Thursday, October 28, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
morning has broken
i am so happy for all of them, but now more than ever i feel this way.
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Friday, September 10, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
RIP Vintage Vantage (2001-2010)
the vintage vantage death announcement was published this morning, announcing an everything must go liquidation sale, all shirts are half price or less. the 40% off coupon code 'skippyhaha' still works, on top of the discount.
it has been a wild ride full of chaos and chuckles.
vintagevantage started as lone ebay seller john keddie selling vintage t-shirts out of a tiny garage in ocean beach san diego california in 2001.
in 2002 i was about to graduate law school in chapel hill and selling vintage myself on ebay for some money, and emailed vintagevantage fanmail because I thought they were doing a great job.
one email led to another and i met up with john a month later at a widespread panic festival in colorado. we couldn’t find camping and set up tent in a taco bell, were woken up by the Denver sheriff who ran our licenses and let us stay.
2 months later he moved to charlotte where i just started working for a law firm uptown. we came up with 'we be illin' sacred hear
1 month later i quit my job and we moved to ventura california, driving nonstop for 2 days with holden on the passenger's lap.
we sold mounds of dirty old t-shirts on ebay, and modeled every one of them. we started coming up with more and more 'originals' and working with factories to make supersoft t-shirts in flattering cuts. that was a shitty process, i didn’t really deal with it.
we got recognized by strangers at music festivals and on the streets. i didn’t like that.
we got married.
we got nacho.
people asked heather.
we moved to pacific beach san diego.
we met a bunch of awesome people across the street.
we hired matt duerr to manage the growing warehouse and do sales.
we made up the ‘voting is for old people’ shirt and caused quite a stir, Russell Simmons hated it, MTV hated it, the san diego news came to our house. it was awesome.
we moved to hillcrest for a couple months, and then moved to encinitas, where we had a pool and a living room full of trampolines and a bitchin 80’s homecoming dance.
we had a contest and took 8 people to amsterdam for 4 days to film 'vintage vantage and the disappearing corn dog.' there was a lot of footage but no movie came out of that trip. yet. i peed myself on the street in amsterdam laughing so hard, at what i have no idea.
Matt quit for a more stable job, and John moved the warehouse and operations up to San Francisco.
I moved to Asheville.
Things quieted down, but we kept coming up with newer better funnier t-shirts, and selling the best real vintage from the 70s and 80s online. We started making t-shirts for bands – ALO, Tea Leaf Green, Guadalajara Joe…awesome shirts for awesome bands.
The inventory was hugely swollen and the sales were down. We are not good business people. The economy went to crap. We didn’t adjust. The interest on a loan from Bank of America ate all our profits. No good offers to buy the business materialized and now we have to liquidate.
I plan on selling vintage t-shirts on my own, on ebay and on etsy, possibly on the vintagevantage.com website if I can arrange that in the next few months. And I’ll keep making peanut butter stash safes.
John is starting a new t-shirt company with a well-established LA partner and their future looks bright.
Nacho will continue hopping through life like an arctic bunny.
All is well.
Some of my favorite t-shirts over the years have been:
the pantychrist -
Fork my life -
Duluth, Duluth Duluth is on fire (burn Minnesota burn) -
Minivan Mega Fun
Jesus loves immigrants
Made a shirt with my dad on it -
And one with holden on it -
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
april 20
i know you don't smoke weed, i know this... but i'm gonna get you high today, cause it's tuesday... you ain't got no job... and you ain't got shit to do
LEGALIZE (and tax) IT!
but
"you can overdo it" - willie nelson on larry king last week saying he had smoked up that day.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
the story of holden: a slideshow
he was born a poor black child at a fancy kennel in raleigh, nc. there were two left from his litter, and another litter of 7 week old pups available, so he was massively discounted, considered 'old' at 3 months.
i named him skippy. his first dad named him holden, and since he paid for him, i let it go. it wasn't after holden caulfield, or holden oversoul, it was for the redneck place on the nc coast - holden beach.
holden's first dad lived in a fraternity house, so holden lived with me from day 1, and i always knew he was my dog.
when he was a year old his first dad broke into my email and read that i thought a guy at school was cute so he threw my computer in the road and ran it over with his car and moved out of the house we were living in and stole holden. i was in law school, a couple weeks away from my first exams. after some wrangling, and a couple days, i got holden back, and then he was all mine for good.
he ate an indigo girls cd and a 50 yd spool of mint dental floss, and those made it through on their own.
he had his first intestinal surgery at age 2 when he ate a pair of my roomate jill's tights and an underwire bra, and they got tangled up and made him very sick.
he ate 30 lbs. from a 40 lb. bin of kibbles and had to be physically pulled away trying to scarf the rest. he assploded for a week.
he loved doing taste tests when jill would put a cheese ball on one side of the room, and a munch em on the other.
i made him a vest from an old navy doggy raincoat, stenciled on it 'guiding eyes for the blind - dog in training' and he wore that to go to UNC baseball games with me and sat in the grass.
jill and i put him in the vest and went to harris teeter one night wearing sunglasses and holding the white stick from horizontal blinds and let holden off the leash hoping he would go run through the aisles to the meat counter, but he just sat down at the automatic doors and looked at us like we were crazy.
on vacation in charleston, he ate an entire cheese cake off the counter.
he had lots of dog friends, he never humped any of them.
when i was studying for the bar exam i listened to the lectures on a walkman walking around chapel hill for 3 hours at a time, it was so hot in the summer i often went late at night and always felt safe walking with him.
at night, he slept right next to me using me as a bolster.
he moved cross country in a 42-hour non-stop drive, the car was so packed he had to sit the whole time on the passenger's lap.
he was an excellent vintage t-shirt model, especially liked wearing track jackets.
he couldn't believe it when we got nacho. what had he done to deserve such an indignity?
he and nacho crossed garnet st. in pacific beach san diego - a very busy 4 lane highway at rush hour and made it to the safety of a shell station.
they pulled a pyrex dish off the counter, and it shattered and they ate the casserole-crusted shards. the vet suggested feeding them a loaf of white bread soaked in milk to help pass the glass. it worked great. he loved it.
he jumped off a terrace in the backyard and impaled his chest on a metal stake and needed dozens of stitches.
he an nacho got into a case of pop rocks candy and couldn't stop eating them even though the explosions on their whiskers scared them.
he ate socks, socks, and more socks - the little ones made it through, a couple of the bigger ones required surgery, some of the lucky ones required a shot of amorphine to make him throw them up before they got to his intestines.
he ate an entire cow rib bone and needed surgery to get that out.
he ate a giant bowl of trail mix and needed an amorphine shot to throw that up.
he had a few lipoma fat balls removed, one the size of an orange.
he had one myxosarcoma that they didn't remove all the way and was going to grow back.
he loved to go swimming, but wouldn't go in a pool because he was scared he couldn't get out.
he didn't like going up or down wooden stairs because his paws would slip.
he loved running around the yard looking for dead things to eat.
he loved riding in the car with his head out the window.
he loved sitting next people on a couch, curled up in a ball.
here are pictures from his first day on the ride home from the kennel, to 4 days before he died on a hike near the blue ridge parkway.
warning: after kevin watched this he said he wanted to hang himself.
Monday, August 24, 2009
fuck you california
LEGALIZE AND TAX MARIJUANA FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, YOU LAZY, WASTEFUL SACKS!
Friday, February 20, 2009
i hate goodbyes
mateo is leaving vintage vantage today after running thangs for five years. here he is during his weekend of fun with the inimitable kid D. there's a tribute to him on the site today here. i made a tribute for him when i started this blog 3 years ago here. he and his lady are traveling the world for the next three months, and i wish them nothing but the best of everything.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
tps report
the transportation director of phoreal records has just left this jedi council meeting and is driving a megavan on the road back west. mega fun & safe travels!
Friday, August 01, 2008
where's zach's cd?
good stuff!
zachgill.com
brushfirerecords.com
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
99notebooks.com
i got a blank notebook in the mail and i just wrote in it.
it's part of a project my friend spencer is doing called 99 notebooks.
if somebody gives you one of these notebooks you have to do 3 things - read everything in it, write something in it, and pass it on.
check out www.99notebooks.com for more details, and watch as 99 marble notebooks make their way around the world!
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Saturday, February 16, 2008
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
voting controversy from the vintage vantage site
It all started with Kat Storemski. The outspoken 21-year-old from Florida complained to MTV that our voting t-shirt was giving young people the wrong idea about voting. MTV News ran the story, and what followed can only be described as a media explosion. We were soon fielding early morning calls from the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR - everybody wanted to know why we hated democracy so much.
Even Russell Simmons was talking poop. Then Harvard University chimed in and our shirts were banned from stores across the country.
Uhh, what?
Our favorite part was when Fox News came to our house to cover the story - while we didn't answer the door, we did let Holden and Nacho (dressed in voting t-shirts) out to play with our new friends. They got along great! Look, they're kissing!
When the dust cleared, we collected some of our favorite quotes on the subject - click here to check em out. |
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go out & vote this year, old people
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Thursday, January 31, 2008
there'll be peace
i had to pull over while driving on grand ave. in san diego one time listening to this song because it made me weep & i couldnt see
seger sundays at the silver fox = $20 in the jukebox, nothing but seger...until the bartender pulls the plug...an act of treason
Monday, December 03, 2007
shroom & bridget's firebird
Saturday, November 03, 2007
trevor garrod @ las tortugas, last sunday morning 10-28
angel from montgomery (john prine)
just like heaven> (the cure)
don't let it down
? 'water, wind and wine' -tg on harp and guitar
16 tons (merle davis)
where the forest was
'i wish i was innocent'
i've got a truck
edge of the world
blackbird on a wire
love reveals
brokedown palace (hunter/garcia)
drink of streams
taped & posted by AG of jambase
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
be careful
there's drought and wind and fire out in california (see the map) just a few miles from where i lived and where all the vintage vantage t-shirts are warehoused, and it's a terrible mess for thousands of people out there. all the kitshickers are safe and breathing in horrible smoke and ash. pray for the winds to die. in extreme cases, wear mosquito masks. in the words of jerry springer, take care of yourselves...and each other.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007
betsy originals
betsy originals
i have "the Right Way" (under "browns") up in my house now and i love it. i like thinking you'll find fluorescent if you scratch the surface.
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Friday, August 04, 2006
sun fish
4.5 hours in the sun
so done, so good
i've done this a dozen times or more with all kinds of fish and haven't gotten sick and it really tastes great
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