RELEASE DATE: JULY 10TH, 2018. TIME: 12:00AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME PRICE: $80 USD (SHIPS WORLDWIDE) (CONTENTS) CUSTOM ALPINE BOX ALPINE TACTICAL HOODED GARMENT 2 STICKERS PERSONALIZED MESSAGE ON BOX W/SIGNATURE.
I guess it all started with the phrase, “Look it up.” It is what my mom always tells me to this day whenever I ask her a question. “Mom, how do…” “Look it up.”
Whether it was just not wanting to into further explanation, or tough love.. It is kind of something I have brought with me as I got older. My mom is from California, and both of her parents were first generation Korean immigrants. My grandparents owned a drug store in Compton back in the 1970s. As a kid, there would be times where she did not have running water, or power because her parents would not pay the bill. She recalls several times where she woke up on Christmas Day to nothing under the tree. After school everyday, she would go to her best friend’s house to escape her home life. She was in high school band and played the flute.
(MOM PICTURED SECOND FROM LEFT.)
“First chair.” She says to me. She’s the definition of an Asian tiger mom. Hahaha, nothing is ever acceptable to her. To this day, she is the one person who is my biggest critic and the one person in my life I want to impress. After moving away from her parent’s house, she attended UCLA, and transferred to Eastman School of Music to finish out undergrad. She paid her way through college working a variety of odd jobs. She worked at a vacuum cleaner store, as a waitress, a secretary. After Eastman, she went to grad school at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she met my dad. She cried at her own wedding because of the cruelty of her own mother. If you look at the wedding photo with my dad, her makeup is smeared. Her relationship with her mom after that was pretty non-existent. When her mom (my grandmother) died a few years ago, nobody went to her funeral. My mom and I haven’t always seen eye to eye.. Probably the most vicious verbal fights I have ever had were with her. There have been times where she has threatened to kick me out of the house, I have needed to stay with my relatives, and we do not talk for weeks. Every time I come home she tells me, “See Jake, this is why I do not like when you come home.” She also tells me, “You are not living at home for a day, post-grad. We are cutting you off.” A lot of tough love. Usually, after she says this, we go and see a movie. She’s a talker, she loves to talk during movies to me. She loves independent movies, and I do not think I have ever chosen a movie when going with her. We never get popcorn either, “overpriced,” she says. At times, she is not the best parent, or the most supportive person in my life. In high school and even up until a few years ago, I was constantly upset because of this. But, that eventually changed. This is the story about how I found myself through clothing.
MCs and Breakbeats the first line: Since I was in middle school I had torrented versions of Photoshop that I ripped off of the PirateBay on my computer. I just loved to screw around on the program and make “sigs” which were online signatures. I would post them on a Cleveland Cavaliers forum which I frequented. I took a Photoshop class in high school in which I completely breezed through, and in the process I helped this girl I liked with all of her projects. I think we both passed that class with flying colors. Fast-forward back to my freshman year of college.. Entering my freshman year of college, I was roommates with my best friend, Zach at Miami University in Ohio. We had always talked about doing a clothing line named, Franchise in high school. But, it never came to fruition. Zach just didn’t have that much interest in clothing to be honest. But, people who have supported this thing know how he influenced me in different ways. Zach transferred to Ohio State our sophomore year. I have always been in love with music. It is the one time in my life where my mind goes blank, and I will realize at a certain point that I have just been sitting down getting lost for two hours. My friends have noticed that I take a certain section of a song I like, and play it over and over and over again. I have a certain affinity for hip-hop music, I guess that's the part of me that loves to replay the section of a song like a sample from a beat. In the middle of my freshman year, I started designing clothing for real under the moniker, “MCs and Breakbeats.” An MC is a master of ceremony which in hip-hop is a person who takes the mic. A breakbeat is a break or rhythm part on a record that is commonly sampled on different tracks. For the clothes, I ripped two logos from the 1990s Utah Jazz, and Denver Nuggets, re-colored them, and slapped them on a t-shirt and hoodie. The hoodie, I called the Summit Alpine hoodie. For the first hoodie drop, I went with an edition of 24. However, it cost nearly $1000 to produce all 24 of the hoodies and shirts and I did not have that much as Jerry Garcia liked to say, ice cream money at that point.
To get that money, I took a summer job after freshman year working at a town grocery store called Pepper’s Fresh Market. It was the most miserable experience of my life. I remember sitting in my car before work everyday, silently whispering “fuck me,” before I went in for my shift. I worked in produce and the work was mindless, which has always been a huge problem for me because my mind moves at a million miles per hour. The entire summer, I was just looking forward to finally printing up the t-shirts and hoodies, something I actually made for myself. The entire time doing this, my mom was constantly in my ear asking me why I was wasting my money on clothing. I spent nearly all the money I made that summer making those hoodies and t-shirts. During the process of making them, I had friends who constantly told me, “looking forward to buying your gear,” When I finally picked them up, I was so happy. I slipped a hoodie on and drove home. I then threw them up on this shitty BigCartel website that I had slightly changed the coloring for on the template they gave.
Everybody who said they would buy one off of me flaked. I think I actually sold like 3 of them. It was one of the largest “coming to a realization” moments that I had during my life. You can’t rely on other people to support you, even your friends. You can't expect anything from anybody. It was one of the moments in my life that I felt like I was absolutely worthless.. Like it was me against the world. Sounds fucking stupid when you are referring to a bunch of t-shirts, by hey your passions can make you feel like that. I kind of looked at myself in the mirror and knew I had to get better, but first I had to identify to myself what was wrong. It wasn’t anybody else’s fault, it was my own.
Sophomore Year, Research Period. Miami University. Subsequently, I entered my sophomore year of college. I had a core friend group of about four guys, and three of them after our freshman year at Miami transferred to different schools. I was alone at Miami which had a social atmosphere that depended on Greek life. I never was into rushing fraternities, and I knew at that point that I was probably transferring to Xavier University in Cincinnati, but I had to re-take a Pre-Calc class that I went D status in (I have always been horrible at math.) I knew that I was going to have absolutely zero social life, like spend weekends in your dorm room type stuff. Luckily, my dorm had a built in study room. I took two classes along with Pre-Calc that shaped my life. The first being the History of Jazz Music with Tammy Kernodle, and Creativity in Entrepreneurship with Jim Friedman. I remember that Jazz Music Class was one of the best classes I have ever taken. Professor Kernodle was the perfect professor. She was so fucking passionate about her job, and would just gush about the people she was talking about within the jazz course. Shit, this was a fucking intro class! I think it takes a special professor to teach like that. Something out of Dead Poet’s Society. She was so passionate that sometimes students would be on their phones and she would notice, end class, and say it was fucking ridiculous and told them not to even show up. No bullshit. During that semester, I would stay up until 3AM in study rooms watching documentaries about Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald and others. My love for hip-hop music really was the gateway into jazz for me. Hip-hop constantly used jazz breaks, and it led me into researching the full song in which that break was derived from. Some of the most beautiful music that I have ever heard was found during that time period, and it is still a technique I employ while looking for new music. I used my mom’s mantra of, “Look it up, Jake.”
I got to know Professor Kernodle through her office hours during the semester. I would just gush about hip-hop and jazz music that I was discovering to her. And nicely enough, she would listen to me. I remember meeting her in office hours and telling her that I was transferring. She told me that I was a rarity in the students she taught, in that I was a “scholar.” I was kind of taken back by that comment. It was one of the nicest things ever said to me, and in my life.. It wasn’t something I was used to. The Creativity in Entrepreneurship class was taught by Jim Friedman. He dealt with complete ambiguity, and would not tell you your grade until the end of the course. Thus, you were forced to hand in your assignments blindly and he would give you a final feedback sheet at the conclusion of the course. Usually the assignments were broad and you could choose any topic you wanted. Naturally, I chose clothing throughout the semester. Friedman and I had a rough relationship as opposed to Professor Kernodle. He was incredibly intelligent but he was probably the most disrespectful person I have met in my life. He wasn’t disrespectful to everybody, but I could tell he just did not take me seriously whatsoever. I would try to initiate a conversation with him, he would cut me off in the middle of it and say something to end it. Half the time, I wouldn’t even be good enough for him to make eye contact with. Even through that, I worked my ass off in his class. In between Jazz assignments, I would spend time designing sort of a brand identity on Photoshop for MCs and Breakbeats. I would design things so late into the night I would fall asleep in the study room and wake up the next morning, quickly showering, brushing my teeth, and changing clothes.. I listened to “I” by Kendrick Lamar every morning. That shit was easy to do, doing something you love isn't work.
One of my best friends, LJ also started a basketball filming company called HWBD. He asked me to help him with branding the company, so I was able to really improve my skills in graphic design with him. He was one of the people who was always encouraging me, and believed in me before I believed in myself. (Later he went onto have HWBD featured on Bleacher Report, USA Today, Slam Online and other publications.) He is one of the people in my life who I do not have to see him for years for us to pick up right where we left off. One of the best people, and I am eternally grateful for him. He is one of the few people who actually bought my original shirts and encouraged me to go on.
However, LJ went to OSU. During my last semester at Miami, I did not go out, I didn’t have any real friends that I hung out with outside of class. It was the most alone, the most unhappy I have ever felt in my entire life. One of the most interesting things you can do is close yourself off to the world for months without any real human communication. You may feel the most alone you have ever felt, but you also push yourself to your absolute limit. You go deep into the things you love, and question yourself at every junction. I would also research clothing brands on HYPEBEAST which was a forum that talked about culture and clothing, and dive into the archives of design, music, and travel. One clothing brand that I found was by a college kid named, Phillip T. Annand called AWARD TOUR. He hand-drew the designs in college taking inspiration from his Haitian Roots, Nat Geo, and records that were plastered all over his dorm room wall. He ended the brand a few years before and went onto found the enormously successful creative house, The Madbury Club. I scoured HYPEBEAST for his old AWARD TOUR gear. Luckily, I was able to find two shirts from his old line and ordered them. When I got them, I was taken back. He used so many prints per shirt, and used a lot of colors per print.. Something I was not accustomed to. I remember on my final project for Entrepreneurship, I marveled on how fucking awesome the t-shirts were and how much attention to detail Phil paid. I know Professor Friedman was rolling his eyes reading through that.
Along with being surrounded by records because of my parent’s musical background, Phil’s style resonated with me because a few summers before while in high school, I traveled to Switzerland and France. It was the first place outside of the United States since I had lived in Ireland as a kid. My family and I traveled to Geneva, Annecy, and Strasbourg. Strasbourg had a massive fucking cathedral built from the 1100s-1400s and every building there was in Tudor architecture which was kick-ass. Annecy had a beautiful lake, with a mountain range in the background. To this day, seeing pictures of those places still makes me think, “damn.” It is one of the reasons Phil’s style has always stood out so prevalently to me. It reminded me of that.
STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL, FRANCE.
LAKE ANNECY, FRANCE.
My final project in Entrepreneurship included an Astronaut holding a record modeled off of Heinz Edelmann’s art style, the guy who designed a few Beatles album covers. This later went on the back of a shirt, and the front I designed a knockoff NASA logo. He gave me a final grade of a C during that semester and told me throughout the class, I had missed the point. I was always handing in these final assignments, but never showed the process of making them. That oversight to me, was another failure. While I did undergo that process, it was never displayed outwardly. Shortly after, I dropped the t-shirt and it did slightly better than the original Summit Alpine Hoodie and t-shirt. However, I think at that point, I had upwards of 50+ unsold garments sitting in my parent’s basement. Something my mom was not happy about. After that, I knew it was the last design that I wanted to release under the name, “MCs and Breakbeats.”
Bombed at Apollo: The Beginning During that semester, I researched the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York for my jazz course. Apollo is interesting in that they hold an Amateur Night in which people perform in front of a sold out crowd. If the audience does not like the amateur performer, they boo them off of the stage which is referred to as, “bombing.” In that moment, it is where someone feels absolutely alone with themselves. It was a feeling that I related to on many occasions during my life. I knew that I wanted to change the name of my company to, Bombed at Apollo.
In many ways, Bombing at the Apollo is the personification of failure. My time at Miami concluded. However, at this point I was almost broke after two massive failures of clothing releases which I had sank a few thousand dollars into... Naturally, I decided to have a fire sale. I offered the hoodies and t-shirts up for $20 and $10 each. It was almost a joke to how much I posted on social media, and hit my friends up about buying my “$10 tees and $20 hoodies!” My friends bit and I sold out of almost every single one of them. I was still short of enough money to produce my next line, so I sold almost all my own clothes on HYPEBEAST the months leading up to enrolling in Xavier. I remember at one point I had like four t-shirts, one hoodie, two pairs of Adidas trackpants, and a busted up pair of Adidas Superstars that I would just alternate through. Not a lot of clothes considering it was pretty much all I thought about. The bottom half of me looked like Run DMC on a campus that dressed like easter eggs.
My first semester at Xavier, my roommate left so I got a single to myself halfway through the year. I remember donating the rest of my clothes from MCs and Breakbeats to the Entrepreneurship Club for a camp they were doing as “goody bag” prizes. The girl who was leading the endeavor named Libby, was my year in school, and had an interest in clothes as well. She (incredibly kindly), tried to pick my mind. I remember being extremely fucking embarrassed explaining that I designed clothes to her as I gave her them. She asked if I ever sold them..I told her “only to my friends,” who wouldn’t have even bought them if I hadn’t basically given them for free. I was embarrassed talking about the thing that I was the most passionate about in my life.
Bombed at Apollo Case Study 1: Sophomore Year-Junior Year
After my roommate left, it was like my own little study room where I could just dip out and design on my own when I felt like it. I made three really close friends named, Tara, Samm, and Paul. Paul is a person I live with as I am writing this in my fifth year of school. In that semester, they were so supportive to me as a person, and really built up my confidence. It is something that I will forever be grateful for. By the end of that year, I started to transform from a person who was unbelievably shy into someone who never shut the fuck up. However, this gave me the ability to sometimes be the loudest person in the room, but at other times be completely silent and listen. That switch up factor is one that I still carry with me. During that time, I designed 3 t-shirts and a hoodie.
The first called, “The Goggles On! T-shirt” which was modeled off of a French company called Vuarnet who made t-shirts in the 1980s-1990s.
The second called, “The Grand Prix Longsleeved Garment” modeled off of a Grand Prix Monaco poster that I had bought off of Ebay.
The third called, “The Academy’s Varsity Hoodie” which was a burgundy hoodie which a varsity styled “B” with “At Apollo” in the middle in the font of the Apollo Theater.
The last being, “The World’s Fair T-Shirt” which displayed a pennant that I designed in Photoshop on the front with a scan of the Taiwan Pavilion postcard from the 1964 World’s Fair.
The World’s Fair especially interested me because it was a bunch of cultures coming together for an exposition, displaying what was so unique about each one of them. I decided in the middle of the design process to call the release a “Case Study,” which was a period and process of research that somebody undergoes before publishing their work. I brought back the criticism Professor Friedman had given me of essentially not showing my work, and did so. I also added a few songs that I had been listening to while in the design process. The entire Case Study had a vintage theme, so I realized that I could not just sell the clothing itself. Something that heavily inspired going into the process of making the shirts was looking at liner notes of old records my family had around the house. Something that was awesome about liner notes was that it delved into the creative process that the artist went through while making the record. How they were feeling, what other records they listened to.. It was something that was incredibly appealing to me. This is fucking corny, but I had to sell the idea. I started designing spreads for each of the garments to give it more of an old school look. I combined photos taken of me in Toronto, Ontario wearing the hoodie at Casa Loma in Ontario and turned them into a collage. I then took an old Nat Geo picture of a mountain and combined a tearing effect with the picture of the Goggles On! T-shirt. For the Grand Prix Longsleeved Garment I did the same thing, except plastered mountains over my body while messing with layering effects. In the middle of my junior year after finishing designing all of the clothing, spending nearly all of my money producing the line.. I knew I couldn’t afford to fail again. I remember telling one of my friends, “if this doesn’t sell, this is the last drop I’m going to do.” I was on the brink of giving up on myself. At the same time, I knew I couldn’t rely on my friends to buy any because they wouldn’t come through. So I resorted to Reddit which is an online clusterfuck of news articles, and different subcommunities in which people nerd out over a respective passion of theirs. Reddit had a streetwear community and I made a post asking for “Feedback on my clothing brand.” Within hours, comments poured in (I responded to every single one of them) and it vaulted itself to the front page with 300+ upvotes. People were saying that it was one of the best startup brands they had ever seen. I sold out of that line in a day and shipped clothes to like five countries around the world. For months afterwards, I got messages from people wondering when I would come out with my next line. My friends couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it. Before I got in the car to go back to school after shipping out the packages, my dad gave me a hug and told me, “all the hard work paid off.” For the first time in my life, I felt like I was successful at something I did. Later that year, one of my good friends, Caroline, possibly the coolest person I know was in a fashion organization back at Miami University. Again, one of those few people that encouraged me to keep going. Every year, the organization put on a killer fashion show. Out of the kindness of her heart, she hooked me up with tickets to it in the 2nd row usually reserved for family members, or massive benefactors. While most people showed up in suits, or nice dresses.. I wore a t-shirt, beer shorts, and adidas superstars. Sitting directly in front of me was Professor Friedman. At one point, he turned around and made eye contact with me. We didn’t say a word to each other.
"I'ma wear the yellow tux at at the Grammies, and rock out with my cock out.. Like who this kid think he is." - Frank Ocean (Astro)
Case Study 2: Senior Year
From people constantly hitting me up, asking what I was going to release next, I felt some sort of pressure to live up to expectations that I had put on myself because finally, I had some sort of moderate success actually doing this clothing shit. During the summer following the Case Study 2 release, I worked at a sandwich shop and pretty much repeated the grocery store method from the summer before and accumulated money just to design clothes. This job was a bit better, and the owner was a huge hippie so I got to listen to Jimi Hendrix all day, wear tie-dye, and make sandwiches. No complaints there. I came out with three garments in the fall that year taking heavy influence off of the Beastie Boys' record, “Paul’s Boutique” which was riddled with funk samples from Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and others. It used so many samples that if the same record was attempted to be made today, it would be impossible due to royalty fees.
Paul's Boutique Album Cover - Beastie Boys (1989)
The first, “On the Corner” which displayed several gradient graphics, and a picture of Kensington Market that I took in Toronto the year before on the back. The picture of Kensington Market had a striking resemblance to the cover art of Paul’s Boutique.
The second, “The Sporting Club Garment” or the “Funky Dutchman” was based off of a 90s Nike AquaGear tee I had seen that displayed on a video called, “The Mingler.” That displayed Nautical flags that displayed the word, “Funk.”
The third, The Tobacco Supply Garment was modeled off of an old “Chew Tobacco” advertisement I saw while camping in West Virginia with my roommates. Some of the spreads on that shirt display a picture of the advertisement that I took. Unfortunately, with history and specifically portraying a tobacco advertisement, there is quite a bit of usage of a racist caricatures of Native Americans. Unfortunately, I had not come to this realization until after releasing the shirt. In order to make up for this, I donated all of the profits to Standing Rock.
I released Case Study 2 in the fall that year. Again, I marketed it on Reddit. Some of the items sold out in a few days, but it did not do as well as the first release. It drew quite a bit of criticism for being too similar to The Madbury Club which had recently started making clothing.
The criticisms were warranted, I had taken inspiration from Madbury Club. But, in different ways. Phil and I are similar in terms of taste.. I collect vintage editions of National Geographic, both my parents were musicians so I had records and music around me my entire life, and I took a special interest in design. Phil and I both have a love for Nike ACG and do not take ourselves too seriously. Because of that, there was an obvious inspiration, specifically for that release. It was not a direct knockoff of Madbury.. But at that point, I recognized I had to establish my own identity as a person and designer. Again, I had some clothing laying around in my basement (around 20 shirts).
Mom:
Later that year, I was walking on a beach in Maine with my mom shortly after a break-up with a girl. For some reason, the subject of my clothing company was brought up. For the first time in my life, my mom told me she was proud me. She told me to not let anybody let me feel ashamed of who I was. When she told me that shit, my self-doubt pretty much vanished. See, my mom met my dad in music school. Post-grad, she shopped around for gigs in music which was her passion in life. She did not get an offer to continue on. I think one of the biggest things that I respect about my mother is how dynamic she is. When music did not pan out for her, she went back to school in something she was naturally good at which was science. Usually, a person excels at one or the other, not both. She is one of those rare people. She worked her fucking ass off, and placed into Medical School. During the early years of my life, we were extremely poor. We lived off of my dad’s musician’s salary, while my mom was going through school. Soon after giving birth to me, she graduated. I still remember going to her graduation as a little kid. We then moved around quite a bit, all over Ohio, to Ireland, back to Ohio, to New Hampshire, and then finally settling once again in Ohio. However, while she was making good pay being a doctor, I think there was still part of her that needed to express her creativity. I remember her still practicing the flute in her study when she was well into her career in medicine. A few years ago, she stopped. Recently, she has started to do tie dye and I will order shirts for her. Every time she comes home, she locks herself in her back room to do projects.. Wanting to be alone. I think a part of her always wanted to quit being a doctor, but because of her upbringing of having her power turned off as a kid, paying her way through school, she always thinks that money is the answer. In doing so, she still has a sense of unhappiness. A lot of times, she feels like it is her against the world even when dealing with her own family. The more I have thought about her treatment of me throughout my life, I started to realize that all she wanted was to protect me from having something that I love so much, break my heart. I think she saw a bit of herself in me. Me with clothing, her with music. Even through it all, I love the shit out of her. She gave me the life that she never had growing up. I am so proud of her, not just in her success. But, even more-so in her failure.
The World’s Fair Supply. Case Study 3: Senior Year-Year 5, The Most Dangerous Game:
In trying to distance myself away from Phil, while still retaining a sense of my identity.. I realized that just making t-shirts was not enough. I had to make something that physically showed how passionate I was about the clothing. In order to do that, I decided to go full passion project for the rest of the releases. Releasing garments 1 by 1, each in custom packaging, physically showing how much attention to detail that went into each garment. For me to be compared to Phil, I needed to show that we liked the same things and I was not just biting off of his style. So, I told a story about my childhood at an army surplus store, buying 1800s Liebig trading cards, and hand-drawing a nature scene that took me a month short of a year. At this point, I knew Bombed couldn’t run off of a standard business model. It had turned full-scale into a passion project, and something that I knew I could never make money on as a sole source of income. At that point, I knew I had to just design the craziest fucking thing I thought of. All I wanted to do was make enough money in order to be able to design more clothing. I knew that it would not necessarily turn into the most successful company, but I realized that is something that I never wanted. I always wanted it to be small. I wanted to get to know the people wearing my clothing, and I wanted them to get to know me as a person. Because the brand wasn’t a brand, it was me. While I was perfectly fine with working in a team in other endeavors, that was the reason I have always wanted to do it alone. Like Professor Friedman criticized me for, I showed the entire process in a long write-up detailing every single element of the garment. I also opened up about my own insecurities with myself. As some people may know through reading the MDG, I found my best friend after he took his own life. I arrived back to school after one of the worst weeks of my life.. Waiting in my room was Frank Ocean's "Boys Don't Cry" zine with the helmet cover. I got lost in that for the next year and I have a deep emotional connection to his music because of that. The lead picture in the Most Dangerous Game is a direct homage to that. During the design process of the shirt, I couldn’t let go. I would miss days of class because I was feeling too depressed to go, and feel distant when I was talking to people. I used the t-shirt as an escape. One of the reasons why I put it down for everyone to see was because of the show Epicly Later’d by Patrick O’Dell. It is a skateboarding docu-series that goes into the lives of skateboarders, filmmakers, etc. One of the most recent losses that the skateboarding community has dealt with is that of Dylan Rieder who passed away from leukemia. In Dylan Rieder’s Epicly Later’d, a picture flashed on the screen. In the photo with Rieder was my cousin, Dennis. Dennis is a killer photographer, who grew up in the 80s and 90s skateboarding. He is a person I truly admire, and someone who went against the grain. I am lucky to call him part of the family. After seeing the Epicly Later’d, I opened up about Zach’s death to Dennis in private. He offered me some nice words that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Epicly Later'd recently made its television debut as a show on VICELAND. You can catch the old episodes on YouTube.
Dylan Rieder in the HUF hat
I would also like to thank my father, and one of my best friends from my freshman year at Miami, Jacob who always lent their ears whenever I felt down. I would also like to especially thank probably my best friend since the 8th grade, Brendan for listening to me as I nearly broke down for a few hours talking about what happened in my car before leaving Chicago after visiting him. That was the first time where somebody outside of my family directly saw how it affected me. I think that’s why I threw myself into the details while making that shirt. I needed it to be perfect for peace of mind. I didn’t make things just for the sake of making them. Alot of people say they like to "create" or are inspired because of the "energy" of their surroundings. I can respect people in touch with that sort of spirituality.. But, that was never me. I guess i'm spiritual, I just articulate it in a different way. I made the shirt to find peace. It was my therapy. When I read liner notes going into the creative process of musicians on wax, I found that many of them made their best work when at their lowest. Emotions cannot always be expressed into words, so they throw everything into a project. All the tears, their heartache, the self-reflection.. It's everything I threw into a single t-shirt. Have you ever just started crying, and not had any idea why? Because of this, to me, The Most Dangerous Game will always be the best thing I ever made.
I posted the Most Dangerous Game on Reddit half a day before releasing it, and I remember ten minutes before dropping the shirt at Midnight.. The shirt had the most publicity I have ever gotten for anything. It was at the top of the page, had 13,000 hits.. I told my roommate, “I think this joint may sell out in like thirty minutes.” It sold out in eight. Minutes after I sold out, I locked myself in my room and started crying. In the following weeks after that, I was finally able to let go. When I sold it along with the story, emails came pouring in from kids who had read my story about the process of The Most Dangerous Game. A few said they were crying when they were reading it, and opened up to me about their demons. How they felt alone. Something my entire life, I have felt. Even with the most supportive people a guy can ask for around me. They said I had inspired them... Something like that floors me. From a guy who at one point struggled to talk about my biggest passion. I am hardly the inspirational figure. I am glad that people found some meaning in what I wrote.. Because, at times I felt like writing was the only way in which I could somewhat describe how I felt without losing it. I had probably 30 of my friends hit me up personally about buying that shirt, some of the same one’s who had ghosted me a few years before. I just didn’t have enough for them. When other people see you being successful at something, they want to get in on it. But, starting up is the most difficult part, especially going through failure after failure. I realized that people weren’t going to care about me, I needed to make them care. To me, it was never just about making a cool t-shirt, it needed to be drawn from things that were part of me.
The Alpine Hoodie. Version 2: The final clothing release of my college career will be a re-work of the original Alpine hoodie I released after working at my job at the grocery store. It was the first time I experienced failure, and sure as shit will not be the last.. It made me appreciate that there was beauty in that process. I think it is only fitting and it shows my development as not only a person, but as a designer. ((Hell, I still have no idea what I am doing half the time, I just open up Photoshop, or Illustrator and screw around for hours.. Before something comes out of the oven.))
The Alpine Tactical Hooded Garment comes with a custom box and two stickers. The garment is heavily based upon my trip to Annecy, Switzerland. Taking inspiration from the waterfront and mountain range heavily featured within the small town. The back graphic contains a scan from a vintage issue of National Geographic. The sleeve graphic is inspired by an Army Surplus store I would travel to as a kid in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
What Matters: I think this entire college experience has implanted large parts of my identity that I hold today.
The first being, always support your friends.
I know what it feels like to be absolutely alone, like nobody gives a shit about anything you put out there. I always make it a point to tell my friends I care about the things they do.. You never know when you will not have a chance to again. It means the world to know that somebody cares. Give them money for shit they make so they can make more, tell them how proud you are of them, find inspiration in them… At the same time, I know that I cannot always rely solely on them for inspiration or support. In that way, I got out of my box.
The second being, “Don’t be afraid to fail.”
You are going to fail so many times in your life that it is not even funny. At times you will hit rock bottom, but keep on plugging away. Dedicate yourself to what you are truly passionate about, make it a huge part of your identity. Even if you are uncomfortable talking about it at first, if you truly commit yourself.. I guarantee at a certain point you will not shut the fuck up about it. You’ll slowly build the confidence.
The third being, “It’s about the people you meet along the way.”
Because of this clothing shit, I have met and started friendships with people all around the United States.. As well as from over the pond. It’s amazing to get to know people and hear their stories, passions, and vulnerabilities. It’s so much more than clothing and what makes everything all worth it. If put up against making clothing, I would take the people I met along the way over it ten times out of ten. Even if people you have direct contact with do not necessarily share the same passions, there is always somebody out there who does. If you are reading this, please reach out to me and introduce yourself. If you ever need to talk about anything, if you are feeling down. Depression is something that is incredibly real. It is what makes us all human. Nobody is invincible. Sometimes, you have to sound like a cornball to describe how you feel.. It is okay to cry and show vulnerability. My line is always open: Jake@bombedatapollo.com , DM me on Twitter, Instagram (@40Footers) While I may have designed everything alone. I was never truly alone along the way. There were some amazing people that picked me back up along the way when I fell on my ass. It is never you vs. the world.
The fourth being, “Accessibility.”
During my life, I have been around people who have not been interested in art whatsoever. For example, I have a MoMA hoodie, and people asked me why “momma” was spelled incorrectly on it. People aren’t necessarily going to “get it.” In terms of designing, it is important to be accessible to people. By this, I mean while it is important to go into your wacky creative stage, it is also important to use modern ways to articulate that idea so it can catch the attention of people who do not necessarily dive as deep into a subject as you. I think this idea can be applied to anything, and it is something I used while searching for samples while listening to hip-hop music. Everything is a gateway to dive deeper into another topic. You can't just make a cool t-shirt and expect people other than your friends to buy it off of the rip. You have to write that story around it, and lead people into caring about it.
The fifth being, "You can read about it, but it's different to live it."
You can sit behind your computer, or behind books your entire life. But, people will only get the full picture if they are living in it. There are always details that don't quite do that story justice, things cannot be quite articulated through words. Everybody has a different scope on a situation. Don't hide behind something that only exists within the confines of a book. You can't force creativity, it just kind of happens.
The last being, “Look it up.”
Thanks mom, for always telling me to look it up. Without that advice, I would not have gotten so deep into my interests and eventually outwardly show that passion. Curiosity is the source of creativity. It’s funny I say that because I probably am not even the most creative one in my parent’s house, let alone extended family.
END: Right before she graduated from Xavier, Libby (the girl at one point I was embarrassed talking about designing clothing to) designed her own shirt where she printed a postcard from Vogue onto the front. I bought one, still wear it to this day, and paid her I think $20 more for it than she was asking. I told her to go buy a handle with the extra cash
Bombed at Apollo was a solo project by Jake Golden that lasted from 2013-2017 during his college career. From 2018 on, it will undergo the final name change as The World’s Fair Supply. The Case Study Programs will continue on under the name. The World’s Fair Supply will always be a passion project and each garment will release one-by-one. Case Study 4 will be released whenever Jake feels like it..
