As street art evolves, so do our tastes and sensibilities.

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Our favorite street art is not necessarily simply a great image or a playful character that makes us smile. It is an element of surprise into an otherwise uniform and predictable world.

Street art that truly inspires me is work that is site specific - meaning that the artist fully incorporates the specific location into the work. This is not only when street art is truly at its best, but it’s when street art is truly “street art” and not just simply a poster or a sticker placed on a wall without permission.

High-end street art for the connoisseur.

Not that this is the most egregious possible example, and subway ads are certainly nothing new, but whoever the revenue entrepreneur at L.A.’s Union Station is has been on quite a roll of late. Most recently unveiled is the “Bodog” mixed fighting championship campaign which basically took over the entire entry and platform to the Red Line, i.e. the main subway node (which, granted, isn’t saying much in L.A.). A huge vinyl covers the floor in the entry, as well as several billboard-sized wall mountings further in the entry, capped off with a vinyl wrap around every one of the supporting column/pillars down in the platform area.

As you can probably imagine, the top (I’m assuming) Bodog mixed fighting championship contenders aren’t the prettiest faces around to say the least, and the ad is a huge up-close face-on portrait of each contender. I wasn’t looking forward to having to endure these gruesome heads on a bi-daily basis (in multiple no less), but it hasn’t bothered me as much as I thought it would. In fact there’s almost something primal and cathartic about descending into the cavernous underground space in the heart of L.A. and being confronted by the bigger-than-life, jabba-the-hut-caliber ugliness of these visages, only to then walk right over them, your foot fitting surprisingly well in a roundhouse-contorted nostril as you pass.

This is on the heels of a whopper of a Dos Equis ad that was put up way back at World Cup time (and still there), which covers basically the entire tunnel leading from one end of Union Station to the other. This was kind of shocking at first, Union Station being a tourist-level architectural attraction in L.A. and all. In retrospect, it seems surprising that prior to this, the considerable interior square-footage of the central hub of commuter travel in L.A. was basically blank, which I guess speaks more to advertisers’ estimations of the reach and frequency rates of would-be adspace there…

As a vaguely-related postscript, here’s a view from the 16th floor at my office, in which if you look closely, you can spot off in the smoggy distance a HUMONGOUS ad for what appears to be in my best estimation the newest Will Ferrell vehicle. I believe this month’s installment has him as an ice skater.

Just when you think the minefield of distraction that is the internet has decimated your every last mental limb, along strolls a site like Monoface to demonstrate the regenerative power of your curiosity before laying waste to your sprouting nubs of attention.   Seamlessly mix-n-match different facial parts to create your own frankensteins.   Plenty of productive uses such as fake casting sheets, i.d. hacking, red-light-camera-foiling masks to keep in the car, etc.