Five Favorite Things: Shad & Leigh Kvetko

Shad and Leigh Kvetko are collectors. Shad for life and Leigh for as long as she’s known Shad. They love a lot of things and they know even more … things. With all their knowledge they could probably teach a class at the learning annex, if we had one. Or professionally give home tours of only their home. Or put your tiny pea brain to shame. Bet: Your brain would crumble if it had to carry around the (figurative) Encyclopedia Britannica they lug around on a daily basis. No shit, they taught us so much and in such a short amount of time. Cue Sarah McLachlan’s Will You Remember Me?

Here are some little nibs they launched our way…
Home Tips
Listen to the house. Don’t go against the bones to try to make your style fit. Their current house whispered, “Make it really, really colorful or GTFO.” Their house knows acronyms. Weird, we know.

Home Furnishings
The Kvetkos believe in maximum comfort. They ain’t tryna live in a museum. Shad Quote: If you don’t feel like you can stick a dagger in the dining table then what’s the point?

Macabre
There’s nothing macabre about macabre. The Kvetkos, and millions of others for thousands of years, see momento mori or “remember that you can die” as a reminder to celebrate life because we don’t get a lot of it.
Art
The Kvetkos have a ton of cool art pieces and just as many ways to describe them. Here are things to Google if you want to bite their style: tramp art, folk art, native art, tribal art, primitive art, naïve art, popular art, outsider art and art brut.

Pronunciation
The Mexican state of Oaxaca is actually pronounced WEE-HAW-CA and NOT OH-COX-AH.
Mescal
Agave-based mescal is the only alcohol that’s a stimulant and not a depressant. (It’s also artisanal, made by roasting pinions in the ground, and has a smoky flavor that will knock your short pants off.)

Carry Ons
If you try to carry on a mescal bottle shaped like a penis or a penis gun, you’re gonna run into some TSA troubs.

If you want to learn more, ask them for a personal home tour. They’d probably give you one because they’re seriously two of the nicest, most generous people we’ve ever met. Of course if inviting yourself into strangers’ homes isn’t really your thing, keep reading because guess what you’ll find in their five favorites? Cool shit and even more info. Yay knowledge!!!

The Ol’ Mescal Dick and Dick Gun
We previewed these gems only sentences ago, but here they are in all their weiner-ed glory.


Shrunken Head
Straight out of a Scooby Doo mystery involving the Shuar Tribe in Ecuador, Peru, it’s a real live shrunken head!!! Yes, it really was someone’s head and double yes, that hair is real. The Shuar sew up the mouths so souls can’t escape and come back and haunt them. In less terrifying news, the Shuar harvested a lot of heads from plane crashes, but make no mistake they’re still a bunch of fierce-ass
motherfuckers. Also, never conquered by the Spanish.

Child in a Wheelchair
This fits into the category the Kvetkos call “accidental art.” It was created for a utilitarian purpose, but it’s so freaking cool they use it as art. This particular sculpture collected alms (offerings) for cripple children and no, we have no idea if it’s okay to say “cripple” or if we were just a heartless asshole. 


Boston Terrier Collection
Olive is their current B.T. main squeeze and the Kvetkos love this breed. Obviously, Olive is a rescue because they’re superior humans. No judgment.


Shad’s Dad’s Boots
In the 1960s, Shad’s Dad was the president of a 1% outlaw motorcycle gang called the No Counts. He was also a general badass and the owner of these boots. In the 1980s, Shad, then a punk rock kid, inherited the boots and wore the soles off them. Around this time Leigh was busy being equally punk rock with her own boots halfway across the country.