Gawker: valleywag, shinmin li

Granting Visa's giant cupcake wish

Jackson West — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:40:00 EDT

An eagle-eyed reader spotted a shot of what looked to them like a giant cupcake building in downtown San Francisco, and immediately Google's cupcake princess Marissa Mayer came to mind. Credit-card giant Visa has recently started running an ad with lots of everyday-but-oversized objects populating urban areas (we've searched in vain on YouTube and among sites that cater to ad agencies for the full video). Based on the street furniture, I'd say it's not San Francisco. But is the connection so far-fetched?

Mayer is well known both for her love of cupcakes and the the "pink power" girliness of Sex and The City. I could see a commissioned installation in the trite, childish style of international art superstars Jeff Koons or Claes Oldenburg. San Francisco still doesn't have a Frank Gehry, and frankly, a giant cupcake wouldn't be half as ugly as the Experience Music Project building in Seattle sponsored by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Could be high time for Mayer, the newest member of SFMOMA's board, to make a dent on the skyline. Maybe a new storefront location for the pastry-sculpting business Mayer owns with Shinmin Li, I Dream of Cake?

Marissa Mayer decrees, "Let them eat cupcakes"

Jackson West — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:40:00 EDT

Pictured are a pair of Faux-nolo Blahniks made from cake and icing by I Dream of Cake's Shinmin Li, size "33" in honor of Google VP Marissa Mayer's birthday at her Four Seasons penthouse. Mayer also flew in cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, the Manhattan cupcakery featured in Sex and the City, a product placement which is largely considered to have kicked off the sticky-sweet treat trend amongst the Scary Sadshaws set. According to one cupcake connoisseur familiar with Magnolia, Mayer could have gotten better desserts in San Francisco: "It's not worth flying them out from New York." But that's just the kind of fanciful display of devil-may-care wealth that Mayer is becoming increasingly well-known for. (Photo by Rachel Lea Fisher)

Marissa Mayer holding "Sex and the City" party tonight

Owen Thomas — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:00:00 EDT

At this very moment, a guest tells me, Google executive Marissa Mayer is throwing a "Blahnikfest" to celebrate her birthday and the premiere of Sex and the CIty. She's rented out a theater at San Francisco's downtown Century multiplex for her friends. Is Mayer our Carrie Bradshaw? Quite possibly, though Mayer's Four Seasons penthouse is more fabulous than the Sex and the City scribe. Like the heroine, she's found love in the hunky form of Zachary Bogue — her Mr. Big, though Mayer's the one with the far more impressive resume. She turns 33 today, as we've noted, and while she normally skips birthday parties during odd years — a "quirk," she says — Bogue was out of town today. The party features cakes the exact size and shape of Bradshaw's preferred shoes, made by Shinmin Li, the owner of the Mayer-backed I Dream of Cake bakery, as well as cupcakes flown in from New York's Magnolia Bakery. The invite:

Marissa Mayer hits the town with hunky boytoy and Orkut

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:20:00 EDT

Google VP Marissa Mayer attended the San Francisco Ballet's New Work's Festival on Friday and she brought along all her favorite friends. These included Mayer's manfriend, real-estate fund manager Zack Bogue, who, for reasons unknowable hasn't starred in a season of ABC's the Bachelor yet. Mayer's outfit is "a softer, [more] feminine look than we usually see from her" reports SFLuxe — but check out Googler Orkut Buyukkokten's suit, below. It's a Roberto Cavalli, darlings.

You know Orkut Buyukkokten, don't you? Yes, he's that Orkut — the Googler behind the favorite website of Brazilian pederasts, neo-Nazis and Indian teenagers. And he's fabulous in sheen.

Here's Mayer with business partner Shinmin Li, proprietor of I Dream of Cake, the North Beach pastry salon. "Cupcakes anyone?" SFLuxe ignorantly asks. Anyone who's anyone knows that Mayer calls the business "cake-sculpting."