Keeping it fresh, 20 years on

It's bugged me for the last decade once I realized after the Vintage Vantage website went dark that half the photos and all the links in my RIP Vintage Vantage post also went dead and blank. 

In honor of the 20 year anniversary of when I joined VV, I went through and fixed all the photos and links and now it's back fresh and functional as the day the post was born in July 2010! Thank you, Wayback Machine! 

Without further ado: RIP Vintage Vantage (2001 - 2010) now with working links and photos!

free shirts, ligers

yes! another fun post in the 'free shirts for bloggers' series has arrived.

john is a long-time vintage t-shirt lover, and has a sweet blog where he documents his sweet life in seattle. he compares skippy haha vintage with the montgomery flea market - it's just like, it's just like, a mini-mall! mega fun! 

check out his post here.

A Day in the Life of One Girl: Riding Horses On Thin Ice

You all go over and see Jessica wearing a pink horses t-shirt from the skippy haha etsy shop. She is braving ice cold in short sleeves and wearing bitchin blue shoes. Bonus of heartwarming cute old man stories.

A Day in the Life of One Girl: Riding Horses On Thin Ice: "On Thursday I tried to get some errands done since I had half of the day off. Instead of enjoying my vacation day by doing something fabulou..."

light at the beginning

today isn't the end. it's friday. tomorrow isn't the beginning. it's saturday.

but in the spirit of new years, i will say i had a busy 2010.

i moved from charlotte back to asheville with my love.

holden killed himself. i didn't kill myself. it wasn't as hard as i anticipated. it never is.

my business was dissolved, and i started a new one.

i went to new york a couple times, and to florida a couple times, and to charleston, and to colorado. i hiked a lot. i swam in a mountain waterfall.

i became an aunt. to the cutest happiest little monkey in the world.

i didn't see as much live music as i would like, though i did see neil young and bob dylan and that might be enough right there.

i made my goal and posted more times here than i did in 2009.

i watched a lot of dog whisperer. keep moving forward is the secret. be calm and assertive. and move forward.

whatever you are doing tonight and tomorrow and the rest of your life, i hope you find peace and warmth and good people to share your time with. here's to positive momentum - cheers!

selling vintage clothes

i am so excited to be selling vintage clothes online again.

i love everything about this job.

i love finding the clothes at goodwill. i think of it as treasure hunting and 'saving' them.

i love taking pictures of the clothes.

i love photoshopping people's heads on the mannequin.

i love getting them to people who will love to wear them. it feels good to wear your favorite clothes!

i started a store on etsy, as opposed to ebay or starting a site of my own. the fees are reasonable, i like how it looks, it's simple to add new shirts, they allow buyers to pay with checks, money orders, and cash, not just paypal, and they have a 'vacation mode' where i can close the shop for any amount of time and go away.

the top shelf from vintage vantage will eventually be listed in the etsy shop. as soon as the boxes arrive and i can list them.

i love working!

here's a link to the shop - skippy haha vintage on etsy

RIP Vintage Vantage (2001-2010)

it's a sad day over here.


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

t children's hospital'  and urban outfitters ordered 5,000 of them, along with 'get high on yourself,' and we were off.

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.

American eagle outfitters copied our ‘

detroit is for lovers’ shirt and we sued them and settled. It was awesome. 

people asked heather. 

we hired happymexicansock, aka socky, to stuff packages.


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 had an online dating contest for matt (get fresh with mateo), won by none other than kid D, and flew her out to san diego from oklahoma for a weekend. 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 outfitted the kitshickers.

and the kitshakers -

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.

we got divorced.


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:

Solar power turns me on -

Let’s hear it for sign language -

the pantychrist -

Fork my life -

Duluth, Duluth Duluth is on fire (burn Minnesota burn) -

Minivan Mega Fun

Polite as fuck -

Jesus loves immigrants

I’m not fat husky-

French canadien

Made a shirt with my dad on it -

And one with holden on it -

it was a good ride. keep it fresh, amigos.

ready for modelfest

ready for modelfest, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i had some lovely ladies over last week for vintage t-shirt modeling. there were a few rookies but you couldn't tell from the pictures. they were all amazingly efficient and super hott.

The White House Weekly Address: Health Insurance Reform, Small Business and Your Questions

what is this world coming to?

what is this world coming to?, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

what do you love about botox? the giant needle? the botulism toxins that freeze your facial tissues? the way it makes you look like you're carved from wax?

if i had the chance i would absolutely fire the persons responsible for designing and ordering this craptastic makeup bag.

*****

in other and more heartwarming news, head over to the magical blog of tobias - toby or not toby - and post a limerick about michael jackson and win a sweet prize!

squash

squash, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

woke up tuesday and my computer had a virus. it was a fake virus scanner box that popped up. i tried to run virus removal from symantec and windows defender and after babysitting the machine for a few hours while it scanned every file i have, i restarted and the virus popped up again. so i took it to charlotte street computers. the nice guy called last night and said the hardware is fine but it's infected and it will be at least $160 and i should have it back by friday if all goes well and there's no way to rush it. i've been going to goodwill gathering vintage taking photos of a mannequin and going to the library to check emails. pretty frightening how i am so tied to having a computer with the internet. i love technology, but not as much as you you see, but i still love technology, always and forever

eating spotted dick

i just had to eat cold spotted dick for work.

it wasn't so bad.

i hate goodbyes

goodbye, originally uploaded by vintagevantage.

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.

running the picket fence at them

a slight communication gap leaves vintage vantage headless for this week - the two guys who know what is going on are 1) hiking argentina for a month and 2) on jamcruise in belize this week. and they left me in charge 2500 miles away.

instead of redemption and winning the game and blah blah blah i have sent a few emails starting with "again, i'm sorry, i have no earthly idea..."

but i was able to hack an email account to find a purchase order and got confirmation that the order was shipped. at least i haven't been caught watching the paint dry.

hellllllo panty christ!

just in time for christmas! the lamb of god in panties!
check it out - here
as always coupon codeword - skippyhaha = 40% off everything at vintage vantage

mannequin

mannequin, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i just got a torso mannequin for some more efficient t-shirt modeling, and i think with dick cheney's head in the window it will also scare away would-be burglars, unless they think there's an armless dick cheney inside and break in just to kick him.

my face hurts

dscn0017, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

myfacehurts.com
celebrating hysterical laughter and facial injuries

click on myfacehurts.com

coke adds life

coke adds life, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

has there ever been a torso better suited for modeling vintage t-shirts?

SamiSalsa rules.

skewing a poll

please vote for your favorite vintage t-shirt seller on ebay:

Vintage Aficionado poll

hint: the best one is
VINTAGE VANTAGE!

What would YOU Drill Sarah Palin with?

If you could drill Sarah Palin w/ anything, what would it be? from vintage vantage on Vimeo.

People at Baracknroll SF this week had some good ideas.

I would drill her with a solar powered dune buggy. Or Ritz Bitz crackers.

obama vs. mccain thumbwrestling

"the dude can't use his arms!"