i·mag·i·na·tion

Triumvir - Shadaloo Crime Syndicate Tee II

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:14:00 +0100

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This is the second spin of the Crime Syndicate Tee from the Triumvir X Capcom collaboration effort. This shirt was initially released at the comic convention in San Diego in very small numbers and just very few of these have been openly available to purchase trough the Triumvir webstore a while ago.

The fortunate guy I am, I have been able to get my hands on this and I am pretty proud of it. I am not sure if I like this one or the black one better, because both of them are pretty rad.

I am pretty excited about the upcoming pieces of this collaboration and I am pretty sure that there are few items to come that I'll just have to obtain.

Triumvir - Shadaloo Crime Syndicate Tee

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:46:00 +0100

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Okay, so where were we? Seems like I lost track of things again. Anyways - what you see above is the first of three shirts that arrived on my doorstep from Triumvir about two weeks ago.

A shirt that I'd normally wouldn't have bought if it wasn't for my affiliation with Triumvir. I really hate backprints, especially the small frontprint - huge backprint combination gives me the heebie-jeebies. Now I like what Triumvir put together with Capcom and I think it's important to keep their idea behind designing this shirt in mind. It's ment for members of the "crime syndicate" and as long as I can remember gang/group/club tees and pullovers always featured a huge logo-like backprint in combination with the identical small print on the front, so it does make sense after all I guess.

I count myself lucky to have gotten my hands on this beauty as it was a very limited run and is of course long gone and sold out today.

Winter

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:53:00 +0100

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This is what winter looks like in my City. Now you might want to argue that it's still autumn - which of course is right, but winter is right around the corner and the past winters have looked exactly like this. I'd really like some snow this year - yet I doubt we'll get some. What can I say, somehow you'll get used to the lack of seasons, basically we only got one huge season over here in northern Germany.

Clae - Russel Sneaker

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:49:00 +0100

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What you see above is a Clae sneaker I found and bought in the store of a dear friend last weekend on my trip tp Berlin. His store is called Kickback Berlin, make sure to pay it a visit!
I bought the sneaker by total coincidence, I just saw it and fell in love with the colorway. Once I tried them there was no turning back and I am looking forward to rock these regularly now.

I am wondering how they'll hold up, but time will tell...

Supreme - Monaco Tee

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:20:00 +0100

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I've never been a huge fan of Supreme and I never really understood the hype around it. It can't be about quality that's for sure, I mean their quality is alright I guess but certainly not worth the hundreds of dollars that are so often paid on the after market.
Whenvever I come by a Supreme shirt that I really like and that I can get for the retail price I tend to buy it, but that's about it. I once bought a $100+ Supreme/Neighborhood shirt on ebay and it turned out to be a fake, so I've been avoiding ebay in terms of Supreme ever since. That's actually something I can only recommend to all of you - unless your 100% certain, don't ever buy any Supreme gear on ebay, there's just too many fakes around. I see $5 fakes going for $150 on ebay day by day.

So I've been to Berlin last weekend and that's where I picked up the lovely shirt pictured above. After a long time this is my first Supreme shirt again, the last one I got probably a year ago and that one actually was a present from a good friend of mine.

False - Faux Militare

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:04:00 +0100

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Last but not least here is the third (one, two) of the False shirts that I ordered and received last week. This is probably my favourite print of the bunch.
Meanwhile I had the chance to wash all three of them and as it turns out the print held up very well, which is always very nice to see. As previously mentioned they still (even after washing) priobably are the largest shirts I have in my size, so if you ever thought of buying one of those sweeties be advised to either try them beforehand (which you probably won't be able to) or just size down a size to ensure that they'll fit just like the rest of shirts in your wardrobe.

False - The Cool Tee

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:46:00 +0100

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Pictured above you see the second (here is the first) of three False Tees that arrived at my doorstep last week. I remember reading about the announcement of this tee a while back and right from the start I was pretty sure that I'd probably never be able to get my hands on this.
So you can guess that I was pretty amazed finding it on sale the other day. What makes this shirt so special is the fact that it's a collaboration effort between the False Crew and rapper Lupe Fiasco who came together and designed this in support of Fiasco's latest album release called "The Cool" - hence the print.

Here is a small tidbit about the people behind False and their vision:

Hand-screening and Hand-finishing their garments since 2005, creative couple Le Messie & Amanda Scully have built their independent art fashion brand from the ground up through good old fashion blood, sweat, passion and tears. Growing from a small project to what it is today the creators continue to believe in their hands-on artistic qualities continuing to make each and every design by hand, bringing real life to the garments themselves. Each and every FALSE garment is individually hand-screened and hand-finished using no hand-silkscreen machines but just a simple wooden silk-screen placed free-hand, a high quality cotton combed tee, squeegee and paint. Not your average independent street wear fashion brand. FALSE brings a sophisticated artistic movement on a ground level with each participant being a walking canvas.

False - Hell Cat Tee

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:46:33 +0200

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Here is yet another try to bring a bit of life back to this weblog, I added a new category too - 'fashion', we'll see if I manage to bring a little bit of attention to it.
What you see above is a Certificate of Authenticity that came with a batch of False Tees I ordered just two days ago and that arrived yesterday. I have to admit that I didn't even knew that they were available in Germany and I have to say it was a little bit ironic and typical that they even were reduced by 50%. Oh well, lucky me immediately ordered three of them as I always wanted to give them a try anyways.

This is the first of the three shirts, I can't say much of them yet expect that I am not entirely sold on their quality so far and that they sure are a bit on the larger side, I probably could have sized down and they still would have fit well enough. But to set all that in stone they'll have to be washed first.

Other than that I'm already in love with them - simple, clean, straight forward.

Sunset

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:35:31 +0200

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Here is a recent sunset as seen from my new appartment... I really like the new place, even though there still is a lot of work to do.

Slow motion skating

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:05:14 +0200

I love this, apart from looking absolutely marvelous all the tricks seem so easy - which they aren't - trust me on that. I wish I could skate like this.

Roadtrippin' III

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:20:00 +0200

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I didn't try their Crepes, Smoothies or Wraps... but seeing that sign today I wish I had.
America was a mixed bag of everything for me. Some of my presumptions were met, some not, some things did manage to surprise me while others were shocking. Overall I think I can easily say that I liked it way better than I thought I would. Am I going to visit again? Certainly. Could I imagine to live over there? Why not, Boston seemed like a wonderful city to live in.

Then again it's hard to imagine what it would be like to actually live over there, my whole trip was far to fast-paced to come to a certain conclusion. Just to give you an example - when I left from Germany it was my plan to try as many burger joints as possible when over there, mainly because you can't get decent burgers in Germany and I do love burgers. This turned out to be an easy thing to do, I tried countless of those joints and pretty much each and everyone of them was better than what you can get over here.

On the opposite side though I have to say that I never tried to actually get something we Germans wouldn't call junk-food and apparently I never even saw a restaurant in which I thought they'd serve something else than junk-food. I am sure this is just an impression and surely the wrong one, but they definitely got a lot of junk-food places there.

Look at that picture! Isn't it just beautiful? Look at those signs! They're all over the place, just like you'd have imagined from the movies, television and pictures/press. They are so beautiful, I could have demounted dozends of them and shipped them over here to Germany in order to brighten up our cities. I love them and I've missed them ever since I am back in Germany. There is nothing you can find over here, that is even remotely as beautiful.

This particular picture shows "Claiborne Liquors" in Buffalo, New York. The "Try our..." picture up there was shot in Buffalo as well by the way.

I hit Cleveland and with it the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame on September 11th, hence the flag. Cleveland was a nice start for me, but there would be several cities on my route that I'd enjoy way more...

Roadtrippin' II

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:15:00 +0200

The lakes, the Great Lakes to be precise. They really are great.
Actually they are pretty unbelievably great for a guy like me. I lived close to the sea most of my life, the North and the Baltic sea are basically my home and usually there isn't a single day in my life when I don't see either of them.

The first of the Great Lakes I hit was Lake Erie in Toledo, eventhough my plane originally landed in Chicago and therefore I was way closer to Lake Michigan. I decided to save that one for later and rather start by heading out of Illinois and into Ohio.

Upon first sight Lake Erie disguised itself, as you can see in the picture above. Sadly I don't know anymore where exactly I took this picture, but it was somewhere in the Toledo area and it is some sort of bay, because you can see land all around the water. When I stopped to see Lake Erie for the second time, this time in Pennsylvania, in the city of Erie itself, it was different. There wasn't land all around and it took a while until I realized that this actually was a lake, not the sea. It mainly was the salt-water vs. fresh-water thing and the fact that it was very shallow that let me realize that this was in fact a lake, a huge one.

Ready for the next lake, I left Pennsylvania and entered New York, Rochester to be precise.

Above pictured Lake Ontario and the orange horse that accompanied me on my whole roadtrip. Even though Lake Ontario is smaller than Lake Erie, the way Lake Ontario opened up in front of me when I approached it left me speechless. If I hadn't realized it before - just then it was obvious why they were called the Great Lakes.

After my visit to Lake Ontario the next thing I saw, water wise, was the North Atlantic Ocean. It wasn't until I was on my way back to Chicago that I decided to stop by Sarnia, Canada in order to take a look at Lake Huron.

After I parked my car I took a small path down to the water, accompanied by a group of three or even more squirrels running right next to me I approached Lake Huron. The view over Lake Huron on this sunny and hot day was absolutely magnificent. I have to admit that I am not really smiling on that picture, then again I did drive for many hours and as said it was very warm that day. The view nevertheless was absolutely breathtaking. Unbelievable and unforgettable.

The last lake I managed to see was Lake Michigan prior my departure to fly back home. The pictures I took of it didn't turn out very well - but I have to admit after seeing Lake Huron, Lake Michigan didn't manage to sweep me off my feet. As it turns out I was getting used to those huge lakes, and I really liked it. Believe it or not there were many stops I made throughout my trip at which I couldn't help but be reminded of home, both weather and nature wise. Boston even reminded me of home culture wise - but that is a whole different story...

Roadtrippin'

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:37:00 +0200

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Yes, it's been a while. No, the story I am about to begin isn't exactly a recent one...
Last September I went on a Roadtrip through a part of the USA for two weeks and ever since I came back I thought about how to add a little something about my journey to my weblog. As it turns out I never quite had a good idea about that, especially because I in my opinion took just very few presentable pictures of that trip.

I actually took my Hasselblad with me on that trip but never even managed to unpack it. Everything was just a bit too huge for me, all these impressions, new things, new citys and people around me never quite left me enough air to breathe to actually settle down and take some decent pictures.

I take it that most of the people close to me know about that trip anyways, I told my stories quite a few times and that is another reason why I never even started to write something about the trip down here. Anyways - I went through my pictures again last weekend and found a couple of them that I deem good enough to show them off here and maybe even loose a few words about them.

The story which is about to follow on this weblog is in no means a complete re-cap of what I experienced and where I've been in the states, you probably should take it as more of a glimpse.

Overall I drove a total of 3000+ Miles, the areas I visited are the Great Lakes, the south border of Canada and the east coast of the states. The biggest cities I saw include Chicago, New York, Boston and Toronto.

Here is the full picture of where I've been and where I made my stops:

This whole trip had several purposes. First of all I finally wanted to see what everyone is talking about and as much of it as possible, Second of course a bit of sightseeing, then again the only real sightseeing I did was probably in New York. Third and last I went on a complete streetfashion rampage. I hit all the spots I could dig up, talked to lots of people and of course did buy a few pieces for myself. But more about all that probably later...

Back in the days...

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:03:00 +0200

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After reunting with a lot of friends from a long time ago last Sunday and upon realization how much time had gone by, I decided to do a little homage to the good times that I had with all of them.

This one goes out to my cousins, my old friends, my family and all of you that have spent time with me 12 to 15 years ago.

Those times will never be forgotten. Enjoy.

Homecoming

nospam@example.com (Lewe) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:45:11 +0200

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I always wondered why "Homecoming" of Kanye West's latest album "Graduation" never was released as a single - well, I guess it was only a matter of time...

Now there are finally pictures to the lyrics. Chicaco all over the place, Common is in there too, together with a lot of pictures that will forever remind me of my trip to the USA last year. Especially Chicago, which was the beginning and the end of my road trip. I'm coming home again.

Good times.