when the
sanrio small gift pop up tour rolled into town (i love sanrio and their super long names for everything. i'm surprised they didn't call it, "the sanrio really cute small gifts shopping galore pop up tour) i knew i had to attend. i mean, i was a hell0 kitty fan from way back when and who wouldn't want to visit some nostalgia while it's in town? i for sure didn't want to miss it.
so i convinced my fiancee that he HAD to attend the cutest pop up shop in the world with me and off we trekked to santa monica for the last day of the tour. once you enter the space, three words immediately came to mind: hello kitty clusterfuck. can you spot the sea of heads at the bottom of this picture? good lord it was dense with humans...and er, cats.
i saw a lot. some funny. some cute. but honestly, i kinda wanted to bolt out as soon as possible. i mean, wouldn't you if you found yourself in forced body contact with complete strangers? some were hairy too, might i add. *shudders* this ain't a rock concert peeps.
anyways, the event was geared towards hello kitty fans and children...though the line blurred sometimes when i saw some of the get-ups there. wooooweeeee. i saw a sanrio ferris wheel, too. i made sure to capture my most favorite sanrio characters ever, kerokerokeroppi and my melody (the little twin stars were on the other side). in fact, i must make a teensy weensy confession right now. my favorite was never hello kitty. i thought that white cat was just way too played out. did you have a favorite?
folks taking nostalgia to another level perhaps? i definitely saw A LOT of older peeps (like in their late 20's and 30's mind you) in some rather creative get-ups. but what-evs, everybody was there to enjoy themselves. these folks here are playing dress-up.
then we mosied through the art gallary portion and i saw a few interesting pieces inspired by the white kitty with the big head. i think there was a definite trend in portraying hello kitty with more grit and less innocence. hello gritty perhaps?
this one was pretty cool. i didn't know schools of fish were hello kitty fans as well. nice.
this one is made out of a million jelly beans. not sure about its relevance to sanrio though. am i missing something?
after walking rather briskly around the small space, we picked up some eats at a
food truck before we headed out. there was no need for us to wait in the insanely loooooong line to get into the shopping portion of the pop-up. seriously, age and patience is inversely related for me. besides, i used up all my patience at work and have none left over for loooooooong lines.
i would love to say we sped off in this ride (seriously, only hello kitty cars will shoot out rainbows! look at the bottom right of the photo), but we didn't. all in all, it was an interesting day full of furballs and things that were really pink. i have a feeling these pop-up tours will come around again even though this one in particular was to celebrate their 50th anniversary. it was positively a money maker for all that were involved. i'm glad hello kitty is rich. she needs a lot of money to supply herself with a lifetime of red bows for her left ear.
