Superchief Goes West

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Superchief Goes West

This Thursday, our favorite druggy blog turned legit art gallery is opening a new space in LA. To get there, the founders packed up a truck with $500,000 worth of art and hit the road. Here are some of their pics of America, taken in a hurry as they...

A few years ago, my friend Bill Dunleavy and I started Superchief Gallery in a loft space in Brooklyn. In 2013 we moved it to the Lower East Side, where we hosted 47 week-long gallery exhibitions, including VICE's annual photo show. This year we're opening up a new branch on the West Coast, in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown LA. Our first show opens this Thursday, May 15, and it's the biggest thing we've done so far. It's called Grand Opening, and it features more than 45 artists, many of whom you've seen in the pages of this very publication.

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A few weeks ago we drove a 16-foot box truck (packed to the gills with $500,000 worth of art) from New York to LA, hoping like hell we wouldn't get busted for weed on the backroads of some ratball country town. Almost every night we slept in sleeping bags on top of the truck, but once we stayed in the slave quarters of a mansion owned by a high-level Mason with a one-eyed cat. We climbed through hollowed-out airplanes in the City Museum of St. Louis, visited the Westboro Baptist Church, got pushed off the road by a flash sandstorm in Kansas, bought overpriced legal weed in Denver, and drove through the gorgeous desert panoramas of Utah, Nevada, and California, pissing off GTA 5–style biker freaks as we slowed down to take their photos from the passenger-side window.

These are some of our flicks of America, taken in a hurry as we hustled across it. And if you're in LA this Thursday, roll through the gallery and party with us. Here's all the info you need.

The view from the Brooklyn Bridge at the beginning of our journey

The route we took cross-country

This is the exterior of the St. Louis City Museum, a giant playpen for adults with hollowed-out airplanes and school buses and ten-story slides.

An exhibit on presidential-forehead gunshot wounds

Bill and Ed enjoying long-legged ladies in the basement caves of the St. Louis City Museum

The Mason's one-eyed cat

Street view of the Westboro Baptist Church, with some kind words for the community

Bill being ejected from the sacred ground for being a little too gay for Westboro

A drunk-driving warning with a car that says loser on a little hill that says liquor

And suddenly there was a sand storm on the horizon in Kansas, and it quickly overtook us.

Waiting out the sandstorm, we came upon the world's biggest Van Gogh painting and had to run across the field to avoid death.

Fortune-cookie advice at a helicopter graveyard

Kum & Go, the most aggressively named truck stop in Denver

Classic Jesus-related merch at a truck stop

Leading up to a tunnel through the Rocky Mountains, and the view as we emerged through the other side

The horizon once again disappearing into a blizzard as we descended through Denver's Rocky Mountains

We paced this biker all afternoon to get a photo of his camo and helmet.

The Pyramid in Vegas felt like a bizarre mirage.

When we finally made it to LA, at least the corner store had a sense of humor.

All of the art made it to LA safe and sound.