An exploration with  Sunny Preston, Alana Tang, + Harry Stayt

There are a few cherished pieces in my home that’ve survived the move from my dorms through each of the rooms and apartments I’ve occupied up to now, but the bulk of my furniture is from when I first moved to Portland a few years ago. It wasn’t until then, finally finding myself in a space I planned on living in for longer than a year, that I finally turned to the world of Craigslist and F*ceb**k Marketplace for pieces to complement that which I’d already collected from local shops, estate sales, and the occasional Ikea trip. At first, the finds felt almost too good to be true; scrolling through pages that seemed endless, I was shocked at the amount of quality furniture available, and in my naive mind it felt ridiculous not to buy yet another side table. The high of each buy was a gateway into the next, and for a time I was absolutely slaying: a rosewood and leather Percival Lafer armchair, a stunning post-modern squiggle table in pink burl wood veneer, and a set of four Emu Rio armchairs are among my proudest finds. I’d feel such a mixture of confidence and impulse in the pieces I was uncovering that I sold myself on the idea I’d be able to simply flip the items if my taste ever changed, which with my new found investment in this space and congruently expanding awareness of designers and styles, it very rapidly did.

So selling online I tried, and the one time I profited 200 bucks from a pink velvet tufted armchair I’d only spent 50 on nearly convinced me that resale was the game meant for me to play. But as the basement collection of things that never sold and my dusty online listings would tell you, I never became a very accomplished seller. Not only that, but I’ve sensed the number of truly exciting bargains plummeting; the likelihood of successfully scrolling Craigslist for a reasonably priced Gainey pot feels less than somehow stumbling into Mugler at Goodwill. Certainly there are and always will be deals to be had, but seeking them out is real work. To fully commit to a life of flipping furniture and all it entails—knowing your history, getting there first, buying low and selling for enough to make a profit while maintaining an audience—would be committing to a full time job. And I already have one of those. So my attention has now mostly shifted away from the traditional resale platforms and more towards Instagram, where the listings I scroll are consciously curated by the tastemakers who’ve made the resale life theirs.

Even at the height of my days obsessively scouring Craigslist as if a murano mushroom lamp might appear at any minute, I found most of my inspiration (and most of my favorite things) from local sellers like Sunny Preston of Midnight Sunlight here in Portland OR, a shop she describes as a collection of beautiful and useful things. Its from this shop my girlfriend and i bought our fist couch, upholstered in a velvety geometric pattern of orange hues (Sunny thinks by Jack Lenor Larsen), where I’ve gotten two prized pedestals: one in travertine and one red marble, and also where I found my favorite mantle piece of the moment: a vintage ceramic goblet in powder blue. 

What I was seeing Sunny do with her shop was really exciting. Starting out, what I (like many others, apparently) thought to look for was almost exclusively teak mid century pieces that I was sure would hold value, a phenomenon I remember Sunny telling me she was so over. With each visit to her shop I felt that sentiment more and more as the offerings kept evolving with experimental finds. Of her picking now, Sunny said: “I look for quality, good design, history and character- but I also look for things which speak for themselves. Like I want to be blown away by it. My focus has shifted toward the more extraordinary one of a kind pieces as the competition for middle of the road stuff has exploded.” 

The increase of sellers on the scene and newfound scarcity of product goes unnoticed by no one. To Sunny it makes sense; she knows that the business is highly addictive. With the influx of sellers on digital platforms, where there’s no overhead for rent of a brick and mortar, she said “the cost of good merchandise has really gone through the roof.” And although she says that Instagram is the main driver of business and that most days her phone usage constitutes more hours than a traditional 9—5, there’s much more of a cost to all that’s done behind the screens. “It’s 24/7. Like it does not stop.” Sunny tells me, “I’m enjoying it for now but it is a constant evolution.”

“Buying a piece ‘cheap’ and flipping it for more might seem like an easy come up but behind the scenes the expenses add up. Just to name a few: gas, tolls, ferries, speeding tickets (lol), eating out while on the road sourcing, and restoration work,” Alana Tang, who runs In The Comfort Of out of the Seattle area, tells me when I ask what people would be most surprised to learn about the job. “There’s a lot of time spent driving, not finding anything, researching, cleaning, restoring, staging, photographing, responding to questions, coordinating delivery/ pick up, delivering, and tax season is a nightmare- I could go on.”

The idea behind In The Comfort Of sparked after a chance intervention: Alana took home a 30 dollar travertine and brass table base from Goodwill and, through a bit of research, discovered it was by the designer Artedi. Ones similar are listed on Chairish right now for thousands. “Realizing what I had found sparked the idea of creating my own vintage furniture reselling business where I could decide my own work schedule and use the profits to support my livelihood.”  Only having started a couple years ago, Alana doesn’t feel entitled to an opinion on the new sellers on the scene. “Everyone has to start somewhere and I don’t believe in gatekeeping,” she said. “It can definitely get competitive but I always remind myself that pressure creates diamonds.”

Alana’s shop is a hybrid: she has a physical space she sells out of inside a SoDo antique mall from which I bought the brass and laminate arched mirror that hangs in my hallway, and she also sells directly through Instagram, where I once quickly snagged a set of four globe-based martini glasses before someone else’s DM. “I don’t just “sell” vintage furniture though,” Alana said, “I often try to challenge myself by creating inspiring set design projects that you can shop from for a unique and engaging experience.” This comes to life most through shoppable Instagram stories that feature stunningly curated rooms full of vintage furniture that Alana has set. Each item gets its shine, and the stage is often shared with select work by contemporary artists. The pieces go quickly, but Alana has archived each of the collections under @inthecomfortof’s story highlights. “I’d like to think that In The Comfort Of is what people may think of when they want to look for some home inspiration,” she said. 

With so much more time spent in the home, Alana’s noticed people actively wanting to improve their environment. “They want to feel cozy, inspired, and happy to be home. I feel that’s where the saying, “in the comfort of your own home” comes full circle for the meaning behind my business. You can shop from ITCO to curate your perfect environment to live, exist, and relax in.”

I’ve certainly become more aware of the surroundings that have totally enveloped my day-to-day life. The furniture in my living room has been rearranged countless times these past 13 months and I feel myself reassessing the pieces themselves almost daily. With our circumstance changing so radically, of course it makes sense that this collective awareness would be the bedrock for a new breed of sellers to emerge. One of my favorites I’ve noticed come on the scene is Harry Stayt, the brain behind an IKEA-exclusive archive and online shop (BILLY.forsale) run out of London. “I had been collecting old IKEA products for about five years with vague intentions of doing some form of project with them,” Harry told me. “When we went into lockdown I felt very conscious that I was running out of space at home to store it all so with the extra time on my hands I started photographing everything to archive the collection.” His first sale this past November sold out in roughly 30 minutes. 

Through our conversation, I learned that despite his interest in vintage shops and sellers online, Harry hadn’t initially envisioned this career path either. “I remember thinking it would be funny if one of these shops started exclusively selling old IKEA furniture. I’d heard stories before about people buying what they thought was an antique from a market then getting home and feeling ripped off after realising it had an IKEA label on it... after the success of the first sale I realised it could be a good platform for me to continue selling the items I’m interested in and also build other projects around it.” Harry uses his Instagram to share some of his research/ archival imagery, but dotcom is for prosperity. “My website is where I’m placing the biggest focus,” Harry said. “I want it to exist as an online archive of all of IKEA’s most interesting designs.

Within the world of IKEA design, Harry has identified some pieces like the Niels Gammelgaard JARPEN and Karin Mobring DIANA chairs that have become incredibly popular in vintage resale. His focus is more attributed to the less celebrated, lesser known pieces “like the postmodern style ULK mirror or VAJER drawers,” that were only sold for a couple seasons and don’t meet the same mass acclaim. This approach to discovery seems to be necessary in this new resale landscape. As names like De Lucchi, Aulenti, and Noguchi re enter the zeitgeist, hunting vintage furniture has shifted from a casual hobby to something that now can feel overwhelmingly cost-prohibitive—appreciating a piece for its unique qualities stripped from the clout of its namesake opens the realms of possibility.

The success of BILLY.forsale also proves that the value of furniture can be heavily influenced by its nostalgic and cultural weight. I asked Harry why IKEA products specifically, and the sentiment of his response was evident: its accessibility makes it widely relatable. “I loved watching home makeover shows like BBC’s Changing Rooms where they were really influenced by these designers but as they only had a £750 budget to makeover a room, all of the furniture was from IKEA or homemade out of MDF,” he said. “All of my childhood bedroom was IKEA and because it’s so affordable I was able to get pretty experimental with my room. In the end I had all black and white accessories and painted the woodwork silver.” Harry also noted IKEA as a meaningful lens through which we’re able to study the evolution of contemporary design: “Looking at the early 90s catalogues you see a sudden switch from the chintz and patterns of the late 80s to the Minimalist style that was about to take over. IKEA is just like the high street clothes shops where they produce an edited down, affordable version of what the biggest designers of the time are making.” Although he enjoys the more recent collaborative works, like the MARKERAD Mona Lisa Lightbox by Virgil Abloh, Harry remains mostly attracted to their vintage pieces. “IKEA is my favourite place for kitchen accessories though,” he added, “so I’m mainly just going there now for Tupperware.” 

As the resale market continues to take off, the same rationale that’s boosted it has caused the boom of fast furniture to exacerbate in parallel. And while this more easily allows the masses to indulge in what’s trending, older pieces have already proven they can withstand the test of time. “Sustainability is one of the best benefits of buying vintage,” Alana told me. “That West Elm couch that you purchased not that long ago is more than likely going into the landfill in 5 years. [Vintage is] not only built to last but contemporary designs are often inspired from vintage styles.” Buying resale can also be a practice in building and supporting community. “It’s keeping money local and flowing through our economy,” Sunny noted.

Whatever your reason, the feeling of finding that piece is undeniable. Curating my space with intention and with items that, simply, I enjoy looking at has had unsurprisingly positive effects on my mood, and from the pieces I’ve collected as well as the new finds I see shared on IG, I continue to draw inspiration that manifests in ways beyond just the composition of my home environment. Understanding the constant evolution the industry requires, I remain content on the consumer's side of this resale Renaissance for now, but thanks to the accounts of these sellers and their contemporaries at least I get to witness.

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How Hard Can Flipping Be

An exploration with Sunny Preston, Alana Tang, + Harry Stayt

The day after the band released their debut EP Jimbo Demo, we all met up in a mob of mostly Priuses outside of a Tacoma Walgreens where Aramis, the songwriter and lead vocals, was receiving his second Pfizer shot. Aramis is an old friend from my time in Seattle. He’s been persistent in his quest for fostering culture and gathering community, and he’s consistently proven to be good at it. Enumclaw is the band he started with friends a little over a year ago, their debut of five songs is incredibly true to the Pacific Northwest and the most exciting music I’ve heard in a long time. My first time listening to Fast N All it was cemented in my mind as an instant classic; I5 may stretch all the way down the west coast but it belongs to Tacoma when Aramis belts it. The sound is cool and assured and the lyrics express something vulnerable and honest. “When I write songs, I'm trying to tell a story, you know,” Aramis tells me, “and so just based on my location and my day-to-day life, I live in Tacoma. And so I'm telling stories about people and things that are happening in Tacoma, Washington.” 

After receiving the dose, a bright red band-aid, and a couple of Dum-Dums from an especially friendly nurse with a Keroppi tattoo, we made introductions in the parking lot as the crew nursed their hangovers and reminisced about the night prior. A barbecue with a cake and hard seltzers quickly turned to too many beers in celebration of the EP release, one that’s already been heralded by publications like Sterogum, Fader, and the Seattle Times. “Last night everyone pulled up. Everybody’s just glad that somebody’s about to cross that line,” says Aramis. “A lot of people have been in our position before and it doesn't go any further than this.”

With us for the day is a group of ten including myself. The band has four official members: Aramis, Ladaniel (drums), Nathan (guitar), and 17 year old Eli (bass). Chris, whose honey voiced affirmations are sampled at the end of Fruit Flies serves as the band’s hypeman and “pretty face,” is here, and Benji, the self-ascribed creative director who Aramis calls the star of the band despite not being in it, rolls up last bundled in a scarf as large as he is, smoking a joint with his painted middle finger pointed toward us as he approaches in slow motion, both eyes shut, clearly still hurting from last night. TJ, in his camouflage crocs, does video editing for the band, and is also a brother to both Aramis and Eli. Ian is a holdover from the party last night; he tells me he takes photos and makes skate videos which Chris and Aramis quickly shout to clarify as “the best.” Finally there’s Graham from Fat Possum Records, who’s in town from Mississippi to scope out the band for his label, and Colin, our photographer.

The band met through a web of chance encounters and introductions involving ex girlfriends, concession stands, and a night with Toro Y Moi’s Boo Boo, seemingly most of them with Ladaniel as the central connector. They all live in Tacoma now- with Nathan originally being from an island further north and Ladaniel growing up between Tacoma and Louisiana, they both agree on what sets this place apart. “It’s just so diverse here,” Ladaniel tells me of the difference. “It’s definitely a plus for Washington. I don’t know what race my neighbors are gonna be here, as opposed to out there [in Louisiana] it’s much more segregated, so I definitely appreciate that.” They mention the views, the food, the trees and proximity to nature. Eli, who dons a stack of beaded bracelets, bleached grow out, and a face full of braces, says that there’s a perfect ratio of cool to not cool people here: “like you go somewhere and it’s like, oh shit, that guys whack!—I’m fire!”

Tacoma is a city an hour south of Seattle in good traffic. Flanked by I5 on one side and the Puget Sound on the other, downtown is incredibly picturesque on this May day with a scatter of sunbreaks breaking through the stereotypically overcast sky. Born at Tacoma General and raised in Lakewood, a town bordering the city's south end, Aramis rattles off the comforts of the city: “It's just enough, you know, it feels good. It looks good. There's real community here. There are real people here. Like people going through real life day-to-day, and I really admire that.”

While the exponential growth of tech companies in Seattle has priced the population out of the city limits in droves, Tacoma’s largest employer remains the Joint Base military installation that’s been operating here since the early 1900s. It’s a beautiful and lush city with historic buildings and incredible views, but due to a relic of stigma is only now seeing an influx like its neighbors to the north. “There’s no city ego,” Aramis says of Tacoma, “Where as sometimes I feel like people from Seattle, their biggest claim to fame is that they’re from Seattle.” By 2030 the Lightrail will extend to pick you up at the Tacoma Dome and drop you off at Westlake Station in times comparable to a train ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan; the city’s stock is good after being overlooked for too long, and the type of things these friends are making happen here make it all the more exciting to watch.

I first met Aramis through Chris, who I became good friends with during my time in school, and, having also come from Lakewood, the first person I met who spoke of Tacoma with real pride. We lived together our second senior year and our house hosted the first college edition of Toe Jam, an RSVP for location rager that Aramis was inspired to throw after an especially fun night DJing for his friend Gabe at a house show in town. After an incredible success with the first one, and with each iteration that followed suit, Toe Jam grew its loyal base of followers until Aramis eventually walked away due to creative differences with a partner who joined the project late: “no diss to him or anything, but we were acquaintances who got, like, famous together over the same thing without even getting to know each other first. I just knew I could do bigger.” After Toe Jam came Suite A, an underground label where Aramis and friends helped manage and produce content for local musicians. Suite A involved a lot of the cast that’s gathered today, and eventually faded from the purview as the group’s focus shifted more and more toward Enumclaw.

Despite having contributed to the culture of art and music in Tacoma for years, so many of the write ups have been shaping their narrative around the members’ relative inexperience; “Aramis just learned guitar and Ladaniel just got on drums, so they love in all the articles to be like ‘tH3se gUys hAv3 0nLy bE3N pLAyiNg tH3iR iNsTruM3nts 4 a Y3aR & a hALf” Ladaniel's been playing shit forever just not drums. And I've been playing guitar since I was like, I don't know, like 13 or something,” Nathan said. “They always like to make it a pull quote! It just makes me laugh.”

Even if you’ve never heard of Tacoma, you’ve probably seen it before. “I don’t know if you’re hip,” Aramis told us when we hopped on a zoom to determine the locations we’d be shooting for this story, “but if you’ve seen 10 Things I Hate About You, there’s this spot the Stadium Bowl.” So many of the backdrops from the iconic rom-com that gave Seattle such shine are actually located in Tacoma, like the downtown music store, the Stratford sisters’ house, and the castle looking highschool where Joey “Eat Me” Donner ruled the halls until the Prom of ‘99. My sister ran that movie in the background of my childhood on repeat, so discovering the school was hosting a soccer tournament on the day of our shoot made the scene all the more nostalgic as the band set up along the steps where Heath famously wooed Julia with a rendition of Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You. On that zoom call, Aramis also mentioned his plan of selling out the Stadium Bowl two nights in a row. On the day of the shoot I asked him why, and in what I know to be true Aramis fashion, his ambition had already more than doubled:

“During COVID I lost my job, and so I had all this free time. And so to get out of the house, I'd walk around the neighborhood and I live pretty close to the Stadium. So I'd walk past it almost every day. And I started to stop and think, and it's like, nobody's like, I've never seen this place filled up! I Google searched and I couldn't find any pictures of it filled up. And then I just stopped. Like, it would be so crazy if we could fill the fucking Stadium bowl. At first, the goal was just to sell out the Stadium Bowl, you know, like a summer, August, bring out some special guests, but I really think this is a thing that's going to be so big that we could sell it out five nights in a row.” Aramis estimates the bowl can host 13,000 in the stands and another 5,000 in the field. His charisma is so persuasive that, while he’s telling me this, my thoughts don’t stop to question whether or not this show will happen at all, but rather when I’ll be able to secure my tickets. There's a feeling of potential in the air as if a giant pendulum is held over us, ready to swing at any moment and bring these manifestations to fruition along with it.

“I woke up to hate this morning!” Aramis exclaims as the group gathers to head out of the Stadium. He goes on to explain the situation in all its pettiness: at the party he had told Ian he was destined to be the next Spike Jonze, which Ian tweeted with the quote attributed. That tweet was then screenshotted by a friend named Nick and sent back to Aramis. “The homie sends the tweet and says ‘and I’m Scorcese and you just fucked up’ and he blocks me on everything!” The rest of the crew is giving Aramis reassurance, but he continues, “He just thinks I’m a bad friend, like I don’t put him on enough. But it’s like I only have 1,200 dollars in my bank account! I don’t know though, I could always be a better friend.” That statement could be true for anyone, but with Aramis it’s hard to believe. Throughout our interview he’d interject with shout outs of friends he wanted to recognize repeatedly; names like Drew, Gabe, Austin aka Bujemane, Demani, the team at the local streetwear label ETC whose magenta crewneck Aramis was sporting on the day (“you can be cool in Tacoma and if ETC doesn’t fuck with you it’s meaningless”), Liliana, Hannah, and the “‘white trash homies Mikey and Dave Brazil” who introduced him to the sound from which the band draws its inspiration.

“My parents were Black, we grew up, we listened to like Hip-Hop and R&B. My mom even had a Country phase at one point. But I started hanging out with the Brazils, and their parents looking back were in their twenties. And this is like the early 2000s. So it's like Limp Bizkit is still big, Korn, all of that stuff. And then Rock Band came out,” Aramis tells me, “And I would go over to their house every weekend and we would play Rock Band. And ever since then, I wanted to be in a band—fast forward, like 15 years I met Ladaniel, and he was kind of already doing the music thing and it was like something I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to go about it. He kind of gave me the courage to do it. And then I kind of wiggled my way into what they were already doing, honestly, because Nathan and Ladaniel were already kind of a band and I was like, we should start over. But let me be in it.”

After a break for lunch at a taco truck called Rico’s and a visit downtown to witness a physical copy of the EP at ETC, we head to Bob’s Java Jive: a teapot shaped café turned karaoke bar listed on the national registry of historic places. All around the place are handwritten signs that warn ‘No Trespassing’; as Colin loads his cameras, a woman emerges from a small building connected to the teapot and asks us what we’re doing. Seeing who’s in the crew, she’s quick to drop her guard and tells us we can keep on. She recognizes the band because before the pandemic they were regulars. Driving around town one Monday months ago, Chris, Aramis, and his ex Liliana happened to check it in. Convincing themselves to get on stage took an effort that first night, but the evening was so iconic that Karaoke Mondays became a tradition. I can now contextualize the performances I remember seeing weekly on IG stories pre-pandemic, always posted alongside an invitation to come down and join in.

As we’re sitting on the curb outside, everyone is sharing stories from those nights, about Nathan and Ladaniel absolutely hitting that falsetto on Prince’s I Would Die 4 U, and Chris serving a first-class rendition of Lake On Fire by Nirvana. Everyone weighs in when a patron named Cheryl is mentioned, a former go-go dancer who’d bragged about scoring with Johnny Cash. Before Enumclaw, Bob’s of course had its regulars, but the band brought new life here, fostering community around music just like they’ve been doing everywhere else. Benji’s shuffle lands on Delegation’s ‘Oh Honey’ and as the speaker follows suit everyone is on their feet, dancing to the song, as they’ve designated it. “When I get lost, feel I've been crossed / She will be my salvation / When I feel low, I've nowhere to go / She'll be my inspiration.” These lyrics, which speak to this friendship and this moment so perfectly, fades like a soundtrack behind the laughter and chatter in this perfect little scene. “I want to be able to take Lady Gaga on a date when these come out!” Aramis calls out to Colin as he snaps the group hoisting Benji into the air like a trophy. 

Before setting off to our final shooting location, we caravan to Lakewood to set a scene atop Chris’ famous BMW, a gift from his late aunt that’s been cameoed in a number of friends’ productions. The namesake water tower in the distance was sonically immortalized by the local rapper Fice who released his hometown hit 253 over a decade ago. The song’s hyper-localized lyrics cemented its legacy as cannon immediately; when Chris plays it off his phone’s speakers everyone instinctually croons along when the bars approach: “up in the state of rain sometimes the showers / you know you’re up in Lakewood if you can spot the water tower.”

A couple days before this, the band reposted a fan’s cover of their single Fast N All on instagram stories. The accompanying caption said it was the coolest thing that’s happened yet. “It’s just crazy because I know how I felt and where I was when I wrote that song,” Aramis says, “I know how a song makes me feel when I want to go and learn it. And so it's like, to think that a song that I wrote on my couch that's half torn apart—somebody in a completely different place in the world felt a type of way enough about it to want to like play it back for themselves, you know? It’s wild.” 

Since I first met him, Aramis has told me assuredly that he’s leaving for LA or New York time and time again, but something has always kept him; the city clearly isn’t done with him yet, and that’s something he finally feels comfortable with. With the industry as it was, breaking out while living in a place like Tacoma had hurdles unforeseen in larger places, but emerging digitally while under lockdown seems to have democratized the process a bit. The roadmap to becoming a star has become less clear in this incredibly saturated era of music; while the tools afforded us by social media may make it easier to get work out into the world, using them also requires a certain panache to cut through the digital noise. Enumclaw’s online presence is both informal and intentional. Posts with typos remain unedited and their music videos, while cutty, are narrative driven and engaging, and their page is littered with niche content like Aramis’ recent Anthony Fantano cosplay. They show themselves as excited as they ought to be, and that enthusiasm is contagious. Spending the day with the band makes me feel like part of it; the energy they bring is so welcoming and genuine and to see that translate across a glass screen so honestly feels rare. The band has a new album in the works, 12 songs as of now, and Aramis tells me that while the EP is special, that these upcoming tracks are truly beautiful. 

We end the day among the ruins of old gravel mines as the sun sets, creating the perfect cast of light for Colin to take his final shots. He sets up Aramis, Ladaniel, Nathan, and Eli atop a mossy hill wearing Hazmat suits, and as they pose the cars passing by lay on their horns and passersby sneakily whip out their phones to catch a quick snap. It’d be easy to attribute this attention to their costuming, but I could be convinced it’s the band’s radiating undeniable if not fully uncovered celebrity that’s attracting the fanfare. “I think in 2021, I want to prove that we're the best band in the world,” Aramis tells me, “I want to do it all and have as much fun as possible and do it with these guys. I tell these guys all the time I wouldn’t want to be in a band with anyone else, and I mean that.”

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Enumclaw To the Moon

Over the last few months photographer Kristin Rowe captured a series of images and audio interviews with a selection of Black Women and Non-Binary Black artists who they believe are prime examples of self preservation. Sharing their space and time, these portraits shed light on the routines and physical locations that create a semblance of peace for them, in efforts to inspire those who may not know how to unplug and prioritize their needs first. The project is an uninterrupted conversation that speaks to community, wellness, inspiration and finding joy in trying times. A special thank you to Sacha Alexandra, Sammi Gay, Shala Miller and Tann Parker

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Kristin Rowe: (0:00)
Community has always looked like showing up. Um, just the simple act of showing up because to me it's intrinsically tied to the act of love. And I really only show up for the things and the people who move me in some way. And, uh, thankfully my definition really hasn't changed with the times. If anything, it's become more amplified to align with my self-care practices. Because now more than ever I'm gravitating towards the people and the things that like support me in every capacity. And, it's basically easier to just go where the love is at and to stay there. Like there really isn't much room for anything else. 

Sacha Alexandra: (01:11)
Honestly, I've never been prouder to be black than this moment. Honestly, I feel like I used to be so afraid, you know, just to be who I am. And I feel like because of like community, because of, you know, the sense of connectedness, I feel not alone. So I realized like now that like, I'm not in need to be like afraid. I don't need to be afraid. I don't need to feel like I'm alone. And like, I just need to realize that like black is power black is beautiful and you know, like it's never been a better time to be black, I think now than to like really fight for like what we need, you know, because one day they'll look back and I hope, I hope, I hope that all the stuff that we had to go through, won't be something that the future generation has to go through.

Kristin Rowe: (02:11)
To stay inspired. I've been going on a lot of long walks, no matter what the weather has got going on. I think that was a pretty much a norm and in my life pre COVID, but I think now there's a sense of urgency to capture the world that's changing around us. Um, just because we are, you know, living through a major historical event and, um, memory definitely warps with time. And I think the one thing that's a constant truth is your archive of negatives. Like you can't change that. And I think it's important to just shoot everything and anything because it will not look the same tomorrow. And that's a fact. 

Tann Parker: (03:18)
The ways I exhibit reverence for myself on the days are harder than most. I do that by allowing myself to feel my feelings, to be honest about them and to have a personal ego check. What I've been doing to find inspiration is looking at other forms of body modification. I've always been scared of getting piercings. My last piercing was over five years ago, and I know as I grow into entering my thirties, that I want to strengthen my spiritual practice and body modification has always been something that connects and aligns my body. And other than getting tattooed, I haven't done, um, much of getting piercings and other body modification. So that has been inspiring me to see other folks, uh, with their collection. 

Sammi Gay: (04:33)
I think, ways that I've been trying to cultivate joy in my life has been meals with friends. Um, you know, that's my favorite way to connect with people is over a delicious meal. And like having that intimate time, it's so fulfilling to me, um, trying to practice having an open heart, I think feeling embodied or practicing or trying to achieve embodiment has been a slight journey for me. I'm a super heady person. Um, I'm always in my brain and like sometimes I neglect the rest of my body, especially doing such physical labor. Um, so I've been just trying to constantly remind myself of my body, whether it's taking a walk or, you know, soothing these aches and thinking about working out, um, yeah, I've been really desiring some full body connection, but it has been more of a, um, some work for me, but the joys of the journey as well. And what it could be? You know? Um, so I've been really leaning into that. 

Shala Miller: (05:52)
I think running yourself ragged or not listening to yourself when it's saying whatever it it's saying, you know, when it's telling you what it needs and you're neglecting it is being disrespectful to yourself. And I didn't really think about it in that way before this, this, um, pre quarantine time. Um, but yeah, I just have learned that it's, it's it's necessary because I care about myself or at least I really should care about myself and care about my life. And, um, um, I deserve to live well and the same way that I resist and try to guard myself from mistreatment outside of myself, from other people from institutions, whatever it may be. I have to do the same thing to myself. You know, if I'm finding that I'm resorting to, um, a conditioned habit of like, just like either being abusive to myself emotionally or physically, then I need to do something about it. Um, so I just try to constantly like keep myself in check, and try not to be so try not to be neglectful, but again, you know, it's hard. Um, and I think that that all kind of relates to, black joy and, and what that means to me and what it means for me to see it as an act of pillar of resistance. And because yeah, I do think that, you know, there are things that we have to unlearn. There are things that we've been conditioned to think and to do. And a lot of that has to do with like, you know, thinking as black people, we don't deserve to rest. We don't deserve love. We don't deserve joy. We don't deserve beauty. We are, we have no beauty. We have no, we have nothing. And I think resisting that, um, is necessary because again, like what I was talking about, you know, about having respect for yourself and understanding that you deserve a good and beautiful life. And I think in order to do that is to actively resist these things that we have been, conditioned to think, um, you know, things that we may not want to live within us, but have found residence within us regardless. And, um, so yeah, I just it's, it means a lot to me to understand that every day, that in order to live the life that I know that I deserve and desire, I have to resist and that means that I have to be joyful and that means I need to practice love and know that I am deserving of that as well.

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Kristin Rowe My Domain

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Cult Classic's Ryan Blackway talks with Kaili, a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and creator whose work revolves around dreaming up new sonic and visual worlds to break down the binary matrices of everyday life. Having DJ'ed alongside artists such as DJ Lag and Yaeji, their colorful, hybridized approach to dance music is also featured on Bodywork, their monthly residency on NTS. A dear friend and alumni of Cult Classic, Kaili breaks down everything from their Neopia fandom to their favorite rave ever, all while battling it out on Super Smash Bros.

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Multiplayer LVL 1: Kaili

CTRL: An Interview with Helsinki-based Designer Tomi Freeman


Tomi Freeman is the designer behind the brand CTRL(pronounced Control), which is one of the oldest European skateboarding brands. I met him over email, accidentally, after a shot-in-the-dark attempt at reaching out to the brand’s email address to figure out their Finland store location and hours. During my first trip to Helsinki, I would learn that he was a local presence. “This man’s a legend!” someone exclaimed at Putte’s Bar, where he’d introduced me to some of his buddies over cool, bitter beverages. Generous, humble, and downright pleasant to be around, Freeman was as enigmatic and casual as the decades-old skate and streetwear brand that he’s now fostered for years.

Like most culture-makers and disruptors, he hadn’t calculated a formal ideology around the brand. He sort of fell into design haphazardly, after putting together some boards, t-shirts, and hoodies in the mid-90s under the umbrella of the shop Union 5. Their skateboarding film SISU debuted in 1996, and it is still among the most monumental films in the world of Scandinavian skateboarding. "Sisu" translates loosely to a sort of relentless perseverance against all odds—something that defines much of Finnish culture, and subsequently, the brand CTRL. Now, after more than two decades, CTRL has somehow remained decidedly underground—an earnest, long-standing alternative to some of today’s cheapened, default gatekeepers of internet hype. More importantly, though, CTRL seems to embody a real sense of place. It is grounded within the quiet reverie and sturdiness of its Scandinavian underpinnings. I sat down with Freeman over coffee and a Zoom grid recently to discuss the origins of Finnish streetwear, ask about what Helsinki has been like in lockdown, and to try to parse, once and for all, the true meaning of the word sisu. 

Eileen: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of CTRL, like when it started, who was involved in the early days and where it's at now?

Freeman: So it started in '95. Some say it was '94, but I think it was '95. It started as a group of skaters in Helsinki, and there was this store called Union Five. So Union Five was the only store in Helsinki that stocked skate brands, like Girl, Chocolate—all the hottest labels at that time. Back then, the skate scene was already super strong in Finland. So they were sponsoring a lot of kids. But the owners—funnily enough—all the owners were from this small town called Jarvenpaa, which is like 30 kilometers from Helsinki. So Jarvenpaa ends up playing an important role in the history of Helsinki, skateboarding, and fashion. Because it was so expensive to have a skate team, and sponsorships with all the US labels, the crew around Union Five was super strong. It was kind of natural that CTRL evolved. Maybe it was first like a t-shirt, and then “let's do some boards,” and then the owners, they were like, “okay, we could actually make this a proper label.”

Eileen: So that you could sponsor skaters yourselves?

Freeman: Yeah. So we had our main guys, and set up a real team. I owe everything to the skaters, because they were such a strong, super charismatic team. You could say they were some of the coolest guys in Helsinki. When we released the first movie Sisu (1996) it got a lot of exposure, not just in Finland, but around the world—especially in Europe—only because the skateboarding was so good. The level was super good.

Eileen: Everyone was just super talented.

Freeman: So I think it became an important part in the history of European skateboarding, because CTRL was one of the first European skateboard labels. That’s when people started realizing that you could actually have your own teams and skateboard labels in Europe.

Eileen: It was all in the US at that time?

Freeman: It was just California. Even New York hadn't really started. Supreme was super small for a long time. No matter where you were from in the US, if you went pro you kind of had to move to California. But slowly the European scene developed, and the UK was playing a big role on that.

Eileen: So it all got started naturally with skateboards?

Freeman: Yeah. We were doing the hard goods—wheels, boards, and so on. Then we started doing t-shirts, and then people wanted more, and they sold out super fast. So we could introduce other types of clothing, and like actually set up a clothing line, which happened super organically. When I did my first graphics for CTRL, I wasn't the owner. In the beginning Union Five was the store that owned it. So when I did my first designs, I pretty much didn't even know how to use Photoshop or whatever. 

Eileen: Can you tell me why the first skate film was called Sisu?

Freeman: It's really hard to translate, but it kind of means you're going through, like...no matter what, you're fucking going through that shit. It's kind of the word that describes the Finnish stubbornness or in a way like...

Freeman: Yeah. I don’t think there’s an English word. That might be close.

Eileen: So with the growth of the clothing line, you started doing different kinds of t-shirts, button downs, tote bags and things? Maybe venturing into a little bit more women's wear?

Freeman: Yeah, it wasn't really structured at that time though. We noticed that there were a lot of stores asking for our stuff around Europe, pretty much all over the place. Especially the core skateboarding stores. We set up a booth at this trade show called ISPO, and for the booth I just designed some weird graphics. I wasn't really following what was happening in the states, or in skateboarding. So I think that made a huge difference because a lot of people were expecting like, “yeah, okay, they must be copying what's happening in California.” And that was the feedback we always got, was that we were just...different.


Eileen: Could you talk to me about some of the collaborations you’ve done over the years?

Freeman: Yeah, let's say from 2000 to 2015 or something there was a lot of stuff. We did a lot with Japanese labels, because Japan was really good for us. For some reason they really liked CTRL. Our distributors were super cool. They were kind of like our buddies speaking the same language and they really believed in the label. We collaborated with some stores that were selling our stuff, and with Stadium in Tokyo… 

I mean, how did you get to know about CTRL?

Eileen: That's a good question. I feel like I found something on Instagram at some point, and I was just like, “Oh, this is really sick. This is coming out of Helsinki.”

Freeman: Yeah, because I think you were...

Eileen: I was kind of looking at different spaces. Right? And then I found that party that you threw at the Beyond venue.

Kingpin Skateboarding, 2010. History of CTRL


Eileen: How did you get started with graphic design?



Freeman: When I was still studying graphic design, I moved to Barcelona to work for a year. Back then Lodown magazine was like the coolest thing I could think of. It was like super, super cool. It's still ongoing, which is pretty good for a print magazine nowadays. I sent them my portfolio and then they replied like, “Whoa, that looks dope. How about doing a double spread?”

Eileen: Wow. Now, that kind of thing just happens in comments or DMs—that feeling of like, “Oh, this brand noticed what I'm doing,” Back then it was an email exchange.

Freeman: Yeah, exactly. Nowadays I hate email, email kind of used to be fun. Now, it's more like...getting an invoice through your door or something. 

Eileen: What are you guys up to now? Or what's next? I know you sent me some of the sewing work that you've been doing. I know that might be separate from CTRL.

Freeman: Yeah, it's not CTRL. I got this old workhorse called Bernina from my grandmother, like this old sewing machine. And then I have old CTRL fabrics leftovers. So I just thought I'd make some pillows, nothing to do with anything—lockdown hobbies. 

Eileen: How has Helsinki been during lockdown, or over the past year?

Freeman: Well, the spring had some restrictions, and people would not go out that much. Summer was pretty much normal, but now it's getting worse. Like much worse than...I mean way worse than ever. So we'll probably be...well, the bar is closed this Monday. I'm working on a logo for a new bar opening in Helsinki for a friend of mine. And I think that he chose the worst time ever to open a bar.

Freeman: They opened it for one day, and then lockdown came.

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CTRL: Tomi Freeman

A conversation with the Helsiki-based Designer

CLOYINGLY SWEET: Mikayla Brown’s syrupy approach to image distortion and archiving.

Words by Ella Ray
Images by Mikayla Brown and Frances Rich

The URL algorithms programmed to prioritize images deemed profitable and desirable are informed by, and actively informing, our IRL structures. This cycle leaves Black artists creating outside of the framework of representation in fraught, but generative space in the “art world” and online. As social media is further baked into our arts ecologies, the pressure to produce objects and images that are digestible for a broad, white, uninterested audience is at an all time high. As an art historian, and as a Black woman, attempting to evade the canon of my own practice, I am excited by visual artists that decline expectations around creating figural or narrative work-- knowing that this leaves us at an impasse. 

Black artists making abstract art are often marked as illegible by institutions that profit from representation politics. And while the obscurity that comes with an abstract, or even experimental, practice is what leads to Black artists like Howardena Pindell and Ed Clark getting their roses decades late, the characterization of illegibility is an opportunity to define the conditions of production and engagement of and with our art. 

Mikayla Brown is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist exploring interiority through alternative means. Mikayla’s practice is not devoid of identity, but makes distinct connections between materiality and image in ways that reflect an investment in ritual and process. Ironically, I was introduced to their practice via the algorithmically produced “Suggested Follows” feature. Also known as @nectaryear, Mikayla occupies an illusive but notable place on the internet. Their instagram is an assemblage of super-zoomed selfies, dancehall ephemera, and 18 karat herringbone chains. Interspersed throughout are fragments of striking abstract oil paintings and fragile ceramic work. The ebbs and flows of Mikayla’s online-presence, and practice, have left me hungry to know where their work begins and ends. 

Through a handful of emails and a long zoom call, Mikayla and I dove into the theoretical and technical underpinnings of their studio practice. Between the moments where we found common ground in our eBay search history and adoration for Fanon, Mikayla gingerly traced the trajectory of their work. Throughout our conversation they wove a complex web of reference and inspiration-- making apparent Mikayla’s commitment to the deep study of art history, popular culture, and image theory. 

Growing out of an elementary school hobby, Mikayla recognized that their portrait painting skills could be used to gain access to educational and artistic resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available. The exchange of hypernarrative portraiture for life and practice sustaining funds is not uncommon for Black artists. The benefits of producing art objects that align with a neoliberal understanding of “Black art” is not lost on Mikayla and in many ways, informs their departure from figural work. 

“I wasn’t initially drawn to becoming an abstract painter, I actually was really averse to it in the beginning. It was after using painting as a tool to access different resources that I began leaning away from traditional mediums,” explains Mikayla. Experiences with new media technologies, exposure to performance work by artists like Ulysses Jenkins, and a desire to study textures and finishes pointed the artist toward a more abstracted practice. This shift is evident in Mikayla’s cake paintings and “frosting objects.”

These paintings are often rendered on square canvas and, depending on your perspective, can be understood as a slice of the larger form or as the whole cake. In a swirling palette of beiges, powder pink, neon yellow, and cherry red, Mikayla depicts distorted layers of sponge and globs of frosting. Within a singular painting, the artist’s application of oils range from gentle washes to densely concentrated treatments that reinforce the stickiness of the confection. Placed on the upper ledges of the paintings are the stoneware “frosting objects.” Mikayla pipes these segments out of a pastry bag. After firing, they apply a powder coating that adds a jewelry-like chrome finish that doubly acts as a protective layer. Although these ceramic forms are sometimes exhibited separately from the paintings, the combination of these objects illustrate a tension between deterioration and preservation. 

Mikayla notes that they are “usually thinking about how Black people are supposed to present a consumable product, even if it’s an image of something destructive or violent.” While their paintings and ceramic works are hardly violent, these forms serve as material space for the artist to explore the consequences of image commodification over time. These paintings recall desserts at the end of a celebration, where the original object, or cake, is distorted through slicing, plating, and eating. You almost can’t tell if you want another slice or if you’re disgusted by the mess that has been made. In capturing this distortion, Mikayla makes clear the effect of our excessive consumption is an image separated from its origin. 

Mikayla’s interest in materiality and image production is continued through their study of jewelry. Informed by working in a Black-owned jewelry shop on the southside of Chicago, Mikayla began documenting the wearable aspects of Black cultural ephemera through a project called “Gilded Cavity.” The archive consists of 58 close-up images of gold pendants, heavy pinky rings, and flat chains. At first blush the Instagram account feels like you’re flipping through a Black family album that isn’t yours, each photo reading as both universal and highly intimate. I saw myself, my lovers, and my kin in the jewelry choices of these strangers. With time though, Mikayla’s selective omittance of the faces and the bodies of the jewelry-wearers brings the formal mixture of metal and flesh to the foreground. The contours of skin begin to mirror the shapes of jewelry and patterns in size, placement, and cut appear repeatedly, giving the archive a scientific quality. Mikayla's powerful play with image structure maps the mundane but tender relationship between metal and Black bodily adornment. 

Across their practice, Mikayla Brown is experimenting with maintaining and warping images. While Mikayla’s acute understanding of the rapid circulation of Black cultural production grounds their work, it’s through their sharp exploration of material and process that their practice bears fruit. 

Equal parts sweet and sour, decaying and blooming, Mikayla Brown is creating abstract art rooted in the Black tradition of refusal. 

the frosting tv
wax, stoneware, silk print, and super8 on 2003 tv, 2020

(Images in couch photo from left to right)
raspberry cake
oil on canvas, 2020

imprint of a pendant with a broken jump ring 
oil on canvas, 2020

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Cloyingly Sweet

BILLIE OCEAN’S "NESTING" April 01-May 01

BILLIE OCEAN'S "NESTING": NOW EXPIRED
(3) FILMS PRESENTED by CULT CLASSIC

Soft Nest
Co-directed and Co-shot by Laur Geiger 
Music by Boy Harsher, Nailah Hunter, Billie0cean

Do You Think You're Better Off Alone?
Music and Performance by Billie0cean

My Tears Ran Down Your Throat
Music: Mixed and produced by Billie0cean

Billie or Lanéya, in typical Libra fashion, the artist toggles between her enigmatic byname Billie Ocean and full name Lanéya Billingsley. Billie mentions wanting to be a harpist by the time she’s 50, yet another instrument to add to her orchestra of cyber-celestial ever-evolving dreamscapes. Tugging on heartstrings with stirring visuals; her work is cerebral to the core. Beyond aestheticism, the three films on view “Nesting” are portraits of the gut wrenching reality that is living and breathing with the complexity of raw emotion – marked by an irreplicable dissection of introspect. There is comfort in knowing resolve; a catharsis Lanéya shares with the viewer. Painted in reference to very specific sound bites and moments, the pieces exist beyond being simply beautiful or eye catching. Her cinematic oeuvre is proof of self love; exemplifying that the actual act of loving self isn’t always the airy depiction ascribed by pop culture. It can be ugly, confusing, sometimes twisted in unknowingness. That is the process. Billie Ocean wants you to know.

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Billie Ocean's "Nesting"

A Retrospective As Told By Azha Ayanna & Apryl Fuentes

POV San Francisco 2012, A fresh faced 18 year old Apryl Fuentes logs onto her Tumblr account “gringatears” an apt name for the then sardonic blogger. Apryl clicks the autofill password saved in her Firefox browser as if her password wasn't hackable enough. Apryl reenters the Tumblr kingdom she’s built alongside her best friend Azha, adorned with soft pink aesthetics and Shade Zine reblogs, where she has acquired a degree of internet fame (laughable by today’s standards). On this particular day she receives a direct message from none other than photo extraordinaire, “it” girl herself – Vivian Fu.

On a pre-Instagram influencer internet, this platform invented the DM. Back, back deep, back into time. This DM in particular was a pure fan-girl back and forth resulting in “let’s hangout sometime” to which I accepted in elation. At that time any glimmer of friendship from an internet link up gave me something to look forward to outside of my chaotic college life. SF was our playground, making our way across crowded Muni cars and neighborhoods crooked with Victorian style houses; homes to 20 somethings working multiple coffee jobs within walking distance of places that are mere figments of my imagination now. The city was a backdrop for a friendship that ensued, from the digital to IRL, when Azha and I met Vivian Fu.

“I owe like everything to Tumblr right?” She speaks directly into her headphone mic, her words reverberating like an ASMR YouTuber. “This is like something that would upset most of my friends... but I'm like, photography is dead! Let's explore," to which Azha and I laugh at the Zoom screen. It’s 2021 and we are video calling Vivian Fu to talk about photography and the fossilized internet culture we all came up on and all we can do is make meme references and shit talk tech companies. Let’s get into it. “Expand.” There was a Vivian before there was a Tumblr. You might not guess her beginnings with an art degree from UC Santa Cruz, a detail that makes complete sense when she lights up in talking about critical theory, the algorithm, and how our social conditioning shapes our aesthetic “choices” our tastes, if you will. 

“People are using cameras differently now. And I think, yes, they are doing soft documentation, which is what I was doing, but I think they’re also doing soft documentation in this other way that I was also participating in. I think what I was doing as well is...you sort of live your life in this way that is intentionally very photographic. But now, I think with Instagram, it is so next level. So like, you know, if I’m gonna take a picture of my bedroom, like am I going to make sure my bedroom looks nice? Or am I just going to take pictures of my bedroom?” 

My memory of being at Vivian’s apartment in the Mission back then is clear as day. Sitting on a vintage denim couch, I shared my ruminations on creating this platform that Azha and I had so cleverly coined “Shade Zine” to which Vivian beamed in unquestioning support. All three of us came up at a time before our understanding of algorithms, when we were making art and meeting up because we thought shit was “cool”. Critical conversations were starting to happen on the blogosphere and yes, we did graduate from the school of Tumblr. Still the platform was very much follow-for-follow this looks cute and I hit reblog. 

We go back and forth about the skewed systemic matrix upon which digital social media is anchored. You ever notice no one shoots horizontal photos anymore? Instagram calls for vertical imagery, the literal framework for how we view “the world”– a canvas for selfies or what we call “hot flexing”. “If you hit the jackpot of markers of individualism, we’ll say, you become marketable.” Deep into the discourse of identity and the meaning of representation within photography, we approach the conversation around Vivian’s expression of Asianness within her work, at times out of her own control. At what point is representation barely a marker for actual change, less than a step in any direction, simply a ploy for companies to profit off of this brand of diversity. We all agree that many of us don’t have a choice but to accept, sometimes, when saying “no” can be detrimental to a young artist with bills to pay. “I understand why people are doing it, but I think again, it’s because I was doing it. I was saying, 'do you want me to be an Asian schoolgirl? I’ll be an Asian schoolgirl.' But it feels so one dimensional. It’s not because I don’t want people to honor their heritage or their family, or to embrace their cultural rituals. But, I’m also just like, it feels like you’re doing this for white people.”  

Looking back at her own practice, Fu refers to one specific iconic portrait of hers, iconism as described by me and Azha. “I think at the time, the story about Asian girls was very limited, and I think that’s why I wanted it to be like, I’m on top of this truck. I’m holding guns, because up until that point it was literally like, oh Lane from Gilmore Girls or Nelly Yuki on Gossip Girl. It’s this very specific archetype of an Asian girl, and I was like ‘no. I’m bad’,” that last part booming once again in ASMR pitch. 

Even as we traverse through the past, the message remains the same. It’s one of intention and shifting reality. A digital landscape that once was can be no longer, because the ideologies we attempted to mimic as young artists are clouded memories now. We get on the topic of PostSecret – a throwback moment. For those unfamiliar, it was an online project where people could send secrets on postcards or imagery to be posted online in complete anonymity. Parallel to this pop culture moment, Vivian shares stories of working at a photo lab in SF slanted on a main street where Azha would drop off some of her early work, alongside other people’s memories, of which she was the beholder. Her fascination with people’s own aesthetic choices was further informed by her handling of customer’s most private moments, some photos which might never see the light of Instagram day. There’s an intimacy in the secret sharing of images close to the heart, like the scanning of a full tub of archival family photos, or that roll you shot at Coachella in 2010 – Vivian saw all. The recollections end on this note as our conversations snap back into reality. 

A curious person with the same spirit as in her scholarly years, she poses the question – “What is it all? What does it mean?” In her own expression, along with some encouragement from an influential college professor (like some of us were lucky to have), she came to understand that her “photography is like a ballad,” when words fall short. Vivian admits to not being vulnerable outside of her visual art, something I think more than few of us can relate to in one way or another. She’s still an internet punk icon in our eyes. We joke back and forth as we part ways; reaching the threshold of our 2 hour zoom call. And just like that, we break for dinner.

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FLOWERS FOR VIVIAN FU

“Of all the girls of college years,/There's one that I've loved long. /For me she wears a golden heart, /For her, I sing this song.” 
— Wonderful Sigma Phi Epsilon Girl (Sweetheart Song)

Featuring 
Tournament Haus
Jazzelle Dodd (Lady Tournament, Mother)
Ernae Windham (Ernae Tournament, Father)
Lucky Frankie (Lenz Tournament, Prince)
Vanté Franklin (Prezéntt Tournament, Princess)
Viv Hamilton (Trouble 007, Heir Apparent)


My first child, I had before I was ready. I found myself in a ballroom family, part of an urgent underground Black & Brown art scene locally. Ballroom houses serve as a makeshift families for queer artists under-resourced by their family & communities. The ballroom scene has its own rituals & lives as a myth. Its history is misrepresented & under-contextualized despite increased visibility, & no one can decide what to do with spectators. My first child was the baby of my original house & within hours of meeting, I claimed them as mine, not even the House Mother could object. After months of growing tensions, I realized I didn’t fit in my first family. I found my function but my place wasn’t respected, my labor wasn’t valued. I’d grown accustomed to being kind of revered by folks I loved. Leaving my first family scared me & the woman I was becoming. I left my first child behind so she could choose family for herself & I swore to her I wouldn’t ever be starting a house & I’d just always be there for her. For months that was true. I was content supporting just her work, I believed it was enough. Then an itch began in my body.

I was raised to be partial to myth. The myths of Christianity, fables of miraculous birth & martyrdom destined. The theater of my own birth: my mother’s labor hours into a late April 1992 Southern California earthquake, the ashes of a city burning after Rodney King’s injustice covering my drying baby clothes. I was raised in a family of faith, that cultivated purpose from the realities they faced daily. My mother, a sharp-shooting pageant queen & ordained religious scholar made our every day meaningful. I never knew myself other than intentional. Despite my parents’ early divorce, I was fortified by the mutual understanding I was meant to be here. How to survive in this reality never quite made sense to me. I didn’t feel “real” growing up.

Being born in the body I was allotted, I was given a myth of boyhood. He was to be great. The gem in a line of praying women & heir to Los Angeles Black Church royalty. I was born of two ministers under the watchful eye of a devoted village. I began boyhood boisterous, bombastically brimming. I can’t remember when I first began to carefully cultivate charisma but I knew I was unable to hide. Openly queer from childhood, I was alleviated from many lasting, though archaic, limitations on masculine performance. I could be a kind of expressive faggot. Couched in my 6’5 Black body, this prismatic persona was made even more unrenderable. I learned I could masquerade in masculine spaces because my sheer size demanded caution. How lucky then for the young flesh thirsty gay, enjoying naively hallow grounds: boy’s locker rooms, straight guys cars, janitors closets after school. I surrounded myself with men not because I identified with them but I need them to make me feel a type of whole.

By the time I got to college, I decided the mythic manhood I was barreling toward needed to include networking with a matrix of men. Fraternity life was rife with myths, embolden by ritual, & scandalized with secrecy. It’s one of the most flagrant theatrical performances of masculinity. Even now I’m hesitant to reveal anything too sacred. We have our Founder’s tale, a group of twelve seminary students trying to bring a new frat to their school. We have our values, virtue, diligence & brotherly love represented by our colors red, gold & purple. We have handshake & songs: Should harm betide me, /Thou ever will guide me, Sigma, Dear Sigma Phi Epsilon True.  I was primed for this kind of community. I was conditioned with my extensive study of how men are & an unchecked desire to be needed by them. My fluency made me easy to talk to & early in my time as a pledge I saw how special they needed me to be.

My first role after becoming a brother was serving the Vice President of Recruitment as Social Chair. I helped throw the parties, logistically. I was to manage the guys working their stations, watch out for any liabilities & keep the noise within reason. Moreover, this was the beginning of me being tasked with both caring for the house & bringing in new people. By my junior year, I was Vice President of Recruitment & personally responsible for engaging potential pledges. I had no concept of care as I do now. My only language for persuasion was the flirtation that fortified my place among these earnest liberal-arts troglodytes I fancied so fervently. My recruits signaled a change for the fraternity. Our queer brothers increased, our brothers of color increased. We had more than just econ & comp sci majors. I felt like I was casting new men in roles my older brothers left vacant. There isn’t enough space here to map how my body was a site of experimentation for my older brothers but all these men told me I was special explicitly & otherwise. Facing the young men who came up under my tutelage taught me I wasn’t like the other Black or Queer brothers, I was a singular feature of the fraternity.

Before crossing over into the Brotherhood, older guys in the fraternity solicited me for time & attention. For some, I was this genuine curiosity: a tone of Black they didn’t know & a kinda queer that didn’t quite fit. For others, I was the material manifestation of magical negro necessity they’ve only dreamed of. I’m only so retroactively responsible but at the time I convinced myself all violence was self-inflicted cause I wanted them so damn bad. There was more causality than conspiracy in what I catered for the brothers, so I was passed around by all secretly to siphon whatever salacious or sage sensation they sought.

My senior spring, with my Vice President term complete, I was selected to be a pledge trainer (locally we called each other pledge masters) over a prime group of about 15 boys. This was the first time however, I was actually in a role of mentorship. Ever. Even with the parameters & absurdity of the pact, I saw the responsibility as paramount to my manhood at the time. I, along with 3 other Senior Brothers, embarked on the semester-long journey & I don’t think it took a week for those boys to start calling me “Mom”. Many a weeknight I had a counsel of boys passing around bongs & beers in my room. I heard childhood stories never before shared, wishes they can’t tell their girlfriends, the lies they told their mothers & themselves. More than the parties, the social capital, or the cloak of brotherhood, I found the most comfort caring for my pledges. I had been in dance groups, acapella clubs, theater productions, but here among them did I first feel real.

Upon graduation, living only minutes from my alma mater, I had to actively take time away from visiting the campus, keeping tabs on my boys. For the Fall after I graduated I visited my boys about twice a month before finally committing to my new life. Postgraduate life was a blur of flailing past the point I planned to live & deciding art was my calling. I tried activism. I tried mentoring youth poets. I was a drunk who didn’t believe I was living for much now years away from the last world I felt useful. The years following college were a trek into a wilderness, I was eulogizing the boyhood I barely survived. I began untangling the definitions of self in proximity to men. I saw how even queer expressions of masculinity failed to bring me security. Beginning life as a trans woman I returned to my home state of California & admit to my own alcoholism. 

In the first year of my sobriety, I moved to Portland & began collaborating with local Black artists, curators, & spaces. I found sociality & new kinds of community that affirmed me as real. I had tamed my insatiable taste for being surrounded by “men”, with their mythic promise of security. It took months to re-center myself & invest in the Ballroom scene at large, but still, I ached for a place to fit. I had my creative & professional accomplishments from my time across the country but here in my home, I wanted to be known within a family.

My hormone therapy, about 6 months in at that point, had severely shifted my mood & my wellness baseline was raised. I found a new softness in everything. It was then I first imagined motherhood. I had jokingly begun claiming some young Black artists in town but wondered what if I did so with intention? I didn’t want my house to look like a team though, nor a fraternity. After asking my closest guy friend to be the Father, I felt poised to gestate a collective under my care. We had the myth of ballroom families readily available to us. I have two more children now & it’s not lost on me the vaguely nuclear quality to our structure.I jokingly call my first child (from my previous relationship) when telling my friends about my family.

I find myself mythologizing my history to my children often. I try to not over-romanticize how I got over & the never-ending nature of getting through this life. What’s left of my childhood faith I pass on in cautionary tales & demand for higher pay rates. I worry my narcissism fuels my motherhood, each of my children’s faces remind me of a favorite self. But they each tell me how specifically they fit into our unit & how I impact their worlds. I can’t always believe I was the best influence over my pledges but I believe I gave them another way to be in the world. They practiced me to be patient & possible for the earnest & every day. The realness I sought since childhood, I now know is the womanhood I am living in now. The mother/girlfriend/sister placeholder I served for those boys recognized a self I was yet to fully embody. Now, as a woman, I actively seek ways to be the best mother. It’s a realness I fashion from a boyhood that pledged to be more than the myth of a man.

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Lady Tournament

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posted
in kitchens, down the block, unos a otros


Mar Citlali holds specific and detailed relationships to different mediums of expression, his approach to sharing food has varied sources of inspiration, fluidities, transparencies and pronounced philosophies. His pace and rhythm in the kitchen felt familiar in its confidence, comfort, but it isn’t lackadaisical. Watching him prep, cook, plate, the way Mar moves made us long dancing again. 

Periodically he points out his mom’s voice, muffled in his mixes, he says she’s never had his recontextualization of her Pozole, 

“mostly because she likes to make the food when I’m around, not me.” 

She makes Mexican food when she feels proud, Mar tells us, and he feels joy in filling his home with the same aromas – semblances of his childhood. He loves his mom’s particularity in taste, a decision in time effective brand use, enlatada enchilada sauce basing her Pozole. It’s not a flavor that thickens, it finds a way to be light once out the can but immediately sets, rich. Traditions shift realizing we culturally pivot creatively out of necessity. 

An expansive palette, or good taste, or personable charm or innovative methods or whatever words are given when work is given its due praise. With new piquancies, the basis of his menus is that “homestyle mexican-american multigenerational convenience capitalist shit.“ 

With most of his family from South Central, Mar came back to Los Angeles at 19 and grew up in Victorville most of his young life. Living in Los Angeles again is special to him. Mar has always cooked but first stepped into the industry in the back of the house at a Vietnamese restaurant, with a few places in between and at Rose Bakery at Dover Street Market, until recently. Mar knows he’s an artist, an art maker.

“Emerging”, “up and rising”, “discovered”, it feels wrong to give these misnomers to an artist immersed in a legacy of practice. Who qualifies emerging? It is in that language, Pozole may not be considered cuisine until “validated” by exotified flavors, so it too might be discovered or made relevant (however many centuries later). The presence of the pineapple vinegar curtido and pipicha only amplifies this food as an extension of a pallet shared through generations. 

Mar’s capsule and menu’d dinners show an interconnectedness with central american, sichuan and vietnamese aspects that happen sincerely, maybe because he’s magnetized to pungencies he finds in the food from the kitchens he’s worked in, Macarthur Park on a weekend or Mexicali where his grandmother now lives. Mar describes a threshold he’s allowed to push depending on the space, but his ideology doesn’t change. He’s excited to be challenged with co-creating ecosystems of exchange, adaptively.

Mar uses participatory language when he speaks,  in his words and interactions; there doesn’t seem to be a finite line between the two. There’s an intentional and living conversation between Mar’s approach to the flavors, abundance of his dishes and the people eating them. In his friends’ kitchens, hopefully one day his own, in the back of his Yukon, open trunk, fold out table with housed and unhoused neighbors. It quiets the nostalgia we hold for a functioning industry, at times briefly allowing us to forget it ever existed. 

A produce packing warehouse once lived where DSM now stands, Mar mentioned. It feels like an important fact when considering proximity and its reality. 

“LA is crazy” a neighbor agrees as we pack Pozole, the different extremities of money and wealth existing visibly within blocks of each other.

He’s vocal in the way people are conditioned to maneuver through and around small, private, public, and commercial statuses, for upward mobility but he is not negligent of himself as a resource to those around him. In the many trials of resource sharing popping up there is an innate feeling to donate or work, but effectively redistributing is being acute to cracks. Pull from them. Identifying as a skill. As some deepen into realities of what it takes for efforts to last, note that redistribution as a trending curation is inadequate. Mar feeds people, on and off the clock. There is no anticipation of sharing food or knowing how to. Not anyone will pull up with food to their block on a Sunday and not everyone should. Part of Mar’s approach to sharing food is asking for help by meeting people where they’re at when he knows people want to participate. 

It was hot all day. A layer of smoke, Mar’s broth was light and warm, coating throats, complemented by the freshness of the Agua de Melon. 

In an exchange, mouthfulled, someone said “the glory is the sky!”

Does the public yearn for healthy industries at the expense of communities curb your appetite? Does it parallel the gustoral experience of cumin in crema, a protrusive sharpness on blank background? Flirting more with the identity of dessert than side, Mar would describe cumin as it appears, that 

Food maintains its own position as an influence and informant. We wish to explore the nuances of chefs in the context of their own worlds, flavors, styles and communities while also navigating the world of cuisine during a time of world crisis’. Mar, in many ways, speaks to and often revolves around amor, identity and modulating honest transactions. 

Back in January [2020] we partook in indulging sequences of eating and ideation, meals that had us thinking about friends and artists, their approach to cooking without an official title, allure to distinct ingredients, presentation of dishes, and real curiosity of knowing who’s in front and behind them. Initially it was a specific mimicry of opulence in eating that we first reacted to. The curiosity of how the eater, the cook and the plate lived in our projections of luxury; a mulling of labor and artistry in cooking, outside and inbetween industries (sometimes in spite of them). Where artist constructs environment and honors the relationship to them in order to reimagine ways we eat. It’s now October and we are navigating the world of cuisine during a time of world crisis, ie: pandemic, disasters, fracasos. This all tastes different now, well intentioned visceralities of plated dishes and artists' stakes carried realities more than being precepts of old attachments, we’re excited they’re more than that, they are actually just new. 

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Mar Citali

posted 
in kitchens, down the block, unos a otros

Oscar Chavez is an artist currently working in Chicago with absolutely no affiliation to SAIC. He makes paintings and performances and has never lived in a world without the Internet. His work exists in a historical canon of camp, glamour and public intervention. Calling inspiration from artists such as Adrian Piper & Vito Acconci, and designers such as Jeremy Scott & Martin Margiela, Chavez uses clothing to infiltrate public spaces and expand ideas of conceptual writing. The inherent subversive power of a body in space comes to light through his wearables and their appropriation of fashion tropes through the lens of a millennial. Tube tops, opera length gloves, and couture wedding gowns can all be used as tools in performance and protest.

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Oscar Chavez

Travis Miller, aka Lil Ugly Mane, has donned numerous aliases. They're all names that reflect a specific space and time he's occupied during his 20 years of making music. The Richmond, VA native discusses the influence travel has on his ever-evolving sound, the currency of hip hop music, his journey with mental health, the acceptance of fans and his natural DIY approach to life. Photography by Jessica Lehrman.

LUM: I'm doing alright, man. I'm just over at the studio right now in New York, going back out west on Friday. I'm just chilling right now, though. Kinda hanging out.

CC: How does living in one place while being from another, doing all this travel influence your work?

LUM: I like to keep it moving. I can't be in the same place for too long. You know, I'm from Richmond, and then I was in Philly for two years. I was in Baltimore for a year, but then before I moved out to LA, like two years ago, I'd been living out in the mountains in North Carolina just like on top of a fucking mountain on a dirt road.

When I was in the mountains, there was nothing there. I was completely by myself up there, and I didn't have cell service. Personally, I think you have more opportunities to do a lot more things in cities and shit like that, but I don't know if that's necessarily beneficial to what I do because I feel like I'm less productive. I feel like I do more things, but I'm still less productive because I don't have the time to just brew over something.

CC: Is that why your style and approach varies so much? You blur a lot of lines in your sound. 

LUM: No, I think that all my shit is just me. I'm intersectional. I grew up punk. I got into jazz and through that I got into hip hop. Through hip hop I got into all sorts of shit because I was obsessed with the idea of sampling. I love sampling. I think it's fundamental to what hip hop is. I think I'm just an amalgamation or culmination of a bunch of different shit. I don't really like to put a word on it. That kinda comes from the noise scene really. When I was involved in all of that, it was just a bunch of people that liked music. It wasn't necessarily people that loved noise, or loved experimental music. It was just people that like sounds, so it was just a community of people that were interested in sounds. And that felt the most like home to me, you know? So that's all anything is, just a cluster of sounds. 

CC: So when you make something and people interpret it a certain way, do you ever think, “No, that's not it. It's this way.” 

LUM: I think that if we're all being honest, most art is whatever it is. I've had enough friends go through art school, I've had enough people go through critiques and learn how to write artist statements. All of that shit is just a tool to sell your art to somebody else. Ultimately, what you do when you walk into a gallery is you look at a painting and it is what it is.

As far as the artist is concerned, they made that painting because they liked the way it looked. Any deeper, if you're talking about "Oh this is about, post-industrial America or blah, blah, blah,” that's just a tool to make the viewer or the consumer believe that you should have a job, that you shouldn't be a homeless person. That's all that is - you're trying to convince someone that you know something that they don't. Ultimately you like the way that it looks or you like the way it sounds. I don't think there's really any deeper meaning in most things. 

I put out noise tapes for years that literally had no information. There were no words on the entire tape. Unless you remember that you bought it from me and what my project's name was, you probably wouldn't even know what it was. That's always just been okay with me. And so the idea that hip hop has to be this certain thing where unless I'm posing against some wall with graffiti behind it or I'm wearing a certain outfit, I’m labelled as mysterious — I think is weird. I think our art is art. 

CC: You are mysterious to a lot of people, though. Even your listeners. You have a lot of aliases — too many to list.

The aliases for me are just, you know, “This sounds or doesn't sound like Ugly Mane to me, so I'm gonna name it something else. This doesn't sound like Bedwetter to me. So, I'm going to name it something else.”

LUM: I mean, it's all just me. If I was in any other genre, this wouldn't be a weird thing; but I think because hip hop is what it is and it's so personalized, I've always been classified as some sort of mysterious person or whatever. But I came from punk and hardcore and, you know, in the nineties we couldn't really get any information about something. You'd get a 7-inch, you'd get a tape or CD and the information held within the booklet is all that you're going to get. That's it. If you write to the band, maybe you can learn more about it, but ultimately what you're given is what you get, and that was always enough for me. If I got a seven inch and there was just a band photo in there, they didn't say who was in the band. I'd be like, “Well, I guess I don't know who's in the band,” and that's kind of the way that I've always approached it. 

I was Shawn Kemp before all of this. I was producing under that name, and I just kind of fucking hated working with people because they weren't really doing what I wanted them to do with what I was doing. 

LUM: I just started doing it myself. I mean, I would make a beat and I would hear exactly in my head what that song was, and instead of listening to my own intuition I'd be like, “Well I'll give it to another artist to achieve that,” but whatever I would get back wouldn't really be exactly what I wanted, so I just started rapping myself on it. And that's how Ugly Mane came about. The first Ugly Mane shit was all produced by Shawn Kemp. That was just because my beats were under Shawn Kemp, but I just made up this rapper to rap on it. It was out of desperation. 

I mean, the only reason I put it online was so I could have a link to give to my friends. I don't know, but that's the story. Then people started passing it around and I was like, “Oh, I guess this was cool or something.”

CC: You upload an entire album as one track, like a cassette, you press play and just take it all in. It seems as though that’s been the method to your entire career: release and get back to it. No promo. 

LUM: Exactly. I mean, that's why I don't tend to split up tracks and stuff like that, and that's why my identity isn’t important. Do you like the song? Okay, cool. Well, then why the fuck do you give a shit who I am? That's my identity as far as music is concerned, you know? I don't understand it. I've never been like, “I wonder what the singer of this band's like in person.” My brain doesn't work that way, and I think that's something that I've had to come to grips with — that my brain probably works differently, that everybody's brain works differently. I've had to accept the fact that people don't look at things the same way that I do.

Ultimately, if you don't give somebody anything, they're going to find something. That's why there was, like, years where I wasn't really doing much; where all the information about me is fucking wrong. It was just horribly wrong.

LUM: People who were writing biographies and stuff.

CC: Are you saying the Wikipedia page is wrong?

LUM: All sorts of shit is wrong. I can't think of anything specifically. 

I'm also super critical because I don't like the idea of a biography. I'm really into the idea of an autobiography, I'm really into the idea of a memoir. The idea of a biography where you're proposing how a person was feeling at the time that a person did something — I think it gets into a disingenuous territory.

It's not correct, you don't know what that guy was feeling. I don't really like to pontificate how somebody was feeling or like “Oh during this time…” I'm not really into the idea of a biography. That's part of the reason why I agree to interviews every now and again, just so at least there's some record of what I'm saying; not a bunch of people positing over it.

CC: You have this cult-like following online, and you do these intimate live shows. What’s it like to interact with fans at that level?

LUM: I definitely dealt with it differently in the past. I had contempt for a long time towards my fans. Like, I hated them, but it was just that the idea of fandom on a promotional level, it just didn't make sense to me. I didn't understand it. I think coming from punk rock, coming from what I learned at a early age, it’s that the band that's on the stage is going to be hanging out with you in the crowd for the next band. 

You know, if you want to go talk to them you could just be like, "Hey man, that was a good set," shake their hand and go away. The idea of any more interaction with that was completely based on the idea of like, “Do you think that we could get along?” I just end up always thinking of it like a peer group - we're all the same, we're all interested, we're all here because we all like the same thing and so therefore we have something in common and we're all friends. 

So, I've learned that I have to appreciate the fact that I haven't had a job in fucking seven years. I appreciate that these people are literally supporting me, and I think that's fucking awesome. I think it's fucking great. The other things that I've been involved in, the idea of supporting yourself with it was the most absurd idea. Like, my fucking shitty-ass performative noise project is just a bunch of bullshit, it doesn't make any sense. Like, nobody's going to support that. It's fucking stupid, you know?

CC: For sure, people can feel how real your music is. You’re always changing the way you release music, which makes it feel like the music is more for you than anyone who may be trying to capitalize off a certain sound.

LUM: Oh yeah, it's just me. It's very narcissistic. 

LUM: I don't know if I would call it therapy ‘cause it hasn't really helped a lot of shit. Well, it could be therapy, but really bad therapy. [Laughs] Like court appointed therapy where the therapist doesn't really give a shit. Like I said, I feel like it's almost the opposite of therapy, because it's a compulsion. It's a compulsion I'm not dealing with properly. Anybody else with any other type of compulsion would probably get on medication, but my compulsion is making music so everybody's like, “Oh that's totally cool.” But, I guess this doesn't hurt anybody so people are alright.

CC: You posted on Facebook about America’s mental healthcare system incentivizing violence and self-harm. Aside from your music, it’s probably the most you've opened up. Are you feeling better today? 

LUM: Yeah, I am. I had to get a grip with that, but, I mean, it's all anxiety. I have a horrible fucking anxiety issue; it's terrible for me, everything is terrible to me. So, even this [interview] was like, I felt like my stomach was in knots since this morning just getting on the fucking phone with you guys.

LUM: It's fine, I do it every now and again. I haven't done it in a while, but speaking to the idea that we mentioned before, if you don't give somebody anything they're going to make something up. They're going to find something and it's not necessarily going to be what you want. The way that I started dealing with all of that was I guess oversharing. Just like, I'm going to overshare, like if you want to know who I am, here I am. You’re probably not going to fucking like it. It's going to be horrible for everyone involved, it was just going to be a nightmare. So I've dealt with dark themes in my music since the beginning, and speaking to the fans I knew I had. I've gotten so many emails from kids that were going through horrible shit. I can't 100% say that some of them weren't larpers and shit that just want to connect with me on some like dark level, but the last thing I want to do is feel like I'm in any way responsible for furthering something.

LUM: I mean, like when I was going through what I was going through, I felt really lost and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'm an adult. I have money. I can afford anything that I need to do, like, "What therapy do I need to go to? Should I go to a hospital?" It's not some issue, so when I felt like I was kicked out on my ass after that, I thought about kids that were hitting me up saying that they were all this and it's like they're kids, they're at their parents’ whim and they don't have the autonomy that I have to just figure out their own type of rehabilitation, you know? Like, they're kind of at the whim of whatever their parents believe or whatever the parents want to do so...

LUM: I think ultimately you just have to figure out what works for you and push through it. Make it better. It's always gonna suck. Everything's gonna be stupid. Nothing's ever gonna be exactly the way you want it. You have to figure out what's important and prioritize that stuff. And once you start prioritizing shit, nothing else really matters.

CC: Is there anything that you want to say to the people?

LUM: I don’t know… I think we… here's something: I get emails all the time that are like, "Come to this state, come play here." Just, if you want me to come somewhere, figure out how to book a show. Do it yourself. It's really not that hard. 

CC: Are kids not doing that as much anymore?

LUM: I think people should be more proactive. If you want something to happen, you should just make it happen. Like, if you want me to come play fucking Idaho, fucking go walk around and find out where a show's happening in your town. What's going on over there? Oh, is there a guy that usually does it? Talk to him, see what's up. You know what I mean? Send him an email.

I think that everything is kind of diluted in the rap world. Everything's so official, but that's not what I do. I think that more people should be doing shit. I did that a couple of years ago with a compilation of people's first beats. I asked people to, like, if you've never made a beat before, try to make a beat and send it to me.

Jared Brown for
CULT CLASSIC RADIO

HOW HARD CAN FLIPPING BE?

Words by Peter Dolezilek
Art by Liz Mydlowski

Jared Brown forCULT CLASSIC RADIO

HOW HARD CAN FLIPPING BE?

Words by Peter Dolezilek Art by Liz Mydlowski

Jared Brown for
CULT CLASSIC RADIO

Words by Peter Dolezilek
Art by Liz Mydlowski