I have had quite a time trying to get nginx to serve static assets from my wordpress blog. Have a look at the config and let me know if you can help. ( https://gist.github.com/1130332 - to see the entire thing)

server {

listen  80;
server_name  subprint.com;
access_log /var/www/subprint/logs/access.log;
error_log /var/www/subprint/logs/error.log;

root   /var/www/subprint/server/public; # express serves static resources for subprint.com out of here

location / {
  proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1:8124;
  root   /var/www/subprint/server;
  access_log on;
}

#serve static assets
location ~* ^(?!\/).+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|html|htm)$ {
    expires max;
    access_log off;
}

# the route for the wordpress blog
# unfortunately the static assets (css, img, etc.) are not being pathed/served properly
location /blog {

    root /var/www/localhost/public;
    index index.php;
    access_log /var/www/localhost/logs/access.log;
  error_log /var/www/localhost/logs/error.log;

  if (!-e $request_filename) {
   rewrite  ^/(.*)$  /index.php?q=$1  last;
   break;
   }

    if (!-f $request_filename) {
      rewrite /blog$ /blog/index.php last;
        break;
    }   

}


# actually serves the wordpress and subsequently phpmyadmin
location ~* (?!\/blog).+\.php$ {
 fastcgi_pass   localhost:9000;  
 fastcgi_index  index.php;
 fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    /var/www/localhost/public$fastcgi_script_name;  
 fastcgi_param PATH_INFO               $fastcgi_script_name;
 include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params;
}


# This works fine, but ONLY with a symlink inside the /var/www/localhost/public directory pointing to /usr/share/phpmyadmin
location /phpmyadmin {
    index index.php;
    access_log /var/www/phpmyadmin/logs/access.log;
    error_log /var/www/phpmyadmin/logs/error.log;
    alias /usr/share/phpmyadmin/;

    if (!-f $request_filename) {
      rewrite /phpmyadmin$ /phpmyadmin/index.php permanent;
        break;
    }   
}
# opt-in to the future
add_header "X-UA-Compatible" "IE=Edge,chrome=1";

}