We love Bruce McCall’s illustrations for New Yorker Mag. Especially this week’s cover – “Gluten-Free Gluten” – of street food carts in New York City. McCall’s been doing these cover illustrations for almost 23 years and when asked how manages to keep mining the street for content he said: “urban life throws out countless humour possibilities. My research is to go around looking for a particular subject until a much funnier one hits me in the head”. We feel the same about London.

Why food carts (and a general interest in all things “wheels”?)

“The cover solves an eternal puzzle: Where do the Cart People eat? They’re too busy to eat when they’re open, and they can’t eat when the cart is closed, because the car it’s chained to drags it at an angle. Solution: the Cart People trade meals with neighbouring carts, silly goose!” – (McCall)

Each cover expresses “both his discontent and his love for the city”.  He paints our imagined future — a supercharged, streamlined fantasyland that teeters on the edge of hysteria. Here’s our favourite:

Watch his TED Talk here: “What Is Retro-Futurism? Where he paints a retro-future that never happened — full of flying cars, polo-playing tanks and the RMS Tyrannic, “The Biggest Thing in All the World.”