August 8, 2026
A tranquill morning ride to get coffee from a coffee shop I hate, Harder Day on Sandy and 46th. At least the winds had changed and the late summer wildfire smoke had cleared; you can still see it when you look out east past the mountain. Makes me sick...
This was August 6, 2026. One day before my 26th birthday. I haven’t been sleeping well. Ruminating on the the imminent end of the eden that is a family health insurance plan. Money’s a drag. At least you can trade it for java.
It’s All Down Here From Here
July 24, 2026
Took an 8 days down the coast with my two buddies, Forest and Dylan. I never thought of myself as a roadtripper but this trip maybe turned that around.
We set off from Portland on Thursday, July 16. We set off down the I-5 to Grant’s pass before heading Southwest along with the Smith river to the great pacific shores of highway 101. We camped just south of crecent city at a campsite called Gold Bluffs. You need a reservation to stay there but you can also just say fuggit and sleep in the woods by the camp. That’s what we did.
We woke up early and took off to the bay. We were staying with Forest’s friends, (soon to be my friends) Jack and Courtney in Oakland. Jack and Courtney are both inspiring artists who recently had quit their jobs to pursue art full-time. They split their time between Jack’s truck-bed camper, their studio, and various dog-sitting arrangements they find online. Luckily they were dog sitting at a dope ass mansion with a terraced backyard and a trampoline at the time of our visit.
We stayed two nights in Oakland. Saw a couple galleries, skated, and got to hang at the art opening that Forest and I had pieces in. It was at a small DIY gallery called Big Door but there was a pretty reputable line up so we were honored to be included.
After Oakland we hit the 1 through Big Sur. Probably the prettiest section of our drive. Rugged mountains cascading into the pacific as far as you can see down the shoreline. Calm breaks in the topography where caddle and horses graze in fields of yellow flowers, wind sweeping across their backs as the fog sweeps in and out, the sun kissing the water as it descends to it’s westerly rest. Then looping around the backside of earth to warm our tents pitched high up Plaskett ridge above the clouds were we camped for a night before saying bye to sweet northern Cali.
At this point we’d had many nights of drinking and bad sleep behind us. Nothing too ruckus but stil we were tired as fuck. We headed a few more hours south to camp just outside of Ojai by a creek. It was hot and dry and the creek was not the most welcoming body of water considering we came down from the PNW but just enough to wade-in and cool off. We hiked up a ridge for sunset and fell asleep early.
The next day we made it to LA. We mostly just skated and chilled in LA, went to the park and stuff. East LA kinda feels like Portland to me in a weird way. I like frogtown. I didn’t want to leave...
I like living in a car. You don’t have to pay rent. Of course all vacations are escapists fantasies but coming home from this one felt harder than usual. Such joys bring such fears. Being an adult is being afraid; weighing every consequence before making a decision, lying awake at night wondering how shit will shake out. I wish I could say that you can keep it.
NYC weed delivery serves: literature reviewNovember 25, 2024
Early in the morning on November 14, 1990, undercover New York City police officers arrested two bike messengers and two dispatchers at 120 Walker street under the suspicion that they were employed by a weed delivery telephone service, “1-800-WANT-POT”. That same day, the police conducted a raid of Michael “Mickey” Cesar’s comic book shop on 13th and Hudson in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. They seized seven pounds of weed and $3k in cash while arresting Mickey and three more of his messengers. Mickey was well known amongst activists in the village in the late 70s and 80s as the flamboyant and cockeyed optimist who to the dismay of law enforcement often sold weed openly at political rallies and touted the legalization of weed as the only sane path forward. He made himself difficult to miss, often appearing in a bishop’s miter with a giant embroidered weed-leaf covering the front of the headpiece. He was known to many as the pope, heading “The Church of Realized Fantasy” which was self described as “a communal marijuana sex church” where members believed they should be able to get whatever they wanted so long as it didn’t harm others.
Mickey’s weed telephone service was a testament to that. In the late 70’s and throughout the 80s, Mickey had been arrested three times on various drug related state charges and done stints at Rikers Island. Despite the complications with the law, Mickey tirelessly believed in his vision. 1-800-WANT-POT was his third attempt at a weed delivery service after “DIAL-A-JOINT” and “777-CASH” in the lower east side were closed by police. And it was this resilience that ultimately led to his famed success. In the words of Clayton Patterson, lower-east side documentarian, “Even in those fuckin’ days, Mickey sold to everybody. The mayor might not be talkin’, but he probably might be smokin’.” Various Puerto Rican and Italian gangs in downtown Manhattan tried to squeeze in on his profits, robbing messengers and shooting Mickey six times with a .22 when he refused to pay for their protections. But Mickey was able to continue his business successfully, owning not only a large home in New Jersey but an apartment on the Upper East Side while providing his employees solid wages and healthcare. Mickey believed he was bringing in about $20,000 per day at his peak in 1990. Believing money to be “like manure … meant to be spread around,” he gave free weed away often, paid for the medical bills of those with AIDS, and leant his phone centers and spare apartment out as places for the houseless to squat.
Then, to the disdain of any narcotics dealer, his operation got too popular. It wasn't long before his arrest in 1990 that Howard Stern found his ad in a New Jersey newspaper and decided to give the number a call while on air. After the call, Stern remarked that it would be too easy for the police to simply call the number and arrest whichever low-level crook showed up on a bike. And that’s exactly what the police did. The cops made multiple calls to the 800 number from September up to the pope’s arrest in November of 1990. He was ultimately sentenced to a 15-year bid for possession and distribution but unfortunately passed away in 1995 from liver cancer. In his time, Mickey Cesar unknowingly blazed new ground with the establishment of the first weed bike messenger service, an NYC tradition that carries on to present day.
The messenger infrastructure and labor force that Mickey used to distribute his weed was well established already though, and thriving as a critical component of New York City business. Bike messengers first appeared in NYC in the late 1960s and by 1985 the city was supporting a population of 4,000-7,000 couriers (the numbers are difficult to estimate because messengers were considered independent contractors), far more than any other city in the United States. Before the fax machine and before email, the technology gap that prevented major industries like finance, advertising, and legal services from moving data quickly could only be remedied by physically transporting documents from A to B. It was this crossroad of the information age that birthed the bike messenger boom. Given the variability of automobile traffic, limited parking, and just how slow the subway can be, the bicycle became the perfect solution to the productivity needs of evermore rapid-paced business.
The expectation for businesses in choosing to send parcels by bike was speed. Most everything was time sensitive. Documents needed to arrive before wall street closed or the law office locked its doors. However, it was this propensity for speed that earned bicycle couriers their antisocial reputation. Because historically messengers have been paid a piece-rate per delivery, the messenger's income was entirely determined by deliveries per day. The motivation of the dollar, combined with the expectation of speed from the dispatcher created this “by any means necessary” mentality amongst messengers in the city. Couriers would choose lines that could be seen as reckless, weaving through crowded midtown traffic, parting seas of pedestrians to get to the drop-off and on to the next pick-up. And this complete disregard for traffic laws made them public enemy #1. Numerous opinion pieces throughout the 80s and 90s tout messengers as things like “law-flouting, obscenity spewing, bath-needing, wild-riding, pedestrian-smashing madmen” (Bob Levy, Washington Post, 1989). Messenger received accusations of homicides, bike theft, and the killing of innocent squirrels (1991). The City began to take legitimate legal actions against messengers in 1986, increasing the number of citations for traffic violations. In 1987, Mayor Koch passed a bill banning bikes on Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues from 31st to 59th between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. directly targeting messengers in midtown.
All while messengers were transforming into villains on the street and in the press, they were also becoming cultural icons. In 1986, Kevin Bacon took on the role of a former stockbroker turned dare-devil messenger, living on the edge of society with a contempt for authority. They were regarded “as the ultimate urban man– tough, resourceful, self-contained, riding against the odds the city stacks against everybody” (Smith, New York Magazine, 1986). It became something of a hip-job for lower-east side derelects and artist types. “They live the life you may have dreamed of but never had the courage or foolish disregard to try… You have a primal dream about it… You go to the parties the straights have never heard about… You have the kind of sex they would give their fortune for” (Cheney, Toronto Star, 1993). Messengers were becoming the outlaw heroes of the street, living against the flow of traffic, engaging with the urban death maze only as much as necessary or as much as they can.
The reputation of this job attracted very particular types of individuals. Messaging was a job that could provide a liveable wage (messengers earned about $100 per day in 1990 or about $240 in today’s cash) to someone without education, without citizenship, a green card, or working visa, without any prior work experience, with a criminal record, and who may be struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. Messengers historically were independent contractors and, even in New York where legally companies must file their riders as employees, messengers still behave and are treated as de facto contractors. This means that messengers have the freedom to decline runs, decline days of work, and basically come and go as they please. However, this also means messengers have no job security, no steady income, no benefits, and no health insurance, a risk in and of itself considering the job entails nonstop high speed cycling in manhattan traffic. Still, as long as you could pedal from A to B, you could work as a messenger. This kind of work attracts people living on the perimeter of society either by choice or out of necessity. Many messengers were homeless or squatters, drug addicts and alcoholics, who chose this life because of the freedom it offered and their general disregard for authority. It’s not a stretch to assume that a group like this would be down for weed. And that is exactly the crossroad where Mickey Cesar’s 1-800-WANT-POT existed, creating the blueprint for weed courier services for decades to come.
As public drug markets in New York were shut down throughout the late 80s and into the 90s, drugs had to find a new, more inconspicuous way of moving through the city. From 1990 to 1999 the narcotics squad of the NYPD grew by 137%, Rudy Giulianni graduated from his position as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, taking his tough on crime policies to the mayor's office, and weed markets had to adapt. This meant that the trade went underground. Weed doesn’t come into the city by the ton on boats and trucks like it used to. Instead it starts with small amounts, grown regionally, moving through multilevel distributors. This 21st century distribution style resembles the internet in its decentralization and many pockets of activity, making it difficult for the cops to connect the dots. Sellers moved to pagers, cell phones, and PDAs to create sophisticated, difficult to track networks with several layers of middle-men between grower and buyer. Think 1-800-WANT-POT, but if there was an absolutely 0% chance of Mickey Cesar answering when a patron dialed the number.
And these ancestors of Mickey Cesar’s archetype quickly grew to heights that the pope couldn’t have imagined. In 2004, a police department in Long Island received an anonymous tip from what law enforcement assumes to be a disgruntled employee working for a weed delivery service called the Cartoon Network detailing its functions and providing the address to a call center. After a year of investigation, John Nebel, founder of the operation, was charged with conspiring to traffic over 2,200 pounds of weed between January 1, 1999 and December 1, 2005. Nebel pleaded guilty, admitting to running a mobile, tech-based network out of a call center that often changed locations and delivered weed through a system of messengers overseen by street level managers.
It’s difficult to know just how many of these services are actually operating in New York. They exist in all sizes, from large corporate like structures with organized lists of clients in the tens of thousands to small-businesses who deal with only a select few. They have no posted marketing like 1-800-WANT-POT. They operate through business cards and word of mouth. The internet is too easy to track. Nebel’s operation in its heyday had 30 known employees including business executives, and at least six street-managers who oversaw countless dispatchers and couriers. Only Nebel and his nearest associates knew everyone involved, making it difficult to be ratted out to police by a lone snitch.
The weed was being supplied by tens of private homes across the tri-state, growing 300-400 high-grade plants and harvesting three or four times a year. At the time the street price from one grower could reach as much as $720,000. But The Cartoon Network bought in small amounts so they could move it quickly. The weed was delivered by the pound to call centers that changed weekly, or sometimes daily, often hotel rooms or one of Nebel’s seven houses. The service kept a sophisticated database that could scan numbers based on buying history and previous messenger, making it easy to avoid police. If the number cleared the database, the dispatcher would return the call and ask for a code, if the buyer provided the code then a messenger would be sent to the address. Many of the messengers were young, normal looking couriers. They carried just under 8 ounces of weed at a time, since, in those days, possession of 8 ounces resulted in a felony charge.
In the 6 years that Cartoon Network was functioning, Nebel and his associates made their fair share. At the time of his arrest, feds seized $837,000 of weed, $685,000 in cash, Seven homes, 16 cars, and a boat. The feds at the time were seeking $22.5 million in forfeiture. With all this cash available, weed services had no problem attracting messengers. Couriers working for the service made $200 a day (about $320 in today’s money). While this might be just pennies compared to the earnings of Nebel, it beats the wages that the typical, “legal” messenger might make. And as weed services grew in the mid 90’s and early 00’s, the advent of email and fax left a lot of “legal” couriers unemployed, without transferable skills, or job training.
The bread and butter of the courier industry was for decades documents with information. But, with technology like email, text, and fax making it increasingly easier to send documents with the click of a button, the niche that messengers once critically filled no longer required their services. Rob Kotch, owner of Breakaway Courier Systems, put it like this, “the only thing left is food and clothes … and none of that is urgent… No one wants to pay $25 for a delivery. They want to pay $5. So the only way to do that is to have what’s called delivery density. That means deliveries per hour… You’re doing two deliveries an hour, you’ve got to charge the customer like $40 or something.” Nobody is willing to pay high prices for documents that can be sent instantly for free. And, while the food courier industry is booming in New York City, the treatment of “employees” as independent contractors by companies like UberEats and DoorDash means that wages are exceptionally low. With costs of living in the city going through the roof, it’s difficult to make a liveable wage at all as a food delivery person. In 2020, the court case “In re Vega, No. 13 (State of New York Court of Appeals)” ruled that corporate apps like UberEats, Doordash, and Postmates must consider their couriers proper employees and, in turn, provide proper wages, workers comp, and other benefits. But the NY labor department doesn’t stringently enforce these rules allowing big business to maintain an economic advantage. Traditional courier services can’t compete with low delivery prices while abiding by labor standards, i.e. paying minimum wage.
With these corporations dominating the food delivery market, traditional couriers rely more and more on delivering non-consumable physical items that could never (at least with current technology) be sent via the internet. To accommodate, “Messengers” are giving up the track bikes and shoulder bags for cargo bikes and front racks so they can transport larger packages that otherwise would need to travel in a car. And, they’re starting to compete in some ways with freight companies like UPS and DHL stepping into the space for what’s called “last mile delivery” (delivery in metropolitan areas where variable traffic and parking is an issue). These bike couriers feel less like messengers and more like corporatized delivery men; especially when you see them cruising slowly through midtown, stopping at every red, smiling at pedestrians on a bright yellow lay-down, DHL cube-cycle, complete with a matching DHL lycra suit, and clean piss-test to turn into the union. Nothing about this image harkens back to the high-flying outlaw days of decades past.
While traditional “legal” couriers may be dwindling in number, the illicit couriers delivering undigitize-able kush seem to be holding strong. Weed delivery, in some circles, has become something of a common job. As a young 20-something living in New York, I can tell you that it isn’t rare to meet a college student or aspiring artist who’s kept up with the city's inflated cost of living by delivering weed. When the money is decent, you get paid in cash, and your hours are compatible with late-night drug and alcohol benders, it’s difficult for many to move on. Especially if you don’t mind biking up to 50 miles a day in the hot or cold and potentially being the victim of an unreportable robbery. It’s impossible to say how many wheeled weed salesmen bike around the city on a day to day basis, but it’s certainly more than a few. And many of the messengers you might meet carry that same freewheeling attitude toward authority that the bike messengers of 25 years ago pioneered, maybe even to a greater extent. Hanging out anywhere, smoking they’re supply, staying out late, and not worrying too much about when they clock in or out. After all, as one messenger put it, “There’s not too many other reasons to put up with this shitty job.”
But what happens to underground weed networks and the cultures that they nurture when weed sales become legal in New York City? When weed was first legalized in NYC, thousands of dispensary-style shops, or “weed-delis” as I like to call them, opened without an actual license. As Bridget Read described them, “part smoke shop, part convenience store, part dispensary, all packaged in the aesthetic of a monster energy drink.” An estimated 2,900 of these unlicensed vendors popped up throughout NYC compared to just 60 licensed dispensaries. But after over a year of limited enforcement, the state is catching up and locking down their doors. As of July 2024, the NYC Sheriff office stated it had closed over 700 illegal stores since the updated regulations passed in April. State officials were initially reluctant to “recriminalize” weed, trying to make up for decades and decades of excessive prosecution. All the while, receiving a dispensary license was a bureaucratic nightmare, almost creating an incentive for stores to open illegally. Since the change in legislation, licensed cannabis sales are way up with some shops estimating a 35% increase since April. However, that isn’t necessarily true with licensed weed delivery.
When weed-delis first began to boom, there is no doubt that unlicensed “serves” took a hit. The only thing easier than shooting a text or telegram to a delivery service is walking to the deli, especially since there's one on every block. And since you could smoke on the street, there was really no reason to buy discreetly at all. On top of that, weed prices have been going down in every state, legal or not, as a result of overproduction. Veterans in the weed delivery game have made public comments about “Traditional NYC delivery” departing the golden era, and the weed courier becoming a “modest gig.” It’s more difficult to recruit your average everyday smoker to buy from an underground delivery system when there are street-level markets with large signs that say “Loud Za sold here.” Some services have chosen to isolate themselves from the market as luxury. Afterall, the days of weed delivery catering to the upper echelons of NYC’s smokers date back to Mickey Cesar and 1-800-WANT-POT, but buying from a bodega has always meant bodega quality. It’s difficult to find a deli that sells classic, bell-ringing strains like Green Crack, Sour Diesel, Northern Lights, etc. Let alone all of them conveniently packaged into a backpack and laid out in front of you on your own coffee table. Still, the illicit services market is being cut into by legal licensed dispensaries that are growing in number. Someday soon, licensed dispensaries may be close to as ubiquitous as weed-delis in 2022, often offering their own weed delivery service from a licensed bud-tender.
So, are we in the twilight of “Traditional NYC weed delivery” and all that comes along with it? Well, we won’t know until it happens, but examples from other cities suggest so. In 2019, UberEats and Leafly partnered up to offer dispensaries in Toronto a weed delivery service no different than food delivery. In a statement to the press, UberEats and Leafly suggested that their service was directly targeting a space that the illegal market was filling, taking up about 50% of unlicensed weed sales. Since then, the model has expanded into 3 other Canadian provinces. It’s not difficult to imagine UberEats stepping into American markets like New York when weed dispensaries increase in number. And, in turn, the traditional renegade weed courier will likely become a dramatically corporatized, underpaid, underprotected, and under-”employed” UberEats rider with an insulated cube backpack and reckless e-bike riding habits. Not to mention that before long, the case for interstate weed commerce may grow so strong that large out-of-state cannabis corporations begin to impede on the NYC weed market, unphased by relatively tiny delivery networks and small sacks sold out of delis. Soon the little fish may be dropped into the big pond and forced to swim with giants. Isn’t that what’s happened to all New York small businesses since the times of 1-800-WANT-POT? So, I think it’s likely that just like any renegade-tradition, there will always be a few weed courier networks that hold on as a sort of relic to the past. But they too will be pushed further into the pigeon hole of a subculture, a necessary protest to the corporate machines ability to swallow whole even those businesses deemed illegal.
*Bibliography available upon request
James Folgarelli Interview (unedited)
October 5, 2024
L: How'd you get in all the Snoopy stuff?
J: Childhood. My mom and my aunt both worked at Hallmark cards, which has a huge Peanuts collection and hallmarks based in Kansas City, where I'm from. So there was a lot of Snoopy themed stuff growing up. Then I kind of tapped out of it until I got older and met Mo (Momo Gordon). We both are kinda obsessed with Snoopy and comics. So that's where that came from.
S: Lukas said, you know, all of Snoopy's siblings' names?
J: I do, yeah. Andy is the fuzzy one who is based off of Charles Schultz's real life dog who's like an aerial character or something. And then Spike is the one who lives in the desert, Olaf is kind of like a Russian caricature. He's a big fuzzy one with a winter hat and then marbles is a dalmatian, which is weird because they're all beagles, so I don't know how that happened. Infidelity, perhaps. And there’s Andy who has brown ears and a white body. Snoopy has a sister named Bell as well. I don't remember his parents' names but that’s in the lore.
L: What attracted you to Portland?
J: I never really intended on living here, but my sister went to college here, and, stayed and lived in Salem. I only applied to two colleges, and one was PNCA here, and one was SAIC in Chicago. And I got a full ride to PNCA. So I was like, I kind of have to go. Chicago gave me a huge scholarship too, but it would still be, you know, $200,000 of debt by the time I was done with it. And I had lived in the Midwest for 18 years s I didn’t need to stay there and endure an even colder winter than Kansas. So yeah,it feels weird to live in Portland because I didn't seek out living here, but it's become home in a lot of ways. Yeah, and you feel like, like, culturally
L: And, you feel culturally supported here?
J: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people doing similar things here, and I think the scale of the city is small enough that you're not competing with every single person like in LA or New York, but at the same time, you know, I think there could be a lot more ambition. Or a sort of mutual energy that I'd like to see more. And at the same time, I don't really go out trying to meet other people who are sewing but I have friends who are sewing.
I was primarily here for the art scene, when I was done with school, and I was trying to work in museums, and I worked at several galleries, and I thought that was my trajectory in life. And it still is, in some ways, but it's become more complicated because I have maybe too many interests, and I feel complicated about being a generalist instead of a specialist. I'm pretty good at a lot of things, and I'd say actually good at a few, but I'm never gonna be, in this current trajectory, the best clothing maker ever. And I don't think that's my intention either, but yeah, it's nice to have all of the skills and components to fully flesh out something like daag. A full brand, my creative outlet, and not just like visual fine art. So it was a really good way for me to transition from like, the idea that I'm gonna make money off of photographs and paintings which is a cool fantasy, but it's not exactly what I want to be doing. So yeah, I don't know that was a long winded answer to something just about Portland lol. I guess I would say I feel supported.
S: You said you were doing sculpture in school? How does that influence the brand (daag)?
J: Yeah, the sculpture had a pretty easy transition into clothing, because I was really interested in fabrics and materials and softer sculpture forms as well as resin casting… and furniture as well. But even making clothing racks out of wood that I can hang clothing on or something that's a soft, textile based, sculptureI was informative. It was nice to be in a place where people were trying to sew and do other sculptural mediums more seriously.
I feel like that's the beauty too of being kind of good at a lot of things but maybe not an expert in any one of those things. It allows me to curate the whole of a project rather than feeling I need someone else to do certain components which means relying on their artistic input. And also from a financial perspective, I break even on what I'm doing that way. But if I had to pay someone to do all of the photo work, or the E-commerce it would become purely a passion project instead of a supplemental income. It has been that a lot of times in the past: just something more passive that I can keep putting money into when I can. It's not just like never ending money suck. Although it does feel like that sometimes too. I have to be wary about the level of ambition and wanting to position myself as a brand among certain types, and recognizing that there’s a team of 10 people working on those. My expectations have to be tempered a little bit. But at the end of the day, I don't want to be waiting to finish something because I have to have another person come into play. Sometimes it's good to just finish something in one sitting. Be like, Okay, this is done. I can have my headspace back and move on to the next thing.
S: When you look back at the work that you were doing when you were in college, do you see a through line from that to what you're doing now?
J: Yeah, I think at least at the very end of it, I was thinking about printmaking and sculpture in ways that they applied to real world objects, or how they could exist not only in a white cube setting. In that way, like for my thesis work, I sewed an outfit and made this fiction, sort of scenario where I would… oh, God, this is going to be challenging to explain. I don't need to reread my whole speech and paper… But essentially, I made clothing. I became a character figure in this scenario. I photographed the whole thing. I printed it as real artifacts that were artworks, but at the end of the day, also, the clothing that I made was still wearable. And that seems like a through line, because I'm still making clothing now, and I'm still photographing it, and I'm still thinking about it in terms of materials at the forefront, instead of just making clothing as a brand. Like, I don't really know if what I do is a brand, but I've branded it with a logo, so it kind of exists in that space.
L: How do you source your materials?
J: Generally, I used to source everything here when I was getting started, just at Mill End, the fabric shop here. And I love it but it has become really limiting. I realized the price gouging on stuff, not saying anything bad about them, because it's a business, but yeah, I source a lot of stuff from LA now. I have one vendor that imports things from Turkey, Italy, Japan, a lot of Made in the USA. It's really amazing, because they don't have minimums, so you can order just enough for one project, which has always been a component of my work. I don't want to have too much stock that I can never get through. And also being able to buy $50 worth of fabric, versus having to buy 300 yards.
I think in terms of running a small brand or project where I don't want to have waste. I don’t like the clothing industry, it's so gnarly, and the biggest polluter. So I try to keep it small that way it's not going to go into a landfill necessarily. I only make maybe 50 things a year, and hopefully people are wearing them for a long time, or giving them away or donating them. I have a minor in ecology from Art School, which is really funny. I think that also influenced the way I think about clothing and sort of regenerative sources of creativity. I'm going to tangent way too far off this. I'm not going to talk about this haha
I’m just trying to be as intentional as possible without compromising too much of the final product or vision which is always a challenge
L: I'm interested in the way that skating has informed your design practice, or, if you feel like it does it all?
J: I mean, I think it's the reason I'm obsessed with clothes for better or worse. You know, growing up watching skating, I want to look like this person. How do I get the right jeans? How do I have the same sort of style or the way you carry yourself through life, and so that's definitely been a jumping off point. And I touch on skateboarding as a reference all the time, but it's not the primary focus. I don't want to be a skateboarding brand, but being skateboarding adjacent makes sense.
I'm just not going to do a campaign where someone's holding a board. There will definitely be something where someone's skateboarding. My next collection is titled pedestrian so it's very wearable, very unassuming. Just seeing how people actually move around and live in the garments. So it's like skateboarding, biking, walking, hiking, which is a very simple concept, but has a lot of legs to make something beautiful in terms of the campaign.
L: I feel growing up skating, it's like, the pants obsession. You know, you get a pair of pants, and then you are constantly looking in the mirror. Are they too long or too short? Are they too baggy or not baggy enough? I feel like all my experience sewing is just like pants alteration.
J: The obsession doesn't go away. It gets worse. Yeah, it only gets worse. I buy pants as references. Well t's not really a reference, I just want stuff but that's how I'm validated. It's actually a business expense. But when I got it now I don't want to cut it up, because it's so good. But there's definitely ways to pattern off things without totally destroying them. But I mean, the first pants I made are like a Dickies bootleg, just with an elastic waist instead. They were pretty fucked up looking, to be honest but they've grown. Everything kind of goes back to, like a very simple silhouette that just minor tweaks over the years. The latest iteration of pants I feel like I finally made something that I really want to wear.
L: I guess I kind of want to transition in talking about, like, your day job, and the way that your day job is informed by your work with daag and vice versa?
J: Yeah, It's an interesting question, because just as of six months ago, I started a new job where I'm actually doing apparel design. But it's at a much different scale and a different approach than what I do for myself. So I work for CCS, a skateboarding company, got hired to be an apparel designer, but spend, I'd say, 80% of my time doing graphic design, which is not my background, despite working at a design studio(Fisk) for five years.
But the process is really interesting for the apparel patent, because in some ways, it's similar to how I started, where you find a reference you really like, and make alterations or tweaks and call out certain changes you want, and then send it off to get sampled at a factory elsewhere, and then get it back and sort of go through that process as a traditional clothing brand or manufacturer. But I'm not sewing samples for them. I'm not making everything from scratch, which feels like a cheat code. And I think a lot of brands operate like this. They'll find some vintage silver tab reference and then, you know, we got polar big boys from that and all sorts of very effective trendy clothing that is in the cycle. So yeah, it's interesting doing that now, and I feel like it's changing the way I approach daag, because daag feels pretty sincere in comparison. Not that designing for another company doesn't, but having full control and not having to compromise for materials or where it's manufactured, I can really hone in on that. But at the same time, I'm learning how to work with a factory, in case I ever want to scale in that way.
L: Do you think that you would?
J: I don't think I would do it for daag. You know, if I was in a position in the future to start another brand that had some sort of investment, I'd see it as a chance to actualize certain ideas that wouldn't work for my current operation. But I'd be open to working at a different clothing brand that feels aligned and to working with manufacturers and leading with material sourcing and actually having hands-on experiences with the people who are fabricating things. Yeah, I just don't know what the trajectory looks like in my life to get to that point now, but it is something I'm interested in.
L: What was the first Daag item? Was it a dry bag?
J: It was like a pullover shirt and some shorts that had an elastic waist. But yeah, the bag was the first thing that was officially a Daag product. That had the tag on it. yeah. And it's a very ubiquitous design. It's in REI or any camping store, you know, it's existed forever. But this is sort of in a strange design space, where it's really simple but it's not functional for outdoor activities necessarily, depending on the material chosen. So maybe it's a fashion item, maybe it's a function item, but it's somewhere in between that. I think that's why that product works. I'm like, this is just weird, and it's easy enough for me to make, I can sell for a lower price point. People can engage with it if they don't want to buy a $300 jacket.
S: How did you come up with the Daag logo?
J: So back when I was doing printmaking in school, I found this little letterpress piece of lead type that is basically the logo one to one besides a few tweaks I made. So I printed it, I scanned it in, and then basically image-traced it and added some different details, removed some of the smaller, finer aspects, and kind of ran with it. And I've seen it pop up in other places. I think it's old enough that it's maybe really old glyph. It;s like creative commons by now, but I've seen other people use it very rarely, and I'm like wow maybe I should have changed this even more. There was a 90s Stussy graphic that has a chunkier version of the same dog. And I was like, whoa. Maybe I need to re approach this. But I think it's cool that it exists in a way that has a legacy, even if I don't know all the other artworks or ways it's been printed in the past.
L: I feel like because you found that leadtype and didn’t know the previous uses, you get a pass.
J: I have a friend who works at Stussy and I sent him the photo of the shirt I found with the dog on it. And He's like, “Oh yeah. I thought that's what you based your logo off.” And I was like, “Damn! No, I've actually never seen this.” I wish I owned that shirt so I could just look at it and kind of dissect it a little bit more.
L: So I noticed that none of your shirts have shirt-tail hems? Is that just a taste or style thing?
J: Yeah, we were talking earlier about skills I want to develop. But just because all of this came from like a self taught place, I mean I absolutely can do it, and I've done it before, but it hasn't made sense to do for some of the garments I've made in the past. Because I don't really do shirting. Everything is more of a jacket layer or slightly heavier. Not that those garments can't have a curved hem. It's something I'm interested in doing in the future. I've just been stuck on the flat hem crop because it was luckily easy to make when I started, and then it became very fashionable. haven't had to adapt it enough.
But, you know, the goal is to keep pushing myself and make things so I'm not just doing two main silhouettes. There will be a time when this is a special, new product that's released, and there's a reason for it but I don't know if I'll make men's shirts. Everything is sort of as it is now because It works really well gender neutrally. The elastic pants are pretty inclusive. The raglan sleeve works if you have broad shoulders or narrow shoulders. So those features have been really nice to work with and meant that I don’t have to size everything for so many different body types.
But that becomes a crutch I'm using. I could get better at these things, and I will eventually. And when I have time, I'm gonna really dial and learn those things. I don't want to make elastic pants forever. It's fun and easy and it looks really good, depending on how you style it. But, you know, I only really buy button fly jeans, and why wouldn't I make the thing that I want to wear the most? So that's definitely on the list of things that's happening. Hopefully next year.
L: It's interesting though to hear about your design language being informed, not only by your strengths, but also your limitations.
J: I think it's good to have, you know, constraints that are either within your control or outside of it. I could buy an industrial machine too and somehow get it up these stairs and in that room. But at the scale I'm working at now, just having a couple tabletop machines has been so nice. I can't be moving a 2000 pound machine all the time. I mean you can get them not super expensive and I’m sure it'll happen at some point because I do want to start making more leather bags. But I've been able to get away with thin leathers and suedes for now.
L: What's inspiring you or motivating you within the realm of Daag right now?
J: It's a good question. I think, getting better technically, like seeing other people in this space, or, around my age doing things, I'm like, “oh, I should be able to do this thing”, and not necessarily in a negative way. I don't feel bad about the stuff I make. I'm really proud of it, but I want to push it to the next level in a way that doesn't feel like I'm breaking myself off every time I have an idea and getting stressed out. I want to approach it organically and sustainably. When it makes sense to learn those things.
And I think always materials. It's what I'm obsessed with, how I really wanted this to go from the beginning is having a priority on those things and earning through understanding which materials work for which silhouettes, and subverting people's expectations of what would work. Well, yeah, so it's those things. And then, working with more people doing collaborations where it's not just one person making something, and not to say that I have to work with someone else who's fabricating, but working with friends who are videographers or photographers or writers just making things that have a wider audience and sort of bring more people access to not only my project, but whoever I'm working with has always been fun.
And you know now that I don't work at a very public gallery and, design studio space, I have to go out of my way to make those connections, which I think is a really good growing point in my personal sewing career, and also just life in general. I feel like I've met so many people by proximity of just being in a space, and now I have to be intentional and put in the effort to meet people who are interested in the same things, which can happen very easily and organically somewhere small as Portland, but making a point of doing that, instead of thinking, “I’ve met all the people I’m going to meet in Portland.” There are so many people here I've never met doing cool things.
L: I guess we probably shouldn't wrap it up before talking about your time at Fisk.
J: So that was definitely a keystone event in my life. I graduated from school. I was trying to work in galleries and kind of trying to do Daag at that time too. I didn’t know what I was going to do for work. I was doing all these part time side hustles. And I thought “ maybe I'll just make clothing”. And I'm glad that wasn't what happened, because I wasn't really ready, and I didn't have the experience, or all of the references that would really change my perspective for the better. And working at Fisk, originally being hired on to manage the gallery space because of my background in installing artwork and working in museums, it felt like a dream. Leaving school, fumbling around for like, six months. Then me working in this field that I've wanted to work in, feels like a real blessing. And then, you know, the pandemic closed the gallery multiple times, things shifted. I ended up doing product development for our apparel and whatever other things we were selling in the store. And then, you know, kind of learning to do design work accidentally. And thankfully, it's helped me in a lot of ways. And then reopening the gallery, it was a whirlwind of five years. It feels like it was 10 years of my life, honestly. And very thankful for it, yeah.
S: Do you feel like you spend a lot of time seeking out sources reference material or do you feel like you’ve curated your social media accounts and internet presence to the point that those things just come to you?
J: Definitely. I mean, I think social media has really put information and power into people's hands, both in terms of being inspired by someone you see, and then also being able to go to YouTube and look up how to sew something, for example. I think it obviously can also be dangerous, because you see something and know you can make that but you have to constantly question “what am I bringing to this that isn’t just recreating something?”
So I think in a lot of ways, the algorithm shows me, you follow the right stores or other designers, and you get easy access to know what other people are doing for their process, and it's really helpful. But as much as possible I try to find inspiration outside of not only just social media, but also people doing similar things to what I'm doing. Like, I want there to be a reference that hopefully only I have.
And it's not always coming from a place of seeing a garment in the world. It could literally just be someone walking down the street, or the way someone describes something in a book that motivates you to want to make it. I feel that way with William Gibson's writing a lot, because there's a lot of strange secret clothing brands and aversions to garment labels and keeping things as unidentifiable as possible. But the way the materials are described and the processes and some of those books pattern recognition, I think that's what's kept me inspired to make clothing, because the way it's described does something for my brain. I'm visualizing something that just seeing someone walking down the street doesn't necessarily do, that's really cool.
S: Yeah, I feel like I spend a lot of time kind of almost consciously trying to avoid referencing things too much that I see digitally. Because I'm like, well, if I'm seeing this, how many other people are also seeing it. Am I thinking critically about what I actually like about this? Or is it just in my brain because it's right there in front of me? Yeah, or you see it enough times that it's stuck?
J: Yeah, is it just familiar and I don't know, easily accessible? Yeah. I mean, the question of taste too is really a whirlwind. I don't know what my taste is, and I don't think anyone should fully. yes, you have the things you like and the things that make you excited, bring you joy, but if your taste is static, that can become a problem.
S: That’s interesting because from an outside perspective, I look at your home and the way you dress and the things you make, and it feels like a very cohesive aesthetic. But when do you feel like this current iteration of your taste came into being?
J: Yeah, I don't know if I could pinpoint it, but now that my partner and I live alone, it definitely has become a more intentional space. Well, okay, this is kind of a tangent, but the thing that I worry about with really finding your style or having a uniform (because I love the idea of wearing a uniform and not necessarily having to make 10 choices every day of what you're wearing) is that there's a fine line between wearing something for function and wearing something and looking like a cartoon character or caricature of yourself, which you know you want to be cohesive and people to recognize you like if you change your style every day, that can be kind of jarring, and it's cool, like a lot of people do that in a way to find their own style later down the line but I think where I'm at with my esthetic or style right now is… if I say, “an appreciation for materials one more time” …
L: But that’s what you like though. Like simple silhouettes with nice materials.
J: Yeah and then like one unexpected move. I think this is why my next collection is called pedestrian, I don't want to make stuff that's too loud, but if you're really paying attention, you'll notice something that will stick with you. And I think back to the reference of William Gibson's writing, like, if I can actually make something that lends the sort of feeling that I get from those books. I want to give that feeling to people through some other medium. I want to create a piece where there's something people don't expect, and it stays with them, but it's not earth shattering. It doesn't have to be loud.
S: Yeah, What was your style like when you were in high school?
J: I was wearing skinny jeans and corduroys with some nice Lands End boots. Pretty much every day I wore some flannels. I really liked the color purple, and still do, but I was wearing purple sweaters. So I guess that mixed with like skateboarding style. Like, I was living in the Midwest, kind of trying to have a Pacific Northwest style, even though I didn't know I was gonna live here. And then I had to have a good hoodie and the right pants. I don't know, it was always a balance of being sort of the odd one out in school and balancing being into skating and also interested in clothes. But people were just wearing sperrys and, like, peach colored shorts. It doesn't work for me. I don't like that. I mean growing up being like Dylan Reeder is the coolest person, I want to dress like him. I want to wear black skinny jeans and cuff them and wear slip ons and that in the Midwest that means you're gonna stand out a little bit.
Photos by Lukas Kubeja