Friday, July 30, 2010

This Breast Milk Has Us Sideways



There's a lot of weird videos online about breastfeeding. I used to think breastfeeding was natural and every baby should be fed from the teet, now I think babies should be nourished electronically, or just fed crackers.

also, don't ever watch this movie

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Counting Sheep, 'cause dreamers don't sleep




We've just wrapped up an insane 5 day, non-stop Avocado Goth mash-mission. Zachy's been in town so that we'd all be in the same place to get some of these things done easier. Zach is crazy and I love it.

When I was a child I always dreamt that I'd somehow be able to fandangle a business that was run as though the main operatives were constantly on acid. Think about our roster...

1. Megan, She's a molecular ball of unattainable beauty , creativity and talent. If I wasn't lucky enough to make-out with her every day , I wouldn't touch her for fear of electrocution

2. Zach, He's like a white Dame Dash, but cockier and way more ready to knuck-up

3. Richie, OK, Richard's a pretty level-headed normal dude. Some people's opinions may differ slightly, but those people are most likely racists or Ginger haters


THEN, think of the other artists we have working with us Lyndsea, Brian, BLOK...Jesus, we're a bunch of insaniacs.. my dream is coming true!! If i could laugh that belly laugh that a mad scientist emits when he finally, successfully graphs a rocket launcher to a bottle-nose dolphin, I would laugh that laugh right now

Also, this is what half of our work day looks like
,

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

PROCESS POST: Sourcing T-Shirts



American Apparel makes nice shirts, don't get it twisted. The problem is, American Apparel blanks are ubiquitous to the point of detriment. Your band's t-shirts are printed on AA, your dodgeball team's shirts are printed on AA, your damn pool cleaners business shirts are printed on AA. They're everywhere. They're places I don't want to be and places I vow Avo Goth will never tread.

This being the case we decided to venture outside of Dov's empire to create our 2nd Avocado Goth shirt. The first place I looked was Alternative Apparel, AA's long-time co[y-cat competitors. Competitors is a stretch. If these 2 manufacturers were basketball teams American would be the Globetrotters and Alternative would be the Washington Generals. Just Alternative Apparel's catalog made me puke a little, so so bad. the models are bad, the graphics are bad, the whole things just reeks of clueless, like, without a clue not the rad movie with a then chubby Brittany Murphy (RIP)

Aside from the omni-presence of these 2 companies I also believe that the silhouette of the t-shirts them selves are less and less relevant everyday. American Apparel has made small technical adjustments to move away from the days of tight-ass t-shirts and side-swept hair-do's of the early 21st century suburban teen masses, but for the most part their basic wholesale blank tees still scream "MALLCORE" and that's just not what we are. Our personal closets are like museums of t-shirts throughout the ages. We wear boxy t-shirts from the 1980's, we love the dumped out sleeves popular in the 90's, these are shapes that represent our shit, these are the shapes i desperately needed.

what to do, what to do...with my time machine weeks from completion and our capacity to create our own cut and sew blank tees a tiny bit out of our reach i turned to the streets of our beloved DTLA for the answer.

I began feverishly visiting every bargain garment vendor between Broadway and Alameda, snatching up every dead stock t-shirt in their possession. Often times these penny-shop owners were literally opening boxes from their basements and selling me 3 or 4 pieces from stock that has been sitting stagnant for years. I'm sure that these vendors never expected to unload this merchandise.

Piece by piece we amassed a collection of dead stock blank t-shirts that represented every trend in cut and fabric composition that occurred in the last 20 years.

It was DIY, it was an adventure and it was exactly what Avocado Goth means.

Once I had acquired 100 pieces, no more than 5 or 10 alike, i shoved them into my laundry hamper and drug them to the 60 bus, en route to Rusty, Jay and the boys at Ultimate Graphics, just over the river in East Los.

Ultimate is the best. Any other screen printer probably would have thought I was retarded, some weirdo with a hamper full of old t-shirts showing up in there office with an illustration of 1930's Mickey Mouse catching brain and throwing up the "hang loose" hand sign. Instead they not only took us seriously, but worked with us, switching ink and printing method with every new fabrication and t-shirt type that came out of the hamper.

What resulted is art worthy of Brian Skiff's original drawing and worthy of the Avocado Goth moniker. We're NOT a t-shirt line and this is not simply a t-shirt. its weird and its wearable and not for everyone. But we're not RVCA, we're not street wear, we're rainbow goths and we're gonna do us 'till we're pregnant with our own babies.

James Chance, just because...

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Sleep, Little One, Sleep

Baby, I was like you once. I slept in a bed with yellow sheets...

Baby, I'll never sleep that way again until I die

Monday, July 12, 2010

Lost (and found)

found poster: Melrose and Kings, West Hollywood, CA



I've learned from the poets of antiquity that the sea is an easy place to disappear. I've learned from my own Burroughsesque travelings through this city that West Hollywood is also quite an easy place to lose yourself...and then possibly find yourself inserted into another man. Then find yourself crying, alone, reading your Gideons Bible. Then find yourself skipping town with an underage boy named "Emillio". Not that that sequence of events would ever happen in my life, but I'm not "Bottem", now am I?

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Earl Sweatshirt

This admittedly has very little to do with Avocado Goth, contextually speaking, but there is a little kid named Earl Sweatshirt. He is cooler and better at rapping than you will ever be. He's fucking 16!

"EARL" /// Music Video. from AG Rojas on Vimeo.



via another one of my favorite rapper/blogger/talkers person; Nehru Jackets

Thursday, July 1, 2010

PROCESS POST: Sample fabrics


On Saturday, Megan and I met with the enigmatic Avo Goth designer Lyndsea LaMarr to discuss the textiles we would be utilizing in our very first collection. It was an exciting event and I'm sure that had the Beach Goths and Hobie Punx statewide been privy to this brainstorming session, they too would have been wearing their stoke-faces.

When we had carved styles, revised designs and truncated outfits it was clear that Megan, Lyndsea and myself had piece-mealed
together a group of garments that were exciting. They are contextually provocative, aesthetically challenging and they promise to be f.a.f(fun as fuck) to wear. Smiles, all around

While we committed to create about 12 garments in total, I have the organizational capacities of a veteran glue sniffer, therefore I decided to concentrate on 6 women's styles; designed by Megan and Lyndsea. I would make the decision to put my men's wear styles on the back burner until my eyes bled from over consumption of chiffon and lace and viscose jersey, then I would re-visit Dude-land.

We set out to that magical land of twills and thrills that lies between 8th and Olympic, Maple and Santa Fe known as the Fashion District. There they would have all the fabrics and notions we'd need, along with a Persian to sell them to us

If you've never explored Downtown L.A's Fashion district you may be missing out. It's part Near-Eastern bazaar and part skid-row thoroughfare. It's the go-to for serious fashion professionals(us) and measly needle and thread hobbyists(you) alike

We haggled, wrastled and ate Popsicles. When the dust had cleared we actually had pretty much all the fabrics ad trims needed to create the above-mentioned 6 pioneer styles. Success, it sort of smells like avocados.

Wish Zachy could have been there. He was there, in spirit.

editor's note: I'm seriously not showing you guys the fabrics because there really is biters out there. When you've been ripped-off for designs as much as we collectively have, you learn your lesson about secrecy, especially when you're hustling with your own cash. basically what I want to say is excuse me for playing my cards so close to my chiseled pecs but sometimes it beez like that.

Anarchy by U.S. Mail

Megan just got these Crass 1st presses in the mail!!!!


as well as some other Crass Records 1st presses that are so rare and anti-establishment i can't even show them to you...or I'm just bored of taking photobooth picture of records, one of those two explanations, probably.