A WEEK IN THE LIFE.

Its been a long, long, long week. Wrecked and crazy tired.
Thankfully, I'll soon have a 15 hour flight where I can recharge and collect my thoughts.
Here's a review of what's been goin on the past couple of days.


Remy Martin sponsored a poker/blackjack charity benefit. It's fun to dress up once in a while and go to high profile events. Not often...but like 4 times a year is cool. The star of the event was Ray Lui, a major HK celebrity who starred in over 70 feature films. This night, they turned Cipriani into a mini-casino and it was pretty fun. I picked up this new suit a few weeks ago and I'm pretty happy with it: Brooks Brothers/Golden Fleece collection. Ray's tux is probably a rental. Haha.

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Just got this in the mail also. Its called MagnaDoodle. Think of it as Etch-A-Sketch 2.0. Deanne put me onto it. She got one for her newborn kid but ended up playing with it more than the baby. She told me she uses it for practicing new hand-done typography techniques. Its really fun and addictive.

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Oka from Medicom dropped by for a visit. Here he poses in front of all his creations. He probably has one of the best jobs in the world.

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New York is the capital of many things. Fashion, Art, Finance, Music, etc. Well now you can add BBQ to the list. Yes, its true. Try HILL COUNTRY once and you will never accept BBQ anywhere else. Its incredible. All the wood used to slowroast the meat has been trucked in from Texas. Don't divert from the plan and fill yourself with nonsense like mac+cheese or corn bread. Head straight for the Moist Brisket. Get an iced tea to wash it all down and you won't even leave with a food comatose.

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Say hello to Mark from Nike (formerly Fatlace). First time we have ever met but I feel like I've known this brotha for a long, long time.

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I was invited by Columbia Business School to come and speak to their graduating senior class. I got to speak right after the CEO of Hermes! This was a great honor. Speaking to business ivy leaguers about business?! Moi? Really humbling... For most of the lecture, I was honestly wondering what I was doing up there.

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Then went to dinner with a couple friends at Mario Batali's pizzeria, Otto. Great food and even greater company. Automator and Daniel in attendance along with his girl Lisa, Toni, Sabrina (happy birthday!) and umm..i think Philip? (Sorry if I forgot ur name.)
Get the pizza with the sunny-side up egg on top of it. Trust...its dope.

Daniel sent me this link. Its a collection of some interesting Nike commercials shot from China. I like that these integrate common day Chinese life. You look at these ads and then you look at what we have in America. Its easier said than done to be able to communicate on a global level.

HIROSHI CAN'T MAKE ME WEAR CHUCKS?

Now that it's been discovered that Hiroshi can't ride fixed, I'm wondering what else Hiroshi can't do. Can he make me wear Converse Chuck Taylors? Apparently he can! For all the years I've been a sneakerhead, I have never owned the ultra-classic Converse Chuck Taylor. It was just never my thing. But since I got a pair of the new HF x Cons, I donned a pair for the first time in my life today. They look pretty good on. Comfort-wise they could definitely be better. I'm not really anyone particularly special. I'm just a regular guy. And if HF was able to put me onto this shoe, it now greatly increases my chances of maybe buying another one day. Multiply this effect by all the other people who might buy this shoe and you have a lot of converts on your hand. A good move by Converse...Another notch to add to HF's accomplishments...I must say there is impressive power in that.

This shoe is available in only a handful of selected accounts in America. Reed Space drops the HF Chuck this Saturday the 29th.

EMAIL.

Somewhere along the timeline of technology and man's innovation, we have replaced speaking with typing. Email was supposed to be a more convenient and paperless means of faxing. But now, people have replaced email with conversation itself. I have at times been guilty of this as well. There's a grassroots campaign going around to try and fix this. Bring emails back to where they were supposed to be. The drive is called FIVE SENTENCES. As they state:
THE PROBLEM
E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.
THE SOLUTION
Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it's too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.
five.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It's that simple.
I'm trying my best to stick this. So no offense if you get an email from me and it seems short, curt, and to the point.

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Speaking of emails...ever accidentally and embarassingly send an email to the wrong person? Or worse? Call someone out to be an asshole and for some reason, end up sending it to THAT person. I've done it. We all have done. And it sucks. You start thinking about ways to break into that person's office and deleting it before they read their email. Well Outlook has a nifty simple feature to help you in these situations. I'm trying to find something similar in Mac's iMail, but to no avail so far.


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I accidentally left my digital camera on record while I was typing up an email. Came out pretty cool and for some reason, I find it quite hypnotic.

PUMA CULT.

Thank to K for these fresh Puma Clydes. Brings me back to the old school fo shizzle. The limited edition PUMA Yo! MTV Raps Suede III shoe features textured grey and black "elephant skin" and black nubuck. Yo! MTV Raps logo on the tounge as well as the insole.

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And for the ladies who missed out on the Staple 10th Anniversary collection...now here is your chance. Cultist Shop represents for our better half and just dropped this hard to get collection in womens sizes.



If you build it, she will come.

VERBAL.

There's not too many people like Verbal in this world. My dude is Korean. Schooled in Boston. Went to Japan to become a musician. Came out on top with his group M-Flo...one of my favorite Japanese music groups. Then joined Nigo from A Bathing Ape to form Teriyaki Boyz. Did I mention he also has his own jewelry collection with his beautiful wife Yoon? Yeah, its completely ok to be jealous.


Verbal with homies, Rostarr, Yoon and Miss Info.


Then we went and ate the biggest steak he has ever seen in his life at our favorite neighborhood spot, The Orchard.


Peep the Michael Jackson-Jesus Piece. Men's and Women's size...so dope. Its from his company AM+A.

CP RECAP.

I just wrapped up another Cut + Paste and this year was the best yet. Great competitors, great venue, great fellow judges.


Could this place be any sicker to hold a live design battle? In the house of God, a design prodigy will be born.


1300 people in attendance. 200 people turned away. To watch designers!? Who knew???


Think this is easy? Imagine trying to design something with all these people right in front of your face...


...and the clock counting down!


I only took one photo of one contestant and he ended up being the winner. I have crazy vision son! Meet Mate (pronounced like latte.) Congrats man....you rocked it.


Judge's Delight. Andrea, Futura, Deanne, myself and Brent.


Shook Ones Pt. III

CUT & PASTE III

Each year of Cut and Paste gets better and better. For those of you that don't know what it is, C+P is a live design battle that takes place in front of hundreds and thousands of people. Think American Idol with PowerMacs. I've been a judge since Day One and I'm proud to be a part of it. This year, the judging lineup is sick! Brent Rollins, Futura and Deanne Cheuk join me on the judges panel. Come and check it out!
(Click here to check out a video clip from last year.)


(Pigeons!)

LA IMPRINT.

(This is me on the 101 in LA. Note my speedometer.)

L.A., L.A. Big City of Dreams.
Haven't been back to LA in a long minute. The weather...just as I last left it, is still perfect.
The traffic...still sucks. On my way to the hotel, the GPS in my rental car said I was 8 mins away. But because of traffic, it took 1 hour! New Yorkers just cannot accept that level of inefficiency! Well, after settling into the hotel I grabbed a late night dinner with Tony Held, CEO of InCase and Damon Way, legendary skater and founder of DC. This is the beauty of the internet. The three of us have been communicating via email for months and months...but this is the first time we actually met in person. But once we met, we hit it off like old buds. It was very good to meet these successful figures. Two cats I can really learn a lot from.



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The next morning was the commencement of Imprint Life. As told in my previous post, a very interesting collection of artists and creatives here.

(l-r) David Choi, Happy Slip and Xin talk about YouTube as a powerful medium as these guys can definitely attest to. Rob Heppler from WeeklyDrop and Brian Lam from Gizmodo chill in the green room before we head out to speak about blog culture. Alyasha (FiberOps) and Bobby Hundreds (Hundreds) sat with me in a panel about streetwear (along with Jennifer Yu/Entertainment Marketing from New Era).


Whoa! 10000% pigeon dunk! Its awesome that people are still so intrigued by the Pigeon Dunk release...even 3 years later now.


The conference wrapped up with a one-on-one session with myself and one of my design heros, John Jay of Weiden + Kennedy. All we did was sit back and talk. But after the session, the audience and organizers loved what we did. They said they felt like a fly on the wall while we were just having a casual conversation. Haven't you ever had a dope deep conversation with someone and afterwards said, "Damn, I wish we were recording that whole thing!" Lots of time, when cameras and an audience are in front of you, it makes it difficult to be relaxed. But for some reason, we just breezed thru this totally casually and people really responded to it.

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After that, Julia Huang, CEO of interTrend, treated a bunch of us to an incredible dinner. It was at a secret restaurant that is probably not even legally allowed to operate. The front is completely covered up. The entire restaurant of 20 seats was booked privately by us. I absolutely say this without a grain of exaggeration that this was BY FAR, the best beef and steak meal I have ever had in my entire life including every country I have ever traveled to. Words that come to mind are: Cosmic. Mind boggling. Banoodles. Numbing. Ludicrous. Yeah, that good. Sorry, I can't expose the location of this place..but I wish I could. I will go back to LA often just for this place.


Daniel Wu from HK and Dan Nakamura were manning the grills. They also were part of the conference.


Sarah Honda of Smart Magazine.


Staple and the WU.


We made it thru the dinner. Ever wonder what raw cow throat tastes like? Or how about inner AND outer intestines? Trust me...its crazy...but so freaking good. (Myself, Daniel Wu, Dan Automator, and his cuz Larry..with Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot in the background...big ups to him for organizing this entire shindig.)

IMPRINT.

If you're gonna be in the great Los Angeles area this week, I invite you to come check out IMPRINT CULTURE LAB. Its a design conference of sorts with an extremely interesting mix of individuals. My friend Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot is running the show. Pre-Conference stuff begins the 12th.
September 13th is when the real festivities begin. I've got a busy day ahead of me. First there is a forum about Blog culture which will include Josh Spear as moderator. Other panelists are Danny Choo, President of Mirai Inc, Brian Lam, Editor of Gizmodo and Ron Heppler from WeeklyDrop.
From there I go right into a forum on Street Fashion. I'll be joined by Eric Nakamura (moderating), Alyasha from FiberOps, Bobby Hundreds from The Hundreds, and Jennifer Yu from New Era. And from there, I wrap up with a one-on-one interview with John Jay and myself. I don't even know what that one is all about! But it's an hour and five minutes long so I better start thinking of something to say...
The other panels look really interesting also...I wish I could check some of them out. Anyway...see you in LA!

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Have you seen Chris Brown's new video? This is what perplexes me about the fashion industry. How is Chris Brown rocking the new Staple Fall 07 Varsity Pigeon Jacket in his video before I even have it for myself!? Dammit...I always get shafted. Well, enjoy the video. This kid can cut a rug.

PASSING SHIPS.

On September 3rd, 2007, a man by the name of Carlucci aka ELF passed from this earth.
He was a visual and verbal fixture in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I often saw him on my morning walks to get breakfast or lunch. I first met Elf about 8 years ago when Alife was art directing Mass Appeal magazine and we were doing a feature together. His raw imagination and artistic integrity immediately captured me. We fell out of touch as I worked my ass off like any good chinaman should....and he, most probably continued to create infinitely.
When I moved Staple, Reed Space and myself into the LES, we reconnected...often at impromptu moments. We would often get caught up in long conversations about art, commerce, the neighborhood, the changing of the times, etc. I am always caught off guard when such talented artists can somehow find a way to relate to me. I always think, "You're so freakin talented! It's so dope that you are even having this conversation with me!" He wanted to hold an exhibition at Reed Space and I was always ready to do it but the timing was always an issue. This happens a lot in New York. People are like ships passing in the sea. Sometimes you come close enough to have a conversation. Sometimes you stop and actually collaborate on something. And sometimes you don't. You assume there will be a next time...and you say to yourself, "When the time is right, it'll happen". But then you take life for granted...because sometimes there simply is no next time. You can google him and read all about his talents, visions and accolades. But to me, Elf was just a damn good man.


(Photo of Carlucci from recent Yonehara exhibition at Reed Space. (11/30/06)

UNINSURED.

A little collaboration with Wendy Dembo from Cool Hunting (and soon to be mom!).
I'll let her explain how this went down.
"Last year when The Gap came out with their (red) campaign, the first word/s that popped into my head, was insu(red)/unisu(red). I wondered why they didn't make an uninsu(red) shirt. They did a few kind of ironic shirts like bo(red) and ti(red).
I think that insurance is going to be the touch point for the 2008 Presidential election. And I thought that making these shirts could hopefully get some uninsured kids to think about their need for health insurance, perhaps even the need for universal health care.
I ran into Jeff of the Reed Space at a party and told him about my idea. And he thought that it was a good idea too. He designed and manufactured the shirts. It took some time, but starting Friday the shirts will be available at the Reed Space. We hope that they will start a dialogue...."

Wow...this is what collaboration used to be like. Two people getting together to make something simply because it SHOULD be made.
Reed Space
151 Orchard St (Bet Rivington and Stanton) New York, NY 10002
212-253-0588

CLEAN CLAY.

Interesting week. After a full 7 days in Vegas...I can honestly saw I am hungover on Vegas. The recovery time took much too long. I had that jackpot ringing sound in my head even after 4 days in NYC. It seems like a ritual now where people travel around for MAGIC and ASR and then drop thru NYC so that means lots of visitors all in a matter of days. The guys from Doublepark in Hong Kong came thru, as did the crew from Sneakers and Stuff/Sweden (kicked their Swedish ass in table tennis...haha).

I got to sit down with Kevin from Hypebeast and have some chill Sunday brunch. Look out for some new developments at Hypebeast coming soon!



The man behind every true sneakerheads weapon against grime: JasonMarkk also dropped by the studio. He showed us some new developments in the works. This is a smart dude...peep the new hog hair brush and microfibre shammies he is releasing soon. Covey thy footwear.


Speaking of coveting footwear, I am really into the relaunch of CLAE footwear. One of the few brands I was sad to see go and even happier to see come back stronger than ever and stronger than most. My man Sung Choi is really doing his thing. Funny thing is, I used to work for Sung. He was one of the four members of legendary streetwear brand PNB Nation. And while i was interning there back in '94-'95, he would tell me to get him stamps and chips. Now he has his own shoe line in my store! Its bananas the way life works. Anyway, if $300 Visvim's are out of your budget, Clae's are a perfect way to get your grown man on. But still be fly.