The Girl Holding the Sign Is a Real Person

There is a girl holding a chalkboard on our homepage. People assume she is a mascot somebody designed for us.

She is a real person. Everyone here calls her Momo-chan.

Who She Actually Is

She is a regular, and she is one of the founding members of TEN TEN, the arts nonprofit that meets here every Wednesday. More than either of those, she is a very dear friend.

Her actual job is real estate. She is a full time broker, which is the least interesting thing about her.

She also trained in baton twirling and is genuinely, unreasonably good at it. She does not do much of it these days, but if you go far enough back through our social media you will catch a glimpse.

And she is the kindest person I know. That is not a thing you say about someone to be nice. It is an observable fact about the room. When Momo-chan walks in, everybody wants to talk to her, and I have watched it happen enough times to stop thinking it is a coincidence.

How She Became a Sticker

A few years ago I needed a female character for a banner.

I had Abigail draw one based on Momo-chan, and then I decided it would be funnier to turn the drawing into a sticker and a temporary tattoo. Purely to embarrass her a little.

I put the tattoo on my neck and wore it when I went to pick her up for an event.

That was the whole plan. It was a joke that was supposed to last one evening.

How a Joke Ended Up on the Homepage

Much later, when we were building this website, I was trying to explain to Abigail what I wanted the character holding the sign to look like. I was doing a bad job of it, the way you do when the picture is clear in your head and refuses to become words.

Abigail said, "oh, like the Momo-chan stickers?"

Yes. Exactly like that. And that is how the girl on the sign became Momo-chan, without anybody deciding it, which is more or less how everything around here happens.

A Note About the Drawing

That sticker was the first time I had Abigail draw a person for something physical.

She had done people before, in the sets we made for Line and WhatsApp, but almost everything else she has drawn for us over the years has been animals or yokai. The dog, the daruma, the creatures. Momo-chan was the exception, and she is now the one you see first.

Which feels about right. Abigail has never actually set foot in the restaurant, and she still drew the person who most makes it feel like one.

So if you have been wondering who is holding the chalkboard: she is a broker, a baton twirler, a founding member of an arts nonprofit, and the person everyone in this room is happiest to see.

She did not ask for any of this. I put her face on a tattoo and then on the internet.