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.

god answers smutty's prayer

i think prayer is basically talking to yourself in a reasonable tone in complete sentences about things that are most important to you. i know i spend most of the day with my thoughts in rapidfire images and half formed snippets of words that are relating what i'm sensing and trying to categorize and respond. hardly ever, if at all, in reasonable full rational sentences. i think you don't have to believe in god to pray, and get the same benefits from it as people who do.

saturday

drool

never mind the fur stuck in the cracks, this is why i need vinyl seats in my car. anybody want a ride?

green army guys

i have a great idea. you know those thousands of men and women who risk their lives for our freedom, because they want a chance to get ahead in life, or because they have deep feelings of patriotism and love for america and the rightness of its causes? let's make them into gummy bears and eat them.

soft like bunny

would you look at the freakin wrinkles on this dog's face?

weekend with leo

leo is half golden retriever, half shar pei. he has the soft wrinkled face of a shar pei and the sweet goofiness of a golden. he's only 1.5 years old but acts more mature. he's staying here for the weekend and nacho and i couldn't be happier. game on!

my hippo

speaking of hippos, check out lindsay's little hippo ethan! he's only 6 months old. nothing cuter than a chubby baby. (other than a chubby puppy).

rapids

may be going tubing this weekend. may be going on the la zoom purple bus tour. may be filling the kiddie pool with ice cubes and snorkeling in it. may be eating genuine alaskan moose burgers. will be fun.

alex trebek can suck it

it is kid's week on jeopardy and some sharp mini-cookies were on TV last night competing for tens of thousands of dollars on the classic thinking man's answer and question game show. (what the TV guide calls it).

after the first break, alex makes small talk with the contestants, and one of the boys told him he was going to get into falconry when he grew up. he was extremely serious and passionate about it, and mentioned by name a professional falconer that he had met when he was younger and how he was going to follow in his footsteps.

alex said, "well i don't think there's much of a market for falconry these days so you better have a back up plan" and walked back to his podium to start the game.

what an asshole. who squashes the dreams of a 10 year old boy on national TV?

labs wearing goggles in a sidecar

i have found a new dream. i would like to travel around with a sidecar full of labs wearing goggles. this man is my hero.

(photo taken at the montreat 4th of july parade by sweetashvegas, author of the super informative asheville site ashvegas.)

fluffycups and chucklecheeks

nacho and eli don't mind being sequestered when the cable guy comes as long as they get rawhide chewies on the bed in front of the fan.