RESELL

What’s the situation with these (scrapped?) Supreme x Nas images? Looks like a photo shoot that should have happened a long, long time ago and something that could cause a hype situation if it appears on cotton sometime soon. There’s a lot of rappers out there who don’t look at home in that kind of gear — they’re on that Karmaloop trolleydash non-steez or (insert Zumiez stocked brand here) surprise box anti-swagger. Nas looks at home in it.

The ad above is another late 1990s Small Earth ad (I posted a sumo wrestler in XIs one here a couple of years back) dating back to 1998. French-made adi, a selection of Jordans and a handful of cult 1985-era Nikes were worth money to Grand Rapids, Michigans buy and resell to Japan enterprise. Chuck Vander Hoek and his business partner capitalised on the Japanese kids coming into their vintage clothing stores to set up this targeted business — some OG American resellers. Anyone shifting their Hawaiis to them for $63 was probably jumping for joy. If only they knew…

I never got down with the whole toy thing because I’m old, every release was more expensive than I ever anticipated and because some dickhead decided to call them things like “urban vinyl” to justify being over the age of 11 and still buying action figures. That doesn’t stop me needing the new life-size Medicom Gizmo, complete with puffballs of potential mayhem caused by a clumsy Corey Feldman. I still kick myself that I never got hold of the Medicom Bride of Chucky era Good Guy doll replica, so despite the $300+ price tag (nostalgia is an expensive industry), I need Medicom’s latest foray into the Mogwai species in my life. Gizmo is the pet I always wanted and ownership doesn’t mean the fear of having a dubious stereotype knock at the door to claim him back, or the potential annihilation of my hometown.

Bobbito Garcia’s Where’d You Get Those? is the greatest book on sports footwear ever written by a long, long way. There’s a few books on the topic en route, but nothing touches this 2003 tome’s authority and sense of actually being there and hoarding AF1s at least a decade ahead of the majority. By cutting off at 1987 (bar his section on slept-on classics) to avoid the influx of gimmickry that dropped in the years that followed. The Where’d You Get Those? 10th Anniversary Edition drops in November after being out of print for a few years and it looks like Bobbito has wisely avoided any temptation to go beyond the cutoff year for this one. However, that proposed cover, is an abomination compared to Brent Rollins’ masterful work on the original release.

A while ago I wrote an interview with the mind behind SOTech. It’s pretty detailed and worth reason if you’re inclined toward military gear and tired of milspec’s misuse of late. My eagle eyed partner-in-hype Charlie Morgan spotted the SOT-BLK gear crop up in Union — the fruits of SOTech’s work with Rob Abeyta Jr (who has a military background and is who I would want on my side in a brawl situation) — with the near-invincible baggage that’s created for battle conditions is tweaked slightly for everyday use. If you’re going to protect your blank Moleskine and copy of Monocle you never got past page 17 on, it’s good to know that if those parachutes drop en masse, your MacBook will be protected during the subsequent fight for freedom. The SOT-BLK Mactac bag is a tweak on a design originally created post 2008 Mumbai attacks for anti terrorism gear to be kept in a single bag. It’ll be interesting to see how the recent moves to get the U.S. military share a single camo pattern affects contractors and manufacturers, but this is perfect baggage for the disorganised and accident prone. Built to survive the world’s worst and ideal if you wake up and you’re the last living blogger on the planet.

While I keep hunting the rest of this W)Taps GRIND shoot, I recommend listening to this William Friedkin interview, where he discusses throwing out some Basquiat paintings, meeting Darby Crash and naming Sorcerer after Miles Davis’ 1967 album (which is also discussed in his fine memoir, The Friedkin Connection). Sorcerer is a slow burner, but that exposition and slow-burn tension pays off, so it’s good to hear that one of the most underrated films of the 1970s (a notorious flop) is coming to Blu-ray in remastered form. Friedkin’s approach to audio is something deserving of more than the current bare-bones, half-arsed DVD release. Despite his reputation for rages on set, Friedkin’s opinions, co-signs and evident passion for the craft are admirable.

LIBERTIES

There’s a special place in hell reserved for people wandering around saying “Trill” and “We out here”. Especially hipst… actually, let’s be more direct — whiteys. Unless you’re Haystak or Lil Wyte or something. Self hating hipsterdom of the Homer Simpson “It’s funny ‘cos it’s true! We’re so lame!” kind is equally jarring, but honestly, the only rap nostalgia I’m interested in is a restoration of the days when melanin-deficient rap nerds got a “What do you know about hip-hop?” reaction to any attempts to spark a chat about Rap-A-Lot. I used to enjoy the vicarious thrill of listening to X-Clan, King Sun, Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Geto Boys and Brand Nubian just because they didn’t seem to want me listening to them. They weren’t retweeting my endorsement — rappers were taking my international money order for fan club membership or merchandise and sending me nothing because I was a white rap fan and I didn’t deserve it.

It was a poorly kept secret that we were the ones funding the industry by making up a lion’s share of music purchases, but nobody seemed to cut us any slack — we were honkys, crackers, goofy dudes or cops with amplified caucasian dweebiness on album interludes. We kind of knew our place. Even MC Serch sometimes sounded so disappointed at being white that he’d berate white devils too. Somewhere down the line, the pet white characters like that white dwarf in Too Much Trouble, Miilkbone and Knucklehedz gave way to a post-Eminem world where wild liberties are taken, kids that aren’t Paul Wall have fronts, people actually debate whether it’s cool for white people to say “nigga” (some people even think it’s cool if Gwyneth Paltrow does), hug rap replaced thug rap and even the gooniest goons seem to want to interact on social media, not helped by a climate of dickriding where rappers and hip-hop personality on Twitter “reacting” to stuff is a big deal and everything has to be “addressed”.

As is the case with high-end brands and formerly snooty stores wanting to be buddies all of a sudden, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with rap’s acceptance of me. I’m assuming that the NPR intern kid is white (posisbly even fictional) and there he is dismissing Public Enemy — that would have been a beatdown in 1988 (not that I’m advocating one and it’s kind of quaint that kids still want to be music journalists). Now it’s just a low-level viral ticking off. And how did you just get on the Trill talk when UGK said it 24 years ago (20 if we’re talking Jive records)? “We out here” is strictly for white teed characters in the background of WSHH videos. Revoke those passes people — hip-hop needs to start getting intimidating again. The music’s still on point but some folks need to be kept in check.

Anyway, everyone knows the only white dude hip-hop allows is Phil Collins.

If you spotted the mysterious artwork for Pasolini’s ‘Trilogy of Life Criterion Blu-ray set doing the rounds this week, which may or may not be a fake, because its origins are mysterious, you’ll have spotted the homage to Basquiat in there. Whatever the origins, it’s a lot cooler than Swizz Beatz shouting about “That Basquiat Life!!!!!” on Twitter. Is a disfranchised, heroin addled existence something to add multiple exclamation marks to? How about, “That Mark Rothko Life!!!!!”

I maintain that Long Beach’s Proper don’t get their due for breaking from the collaborative norm just before a hype communication infrastructure was in place. Their ASICS GT II used speckles when they were still cool and applied military grade ripstop long before everyone else did. In a ‘Sneaker Freaker’ interview in 2005, they talked about a Gel Lyte III they were working on (seemingly coinciding with the model’s reintroduction). And then, nothing. This Knicks-colour version of the shoe is one of the great lost collaborations and it even has a phantom-like quality, thanks to some wonky Photoshopping. If this shoe had come out, I would have lost my mind and I still think it holds up, despite the slew of makeups that have dropped since.

1984

Weapon ads in old issues of ‘Black Belt’ take it back to 1984 — a time of local video shops with a wall of cheap martial art movies to match the heft of the horror and porn sections and school trips to France being the optimum time to pick up knuckle dusters, fun size explosives and the fabled throwing stars. Not so much ‘Niggas in Paris’ — more like ninjas in Calais. I love these pictures, from the peak of Michael Dudikoff’s career and a time when Lee Van Cleef and Sho Kosugi in ‘The Master’ took ninjas prime-time before a swift cancellation, who wouldn’t want foot claws and a belt buckle with a removable throwing star. The scope for stupidity, and a trip to the emergency ward, with these offerings is still deeply tempting. Who would have thought anything that included a knuckle knife could look downright quaint 28 years down the line?

My quest for the perfect sweat continues and like the white tee one (mission aborted, I’ll stick with Kirklands from Costco from now on) it’s too subjective to announce a winner. But looking in spots like J Simons reveals some contenders that aren’t Japanese repros or the usual suspects. Germany’s Pike Brothers have a grey melange number that gets the neck, cuffs and snug but not skin tight (the downfall of many a fine effort from the far east) fit right. The brand seems more aimed at the 1950s’ revivalist crowd, but even if you’re not a pomade and braces kind of chap, they get this basic right and drop it at a fair price point. Taking the name of the design back to its physical training origins by calling it the P.T. Sweater makes a lot of sense too — resisting any urge for contrast ribbing or flat lock seams that you’d be able to see from a mile off lets this accessorise pretty much everything. A very strong effort.



As proof that people have been solemnly over thinking graffiti on canvases for a lot longer than European tourists have being wandering east London with cameras held aloft on Banksy-themed tours, ART/new york’s ‘Graffiti/Post Graffiti’ has reappeared on YouTube again. It tends to appear then be pulled down and while it’s not essential, it’s a good accompaniment for some core flicks for fans of this miserable sub-culture. I’ve long pondered as to whether anyone downtown in the early 1980s realised that they were at the nucleus of a zeitgeist, or whether it was a squalid hand to mouth time for anyone beyond the chosen few. What is clear is that by 1984, when this documentary was put together, the joy had been sucked out by solemn studies like this. Still, at least some deserving folks were getting paid at this point and now this kind of film is pure gold. There’s some good Rammellzee works and sonics, some Futura and Crash’s leather jacket, but it’s the serious faces in attendance watching the canvas being reworked at the New York Society for Ethical Culture happening that are some of the best footage in this short film. That Marc H. Miller Basquiat interview (an edit of a far longer chat) is the one that inspired the confrontational Christopher Walken conversation in the ‘Basquiat’ biopic — a great film, rife with SANE and COPE tags and throw ups to ruin the historical authenticity, though none were as jarring as the OBEY poster in a Lester Bangs themed deleted scene in ‘Almost Famous.’

Harry Jumonji is a name checked downtown skate legend who represents the hardcore attitude of the city, but had a career blighted by crack addiction and jail time. Life would barely be worth living without the prospect of another focused skate documentary in post-production, and after some solid portraits of other characters, from Gator to Hosoi to Duane to Jessee, it’s Harry’s time. It’s nice to see New York in the spotlight, and while I assumed Epicly Later’d might cover him one day (on the Later’d front, the Fabian Alomar story could fit another 2 hours), NY Skateboarding just reported on a trailer for a documentary from Erica Hill Studio. With a life that moved from Parana to Ubatuba to New York, Harry’s a legend — this 1989 image of him skating in Air Solo Flights and Stussy, taken by Bill Thomas and used in the teasers for ‘Deathbowl to Downtown’ is a classic.