Friday, January 28, 2011

With Bonnie And Clyde Like Fervor / Drift Buckin'

Boy, they just don't make snowmobiles like they used to. As you can see, it doesn't appear that the County snow plow drivers are even out of bed yet. I wonder, after confronting the driver of the vehicle coming straight for you, how pleasant the tone of conversation was while deciding who was going to be the one to back up.
O' course if this couple happened to be Bonnie and Clyde, there probably was no conversation.

Drift Bucker is a term Rob Ter Veer or Jim Bolens used to describe a $200 rust bucket that you'd buy in November so you could put your stellar, $1000 dollar, I get more chicks in this thing, Plymouth Fury up for the winter.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Oui Oui !

I love this photo and wanted to share it. I bummed it off Schott Bros. Facebook page. This is model, Crystal Renn in Schott's lambskin, women's Perfecto in a photo shoot from Paper Planes Magazine.

Friday, January 21, 2011

ronniehanna 1962-2011


Sometimes I heard Ronnie, never just Hanna, but always ronniehanna. Just 4 easy syllables. Sure, What-A-Guy, his company's namesake and really, with no irony, the most accurate description anyone could ever bestow upon someone, would inherently follow.
I hadn't known Ronnie all that long. Sometimes, as a sales rep, you refer to particular time frames by the line you carried at the time. I met Ronnie during his days with Stussy at an Embassy Suite's show in Southfield. The show was so dead, there was nothing to do but dangle over the hallway wall in the atrium and talk shit to other reps.

He had just come off a long stint with Michael Brandon and was starting over with Stussy. He was full of himself and had lots of stories about the crap sides of this business I had never known. And I thought I'd already lived enough crap stories. Christ, there's more?
So I kind of held Ronnie at a yeah, right, whatever sort of distance. I don't know that I admitted it to him, almost sure I didn't, but I was envious of him. How much longer than me he'd been in the business, the people he knew, the places he'd gone and the money he'd made...and lost.
Yet he was starting all over again, like many in this business do. So our kinship, if I may call it that, started then.

And since then, I would go out of my way to spend even a few minutes at one show or another to catch up. Bands and music were another thing we jawed over. He used to tell me that while he lived in Milwaukee, he was often mistaken for Sammy I think his name is, the shorter guy in the Bodeans. Once, while in New York for the Men's Collective, it was my 5oth, and he took me out to dinner because I was away from home on my birthday. When I lost my gig as a rep after being in a motorcycle accident, he called me right away and asked me if I needed cash. He told me about the summer he moved to Milwaukee and how it ceremoniously coincided with the police rummaging through the condiments in Jeffery Dahmer's icebox. And finally, last summer, he made a point to stop by my hotel after the show and we had a smoke and a cocktail while admiring a cat sized rat walk the fence line on the patio.

Not many people in this world leave you wanting more. And now of course when I can't, I wish I would have nudged our friendship further.
I will let that be a lesson.

Cheers, Ron.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Seaway


When ever I'm in the vicinity of Seaway Drive and I just feel like taking a little time out, say, for like a night or two, I like to kick back at the Seaway with a really big bottle of something nasty. You know the size bottle I'm talking about? There about the size of an old file cabinet. You practically have to tip em over onto a pallet and haul it away with a fork lift. That size.
(I'm just jokin, Honey. I've never had to use a forklift).

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Mr And Mrs.


This couple could have been my parents. But, I suspect, as much trouble As I got their son into, they quite likely would have declined the offer.
This photo is important to me for a number of reasons. One; I totally forgot about The Green Bean.
While it may stand out as one of the more inglorious vehicles ever made, it represents a time when we were finishing high school, and we had the whole world in front of us, and the most important thing we were concerned about at the moment was who had papers.

Two; This particular angle of the house depicts the door to the sun room where we watched Bewitched at noon. It wasn't just the Snow Capped Franks we were avoiding, it was the importance of autonomy, being able to walk away from it all, for like, 25 minutes. We returned reinvigorated, maybe even a little bit arrogant.

The roof to the sun room also served as an important cog in one of the greatest sneak outs from a sleep-over ever to be busted by a mom for.
It seemed flawless on paper:
A) Climb out second floor bathroom window to roof of first floor sun room. B) Jump off sun room roof to ground below.
"Tuck and roll" I whispered. "Remember to tuck and roll."

While returning from whatever pointless adventure we earlier set out for, we realized we left out one small but very key element to the success of this euphoric, no walls can hold us, flight to freedom. Just how exactly, were we gonna get back up to the bathroom window.
This minor set back to our plans quickly took a back seat as we tip-toed through the woods toward the house when we stopped, dumbfounded. We stood silent, trying to make sense of it. There-are-now-many-more-lights-on- in-the-house-than-when-we-left.
Shit! Norma was awake!

Three; You are missed Mrs. Leaver

Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Pendletones



The dawn of hipster surf...

Hot Car Girl

I'm often asked how I met my wife.