Well we’ve hit our final Fall-1 T-shirt design… Secret Weapon!

I love Military nose art, I think it’s one of the first widely accepted examples of art re-apropriation or what’s most commonly referred to as a “flip” in streewear. There was a strong penchant for Warner & Universal cartoon characters whose archetypes conveyed perfectly well the cavalier attitudes of the pilots. The art was usually crude and the characters demeanors ranged from confrontational to overtly sexual, quite the sordid little contrast from their cartoon film persona!

Being that the Skyway Trippers were pilots i wanted to do a design around some pretty traditional nose art. Woody Woodpecker and his thumbing his nose at authority attitude was a pretty popular choice amongst pilots to represent them on the side of their plane. And while Woody appeared in countless nose art renderings, the most classic one to me is of him popping out of the bomb asking you to “keep a secret”. It’s a pretty classic image (at last to me) ripe to be played with! And while unfortunate, it’s no surprise that it was also used as the basis of a design by another artist/label around the same time. While keeping mostly true to the original nose art graphic we did re-draw it to fit our theme and just Mishka more by making Woody into a cyclops ala Simon and then adding our own Simon skull & crossbones to our secret weapon!

We’re hitting the home stretch of our Fall-1 T-Shirt preview here. But fear not because Fall-2 is just right around the corner! Next up is… Space Knight!

The whole concept behind this one is a bit out there so stay with me! I always envisioned the Skyway Trippers as this Heavy Metal Magazine type of story. And when I think of Heavy Metal Magazine I always think of some kick ass Stoner & Power Metal. Like I could see myself as a kid reading about the Skyway Trippers and inventing theme music for them in my head! Theme music that would undoubtedly sound like Deep Purple meets Savatge waxing poetic about space knights fighting archaic evil and making love to big breasted girls! This graphic is the tribute to the Skyway Trippers non-existent stoner metal classic theme song… Space Knight!

Since Road Bikes are trendy, mountain bikes must be underground… Looks like these girls are about to blow up that scene too!

Friday August 29th
Trouble & Bass
w/ Guests:South Rakkas Crew (Mad Decent)
Dre Skull (Vicious Pop)

Shark’s Birthday Celebration

Get Advanced Tickets HERE
$10 Before Midnight, $15 After

21+
@
LOVE
179 MacDougal St.
New York, NY

After riding an aluminum frame for a while, I decided to switch back to steel. So I picked up a 4130 Surly Steamroller. These bikes are one of the beefiest “street” fixed gears. They’re meant to take a beating and that’s exactly what I did to it. As a temporary solution to a trick bike while my Brooklyn Machine Works Gangsta track is getting finished, I never anticipated breaking it.

Yesterday, like most days, I got off work and headed to the Peel Sessions spot to mess around on my bike for an hour or so. After landing a few 180s something didn’t feel right. Then I landed a pretty big 180 and felt a pop in my bike. Thinking either my cones were loose in my wheel, or my pedal had cracked I got off and examined the bike. I didn’t see anything wrong with it so I hopped back on. The next combo I noticed that the bike was handling very limp. After the next 180 I felt the big sag a bit. Again I got off, looked it over. Nothing. Then I stepped on the pedal to get back on it and SNAP.

My down tube had separated from my head tube. The weakest spot on a bike. My theory is that the Brooklyn Machine Works fork was so strong that it transferred the stress to the weakest adjacent connection. After countless 180s, 360s, stair gaps and other serious riding, my frame decided to retire. It was 6 months old.

At least it didn’t snap when I was bombing traffic or the bridge!

So, as you have probably guessed, I’m a big fan of Black Metal. Only recently have I warmed up to a few non-Norwegian bands of this genre. I used to think that any Black Metal band that wasn’t in Norway or Sweden or some other cold and depressing landscape was just fake. Like an essential ingredient was missing in the recipe for cranial vibrating blast beats and over distorted vocals.

Krallice is both a NYC based Black Metal band who is not only really good, but they’re also opening for Book of Black Earth, which is T.J. from Actual Pain’s band. The show’s on October 8th at the Knitting Factory in NYC. I’m going and I hope to be on the guest list… *cough cough*. I’ll be most likely wearing the Actual Pain New Era as well!

Oh and speaking of Metal. On September 13th, “Metal” Thom is throwing the 2nd Annual METAL RACE! If the first year’s points race wasn’t enough, this year it’s going to be filled with even more metal mayhem!

Red cameras are some of the most sought-after videography equipment in the film industry to date. They shoot at an awe-inducing 120 fps. That’s slow…

Check out this video shot in Red, 120 fps. Make sure to watch the video on the Vimeo page, so you can see it in HD.

skate – shot on red – 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.

I apologize for yesterday’s diversion, but come on, the Mishka x Actual Pain New Era Cap was worth the small change in plans! But anyway now back to your regularly scheduled tee a day preview with… Head In the Clouds.

Keeping with the whole space adventurer theme we dug into the whole NASA patch aesthetic. The Head In the Clouds graphic is our attempt to recreate one of those graphics that hearkens back to those vintage Apollo shuttle mission patches you’d pick up on a family vacation at the Kennedy Space Center. We really wanted to keep true to the design formula utilized on those while still adding our own twist that related to the whole Skyway Trippers theme. Instead of an image of a shuttle or satellite we chose a Mazinger style robot head propelling over Earth. An air guardian with it’s head truly in the clouds. The rest of the text we tried to keep true to military company mottos choosing “Learning To Fly” and “Be Free ‘n Easy” as ones that not only helped convey the brands general mindset but also fit into the whole Skyway Trippers adventurer theme we were going for!