsteps of last year’s card—a tribute to the then recently deceased Lou Reed—we again chose to highlight the lyrics to a favorite song of both of ours—”Under Pressure” by David Bowie + Queen. We usually pull imagery from flora and/or fauna with these and, for whatever reason, the elegance in form of a great horned owl seemed to fit this year. Maybe we were subconsciously channeling Bowie’s Goblin King from Labyrinth.

You can see more shots of the card below—see the relief in the paper?

You can see designs form years past in our portfolio.

Los Angeles Eater came out with their pick for the 12 best meat-free tacos in the city today.

As write Farley Elliott eloquently puts it:
“Vegetarian tacos don’t get a lot of love in Los Angeles, despite the wide overlapping Venn Diagram of ‘people who like tacos (everyone)” and “people in L.A. who don’t eat meat.'”

So true. But options about in this town—Eater could have easily done a piece on the 1200 best meat-free tacos, I’m guessing.

Though they missed some of our favorites—Malo’s mock ground beef + pickle tacos, Mick from 100 Tacos‘ soy chorizo + sweet potato black bean tacos on fresh tortillas, and Mixto‘s soy chorizo tacos with citrus habanero salsa (pictured above)—they hit others, like the ever-excellent Gracias Madre, and tout a few others we’ve never heard of that, sans dairy, sound pretty great.

Check out Eater’s listing + interactive map for more.

Mmmmmm, tacos.

An old photograph of Katie’s and one of my favorites, from 1998 or 1999.