Mike Elias

Ich habe das nur für die letzten zweieinhalb Jahre nonstop tragen lassen. Und du waschst es? Ja, ich wasche nur meine Scheiße, wenn es stinkt.

Ja. Was heißt diese Farbe? Sashiko Ori. Wenn man sich die japanischen Kendo-Gis anschaut, ist das die Farbe, die sie dafür hergestellt haben.

Ich habe einige Leute in Japan gehabt und ich bin mit einer Schuhe in Japan verliebt, die aus dieser Farbe hergestellt wurde. Ja. bought it. It was a small company over there, bought the shirt and then got back here and you could only find a really thin version of this. That's here made in America. The fabric is not made in America.

It was made in Thailand, I think. Some knockoff of this. And really accessible. A lot of the shirts you see made like this are made out of that kind of cheaper version. Right. But this one's heavy, man. It's heavy. And once I set my sights on kind of what I want to make something out of... I just need to do that. I can't cut the corners and get the shitty version.

Yeah, I found a guy. They still make it the traditional way. What do you mean?

Ich meine, das beginnt mit einer Pflanze, es ist Indigo. Aber ich kenne nicht genau den Prozess. Sie drehen das Kleid.

Und, du weißt, das ist eine Maschine. Es ist nicht jemand, der das Handwerk macht. Okay, okay. Aber es ist eine besondere Version davon, dass es die dicken, echten... Ja, es ist schwer, Mann.

I mean, the whole basis of the brand is just shit that I want. Yeah, right. Everything I've ever designed is something that I see missing in the world or existed, but they don't make it the same way anymore. So I'll just, you know, this shirt is the... It's not a complete copy, but the old US-made Wrangler shirts.

They were cut trim, they were denim, they were good denim. Right. And at a certain point, they started making them elsewhere and made them out of shitty denim. And then it just turns to garbage. So... Ich dachte mir, die sind jetzt nicht mehr in der Welt, weil ich keine guten habe. Deshalb habe ich meine Version gemacht. Ich glaube, dieses Shirt ist ein pre-Sell-Out-Philson.

Ja, ich meine, die Geschichte dieser Firma... Die Tragödie dieser Firma. Ich stoppe das Shirt. But the history, there's so much good history in Filson. It's an inspiration for a small little brand like me, like what they've done over the years.

I come from, well, I always say I don't come from Joisey, I come from Jersey. Yeah, where? Dividend Creek, it's called. It's a little small town in... The closest town people seem to know is Vineland. Yeah.

Yeah, see, I'm two and a half hours south. Which way? Of Monmouth? Yeah. Well, where is Monmouth? Is that central?

Oh, okay, yeah. So, yeah, at least an hour and a half or two from there. You know where Cape May is, all the way down to the bottom? No, but like, what's the... The bottom of Jersey, that little dingle that hangs. So that's Cape May. I'm on the Delaware Bay side, half hour north of there, on the bay. So that's barely Jersey. No, that's actually Jersey. Hahaha.

Nein, das ist es nicht. Aber was ist es, direkt gegen Delaware, dann? Die Delaware Bay. Also, wenn du über die Bay kommst, von wo ich bin, bist du in Delaware. Ja. Also, du bist auf dem Wasser, dann? Auf dem Wasser. Mein Vater ist ein Oistermann, ein Kommerzfischmann. Oyster guy. Yeah, oyster guy. So you grew up with oysters? Yeah, my first job was on an oyster boat. Really? Yeah.

Is that where Ship John comes from? Yeah, Ship John is a lighthouse right in the middle of the Delaware Bay called Ship John Shoal. And that was kind of a point of reference when we're fishing as a young kid or working. We're south of Ship John today, north of Ship John, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, they are. Even back then? They do it differently out there where they'll dump the shells on the ground and then dredge the oysters. Whereas on the West Coast, like on the Willapa Bay, the tide will go down and they actually string the shells up and pick the oysters in some instances.

Yeah, you just go out there and pick them like tomatoes. But that's not the old school way. No, I mean, old, old school, they would tong them. They'd have these long tongs where they'd, you know, I think, Ja, die Dredge sind effizienter. Weil Jersey, sind das die großen Oster? Yeah, medium, not giant.

There's a little bit, not in our family history. Maybe my dad's grandpa or something like that would clam.

They're good.

Yeah, they're all still kind of around that zone. They're not fishermen. The brothers work at their labors. They work on the highways. They fix the roads up and down New Jersey. Oh, yeah? Bridges and shit like that.

He's still working on the boats. He's still on the boats? Yeah, he won't quit. So oysters and what else? Krabs. Er ging immer in Skalop-Booten. Das war etwa zwei Wochen im Ozean. Er war wie ein Bottom-Feeder. Er kriegt, was wir von unten wollen. Ja, ja. Hast du diese Delaware-Krabs? Ja, die Blue Point. Nein, sorry, die Blue Crab.

Das ist West Coast.

Die sind so gut.

I never eat crabs in Florida.

I feel like I've heard of it, but I never realized what kind of crabs they do have down there.

I love the way I grew up. We grew up rabbit hunting, deer hunting, fishing, all that kind of... It's the woods.

I can handle a bow. It's been a long time. And what do you guys do?

Nowadays they're... I don't want to give out any secrets on how they do this. They fill the freezer up. Yeah. And that's pretty much all the meat they're eating. For the year. Yeah. Or for six months. Yeah, for the, I mean, for the year, honestly. Yeah. Oh, really?

We'd eat rabbits sometimes. We'd give them to some of the poor families around. We kind of did it for sport. They never went to waste.

Shotguns, some rifles, handguns for fun. Gunshot in the hand one time with a .22. What did that do to you? I think there's a little shard of it still in there. But it wasn't, my buddy sprayed the... Schell sitting there with the, you know, the hairspray torch? Yeah. He sprayed a shell that was sitting there and it shot me in the hand like a dum-dum.

Yeah, just middle of the fucking woods. Riding dirtbags. From when you were a kid.

I don't really buy into any of that shit. I just think if somebody wants to wear something, wear it. The thing about it is, I didn't Es kommt aus der Fashion-Welt.

Es ist einfach so, dass diese Kleidung, die ich finde, schön ist und lange dauern wird. Wer auch immer sie tragen will. Jetzt ist die Workwear-Fashion eine große Sache.

Und dann haben wir Leute, die unsere Kleidung kaufen und es wirklich aus der Hölle schlagen.

Well, you got a job, kind of.

Hattest du die Motorrad-Kultur mit dem an? Natürlich.

It wants to stay there. You can hide it. It'll show its face again.

Oh, I remember that now. That was that jacket in there?

Oh, the Japanese one.

That was a sweat?

Ja, ich war in der Skating, also Rollerblading, nicht Skateboarding. Ich war in der Rollerblading.

I thought it was. But I did that when I was a kid.

No, yeah, all that shit. Oh, you can do them on the... Handrails and all that.

Sie haben uns nicht gefallen, wenn ich ehrlich bin. Aber einer der Leute, der FDR baut, sagte, dass ich der Einzige bin. FDR ist ein Skatepark in Philadelphia, der von Skateboardern gemacht wird. Ich wusste, wie man Konkret skaten kann, also hat er das bemerkt. Er sagte, du bist der Einzige, der Rollerblätter erlaubt. Oh, wirklich? Ja, also habe ich ein kleines Bad von ihm bekommen.

Oh, that was Matt. Yeah. Isn't he a skate guy? Rollerblade, yeah. Oh, he's a Rollerblade guy. Yeah. You didn't know you were hanging out with a Rollerblader, did you?

He's a sweet dude, man. He's the kind of guy who, like... Er kümmert sich um die Kinder. Er macht sicher, dass sich alle gut fühlen. Auch wenn sie nicht gut sind. Er schützt sie. Er hat mein Abendessen gekauft. Das ist süß. Ja, er ist süß.

Ja, zu einem gewissen Zeitpunkt. Er hat einen Skateshop gegründet. Er hilft der Gemeinschaft. Und Blades? Nur Blades. Ich denke, vielleicht Skateboards.

Were you a punk rock guy? A little bit. I delved into East Coast hardcore for a little bit. You had to, right? With the skates?

I mean, it didn't really tie in. That all came from my brother. He was real into the... Older brother? Older brother, yeah. He was, what's he, nine years older than I am. So he fed me all the... All the Fugazis, New York Hardcore, H2O and all that shit. How old are you? I'm 43. You're a fucking kid.

Elias. Elias.

It is not... The way a lot of people go about it.

Then I was a bike messenger and then I was parking cars, doing those jobs where you give cigarettes out of bars and shit like that. At a certain point, my wife and I... You were with her back then? We met in Philadelphia. We decided it was time to get the fuck out of Philadelphia. This is around 2004 or 2005, something like that. So we hopped in a Volkswagen Van, believe it or not.

79 and headed west and just traveled the country. Had no sights on anywhere. Where to live? No, we just left. Yeah, and so you did a crossroad trip? Yeah, we were up across the country three, four times, up and down. I don't know, zigzags and... Aber das war die Idee, dass wir für ein Jahr auf dem Land leben? Wir wollten irgendwo hin, aber wir wussten nicht, wo. Okay, klar.

Wir dachten über die Wälder, über West-Texas. Oh, ja. Wie Marfa? Es ist eine kleine Stadt, die Turlingua heißt. Es ist eine hübsche Stadt, nahe Big Bend und so. Okay, ja. Es ist sehr schön da unten. Aber ich bin froh, dass ich nicht da bleibe. Du bleibst in Texas? Ja. Aber du hast ein bisschen gehalten? Ich habe ein bisschen da gehalten, in Kalifornien ein bisschen gehalten. Ja, ja.

I wanted to play when I was a kid. My dad always played guitar. And I'm going to call him out for this, but I was like, Dad, can you teach me how to play guitar? And he was like, I taught myself you can teach your damn self.

I got to teach myself. Honestly, kind of. It stuck with me. I taught myself how to play guitar in late teens, early twenties. Just kind of like folk stuff. What did he play? Your classic... Rock'n'Roll, Pusha Man und Zeppelin. Auf Akustik? Auf Akustik. Das war immer in meinem Haus.

Ein bisschen. Bisschen groovy? Ja, ich war nicht ein Hippie per se. Einfach ein freier Geist. Wie kommst du nach Portland? We had to meet somebody there. We had a job at a skate camp actually for a summer. Because we ran out of money. This is in Datchpee, California. Met some friends there. They invited us to work on their farm up in Humboldt. Pop farm?

Yeah, before that it's just like whatever kind of shake in a little bag.

Ja, genau.

Doing that. And then before we went there, we had to meet somebody in Portland. So we're in Portland for one day. Two days maybe.

And then went down there. Dann haben wir gesagt, wir wollen zumindest ein bisschen mehr nach Portland schauen. Was war das Jahr? Das war 2006. Okay. Ja, 2006. Also das war der Peak von Portland. Es war gut. Es war gut. Also du gehst da hoch und denkst, das ist es? Es war groovy? Wir lebten in der Van, vier Blöcke von wo mein Shop ist, in einem Parkplatz. Ja.

Wir hatten keine Computer, so wir gingen in einen Kaffeeshop und sahen ihre Community-Computer, um Jobs zu finden. Ich habe einen Job in Stumptown gefunden. Das ist ein Kaffee-Platz, der originale Stumptown. Ich ging in den originalen, um mich anzupassen. Ich wusste nicht, was ein fucking Latte war. Ich war in der gleichen Veste, als der Kollege, der mit Blake arbeitete, in der gleichen Platte.

Und ich war so, wer werdet ihr hirten? Er sagte, ja, wir sind es. Wir haben uns getrennt und angefangen, Kaffee zu machen. Du hast Espresso gepullt? Ich habe Espresso gepullt.

An dieser Zeit war Stumptown der einzige gute Kaffee. Es gab andere, die anfingen, aber das war, bevor sie wirklich groß wurden.

All of them. They don't fuck it up. They don't over roast it. They don't under roast it.

No, at that point they had three of them. Nur in Portland. Es war keine nationwidee oder weltweite Sache. Aber es war cool, weil jeder in Portland rief. Es war der beste Kaffee in Portland damals. Also kam jeder rein. Das war mein Intro nach Portland. Ich musste alle diese tollen Leute treffen. Musiker, Künstler, alle diese Leute. Ich wurde schnell Teil der Community in Portland.

Wie ein Gitarrenleiter oder nur ein Mann? Wie der Mann, der die Kaffee gemacht hat. Ja. But made some friends, you know, and it was a good intro to the city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas I don't, if I never got that, I only worked there for a year, but if I never got that job, I don't know. What would have happened?

Because when I started making shit, like all my friends who I met through, through the coffee shop, started buying the shit. Right. Just kind of branched out from there.

Es war immer, wie ich es vorhin erwähnt habe, mit dem Shirt.

Du konntest sie nicht finden ohne ein großes Logo auf der Seite. Ich war noch nie ein großer Logo-Typ. Ich wollte meine eigenen Cycling-Hats machen, ohne ein Logo. Das war also das erste Ding. Ich habe angefangen, sie zu verkaufen. Ich habe angefangen, Wallen und solche Sachen zu machen. Mit deinen Händen? Ich hatte eine dreckige Säummaschine. Du konntest nicht säuen? Nicht wirklich.

Ich habe angefangen, dreckige Säummaschinen zu machen.

Basically, yeah, I took it apart, altered the pattern a little bit, made it fit my big old head. Yeah. And started sewing them up. You know, I fucked a bunch of stuff up.

Das wurde... Das wurde populär? Deine Bike-Hats? Nun, ich habe einen der besten Bicycle-Bilder in Portland getroffen. Sascha White, er ist immer noch einer meiner besten Freunde. Er baut diese phänomenalen Handmade-Bikes. Und ich bin in einen Shop gegangen und er hat mich über mein Hat gefragt. Und er liebte es. Ich hatte einen aus Wolle.

Und dann hat er gesagt, kannst du einen Rund für Vanilla, für Vanilla-Bicycles machen? Und ich war so, shit, ja, hell ja. Dieser Typ ist wie mein Künstler-Hero. Und das hat mich mit ihm in die Bicycles gemacht. Also habe ich angefangen, Metallwerk zu lernen. Okay, also du machst die Hatten.

Yeah, I think I did like 25 hats for them. That was the run. That was a huge run for me. That took you a month. I worked my ass off on those things.

Ja, er hat ein bisschen Produktion mit Bikes begonnen und er brauchte nur die Hände. Er fragte mich, ob ich eine Lade benutze und ich sagte, nein, aber ich werde es herausfinden. Das selbe mit einem Latte. Ich werde herausfinden, wie man einen Latte macht. Ich werde herausfinden, wie man eine Lade benutzt, richtig? Ja. Also gehe ich da rein und lerne, wie man Metall fabrikiert. Ja.

Also machen wir Handwerker-Bicycle-Frames in einem kleinen Shop in Berlin. Ja. Und du wäldest? Er machte all das Brazen an diesem Punkt. Ich habe einige davon gemacht. Ich präge also alle Teile. Die Tübe müssen mit einem Miter zusammengehalten werden. Manche nennen das einen Koop. Wo die Tübe sich um die andere Tübe befindet. Ich präge also alle Miter und so weiter. Aber du lernst die Röpfe?

And also a lot of handwork, and I think that's where I really realized what I could do with my hands. Yeah, like what kind of handwork on the bikes? A lot of hand filing. Okay, yeah, sure. Some tubes are welded, some are what's called fillet brazing, which is like a brass ramp between the two tubes, which holds the steel together. Yeah.

Hahaha.

So to make those perfect, you have to kind of do a lot of hand filing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're getting skills. Getting skills and learning how to use my hands. And once you kind of... Die Hand-Eye-Koordination und die Gehirn-Konstruktion-Koordination. Du kannst das in vielen verschiedenen Wegen anwenden.

Ich denke, das ist, als meine Dexterität und mein Gehirn geöffnet wurden, wie ich meine Hände benutzen kann.

Ich habe noch etwas. Ich mache noch kleine Metall-Bitte.

That's where my mind's going these days. My mind is always... I love the clothing that we make, but it's hard for me to get excited about another piece of clothing. Oh, yeah? Personally. I mean, I'm excited about putting this stuff out there, but my mind wants to make other rad shit, you know?

Der nächste Jump, ich habe angefangen, Bags für Bicycles zu machen. Messenger-Bags? Nein, wie ein Pannier-Bag, der auf dem Fahrrad gehen würde. Oh, auf dem Fahrrad. Aus was? Aus einem Kabel? Aus einem Kabel. Und Leather? Nein. Ein bisschen Leather. Ja. Manchmal Webbing. Also starte ich, diese Formulierung zu formulieren. Und die Formulierung von diesen ist mehr straightforward als ein Garment. Ja.

Es ist ein Rekranken hier, ein Rekranken da, eine Kurve hier, blablabla. Ja. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Ja. Ja. Tools online at that point. Oh, really? You had to really fucking search. You had to go to Tandy? Tandy's kind of bullshit tools, but I'm glad they're there because... Are they still there? They're still there, yeah.

But somebody was. Yeah. I mean, the cool thing about... Ja. Ja. Manufacturing. Manufacturing, that stuff is not going to hold up. Yeah, yeah. It just isn't.

Yeah, started learning about, in fact, CS Osborne is New Jersey. Einer der Leather-Tool-Manufacturers? Ja, einer der Leather-Tool-Manufacturers. Also habe ich darüber nachgefragt und dann habe ich angefangen. Hast du jetzt eine Beziehung zu ihnen? Nein, ich habe keine, aber sie geben mir nichts zu. Aber sie machen immer noch die Tools?

Ich benutze meistens Hermann Oak. Wo ist das? Im Mittleren Westen. Ich vergesse nicht, wo sie sind.

Ich recherchiere Materialien und mache Fehler. Ich schneide Sachen auf und versuche... Ich mache nur die Kante einer Tasche, um zu sehen, wie diese drei Teile zusammenfallen würden. Ja, um es herauszufinden.

I started making some custom bags for custom vanilla bicycles. And then I started making my own kind of duffel bags and backpacks and things like that.

I mean, in a sense, there was definitely inspiration from them.

Ja.

Er findet die Leute.

I can't thank you enough.

Used to get it, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I won't mention any exact specifics on that. But, so the Wills jacket was born of... That fabric was prior to the Wills jacket only used for luggage bags. Okay. For Filson or whatever. Filson, other people made stuff. I was making my bags out of it. That's how I knew about that fabric. Okay.

I mean, tin cloth is kind of Filson's term for it. It's waxed canvas. Waxed canvas. A heavy waxed canvas. Generally speaking. This one, the Wills is waxed twill. Yeah, it's nice. So it's a one by three weave instead of a one by one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're making bags. Making bags. At that point I got a job as a stonemason. Wow. So now you know how to do that too.

I'm building hand chiseling rock walls, dry stack rock walls. Like an old castle.

I left the bike thing. I was doing my own thing this whole time, but it wasn't making enough money for it to be my full-time job. So I had to work. I was working at bars too. I worked at like three, four different bars in Portland. Wow, okay. Und, weißt du, Musik-Stuffe gleichzeitig, all diese unterschiedlichen Sachen.

Ja. Lebensstuffe. Ja. Weißt du, versuchen, was auch immer es war, was ich machen wollte.

After the jacket, yeah. That kind of changed the game.

Yeah. At this point, I think right around this time, I got this little barn studio. It was 100 bucks a month. It was like a little... Es war ein 15 x 15 m² Haus von der Zeit des Jahrhunderts. Aber es war auf der Innenseite fertig.

Ein kleines Werkzeug, eine kleine Säugmaschine. Und all die Tools. Ich habe langsam die Tools gekauft. Das war das, was ich damals machte. Wenn ich eine Wallet oder ein kleines Ding verkaufte, dann kaufte ich einfach mehr Tools. Ich hatte nie... Ich war ein armer Scheiß. Ich hatte kein Geld.

And that came from, I won't mention a name, but I bought, I saved up some money and bought this really nice work jacket to do the stonemason. Yeah, yeah. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. It was bonkers. Every single person who saw me walking around wanted one. I had Instagram with a couple, three, four hundred followers and every single one of them wanted one.

And then all the people I worked with at the bar wanted one. So I was just like, fuck it. Let's make some jackets. Give me some money, I'll get after it. So you started to do it? Yeah. How many did you make? Ab dem Zeitpunkt war ich 25 oder so. Das hat einen langen Zeitraum gedauert.

Yeah. Still wallets and things like that. Because at the same time I was refining my leather craft. I'm still refining it. I don't mean to say. The chain wallets? Chain wallets. I have a bunch of different wallet designs and bag designs and things like that.

Just ever so slowly decided that the shop had to grow and Und jetzt... Du kaufst noch mehr Nähmaschinen? Ich kaufe noch mehr Nähmaschinen und habe angefangen, Mitarbeiter zu holen. Bist du immer noch der Hauptdesigner? Ja, ich designe alles.

They don't even bother? So it's cool to have trusted folks to bounce those ideas off. Jacob, who you met a couple times. He's really cool in that he studied a lot of the history of garments. He's collected like vintage band t-shirts for the last fucking 25, 30 years. So he's a garment historian now. He kind of is, yeah. And he knows a lot about fabrics and the history of them.

So he'll like do these little searches for neat fabrics that are available and kind of throw some stuff in front of me. And I'm like, nah, that one feels this way or feels that way. So I make the final calls.

Yeah, those things are not forgiving.

Making the wheels, shirts. It's kind of the same thing, like I mentioned earlier. I wanted the duffel bag. So I started to design and make duffel bags and the shirts and the jeans. But that's later, right? Yeah, it starts to grow in the...

Yeah, yeah. It's one, two, three, it's five 12-inch curves that I laid out.

The Union Special, the 43800G... Es ist für das Hemmen hergestellt. Und das ist wie ein altes Levi's Ding, oder was ist es? Levi's benutzt fast alle großen Jeansfirmen. Aber es ist eine manuelle Sache. Du musst da sitzen und es machen. Ja, ich meine, es hat einen Motor. Es ist nicht wie Treadling oder Handkranke. Ich mache es mit den Augen. Manche Leute hemmen es ein bisschen vorher aus.

Aber ich mache es, ich nenne es den alten Hairy Eyeball Method. Ja. Du rollst es und dann gibt es einen kleinen Folder, der es in den Ort hält. Die Leute lieben diese Maschine, weil sie das Hemd ein wenig wickelt. Wenn du dich an den alten Levi's von den frühen 70ern ansiehst, Die Unterseite des Hemms hat einen kleinen Winkel an den Fäden. Das nennt man Rope Hemm.

Oh, und das ist das, was man mit dieser Maschine bekommt. Diese Maschine... Sie machen diese Maschine nicht mehr.

Oh, der Kopf-Angriff. Ja. Das war 2018. Ja. Also, das ist ungefähr, wo wir sind in der Zeitlinie. Ja, ja, wir fangen an, es mit Wheeljackets und so. Aber es ist immer noch der alte Shop. Der erste Shop. Der zweite Shop. Der zweite echte Shop. Aber nicht der Store-Shop. Nicht der, den ich jetzt habe. War das der, den ich besucht habe? Das war der erste, den du besucht hast. Okay. Ja, MLK. Ja.

Ist das, wo es passiert ist? Ja. Ja. Und was ist passiert? Das war... also wir haben Musik-Events in der Shop. Das war irgendeine Feier, die wir hatten. Ein Portland Band spielt. Wir hatten eine tolle Nacht. Und Good Art Hollywood, die silberne Firma. Ja, die haben mich einfach mit diesem schönen Bracelet gekauft.

Now you're a real person.

Wir hatten ein kleines Party und meine Frau und ich schlossen den Shop für die Nacht ab. Ein süßes Trunk-Show. Good Art war da, da gab es ein schönes Jewelry-Show. Einfach süße Leute. Es sind immer gute Zeiten. Ein paar Trinken, ein bisschen Essen, Musik. Und dann schlossen wir den Shop ab, gingen in den Auto und zwei Tweakers auf kleinen BMX-Bikes fuhren. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. I went straight down.

She effectively, you know, saw me. Saved your life. She thought that I was gone, you know. Yeah. Cops came. They scurried off. I came, too, in the operating room. That's not supposed to happen.

They were kind of like pulling me in there. And first thing I thought of, I didn't know exactly what happened, but something happened. My wife was there. And Oh mein Gott. Oh mein Gott. So I started getting up off the fucking thing, because I thought she was in the next room, you know, over, getting operated on, or not there. Or maybe dead.

Yeah, one of the nurses was like, he's not, we gotta get her. Oh, they gave me a piece of paper, and I was like, I just wrote my wife, you know. Yeah. And one of them, thankfully, she went and got her. She came in and held my hand, and then, you know, you've been put under, they do the thing, like... Oh, erzähl uns über das. Ja, ja. Und dann bist du weg. Ja. Ja.

Also, dann wach ich am nächsten Morgen auf. Aber du warst die ganze Zeit bewusst. Ja. Ja. Als ich auch gekommen bin. Okay. Und alles, wie ich gesagt habe, alles hat funktioniert. Aber ich denke, es ist wie die Brokus-Area. Ja. Ja. I'm not a fucking brain guy. From what I've read and what my doctors have told me, the part of my brain, like my skull was pushed in.

Like holding that part down so it just wasn't letting it work. So what'd they do? They had to cut that part of my skull out and they just popped a metal plate on there. And you can talk? Yeah. Could you talk like right after surgery? It took a while. Oh, it did? And I still have like, I still have, it's like a, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Anger? No. No anger. No.

Just sort of like the fact of being attacked. There was a point in time where, you know, I was going to get my CHL and I was like, I'm going to carry a fucking gun around with me all the time. But I just don't want to be that guy. I just, I don't want to, that to me is living in fear. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm scared of a lot of fucking things in the world. Yeah. Not being attacked. Yeah.

Even though it happened to me. Yeah. It didn't put me in the state of like, Every Tweaker I see is gonna fucking kill me. Did they find the Tweakers that did it? They did, yeah. It was like a fucking CSI thing. Oh, really? My wife remembered that one of them threw a soda cup down. They grabbed that for evidence. Got DNA off of that. Got a video of them buying the soda. So they had a facial tie-in.

And got him, man. I think they caught the guy who Funny enough, the one who... Did actually attack me. Yeah. Did a form of an apology in the courtroom.

It was one of the written notes that somebody probably helped him out to write and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, they were tweaked out.

Yes.

Yeah. I'd say a little bit. I don't like it. What am I going to do? Fucking hate him for the rest of my life? I got other people I hate more than that.

Ja, und das ist auch eine andere Sache. Es gab so viele Leute. Es gab ein GoFundMe und eine große Musik-Benefiz und so. Meine Gemeinschaft hat mir den größten Hubschrauber durchgebracht. My employees kept the shop rolling and it was a good thing through it. So we were able to kind of make it through all that shit. I had a pretty long recovery after that. That's amazing, man.

And you kind of just plugged on.

Well, a lot of these collaborations, kind of the beautiful thing, the way I see it is their actual friendships. It's not just a business transaction. Like Chris Warren from Wesco, he's one of my best friends in the world. Benny Langlitz, they're just Josh and Rach from Good Art. They're actual true friends of mine. So it makes the...

Maybe the customers don't give a shit about this, but I think it's an important thing to bring these things, to birth these things from a place that's more than just like, we're trying to make money off of this shit.

Well, no, I mean, the thing is, you can make, we're still dealing with cotton. You know, even, you know, you bark your ass off out there, swinging the hammer and everything, you know, the stitch is good.

Grantsforsbrook. Ich kann den Akzent nicht machen, aber sie sind aus Schweden. Ich habe sie schon immer geliebt. Ich habe Hatchets geliebt, bevor ich mit dem einen in den Kopf geraten bin. Ist das nicht verrückt, aber? It's like I willed it. You brought a hatchet right to your head.

Even on the handle of my personal Ransfers, I've had it for almost two decades. Before it happened, I carved a skull onto the butt of my handle. So I was kind of thinking like, fuck, did I do something fucking weird?

But yeah, those axes have always lived and there's not a whole lot of places to get them. So I figured out how to carry them and started carrying those.

It's been discussed from a couple of angles.

Yeah. But I'm not, I'm not, I don't know. I don't have, I'm a pretty bad businessman. Yeah. You know, like... I keep my prices at a point where it makes sense for the health of the business and no more. And I'm not after it. I don't have that startup mentality where I'm building this up to sell it. Well, you like the work. I do like the work. And I like the brand. It's a part of me.

We've upped it. We've grown it. Not exponentially, not a shit ton. In terms of your ability for output? Yeah, for the Wills Jacket specifically. And working with people to make the collaboration stuff and offering other things. So it's expanded, but I don't like... I feel like we've expanded on a level that's... Manageable? Manageable and the foundation is there before taking the next step.

Right. You know, I don't like to, you know, if you start running across a bunch of stones real fast, one's gonna, you're gonna slip on one, fucking crush your ass. Right. So I like to have the strong foundation before taking another step. Yeah. And that's, I feel like that's a healthy business move. Sure.

Yeah, I'm happy. And we try to pay our employees well. I want to continue to improve that trajectory of making sure they're taken care of better. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. All that salt air.

Yeah, they started making them shallower and the bills got longer.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, man. Starting to, like last year was better than the year before. This year is starting off better than last year. So starting to continue growing. Improving logistics within us, you know, smoothing out the way we operate.

Metal shit, I'm working on more, I just made this little key release thing. And the weight for the records, I think I saw one of those.

Well, it's kind of back to the beginning. So when I started doing leather work, I didn't have any money.

But I had one of those knives, so I did all my leather cutting with one of those knives.

Es ist also diese geschlossene kleine Werkstatt, die ich gelernt habe. Es ist nicht eine leckere Werkstatt. Genau. Speziell die Werkstätten, wo die Bläder nicht auf dem Weg sind. Ich bin ein nostalgischer Typ. Es ist also so, oh, das ist meine kleine Werkstatt, die mir geholfen hat, all diese Sachen zu lernen.

Yeah, I got a little, I got a little, I have a problem with them. I've got like, I don't know how many I have. How far back do they go?

I think 40s, I want to say. Originally there were cast iron and then there were cast aluminum. Yeah. And so on and so forth. And now you made one. Yeah. The Ship John Utility Knife. Yep. Yeah, they got machined in Japan. Based on the Stanley. It's a totally new design. Sure. The idea is based on Stanley. It holds the same blades. Oh yeah. I gotta get one of those. It's a beautiful thing.

I love it.

The brass ones went away real quick and then we did some copper ones. Then we did aluminum ones and they weren't as hot.

It's special aluminum. People like brass. They like the patina. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nice talking to you too, Mark.

Das ist eine Art Ausgleich für mich.