I graduated from college last month. Still looking for a job, mom is on my case. I am living in my college house in Cincinnati, Ohio until my lease is up on July 31st. I am trying to move to more of an urban area whether that is Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago. I feel like it fits my interests more-so. My mom said I am not allowed to move home, so I have a month to figure it out. After that, if all else fails, I am moving to Boston. I lived in a house with 10 guys this year. At times, it was crazy but it was a really fun experience looking back at it, no sarcasm intended. The house was stacked with nursing majors, actuarial science, accounting, finance, physics, psychology.. And then there was me, The art kid. We all had our differences, but we were all really fucking goofy so it worked out. Shit started off extremely rocky... When we moved in, the house was infested with fleas and we had to hire an exterminator. We also were robbed early on. Several kids were contemplating moving out at that point, not to mention a month into the year, someone got capped across the street from us. We heard gun shots ring out, and one of my roommates was a witness. News crews showed up and gathered in front of our house, if the camera tilted up a little further.. You could have probably seen the entire house looking out the window on the top floor. We look down, and one of the roommates ran outside and snitched on the guy! He was the witness on a news report, his girlfriend at the time said.. "He has nothing to worry about, he has a black belt in karate." Yo, I wasn't worried about him, I was worried about the rest of us. Just stay out of something like that.. Especially when the entire neighborhood is there to witness some guy heading to the slammer. The guy who did it was handcuffed in our front yard. After that, it wasn't too bad. We were all friends.. So, honestly your last year of college? What more could you ask for? Living in a place with all the guys. The most drastic thing that happened since was somebody from the block stapled a piece of white bread to our house. I think my roommates were wondering what it meant, hahahahhaha
In the two days after we all graduated, six of them moved out to go their separate ways. One of the guys I lived with was named, ST. (Third from right in the photo.) I have never seen somebody so in love with sports. Every night, he had a massive book where he would look at MLB box scores and take his own statistics. We went to a Cincinnati Reds game, and he brought his own statistics sheet so he could keep track himself. During NCAA March Madness, he made a bracket of notecards where he would draw each individual team in the tournament, their record, and their starting lineups. He spent an entire day doing that and got it retweeted by somebody who worked for ESPN. He did it every year. This was the one from 2017:
Here is a GIF of ST mouthing "what the hell" at a basketball game, thanks CBS! ST is usually pretty rated G, but he was caught on national television in a rather tense moment:
ST had a lakehouse where I met his parents this past year, I remember his mom saying at a certain point.. "He just can't stop gaming." He always had to be doing something related to a game, or sports. After that, every time he wanted to play something, I said to him, "games, games, games" like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas in jest. Almost the entire house started saying it to him after that. The other thing that ST loved was extra-curricular sports. He won an award as the person who did the most intramural sports throughout college. The award was a hoodie. Every single intramural season throughout college.. He was on multiple teams, always texting people on the team, "You coming to the game?" At the conclusion of his last intramural season, he sent this long email to everybody who had been on teams with him throughout the years. He was able to re-count specific moments from almost every person in different intramural seasons and compiled them into one email thanking everybody. He flat out counted how many times certain people were on teams with him, I think some people were in the 30s. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. I was still sent the email even though I was only on a few teams with him. As a person, it was gratifying for me to see one of my friends that dedicated and passionate about something.
A few months ago I walked into a bar. I struck up a conversation with a guy who mentioned my hoodie I was wearing from the Museum of Modern Art. He said that some of the best clothes are from gift shops at museums. I tend to agree. I am not sure if I am ever going to see that guy who I met at the bar again.
Anthony Bourdain passed away a few weeks ago after he took his own life. He was found by his best friend, Eric Ripert.. I was hit especially hard by that. I think Bourdain's greatest talent was his ability to articulate that no matter where somebody is from, people are more alike than different. Kinda corny, and i'm not stating something groundbreaking here, but it's true. People who have kept track with the brand will know that my screenprinter has been gripping the Alpine Hoodies for three months. As an apology, he gave me 36 1-color print shirts. I decided to model the shirt after a fake art exhibition called, "Extra-Curricular Activities" based off of my conversation at that bar, and from ST's passion for extra-curriculars. There is absolutely nothing on the front of the shirt. I just fuckin' love blank white t-shirts.
Looking back at these past five years of school, and even this past week reminds me of another quote by my favorite author, Stephen King. “For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room. No more child’s desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind. Like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to go nowhere. A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity.. And put in a living room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife’s help. In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crusts behind when they moved on, but I didn’t care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me.. And I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk. It’s handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the t-rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. I’m sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I’m doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. And now I’m going to tell you as much as I can about the job. It starts with this: put your desk in the corner.. And every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art.. It’s the other way around.” **This shirt is dedicated to my roommates this past year: Paul, Nicky, Twins, Ryan, ST, Lark, Rob, Gib, and Coyne. White boy basketball.
RELEASE DATE: JULY 10TH, 2018. TIME: 12:00AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME PRICE: $25 USD (SHIPS WORLDWIDE) WITH 2 STICKERS.
TYPE TALK: WARNING: I nerd out over tightly kerned Helvetica. If you aren't interested in typography, you probably want to skip over this part. Yo, so the entire idea behind the back graphic of this shirt was because I really.. really like Helvetica, especially old school posters where it is tightly kerned, and kind of off-kilter (pre-digital.) I stayed in a timber frame house of a lesbian couple in Ogunquit, Maine over the summer. They were incredibly charming women, and had a beautiful home. One of the books, which they proudly displayed, showed the process in making the home through the seasons. I remember they had all these old school sardine posters from the 1950s, paintings, etc. I was having a field day in that joint. Anyways, they had one poster upstairs that really caught my attention for a women's conference. Shit is just beautiful.
Additionally, something that I have loved looking at going on the Helvetica line are Ellsworth Kelly exhibition posters. This one especially caught my eye. You'll see the obvious inspiration.
TUNES:
Note: Shoutout to the homie Tessa for showing me Rostam a few weeks back.