Versus
We headed over to some of our earliest supporters and all around cool dudes at Vs Social Status. Designs have been rolling off the shelves there, especially the Roll That design. If you are in the area, swing by their Southdale mall location and pick up a CY6 design!
A nice CY6 collection sits in between other brands like IM KING and Dissizit.
Vs also stocks fellow Minneapolis brand Airtime.
Midwest Marauders
As the blizzard is heating up and youngsters are getting back into the elementary schools, James and I are playing cat and mouse with the downtown Chicago traffic. On one hand, I love driving into Chicago, my mini-van really gets to purr knocking on the door of ninety miles per hour. Nonetheless, when the slowest car on a 55 mph highway is going 75...it makes us Minnesnowta kids look Amish.
Anyways, we spent a few days this week visiting retailers in Milwaukee and Chicago. In one word...amazing. We were thrilled that even in times of economic uncertainty and a questionable future, everybody is keeping their head up and remaining positive. Being such a young brand, we essentially completely disregard any ideas of the economy preventing us from doing what we want to do, and are always pushing the brand in a positive direction.
We have spent the last few weeks really pushing Check Your Six in a direction that we have never felt more excited about. Our website is re-developed, our Spring release is going to be undeniably our best ever, and the response from retailers and consumers alike has been very motivating. Nearly all of the guys that we approached this week saw how we have changed the brand direction, and it felt great to hear how much they supported what we were trying to do. I guess real recognize real, right? Here's some photos to highlight the trip, stay tuned for announcements, as well as more and more previews for Spring, and of course...some really awesome products.
On the Road Again
Aaannnddd we're back. The new year is upon us, I have now lived for officially two decades (minus two years), and Check Your Six is back on the road. After spending last week in our hometown Minneapolis, we're now back in Madison, and have on the agenda for the week trips to Milwaukee and Chicago. We'll be meeting with owners to discuss the expansion of Check Your Six for our Spring 2010 release, which is set to be dropping in mid April. We're extremely excited for our Spring release, among a re-release of the infamous Roll That tee are some other prints that are almost guaranteed to join that and Elephants in the top sellers for CY6. Before some Madison shots here's a quick preview of what to expect for Spring '10 (by no means a fair and balanced preview, that's kinda the point).
Being a college town, Madison tends to pretty much close down during holidays and summer. I know this doesn't look entirely closed down, but yeah, it is. Oh, and there are two seasons in the Midwest: winter, and construction. This is a fun little taste of both.
Living in Beijing for nearly two years, naturally nearly everything on my brother is fake. Head = fake Red Bull New Era. Feet = fake Red Wing ""stomping boots". Bag = real. Jacket = questionable.
We headed over to one of our retailers, Alumni, after some secret business at the Post Office. Snapped some shots of the store interior, unfortunately my camera skills are still moderate at best, so none of them really turned out. Regardless, we spent some time discussing Spring plans with Derek and Dave, and had some knowledge dropped for us in regards to cut and sew production.
Again...apologies for the unbearable pictures.
After Alumni and some phone calls back at Lucky, we met up with our photographer / creative contributor Steve and talked about some new appproaches for Spring. He just re-did his attic into a nice little office, condusive to creative thinking, not-so creative thinking, and a whole lot of entertainment. See you soon, off to Milwaukee.
The Revolution is Now
Recently we put together a t-shirt design for no other reason than to just do a design we liked. This one isn't apart of any collection per say, but it's still got the CY6 flare you've come to know and love. It's a pretty self-explanatory shirt: propaganda style art promoting the 'one' revolution. Show your support for using two wheels instead of four and rock this shirt with pride. Because of extremely limited quantities we are keeping this out of the webstore for now, so send us an email at info@checkyoursixclothing.com to order!
Parallax
The dudes over at Parallax have been coming hard for a good minute now, and are only getting started on gracing your Ipod buds. Give some of their tracks a listen if you haven't had a chance to yet, and hell, buy a CD for Christmas you bastards! Chance blessed me with When It Rains It Snows, one of the coolest Minnesnowta grown CD's since I bought Overcast as a nine year old. Below is Chance in a recent photoshoot pulling off our Greenbacks tee from our Holiday 2008 release.
Keep your ears to the pavement for upcoming Parallax shows and events, these guys are mad talented and have a unique style that stands out among an industry of pretenders and mimickers (like Check Your Six!). Anyways, you'll be hearing from these guys in the future, I can promise you that...maybe even a little CY6 x Parallax project...? Happy Holidays.
Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall
I decided to hit up the Great Wall once more before I came back to the states. Hopped a bus to get outside of Beijing, and found myself one hundred 'rmb' on the way! (rmb = ren min bi = Chinese currency)
Gates to the Great Wall, and more importantly, the Bear Park.
his section of the wall is well restored because it is very touristy, but it is nonetheless still relatively treacherous. I'm sure something simliar in the US would require a waiver.
Guess the editor missed this one.
You really can't appreciate the wall's incredible size until you've seen it first hand.
I think these bears would make good mascots for CY6, especially if we trained them to hold AK-47s.
Until they get the AK-47 thing down, they can keep climbing these stairs. This wasn't a show and there was really nobody around, but these bears just seemed to enjoy climbing up anyways.
But what they really wanted is to just get some apples. I hope one day I can own some bears...
Exploration of Insanity
Photos courtesy to my good friend and creative colleague Steven Knurr.
S.N.A.F.U.
As awesome as the year's first big snowfall is, it somehow loses almost all of its' wickedness when it happens during finals...Oh well, sweet pictures at least right?
Photos courtesy to my good friend and creative colleague Steven Knurr.