Five Four HUGE sample sale this weekend. Bring cash, lots of dope tees, hoodies, jackets and jeans available!!!!!
Info is below...
WHEN: Saturday SEP. 30TH & Sunday OCT 1ST 10am – 7pm
WHERE:DOWNTOWN L.A.2444 PORTER STREETLOS ANGELES, CA 90021 (if coming from 405, 110 or West L.A., take 10 east to santa fe exitsanta fe – north (go left at exit, you will be on porter street already. Pass the light on santa fe/porter, and continue for ½ block and you will see building on right hand side) I don't know how to come from the Eastside, so just mapquest it....
FOR MORE INFORMATION EMAIL US AT
INFO@FIVEFOURCLOTHING.COM
Oli stopped by w/his pops who is here from England. Oli is going to be in our Spring '07 campaign, here he put on one of our new jackets from next year's line
Also, The Hundreds posse rolled by for a bit to talk shop, life and make fun of each other, what we do best. Bobby and Danielle blessed us w/their presence
Had a pretty fun weekend here, lots of sleeping, a bit of partying and shopping. Sunday rolled out of bed at 2pm, realized by day was half spent. Didn't really do much, went to the gym, saw my mom and bought some flip flops at the new Active store in Santa Monica. The new store looks real hot, check out the Five Four gear that's about to hit this week in their store.
Saturday, was supposed to be a day spent on buying wedding gifts and birthday presents for friends. I have 3 weddings next month, I can't believe I have 3 friends getting married in the same month. And they are all 26-27 years old!!!! Anyways, I planned the day to buy their gifts but instead shopped for myself, what a greedy bastard I am! I have to go next weekend now to buy their gifts, or better yet online. They are all registered, but I personally hate shopping for people through wedding registries, it makes the whole present buying experience very boring and non-creative.
So, this is what I bought instead. I stopped by Undefeated to look for kicks. I bought these Vans, the colors are nuts!
Then went next door to Jack's Eyewear. If you guys don't know about Jack's, well you better get to know it. Dude's got the HOTTEST sunglass game I've ever seen. I've been all over the globe in the last 3 months, but nothing compares to this guy's selection. This is where designers from all over the world go and buy their shades to knock off, including the fine people over at Louis Vuitton. They sell mostly vintage glasses from the 80's, and customize them for you as well. Jack is real cool, very funny guy.
And here they are, Dior glasses from the 80's...FIRE!
Even the case was old school. Before there was a Dior Homme, there was a Christian Dior Monsieur.
Went out to some clubs that night, nothing too special. Friday did the same shit.
Last week was mainly spent grinding away, caught the Banksy show in Downtown. Pretty impressive work, and the line was nuts. Good thing I cut the line.
Had some recent press come out, check it out below.
Rego Magazine did a full feature on the story of Five Four, good looks to Paul from "SGV":http://whatissgv.com/home.html for doing the feature.
Next up is Synthesis Magazine, they did a fashion spread on Five Four.
ION Magazine also did a feature on Five Four.
BPM September 2006...
Lastly, you may have seen our new ad in magazines such as Vice, 944, Flauntt, Complex and Vapors. The ad is featuring one of my very good friends, Jon Alagem.
Got back from Hong Kong about 10 days ago. Had a great trip, to my surprise I had some presents waiting for us. Had some shoes sent to me by Nike on the left side and then I bought myself some presents in HK.
The ones I'm most excited about are the Ronaldinho kicks. I'm a big soccer fan and saw these at a store in HK. The other ones I'm really feeling right now are the white ones in the lower right hand corner, they are TST kicks. Some brand out of Europe, they are sick!
Last day in HK was spent shopping, we saw this lady off of Patterson Street with this dog that was about her size. She was walking the dog, the dog barked at another dog and this lady went postal on the dog. She was basically riding it, slapping it and yelling at it. Normally I would think that was pretty vulgar, but the fact that the dog was her size was kinda funny.
Stopped by the new Dior Homme store in HK, hot as usual.
Saw a homeless dude in HK, never seen this technique done. Dude was basically sleeping in the middle of a walkway on an underground walkway w/a box for money.
Saw our boy Ian before we headed out back to L.A. He made our first Five Four bag, in stores this Fall. Ian is the man, always cheery. He grew up in London for a bit, so he has that Brit side of him that always wants to have a good time and drink up!
Went to Macau as well, for the first time. Took the ferry over and checked it out. For those of you that don't know, Macau is the Vegas of Asia. It actually just surpassed Vegas in revenue, pretty crazy place. The new Wynn hotel just opened up there that week that we were there. Looks similar to the Vegas one, we even saw Steve Wynn walking around, the owner of the place.
The Hotel Lisbon, lit up at night is a site to see. This was the original luxury hotel in Macau.
Even the Sands had a hotel there.
Went to a nice Portuguese style dinner. As many of you know, Macau was a colony of Portugal before. So many cultural elements from Portugal remain there. This place had some amazing food, I think it was called Alfredos or Rodolfos or something like that...
Jerry from our accessories maker sits here w/his friend Alex who both showed us what Shanghai is all about. Coincidentally, they both were friends with some people I went to USC with and after putting some things together, we had actually met about 5 years ago eating sushi in L.A. for some girl's birthday. What a small world.
After dinner we headed off to some spot I've been before called Bar Rouge on 18 on the Bund. It was filled with models, Euros and a whole group of random people. It was like the UN in there, I'd never seen such a mix of people in my life. It was a great time had by all. After 2 bottles of champagne, 3 bottles of vodka, 2 rounds of shots of tequila and 3 other rounds of shots of some weird Chinese shots, we were done for the night. The Chinese definitely know how to party. I had also met up with my friend Solomon at the club. I went to USC with him, he's studying Chinese in Beijing right now. He flew up to Shanghai to meet up with me since we hadn't seen each other since the USC days. It was good seeing him after these years, he was there early on in the Five Four days when we were only a t-shirt brand out of my college dorm.
We had a 10am flight the next morning to a city called Guangzhou in South China, 2 hours away from Hong Kong. We had to meet with a vendor for a few hours and then take an evening train into HK. Getting back to your room at 6:30am isn't a good idea after a late night of partying. We had to be up in 2 hours to catch a ride to the airport. Of course, we slept through our wake up call and got up at 9am. We missed our flight, AGAIN! I don't know what's up, but I've missed 3 flights in the last 2 weeks. I'd previously missed 0, yes zero, flights my whole life. Anyways, we got into Guangzhou in the afternoon catching a later flight.
Our vendor took us to a quick Chinese dinner, the places he usually takes us are really good but this place was a little sketchy. He told us he had to take us here because of our schedule being so tight. Anyways, after dinner as we are about to leave I here a rumble in the cieling above us. Then another one a minute later. I look at him and ask him what it is, he says to me, "Don't worry it's just the rats." So after this statement I realized it was time for us to leave to HK.
We headed to our vendor's office for a quick meeting before dinner. Chinese people love to do big dinners, I mean BIG. We ate like kings, drank Tsingtao beer and headed back to the hotel. Ryan and Eman fell asleep in the cab, here's Eman falling asleep on Charlie's shoulder, how funny does he look. Charlie owns the sourcing company we are meeting with in Shanghai.
Of course, these 2 bozos read about 6 pages total combined of their books on the vacation.
Finally it was time to board our flight. Poor Nick got the worst seat in the plane, literally in the last row in the middle seat.
We arrived in Hawaii in the afternoon and went straight to the hotel.
Went in the ocean for an hour or 2 and headed to the room as it became night. Day 2 was when the excitement started. A crew of us went to go rent scooters and drove around the island. It was a really dope experience. I had never ridden a scooter up to this moment.
Our first stop was a famed bakery called Leonard’s. They serve these donut looking pastries called malasadas, they were damn good.
We proceeded to go snorkeling after this. This was the spot, we saw so many kinds of fish, turtles, etc.
After the snorkeling, we cruised for a bit and rode by the ocean. Listening to my iPod playing Jay-Z, The Killers, A.F.I and Talib Kweli was a real soothing experience. Here’s Nick and J Dubb overlooking the ocean…
At night, we went to go have dinner at Ruth Chris with the Monarchy crew. All of us pounded down are big meat plates, poor Dee the vegetarian got stuck eating mash potatoes and garlic potatoes. He ended looking like Mr. Potato Head afterwards (sonnnnnyyyyyy urbannnnnn).
Next morning J Dubb and I went running on the beach. Don’t ever run in Waikiki, there are so many damn tourists on the beach even at 9am. We spent more time dodging tourists taking pictures. After our dodging experience, we met up with the group for some breakfast. Here is the bachelor table getting some nourishment for a long day of recruiting on the beach.
It also happened to be Dee’s birthday, the big 26. Happy Birthday Kumar! No labels!
Eric (Monarchy CEO) and his wife Vivian enjoy the buffet. Eric so happens to also be my mentor and is like an older brother to me. He’s the guy that schooled me to the game.
Nick and J Dubb proceeded to go surfing after breakfast. The rest of us went to go lay out on the beach. On the walk there, we noticed some street hustler lady that was claiming she was related to Jesus or something of that nature. Then I saw a line of idiots there waiting for her to bless them as she collected a donation, of course. I had to get a picture of this, these things crack me up. I’m a big believer in faith and have a lot of respect for whatever your religion is, but sometimes things are worth making fun of especially when they try to turn religion into an obvious hustle.
Brady (Monarchy Sales Manager) and his wife along with Dee waiting for valet outside the hotel…
We had to go return the scooters after the surfing, before that though, Eric had to pick his nose, it looks like he got DEEP up in there…
After this we headed off to the North Shore in Oahu. The drive up there was filled with Nick freestyling, shit talking by all and a lot of laughs.
There’s this rock where people go and jump off of it into the water. Most of the group jumped off the rock…
On a funny side note, we were playing football in the water and J Dubb thought he was Michael Vick. He threw a rocket pass to me and it skipped the water and started to head out into the ocean. Since I was closest to the ball and I missed the rocket pass, all of the crew throwing the ball said, “go get the ball chedda!” Chedda is this nickname that J Dubb put on me, kinda young. To everyone’s surprise, I actually was on the swim team in high school. I wasn’t the best swimmer, but I was a good swimmer. That was 10 years ago though. In my mind, I said “f**k it, I’m going to show these punks I can swim farther than any of them can and rub in their face”. Okay, bad idea. I probably swam the equivalent of 2 football fields into the ocean as this ball kept riding the wave back into the Pacific. Dude, life sucked at the moment. I was swimming out for a good 20 minutes chasing this ball. Finally, I grabbed the ball. Everyone thought I was going to die and get eaten up or go into the sea. Dude, shit was nuts. Like, real nuts. After getting back to shore 30-35 minutes later, they gave me the heroes welcome. Just thought I’d throw this in.
After the North Shore, big rock and swim-a-thon experience, we cruised in the car to go look for some fresh fruit. We found this spot selling pineapples, coconuts and other good stuff.
It was getting late and we needed to head back to Waikiki to celebrate Dee’s birthday. The drive back was very relaxing.
We ate at some Italian spot overlooking Waikiki, it was a great time had by all.
Nick, being the gentleman that he is, lit up a cigarette for Christine in style.
On Monday, Labor Day, we headed off to some place. I forget what it’s called, all these damn towns in Hawaii sound the same ending in “i’i”. The view was amazing.
Christine, Miss Independent, was the official towel carrier for the crew.
Dee and J Dubb rented a kayak. This was hilarious. They took it out into the ocean.
Attempted to get on it.
Wait, that’s attempt #1. Man overboard.
Attempt #2, not so much better.
Attempt #3, shit, still no juice.
They finally got on it on the 4th attempt. Who cares about seeing those pictures, they aren’t funny at all.
As we winded down the day, we took a group shot.
J Dubb, myself, Dee, Mikey, Nick
Now standing.
J Dubb, myself, Mikey, Dee, Nick
We ended the night off with a meal at Benihana.
The next morning on Tuesday, everyone was headed back to L.A. in the early afternoon except for myself. Next stop, Shanghai, straight from Honolulu. Unfortunately, I have to go to Taipei-Hong Kong-Shanghai to get there since there aren’t any direct flights. My flight wasn’t leaving until midnight, so I got to kick it solo on the beach all day Tuesday. Everyone was back to work, so I was fielding calls from below, check out my office space below on Tuesday.
So the day ended, and it was time to go to the airport. To my luck, there was an accident on the highway. The geniuses in the transportation system in Honolulu only built one major highway from Waikiki, thus there's only one way to get to the airport. The taxi driver estimated between a 2-3 hour ride from where we were, where it would normally take about 20 minutes. I told dude he better take some side roads or else I wouldn't pay him if I was late to the flight. The guy hit the gas and drove down every side street through Waikik and Honolulu, getting me to the airport in 1 hour.
To my great surprise, I had another "male assist" calling due to my snaps on my shorts. I wore them again, forgetting about the detector.
