Monthly Archives: June 2011

I had lunch with my friend Kevin Poon from CLOT today.  We went to Soda Pop’s, which is appropriately named, although it’s pretty suspect they don’t stock Mr. Q’s Cucumber Soda.  Had one of the better sandwiches I’ve had in LA outside of Bay Cities and All About the Bread, and had the absolute finest service from the register girl who was so nice and accomodating that I thought she was gonna ask me to join a cult by the end of the conversation. But nope, she just wanted me to convert to the Church of Delicious Sandwiches.

Afterwards, we met up with Ben and headed to Jensen‘s new spot with his girl Meghan (you may remember her from this).  There’s Poon’s shoes, as evidence that I’m not making up all this coolguy name-dropping.

Being that Jensen runs Gallery 1988, you’d expect him to deck his walls with some mean art.  You’d be right.  I love this Josh Keyes:

and Scribe did their bedroom wall.  I think Meghan did the unkempt bed and Jensen did the unfinished furniture. (What kind of exotic bedroom rituals involve a spray bottle?)

That’s Bill Murray, their heavily Instagrammed cat.  Ben and Jensen exchanged urban legend Bill Murray stories where the cult actor’s been known to go around in public spaces, act erratically, then tell people “No one will ever believe you,” before ducking out.  I don’t know if there’s any worth to these myths, but you best believe I’m gonna start spreading the rumors as my own personal accounts.

Ben and I podcasted for Jensen’s online radio show, Hypemen.  Should be out in a couple weeks, but until then, listen to these past shows and hear how other people did it BETTER.

by bobbyhundreds

Alright, this is the last of it.  No more. After this, I will not publicly address Complex’s “The 50 Greatest Streetwear Brands” list, and the surrounding noise, again.  That doesn’t mean I’m not gonna have some final fun with it before we say sayonara.  I pulled some of my favorite tweets from the last couple days of Streetwearmania for your reading pleasure.  Laugh loud. Laugh often.

Earlier this afternoon, while I was getting swatted around by Dante, Ill Bill, and Paul Mittleman in my @replies, Gomez asked me:

Haha.. The answer really is no.  This has been a lot of fun, and educational for me as well. Somebody said that it probably would’ve been smarter to have just not written the List at all. I disagree wholeheartedly.  To whom much is given, much is required. If you’ve been blessed with the platform, use your voice to stand for what you believe in, and what you think is right. To do any less, especially just to save your own reputation, is shameful.

This guy wrote a well-written response to my list on his blog. You can check it out HERE.

What exactly do you mean, Nick?

Oh, you mean, like this, Nick?

So weird that my dad is on Twitter.

Anyways, now that I’m done trembling, the best responses were the kids who looked past feelings and actually saw the educational value in the piece.

It was nice to hear from some of the pioneers, who stayed level and brought levity:

Also nice to hear from other brands, friends, and competitors, who contributed their own 2 cents. Some were on the Top 50 list, others weren’t, but they all stayed objective, critiqued, lent commentary, and kept it professional.  It’s called discourse, and it’s the only way for a movement to move forward.

And then there’s Mishka.  Once again, Greg taking his complaints to the screen, questioning the integrity of the List to an audience of half-interested hypebeasts.  Greg wants to know, how on Earth is Mishka number 30 and not in the Top 15?!  Insinuating on messageboards and other dark corners of the Internet that it’s all a marketing scheme, all about “strategy” as if this were a military operation to reclaim streetwear glory.  Dude, what?  Let’s be honest here Greg, if I wanted to be strategic, I wouldn’t have spent my weekend writing glowing press releases for all our competitors.  If it was about strategy, I would’ve tagged you at #51 on the Top 50.

Okay, now you’re sending me mixed signals.

STREETWEAR~!!!!

by bobbyhundreds

So… how do I defend without sounding defensive?

You could say I had a pretty interesting day. It started off with Complex publishing my “50 Greatest Streetwear Brands” list, eating gluten-free Chex cereal while watching KTLA 5 Morning News, segued into a generally positive response from the Streetwear community (friends and strangers alike), followed up with a disturbing amount of grown men acting like babies and resorting to name-calling to feel better about their dead-end careers and lives, and ended with Dom Deluca and Dante Ross jointly yelling at me at midnight to demand why Pervert wasn’t on the list (they’re right, Pervert probably should’ve been on the list.)

But that’s okay, as long as people are talking about Streetwear again, in a manner unseen since the third wave of the late 2000s.  You see, “Streetwear” is a concept, so everyone will have their interpretation as to who should have or have not been included. That’s the point of lists like these, to engage discourse and debate.  Even Ben, my own business partner, couldn’t stomach some of my picks (and, I mean, have you seen that stomach?)

Here are some of the more notable responses I got throughout the day and my responses.

There were plenty of the “What about Brand X?” clogging my Twitter feed today, and LRG comprised 80% of the call-outs.  To clarify, in my personal definition of Streetwear, LRG is not.  As I’ve always understood it, LRG is an “urban” brand (if I was forced to classify it) and if the list were “Top 50 Urban Brands,” you best believe I’d rank LRG first place.  Jonas had said it himself, that LRG is NOT a Streetwear brand, it’s not skate, it’s not surf.. it’s for everyone.  And that was always the intention of LRG – underground inventive, overground effective.  The mission is to reach as broad of an audience as possible, to accept everyone and defy exclusivity.  Core streetwear brands (the ones modeled after Stussy’s trajectory) approach the same problem with a different solution: limitedness (is that a word?).  One is not necessarily better than the other, it’s just 2 different paths in the overall men’s apparel market.

As I’ve stated before, I have plenty of respect for LRG and what Jonas and Robert have done. I just don’t call them Streetwear, and I don’t think they would want that title either.

I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, I don’t even care about the ignorant name-calling. But what did bother me is that most of the hate came from people who are either not very smart, or just didn’t read the article at all.  Morons asking why urban brands like Fubu and Ecko weren’t on the list, or how I could dare exclude a brand, when I had actually included it and they were too consumed with blinding streetwear rage to notice.  Like my friend RZ here.  aNYthing was #16, buddy.  And do you think NDG would want to ever be included on a Streetwear list? Way to go, future of America.

And then there were those who felt I shafted a particular brand out of neglect or ignorance. Not true. Alphanumeric was definitely an influential men’s brand but I would situate them high up on a Top 50 Skate Brands list, over Streetwear.  That’s just me, though.

Graffiti brands.  I made a huge differentiation here.  And it wasn’t so much the graffiti brands, as much as street artist-driven brands, like the aforementioned Rebel 8, 123 Klan, The Seventh Letter, and others like Upper Playground, Dissizit and Foreign Family.  These brands really belong in a category all their own, because they cater to a slightly different image, clientele and marketplace.  I’d even drop RVCA and Obey in there as the industry leaders, and o.g. brands like Tribal and CONART as the historic figures, all tied together through artist affiliations.  The distribution and image of all these brands are subtly distinct from the Streetwear I’m talking about on my list.

Again, one is not better than the other.  Some hotheads got it confused and read “Streetwear” as “Cooler than you,” when all it means is that it’s a different genre of young men’s clothing, with a different set of rules.

Funny also that no one ever wants anything to do with Streetwear, let alone be labeled as such, but as soon as you leave ‘em off a Streetwear list or don’t put them where they think they rank, they’re gung-ho Streetwear all the way.

I am genuinely scared of that girl Shannon.  Don’t let that sweet cherubic smile fool you, she spits vitriolic hate worse than a horror-core rapper. I bet Shannon makes a living off writing Youtube comments. You can’t see it in her cropped avatar, but she’s holding a dead cat, which she killed with her own hands.

BUT.  She and Brett bring up a good point: Johnny Cupcakes.  Our crossover customer was stumped, “How could Bobby forget Johnny??!”  The fact of the matter is that Johnny is a total asshole and you totally fell for it, I’m just kidding.  The fact of the matter is that Johnny really doesn’t fit into this definition of Streetwear.  He doesn’t fit into Skate either.  He’s not Urban.  You know what, I really don’t know how to categorize him, and I think that’s why Johnny Cupcakes is so successful.  He’s always established his own market, own sales strategies, and customer. This guy built his own industry and he’s still the only player in it.  I’d just say Johnny Cupcakes is a clothing brand. How about that?

Me too.

So awesome.

I hope so.  There were a few complaints that newer brands weren’t on the list.  Most of those complaints came from me.  I hope this list can encourage Streetwear supporters to ignite the next generation of brands and designers.  So far, there’s a lot of upstarts out there, but only a few doing something truly original. I am anticipating the new wave to break down the walls, call brands like ours sell-outs, and take over.  We’re not gonna pass the torch to you guys, you gotta come and take it.  We’re waiting.

I still stand behind The Hundreds at #5.  Sorry.  Actually, no I’m not.

You’re welcome. And thank you for saying thank you.

by bobbyhundreds

At the turn of the millenium I was still working for a now-defunct print magazine called Transworld STANCE, when my Editor-in-Chief Kevin Imamura told me he was leaving to help Nike start a skateboarding division. Up until that point, I had been interested in Jordans, but Kevin was the one who educated me on the Dunk (via Alphanumeric) and other retro Nikes. But the idea of Nike sticking their fingers in the sanctuary of core skateboarding bothered me, as it did most skaters of the time. When I was in high school, Nike had already ventured a foray into skate that crashed and burned to the applause of most of the skateboarding community.  The message was clear and loud: Dear Nike, skateboarding is for the independents. Stick to selling out your mainstream jock sports and we’ll be responsible for our rebel selves. Thank you.

10 years wasn’t long ago, but it was eons when considering the Internet generation gap.  Skateboarding is now in a wholly different state and attitude – it’s a systematically-scored global sport, socially accepted by parents and authorities alike.  Skateboards used to be dangerous cultural weapons (and they still are, for many kids), but now they’re a ladder for corporate America to access the underground.

I shot this photo either at the end of ’01 or beginning of ’02, I’m not really sure. I was visiting my friend Robbie Jeffers in his office at Stussy (who he was working for at the time).  Like Kevin, he was also helping set up what would later become widely known and recognized as Nike SB.  Those are the first four prototypes of the iconic SBs for skaters Danny Supa, Reese Forbes, Gino Ianucci, and Richard Mulder (which are just out of shot.  The red AF1s are his personal pair of rare Rasheeds).

Of course it made total sense.  At the time, I could see myself that many of the prominent skaters had a Nike fixation even though they were backed by skate-shoe companies, clearly a Japan-inspired trend that trickled down through street fashion.  So by enlisting the help of cultural purveyors like Kevin and Robbie, this time around Nike was actually listening to what the streets had to say.  I was sitting there holding these sneakers, thirsting for the mustard Reese Forbes Dunks and wondering why I wanted these so badly, then realizing they were bait for all the right riders to attach their names to Nike SB.  Koston was already a big Nikehead, but SB knew better than to put him on right away, or the Tony Hawks and X-Games darlings.  The 20 Billion-dollar corporation would get called out, assassinated by the same bloodthirsty mob that vowed to keep skateboarding legitimate and indie.  So instead, Nike played it smart, seeking the aforementioned four skaters who were credible within the community, not marqueed by Mountain Dew.

At first the reception was hesitant, but after the sneakerheads devoured the product, the demand for Nike SB exploded amongst skateboarders.  Nike did it all the right way, working with core retailers, injecting money into skateboarding’s soft spots, reinforcing the skeleton for an industry that lacked infrastructure.  Suddenly regular smalltown skate shops had attracted a new customer (an entire line down the block of them, in fact) and were paying the bills off low-top basketball shoes.  Suddenly Nike’s bazillion-dollar technical R&D was designing the most efficient athletic shoe to skate in.  Suddenly Nike went from having the relatively unknowns to stealing the superstars of skateboarding.  They even got Koston.

And suddenly, Nike and skateboarding were synonymous.  Interchangeable.  Two words that no one ever imagined could stand so close together are now emblazoned across the feet and window-fronts of action sports: Nike Skateboarding.

But all great stories don’t have the happiest of endings.  There are countless voices in the skate industry who bemoan ever getting into bed with the Swoosh.  Consolidated used to be the only flag-bearer for the anti-Nike battalion, but in the past year, I’ve heard story after story from retailers who’ve been sunk by Nike’s financial demands.  Business 101: When the majority of your revenue is turned by a single brand, you’re gonna play puppet to their whimsy.  At this point, Nike just doesn’t own skateboarding. Nike owns you.

This isn’t a critique, it’s not even so much a commentary. It’s a timeline of events, and a breakdown of branding and business.  In 10 years, a corporation did a 180, making friends out of enemies and loyalists out of detractors (Apple, anyone?).  They gave to the poor, who then became rich, and then stole from the rich.  Something like that.

I never got those honey-mustard kicks, but I did contribute my share to Nike’s Dunk revival in the 2000s, collecting skate-sneakers like they were baseball cards.  Ironically enough, I skated less and less during those years.  Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

by bobbyhundreds