Mission Mission

Today on Fashionist, asked to describe her style philosophy, the girl on the left responds, “Highway sick with a tank. Loosen it up, baby.”

I like it, but was something lost in transcription? If not, what in god’s name does she mean? Link.

Previously:

Tanks and Insects

If you know me, you know that even though I don’t even have the slightest idea where Davis is, I could wear a different KDVS shirt every day for a month and probably still have a couple left over. (My little sister is the publicity director — AND THEY HAVE RAD SHIRTS.)

Well, tonight is the final night of the station’s 2009 fundraiser, so you’ve got until midnight to pledge for this GNARLY ROCKTOPUS, one of the raddest they’ve ever produced. (Also, like a million other premiums and other shirt designs and prize packs.)

Listen live here, and visit the fundraiser page here.

Previously:

Support Handmade Radio

Two weeks ago, my friend Mike and I ran into Mai from Fashionist in line at Mission Street Food. Mike and I are quite fashionable, so Mai took some pictures and the whole thing resulted in probably the best Fashionist post to date.

As part of tonight’s fan appreciation night, MSF and Fashionist are teaming up for real. Mai will be out front meeting fashionable diners all night long, photos will be posted soon thereafter, at which point voting will commence. The best-dressed folks get a free future dinner (wine included). Link.

Plus: The cheesesteak is back!!

Tonight Self Edge hosts a little party celebrating style, motorcycles, vintage stuff, and maybe even blogging. There’s a blowout 15%-off sale where you can also get a free really expensive shirt just for spending $200 on other stuff. Blogger Paul d’Orleans (A.K.A. The Vintagent) will be in attendance. And they’re pouring some kind of locally brewed beer. Link.

tgifreytag explains that this Hugh D’Andrade creation was the “back cover of the program guide for the 2003 SF Indie Fest.” The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? I mean, nobody would wear a hat like that nowadays, or a shirt like that, and god, look at those sideburns.

But everybody still loves “hipster” humor.

Read the fine print here.

Thanks, khtoo!

The police crackdowns have got me all paranoid.

Remember this kid? Surely you must.

Anyway, some accusations were made in the comments section of our original post oh so many weeks ago, and reader lardtub weighed in yesterday with a fashionably late defense of the accused:

baynikuh- shame on you! you should know better than to try to out people for graffiti.
i’m going to come to your house, wait until you do something illegal, and then slam you for it all over he internet. and p.s. he didn’t throw the m1000. you are full of misinformation. that isn’t even a rumor anymore because most people know better.

i know i am commenting way after the comment storm is over, but this guy is, as some people have mentioned, a mission native. i’ve seen photos of him as a child and he had on the exact same pair of glasses, same haircut, same clothes as he does now.

the fact is, hipsters know that they are fake…so they wouldn’t be caught dead making a sign like this in public. they would talk about it for days but the second there was a threat of someone capturing their bullshit on film they would scurry away to pop’s to do coke in the bathroom and only play one thin lizzy song on the jukebox.

Link.

Fashionist thinks so, but I’m not so sure. Sure it’s nice to be unencumbered while cycling, but you also have to look good, and sometimes that means being encumbered. Link.

When Self Edge took over the old Leather Tongue Video space a few years back, I thought to myself, “Oh great, some high-end Marina douche boutique has displaced a beloved Mission landmark.” Over beers the other night, Kiya Babzani, owner-operator of the place, informed me that apparently this was a pretty common misconception in the early days, as Self Edge was repeatedly vandalized and he and his employees were shouted at, muttered at and spat at.

Mind you I’d never patronized Leather Tongue, because who the fuck has even seen a VCR in the last 12 years? But it looked pretty punk rock and I guess I liked knowing it was there.

Now it’s gone, but its iconic signage lives on on the wall at Bender’s Bar.  We grabbed a table right under it and talked Self Edge. At 18, Kiya (bespectacled in above photo) got obsessed with denim, indigo and Japan’s obsession with old American stuff, and a little over a decade later he found himself ready to open the only store in the country specializing in nothing but Japanese reproductions of vintage American garments. He opened it in his favorite neighborhood, where he’d been living since age 20, and it was a success from the start. Despite static from neighborhood haters, there was a global community of aficionados ready to jetset their way to the Mission to browse the wares of such a discerning specialty shop.

In fact, as seems to be customary, upon arriving at Bender’s, Kiya ran into several people he knew, and among them were a pair of travellers from London called Jon and Angi that had been by the shop earlier in the day. They’re newlyweds on an epic journey around the world, and though they had but a couple days in San Francisco, they spent two full hours at Self Edge. Jon said that of all the retail shops in all the cities they’ll visit on their year-and-a-half-long intercontinental tour, Kiya’s tops the list, by a longshot. He had a boatload of jeans shipped back to England.

Denim obsession is a fascinating thing. Kiya for instance wears the same pair of jeans every day for six months, then retires them forever and moves onto the next. He buys jeans that don’t fit him, and never will, solely because of their artistic merit. He knows all about dyes and stitches and can explain exactly why my Levi’s have holes in certain places and not others.

Some people nerd out over vinyl or bourbon or bike parts or comics. Others lose their minds over jeans.

Kiya and his fellow obsessives trade news and knowledge on a website called Superfuture, a lively community with forums devoted to travel and shopping – and denim in particular. People live their lives on this thing, keeping track of new innovations, new endeavors and new collaborations. Self Edge collaborates with other organizations and manufacturers and designers on a regular basis. We mentioned their most recent one last week, and next on the horizon is a jean even more certain to blow minds on the forums.

There’s this user called ringring, respected above most others for his comprehensive knowledge of denim and textiles and the whole history of fashion. Nobody knows who he is or what he does for a living. Nobody, that is, except Kiya. They’d been in touch since ringring made a clandestine early morning visit to the shop a while back, and at some point Kiya managed to convince him to collaborate on a jean. Kiya says the forthcoming single-stitched SEXTXRR10 will not be a standard five-pocket jean. This may mean absolutely nil to the layman, but it’s bound to be big news on Superfuture. And when the release date arrives, people will be lined up around the block, and crashing the Self Edge website’s servers.

But does all of that mean Self Edge isn’t a “Mission business”? The shit’s expensive, but that’s because it’s the shit. Like with Ritual‘s coffee or HMS Beekeeper‘s honey, buyers pay a premium for premium goodness. Moreover, this is a group of people from the neighborhood using the internet to forge meaningful, productive, real-life relationships with people within our little bubble and people well beyond it, and that’s surely something to be celebrated.

This weekend, it all comes together. Self Edge and Superfuture host their annual SuperParty at the shop tonight, sponsored by Fernet, with giveaways from the most prominent garment companies, and it’s sure to draw hundreds and hundreds of partiers from the Mission and around the world. Sunday, the party continues at Bender’s, Kiya’s (and many a Missionite’s) bar of choice, where beer nerds can nerd out on a special barrel-aged brew by Russian River Brewing Company. A seven-ounce pour of Consecration may cost $8, but c’mon, it’s the shit!

Photos by Sidney Lo, Nicole Lee and Andrew Ng. Click photos to view photo page.

Previously in “Fashion”:

Vote For True Love

Remembering Ben Davis

Lou Reed & Supreme

American Apparel Controversy Comes to an End

Marc Jacobs on Change

Fashionable Footwear in the Mission

Fanny Packs All Over the World

Audrey from Awww Damn submitted this design to Threadless, and I hereby hope it makes it through the voting process and becomes a real live t-shirt. Vote here.

Previously:

Ohlone Chiefs Shirt

Best Sandwich in the Mission?