chicote

That’s a great fit!

@Double 0 Soul beautiful photos and looks like a really fun ride! out of curiosity, are those friction shifters you mounted to your bars? i have friction shifters on the down tube of my 70s road bike that i would like to change for... well, anything.. as long as they can go on the bars, lol

Oh man I love those… did someone here get them??

Flat head engineers, before treatment.. getting a little bit beat up, lol.. Interesting how grey / washed out the inside shafts of both boots are, think it’s from being pressed against motorcycle engines, but not sure..

@shredwin_206 what’s different about them from other pairs you have, like your fw or sugar canes? I was looking at the new release and thought the top block looked pretty uncomfortable on the s&s model.. but could just be he is wearing them tighter than maybe we would…

Stopped through the Bay Area on my way back to Seattle and spent an afternoon working on a close friend’s new (to her) Saab.. it was freezing there yesterday!!! im wearing a vintage jacket, rocky mtn featherbed hoodie, duke belt, tender 132p and flat head boots.. and some merino underlayers.. and 2 pairs of socks lol

Some really dark M41001H up on yahoo auctions, look to be a good size, 82cm waist… https://www.fromjapan.co.jp/japan/en/auction/yahoo/input/p1175457212/

Wow, that’s such a great story, thanks for being willing to write it all out. Have you met any younger people who’ve entered this line of work at all? Or anyone who you’ve considered taking on as an apprentice yourself? I know computers and automation and AI are being hailed as the replacements for everything, but I’ve always thought that attitude a bit hubristic.. there will always be a need for some of this knowledge to be retained by humans, as your contributions illustrate very well!

^ It’s interesting you say that; i have a pair of older 2000s in No. 1 (unsanforized) denim and find that denim among the toughest & most stubborn of any pair of jeans I’ve owned. Every once in a while i look for a pair of 2001s in the same denim — it’s really a beautiful fabric, really worth finding an older pair to compare your experience to, as what you describe of the new models sounds quite different.

Looks so beautiful @Double 0 Soul!! I’ve met several hardcore mountain bikers / bike tourers / messengers while in Mexico and have definitely been getting my interest piqued speaking w them … seems like a more peaceful and involved way to get out to the country than braaping around on a 180kg dirt bike, although that can be fun too Thanks for sharing photos of your work as well, always really inspiring to see. Did you have to go to engineering school to learn the skills for your work or had you been a woodworker prior, or something else? It seems like such a specialized job with so much prerequisite knowledge required, I can’t imagine where you’d start!

Just saw these in a small town in San Luis Potosí. They’re actually amazing, really nice looking denim, but obviously the brand name is the star of the show. Size 32 .. Anyone interested? Lol

Have you all heard of Panam sneakers? They’re a brand I saw a couple of times around Mexico, and embarrassingly and chauvinistically wrote them off as probably some pair of off-brand Nike/Adidas knockoffs. The swoosh /and/ the stripe?? It seemed too over the top to be anything else. Well, on a whim one day, I walked into one of the many retail stores they have around the country, and subsequently found out I had the story completely backwards. Not only is Panam a very well-established sneaker brand, and one of the longest-running made-in-Mexico fashion brands around, but it actually /predates/ Nike by almost a decade, being founded in 1962. So, out of curiosity and maybe feeling a bit humbled by my error, I got a pair: the “084” model in white & gum. (placeholder for photo) I’ve had them for close to three months now and am honestly very impressed, coming from experience mainly with Nike Dunks and a couple pairs of New Balances. My pair cost just over $25 USD, but to me they stack up well against a good portion of the major US sneaker brands. The soles are quite thin (they sometimes have a reputation here that you can feel pebbles beneath your feet as you walk) but as an upside, they’re very flexible and easy to wear in. Anyway, I don’t have too much else to say, but hope this is interesting to someone - or if you have a pair I’d love to hear how you like them!

People might be disappointed to see you come and go on something other than a motorcycle… edit: but to give you a serious answer I find diagonal zip jackets have quite a different shape when worn open, that would be the main difference imo and is overall a matter of taste and coherence with the rest of your wardrobe (although a leather jacket is about as versatile as it gets imo!)

I’ve been nerding out about sign painting this week, after finishing a big series of signs for a farm on the Oaxaca coast I’ve been working at since January. Here are a few of those: Afterwards I rode up to Oaxaca on my way to Mexico City, stopping at a postal museum on the way that happened to have a small sign painting exhibition: And last night got to go to the opening of an amazing show featuring dozens of sign painters from around Mexico, including some who work in near-forgotten styles, such as the man who painted the signs on the right side of this pic: I love the top right one, it says: “Life is a popsicle; it’s melting whether you suck it or not”! The artist of these signs was in attendance but had a mob of people around him asking for pictures, lol … surely enjoying the resurgence in interest in sign painting, i hope! A close up of some lettering done on a small mirror, maybe 50cm across. i actually didn’t get any other photos besides these, but will add some more on a different day as the show will be up all month. Anyway, thanks for looking!

That ramen looks amazing @Geeman, and so cool to walk through and give equal attention to each of the many laborious parts of ramen making as part of the class. Reading your descriptions reminded me of the movie Tampopo, I imagine you’ve seen it perhaps?? If not it would be a perfect follow up!

^ So true.. when i lived in Canada ten years ago (wow) my go-to outfit was a thermal t, thick flathead flannel, and denim jacket over that… and i could be out in the snow for ages!! I never expected denim jackets to be so versatile but i think they work really well with a thick heat trapping layer underneath.

That’s an extremely powerful pre-soak fit bartles …. though the post soak is excellent too. Really all of these fits are great, you’re all getting things off to a tough start for the judges…

Quick update on my 132D, which are still pretty filthy after their first machine wash in a few months … it’s interesting how different the colour is coming out compared to my previous Tender jeans, all of which were washed biweekly at least throughout their life cycle. These have probably five months of wear now.

I’d bob for apples in those! Or maybe go on a hay ride; I think apple bobbing might not have survived post - covid …

The options are the same as they have always been: accepting that most people, the vast, vast, majority, share the exact same base desires as we do — to love and be loved, to live a fulfilling life, to be appreciated for their contributions and achievements, and to accept and learn from their mistakes. These same people, without exception, are going to have painful experiences from their upbringings, to be hurt when trying to be vulnerable, and to learn to react with fear, withdrawal, anger or violence, and in doing so they’ll also cause pain to other people. The choice becomes available when we realize and accept that about others — and just as importantly, about ourselves — and choose to meet people’s pain, struggle and difference with understanding and compassion. The choice to “go NC” (no contact) with somebody is valid when someone, in very rare cases, proves themselves pathologically incapable of meeting you halfway in your process of healing. But in the vast majority of relationships today, people can and deserve much more understanding and commitment than they get, even from close friends, partners and family members. To not offer them that opportunity is a failure to fully respect the complexity of the human condition, in my opinion. And it’s a root cause of the epidemics of loneliness and division I know we are all experiencing at this moment in history.

I’ve been thinking often recently that the highest form of “education” a society can have is shown in its capacity to accept, and live with, differences and contradictions both within and outside of itself. To that end, I see many rich, college-educated liberals in Seattle being stuck in the same backwards state of mine as the proverbial backwater Southerner: distrustful of outsiders, intolerant of difference, to the point it’s become a trend to even cut family members out of your lives who voted differently than you. It’s a problem both sides of the political & socioeconomic spectrum are really struggling with. I finished reading a wonderful book a couple weeks back, The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. There’s a passage in it where he discusses arranged marriages, often seen as antiquated, backward, even barbaric in the West (and surely there are elements of this when there are huge age discrepancies, etc — that’s beside the point for the moment). But in fact, he argues, a high percentage of those in this arrangement report themselves as quite happy. Why? Because, contrary to the modern social narrative that you’re meant to “fall in” love, which itself presupposes chance more than effort, he says people enter into arranged marriages understanding that they are building a loving relationship together, basically from scratch. That from being more or less strangers, perhaps with nothing in common beyond some shared cultural understanding, they work to find their common humanity, their capacity for care and empathy, and develop a lifetime commitment to one another, which forms the basis for their, not instant, but gradually developing, love. In contrast, the West’s “modern” love ideas are far more transactional. Do you and your spouse feel the same burning, passionate connection after 5 years that you felt as new lovers? Perhaps not, and so one or both partners may just abandon the relationship to search for another, in hopes that this time, that initial feeling of love won’t fade away (it almost always does). That this dynamic has now stretched to include family and community members, and become codified in the act of “cancelling”, “ghosting” or otherwise abandoning people who don’t easily and comfortably conform to your ideas of acceptable, pleasing behavior, is to me one of the most concerning and notable elements of the decline of contemporary society in the West. It’s interesting to consider that behavior such as inviting a stranger in for tea or offering a ride to someone broken down on the side of the road are now seen as risky, perhaps intolerably dangerous, though our grandparents may have thought nothing of either one. In fact, where I am living in rural Mexico, these are still normal, even socially expected, behaviors today. Why we have gone down the path of separateness I think has many factors, economic pressure and social media being some of them, but those are factors all over the world, and some places still stubbornly continue to embrace one another’s differences and embrace contradictions rather than turn away from them. So I don’t think those factors alone tell the whole story. Anyway, sorry for the long ramble, but this conversation about cultural difference & isolation has felt increasingly relevant this past decade and I am always wondering where it comes from and what can be done about it.

Holy shit, that’s one of the most amazing pairs of jeans I’ve ever seen. Beautiful work and repairs @crownzip!

I love cinches they’re so cool! I don’t know if I’ve ever cinched any of my pants up tight enough to do anything to the fit, but for me that was never the point. Bonus points if your jeans and jacket BOTH have cinches.

Happy birthday @mlwdp! I also see Minnie Riperton’s Adventures in Paradise up on @fabes wall… a great one!

Not to go too heavy handed into this, but you’re absolutely right — that idea is foundational to our whole economic system. The whole principle of an “employee” is somebody who produces something (shoes, coffees, tattoos) for their employer, and who in return receives something (a wage). But the workings of the system require that the employee’s wage be overall less valuable than the labor they provide for their employer — the difference between the value an employee produces and the money they actually earn is, to the employer, the basis of “profit”. Foundational economists working in early capitalism understood that the easiest way to maximize profit was to maximize the number of employees an individual employer has, because each new employee is a new source of profit. And as employers obviously prefer employees willing to do the same amount of work for the lowest wage, this formed the basis for the formation of multinational corporations, leading to the modern trend of “offshoring” jobs from Europe and the US to parts of the world where standard wages are far lower. Because this all began in a time when the world’s economic systems were not yet interconnected, it gave rise to the myth that businesses have the capacity for endless growth, and therefore that their profits could increase endlessly, year after year, as their markets expanded around the world. This is the basis for the principle that profit-driven businesses will always tend towards becoming monopolies. It’s also the driving myth behind the stock market, which forces companies to find ways to earn higher and higher profits every year in order to attract investors — an investor, themselves, being a mini-employer of a sort. The alternatives to this business model are more commonly found in small businesses, but not always. The tattoo industry, at least in my experience, has trended more towards “collectives”, where each artist pays a flat rate for rent and supplies each month, and keeps all the rest of the money they earn in the shop. (This is compared to a more traditional model, where 30-50% of each artist’s earnings go to the shop owner, who ends up making far more than any of their employees before doing a single tattoo of their own.) And on a larger scale, we can look at cooperative corporations like Mondragón of Spain, which employs almost 80,000 people, yet pays the highest-earning worker no more than 6 times the salary of the lowest-earning ones. There is a lot to learn from these examples, and though they’re difficult to implement when in direct competition with huge multinational corporations, like your post mentions, I think the ethical position that cooperatives advance and the standard of living they provide are really worth supporting and adopting in larger sectors of the global economy.