Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Actually, whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, those of us at The Rap Sheet wish you the very merriest holiday season! The memorably dark-themed magazine cover embedded above, from the December 22-29, 1997, edition of The New Yorker, was illustrated by Northern California artist Owen Smith, whose work we’ve showcased at least one time before on this page.

(Hat tip to Pulp International.)

If You’re Going to San Francisco ...

... forget all that flowers in your hair stuff. Instead, slap on a fedora, pull on a trench coat and fire up a jasper as local artist Owen Smith pays tribute to Dashiell Hammett’s private-eye classic, The Maltese Falcon (arguably ground zero for the genre), with a series of posters assigned out by the San Francisco Arts Commission as part of its Market Street 2008 Program. Those placards will be installed from Monday, June 16, to Thursday, September 18, on--where else?--Market Street in downtown.

And to kick off the project, Don Herron and Smith will lead one of Herron’s popular Dashiell Hammett Tours, beginning at the southeast corner of Market and Third streets on Saturday, June 28, at 1 p.m. Participation is absolutely free of charge. You’ll get to scope out Spade and Archer’s office and other Falcon landmarks, as well as check out Smith’s posters and hear how he came up with each one.

Artist Owen Smith, of course, was the artist I blabbed on about recently in my own blog for his amazing “Torture Hits Home” cover of Mother Jones magazine.

To learn more about his Falcon posters, click on the pic below....

I dunno. Maybe it’s time for me to finally check out this burg ...

If you’re going to San Francisco, gimme a call.

READ MORE: “Peak Smithology” (Pulp International).