The world Erik Herskind is interested in doesn't exist anymore. Actually, it never really did. B.A. Hobo Co. Makers, the clothing company he founded a few years ago, sells T-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with logos from long-dead supper clubs, bars, lounges and businesses, among other things. But they aren't replicas: In the 1950s and '60s, where most of the designs spring from, no one wore anything other than white tees, and no one saw those because they were worn under other shirts. "In a weird way, I'm creating T-shirts for a time period that didn't have T-shirts," says Herskind, who operates out of a warehouse on Central Expressway. "I'm sort of thinking, 'If you walked into the Blue Marlin Bar in Miami in the '50s, what would their shirt look like?'" Probably like the one he sells on his site, www.hoboco.com.
How did you decide which logos to use?
The thing I started realizing is that people are really kind of beaten down by the homogenization of everything. You go into a mall and every mall has the same stores, and even the stores that have some cooler stuff, there's 30 shirts of the same design. You're kind of like, "Eh, I don't wanna be like everyone else." I'm gonna be constantly updating and evolving and adding new stuff all the time, so there really is an exclusiveness to the designs...I will not get into the sports side. Why not?
One of my very good friends, Chris Anderson, has a site called Classic Sports Logos (Full Frontal, February 20, 2003). He and I are longtime buddies, and we share a warehouse space together. A few years ago, we kind of said, let's try to get some stuff going on some other things besides our regular jobs. He had collected all these old retro sports logos, and I had this huge box of old non-sports stuff. So we kind of drew a line in the sand.
What shirt is selling the best?
The neat thing is, every design has sold since the site went live in November, which is really encouraging. But the thing that's interesting is Handy Andy--it's an old tool set made by a company in Illinois called the Skil-Craft Corporation. They used to produce these little toy tool sets for kids in the '50s and '60s. Well, I started getting all these orders for Handy Andy. I couldn't figure out what was going on. They were coming from all over the country. So I sent e-mails to a bunch of the customers, and every single one of them said the same things, which was either they had a friend named Andy or they had a husband named Andy. So then, a couple days later, I started getting orders for Howard's Dairylux. Same thing. People said, "I got a buddy named Howard." So I'm wondering if I need to dig in and find more places with people's names in them.
You could just ship a box to Ashton Kutcher, and there you go. Money in the bank.
That's a huge idea. Celebrity endorsements and getting people to wear our stuff is absolutely something I need to strive to do. I look in those magazines and see these kids wearing these shirts. Every time I see something, I get a little nervous that there's gonna be somebody else out there doing the real thing eventually, but it continues to be this fake stuff, as I call it. I think the thing that's a little different is that I have grown past the age where I can walk around wearing an Abercrombie shirt, or maybe even a Lucky Brand shirt. --Zac Crain
Tight Wad
We cant really explain what drove us to purchase. No, wait, we can. The offer was original, bizarre and, how you say, funny. A friend told us about it, and as the site came up we were greeted with YOU BUY WADDED UP PAPER NOW!!!!
That's right. The site readily admits, albeit in broken English, that origami boulders are, in fact, just wadded-up balls of paper. This artist, however, creates them with pride and care. Consumers have the option of buying a boulder for $10, a boulder with a haiku inside (buyers are encouraged not to unwad the paper to read the poem, just know it's there, so the art remains intact) for $15 and our favorite, the performance-art option for $3 that includes the artist constructing a custom boulder and then tossing it into the wastebasket. With the performance art, we got no boulder in the mail, but what we did get was the following e-mail detailing our special performance:
Thanks for purchase. You are good person and true patron of arts.
Artist make special edition Swiss performance while on vacation at no extra charge. Artist take clean sheet of Hotel Krone letter paper and wad into small, tight origami boulder. Next, artist walk across small hotel room and toss into wastebasket near television and then continue with watch Sat3 tv show. Price of performance almost enough to buy 1/2 glass of Fanta at outrageous Swiss price.
Hpe you enjoy international performance.
Maybe he really did it, or maybe everyone gets the same e-mail (if anyone besides us has purchased from the site). We don't really care. See, we've worked out a little vignette in our head of the performance, and the visuals are worth three bucks...plus we almost bought the guy a Fanta. --Merritt Martin
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Earlier this week, we were sitting around the office, discussing Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez's promotion to team captain, news that came as sort of a kick to the junk. Then we learned that Dallas Mavericks arena announcer Humble Billy Hayes was taking over as the morning-drive host on The Bone (93.3 FM). Realizing that Hayes' relentlessly over-the-top persona ("In his eighth season from Santa Clara... number13SteveNash!!!!") would greet us before we had our first cup of coffee five days a week was a kick to the junk that made that whole A-Rod thing, well, look pretty tame in comparison. Your junk would hardly notice it.
We figured we had to find a way to differentiate events such as these. So, in a nod to ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons' Levels of Losing, we've decided to unveil Full Frontal's Levels of Junk Kicks.
Level 1: Man's Best Friend
An overenthusiastic dog, most likely one in the Labrador family, greets you by ramming his entire head into your crotch.
Level 2: Child's Play
A 5-year-old kid learns how to thump your naughty bits and decides it's the funniest thing in the world, then proceeds to test out this new party trick on your man parts.
Level 3: Bob Saget
This is straight out of America's Funniest Home Videos: An errant projectile--say, a football--veers off its intended course and heat-seeks its way to your loins.
Level 4: X-treme Prejudice
Basically anything that, if filmed, would make its way onto Fox Sports Net's You Gotta See This!--a skateboarder losing his footing on a rail slide and catching said rail square between his legs, for instance.
Level 5: The House Always Wins
A friend bets you $400 that you can't withstand a kick in the wedding tackle from a 14-year-old kid. You're a little drunk, but you still think it sounds like easy money, so you agree. The kid turns out to be international soccer phenom Freddy Adu.
We've decided A-Rod becoming team captain is a 1 on our scale. And Humble Billy Hayes? Possibly a 3, but at least a 2.5. God help us if we ever come across a 5.
