It had been a lacklustre week since Flatmate was away. Ok, there were a couple of fun nights, but they were nothing quite like yesterday. Yes, FM came back last night unannounced and primed for a good time out. It was business as usual.
To be honest, I was just expecting to grab a few drinks on nearby Upper Street and then head home to do some more work. But FM had a much bigger appetite.
We kicked off the evening at the same places as I did last week (yes, I did finally go out), Bar Rumba and Tiger Tiger in Picadilly Circus. Both spots were fairly busy for a Tuesday night but that still didn’t cut it for FM. So I brought him to The End.
The Players night at The End was massive. AKA, the bar upstairs, was packed at midnight and by the time we left, the bottom floor had filled up with a flirty crowd of twenty-something jamming to the sounds of electro funk and acid house. Hope FM’s day at the office goes well.
Note: Took a lot of footage, but yet again couldn’t use them due to lighting.
SWIFT INFO
AKA/The End, The Players on Tuesday night: free before 11pm, fiver after… crowd of about 300 in their early 20s working mostly in the hospitality sector (free entrance if you bring a pay stub from a bar, restaurant or hotel)… lots of Spanish, French and Italian clubbers… dress code: relaxed, trainers are ok.
18 West Central Street. Holborn Tube. www.endclub.com
Bar Rumba on Tuesday night: free before 10pm, fiver after… mixed crowd of all ages but that gets younger as the night unfolds.
36 Shaftesbury Avenue. Piccadilly Circus Tube. www.barrumba.co.uk
Tiger Tiger on Tuesday night: free before 10pm, fiver after… 30-something crowd, I’d say most are tourists or are in London on business… rnb and a bit of house.
29 The Haymarket. Piccadilly Circus Tube. www.tigertiger.co.uk
We were supposed to launch yesterday, but we decided to be a good sport and let Microsoft Vista get all the attention this week.
Jokes aside, everything’s in place minus the payment function, which is an important feature to have, and our Body Art T-shirt. We noticed that our suppliers printed it on a men’s t-shirt, causing the piercing to appear below the waist. Not quite the desired effect we’re after.
While our programmers are hacking away, I can now concentrate on the stuff I like - making T-shirts and going out. I’ll try to attend Margin London, a streetwear tradeshow, and review concept and T-shirt stores in London.
One I must see is Best. Here’s an amusing pic from the shop’s blog.
We received our first T-shirt today. It took a mere 5 days to ship from California to London. Ironically, the regular airmail shipping through the U.S. Postal Service was a day faster than its priority service, and $60 cheaper.
Four more T-shirts will be sent today via DHL, and the remaining one should get here early next week. If all things are in place (still on pace), we will start selling on 29 January.
I’ve gone from bar hopping to web coding the past two days. Now that the online shop is sitting on our server, I got to dabble once again with HTML and tinker with the site’s design.
It’s been almost non-stop since Sunday evening, understanding why there’s extra space between lines, why some pages appear wider than others, why the page displays correctly in Firefox but not IE, vice-versa, and other pesky browser issues.
With my HTML ordeal nearly done, the dilemma tonight is deciding whether and where to go out. Bar Rumba for some latin beats? A chill Open Deck night at The Chapel? Or the mother of ‘em all The End for a house jamming feast?
It almost started really early. Shortly upon arriving London on Sunday morning, I dropped my bags at King’s Cross and headed to an after for a Berghain-type night at EGG. It wasn’t that I was in a real mood to party. I just couldn’t think of anything else to do as I didn’t have keys to the flat and didn’t want to wake my friend up.
It was 10am by the time I got to EGG, a 15-minute walk along the industrial wasteland north of King’s Cross. I got in the queue (I was the only one), took off my jacket, stared at the camera, and ultimately got snubbed. “He doesn’t want you in”, the bouncer said. I don’t blame him. I looked either too sober or dodgy from the red-eye.
But things picked up quickly afterwards. “Hope you arrived safely in lon. So, the usual q: what’s the plan 4 tonight.” Flatmate and I get along too well.
Earlier this week, we hit The Big Chill in Brick Lane, Keston Lodge, our perennial Upper Street hangout, the Brazilian beats of Favela Chic, dreambagsjaguarshoes, and the Tescodisco night at the Ditch Bar, where we didn’t fit quite in.
Last night, we kicked off the evening at Abacus to join the banking crowd for a short evening of debauchery. The bar on the main floor was already humming when we arrived shortly after 9pm. After a quick drink, we moved downstairs and were surprised to see even more people (200?) chilling at the lounge or swinging their hips on the dance floor.
Then it was off to the T Bar in Shoreditch for a mishmash of dark, industrial, electro sound of Ivan Smagghe, whose name adorns our Vinyl T-shirt.
Addresses
Abacus: 24 Cornhill, Bank, website
Big Chill: Dray Walk, Liverpool St, website
DiTch bar: 145 Shoreditch High St, Liverpool St, website
dreambagsjaguarshoes: 34-36 Kingsland Rd, Old St, website
EGG: 200 York Way, King’s Cross, website
Favela Chic: 91 Great Eastern Rd, Old St, website
Keston Lodge: 131 Upper St, Angel, website
T Bar: 56 Shoreditch High St, Liverpool St, website
Now that we’re just a few days away from opening the online store (29 January is our target date), I’d like to share my favourite T-shirt companies pre-launch. I avoid the term best, since taste is subjective, and I haven’t covered all T-shirt labels to make such statement.
My list is based on one criterion - the same approach we’re using for our Tees - would I wear it or buy it for a friend? To be more specific, the style I like is urban, gritty, witty, and above all simple.
Without further ado:
1. Graniph (Japan)
+ $9,000 top prize money lures top designers, affordable T-shirts
- too many people wear it in Japan
2. One Top (Quebec)
+ great designs by Quebec artists, few people know about it
- disappointing 2006 collection
3. 2K by Gingham (California)
+ great selection of T-shirts
- hard to navigate, new designs
4. LaFraise (France)
+ limited series T-shirts, intuitive website.
- designs are getting too cutie and cartoony for my taste.
5. Divinas Palabras (Spain)
+ witty and well designed T-shirts
- some are less witty, not cheap (50 euros last I checked)
These labels also have good stuff but the overall humour or style, I suspect, is meant for a younger crowd: Bedlam (closed?), Busted Tees, Naco.
Note: my list was compiled over a span of 2.5 years from either surfing the net or scouting these cities for great Tees: Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Prague, London, Milan, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Other cities I want to check out are Buenos Aires, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, and Stockholm.
They were following me. Models from Moscow had descended to Hong Kong and were queuing conspicuously near me at customs. Then reality sunk in, it wasn’t me they were after but our T-shirts. Ok, not really. Fashion week was on in Hong Kong.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it to the fashion shows. But I’m sure it was all bling and glamour like the fashion scene in Central.
This fashion enthusiast hails Hong Kong as a “shopper’s paradise”. Indeed, all major luxury brands are well represented with stores tucked in a prominent high rise in Central. Giorgio Armani even made it home to its largest flagship store outside Milan.
But my feelings are still mixed. It’s just that spending an afternoon in Central, to me, is as enticing as shopping in Wall Street, Canary Wharf or the sexy La Défense in Paris.
From what I saw, the streetwear style in Hong Kong veers more towards the hip-hop look, baggy clothes paired with a Nike, Adidas, Onitsuka or Converse trainer. It’s no wonder that Japanese store Bape and Juice are a hit with locals.
Edison Chen, the man behind Juice, seems to be the next Hong Kong phenom. This entrepreneur, designer, rapper, actor started a lifestyle brand called Clot, an umbrella company that encompasses all his interests.
We’re also shooting for the same concept with Swiftlabel. But our similarities end there. We have a different taste, lifestyle, philosophy and lingo.
HK Notes
I saw someone in Hong Kong wearing the same Graniph T-shirt I had just bought in Tokyo. I guess from now on I’ll only wear my Graniph Tees outside of Asia… Borrowing the CaféPress / Spreadshirt model, Udesign is a local DIY T-shirt store that hosts weekly graphic workshops (plug from BC Magazine)… Fashion Access is holding a Bag Design competition. Deadline is 12 February.
Websites
Freshnessmag’s review of HK shops: website
Hong Kong Fashion Brands: website
Hypebeast (streetwear blog): www.hypebeast.com
Hong Kong is simply breathtaking. Whether it’s the towering skyline, the frenzied pace or the pervasive smog, it’ll leave you gasping for air.
On my trip last year, the city’s vibe gripped me. Everything in Hong Kong seemed to move faster. This time around, I still enjoyed the lively scene but I also noticed just how compact the island actually is and how repetitive it can be.
On Saturday, I spent the afternoon in Central around Soho (South of Hollywood Rd) and Lan Kwai Fong, the entertainment hub of Hong Kong, looking for a pay phone (couldn’t get reception with my Orange mobile) and keeping an eye out for cool places. I was able to do every street seemingly twice in only 45 minutes. With time to spare, I chilled at a café combing the net and Juice, Hong Kong’s new urban culture magazine, for things to do.
Bar hoppers will revel at Hong Kong’s nightlife. Pubs, bars and clubs are stacked one next to the other, from Lan Kwai Fong to Soho, paving way for a seamless chain of expat punters beefing their arms and gut with pint-size weights.
Since the prices in LKF are as expensive as in any other big cities, the locals who go there are mainly Westerners (80-20 split), work in the business district and are more mature, maybe not by their behaviour but certainly by their age.
My nightly excursions in HK were fairly relaxed. My friends treated me for drinks at Solas, a new laid-back bar, and Azuro (sp?) at the hip Hotel LKF. A wilder weekend in Hong Kong will have to wait until next time when, I hope, Flatmate or Business Partner will join me. At 3bph (bars per hour), I wonder if we can hit all the bars and clubs in Central.
My bags are packed. In a few hours, I’ll be bidding farewell to Taipei, my home for three months in 2004 on a short-lived attempt to learn Mandarin. The 100 or so characters I had learned has now dwindled to about 5, 3 of which are the characters for 1, 2 and 3 (one bar, two bars and three bars).
Next stop is Hong Kong for the weekend, and then I’m flying back to London on a red-eye. Not the ideal flight but it’s a much better way to travel than slinging myself to the old continent. (FYI, sign was on the 2nd floor of a restaurant in Taipei).
