Every once and a while something happens that makes me step back and realize that I have absolutely no idea who gets my t-shirts once they leave my possession.  Sure there are the repeat customers out there.  The ones who have bought so many shirts and hats over the years that if I ever ended up in their city I could probably walk to their front door and hand deliver them a tee as a thank you for undying support.  But excluding those diehards, the vast majority of people who buy Award Tour shirts are people I will never meet or speak to.  I suppose that is why every time I see someone I don’t know wearing a shirt on the street it bugs me out the slightest bit to know that they supported from someone unknown place.  I’ve shipped packages to Japan, Australia, and damn near every country in between but things like the video below will still always give me goose bumps.

It was some absurd time like 3:45 in the morning a few weeks back and I was scrolling through some sites halfway asleep but not quite ready to attack the pillow.  That was when I ran across a trailer for a Ricky Powell documentary on Hypebeast.  I don’t even know why I watched this video, I couldn’t even list five facts about Powell despite the fact that I know he’s an “legend,” but something said to stop and watch the whole video.  Watch the video for yourself, especially somewhere around the three minuet mark and see if you notice anything.

Did you catch it?  At about three minuets into the movie, graffiti legend, STAYHIGH 149 comes strolling into the picture.  Underneath that winter jacket there’s an interesting mixture of screen printing ink on top of cotton that may be a little familiar.  I’ll let Demetri illustrate how familiar that cotton and ink mixture might be circa an Award Tour lookbook shot Spring 2007.

Check Meech out circa 2006-2007. The Fonz inspired cool. Hilarious times.  All we can do is look back and laugh at ourselves.

So now put yourself in my shoes and ignore for a second the fact that I have an absolutely awful, awful, pair of blindingly turquoise jeans on in the background of the above image.  For those that don’t know, graffiti was the absolute sole concern of my exsistence for about three years before I heavily got involved in design and Award Tour.  I literally consumed anything and everything to do with writing with every free hour of my days and I attribute that complete obsession to my now somewhat fine tuned ability to draw things now and again.  After a little introduction to the United States system of Law and my local police force however, I dropped graffiti and got more focused on other “artistic” outlets.  Back to the story at hand, despite the fact that I left graffiti “behind” years back, I still read and to a large degree obsesses over the culture. My room is packed with graffiti books and if you sit next to me in class it’s more likely that I’m practicing letter form than taking any kind of notes.

So for me to see STAYHIGH 149 somehow showing up in a video wearing a t-shirt that I made…well it’s absolutely surreal.  (For the non graffiti heads out there, let’s put it this way.  You cannot read a history of graffiti without STAYHIGH being mentioned, period.  His tag is synonymous with graffiti, they go hand in hand like Snooki and the Jersey Shore.)

Some lines go crazy when celebrities are seen wearing their clothes in videos and so fourth.  Well, to be honest I’ve had the opportunity to have that happen, and I passed.  It’s not real to be if I have to have the clothes placed on these people.  STAYHIGH 149  is the kind of person I lose my mind over when I see them wearing something I created.  These are the “celebrities” to me.  Authentic people who mean something to the movements and reasons that actually inspired the creation of Award Tour, and people who organically on their own accord are wearing the garments.

Stay High back in the day with the infamous tag, and modern day courtesy of Frank 151.

I want to apologize for going all graffiti-geek there for a moment on people.  I really tried to restrain myself, I know most of you could care less what this shirt this guy is wearing but I guess I had to explain how amazing of a look that was for me.  At the same token it’s no less of an experience when I see any one of you blokes on the street representing the fine combed threads of an Award Tour shirt.  It’s all love and greatfulness all around when support is shown and it’s always an absolute pleasure to see the funk being spread.

I’m going to go hide in a corner and laugh at myself again for those turquoise jeans.  At least they were being worn a full year before all the streetwear lines started releasing their own versions.  I remember custom dying white jeans to make them that brilliantly bad shade of blue and all I can do is laugh and shake my head now.  Good times back when we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.  To be honest, things have only changed slightly since then, and we’re still sitting around laughing.

Stay Safe-Phil.