Everything I have worked on in life has been about working with my friends, having fun, and bringing everyone along for the ride of a never-ending party.When my family and I opened Arroz & Fun we set out to open our version of a café in Lincoln Heights, the part of LA that welcomed us when I was born in 1975.
The café is a dream come true for this American immigrant family, and through it we’ve felt our lives come full circle in many ways. We wanted to bring together people who inspire us—like the incredible Gardenia Rosales who serves her unique Cipota Coffee from El Salvador—while bringing our stories and experiences back to where we came from. You feel this in every detail, down to our burgers—a food that represented the American Dream to us growing up—which we’ve redone through our Asian point of view.
This process has had me reflecting a lot on growing up here in the ’90s. I was an indie kid listening to KROQ and watching MTV to dream about the outside world. Spike Jonze’s videos for Weezer and Beastie Boys were on constant repeat. Back then, you would tape the videos so you could pause and replay your favorite parts. That’s when I remember seeing Spike’s name for the first time, in the credits. When I first saw his video for Björk’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” in1995, it changed my life. I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley, and I remember like it happened yesterday. It was so happy and joyful, yet weird and strange...everything I love in one.
I met Spike at a Christmas party in 2008 while he was working on Where the Wild things Are. Th e next day he came to Opening Ceremony and asked me to work on a collaboration for the film. Since then, Spike has become a best friend, collaborator, the godfather to my children and an overall inspiration. Together we’ve made several clothing collections, a play, a musical, a perfume commercial, and the list goes on. Recently,I was helping Spike reorganize his archive and came across these incredible Björk outtakes, from a shoot for (now defunct) Detour magazine. As a fan, I knew only a few had ever been seen before. Seeing them took me right back to being a sophomore at Berkeley again.
When Spike came to Arroz & Fun for the first time, off -the-cuff I said that it would be awesome to do an exhibition with him here, playing with the idea of what café art could be. His response was, lets do it on Björk and let’s do a ‘Surprise Exhibition.’
So, this ‘Surprise Exhibition’ is an ode to someone I love so much. Dedicating my first show to someone that showed me what the world could be only seemed fitting. Today, help me celebrate this love with The Day I Met Björk.
- Humberto Leon