Like Minded People

Highly unprofessional and unreliable. Our small community non-​profit provides free educational services for immigrants and refugees; we made 2 large t-​shirt orders for a fund-​raising drive. The vendor altered orders without notifying us, tried to get out of pre-​agreed deadlines, and over 20 shirts were either missing, wrong sizes, or had sloppy misprinted logos. Not sure if our account was too large for this vendor to manage, or too small to feel it warranted proper attention.

I totally heart my shirt. They’ve got a lot of tight stuff, like shirts and all that =P Charisse F and I both found shirts we liked at the Hippie Street Fair (Haight Street Fair) and they threw in a free CD. Right on!

My t-​shirt collection used to solely consist of surf-​brand shirts from Roxy, Hurley, and Billabong, because I’m from Hawaii and that’s what people wear out there. Then I went through a phase where I stopped wearing T-​shirts altogether because I was always having to get dressed up for work. Now that I left my corporate job, I can spend every day in jeans and tees, and thus, my personal t-​shirt inventory has increased exponentially, thanks to some amazing designs by a few local design houses.
Well, I found another one — this one, based out of the East Bay, «whose aim is to provide folks out in the world with conscious messages and imagery as an alternative to much of the emptiness being produced today.» Jaime, the owner, has a great thing going on — his shirts celebrate diversity, community, and generally have a feelgood vibe about them. He’s also got some great O-​town shirts for 510 diehards (check out the print «The Town», with a graphic of the cranes from the Oakland estuary).
Jaime’s stuff is available online, in a few select retails stores, and at certain shows and festivals, where you’ll usually see him running things by himself. He’s pretty much one of the coolest vendors I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, and he’s doing a good thing, sending positive messages and imagery out into the world via fashion.