A new mural on West Broad Street is pretty, pretty, pretty good.
In January, an homage to comedian Larry David was unveiled on the façade of Fanboy, a cocktail spot that made Esquire’s 2024 list of “Best New Bars” in the country. The mural features the outline of David’s head and his iconic thin-rimmed Oliver Peoples glasses against an orange background.
Local commercial artist Brad Bacon says the idea for a mural dedicated to the co-creator of “Seinfeld” and star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” came from Fanboy owner Brandon Pearson.
“He just wanted to do something that was pretty simple and fit a certain budget,” says Bacon, a Richmond native. “It’s simple to paint, bold, recognizable, and fit the budget. That’s always important.”
The mural replaces a likeness of the Grinch holding a martini glass that Bacon painted on Fanboy’s exterior a few months ago. It marks the fourth time that Bacon has painted the building since Pearson purchased it.
“Pretty much everything that I’ve done up there, Brandon, the owner, has come up with the concept and we’ve gone back and forth on it,” Bacon says.
While Bacon was painting the Larry David mural, a couple walked by and asked it was supposed to be U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. Not only did David portray Sanders on “Saturday Night Live,” but a 2017 episode of “Finding Your Roots” revealed that Sanders and David were actually distant cousins. Richmond’s tribute to Larry David is just a few blocks east from where Mickael Broth painted a mural of Sanders skanking a la The Circle Jerks in 2016.
For 12 seasons, David played a misanthropic, insensitive and selfish version of himself on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” When he decided to end the show in 2024, many laudatory pieces were written about David, calling him everything from “our greatest interpreter of American manners since Emily Post” to being “an accidental style icon.”
More recently, David got into a spat with comedian Bill Maher after the latter had dinner with President Donald Trump and praised him as “gracious and measured.” David mocked Maher with a satirical short story in The New York Times titled “My Dinner With Adolf” where an unnamed narrator dines with Hitler and finds him charming despite his crimes against humanity.
Last July, HBO Max announced that David would return to TV for a six-episode sketch comedy series that would highlight absurd moments and overlooked figures from American history.
The new mural isn’t Richmond’s only reference to David. Perly’s Restaurant & Delicatessen offers a Larry David cocktail of either vodka or gin, celery soda, celery seed and a sugar rim. Stanley’s, the Philly-inspired sandwich spot in The Fan, previously featured The Larry David hoagie on its menu, serving up smoked whitefish salad, arugula, anchovy verde and fried capers; the sandwich was similar to one featured in the season five “Curb” episode “The Larry David Sandwich.”
For Bacon, the mural is all in a day’s work. One look at his Instagram account and you can see many of the signs, murals and other commercial art he’s produced in Richmond. Among other assignments, Bacon has painted EAT Restaurant Partners spots like Lucky AF in Scott’s Addition and Wong’s Tacos in Midlothian. He’s also done work for Randy O’Dell-created ventures like En Su Boca, Beauvine and The Get Tight Lounge.
Two decades ago, a friend who was a bartender at The Camel asked Bacon if he would design a T-shirt logo for the music venue. It ended up becoming The Camel’s logo.
“If I’d have known that it would be the logo for the next 20 years, I might have charged a little more,” he says. “It was very cheap.”
Bacon also happens to be a Larry David fan, particularly David’s exchanges with J.B. Smoove’s Leon Black on “Curb.”
Though Bacon primarily works in paint, does he respect wood?
“Yes, I respect wood,” says Bacon, laughing. “You have to respect the wood.”
