We believe in getting to know people and places through commerce and design. Someone else's daily diet of lo-fi goods is simple to her yet sacred to us, and vice versa. Let's marvel at each other's mundane, because that shit is dope.
All in The Low Down
Buenos Aires is my kinda city. It’s big (like 2,891,000 big) yet somehow it maintains a small-city feel. It’s the neighborhood mom-and-pop shops, it’s strangers on the street making eye contact and smiling, it’s friends knocking on a window as they pass by so they can wave at the people inside.
Milan is about new-school aesthetics. It’s about high fashion – it’s slicked back and flossin’. People struttin’ the streets like they be workin’ the catwalk for Prada or Gucci. They know how to work it – I mean they WORK it!
What I don’t understand – how can a country proud of their deep design history and a love of typography, how come they don’t have a bunch of Finnish companies crankin’ out office-supply goods for everyone?
Ukraine – you be one big tease. Took forever and a day to hunt down all the goodness but sometimes the chase is where it’s at.
People ask where I’m headed next and I can respond with almost any country and their eyes light up with excitement. Unless… I mention Mexico. No response, no love. Why? I don’t understand it!
The weather in Quito is seriously four seasons in every day. But what all that crazy-ass weather gets you? RAINBOWS.
Two missions – huntin’ for dope-ass goods and perfect breaks to surf. And like a Puerto Rican highway, you don’t know what the f’uk is goin’ on but you make it work.
Holy f'n what the what? Did I really wake up at 5am for 10 days straight… 10 flights, 10 bus rides, 9 cab rides, 2 train rides, and 1 airport shuttle… almost missed my flight home to leave Peru empty-handed? Of course not.
All this crazy mixed together seems so wrong but damn it all feels so right. It’s Saturday night, I’m in Berlin and I don’t wanna go home.
Latvia was the ultimate test. A language that I couldn’t fake my way through, a culture where shop owners don’t understand browsing, and learning very quickly that Latvia isn’t a country filled of factories bustin’ out the goods we need for our STMT Kits.
The further I walked out of the town center, the more I saw restaurants with only three tables, neighborhood corner shops carrying a little bit of everything, and people wondering if I was lost.
No one could understand why two Americans would visit Colombia because neither of us spoke Spanish and we weren’t visiting friends or family. Simple answer, really – we want stylie shit, and Colombia’s got it.
