The Flat Head 3001 World Tour

[PG2G]

This will be the official thread for "The Flat Head 3001 World Tour (sponsored by Self Edge)." Keep all the discussion in here from now on.

I'll keep the OP updated as new information comes in.

The current order is as follows:

1. June - captain5640 (passed on early)

2. Soraanaam (LA, visting China)

3. Cameland (Melbourne)

4. Justiz2 (Malaysia)

5. Largo (Thailand)

6. Cotton Duck (Amsterdam)

7. twistedtrees (Chicago)

8. ordo (Vancouver)

9. adsurgo (NJ, visiting Japan)

10. PG2G (LA)

11. Mrip (San Jose)

12. fallen_angels (San Fran)

13. ProfMonnitoff (Vienna - skipped, will be fitted in the rotation later)

Reserves:

1. wild_style

2. doczein

Links:

Status/Updates : http://flathead3001.blogspot.com/

Self Edge: http://www.selfedge.com

Flat Head 5003 World Tour: http://flatheadworldtour.blogspot.com/

Flat Head 3001: http://www.selfedge.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68&products_id=201

[captain5640]

I think we should definitely get a tracking number/insurance on the package when we ship it. I prefer USPS Priority Mail. It's not that expensive to do and it gives good peace of mind ( I'm trying to deal with a lost package worth $250 right now and it's shitty). As for pictures, I think pictures with a digital camera are good along with the idea of a picture a day with a disposable camera. I don't know if a full, daily journal is neccesary, maybe when you get your pictures developed you can write some info on the back or number them and then write a little bit. Let's get some more input though and come up with some great ideas.

[theetruscan]

Things that need to be determined:

1. What is each person going to need to do, aside from wearing them? (i.e. post card, pictures, journal, etc...). We should get kiya's input on this one, and we'll probably want the 5003 and 3001 groups to be the same in this regard.

2. Shipping standards? Do we need to define preferred shipment methods (i.e. tracking, insurance, etc?)

That's it I guess.

I think the things that should be done (I'm a 34 team or whatever, but I agree about parity) should be:

1. Take pictures in every major location, at the least. Otherwise, let people do their thing.

2. I plan to send them on insured and trackable, I'd say that's preferable to paying for super-express. Also, while speed isn't of the utmost essence, we should avoid really slow shipping methods.

[soraanaam]

ima take pics of the fukin Himalaya's

[unklesteve]

No idea if it's too late to get on the list....

But if they can make it to me by August 1st, I'll wear them while competing in the World Yo-Yo Championships.

http://www.worldyoyocontest.com

Take THAT, other teams!

------

And, dumbass, that I am, I just noticed that the list of names has MONTHS next to them.

I really need to cut back on the drinking.

[ProfMonnitoff]

The idea of buying a disposable camera (no high quality dSLR crap) and taking a picture every day got positive feedback in the last thread. Obviously many of us have lives where we will not be able to have a spectacular picture every day, but there are other ways to get a cool picture. Waiting for a bus, or just in front of some nice piece of scenery ala hap & bizzy.

There should obviously be high quality pictures taken every month to show the fades and such.

Someone suggested keeping a moleskine in one of the back pockets, but I'm not sure if there will be much of a back pocket at the end of the year, with each member actually wearing the jeans every day.

For shipping, tracked/insured is definitely the way to go. Fast shipping too. Kiya is a great guy for providing the jeans, the least we can do is pay to get them around quicker.

The problem is when shipping needs to go to a different continent. I just checked, EMSing them from Austria to the US would cost 60 Euros, and that's with the value declared to be 0, and mass declared to be 2kg (a low estimate I think).

[Charlie Delta]

^ good point about the shipping, I was thinking about that myself aswell.

We could definitely declare a very low value since technically they'll just be second hand jeans.

I was thinking that maybe we can think of a system where ate the end of the 13 months we put all the shipping costs together and divide it by 13? This way we would all pay roughly the same amount.

???

[axtsang]

Put me on reserve please? Toronto, Canada. I'll replace whoever bails or whatever happens.

[ordo]

What about using some kind of Lomo camera - maybe like this one for pictures. The camera could go along with the jeans wherever they go and take interesting pictures. There are other fairly inexpensive cameras in the Lomo Shop. We could have the best, or at least, most interesting pictures of any of the groups.

[ordo]

I took your name ordo, but had to throw some Self Edge (http://www.selfedge.com) love in there

The love is well merited - great idea - thanks again Kiya.

[justiz2]

Heya guys. Nice to see we've finally got a thread to call our own...:-)

I think the idea of pooling our money and dividing it by 13 at the end of the day is good. At least, there's no single person that has to bear any extra shipping cost due to having to send the jeans a bit further away to the next person compared to others. It'll be a shared burden so to say among all of us. Maybe some sort of Paypal pool?

As far as shipping goes, tracked + insured is for me a must. It'll be a complete downer if after getting so worked up and excited about the project, it has to end due to the parcel being lost somewhere. Like Prof said, it's the least we could do after Kiya has given us these things to play with.

Ordo, are those Lomo cameras heavy? I'm just worried that it's gonna add to the shipping weight (and cost.) Besides, cameras are much more fragile than clothing. Something might happen to it during transit, when the parcel is being thrown around. Maybe we could just buy our own respective cameras. Adds to the individuality of each pic.

[justiz2]

Reading back, just thinking; we will have 2 cameras to use for pics. The disposable one to take a picture every day and the digital one for whenever we feel like taking. The digital pictures can obviously just be emailed/uploaded somewhere but does the developed day-to-day picture travel with the jeans throughout it's journey or does it get sent to Kiya? I think it's best if we don't include it in the parcel. It will be quite a weight, each person contributing 30 pics.

[Cameland]

Glad to see people vouching for splitting the shipping costs, I think living in australia sometimes has its burdens such as this, shipping tracked and insured anywhere outside of australia is going to be alot as ProfMonittoff said but I'm pretty used to that now.

Tracked and insured is definately the way to go with this though and we gotta think about time in the air, if you count it all up we loose a lot of wear time just in transit.

[captain5640]

Reading back, just thinking; we will have 2 cameras to use for pics. The disposable one to take a picture every day and the digital one for whenever we feel like taking. The digital pictures can obviously just be emailed/uploaded somewhere but does the developed day-to-day picture travel with the jeans throughout it's journey or does it get sent to Kiya? I think it's best if we don't include it in the parcel. It will be quite a weight, each person contributing 30 pics.

I think we should each just mail our individual pictures to Kiya so he can set them up in some type of display when the time comes. I don't think he'll want to use all 30 from each person, but at least mailing all them to him gives him some variety to choose from.

[ordo]

...but does the developed day-to-day picture travel with the jeans throughout it's journey or does it get sent to Kiya? I think it's best if we don't include it in the parcel. It will be quite a weight, each person contributing 30 pics.

Agreed - it is probably best if each person sends their finished shots directly to Kiya themselves. Your point about not adding to the shipping weight is well taken. The same goes for the idea about sending a camera along - it is probably best to keep the weight to a minimum - even if it would have made for some interesting shots.

[ordo]

I think the idea of pooling our money and dividing it by 13 at the end of the day is good. At least, there's no single person that has to bear any extra shipping cost due to having to send the jeans a bit further away to the next person compared to others. It'll be a shared burden so to say among all of us. Maybe some sort of Paypal pool?

Pooling seems like the way to go. The question is how will that work out practically speaking? We would need to gather all of the shipping monies ahead of time to be able to distribute them as needed. To do this, each person would have to find out what their costs will be to ship (tracked and insured) in as little time as possible to the next person. (An aside - each person will obviously lose some of their month due to the length of time the jeans are in transit so we would want to ship in as expediant a manner as possible.) Each participant should report these costs to PG2P who can then total and divide them 13 ways. Each person then PayPals him their portion. PG2P would then turn around and send each participant their alotted shipping amount. We would have to factor in some PayPal fees as well I imagine. It seems a bit convoluted but would be doable.

I have another way of doing it but as I was typing it is seemed too complex and not really worth it, so I shall spare you.

Does anyone know what PayPal fees we can expect?

[ordo]

Here's this for an idea..

The 3001 will come with a tan leather belt from Sugarcane or Skulls and a 14 ounce Raw Denim shirt from Iron Heart if ALL wearers agree to wear all three items every day (reasonable exceptions accepted).

If not, we're still on board for the 3001 and S5003, both from Flat Head..

Agreement needs to be reached regarding Kiya's offer of a belt AND shirt to go with the jeans. Kiya would like for all 3 items to be worn everyday by each person. My primary concern with this is that while I don't wash my denim, I generally launder my shirts after each wear. I cannot even begin to imagine what I would smell like after even a few days, let alone a month. I say this with regrets because I have been wanting to get my hands on both a Sugar Cane belt and a Flat Head shirt for some time now. Thoughts? He should have an answer.

[soraanaam]

ill washt eh shirt every two days when i get home hand wash than hang, include all three articles kiya!

[captain5640]

I think the denim and belt is enough. I don't really want to wear the same shirt everyday around Spain/Europe/France during the summer. The shirt could be interesting, but I honestly don't think it's practical...

It's much easier to get away with wearing the same jeans everyday rather than the same outfit.

[Largo]

I don't know about Malaysia, but any shipped/tracked/insured packages out of Thailand tend to be on the expensive side since I believe only FedEx and DHL offer said services. I want to say it's around 1000 baht (27 dollars or so?), but I'd have to double check, since the FedEx website says 2300-3300 (at least), and about 3000 for DHL to the Netherlands. Of course on the other hand, that's only about a seven dollar charge if we split it thirteen ways.

Therefore, I thoroughly endorse the 'paypal split' method (naturally). I'm almost 100% sure I'll get slapped with customs of some sort, but that could be anywhere from 15 baht (books) to 750 (Skull Jeans), so I'll suck that up myself. For a pair of 'used pants', I don't see it being on the high end. That being said, I am fuckin' hyped for this. I'm sort of thinking of throwing in some random Thai knicknack into the package too, but I haven't a clue as to what. Hey Cotton Duck, want some LVC knockoffs or anything?

[Cameland]

I'll try to chuck in some aussie momentos, probably things like my bus tickets, some aussie coins, maybe concert ticket stubs and beer caps off some aussie boos. Maybe a couple other things that i come across as well

[justiz2]

Personally I don't really mind the shirt but like I mentioned before, I don't think I'll wear it everyday. And even then, I might wear it as a sort of jacket on top. It's up to the rest of the gang to decide whether we want to include this in or not.

Hehe... I was thinking of pasting some local currencies, fabric and such into the log book as well... :-) Sounds great, it'll be a great way of tracking the journey. Maybe we could also send the bigger/heavier mementos straight to Kiya along with the day-to-day pics? To keep the parcel weight down...

As far as shipping, I am thinking of going with the proper courier service. The local post does offer registered & insured package service which will be cheaper but I'd rather take the safer route. Have yet to check up on what the prices are like. Will do soon.

[Cameland]

I will probably wear the shirt underneath a lot of my jackets so it shouldn't be a big deal, i will be slotted into the aussie winter which is perfect for that.

[captain5640]

Here's my question, and I hope I didn't miss this somewhere, since I'm starting these out, are they coming pre-saoked from Kiya or do I soak them, or do we leave them completely raw?

[ProfMonnitoff]

I still dislike the shirt idea. While it would be cool, many of us (including me) are in an environment where we can't possibly wear a denim shirt every day (not even every second or third day) for a month.

[Cameland]

Here's my question, and I hope I didn't miss this somewhere, since I'm starting these out, are they coming pre-saoked from Kiya or do I soak them, or do we leave them completely raw?

I am 99% sure you will get them raw and that you will indeed have to soak them once or maybe twice to get the shrinkage out of the way, 3001's shrink a lot.

[Cameland]

oh and about the belt and shirt idea, i think even if we didnt get sponsored by Kiya to get them for free im sure we could just buy one. Between 13 people a raw leather belt from Sugarcane or Tanner won't be very much and could be purchased when we all hand in out part of the overall shipping fee - just a thought.

[blm14]

This reminds me of those commercials with the traveling gnome

Anyways about shipping - having sent a TON of stuff overseas before I strongly urge you to use EMS (or the equivalent) at each hop and declare/insure for FULL VALUE. Nobody likes paying import duty but I've had parcels opened with box cutters and you don't want to end up with a huge slash in the jeans or pay a hefty penalty for lying on the customs declaration either...

[swooc]

lol is this going to be like that sisterhood of travelling pants movie? Are each of you's going to have personal problems in which you need the flatheads for the boost in confidence?

[ProfMonnitoff]

http://gnomediaries.com/