The robot on the front of our Kalihi Super Store started with a tiger painted on a door.

Mr. Kushgang (@mr.kushgang on Instagram, and Hanzo to his friends) was born in Busan, South Korea, and grew up along the East Coast: New York, New Jersey, and all around Florida. When he moved to Hawaii, his very first job here was a mural of a tiger on the door of a building next to a restaurant. Bill happened to be eating next door. He and a friend walked out, saw the work, and stopped to talk.

Hanzo had just moved to the islands and had no idea who Battery Bill was. They exchanged Instagram handles, and that night Hanzo went home and asked his girlfriend if she'd heard of Battery Bill. Of course she had. They looked up the commercials on YouTube and heard the jingle.

Then nothing happened for about two years. "I thought he forgot about me," Hanzo said.

Bill hadn't forgotten. When he opened the Super Store, getting a permit for a sign turned out to be difficult, so he decided the building would be identified by a mural instead. He'd already had the idea years earlier, when he hired a Kaka'ako artist to paint the front of the old Mapunapuna store. The decision took about ten seconds. The next ten seconds were "who's going to do it?", and he already knew. The problem was he only remembered one word of the artist's name: Kush. He searched until he found @mr.kushgang and sent a message on Instagram. He didn't learn Hanzo had 79,000 followers until after he'd hired him.

One rule: make it a superhero

Bill gave Hanzo one instruction: it's a Super Store, so make it superhero themed. Everything else was up to the artist. "An artist shouldn't be messed with," Bill said. "I wanted his idea."

Hanzo started by getting to know Bill and the business. He landed on two themes, power and reliability. Superheroes have power, and Battery Bill supplies power. The moment he saw how big the wall was, he knew it had to be a robot.

The harder question was what kind of hero. A superhero can be huge, jacked, or aggressive. Hanzo decided friendly mattered more for a local business, so he made the rider a battery boy, not a battery man. He pairs the scale of the robot with the friendliness of the boy. The colors come from the Battery Bill's logo, blue and red, in lighter, more modern hues.

The name landed with Bill for a reason Hanzo didn't know. Growing up, people called Bill "Billy Boy." Battery Boy, Battery Bill, Billy Boy: all BBs. To Bill, the robot looks like a gentle giant, friendly, never ferocious.

Painted between two storms

The mural took longer than planned. Right after Hanzo sent the mockup, a Kona low hit. His power was out for days, and Bill was swamped with customers who needed backup power, so the reply took a week and a half. When it finally came, it was three words: "Love it. Let's do it." A second Kona low stalled the painting again a few days after he started, and then it rained on and off for the rest of the job.

Hanzo says the goal is simple: "I just hope that it grabs their attention and makes them wonder what's going on in this store. If I can put more eyes on the business, I've done my job."

Hawaii has become home for him too. After growing up somewhere with very few Asian families, he says he feels more at home here than he ever did on the mainland.

See more of his work on Instagram: @mr.kushgang