So I was charged with the task of putting together a write up on some of my favorite pieces from the current Spring collection. This was pretty difficult since Spring 10 has been my favorite collection to come out in the three seasons I have been in the services of Мишка as an intern. The Spring collection offers up all of your old favorites like tees and hats, but also has some of the best cut and sew pieces the brand has produced in the 4 or so years that the line expanded beyond graphic tees and caps. This is only part one because I simply can’t fit all of the pieces I like into one post so stay tuned for subsequent posts.

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• Unknown Pleasures Mop T-Shirt (Black)

It is no secret that the designs being produced just keep getting better and better with each season. Allow me to present to you a few of my favorite pieces from the current Spring 2010 collection. First up none other then the Unknown Pleasures Mop tee which takes its inspiration one of my favorite albums of all time, Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. This image doesn’t really capture how intricate the line work is in creating the Bear Mop. Head over to the shop for more detailed look.

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• Keaton Striped Button-Down Shirt (Black)

Next up we have the Keaton Striped Button-down which is your basic cotton striped shirt with a twist. It’s perfect for hanging out on breezy spring night with my derelict friends or to go to a sales meeting the following morning. The shirt is available in 3 different colorways all of which have contrasting pocket and interior cuffing stripes. I of course went for the shirt in Black stripes with the Navy pocket.

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• Orion Denim Jacket (Vintage Indigo)

The Orion Denim Jacket has been shielding me from the up until recently mild breezes that have been giving me chills. I was lusting over a sample of this  jacket for the past few months before it finally came in with the Spring shipment. The inspiration comes from the classic denim jacket you’d dress up and personalize with patches and pins. Thos eof you without a patch stash fear not, the Orion comes with 9 pre-packed Мишка patch designs that span across the past few years, all of which perfectly suit the rough and tumble nature of this piece. I got mine all ironed and stitched up and even added an old Bad Brains back patch to give it that extra little kick of goodness.

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• Boris Skinny Jeans (Washed Black)

All my dudes out there that rock skinny jeans know what a pain in the ass it could be to find a pair that fit you properly. I was actually shocked at how awesome the fit was on Boris… though if you’re a shorter dude you’ll need to get them hemmed as they come with a set 34″ inseam, but no biggie. The washed black is what I’m all about,  but even the vintage indigo are pretty great and all purpose wash in their own right. If you are looking for a quality pair of skinny jeans I definitely suggest trying a pair of these bad boys on.

Bear witness: an irony-portal so dense, so graphic, and so utterly and completely obvious that you as a viewer are powerless to look away. It’s so good, so true, and so clever that you may not even think it’s very cool. So I’ll explain: The Bloglin reader can be counted on to very likely hold these two things dearly—very dearly—to their bosom, and here they are. Together at last.

Oh. Wait. You’re seeing this in your feed reader and don’t quite know whether it’s worth the click or not? Well, let me spell it out:

Beastie Boys. Sabotage. Music Videos. THE Early 90s music video. Remixed and re-imagined by way of Battlestar Galactica. Click away.

This Kotaku writeup rightly marvels at just how spot-on this video is…it’s uncanny. They even provide a link for using some sort of experimental youtube dualscreen site (which my computer HATES, btw. My ears are not happy either) which will SHOW you how spot-on they are. I, on the other hand, am choosing to be most impressed by just how deep this rabbit-hole goes. To wit:

The Beastie Boys start their career in 1979 as a punk group. They hit big in the 80s with frat-rap, and it’s not until 1993’s ‘Sabotage’ that most of their adoring fans realize that the Beasties can play ‘rock’ music as well. The X-Factor of ‘Sabotage’ had more than a little bit to do with it’s epic video that portrayed the band members as undercover detectives in the ‘Starsky and Hutch’ and ‘Streets of San Francisco’ vein. It was a perfect 4-minute parody of an entire decade’s worth of TV crime dramas.

Battlestar Galactica debuts on Television in 1978 and is to space drama what Starsky and Hutch is to crime drama. It is terrible, and dies a very quick and very painful death by 1979 and by then, Star Wars has officially happenned. In 2004, some dudes who worked on The Next Generation picked up the license and re-imagined the BSG lore as super dark, super violent, and super controversial…only after this was anybody alerted to it’s inherent coolness.

So obviously, someone would take the two and mix them. The result is like tie-dyeing a tie-dyed hypercolor shirt. It is a mix of mixes that have been mixed from mixes. And it is awesome. And it is—in my humble opinion—what places like the Bloglin are all about.

Well I guess they’re called Kind for a reason… You see a while back the dudes over at Kind Snacks were, well, kind enough to start sending us case after case of their Kind bars.  We’d never heard of them until they showed up in-store, but we quickly got hooked on them. These things are dope, chocked full of nuts, seeds, fruits and all that other junk that your mommy said was good for you.

We’ve been scarfing these down for months now, sometimes two at a time… So I figured it was damn time I gave these things a plug! Come 4pm  and I realize I haven’t eaten all day because Mikhail keeps screaming at me to get a store spotting up, I just can’t resist a little ‘Nut Delight” *pause*.

So if you want to try one for yourself and we haven’t finished them all off, drop by 350 Broadway and ask us for one. Each and every flavor has been taste tested and approved by Pete our friendly store clerk so I’m petty certain you’ll like whichever one we slip you.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave.
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

Last week we brought you the first part of Karmaloop TV’s visit to our brand new Los Angeles store. This week we’v egot part two! As I’m sure you might expect, the scene at the opening was full of all sorts of Streetwear lumiries and Karmaloop took that opportunity to interview them on their thoughts on the LA opening and on their upcoming collections/projects.

Catch words from Mega from Black Scale, Ray Mate from Mighty Healthy, Franki Chan of IHeartComix!, Nick Tershay from Diamond Supply, Co., Mink from Crooks & Castles and Erik and Kenshin of Rocksmith. There’s also a few words from Drew who manages Мишка LA and either a drunk or high Ease DaMan… I honestly have no clue which of the two he is, but he may have even just been sober.

It also looks like Ease apparently has a Tumblr now as well. $50 says he manages to have Tumblr ban his account in 6 months.

Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA

Has anyone tried watching The WWE recently? Is it me or has it slowly mutated into recruitment propaganda for the Marines? It’s amazing that this thing is still going on! Why are they even trying? There’s nothing in the world that could touch the golden era of the WWF (circa 1985-1990) — not movies, not cartoons, music, comic books, NADA. We fell into a bit of a renaissance with The Rock, Goldberg, Triple H, Stone Cold, et al. But man, the spectacle of the golden age was our generation’s Vaudeville. This was EPIC drama with Meth-addled Barbers, Loud mouthed Scotsmen, Weasels, Pimps, Hitmen, Giants, Hacksaws, Hammers, Commies and Snakes! Now that the best is behind us from the House McMahon, it’s evident that one Swatch sunglassed, sequened robe rockin’, feathered haired man stands as the Greatest Wrestler of All Time.

MACHO MAN Randy Savage.

Come join me in this retrospective in OH YEAH!

Early Years – You can see the impetus of a schtick which will eventually explode into the luminous nebula of Macho Madness!

In my pre-teens, I was partial to Hogan and later Ultimate Warrior — the former being a horrible wrestler with inspiring charisma, the latter being just what a young hessian needed. I loathed Macho Man back in the day!!! That sleazy, scary, abusive, arrogant, rude and crude cretin!!! It would be years until I realized that these very same qualities are what add to his legend of the WWF’s G.O.A.T. Savage owned it all! The charisma, the acrobatics, the gimmick, catch phrase, overall steez, and man oh man, could that dude improv in a promo!

I like to fantasize about Macho snorting a huge rail of coke in the Gold’s Gym locker room with Hogan when he came up with his infamous “OH YEAH!” catchphrase. His Intercontinental Champion era was his finest if you ask me. He jumped the shark as the Macho King with Scary Sheri!

A Goldmine of Macho

It’s no revelation to speak of his rivalry with Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat yielding the most amazing WWF match in history. Now, if you were like me you were down with Team Steamboat and those Chinese Stars and Tiger Claws stuck in your backyard tree were indicative of that. But looking back, Steamboat is such a herb!

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Kate Corris of The Mo-Dettes, Photo by Philippe Carly

Thanks to the Daily Swarm, there’s word of this very awesome home-made compilation chronicling female fronted Punk and Post-Punk. This is a ridiculously comprehensive collection that scours the globe for female-fronted punk that not only touches on classics but delves way deep into the very obscure crevices of the punk universe. Here’s the scoop on the compilation:

This is a pretty insane project put together by my pal Vince B. from San Francisco a few years back. As the title indicates, this is a homemade 12 x CD-R (!) compilation of punk bands fronted by female vocalists from 1977 to 1989. More like a giant mixtape than a compilation, as he only made 36 copies which he sent to friends and people who submitted material. You may notice that some of the bands didn’t have a steady female vocalist (The Lewd, etc.) but he still included songs that were sung by another member of the band. This is as international as it gets, with stuff ranging from world famous Blondie or Crass to the most obscure Eastern European cassette compilation veterans. The boxset came packaged in a handnumbered fancy translucent lunchbox enclosing all 12 CD-Rs, a stack of full-colored cards featuring comprehensive tracklist and artwork/info, as well as a manga pin-up figure! Talk about a labor of love.

Bethan Peters of Delta 5, Photo by Philippe Carly

I don’t know about you, but I effin’ love female-fronted or just all girl punk bands. I remember a point in my life where that’s all I was trying to hunt down while scouring for records and CDs. Right now 8 parts of this epic 12 disc compilation are up for download on Kängnäve, and are broken up into 3 separate blog posts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). Check back there soon for part 4 and the remaining 4 discs of this retrospective.

I’ve been rereading The Shapes of Things to Come by Greil Marcus – specifically the Laura Palmer essay. It makes me want to rewatch Twin Peaks. I was killing time at work today and came across this SNL skit from 1990 when Kyle MacLachlan hosted. It rules. Kyle plays Cooper (duh), Farley plays Leo, Hartman plays a perfect Leland, a silent Conan plays Andy, yadda yadda yadda Mike Myers plays Little Mike! I lost my shit when Myers came out in the signature Little Mike waddle. Enjoy.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day here on President’s Day! I was going to do a whole “Don’t you miss when we celebrated Washington and Lincoln’s birthday’s separately?” type post but then opted to take things in a Tim & Eric route instead.

Are you psyched for a new season? I sure am! February 28th motherfuckers! Hell I think I may be more psyched about February 28th than February 20th to be honest. Fair warning: This is going to be a heavy T&E post so bear with me here.

First up, is a segment that the A.V. Club did with Tim & Eric last week called “Dear Tim & Eric”. A.V. Club had readers submit questions that Tim & Eric would answer for them like “How do I make my pregnant girlfriend happy?” The answer involved some ICP, duh! The whole interview is like that and features a cameo appearance by none other than Dr. Steve Brule.

Now on to the meat of this post… In celebration of season “Cinco” Tim & Eric have been running a “create your own season cinco promo” contest, where (you guessed it) fans submit their own promo creations (see accompanying clips above and below).

While no winner has yet been decided (I think Tuesday may be the day), DJ Dougg Pound (in-the-mix!) spent most of the weekend tweeting YouTube urls to some of the submissions which range from really good to so bad they come back full circle to being funny again. There’s also a whole lot of fake barfing and stutter effect in most of the entries.

Check after the break for an assortment of the awesome and the awful along with Dougg Pound’s accompanying tweets for each.

I’ll leave it to you guys to decide if these are awesome, awful or awesomely awful on your own. Most of these are only about 30 seconds long so don’t freak out about the length of this post after you click the button below!

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I did a little digging into the good ol’ video vault and found this great interview with Megadeth on Much Music from 1987.

This was taken while the guys were supporting Ronnie James Dio and some highlights include: Megadeth chilling in there tour bus watching Annie Hall, Dave Mustaine talking about challenging peoples minds with his metal and lyrics, why Megadeth ownz over all other Thrash bands and just general shreddin’ shop talk! FUCK YEAH!

Dave please come back to Satan, Ok bud? Pretty please? Megadeth > Metallica 4 Life!

Back in March of 2009, we opened our flagship store – 350 Broadway – in the heart of burgeoning South Williamsburg.   Since then our digs have at times hosted a variety of activities including art shows, various parties, crazy sample sales, celebrity drop-ins, and bitter impromptu Street Fighter 2 competitions.  350 Broadway went from being just a brick and mortar shop, to being one of Brooklyn’s hot spots.

Exactly 344 days after, we will be opening a sister store in Los Angeles where we hope to accomplish in Echo Park what 350 Broadway did in Brooklyn.  МИШКА LA will open its doors at 1547 Echo Park Ave. on February 20th with a clear mission to be a part of the growing transformation of the Echo Park neighborhood.

And our neighbors feel the same way:

I’m looking forward to the Mishka store opening in Echo Park. I’m sure they have some wild stuff planned as only they do. It’ll be nice to grab a beer from El Batey market and shoot the shit out front of the store on a Saturday. That block is great from when Han Cholo and Show Pony were there and I couldn’t think of a better addition to the neighborhood

- Steve Ternosky of stalwart brand Obey

It is the only store of its kind in the new hood, but Echo Park was the only place we felt would be a natural fit for a second location. The neighborhood is slowly becoming LA’s destination for the arts and fledgling independent businesses. Meanwhile, a migration of creative youth, young professionals, and LA natives inhabit the neighborhood. МИШКА LA feels right at home.

Designed with the same sensibilities of 350 Broadway, МИШКА LA features familiar similarities with the bright purple neon lights and the hallmark Adam Wallacavage octopus chandelier. And while the intent was to make МИШКА LA distinct, it still feels connected to our Brooklyn roots.

And who would we be without throwing a big party to celebrate our west coast arrival? While we’ll be having an opening reception from 7-9pm in-store, we also have a H-U-G-E party in the works for later that night. Stay tuned right here for all of the details on what, where, when and how you can attend!