This one’s for the hardcore TH heads only, which is why we’re telling you about this at the last possible minute. Tomorrow (Sunday) is our 2-year Anniversary of The Hundreds Los Angeles store on Rosewood Ave. To mark the occasion, we pressed 50 commemorative t-shirts, which will only be for sale from 12-6pm tomorrow, only at The Hundreds store here in L.A.
FIFTY.
TOMORROW.
ONLY.
ROSEWOOD AVE.
*And a disclaimer. This is the only item that will NOT be 50% off for our Half-Off Everything Sale, which coincidentally ends tomorrow.
Friday was back-to-back-to-back with cameos at TH headquarters. Ray (Mighty Healthy) and Arsen (Hall of Fame) swung through, posted on the rooftop, flexed the new DVS collabs, and threw down on the carpetboard, before we La Taquiza’d it up. Oh and I think I had 4 separate conversations today about Kogi BBQ. Which ups the 3 conversations I had about the hipster/Angeleno food phenomenon yesterday. Korean Taco Trucks are the new Korean Fried Chicken is the new Korean frozen yogurt is the new Korean BBQ.
Yoshi (Foreign Family) lurked through to drop off a batch of the new FF collab tee I drew up. I’m not sure when it’s dropping or where you can go to see it, but trust me, it exists. Unlike the photo of Yoshi I forgot to take while he was here.
Regardless, Rhandy and AJ capped off our Friday afternoon by finally introducing us to ROYCE LEGEND. He’s like the Pinoy Buddy Lee. The raddest kid with that sneaky-sneaky eye. He’s gonna be a terror, but that’s what Rhandy gets for ruining everyone else’s lives all these years!
Check out Royce’s baby Levi’s denim, with the selvedge at adult proportions.
When I was 15 years old, I had a close friend named Melissa Brown. Melissa was usually dressed in baggy clothes that were fashionable for the ’90s, her sandy brown hair unkempt, but too pretty to be called tomboyish. She was from a small town called Stratford in Connecticut, she was a fan of the second wave of punk rock music, and she was also an avid skateboarder… (Not a run-of-the-mill pro-ho or skate girlfriend who’d wantonly twirl her hair curbside, but yes a girl who actually skated. Well.). And Melissa’s favorite skater at the time — by far, almost borderline obsession — was a wiry, raven-haired Ichabod Crane-type dude named Heath Kirchart. Oftentimes, I would snail-mail her photographs I had taken of Heath skating locally here in Southern California back to her on the East Coast.
My good friend Melissa passed away, unexpectedly, when we were both high school sophomores. Her mom called and told me that she buried her with all my skate photographs and memorabilia, she mentioned that Heath’s skateboarding was the thing that made her happiest in life. I thought that was kinda rad, and it proved to me that skateboarding reached a lot further to some people than just the plywood and urethane wheels.
Fast-forward 14 years to Royce Hall, on the UCLA campus. 3-and-a-half years in the making, Alien Workshop’s new skate video MIND FIELD premiered tonight to a VIP crowd of skateboarding’s biggest names and personalities. The buzz had been building for months, and finally came to a head with the bagpipe-driven opener, an unorthodox jumpstart to an epic skate video. AWS came correct, with comprehensive montages by Arto Saari, A.V.E., Josh Kalis, Omar Salazar, and Grant Taylor (amongst others) and abbreviated, punchy clips from veterans Rob Dyrdek, Jason Dill, and Steve Berra.
MIND FIELD’s obvious two highlights were am Tyler Bledsoe’s piledriving lines and the grand finale, yes, the aforementioned Heath Kirchart’s compelling performance. It’s really like this guy has ignored a decade of aging. Underlaid with Morrissey’s syrupy “Speedway,” Heath’s section was a ballet of ridiculously fast, controlled/reckless skateboarding. His bluntslides alone deserve to be archived in the Smithsonian.
Needless to say, I think Melissa would have enjoyed this one.
Here are some bits and pieces from the screening. You can’t see much of the skating, and that’s because you should get out there and pick up the movie yourself at your local skateshop on February 6th. Just vibe off the energy in the room tonight, and keep your eyes peeled for Heath’s backside-flip closer. Everyone had to pick their brains off the floor once the lights went up.
As you may have noticed, I’ve been uploading a lot more HD video content to the blog, which I know many of you have been stoked on. However, I know that a lot of you are having trouble viewing the vids, or the quality is choppy, since the technology is so new. If that’s the case, just click on the Youtube HD video embedded in our blog, which will take you to a low-res version of the movie on Youtube.com, which should load smoother on your computer. Plus on that page, you will find a “watch in HD” link under the window to watch the video in its original, full-screen, HD format.
*Our videos are no longer hosted on (what was previously kinda awesome) video-hosting service VIMEO! Over the weekend I criticized their services after I failed to hear from Customer Support for 4 days, and subsequently, “Community Director” Dalas Verdugo pulled our Vimeo account. Yup, our entire video library is now gone because my man Dalas couldn’t take the heat. As if Vimeo’s obsoletness wasn’t incentive enough to stop using their services, last time I checked, Mr. Verdugo’s actions run parallel to good old-fashioned fascism?
Bummed you can’t find some of our past movies anymore (Disney behind-the-scenes, Bomb Hills, THSF teaser, etc)? Let Dalas Verdugo know about it and give him props for Directing the TH Community into the toilet.
Last weekend was the semi-annual Agenda Show in San Diego, California, — still the #1 street/skate tradeshow worldwide — and our very own Scotty iLL and Baby D were downtown to pimp our wares at The Hundreds booth. Here are some of Scotty’s flicks, as well as additional coverage by Craig Fowler (Agenda).
I’ll be the first to admit that I know absolutely zero about cars. Outside of the Delorean DMC-12 and the A-Team van, I generally couldn’t care less about ‘em either. As long as they get me from Point A to Point B without killing me, I’m okay with that.
Vito and B-Rad, on the other hand, are all about those fancy automobiles. B-Rad drives a Benz with an AMG kit. Vito’s got a Subaru WRX STi 2.5L Turbo, AWD, Java Black Pearl colorway only offered in ’04. And the only reason I know all that is because he told me. I just think it’s nice and shiny.
While we were in Hong Kong, the guys were pointing out all the crazy cars to me, educating me on which ones were the Autobots or the Decepticons, whatever. And so when we got back, I had them take me for a spin in their respective cars. Morgan came along for the ride and was gripping the seat so hard that I think his fingerprints were embedded in the fabric.
Sometimes, I sit back, observe our staff and wonder, at other companies, are their employees as big of characters as ours are? Seems like every single person that works for The Hundreds is an absolute weirdo in their own way. Even the ones that start off being innocuous, plain, bores turn out to have all kinds of obscure interests, or noted talents, or experience in things that no one else can make heads-or-tails of.
Right now in the office, I’m looking at a Guatemalan who used to be a world famous drum-and-bass DJ but has the same interests as a Japanese schoolgirl, a Canadian who has a tattoo across his ribcage of a human heart with hairy arms punching a robot, and an MMA-trained ex-convict who has the largest sneaker collection in the world.
Even our interns are unique. Like Nate, who came onboard not too long ago to help out in the graphics department. It was all good until we discovered that he’s made a name for himself in L.A. by throwing the most insane parties at his parents’ house (really), and that he’s a you’d-never’-ever-guess rapper by the moniker Nathan Nice.
Every morning, the taco truck pulls up on our street, peddling all kinds of breakfast foods and Mexican roach-coach food packaged in recycled Jack-In-The-Box wrappers. Nate was headed out to do the daily burrito pick-up for the crew, so I tagged along:
I got back to my desk to find some nice care packages. Subcrew x Clot x ACU jackets, hats, and incense, DVS x Mighty Healthy Original Intents, some Nike SB dunks with an owl on ‘em, and speaking of Dunks..
These are the CORALINE Nike Dunks. Inspired by Laika’s first full-length animated film, Coraline, directed by the same guy who did The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick. The film actually looks pretty spectacular in its cinematic effects, and that magic translates nicely to the shoes’ handcrafted construction. The high-end canvas has a turned edge and the seams are hand-sewn, resulting in each pair being unique. The sole is glow-in-the-dark and the liner is sublimated with stars, corresponding to certain elements of the movie. Plus, the oversized buttons that adorn the sneakers were designed by Selick himself and only exist on 100 pairs.
My pair came with actual props from the film, some crazy cotton-candy things, and the Dunks are decorated as cat and mouse characters from the film. These are 1 of only 50 pairs like this in the world.
You might be able to get your hands on a pair as well… watch Coraline when it hits theaters February 6th, stay until after the credits, then visit Coraline.com to find out how.
The morning I left Hong Kong, I jetted over to the Swire Island East in Quarry Bay to catch the final week’s showing of VIVIENNE WESTWOOD : A LIFE IN FASHION. In collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the exhibition celebrates the voluminous career of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. From her early collaboration with Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and their revolving King’s Road boutique (Let it Rock / Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die / Sex / Seditionaries / World’s End), through her evolving collections that traveled from music subcultures to traditional British motifs, to her recognition as the UK’s queen of fashion, Vivienne Westwood’s history is as diverse as it is influential.
They say that Vivienne Westwood’s work and insight laid the foundation for Punk Rock, and her fashion has both inspired and impacted modern clothing design. To give you just one example, her capitalization on the traditional Scottish tartan pattern (which was first re-appropriated during her punk phase and then revived later in her career as her clothing matured) has seeped into my own design choices with The Hundreds. In North America, we call “tartan” plaid, and it is because of her vision to flip the antediluvian pattern and interpret it through punk rock culture, that plaids and check patterns successfully work within our brand’s boundaries today.
The Hong Kong exhibition runs until the end of this month. For more information, check the website.
Japan
United States
FOLLOW THE HUNDREDS