GET TO KNOW ME BETTER
GET TO KNOW ME BETTER
Things I like and things I occupy myself with when i’m not at work.
Tees
I collect vintage rock T-shirts. Guess who my favorite band is…
What got me hooked into collecting vintage tees was the fact that you had to verify that it’s actually vintage and not a reprint. A t-shirt’s originality can be verified in a number of ways. The first of which is to check it’s stitching. If it’s single stitched, it’s almost certain to have been produced before the mid 1990s. Single stitched shirts are not a sign of quality in and of itself but allude to being produced better since materials used in shirts before the 2000s were generally heftier.
Tags are also a great way to see if your t-shirt is original or not. In the case of my Rage Against The Machine merchandise, they were mainly produced by GIANT, who was the licensed manufacturer for a number of rock bands back in the day. However, you’ll often come across tees tagged by GIANT’s subcontractors. Tee’s that have double branded tags (GIANT + subcontractor logo) usually go for extra in the vintage band t-shirt market. Tags don’t just vary in branding, too. Brands have changed the formats of their tags over the course of the decades, and some multiple times within a few years.
Collectors cross reference a t-shirts tag to the t-shirts design to fully verify its originality. Despite all this however, it’s common to find tags that have been resewn onto t-shirts in attempts to sell them at exorbitant prices to unsuspecting fans. Some of these t-shirts can go for hundreds of dollars. My advice? Go hunt for them at thrift shops, that’s where these resellers get them. “WE GOTTA TAKE THE POWER BACK!” – Zach de la Rocha
Jeans
As much as I’d love to write a bit about denim, I’m going to hold back. I have quite literally spent HOURS on talking about jeans and my foray into raw denim. Here are a few pairs that detail my adventures over the past few years.
Thermoses
These aren’t any ordinary thermoses…in fact, they aren’t Thermoses at all. They’re Stanley’s. Model A-944 variants to be exact. These bottles are iconic. They’ve been featured as props in television and movies. Apparently, many Americans recall their fathers and grandfathers using these on fishing trips. I wouldn’t know, my father wasn’t too big on fishing. I bought one at a local store and found it to perform worse than what I expected (trust me these things are hype in the insulated bottle community).
Upon further research, I found out that the bottles saw a drop in quality after their production had been outsourced overseas. Determined to have my share of vintage Americana, I scoured the net for a vintage example in unused condition (Just get a used bottle? Come on man that’s a bit much). I found one, thankfully, for a pretty good price. Alas, the collector in me had to get every version once I found out that the design had changed over the years.
STREET FIGHTER
I’m a huge fan of the Street Fighter series, specifically Super Street Fighter II Turbo. I used to frequent arcades in Japan, spending my Friday nights playing against the biggest and baddest names in the community.
