Entries Tagged 'Fashion/Style' ↓

This is a great T-shirt (I love that logo on the back and have often admired it when I’m driving behind a STLFD vehicle). Just got mine in the mail yesterday, so you might see me sporting it around town soon. Get one!

I haven’t done the facial hair thing too many times in my life. In fact, going back to the late 1980s, 99% of the time the only facial hair I’ve had has been sideburns (which I’ve not shaved off once in 20+ years). I’ve tried the “goatee” (or actually, the “circle beard”) thing a few times over the last 20 years, but it never lasted long. Maybe a few months at the most. I remember the first time I grew a circle beard… I was working at CompUSA in Kansas City, and a girl I worked with there told me I looked like Satan. I thought that was pretty rad, but I shaved it off anyway. Then about a year ago I grew a beard but shaved it off after only a little more than a month (I was trying to do the March Mustache Madness thing but failed miserably).

So this year, I thought I’d give it another go, and I was determined to not give in and shave it all off. I stopped shaving the second week of November and by Thanksgiving I had a pretty good, short beard going. By Christmas it had filled in even better. Then, in mid-January, I got a bit tired of the full beard look (and feel) and started thinking about how I wanted to trim it, but still retain some sort of beard. Watching a video on YouTube of my old TV horror host hero Ghoulardi (played by Ernie Anderson) was all I needed. That was it! A Van Dyck (also spelled “Van Dyke”)! Before I get into that, I want to try and clear the air on some common mistakes when it comes to beards. The following is a goatee:

Goatee

When you have a goatee that is connected to a mustache, it’s actually a “circle beard.” Some will even call this style a Van Dyck, but most beard experts will tell you that a true Van Dyck features a goatee that is disconnected from the mustache. Once they’re connected, it’s a circle beard (since it forms a circle around the mouth). A Van Dyck, then, is basically a goatee with a mustache. Got it? So now that we know what a Van Dyck is, let’s look at a few famous ones throughout history:

Buffalo Bill Cody and Sir Anthony Van Dyck

By the way, Anthony Van Dyck, a 17th-century Flemish painter (pictured above), is credited with popularizing this style of beard way back in the 17th century. Hence the name.

My inspiration:

Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth

Some more famous Van Dycks:

Colonel Sanders and Viggo Mortensen

Heath Ledger

Johnny Depp

So, yeah, you probably see Van Dycks around more often than you realize, but definitely not as often as the goatee or circle beard. In fact, I was surprised to see a couple of my Facebook friends sporting Van Dycks recently:

Dave and Larry

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for (drum roll, please)… a couple shots of me with my new Van Dyck:

Kopper's Van Dyck (Feb. 2009)

By the way, speaking of the Mustache Madness thing, it’s happening again this year, and I do hope to make it to the party at The Royale on Saturday, April 4. You should, too. RSVP here.

I’ve always wanted a pair of ’60s-style Beatle boots but they were always so damned expensive, especially the REAL ones. So I decided to see what Zappos.com had to offer in that style since I had a $15 coupon code from them burning a hole in my virtual wallet that I needed to use sometime between now and the end of March. So I started searching their site and BINGO. I found these Giorgio Brutini ’60s-style Beatle boots that look GREAT. OK, maybe not quite as great as the Cavern Boots I’d been wanting to get, but they’re at least half the price of those, so I think I can handle the slight design downgrade. But I’m pretty excited… as excited as a guy can get over getting a new pair of boots, anyway. I’ve never owned a pair of these before… the closest I’ve had was a pair of Dr. Marten’s chelsea boots several years ago. Aside from those and the occasional heavy work boots I wore in the warehouse at CompUSA, I’ve rarely ever worn boots in my life. A pair of Harley Davidson motorcycle boots I bought a few years ago collects dust in my closet (they’re just not comfortable and only look right if I wear very baggy pants… which I have, um, ONE pair of). And I still have yet to even own a pair of regular lace-up Docs. True, I had the GI-style black leather combat boots when I was a slam-dancin’ young punk rocker, and at one time in my junior high school years I owned a pair of cowboy boots (“shit kickers”), but normally I’m a sneaker guy. Been wearing Chuck Taylors, PF Flyers or Vans since high school. But, shit, even a new pair of Vans will run you over $50 these days (the slip-ons are over $40 themselves), so I didn’t see the big deal in plunking down a little extra cash on a nice pair of boots, especially ones that come with such rave reviews as these. Yes, it sounds like the sole is pretty thin and I’ll probably end up taking these to a cobbler to have some protective rubber soles put on, but other than that I think they’ll be perfect, and I’m really looking forward to wearing them. They should be arriving tomorrow, thanks to Zappos’ free next-day shipping. I’ll try to keep you posted.

Spreadshirt is offering time-sensitive discounts on all their shirts for a limited time, but these only apply to U.S. and Canadian customers. They are as follows:

December 6-8, 2008
20% off all orders over $30.00, shipping costs do not apply

December 9-11, 2008
15% off all orders orders over $30.00, shipping costs do not apply

December 12-15, 2008
10% off all orders over $30.00, shipping costs do not apply

Coupon codes:
USD$: NOW1
CAD$: CADNOW1

Here are the links to the stores I have up and running:

GaragePunk Store
Trouble in River City (TIRC) Store
St. Louie Louie Store
South Side for Obama Store

Thanks!

OK, I have a few shirt shops set up over at Spreadshirt.com, and right now they’re offering FREE SHIPPING on all orders of $30 or more. This is a good opportunity to stock up on some of these, but hurry… offer ends November 24. Here are direct links to my stores:

GaragePunk Store
Trouble in River City (TIRC) Store
South Side for Obama Store

Thanks!

Click above to be taken to the new store!

Well, we’re getting down to the wire now and I’ve officially run out of my screenprinted South Side for Obama tees. I’ve been so busy selling these the past week or so at The Royale that I haven’t even had a chance to post an update lately on how well they’ve been selling (sorry ’bout that). Anyway, there is a silver lining to this cloud, and that is you can now purchase a shirt with the above design through a new online store that I just set up at Spreadshirt.com, and there are even more shirt styles to choose from (including girlie tees)!

The best news about all of this is that I was able to raise over $1,600 for the Obama campaign from this little experiment! Thanks to everyone that bought one!!

UPDATE: Spreadshirt is offering free shipping on orders of $30 or more now through Nov. 24. Just use this coupon code when you place the order:

WINTER58

So far I’ve printed up 220 shirts and have sold 179 of them. The last remaining ones are either up at The Royale as I type this, or will be up there within the next few days. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Unless I get a big last-minute request for a bunch of one size or something, I doubt seriously that I’ll be getting any more printed up. Right now the fundraising total for my South Side for Obama personal fundraising page is sitting at $987… not bad! I hope to have another $400 or so added to that total very soon, and more if people want to be especially generous and chip in more to the cause of helping to get Obama elected. So thanks to all of you who have purchased a shirt so far, and to those who haven’t, if you’d like one, you’d better get down to The Royale on S. Kingshighway in the next day or two or risk missing out completely.

Oh, and by the way, I updated the design slightly to include the Obama “O” logo and went with a navy blue screen on nice white/navy ringer tees. The first 128 were the Carolina blue Hanes shirts, and the other 92 were the white/navy Anvil ringers that look something like this:

A couple of weeks ago our friend Michelle dropped in on us from Seattle. It was at Michelle & David’s place that we stayed during our brief trip there this past May. Anyway, Michelle and David live in Ballard, and she brought with her a gift for us: “Ballard for Obama” T-shirts! “Wow, what a great idea!” I thought. Then I told my wife, “We should do something like this for south St. Louis.” So I did. I whipped up a design featuring Barack Obama’s official Senate profile photo and put the Bevo Mill and a fleur-de-lis on it. At first, I had “South St. Louis” for Obama, but then changed it to “South Side” on the recommendation of a friend, neighbor and Obama supporter, Ed Martin, because, as he put it, it’s more colloquial. OK, can’t argue with that! “South Side for Obama” it is. House of Eight Legs screenprinting is printing them up and have done two rounds of shirts for me thus far. If you’d like to order one, please use the PayPal button on the official SS4O Myspace page or shoot me an e-mail if you just want to drop by my house with a wad of cash (they’re $12 each). They are also be available at The Royale on S. Kingshighway.

Here’s the design:

And here’s a Photoshopped mockup of what it looks like on a shirt:

Note: If you pay via PayPal, you’ll need to get the shirt directly from me. If you want to pick one up at The Royale, just pay your server there.

Thanks!

As I’ve posted here before, I was a DJ on KYMC 89.7 FM from early 1984 through mid-1989, hosting a few different music shows including Pipeline Radio Fanzine. The show was originally called Ground Zero but I renamed it in honor of the original Pipeline radio show on KWMU after that program was canceled in September of 1985. “Radio Fanzine” was added to the name in honor of the short-lived punk rock fanzine I put out while in college at CMSU in Warrensburg (also called Pipeline). Sometime in the late ’80s I acquired a KYMC T-shirt, which I had almost completely forgotten about until a couple of years ago, when I found a photo of myself wearing it at my parents’ house in St. Peters in the spring of 1988:

So recently I used that photo to design a new, updated version of the shirt, complete with a Pipeline Radio Fanzine logo on the back! I added the shirt to the TIRC T-shirt shop on SpreadShirt.com and you can order one for yourself here. Here’s what it looks like:

The shirt is $16.99 plus shipping and features Spreadshirt’s awesome, durable “flock printing process” which gives the designs “a velvety feel, like a thin layer of plush.” Much nicer than any screen-printed shirt I have ever seen! I really made the shirt so that I could buy one myself and wear it, but I thought it might be a good idea to leave it up online in case anyone else would want one, too. If you’d like one of these WITHOUT the Pipeline logo on the back, you can have that, too, for just $15.99.

Got my new pair of Vans! These beauties are a little more flowery than you’ll usually see me wearing, but I still really dig ‘em, and besides, they’re perfect for summer! These are a limited re-release of the ‘65 original Duke Kahanamoko’s signature aloha-print slip-on that commemorates Vans’ place in Hawaiian surfing lore. Includes the vulcanized rubber outsole with the heavy waffle tread. No, I’m no surfer, but I’m one surf-lovin’ hodad! By the way, I got these from Swell.com.

My new Vans