Avocado Goth

www.avocadogoth.tumblr.com

2011-09-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

I sorta switched over to this...

2011-03-12T23:25:00.000-08:00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If anybody cares

Free Consuling

2011-02-14T11:52:00.000-08:00

I have a session with my therapist today

(found at the McDonalds on Alameda and 7th, Los Angeles)

Sedona Brand Catnip

2011-02-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

People always find it odd when I tell them how I grew up on a cat nip farm in Arizona. I tell them that a cat nip farm is really no different than any other working farm, no different than a dairy farm nor a cattle ranch. No different than a farm that grows apples in orchards nor oranges in groves. It’s just that our farm specialized in a peculiar crop - cat nip.

Of course, cat nip isn’t peculiar to my family. The Gimbels have been slangin’ nip in the desert for four generations and other than a few acres of Dogwood my father planted in the North 40 many years ago, that’s all we grow.

The subsequent line of questioning is usually pointed at the pets we reared.

“Was it a household full of cats?”

The answer to that would be 'no'. My father was a 'dog' man through and through. Big dogs in fact; Alaskan malamutes. The Sonoran Desert is an odd backdrop for an Alaskan malamute. One wouldn’t expect to see such a canine. Large and majestic with bushy, white and black two-toned fur; all the defining characteristics of a great wolf there among the saguaros and sage brush. One of our malamutes, named Caleb, once killed a neighbor’s pit bull when the dog jumped our fence and threatened several of the area children that my mom babysat back then to make ends meet. Caleb grabbed the terrier by the back of the neck and shook the dog ‘til it went limp and its body flailed with the trajectory of the attack.

That, however, is a different story altogether.

"Come now, let us reason together"

2011-02-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

Remember when we found these? We were Downtown where we shouldn't have been and the bus let us out to an empty lot. "Look", I said. God wrote to us in a child's hand, kindergarten paper taped to a kiosk.

He even drew a picture of a monster to capture our attention. The Lord urged us, the "People of California" toward him.

we turned away.

"You should take that", you said.

I ran back.

I look like Bob Marley

2011-02-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

The year was 2009, I think. I worked as a backstock boy and lived with a terrible woman in Silverlake. When we would meet girls I was embarrassed to admit that I'd been reduced to lowly backstock attendant at a fashion retailer in Beverly Hills so Tommy would fudge the truth for me and say that I "worked in allocation management for the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy company" I was a sad man with a fancy coat.

This dude would post variations of this flier everywhere. Some of them said things like "I want a white woman to give me money" or "I like big white or Mexican woman at least 62 inches" I feel like one of the postings boasted that his father was the first Jamaican on American T.V. but I can't quite remember the particularities. I wish I had kept more of them. He/they did/do make me happy.

An Ode To The Transit Rider

2011-02-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

In 2 parts____

part 1. You move your lips when you read on the train

I've had you pegged from jump street

part 2. tough, tough lesbian on the bus you wear an eyebrow ring ring even

as your hair turns grey you were born during the war

"If I had a stroke would you take care of me" "fuck you, you wouldn't clean my drool"

you hang up your phone

Stay Punk

2011-02-03T18:06:00.000-08:00

For anyone questioning my Punk Rock pedigree, I'd like to submit the following photographic evidence

1986, age 7

1992, age 13

1994, age 15

NO AGE, Feel Free, Monster Pussy, Emo Wars @ Big House/Flagstaff

2011-02-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

drove up to Flagstaff with the big homie Emmett last weekend for the rare opportunity to catch my old LA buds turn Sub Pop superstars, NO AGE play a house show. Big House was the place/NO AGE, Feel Free, Monster Pussy, Emo Wars were the bands/off-the-rocker was the vibe. Only bummer was that Rene Hell was there, I was like "whaaa!" then I found out he wasn't playing and I was like "whaaa?"

I'm aware these photos are terrible. For one, I'm an awful photographer but also the show was so much fun I really couldn't bother myself with picture taking. Ansel Adams of house shows I am not.

Consuming Culture

2011-01-31T20:10:00.000-08:00

It's funny, I feel like the people I hang out with and I fancy ourselves above the consumer culture that defines the modern American Age. The truth is people like us, whatever "like us" means,and probably you (if you've stumbled across this blog) actually consume everything...collect everything. We collect records and clothes and comic books and nick nacks. We buy shit all the time, and you know...I'm OK with it.

Here's some of the cool shit I consumed, this week alone.

*disclaimer-I know these photos suck. I have this camera and I have no idea how to operate it properly. If you'd like to help me out with tips or pointers please email me at richard@avocadogoth.com

1974 New Mexico State University Swastika Yearbook
I like to buy collegiate yearbooks that I find at thrift stores. This one is special because I can identify it's owner, it utilizes several cool paper qualities and for some insane reason the fine students of NMSU decided to name their publication The Swastika!!

Fanjana-A Collection of Recordings and Photography from Madagasikara
Another awesome release from Portland's Mississippi Records. This brand of music has rarely or never been recorded before and it comes with a sweet full-size booklet of photos. You can buy it here

The Teeets-More Bangs!
A solid cassette release from Tempe's The Teeets. They Shred YOBS and remind us that it's "not Phoenix's fault that you're hot"

Galena-Grave News For You..
Weird tape loop/sampler/drum machine stuff from Bay Area tape label Sanity Muffin. Cop it here

Emowars-cassette
I finally got to see Emowars in their hometown of Flagstaff, AZ last weekend. Their sound will bring you back then thrust you forward

Monster Pussy-24 Hour Party Pussies
Monster Pussy is a Tucson band named after, I assume, the famous Vaselines song. I'm in love with these guys and the 7" cover was designed by AZ fixture, and my good friend, Bobby carlson

Sunny Sealeopard and Walk-About Junction

2011-01-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

One of the friends I've made since been in the desert is named Sunny Sealeopard. She is a very humany woman with a very animally name. She is an OG member of Y.O.B.S. which is a bicycle co-op and a D.I.Y. show space in these neck of the woods. There's really no woods, that's just an expression. Anyways, Sealeopard is also in a band called The Teeets. She's an all-around great gal and some these photos are from her art show last weekend, some are from Y.O.B.S. and some are just of things a came up on while on walk-about.

Train Brain

2011-01-25T15:51:00.000-08:00

I rode with train with these two kids. They were drinking vintage Four Lokos and talking up a storm. Their conversation mostly consisted of tales of S-ing on D's and pulling T-strings from peoples V's. Flaming Blaque was wild n' out. Bleachy Pop Tart was a little tamer. That's not saying much.

GOT ROBBED

2011-01-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

I'm from the westside of Phoenix. The boys here still dress like it's the lowridin' sixties; white t's, wifebeats, Chuck Taylors and Dickies. A lot of people in this neighborhood have cursive tattoos of their girlfriend/boyfriend's name on their neck. I wonder how many of these people are still involved with the one who's name is on their neck. It's important to remember that you'll get several chances at romance but you only have one neck. If you're not from West Phoenix, please be careful there.

Los Angeles in a day

2011-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

I live in the desert in the northwestern most part of town. If you drive south or east it will be 45 minutes before you get anywhere good and if you drive north or west it will be a lot longer than that. On Saturday we got in the car and drove north and west, further into the desert, past the windmills and old miners' shacks. We drove and we drove until a great city was born of the barren stillness. Beyond the great city was the ocean. We had been here before. We we were in Los Angeles.

fireside chat

2011-01-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

We had a bonfire at Meg's place. Megan, Alsion, Me. Megan and I learned about bicycle co-ops and perverted sex from Alison. We taught Alison about Transgender issues and African House.

Grandma's House

2011-01-09T17:52:00.000-08:00

My Grandma is 91 and she still gets around pretty good. In fact, she just renewed her driver's license. She lives in a big 3 story house on the canal in South Scottsdale. Sometimes I'll ride the canal all the way from Camelback and get to Grandma's house in time to watch 'Ol Duke Wayne warn some frontiersmen of Injun ambush or storm the beaches of Iwo Jima. "War is hell", we both agree.

>

Mandi & The Third Eye

2011-01-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

35th avenue and Greenway road is the epicenter of my old neighborhood. At this intersection you could find a Shell gas station, a Wendy's, a shop that sold inexpensive mattresses and a liquor store. The liquor store is where a lot of us from the area would congregate. Across from the liquor store and caddy corner from the shop that sold inexpensive mattresses lived my friend David Nuñez.

David was a small guy with a big personality. Everyone seemed to love him. He also had a big family and everybody at our school seemed to be one of David's cousins. David Nuñez's mom was a tax accountant and she took advantage of her prime location on the corner by converting the front of her home into an office where people from the neighborhood would come to make sense of their taxes and unravel their personal financial goings-on. David's mother installed dark tinted glass windows and commercial glass and steel doors. Outside she hung a large light-box sign that read "Maria's Tax Service" so that passers-by would be privy to the types of services offered inside her home-office.

When David and I were both in the 10th grade, he and his family moved out of their corner house with the converted office. David and I shared Mr Streeter's sophomore American History class and I remember him leaving well because his last day was conveniently the very same day we had an exam on the events leading to America's declaration of independence from the U.K.

It was a little more complicated to find tenants for David's old house due to the customization. Whoever moved in would need to have a home business, like David's mom. If they didn't that front space, with it's large tinted commercial windows and office carpet would be wasted or at least very awkward for normal home purpose.

3 months later the corner house came in use again. The new residents did, in fact, have a home business. It was my sister, Mandi, who first alerted me to the presence of our new neighbors. The house being on 35th and Greenway, and that corner being an epicenter the way it was, my sister walked by the house every day on her way to the stop where she'd wait for the bus to take her to her job at the mall. When the new tenants began to move into David Nuñez's old house my sister took notice that their's seemed to be a matriarchal arrangement and she described to me the plump woman who appeared in charge. Mandi described to me how she wore a colorful floral-print moo moo & wrapped her head in a turban similar to those worn by the Sikhs of the Indian subcontinent. She was also careful to specify that our new neighbors were not Indian or Middle Eastern or foreign at all, but rather as Anglo as she or I.

The next day when they replaced the light-box sign that read "Maria's Tax Service" with one that read "Psychic/Palm Reader" my sister called me from the bus stop to tell me about the peculiar development on the corner. The new sign used a font similar to the type on David's mom's sign but the new sign appropriated a graphic of an Egyptian Pyramid with a cycloptic eye in the center, like on a one dollar bill. On the tinted front windows the fortune teller applied acrylic decals, listing additional services; chakra alignment and something called "Reiki" among them.

My sister and I were raised absent from religion or spiritual faiths. We weren't atheists or secular humanists, per se, we were just unexposed to the world beyond the tangible and scientific. This generally worked to our advantage as adolescents. What I mean is that we got to sleep in on Sunday as teenagers.

My sister was 17 when she watched our new neighbors, with their claims of clairvoyance, set up shop in that corner house. With no spiritual instruction to help her decide whether these New Agey claims set forth by the woman in David's old house held water or not, her curiosity got the best of her.

The next day she left work 15 minutes early with a failsafe plan to test our new neighbors psychic abilities. "I'm going to stand in front of her house and think as hard as I can" she said "If she's a psychic, she'll sense it and come out for me".

That day Mandi did just that. On her way to work at the mall she stood in the fortune tellers driveway. She thought and willed for her to come out so hard it was just left of an audible scream. She thought and willed and concentrated in her driveway. After 15 minutes my sister's bus was in sight of the intersection and the glass and steel commercial doors remained unopened. My sister walked from the fortune tellers driveway and boarded the bus to her job at the mall selling costume jewelry and hair accessories, having learned a lesson in Universal taxation and Earthly representation that could have never been taught to her by Mr. Streeter or David Nuñez's mom.

what a mess...

2011-01-05T23:06:00.000-08:00

"Just don't let me fuck up, will you?"

Real Talk Express

2011-01-05T12:02:00.001-08:00

the real talk express leaves early in the morning

Goodbye to Eastside Records

2011-01-05T02:06:00.000-08:00

I'm not gonna get all sappy about Eastside closing. Enough people have done that. Yes, I used to ride the city bus 2 hours from West Phoenix to go there as a 14 year old. Yes, I learned a lot about Punk there, a musical subculture which has served as near-religion to me since. Yes, when I came back to visit, some 12 years later, they still had copies of obscure East Bay 7"s, that I had lost, still on sale for the original press price. But I'm not gonna get all sappy...enough people have done that.

FEEL FREE IN TUCSON

2011-01-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

...anyone notice the Avocado Goth??

new bus pass by feel free LIVE! from bobby carlson on Vimeo.

Flagstaff/Vegetable/Feel Free

2010-12-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

I snuck up to Flagstaff this week with Owen. He was charged with watching over Bobby's and house and his dog, Taffy. We holed up and wrote stories and played piano. Beer 'O Clock comes early in Flag so we also enjoyed ale. No need for a fridge, we lined our 6-packs along Bobby's deck.

Living up to it's stereotypes, I found Flag to be comprised pretty evenly of both anarcho-college Punks and Neal Young Hippies

Sunday night Vegetable from Tempe played at Cottage House with Feel Free. These are photos from that show.

Dane in Echo Parque

2010-12-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

Dane on some solo-dolo. Summer 2009

A Christmas Calamity

2010-12-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

All sorts of things can happen during Christmas time, good and bad. One of the most exciting things that happen at Christmas time is Santa Claus' visit. I don't need to explain to you that he arrives by reindeer-driven sleigh. What the general public either doesn't know or chooses to ignore is that direct contact with Santa's fleet of reindeer can be hazardous to one's health due to various bacteria and such.

Santa has plenty of direct contact with his reindeer. They even sleep in his bed with him (on a rotating schedule of course like sister wives). Santa has had all the proper vaccinations.

This year, when Santa and his bacteria-ridden power train arrived at Megan's house in the wee hours of the morning of December 25th, she was awake reading Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto for a class that she anticipated having one day. Being a compassionate individual with a love for all of God's creatures she was immediately drawn to the majestic beasts. She pulled herself from the couch and slipped on a pair of grayish suede oxfords that were near the front door. "I'll just peep at these reindeer real quick", she thought, "Santa doesn't need me in the mix while he's doing his gifting thing, anyway".

She quietly scooted out the front door just as Santa's bottom-half appeared in the mouth of her parents' fireplace, red-furry pants, shiny black Doc Martens and all.

The reindeer were patiently waiting for their captain on the roof. The desert topography of Cave Creek, AZ served as an unusual backdrop for these beasts of the North.

Megan was an accomplished child gymnast and cheerleader. She hoisted herself onto the tiled roof of her parents’ house, using the front bumper of her Oldsmobile as a stepping stool with ease and grace.

She stood for a moment staring at the reindeer, face to snout. Steam poured into the dry desert air from the breath of all the mammals on the roof, Megan included, like smokestacks in some since-abandoned Midwest manufacturing town.

She approached the lead reindeer (Rudolph, I guess). The animal was receptive to her touch. The rest of the reindeer gathered around her and she spent several minutes stroking and nuzzling the large animals, dividing her attentions among them, as one would with a litter of puppies. Soon Santa himself appeared on the roof somehow shimmying up the family's chimney like he'd do a million more times that night. When he saw Megan in her bathrobe and suede oxfords, cuddling his antlered fleet the way she was, he looked as if he had just been involved in a minor traffic accident. He knew that this type of close contact with reindeer for a person without current North Pole shots could be disastrous. Claus however was in a terrible hurry and had zero time to explain why human-reindeer contact was dangerous, what course of action to take now that she had been exposed or to exchange insurance information. "She looks like a healthy broad", Santa said to him, "I'm sure her immune system is right as rain". With no more than a nodding gesture in her direction he mounted his sleigh and with a masculine "Hi-yaaa" he was air-bound to the next household of naughty, nice and in-between children.

From all outward appearances Megan did seem strong. Lean and toned as her gymnastics pedigree would suggest. There was no way for Santa to know that internally Megan was prone to fragility and counted acute allergies to wheat and dairy among the ailments she faced daily. If there was a way to get sick it seemed little Megan would find it. She always kept a positive head about her and rarely let discomfort from sickness or less than perfect adherence to her strict wheat and dairy-free dietary regimen get her down.

By the time her family began to rise on Christmas morning, however, the reindeer flu had begun to show signs in Megan. Having to share a birthday with Jesus, Megan was a bonafide Christmas baby and it seemed doubly unjust that she would suffer the terrible fever and cold sweats that accompanied this particular strain of foreign flu on her birthday and Christmas.

Not one to spoil a party, Megan kept her symptoms to herself, which by now had begun to include stomach cramps and dizziness, while members of her extended family began to arrive for the holiday festivities. She even found the strength to assist her mother in preparing the Christmas turkey, which she had decided this year she would not roast in the traditional manner but rather splay open like a dissection frog in a 7th grade biology class, de-bone the leg meat, stuff the leg meat into the open cavity of bird with a mixture of wild rice and herbs and then tie the whole thing back together with twine in a poultry sculpture that resembled a giant spicy tuna roll. This recipe, which she had apparently adopted from a Martha Stewart cookbook, was laborious to execute and by the time Megan and her mother put the giant sushi roll of meat into the oven her skin was pale and it was becoming obvious to Megan's mother and the other revelers that something was terribly wrong with her health.

She came clean to her family, detailing to them her late night encounter with St. Nick and his famed reindeer. It was still unclear to her if her symptoms were Santa/reindeer related. It could have simply been her climbing and frolicking in the cold December night, sans proper wintertime outerwear, that had her at her current state. Either way, Megan decided, every particularity must be articulated if they were to plan the proper course of action against the illness, which had at this point shown itself through her skin in the hue of human green that seemed common only on the faces of sufferers of man's great plagues of antiquity.

It was with this same level of careful articulation that she recounted the previous night's encounter to the D.O. on duty at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, just a short trip up the 101 freeway from her family home in Cave Creek. Only after Megan's family had exchanged gifts and cards and consumed the enormous turkey roll that she, at her mother's increasingly voluminous insistence, had made the trip to E.R. She now found herself in triage, telling her tail to the tall doctor in charge. The doctor was a physically formidable man who had gone bald before his years, no doubt due to the stress of medical school and the horrors of sewing so many fingers back on to so many strangers' hands. He looked as though he wore Under Armor brand athletic wear and held membership at Gold's gym, a T.V. doctor in the modern tradition of Grey's Anatomy or House.

The doctor listened intently, clearly intrigued by the events leading to the onset of Megan's illness and eager to diagnose his patient.

"It really does sound like Reindeer flu”, the doctor marveled to Megan, "Of course we'll need to run a few tests to be sure". Blood was taken, urine was given and the clocked ticked-on toward midnight when it would no longer be Megan's birthday and it would no longer be Christmas, but she would surely still be in abdominal pain and light-headed.

When the tests from Megan's bodily fluids came back positive for Reindeer Flu the T.V. doctor seemed almost gleeful to report the results. You see, the doctor saw many patients weekly and while their conditions certainly varied from hypochondria to urgently life threatening, they generally fell into the same handful of diagnosis. Why had the doctor spent so many years with his nose in a book, all the while shedding head hair, if not to identify and treat truly rare conditions affecting his fellow man? Simply put, this sort of thing was exciting for him.

Reindeer Flu, at least in these parts, it turns out was exceedingly rare. Only five cases had been documented in the Phoenix area since they began keeping count in 1950 and only three of those cases were caused by Santa's reindeer. The other two Phoenicians inflicted with Reindeer Flu were mischievous school children who had ventured beyond fences to come in contact with reindeer who were kept in captivity in the city's zoo. The Phoenix Zoo has long since discontinued its reindeer exhibit and shipped out its inhabitants because of just these episodes.

"Don't worry", the doctor reassured Megan, "It's nothing we can't fix-up with the right antibiotics". This news was the best present she could have received. By this time the local press had caught wind of Megan's ordeal and began arriving at the Mayo Clinic in two's, one reporter and one camera operator per television station. It would be an interesting Christmas story, they supposed.

Megan was reluctant to speak with the press, not from shyness, but out of sheer exhaustion. It had been a very long day and not one that she counts among her best birthday/Christmases. With scripts for her medication in hand and her eyes sore from the bright fluorescent lights of the E.R. she pained to get home to sleep off this damned contamination and resume her life of no more holidays, as little wheat gluten and milk as possible and not a reindeer to speak of.

POPO house show/EXP/Summer 2009

2010-12-27T19:16:00.000-08:00

This footage from a POPO set at a little apartment jump-off in Echo Park. It was lost. Now it's found.

VEGETABLE live at Cottage House/Flagstaff, AZ

2010-12-27T16:51:00.000-08:00

VEGETABLE from Tempe ended up playing while Owen and I were up here in Flag. It was a house show with Bobby's band FEEL FREE.

Juiceboxxx and Mabson Live in Echo Park

2010-12-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

I think it was the Summer of 2009. I bought one of those flip cams. Quickly lost the flip cam. Just grabbed my big hiking backpack to go to the mountains with Owen. Found that flip cam. There were some good shows on it.

This is big, bad Juiceboxxx with L.A.'s own Kyle Mabson live at someone's apartment in Echo Park. I think it was a going away party. Someone was moving on.

My Heros Are Falling Down

2010-12-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

Every year people die. If we didn't die our world would be a hopeless clusterfuck. Too crowded. It's already too crowded, imagine if God didn't systematically dump inventory. This year however, 2010, a lot of my musical idols dropped. Some of these people were old or sick or both. That's not too sad because who wants to be old or sick or both? Some were young and left us with the feeling that they could of contributed more.

This isn't really fair of us because their lives belonged to them or God or both. Sometimes, when an artist's output affects us in an important way we begin to feel like we have some sort of dominion over their art or their lives or both.

We don't.

Here's a list of musicians, who affected me, that passed on all in one year. I will list them in order of the importance of their art in my life. But who am I, really?

1. Gregory Isaacs

Reggae and other music from Jamaica influenced my musical pallet quite a bit. Jamaican Riddims were among the first genre I experimented with as a young child. Gregory Isaacs is widely considered one of the greatest Reggae singers of all time. When asked who his favorite singer was in an interview, the great Robert Nesta Marley replied "Gregory Isaacs, Mon" I would agree with Bob on this one. Bless up, Gregory. Rest In Paradise

2. Ari Up

Front-woman for the uber-seminal Post Punk outfit The Slits. Her music was smart and fun and ahead of it's time. I can't think of a modern Punk-ish outfit that wouldn't fairly count Ari and The Slits among their influences. If they don't count Ari and The Slits among their influences their probably some shitty band on a shitty label and if they died they wouldn't get mentioned on this blog.

3. Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson

Sleazy was a founding member of Throbbing Gristle. Their label was Industrial Records. Industrial they were, maybe the first Industrial band. Can you imagine a world where Throbbing Gristle never existed? Me either. Besides his extensive musical accomplishments with Throbbing Gristle and subsequent bands, Sleazy was an amazing graphic and performance artists. In many ways Sleazy was responsible for the look as well as the sound of Industrial music and to a certain extent, the genres of Noise and Techno as well. Fanni and Genesis are still around. When they go it'll be pretty close to over.

4. Captain Beefheart

I'm sure this was a big one for a lot of people. I don't have to tell you that Van "Captain Beefheart" Vliet was a prolific rock musician with a career that spanned a quarter decade. I was never a fanatic but I am of the odd and the Captain was nothing if not odd. Jay-Z rapped once that no one else but he was "so Pop and so hood at the same time". I would argue that Captain Beefheart was so mainstream yet so weird at the same time. I'm not sure a truly avant garde musician, the way Van Vliet was, could obtain the type of success in this day & age that Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band have enjoyed.

5. Eyedea

Eyedea was a rapper from Minneapolis. He was white. Both of these things would have sounded strange in the 90's but Eyedea and his production partner Abilities were such proficient MC's (along with Slug of Atmosphere and the rest of the Rhymesayers crew) that the Twin Cities are now synonymous with dope, usually white, backpack rappers. He won Scribble Jam in 1999. That was the first I heard of him. He never really let up. Their weren't too many Indie rappers in the aughties that matched the success of Eyedea and his buddies. Again, I wasn't a huge fanatic but I took this one especially hard. I think it was because Eyedea (real name Mikey Larsen) was so young. His cause of death was a mystery for a week or more before it finally surfaced as an accidental drug overdose. Opioides, in all their forms, cause nothing but death for many and misery for all. Please don't do them.

Lena Horne, Teddy Pendergrass and Eddie Fisher also died this year but I'm not going to write about them.

Circles Toddler

2010-12-19T22:56:00.000-08:00

I grew up in this town and left when I was pretty young. I definitely romanticized my childhood and romanticized the desert. I especially held fondly to the images of my neighborhood which was bordered by the freeway on one side and a large park on the other. My friend lived across the street from me and her mom was a drug dealer. They were a nice family and I spent a lot of time there. Everyone in the neighborhood called her "Ms.T" even though her real name was Theresa. She had a group of men that were loyal to her because of her influence in the crystal meth trade. They served as a sort of goon squad and would do her bidding. She carried a hot pink gun that wasn't made of metal but rather molded plastic. The gun was plastic but it was a real gun. It fired real bullets and the bullets weren't made of plastic. The casings were metal and the projectile itself was made from lead alloy like any bullet fired from a metal gun.

Because of her goon squad and because of the pink pistol, Ms.T wasn't the person to cross. One time an associate of her's fell out of her favor. She had the men who were loyal to her pick him up on the ruse that they were going to go to a local bar. They took the man to the desert in Ms.T's car and shot him 3 times in the chest and the head and then buried him. When they returned, Ms.T asked if he was 6 feet under. "We put him a lot further down than 6 feet" one of the men said. It wasn't until 3 days later that the man finally dug himself out and found his way back to town. I saw him at Mike's Deli, which wasn't really a deli but a liquor store. A lot of us from the neighborhood would hang out around Mike's, so I wasn't too surprised to see him there. I asked him how he managed to get out of the hole and back to town. He said he dug his way out and walked back across the freeway and into the neighborhood. He confirmed that he was in fact a lot deeper in the earth than 6 feet. His hands were still caked with dirt to his wrists from his grueling resurrection and the bullet holes in his chest and his head were still plainly visible. I told him I was sorry about what happened and I was glad he had found his way back home. I couldn't stay to chat too long because I was on my way to work and I had a long walk ahead of me.

I worked at a bargain super-store called MacFrugals. Before that it was called Pick 'N Save. Nowadays it's called Big Lots. It wasn't a very good job and that may be one of the reasons I left so young to try my hand at big city living in Los Angeles.

I just came back about 3 months ago. Nothing too exciting was going on in the old neighborhood and I grew bored quickly. I went Downtown to see if there was anything stirring. I passed Circles Records which was a hopping record and tape store when I lived here the first time. Circles had since closed and the building was pretty well boarded up. I found a door that looked like it could be breached easily so I wrestled with the knob and found my way in. Once inside I saw that there were a handful people, maybe 20, who had taken up residence in the abandoned record shop. I talked to a nice man that seemed to me to be the leader of the lot. He told me that they had been there for several years and a couple of babies had even been born in the squat and the babies were now toddlers. I saw a Circles toddler playing with a Transformers toy on a yoga mat that had been fitted with sheets and was apparently being utilized as a makeshift bed. I asked the man why they had decided to live inside of Circles Records. He told me they had chosen the location because the vinyl record, as a medium, was dead. I knew he was wrong about vinyl being dead, but I decided there was a possibility that he was right about a lot of other things.

inspiration

2010-11-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

Nacho sent us this video hoping we could draw inspiration for backgrounds in our recent BLOK photo shoot. inspiration indeed.

Directed by Eric Wareheim Music by Flying Lotus Silverlake's definitely in the house

his video below contains some explicit cartoon scenes, flashing lights and is FOR OVER 18's ONLY.

Directed by Eric Wareheim (Tim & Eric) in association with Warp Records and Warp Films. Music by Flying Lotus. Co Directed/ Animation by Devin Flynn. Co Directed/ Edited by Eric Fensler. More info at dancefloordale.com

Tiny-Baby Ginger Dawn

2010-11-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

It was the 1980s and the absolute height of the inter-continental political phenomenon known as the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was still in place and we, as a nation, we're unaware that the U.S.S.R. was on the verge of collapse while America continued to play catch, to ride the school bus, to pack sandwiches for lunch.

It was 1987 and I was a tiny-baby ginger. I was living in suburban Phoenix and i was absolutely terrified of the Ruskies.

I would have a recurring dream, the only one I can remember, where I would wake up to a ruckus in front of my house. I would look outside my bedroom window and see tanks rolling into my cul-de-sac. As I brushed the sleep from my tiny-baby Ginger eyes I would focus on the writing painted on the exterior of the tank, it was not our own, it was Russian.

I was fucking scared and it had more than a little to do with this popular teen film.

racehorse charlie

2010-11-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

Today I took a drug test. The process of peeing in a receptacle is funny enough but the truly amusing aspect of this whole experience lay in the written material that accompanied the test.

There was a list of illegal drugs that would trigger the test. It read as a list in 3 columns.

In the 1st column was the proper name of the drug or the active ingredient in the drug. In the 2nd column was an arbitrary abbreviation that the drug testing company assigned to each intoxicant (column 2 was really unnecessary) The 3rd column...well the 3rd column was a list of "street names" for each drug; euphemisms that would hip parents and square authority figures to the vernacular of the stoner adolescents or burn-out employees so that everyone was on the same page.

I don't know who decided on the "street names" but they were apparently flown in on a time machine from the pages of a Beat-era William Burroughs novel. I have never heard most of these names used before, in fact I'm pretty sure that if these slang terms were ever legitimate they applied to pharmaceutical drugs that were long out of production by 1979.

The 3 columns read as follows:

Marijuana THC pot, grass, weed, dank, ganja, bud, hydro, zig zag
Cocaine COC coke, racehorse charlie, yeyo, blow, nose nachos, hooter, crank
Methamphetamine MET crystal, speedballs, crank, speed, glass
Amphetamines AMP speed, gaggler, black beauties, beanies, pep pills, lid poppers
Ecstacy MDMA E, XTC, X, disco biscuits
Opiates OPI gun powder, morphine, smack, H, corage pills, horse, bomb, heroin
Phencyclidine PCP angel dust, rocket fuel, wack, ozone, fry
Benzodiazepines BZO downers, tranks, benzos
Methadone MTD done, fizzies, chocolate chip cookies, juice, water
Barbiturates BAR barbs, birds, red devils, yellow jackets, block busters
Oxycodone OXY oxy, killers, OC, oxycotton

BTW, my test was negative on all counts :)

not MY kid...

drug test results that Ian MacKaye would be proud of...

Melodica King and the World's Best Island

2010-10-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

Back in the day if a friend had a birthday, a friend i liked a lot, I would always get them one of several Trojan Records 7" box sets. Vinyl box sets are fucking cool, especially when they're 45s.

I would do this regardless if that friend was a fan of Reggae or Jamaican music. I aways felt like my friends who didn't appreciate Reggae just didn't understand it.

Me, myself have always had a minor obsession with the soundz of Jamaica. How could so many prolific artists and so much musical and recording innovation come from one, tiny, isolated Caribbean Island.

And, as if I need to tell you, Jamaica's hella gummy, so these pioneers in the audible arts were bobbing and weaving rude boys and manipulating reel to reel recording in grass huts. Lee Perry, legend goes, burned his own studio down twice. Incinerating with the structures his master tapes, never to be recovered.

Also, anyone familiar with the early days of UK Punk, knows that Reggae was the sound track to the seminal Roxy crowd, with Don Letts leading the charge.

One thing's for sure Augustus Pablo is the melodica king, Lee Perry is the main Upsetter and Trojan Records is the business.

Do They Owe Us a Living....Southern Style

2010-10-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

So our lovely and talented friend, Chris Berdine recently traveled to North Carolina with his equally lovely and talented GF, Melissa. Melissa's native to the Confederate States and they were excited to visit some of her kinfolk.

While in Charlotte, they get a wild hair up their collective arse and head out to see some good 'ol hootin', hollerin', corn-holin' rock n' roll.

Chrissy sports, as he should, an Avocado Goth GRATEFUL THREAT logo T. Imagine the shock and awe on both sides of the fence when he runs smack dab into our buddy on the left side of the above image rocking a fucking GRATEFUL CRASS T!!!! Mind you, we don't know this kid and we're pretty positive he doesn't know us. Luckily, the southern stranger explained that the t-shirt was a one-off that he had screened for himself. Cheers mate! We likey a lot!

One thing's for sure, The Avo Goth Clan and our new Southern buddy are kindred spirits!! If you find us, get at us...

avocadogoth@gmail.com

nehru jackets

2010-10-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

nehru jackets is a blog i like about Indians and rap and stuff

nguzunguzu

2010-10-02T21:44:00.000-07:00

I'm a hustler, Makin' that dough

2010-10-01T15:00:00.001-07:00

an ode to downtown los angeles

2010-09-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

Bukowski sprawled in your duck pond park, drunk on drink and prose and watery duck pond air, John Fante, too & me, as well.

The pond has since become a spout; a launching pad; Pershing Missile Square.

It wasn’t until many years later that I overheard a man at the bus stop say,” that used to be the most dangerous plot in Los Angeles”

The pond had since huddled over, coddling docile homeless and middle-management Armenian types.

Oh, Los Angeles, your Temple is a street & your Spring has long sprung ever-changing, a metamorphic municipality bodega to parking lot warehouse to loft. Even your wholesale fashion for the poor vacates for I.T. guys and painters and middle-management Armenian types, & me as well. Gentrification they say, but phantom Bukowski & Fante’s apparition know there is something far more sinister at hand & me as well.

A black lady pulls over and flags me down. She has real human hair and finger nails with the length & curvature of the journey itself, “Can you tell me where I will find the courthouse?” “Four more blocks & you’ll see it on your left." I have no idea if this is true.

What did you expect?

2010-09-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

Bored, underage and HORNY in South Central

2010-09-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have a knack for finding personal things that have been lost by their owners. If you look, the streets are paved with handwritten notes and personal effects. Somehow, on their individual journeys, these items became discarded either accidently or purposefully, and intercepted by me.

I used to be a waiter in a sports bar. This job was the best for my hobby of collecting articles that were never meant for my eyes. I would very often find portraits; patrons had sketched on napkins, of their friends sitting across from them in the restaurant booth. Another common find would be paper napkins with designs or schematics penned on. The vagueness of their purpose intrigued me, what were these rednecks building??
I would also sometimes find these same napkins scrawled with the silent cries of customers finding their own private hell right there in Casey Jones Bar & Grill. The notes would read something like, “I’m sitting here in so much pain and you’re not even noticing”…blah, blah, blah. I could generally tell by the way they crossed their Ts if I was dealing with a real live psycho or a drama queen with a Dr. Pepper addiction.

I live in LA now and I find a different quality of items now. Bigger, scarier, sexier.

Today’s story is of a note I found outside of South High in South Gate, California. It’s the story of a young boy who went big in an attempt to get sexy and in the process scared us all.

Written in the classic “back n’ forth” style of in-class note passing, the letter exhibits (I think you’ll agree) handwriting that’s very definitely that of a boy and separate handwriting that’s uniquely feminine. I will transcribe the note now; as well I shall include a scanned copy so that you may be that much closer to majesty that is this pubescent dialogue

BOY: So how was it?? You like it??
GIRL: It was alright, I guess!
BOY: Ha Ha Ha OK well today
GIRL: But today it’s my turn!
BOY: How aboiut we both just do it at the same time I’ll finger you and you jack me off??? Or ask to the restroom and I’ll go a little later yeah??

GIRL: So u did like it! LOL!
BOY: Afterschool! Yeah!!and OK how about we just fuck???
GIRL: IDK cuz my friend likes me and ‘ll probably get with him & yah I’ll fuck with him better!
BOY: Dam well we’ll fuck first then you can get with him and dam that’s dirty ☹
GIRL: Why is it dirty?
BOY: Cuz Ive been doing stuff with you!! So lets fuck today or what???
GIRL: Cuz we’ve been doing stuff? That doesn’t make it dirty
BOY: It makes it dirty cuz your just going to fuck with him LOL so do you wanna fuck?
GIRL: Nah I’m just playing I’m not going to fuck with him but I will probably get with him so it will probably come to an end! Ha Ha LOL!
BOY: Well then lets fuck so it could come to an end like that at least yeah
GIRL: IDK cuxz he aint saying shit so yah! But, but I’m a virgin! Ha ha LOL!!
BOY: Oh OK then and yup its ok ☺
GIRL: Whats Okay?
BOY: That you’re a virgin!!

GIRL: oohh!
BOY: so yeah??
GIRL: so yeah what?
BOY: If you wanna fuck??
GIRL: sure! But IDK, when?
BOY: Today!!!
GIRL: NO not today!
BOY: why not today??
GIRL: cuz I cant!
BOY: why?? We wont take long!!!
GIRL: NAH! Maybe next time & do you have a condom?
BOY: OK and ha and I dont why??
GIRL: Cuz we need one!
BOY: ha not even I feel when sperm comes out I can just pull it out!!!
GIRL: sure, wat if an accident happens I don’t want to be preggo!
BOY: you nwont!!!
GIRL: U never know!
BOY: OK

The End

2010-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

We've been in the desert all weekend, tripping on peyote quesadillas. We came up with a ton of great ideas. So many great ideas that some of them may still be good when we come down.

Didn't The Dead Milkmen cover this song...?

We're Famous In Other Places

2010-08-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

10 days ago we put 2 Avocado Goth T-Shirts for sale on e-bay, $30 each. We made 200 Grateful Threat T's and 100 B. Skiff Mickey T's

They were very well received and we've sold the bulk of both limited edition shirts. One problem...we've only sold t-shirts to 1 American, no one in Los Angeles.

Fuck you guys.

Why do French kids, Japanese kids, Danish kids <3 Avo Goth, so much, while no one in own backyard wants to part with $30

Avocado Goth is the Otto Von Schirach of Fashion

Whatevs, We'll just cry into all these Euros

Oh, by the way...The one American lucky enough to have already scored a Grateful Threat T, size Medium... My Aunt Bobbie in Denver :/

Avocado Goth... OUT!

P.S. you guys should come see the homies Baseck, Otto and Venetian Snares next week, SO FUCKIN' DARK

Baseck shreds balls...

Fast Times at La Cita

2010-08-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

MONDAY IS THE BEST NIGHT OF THE WEEK!

336 S. Hill Street
DOWNTOWN, 90013

Free before 10PM, or if you say AVOCADO GOTH and wink.

This Breast Milk Has Us Sideways

2010-07-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

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

Counting Sheep, 'cause dreamers don't sleep

2010-07-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

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
,

PROCESS POST: Sourcing T-Shirts

2010-07-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

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...

Sleep, Little One, Sleep

2010-07-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

Lost (and found)

2010-07-12T10:21:00.001-07:00

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?

Earl Sweatshirt

2010-07-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

so what, so what

2010-07-07T17:00:00.001-07:00

PROCESS POST: Sample fabrics

2010-07-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

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.

QUESTION: what are the AvoGoth kids listening to today?

2010-06-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

ANSWER: Moondog, Viking of Sixth Avenue.

Moondog was New York's equivalent to our very own Pirate Ricky. He left his home to live on the streets of NYC for thirty years, blind as a bat. He dressed like a bum version of the Norse god Thor and wrote beautiful symphonies until his day of death in 1988. What a sad day for the New York street scene. And then I was born!

Listen to this!

Here's me eating popcorn like the Norse god Thor!

It's a Dry Heat

2010-06-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Although we're scattered up and down the Killifornia coast, now, pretty much all the Avocado Gothers have lived in Arizona. A couple of us spent the the entirety of our childhoods in the desert .

In the spirit of that mystical, arid corner of our great USofA I accepted this gift from Megan of stick n' pokery...

Kissed by a Goth

2010-06-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Big day for Avo Goth. We have this one patternmaker, literally, by the balls.

Lots of pretty fabric coming in this week. I would show you swatches but there's too many biters (urban outfitters) trying co-opt our magic.

Also, on the phone with the dude, himself...Zackey Big Rankin', talkin big big tings.

AVOCADO GOTH, ALL UP ON YOUR BABY MOMMY'S BODY (If your baby's mother was a really well-dressed young woman with Bauhaus on her iPod)

Avo Gothey + Mustache Mondays= Love 4-Eva

2010-06-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've always asserted that Nacho Nava is the king of Downtown LA. If there was a contest electing a prom king for Downtown, I would throw my vote at Nacho.

The other fine-ass young cannibal immortalized in this photo is Quinten. Quinten is a friend to Avocado Gothic, nay, Quinten is fucking Avocado Goth!

They were both rocking the label last week at Mustache Mondays; Nacho's seminal,ridic poly-disco-freak weekly party. If you live within Los Scandalous city limits then you know what's up...or maybe you don't and you're a square motherfucker and you're probably not reading Avocado Goth.

I just realized that it's monday, AND, Megan is working the door tonight, so Mustache and Avocado Goth really are family! *HEARTS*

JUST FUN, Brian Skiff for Avocado Goth

2010-06-19T13:21:00.001-07:00

This is the newest Avocado Goth t-shirt. Don't worry, its not what you think it is. What you're viewing is actually an image of a gentleman dressed in a Mickey Mouse Suit catching brain from a prostitute dressed in a Minnie Mouse suit..so, calm down, it's JUST FUN

Oh, by the by, this sexually stimulating imagery was drawn by Echo park's preeminent comic book crust punk, Brian Skiff. Skiff likes cartoons, drawing cartoons in compromising positions and giving people really fucking good stick and poke tattoos. He also likes Danzig, a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. He's kind of gay for Danzig, so much so that I bet the video below will make him cry.

BZZZZZZ

2010-06-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

In order to be taken seriously in the business world, we decided it would be best to cut our hair. So, Richard buzzed a chunk of my head. Look!

the fucking cunts treat us like pricks

2010-06-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

We at Avocado Goth really love Peace Punk. It's like our favorite thing. We're gonna start a Peace Punk night at Drai's on roof of the W in Hollywood. The actor from "Entourage" is supposed to show up...it's gonna be super-fun, you should come.

We should probably include Zounds and some other American bands like A.P.P.L.E and Nausea but these will do for now...

ANARCHY/EQUALITY/AVOCADOS

tramp stamp (is this only exciting to us?)

2010-06-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

We got rubber stamps, Son! i wanted the old school, rubber stamp and pad but apparently the only type they make, nowadays is this...

We're just a GRATEFUL THREAT

2010-06-13T19:45:00.001-07:00

We realize this imagery, while benign to 99% of the populous, may be offensive to certain hardliners as well as members of the granola elite. our statement to those people is as follows: Not doing drugs and shit like that is cool, just don't get all up in my dentistry about it! And to the throngs of hackey-sackers looking for a pick-up game; NO, we don't want to play!

Screenprinted on virgin American Apparel 50/50 t-shirts

extremely limited edition

XS-XL

$30 USD