Monthly Archives: December 2006

Our newest team member Morgan spent the entire afternoon putting our buttons together for us. Piece by piece, rusty pin by rusty pin. Remember in the old Charlie & the Chocolate Factory movie where Charlie’s dad screws toothpaste caps on the tubes for a living? He sits in a barren factory all day, huddled over toothpaste tubes, his raw fingers feverishly whittling each cap on… for hours and hours on end, under the watch of an unforgiving boss?

Yeah, I think this was just like that, but like 400 times worse.

Get your hands out of the cookie jar. Available soon…

by bobbyhundreds

Upon reading the news (is it still ‘new’ if I’ve heard it before?) that the President is considering sending even more troops into Iraq, I started researching potential material for graphics, as a response. Along the way, I came across Dubya’s Daddy’s “Attack on Iraq” speech given in 1991, 2 hours after our first invasion into the Gulf. At the heart of the speech, George H. Bush emphasizes:

I’ve told the American people before that this will not be another Vietnam, and I repeat this here tonight. Our troops will have the best possible support in the entire world, and they will not be asked to fight with one hand tied behind their back. I’m hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long, and that casualties will be held to an absolute minimum.

A decade-and-a-half later…
It seems that the only reason we’re still duking it out over there is because if we pulled out now, [W.]“…It would hurt the credibility of the United States.“[/W.] But has it been considered that perhaps we’re hurting our credibility just as much, if not more, by staying in this war?

Something tells me this one’s gonna get a bigger response than the Cheap Skates piece.

by bobbyhundreds

Check out this momentous tribute to the late, great J Dilla (who’s played by his brother throughout the music video). Cameos by Black Thought, Will.I.Am, Common, and the Greedy Geniu$ crew, along with the fam over at Fruition (who also styled the entire film). And it’s also produced by our man Mazik. Rainbow-sprinkled, jelly-filled kudos all around.

by bobbyhundreds

TENS is now officially stocked in our online SHOP. [Click the button above].
Just FYI, we’re gonna do everything we can to get these orders out as soon as possible, but considering the time of year, we can not make any guarantees that they’ll reach your door by Christmas… but throw in $199.99 right now, and Digit will personally deliver your order in a Mrs. Claus outfit, riding in a sleigh driven by Scotty in an elf costume. And by “elf costume,” I mean “what he looks like every single day.”

by bobbyhundreds

It’s a beautiful day in Hollywood. Crisp clean air, golden tree-lined streets,..

…and spaghetti-strapped trannies…

..and…umm, ..well…..a “partridge in a pear tree.”

back to our regularly scheduled, sexual-deviant-free afternoon stroll.

by bobbyhundreds

The good folks over at AKA just delivered an early Christmas gift. The new MILLION DOLLAR VANDAL book is one of their strongest offerings yet. Featuring the story and art of Desa (MTA)..

by bobbyhundreds

Back to basics. When all is said and done, it all comes down to silkscreening t-shirts.
Another long day at the print shop.. gearing up for some tag-team action.?

Hey, did you know our Holiday collection is already available for sale in most of our worldwide accounts, and online at DIGITAL GRAVEL?

by bobbyhundreds

Between drawing pictures on t-shirts, and fighting with Ben over who gets to play their iTunes at work, I try to keep the blog updated at least once a day. Most the time, the blogs fly under the radar amidst slight fanfare, but every so often, the occasional love-letter and/or hate-mail finds its way through. Earlier this morning, I posted the piece on the early ’90s CCS skate catalogs, in hopes of reminding us all how we got here, and explaining to the younger generations that ‘street’ isn’t limited to novelty hoodies and patent-leather sneaks. Apparently, it did much more than that. Of the 3 years we’ve had the website running, that blog sparked more of a response than anything I’ve ever written. And that includes Ray’s video-blog of Scotty snorting a line of wasabi-and-salsa in Vegas.

I got so many responses, I figured it would only be fair to post a few excerpts here, to give some of you the opportunity to reminisce out loud..

Thanks so much for the post about early 90s skate culture. I was a Dallas, Texas skate rat which meant the most exposure we got to pros was Josh Kalis (in his car thieving days), and Jon Comer. The only park in the area was Eisenbergs, owned by the rollerblader Arlo Eisenberg’s family. The most exposure I would get to the core culture was through CCS catalogs and copies of Transworld they had at the library. CCS catalogs were contraband…skating was cool for about 6 months, but the kids it really stuck with were the stoners so everyone assumed you were too if you had a board. I’d smuggle a catalog ito class and try to decipher everything that was going on in that impossibly cool place on the west coast. I think about that era a lot. It’s mixed up in being an early teenager, but it still seemed so pure and beautiful. There are a lot of images burned into my brain: the Tom Penny sunset bluntslide cover photo on Transworld. Mark Gonzalez doing a coffin through traffic. But yea, anyway, thanks for giving the kids a history lesson. Streetwear can be so cyclical, they should at least know who they’re biting.

- Zack

What up guy.

- Lawrence

bless you for the post on ccs. memories just came flooding back.

- s.

I wish it was possible to comment back on your blogs. I remember those ccs catalog days before I even knew what the internet was. I would pick up whatever skate mag was out at the time in canada (thrasher, big brother, transworld were the big 3) and just being excited on the new stuff that california had. More so the decks than clothes. I fell out of skateboarding when I broke my ankle and it’s amazing how the size of wheels and decks had changed in a 3 year period. I couldn’t find a deck size 7.25 unless I went to kids decks and nobody makes any wheels smaller then 50mm. I’m sure things are way more accessable in california but in ontario, we’re still behind.

-DeMarco

and my personal favorite…

To the attention of Bobby Hundreds….

- C.F. BUCK

..now ain’t that the truth.

by bobbyhundreds

…THAT WE’RE FREE TO DO ANYTHING.”

Tim at 13thwitness is back. Bookmark it now, he’s only just begun..

by bobbyhundreds

Just the other day, I was lurking around on messageboards and I came across a topic on how kids had stumbled into streetwear and sneakers. Out of all the responses, I think there was only a couple of dudes who mentioned skateboarding. One kid even questioned what skateboarding’s relevance on all of this was, and was doubtful as to how there could possibly be a connection.. *GASP*.

I started really paying attention to the culture and ‘fashion’ around skateboarding sometime around middle school, during the early ’90s. In a lot of ways, that early-2nd/3rd wave of the skate industry during that era was similarly structured to our current streetwear market. There were maybe 1 or 2 skate boutiques in each city (and I’m not referring to skate mega-chains), with a steady niche clientele (just a few kids at each school who knew what was up). The companies were all independent upstarts that had cult followings. The product offerings, as far as attire went, were relatively consistent: loud oversized-print graphic t-shirts, straight-brimmed caps, plaid wovens, and baggy denim. And yes, sneakers were a big deal, albeit far from the Swoosh: Etnies and Airwalk leading the charge..

[Of course, we all know what happened next. Skateboarding did that whole "exploding" thing, turned into a gazillion-dollar corporate industry, and our little secret world had become the backdrop for the MTV2 generation. Goodbye independent. Hello in-da-money.]

Aside from the local skate shop, and because this was before the Internet, skaters found out about the newest product either through magazines or through the CCS catalog. California Cheap Skates was a skate shop out of San Luis Obispo, California, that would circulate a full skate mail-order catalog..at the time, the only one of its kind. Over the years, Cheap Skates eventually changed its name to CCS (Central Coast Surf, or something like that), but their catalogs will forever be remembered as the go-to-guide for what was hot in skate fashion. Call it the Hypebeast of early 90s skate culture.

Don’t ask me how, but I still have a stash of CCS catalogs from throughout the early 90s. Just by looking at these pages, you can see where a lot of our own influence and aesthetic are derived from..

Check these hats. In my opinion, this is the perfect cut for a head-protector. Flat-brimmed deep button-back baseball caps. Classic, clean, sharp. Not dopey and swampy.

Back then, skaters would detest any fashion-conscious reasoning for these bottoms, and defend their 40-waist pants by saying they were more comfortable to skate in. But from what I remember, it felt like I was pedaling in the dead of summer with a cumbersome overdyed tablecloth all caught up around my legs. Impractical, but the girls loved ‘em.

39s? 45s? And once you got flatspots with these wheels, your skateboard felt like it was running on Flintstones rock wheels.

Again, this was before the Internet. Hell, this was even years before XGames was broadcast on ABC. The only way you could see skateboarding home entertainment was by $20 videos from the local skateshop. 411 vol. 1 ! Plan B “Virtual Reality,” World Industries “New World Order,” and the Color video. What what.

Here’s another parallel. Since these indie skate companies didn’t have the big dollars to cut/sew their own backpacks, they would all use the same Jansport-styled bags and iron on different company patches. The kids figured it out easy, but they did’t care because they were so dedicated to their brands. Trust, it still happens today with your favorite streetwear backpacks. Except this time, your backpack cost 5 times as much.

Nike SB may be the skate sneaker crack in the streets right now, but skate shoe companies always had their own niche audience. In the early 90s, Etnies reigned supreme, especially with the help of one of the most important skate shoes of all time, the Sal 23′s (bottom left corner). [From the same psychopath guy who works next door to us at SLB]. And look at those Jordan-inspired MC Raps.

My personal favorites were the Duffs’ Kareem Campbell KCKs in white. The retros just weren’t the same!

Even everyone’s favorite MUST SEE TV star had his own signature skate shoe:

Oh, and that other primetime TV personality had a shoe as well… (peep that o.g. logo)

Skate shoe companies really gotta start retro-ing the low-profile simpleton sneaker, as a response to the rainbow-colored basketball-shoe look. My all-time favorites were Duffs and the short-lived Dukes:

And of course, there were the t-shirts. Cartoons, Parodies, Metal references, Bright colors,… you get the idea.

…now… don’t even get me started on those old Droog catalogs..

by bobbyhundreds