Upper Playground's new collection, the San Francisco Heritage Preservation Society, teamed up with famed American cartoonist Bill Griffith to present a very limited edition Zippy the Zippo®. Paying homage to San Francisco’s historic cartoon culture (including R Crumb, the late Spain Rodriguez amongst many) and one of its most legendary comic strip icons, the Zippo is made in a very-limited quantity of 100. We want one.

After the success of Alex Pardee's "WayCooler" mobile sticker app, San Francisco-based Upper Playground teamed up with 99CentBrains to create two new free mobile apps: the "stickUP" app that features classic and UP artwork, and "Choebot," which allows you to apply David Choe's artwork to your photos or your parent's faces. Both are available in theApple App store now.

Our good friend and 2x cover artist, Jeremy Fish (who did a nice logo shirt for us this past year), is set to open a new body of work, Where Hearts Get Left, at San Francisco's FIFTY24SF Gallery. Showing at Upper Playground's FIFTY24SF for the first time in 5 years, the exhibition features 60+ new works and is inspired by and created as a visual love letter to the city of San Francisco. Hey, we live in San Francisco!

One of the more popular comic, book cover, and fine art illustrators that we have ever covered, Tomer Hanuka, just released a new book, Overkill, featuring a collection of over 85 illustrations. As you probably know, Hanuka (the cover of our January 2008 issue) was one of the contributors to the award-winning film, Waltz With Bashir.

Ryan McGinness is bringing back the good stuff. Expanding upon his groundbreaking Sponsorship project at BLK/MRKT Gallery in Los Angeles in 2003, McGinness will open SponsorshipRedux at Subliminal Projects in LA tonight, June 11.

Spanish artists SAN and Escif have just begun a month long tour of California with Upper Playground, culminating with a exhibition at their San Francisco space, FIFTY24SF Gallery. Their first piece was just completed on the side of De La Barracuda near Melrose and Fairfax in West Los Angeles.

Jonathan LeVine Gallery just made two Shepard Fairey hand-painted multiples availalbe from two edtions that are on display at the newly opened Wynwood Kitchen & Bar, a Goldman property in Miami located next to the LeVine Urban Alchemists exhibition space in Wynwood Walls. Full pictures after the jump . . .

Last month in our November 2010 issue, Barbara Kruger graced our cover. It was an important cover and interview for us, as Kruger is one of the biggest and most well-regarded artists in all of contemporary art. For the interview, artist Shepard Fairey wrote an exclusive introduction about Kruger for Juxtapoz, an introduction we felt we should share with you. Read it after the jump . . .

The work of Rob Sato and Joseph To (Juxtapoz #104) is now on display in a showing curated by longtime friend, David Choe. Both these artist's unique renderings are simultaneously humorous, beautiful, and bizarre. We'd expect nothing less from these guys.