Month: December 2015

SHARKTOOTH

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Atlantic Avenue, downtown Brooklyn’s main drag, is dotted with countless lookalike boutiques and restaurants. But among the storefronts selling African shea butter, screen-printed tote bags and vegan cookies is a hole-in-the-wall shop that offers something entirely different. Barely bigger than most living rooms, Sharktooth is an aesthetic oasis—a blend of antique and modern design that you’ll want to spend hours exploring. There, owner Kellen Tucker sells vintage textiles (primarily floor coverings and quilts) to a clientele who appreciates the value of good construction that has stood the test of time.

Originally from Portland, Maine, Tucker moved to NYC in 2011, but her interest in well-worn fabric started much earlier. “It started about five years ago with quilts,” she explains. “I was living in Athens, Georgia, and I started seeking them out. It was like I had a revelation with an object. I really wanted to understand and learn how these quilts came to be: all of the hands, and time, and fabric that went into them.” Tucker started mending some of the more damaged quilts, and selling them online. Soon, she moved from Athens to Brooklyn, “sort of on a whim,” and took a job at an antiques shop. She honed her retail skills there, and after a year or so, a bail bonds office  came up for rent a few blocks from where she was working— Tucker pounced. “It just all happened so quickly. It was such a good deal and it just seemed really well timed. Like a gift, in a way. So I rented it, took a month to renovate, and here I am.”

Now a year old, Sharktooth specializes primarily in antique rugs. In the shop, they sit in lush piles, a riot of warm colors that contrast with the whitewashed floors and walls. Tucker  also offers some of the quilts she’s collected over the years, but with an ingenious twist. To eliminate the kitschy, country look of the quilts, she dyes them in dark, neutral tones. Though  you can still see the individual fabric patterns on some of these dyed pieces, the color brings them into the 21st century. “I think a quilt that has the perfect palette, and the perfect pattern, and the perfect weight is an amazing thing, and I would never dye it. But so many of these are so ‘granny,’ with bright calico fabrics. I like modernizing something really old, and repurposing it.”

She sources her inventory at flea markets throughout the northeast, a process she relishes. “I really like to get up early, so that’s part of the appeal; you have a reason to get up at 4:30 a.m. to go to the flea markets. There’s a bizarre satisfaction I get out of that—having camaraderie with all these people who are 25 to 40 years older than me. It’s just a fun community to be a part of.”

Asked about the shop’s incongruous name, Tucker starts to laugh. “It’s purely sentimental. A friend of mine would say, ‘That’s sharktooth’ instead of ‘That’s cool.’ The name was a way to lighten all the pressure of having a store in New York; I didn’t want to overthink things.” But that’s not the moniker’s only benefit. “If I turn the music down in the store,” she says, “I can hear what everyone’s saying on the sidewalk. Every time someone outside notices the sign, they say it out loud, which is so fun. I’ll just hear, ‘Sharktooth! Sharktooth? Sharktooth,’ all day long. It’s so easy to take yourself too seriously, and it’s kind of a reminder to lighten up.”

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SEMI KIM

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

“I draw every day, carefully keeping all my ideas,” Kim explains. “Once a concept becomes clear, I start to make pieces. I don’t normally use other visual references—I listen to music. My memories and emotions serve as inspiration.”

The mystical and superstitious Korean traditions Kim learned during childhood may have played a part in her decision to study theater and performance at the prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Arts in London instead of practicing traditional studio skills. Ritual celebrations, including special food and dress, are part of a Korean upbringing and have deep meaning. Even birthdays are colorful customs with (perhaps subconscious) theatrical flair.

“I chose to study theater design for performance because I wanted to be different from others,” Kim demurs. “My course of study allowed me to direct, design, work hard and draw more. The theater is a total platform for art.”

While Kim would love to someday complete a project that includes music and film, for now she is happy creating her signature graphic works on paper and soaking in all the alternative film and performances that Europe has to offer. She counts the hipster ennui classic “Stranger Than Paradise”, directed by iconic New Yorker Jim Jarmusch, as a favorite flick, as well as the more recent “Noi the Albino” by director Dagur Kári—a very Icelandic take on teenage isolation and the end of the world.

When it comes to the stage, Kim notes the work of Ultima Vez, a contemporary dance company founded by choreographer and filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus, and also James Thiérrée, a French circus performer who happens to be the grandson of filmmaker Charlie Chaplin and the great-grandson of playwright Eugene O’Neill.

However, when asked to define her own technique, Kim skirts the issue. She prefers to blur the lines between what is considered traditional drawing and painting, tasking her generation of artists to do the same.

 

 

 

“I personally don’t like to divide the genre,” 32-year-old Kim explains. “My generation doesn’t define what we do every day. We just live it up. My art has become boundless. It could be drawing, it could be painting. It’s just part of living my life.”

Free association is, in fact, a large part of Semi Kim’s work. She creates her architectural landscapes by drawing, tearing and collaging with pencil, ink and glue. Figures appear in some of her early work, but recently her compositions have favored graphic pattern and representational shapes. Sometimes, as in her 2013 “Drawings in Repetition” series, triangles represent mountains, brushstrokes mimic water. Kim’s cool blue color fields of texture rely on the power of negative space. Though seemingly simple and spontaneous, there are often several layers involved in her process. She likes to include photocopies of drawings she has used or discarded as part of other work, breathing new life into an older idea or sketch. Kim loves what this process represents— in this case, a human feeling or emotion you may have again and again. Even the concept of time is recognized here, as meticulously placed hits of intrigue—a literal blueprint to the architecture of thought.

“I never get bored with blue,” Kim concedes. “Never! People feel free in general when they carefully look at the sky or the sea, and I’m not exceptional, I guess. I will have an adventure with many other colors this year.”

When she’s not preparing for a show, Kim enjoys publishing small books and catalogues with her friend Alexandre Thumerelle, an owner of 0fr. bookshop in Paris, an indication of work to come.

 

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Posted in Art

HOT KNIVES

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Would you ever think that Chimay Blue—the dark Belgian ale brewed at a Trappist monastery—could be used as an ingredient in a grilled cheese sandwich? Alex Brown and Evan George, the duo behind the cheeky DIY food blog Hot Knives, thought so when they conceived the Beer-Onion Soup Sandwich, a savory mixture of onions that have been simmered in a mixture of Chimay Blue, mushroom stock, margarine, bay leaf and thyme, enveloped between gooey, melted Gruyère cheese and two slices of grilled sourdough bread. “Of the five trophies we’ve taken the Grilled Cheese Invitational over the years, our favorite is the only one with booze in it—no surprise there,” George explains.

The Beer-Onion Soup Sandwich represents the outside-the-box thinking that has earned Hot Knives a cult following (their blog garners 60,000 readers a month). In addition to their blog, Hot Knives has also produced a number of local foodie affairs, such as the Great L.A. Beer Run, during which participants picked up the finest craft beers while riding around the city on their bikes,   as well as the Craft Beer Fest.

This summer, Brown and George released their second cookbook, Lust for Leaf: Vegetarian Noshes, Bashes and Everyday Great Eats—The Hot Knives Way.  Their first cookbook Salad Daze , was released in 2011 and featured vegetarian recipes for homemade kimchi and cast-iron mushrooms, whereas Lust for Leaf  features recipes for DIY wieners and patties, and booze you can eat (think pumpkin beer muffins, gin holes and Manhattan pop tarts).

 

 

 

 

 

Brown and George met more than a decade ago, at Occidental College in Los Angeles Brown spotted George after freshman orientation. He knew it was friendship at first sight. “We found each other smoking cigarettes,” says Brown. “I tracked Evan down because he was wearing a Joy Division T-shirt.”

They became fast friends and soon found themselves working together as line cooks in the school’s dining hall. “We were making 50 gallons of Alfredo sauce in steam cauldrons,” says Brown. George, who was studying history, and Brown, who had taken up philosophy, would goof around in the kitchen, putting blood-colored handprints on their T-shirts while re-filling the salad bar.

After graduating in 2004, Brown and George found themselves in the same predicament as many graduates of their generation: They were unable to find full-time professional jobs. So they returned to the kitchen. “I flipped burgers and worked at a cafe making salads,” says George. “Alex worked first at a bakery that did high-end breakfasts, and then in a French café.”

Eventually George, after juggling cooking with various newspaper gigs, found a full-time job at a now-defunct alternative weekly called L.A. Alternative, and Brown found work at a fine cheese distributor. Brown weaseled his way into writing a food column with George, where they would do things like discuss vegetarian recipes they were developing and review beer before the whole craft beer craze. “We thought we were doing a good service by letting people know there was good beer out there to pair with the food,” says Brown.

When the newspaper collapsed in 2005, Brown and George decided to keep their column on the web, and Hot Knives was born. The two have a guy’s guy DIY ethos with their blog—it’s never too formal and they like to have fun with it. They play around until they figure out something they like. The pair comb L.A green markets—Atwater Village, Silver Lake and Hollywood are their favorites— looking for fresh produce and other ingredients to use in recipes like Thanksgiving pop Tarts, a pocket filled with all your favorite Turkey Day dishes; Peaches and Scream, a Habañero peach jam; and Hot Kniveçoise, their version of salade Niçoise.

The Hot Knives duo have come a long way from their college days, when they would try to make the most screwed-up cheap snack they could think of by staring at the contents of a bare fridge—an egg sandwich made with eggs poached in Pabst Blue Ribbon and stale bread, for example.

Despite still having full-time jobs, the two manage to find time to  meet and discuss recipes, cook meals for their friends and families and work on cookbooks. Just don’t ever call them chefs. “We don’t call ourselves chefs,” says Brown. “We say it as a joking term. We’re cooks; we’re having a good time.”

 

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Boss Selections

Posted on by Stephanie Janssen

Sunny Levine is just days away from finishing his most ambitious collaborative project to date, Boss Selections Vol. 1, featuring no less than 14 songs by 14 different musicians, all of  them written and recorded by Levine in his Los Angeles studio.

His collaborators include drummer James Gadson (Bill Withers, Beck), his aunt the actress Rashida Jones, and his friend Amir Yaghmai aka Young Dad, one of L.A.’s most in-demand indie guitarists, who plays in Julian Casablancas’ band and toured with Charlotte Gainsbourg. “I didn’t want to make another record where I am the artist,” explains Levine at his studio one afternoon. “So I just picked everybody that I would want towork with and made a mixtape, basically. A really cool mixtape.”

Today, RnB singer Orelia is coming to the studio to lay down her vocal track, but before she arrives, Young Dad is going to stop by and record some bass lines for the track Rashida  recorded the night before. Levine will be up until 4 a.m. tonight wrapping everything up before getting on a plane to New York in the morning, where he is recording yet another track for the album, with Brooklyn indie singer Nick Nauman  of Keepaway. When Levine returns, he will have about two weeks to take care of overdubs and mixing; it will be a sprint to the finish for sure, but luckily for Levine, making music— on his own and with others—is what he was born to do.

Music is in Sunny Levine’s blood—his grandfather is Quincy Jones, his father is producer Stewart Levine (Simply Red, Joe Cocker, BB King, Dr. John, Minnie Riperton, and Jamie Cullum) and his uncle is producer QD3 (Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube). Becoming part of the family business was a no-brainer. After fronting the band Matta Haari,

Levine decided to try his hand at production and found himself working with artists such as Mickey Avalon, Hugh Masekela, Ariel Pink, Pete Yorn and the Happy Mondays. Levine recently wrapped up his third solo album, Hush Now, an “emotional rollercoaster” of a record. Boss has an entirely different flavor, he explains. “It still has an emotional throughlin in that there is soul in every song, but it’s generally more  optimistic and up tempo. A lot more grooves and rhythm. And it leans on a few key influences—that 1980s British take on RnB, and splashes of deep house.” When people ask him whether it has been hard finding continuity between the tracks, because they have all been recorded with different artists,  Levine reminds them of the common denominator. “It’s my take on those different artists,” he explains. “Even if the songs all have a different sentiment, the vibe of it is the same.”

Three of his all-time musical heroes are featured on the record. First, Hugh Masekela, the South African singer and trumpet player who contributed to Paul Simon’s Graceland . It was a now or never opportunity—Masekela was coming to L.A. for two days only, on one of which he would be performing, so Levine quickly wrote his version of the “dream Hugh Masekela song” and demo’d it in his voice. When Masekela showed up, they had two hours to get the song down. The track is called “One of These Days,” and it is about unrequited love. “It was such a great thing, hearing it in his voice.” And that was the first track Levine recorded for Boss . “It was so soulful, it set the record off on such a nice journey,” says Levine.

The second of Levine’s all-time heroes on the record is James Gadson, whom Levine describes as the “best drummer alive.” He certainly is among the most recorded drummers in RnB history, having played with everyone from Bill Withers to Ray Charles to Frank Sinatra to Beck. Gadson has hardly ever been recorded singing since the beginning of his career with pioneering soul and funk band Charle   Wright and The Watts 103rd Street Band, with whom he had a hit called “Love Land.” “He’s a legend,” says Levine.

Singer Brenda Russell is the third of Levine’s heroes on the record. “She is someone I grew up up knowing, but we never made music together.” Levine says Russell was curious to check out all the “weird sounds and manipulation” he specializes in. Between working with Russell, Masekela and Gadson, Levine was in producer heaven. “Those three are crazy heroes of mine and to have them come in was a true gift,” he says.

Each song took a day to record, and the majority of artists on the record he had never worked with before. Like Phlo Finister, fashion-forward pop singer and best friend of Peaches Geldof dubbed the “next big thing” by Vice ’s Noisey. Then there’s Aska Matsumiya from the synth band ESP. “I met her in Japan when she DJ’d the party for the opening of the Citizens of Humanity store,” says Levine, who had been influenced by certain subgenres of 1970s and 1980s Japanese pop for a while. He had been searching for someone who could sing in that style, and when he found Aska, the search was over. “I always wanted someone who has that kind of voice, with a little bit of broken  English, and then an accent. Slightly strange and beautiful.”

Aska really loved the track recorded by Young Dad, who strolls into the studio halfway through our interview and grabs a bass guitar. As well as being a go-to indie guitar hero, Young Dad also sings on all the Daedelus records and has worked with the Gaslamp Killer. Young Dad’s track, “Midnight Fools,” “is kind of like an electro RnB track inspired by  home décor and succulents,” says Levine, in all seriousness. Young Dad explains that he and Levine are so close (they have been tight since high school) they don’t even need words to communicate their ideas about music. Levine will just do a little dance, or move his hands in a certain way, and Young Dad will understand exactly what’s up. “The best thing about this project is just how social it has been,” says Levine. “You have to be organized yet open-minded when dealing with so many different creative personalities—something between a  shrink, an interior designer and a boxing trainer. But I think I found my perfect outlet with this format. Hopefully I can just keep making records under this Boss Selections umbrella.”

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JUNPEI KATSUMI

Posted on by Jessica Bowler

Kamakura is less than an hour and a half from downtown Tokyo by train, but it feels like another planet. Compared to a frenetic neighborhood like Shibuya, Kamakura’s pace is glacial, in the best possible way. There, Hawaii-themed restaurants sit next to quiet hillside temples, and a community of surfers paddles out daily to meet the waves. Despite a booming tourist industry, the city feels a bit sleepy, like an undiscovered seaside gem. And nestled inside Kamakura’s farmers market is a gem of another kind—Paradise Alley, a small, quirky café owned by Junpei Katsumi, a 40-year-old gluten master who opened this mecca to flour a decade ago. He’s become renowned not just for his skills but for his unique baked goods, like the jet-black takesumi (bamboo ash) bread, which Katsumi says could help with the after-effects of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. “I think the ash absorbs and discharges any waste products or radioactive substances in the body.” When Katsumi’s not in Paradise Alley, he can be found creating works of bread art and decorating them with elaborate flour patterns or political messages. The term “baker” doesn’t seem sufficient to sum him up.

Katsumi grew up in Kamakura, in fact, and has lived there since birth. (Though, he notes, “Along the way, I came and went.”) “The good part about Kamakura,” he explains, “is that a lot of interesting people gather and live here. The bad part is that it’s a half-baked tourist destination.” It’s no surprise that he ended up as a baker, given his family’s connection to the land. “My grandfather and grandmother were laborers, and my father works a farm,” he explains. “My mother ran a classroom for baking and cooking from the time I was in kindergarten, and still does to this day.” Still, he wasn’t certain he’d follow in the family footsteps. “In the beginning, baking was just something I could do—I hadn’t thought about it much before that.” And as anyone who’s tackled the scientific, time-intensive process of baking a loaf of bread will tell you, it’s not something one masters easily. “Culturing and fermentation are tough,” he admits.

Katsumi opened his own café, Paradise Alley, about 10 years ago. At the time, he was trying to avoid joining Japan’s notoriously strenuous business world, but also attempting to figure out how to make a living. “Paradise Alley was kind of like rehabilitation,” says Katsumi. There he sells not just simple, earthy lunches but also his delicious handmade bread: massive, sculptural loaves and focaccia-based pizzas. And he takes his work seriously—he’s downright philosophical when it comes to the composition of bread and its place in the ecosystem. “Both yeast and bacteria exist at the border between the world we see and the world we can’t see. In people, birds, fish, all kinds of animals—even the bugs in the ground—and in bacteria, life is churning away.”

But Katsumi’s work goes beyond the realm of foodstuffs and enters into the territory of art; his architectural, undulating bread creations look less like they came out of a bakery’s oven and more like works that belong in a museum. He creates these gluten masterpieces for parties, art shows and other special occasions; one recent piece was a huge bread sculpture in the shape of a peace sign, bearing the words “STOP WARS” in the Star Wars font. “I make bread with various messages, like congratulations, hope, nature, space and time, wishing for safe child birth, space, harmony and many others,” he explains. “I also make bread in the shape of the different planets in the solar system, the pyramids and shrines.” It should be no surprise, then, that his works of art are occasionally mistaken for something else: “I think the best was when someone once mistook one as a cushion, and sat on it,” he recalls.
 

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SAMOVAR TEA BAR

Posted on by Jessica Bowler

Samovar Tea Bar in the Mission District of San Francisco is a peaceful haven to slow down and enjoy the present moment.  Founder Jesse Jacobs’ vision for the beautiful, minimalist, ceramic-filled space was to provide a vehicle for his guests to remember what it is to be human by the simple act of relaxing and energizing with a cup of tea. Samovar offers a wide selection of organic specialty teas and herbal blends all sourced from artisan tea farmers around the world who share Jacobs’ commitment to preserving an ancient art.
 

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BEN EINE

Posted on by Jessica Bowler

Artist Ben Eine is a happy man and he’s not afraid to show it, or, um, paint it. The former Lloyd’s of London agent by day/train defacer by night/turned contemporary art star has a lot to be excited about lately. Most recently he opened his first solo show in New York, Heartfelt, at Judith Charles Gallery and completed a rare piece of sanctioned street art on the walls of a U.S. maximum-security prison. The piece, “AMAZE,” is in his signature Tenderloin font on the front of Rikers Island gym.

“There’s a warden in this prison that is well up for people painting stuff and making his prison look better,” Eine told the Daily Telegraph UK. “It’s the only prison in the world that has graffiti and street art in it.”

Thankfully, Eine is on the right side of those prison walls, despite his degenerate start as an all-city vandal in the British graffiti scene of the ’80s. Eine’s early career in prolific public surface abstraction is where he met Banksy, with whom he would later collaborate and become his exclusive screen printer. It’s as a master hand screen-puller that Eine would accomplish his first Guinness World Record for the most colors in a print. That’s 72, if you’re counting.

In 2010, Eine completed what’s now known as Alphabet Street in East London. All the letters in the alphabet, A to Z in sequence, are painted on 26 shop gates with Eine’s signature font in candy colors. Eine worked for a year putting the squeeze on Middlesex shop owners to let him create a street of dreams for graf artists and a quick reference guide for the stroller set learning their letters. The work is still a source of pride for the neighborhood and a tourist attraction.

 

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Recently relocated from London to San Francisco, EINE is now seeing his industrious graffiti and screen-printing background pay off nicely. Not only is his “Twenty First Century City” painting part of the Obama White House’s art collection, but in 2013 he helped initiate a mile-high club for art collectors via Virgin Airlines. Partnering with Richard Branson, Eine opened a show in the first commercial art gallery at 35,000 feet with the Gallery in the Air exhibition, offering Upper Class passengers flying between London and New York the opportunity to view and purchase 10 of his latest paintings, all from the comfort of their seats. It was a party along with the Branson-head-shaped ice cubes available at the bar.

Of course, when one flies first class, one needs the appropriate gear, and perhaps that would include Eine’s Louis Vuitton “Great Adventures” scarf, a textile design the retailer commissioned as part of its ongoing Foulard D’Artistes series. With this exemplary assignment, Eine joined the likes of fashion’s original type gangster Stephen Sprouse in updating the iconic brand. Having painted the words GREAT ADVENTURES on the street in many of his stops around the world—Beijing, Osaka, Copenhagen, Dallas and San Francisco—Eine believes the phrase to be inspirational, meaning something different to everyone who sees it, or in the case of Louis Vuitton, wears it.

Already a long list of firsts for Ben Eine, and there is one more to add: the back-cover piece for Citizens of Humanity magazine, inspired by and continuing his surprising love for fashion.

“Fashion has always been a massive part of my life, growing up,” admitted Eine in a previous interview. “When we were much younger it was all about early hip-hop and Vivienne Westwood; her clothes had the attitude we were trying to project to the world around us. Subcultures always dress in a style that identifies them—graffiti writers, skateboarders, punks, etc. Even now I still dress in a way I feel identifies me as who I am and what I do.”

 

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DUSTIN BARCA

Posted on by Jessica Bowler

DUSTIN BARCA WENT FROM PROFESSIONAL SURFING TO MMA FIGHTING, BUT NOW HE’S TRYING TO BEAT OUT BERNARD CARVAHLO JR. IN THE KAUAI MAYORAL RACE.

It isn’t easy fighting against government corruption and some of the largest GMO giants in the world, and for Dustin Barca, that means waking up at 6am. Family comes first, and this morning Barca is helping his kids make poi, the pudding-like staple in Hawaiian cuisine made from taro root, but that’s just the beginning of the Kauai mayoral candidate’s day, which lately has been filled with events and meetings with local constituents.

A native of Kauai, the fourth-largest most northern island of the Hawaiian archipelago, the 32-year-old father of three once rode the waves as a professional surfer before becoming a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter — “The two biggest things in Hawaii are surfing and fighting,” he says — and then he set his sights on a completely different path: running for mayor of Kauai.

Barca grew up with a younger brother and a single mother, who struggled to make ends meet by working three jobs, so he grew up surrounded by the community. Barca says then around 5-years-old, he got on a surfboard for the first time at Hanalei Pier. “A big group of us who started surfing together just ended up being competitive with each other,” he says. The Hawaiian surf company Town & Country started sponsoring him, then Oakley. As a teenager, he began competing and progressed quickly.

Barca traveled for years to the world’s most beautiful beaches but grew tired of the lifestyle when he started a family with his girlfriend six years ago. “I was burned out on surfing,” says Barca. “I was always away from home, I had kids and couldn’t see them. I missed the first year of my son’s life because I was traveling.”

Initially Barca started training in boxing to stay in shape for surfing, “always admiring the humility and respect and everything that comes along with it [MMA fighting], and the mentality of martial arts,” he says. After he decided to move on from surfing, he pursued MMA fighting. “I’d go to jiu-jitsu in the morning, boxing in the evening,” he says. “I just fell in love with it.

Barca’s political aspirations all started when his daughter had eczema, which he later discovered came from a gluten allergy. “I started reading about these companies that were taking over the food industry and the seed industry,” says Barca.

Although Kauai is rich in edible plant life like sugarcane, coffee, guava, mango, banana, pineapple, star fruit, avocado, banana and kava, about 90 percent of the food consumed there is imported. In addition, the island is haven for testing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), thanks to its three growing seasons, so companies like Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred and Agrigenetics have set up camp there because they can accomplish testing three times as fast as they can on the mainland.

 

 

 

 

The more Barca learned about the companies, the more he found out about their dark pasts. One company, IG Farben, which eventually became the German chemical company BASF, used to make the gas that killed Jewish detainees at Nazi concentration camps. “These are really heavy companies when you look into their history and see what they’ve been involved with throughout time,” says Barca. “There’s been nothing but death and destruction.”

On top of that, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine warns against consuming GMO crops. “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” they warned. Those health risks include infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation irregularities, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system.

Barca couldn’t just stand on the sidelines. He wanted to take a stand, so in 2012 he decided to do so in a big way — at one of the biggest tournaments in professional surfing: Pipe Masters. “I got a sign that says ‘Monsanto’s GMO food poisons families,’” says Barca. The sign didn’t just attract the attention of those who were there to watch the best male surfers in the world compete. It attracted the attention of the media there covering the event. Word spread. “I never expected to make that much of an impact just by doing that, but I did.”

The reaction he got during Pipe Masters that year inspired him to organize a march in each of the five islands in Hawaii. The protest in Kauai, which happened to be scheduled the same day as a storm that cause a torrential downpour, still attracted, according to Barca, “2,000 people ready to march for the future of their island.”

Activism became Barca’s second job. Meanwhile, Barca worked as an MMA fighter to support his family. “I was shooting for my goal of going to fight in the UFC, but a bigger fight came up,” he says.

That fight began when he saw incumbent mayor Bernard Carvahlo Jr. announce his run for reelection. What turned off Barca the most about that announcement was that several executives from the companies testing GMO crops on the island stood behind Carvahlo. During his time in office, Carvahlo also mysteriously drained millions of dollars from Kauai’s budget, setting the island up for debt. “The corruption is just so in our face and disrespectful, so I thought nobody is going to take this guy out of his seat and he’s just going to make bad decisions for our island for another four years that just might affect us forever,” says Barca, who made his decision to run for mayor, despite having no political experience, that day.

While critics may say that Barca, a high school dropout, may not be prepared for the mayoral seat, the surfer turned MMA fighter turned activist insists that he’s ready. “I went to the world college of learning from every culture in the world,” says Barca. “I’ve been to the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro, I’ve spent weeks in Johannesburg, South Africa in the worst places. I’ve seen the worst places in the world. I’ve seen and learned from many different cultures.”

Barca knows very well that if he wins, he won’t be able to run the island alone. Along with encouraging residents to eat locally and pushing the GMO companies out, Barca is also fighting for rehabilitation programs because drug abuse is a big problem on Kauai. He also wants to prevent the GMO companies from dumping the run off into the oceans because they’re killing the reefs. “Me being mayor isn’t going to solve everything, but putting the right people in the right positions is how we’re going to solve things,”

These days, Barca isn’t getting much sleep as he prepares for the November 4, 2014 election, but for him, the sacrifice is well worth it if it means a better Kauai for his family and community. “I believe in upholding the constitution and I believe in keeping the power to the people and that’s what I believe in,” he says. “I believe in making the right decisions for people. That’s what I’m going to bring to the table.”

 

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MIKE TYSON

Posted on by Jessica Bowler

At the start of each issue, we all sit down to brainstorm potential profiles and features; Mike Tyson has been on this list since issue one. With the article now realized, the ideas that everything happens at the right time for good reason and nothing great comes easily ring all too true. When the opportunity to do a feature on him became a real possibility for this issue, the question internally became how to share a side of Mike Tyson that is different from the countless interviews, articles, biographies both authorized and unauthorized, documentaries and films to date.

We all agreed that our best shot at having a unique angle would be to find the right person to interview him, and thanks to Leila Steinberg, Earl Sweatshirt of Odd Future agreed to the task. On November 4th, we took a flight to Las Vegas, where Earl sat down with Mike. There were many times when this interview could have fallen apart, both in the days and weeks leading up to it and even after we arrived, but it happened, and the results were worth every moment. I didn’t know much about Mike Tyson prior to this experience, but what I learned from him is invaluable. That is not to say he is without faults like all of us, but he’s the first to admit them, and his honesty, openness, insight, strength and perseverance make him someone I greatly admire. I hope you find the following conversation as rewarding as Earl and all of us at HUMANITY do.

Mike: How old are you, man?

Earl: I’m 20.

Mike: What do you have to say to me?

Earl: So I got presented with the opportunity to come talk to you.

Mike: Yeah.  Where are you from?

Earl: I’m from LA. So I was trying to figure out kind of what angle to start at when I first got approached with this.

Mike: Are you now?

Earl: Well the first thing that came to mind after doing just a little bit of research that I did was just some of the parallels that – just between me and you, that I thought we had just at 20. Just with being in the position that you was in.

Mike: I mean, you’re pretty much an idiot at 20.

Earl: Right, that’s what I feel like. I got to 20, and I –

Mike: You’re not an idiot, but you are. You don’t really think you’re an idiot, but you are.

Earl: Right.

Mike: But you don’t think it. Like you’re in agreement, but you’re an idiot.

Earl: No, I swear, I was talking to someone yesterday, and I said the mark of me being an adult was when I got to the point where I realized how little I knew.

Mike: Oh, man. I’m humbled with that every moment of my life.  I think I know a lot, but I don’t know anything. I think I know a lot; they talk about a lot of subjects and issues but in the scheme of the world, it’s really not even a grain of salt.

Earl: So, I just thought you would have some real valuable insight just to give to people who are in positions like mine or just similar to mine where you’re just a young person getting pulled from every single different direction.

Mike: Who’s pulling you? Record companies and stuff?

Earl: Well, at first it was record companies, and then when that kind of settled down, it was management.

Mike: What do you need management for? When you think about it, what’s the purpose of management? In boxing, in my opinion. For boxers! I think they, I don’t know, they’re glamorized babysitters.

Earl: Yes, 100%.

Mike: So they say, “Hey, come here. We gotta go here. We gotta go there. We gotta go here. We gotta go there.” You have to give 10 or 15% of your money, whatever it is…

Earl: To think for you, almost, to handle like, kind of mindless duties.

Mike: Yeah, you’ve thought about that too?

Earl: Yeah. Me and Leila always talk about that, she tells me all the time I am unmanageable. Just because I am reclusive and I am the worst at communicating.

Mike: Well, that could be good too. Because the most important thing in the world for show business, really, you know everything’s a high-tech business, but what people want now is what they can’t get – exclusivity. You know, when you’re exclusive, you know what I mean.

 

 

Earl: It’s the allure.

Mike: Yeah.

Earl: It’s what draws people to you.

Mike: None of us are really who we appear to be. Like me talking to you, this is not who I am.

Earl: Right.

Mike: We’re in an interview. This is not who you are. We are never who we appear to be.

Earl: Mhmm.

Mike: And yeah, but like you said it’s the allure, exclusivity. The less you give, the more they want.

Earl: It’s what has worked with so many people. I don’t know if you know one of my favorite artists, André 3000, like he has dropped probably 10 or 15 songs that fans of his know every single word to, as opposed to like 1,000 songs, some is good, some is bad.  A testament to the exclusivity.

Mike: Yeah, he is a big-time guy.

Earl: Because he does so little.

Mike: Sometimes, people have reasons for being that way, something that you’re hiding, sometimes just like – some people don’t want people to know them, because they’re vulnerable. They have no more power, they feel.

Earl: That’s true. I think mine was more gradual, because I used to be a much more social person. And when I was 16, I got sent away for bad behavior by my mom.

Mike: What did you do?

Earl: I hadn’t done anything specifically, but it was just like –

Mike: Did you break the law?

Earl: I broke the law, but it wasn’t so much that, she was worried about my identity, you know what I mean, and just how I was establishing it. Like the man I was becoming. So I had to spend that year and a half just like searching for myself, you know what I mean, just like figuring myself out.

Mike: We don’t know at 20 years old the man we want to be. I just recently found out the man I wanted to be in life. I said, “This is the guy I want to be.” And I realized everything I did in the past prevented me from being the person that I wanted to be, so I don’t do what I did in the past anymore. But it took me to be what, 45, 47, 48 to really get it, so it’s not like I’m some genius. I learned from experience, no one told me to follow anybody else’s example, I had to feel the stove to realize it was hot. Some people say I’m an idiot because it took me this long to get it and some people can get it right away, some people take a long time. But I got it, At least I got it, some people never get it. I grasped it. I realized I’m not in the streets, I’m not in the clubs no more, you know, I’m not sleeping with strippers or anybody like that.

Earl: Right.

Mike: But whatever it is I’m just not doing that. I never really knew what dignity was until recently. And I realized that more so not because of myself but the response I get from people, you know, a woman won’t have to worry about talking to me and worrying about me hitting on them anymore or anything like that.

Earl: And that’s gotta be the best feeling.

Mike: Yeah, it makes me feel good, because when you sleep with so many people, all my life I thought that was adding to who I was, but it takes so much away from you.

 

Mike Tyson - Humanity Magazine

 

Mike: You know anger is my biggest enemy in life. I do a lot of reading on the history. I read the history, the whole history of the world, you know, from the beginning. And we have so many people, a lot of people. But do you know what we did more than fornicate?

Earl: Fight?

Mike: War, yeah. We fought more than we fucked. Ain’t that crazy?  We got billions people on the planet. Even from the beginning, from the beginning of time when that book starts, fighting! What are we getting into now? Fighting! Fighting…from all that fighting, great names, great great great names, them fools be fighting, you know like George Washington All the great names, all these names came from fighting. And what for…

Earl: Fighting against something.

Mike: Yeah, themselves.

Earl: Some were fighting for like civil rights, you know – like it’s all fighting.

Mike: I think war is led by faith. I never think of physical fighting. It’s always spiritual. Fighting is spiritual.

Earl: Absolutely. Yeah. I got familiar with that concept early, just because my mom, she was always working, so she dropped me off at this martial arts dojo. And the dude instilled – we had to meditate for an hour every time, before we did anything. We would meditate. Just to connect to the spiritual side of it. And like, going inside of yourself and realizing the immense power that lies within you, just as a person.

Mike: You know young man; it’s all about spiritual awakenings. I could never stop drugs, I could never stop drinking, doing stuff, until I received my spiritual awakening. Now it’s not a problem anymore. But I’ve been doing this since the ’90s, late ’90s and I never could stop but I never understood the spiritual awakening. And once that comes into play, it’s really eye opening.

Earl: It’s so much bigger than human constraints.

Mike: You’ve got brothers and sisters?

Earl: yeah, I do. Like, my friends are my brothers. Like my real close ones. I got them like that. And I got siblings on my father’s side.

Mike: Tell me about you man, who you are, what’s your shtick, man.

Earl: I do music. So I came –

Mike: Like songs and stuff, records and radio and stuff?

Earl: Not so much radio. I was fortunate enough to – we like developed our own, like self-sustaining like fan base that was separate. So when I was like 14, I was getting better at rapping, like running around L.A., trying to find like people to do music with. And I linked up with this dude Tyler. And he had this whole thing going on already. We started making music, and it was like, it was idiot music, but it was really, I think, what we had in hindsight, what attracted so many people to it was potential. Like we weren’t necessarily talking about anything, but the way that the music was, it was like sophisticated in a sense for our age. So anyways, we’re doing that.

Mike: What’s the name of your music?

Earl: The group that I was in was called Odd Future. So we was doing that. Fast forward, 2010, so I want to say that was like 2008 to 2010. Mid 2010, I got sent away. And we blew up. Like at that moment, it was like hand in hand. I got sent away, and –

Mike: Tell me what you mean by “blow up”. I know what blowing up means but how did you experience—define “blowing up”. You got signed? They played your music?

Earl: Yeah, they started… but it wasn’t even so much, that they played our music on the radio, it was –

Mike: Clubs?

Earl: It was like – it was almost punk rock in the way that it took off. It was just kids became, like, obsessed with it, because they –

Mike: You a crunk dancer?

Earl: Nah…We didn’t dance too much, but it was – they got attached, because in the same way that that punk expressed, like, the angst of being a teenager so well, a lot of our music and early energy had a lot of those elements. You know, that teens, really attach to, you know what I mean – just illogical… passionate unaimed anger, you know. Like, I don’t even know, but I’m just swinging.

Mike: When’s your birthday?

Earl: February 24th.

Mike: Is that Pisces?

Earl: Yes, sir. So I get plucked out. It blows up while I’m gone. The whole time that I was gone, for the first year, I went to hell. It was the worst. Because I wasn’t involved.

Mike: Well, how exactly you wasn’t involved, because you weren’t there physically?

Earl: I wasn’t involved, I wasn’t there physically, I was mad.

Mike: But you were in the group; you were a member of the group on paper, right?

Earl: Yeah.

Mike: Did you receive your money?

Earl: I mean… I got money, but it was from when I signed my advance with the label.

Mike: I ain’t never loan friends money; I give it to ‘em and I don’t expect to get it back. Even when he says, “I’ll pay you back,” I never expect it. If he gives it back, then hey, that’s a feather in his cap, but I don’t expect to get it back.

Earl: That’s where I’m always at. I’m never…I was never even mad about it. I was just… way more obsessed with preserving the friendship.

Mike: Listen, you know sometimes that’s a really an intense word, “friend.” You know sometimes during a relationship, a friendship, a friend’s gonna have to prove they’re your friend, and you’re gonna have to prove you’re their friend. You know, sometimes, the people we invest the most time in disappoint us the most.

Earl: Absolutely. This is the best way to summarize the situation.

Mike: In order to really be a friend to anybody, this is what I’ve learned in life and my experience only, not because I’m a genius, but that I’m saying some slick shit. I endured a lot of pain from this. In order to be a friend to anybody, you have to be a friend to yourself. If you’re not a friend to yourself, there’s no way you’re gonna have any friends.

Earl: If you’re stepping on yourself, then everyone else follows suit.

Mike: You have to be a friend to yourself. You know, ‘cause if you’re not a friend to yourself, you’re an enemy to yourself and if someone’s a friend of everybody they are an enemy to themselves. You know, you can’t be everybody’s friend, you can’t save the world, I learned this word: self-preservation. Once you do that, you can be friends with people, but how would you be a friend to anybody if you’re not a friend to yourself.

Earl: It’s like the same reason why they tell you to put the mask on yourself before the baby on a plane. Because if y’all both dead, because you was trying to help the baby, then what?

Mike: Exactly, you need to learn independence. You have to be independent – it builds character. You have to compete in life because if you don’t have no competition – no competition, no spirit, you know, you’ll fall under the slightest struggle… you know.

Earl: Absolutely – one thing I always try and tell dudes that are younger than me is that because of the Internet everyone can just be by themselves doing something, but the importance of a group is being able to have some sort of competition.

Mike: No doubt about it. You know, times have changed now because I grew up pretty much in the ‘70s, late, middle ‘70s. I met all my friends in the early ‘80s and met all my friends from fighting with them.

Earl: Yeah.

Mike: Most of them from the streets, we loved each other to death, we’d fight for each other, do anything…we even shot at each other. You know? We’re in different cliques, and we shot at each other. It’s really bizarre, if you think about it. It’s really bizarre. And I don’t know how it works, but it just works. It just works. Friends are very – that’s a very interesting word… human beings are a bad lot, y’know.

Earl: We’re some of the worst – yeah, I sit around and think sometimes about the constraints of being a human being.

 

Mike Tyson - Humanity Magazine

 

Mike: You have to experience life. This world, That’s one big school out there. Outside is one big school. You know?

Earl: It gives you a Ph.D. in common sense.

Mike: Common sense is so very simple but very difficult to grasp.

Earl: Psh! Tell me about it. It’s crazy how many people are absent of common sense.

Mike: It’s all about the basics. If you can’t remember the small things, how are you going to remember the big things? Man- you know The mind is a real dangerous neighborhood to travel by ourselves. You think the hood is bad? Try hanging out here by yourself.

Earl: It’s the worst. It’s the worst, man – I always say you can always spot an addict by the person that can’t stop talking. ‘Cause they can’t be in silence. There can’t be an idle moment.

Mike: You can tell when an addict’s lying, too.

Earl: Always.

Mike: You know why, because he’s talking but that’s what the ego is meant to do. The ego’s mean, he’s gotta to be crushed. That’s what I need, I need my ego crushed. Smashed, obliterated. But my ego has given me everything that I have. My ego’s given me fame. My ego’s given me hundreds of millions of dollars, the most beautiful woman in the world – how can I let this go, are you fucking nuts? How do I crush it, how do I let this go?

Earl: Dude, ego is my career. Rap music is all ego.

Mike: How you let it go, you know? It has to be crushed, but it gives you everything you want, but it takes back so much more in return.

Earl: I feel like – I was lucky enough to get my ego crushed, when I was, like, 16. When I got sent away.

Mike: You know, you’re only 20; you’re not crushed yet.

Earl: True –

Mike: It’ll be in hibernation for a while, but it comes back, that’s just how it is – it comes back to help you, it gives you confidence. Gives you a full sense of courage. It just does all that stuff. But it goes too far sometimes. You know, you can’t control it. It’s all about being in control. Like, your mind – if you did everything your mind told you to do, you do some really strange stuff. You’ll probably be in jail, you’ll be in trouble. But you know, it’s all about control. We all have to control our feelings. That’s the thing that separates us from animals.

Earl: One thing that my mom told me that stuck so much that I feel like relates to what you was just talking about is there being only two real primal emotions – fear and love. And like, the only thing that can combat fear is action. And there’s two actions. There’s fight and flight.

Mike: There’s nothing to fear but fear itself. It’s an illusion of fear. Fear is an illusion. If you gonna die, you gonna die anyway; it’s not something to fear, fear is not gonna help.

It’s going to be over soon. Somebody’s going to die, or somebody’s going to get sick, someone might leave. It’s not going to last forever. You know, it’s going to be over soon. You know, the thought of that never enters my mind. This is the reality of life. I watched that movie The Notebook. You ever watched that?

Earl: I haven’t watched it.

Mike: Ah, young man, I don’t even know if you understand that stage of life yet. Very interesting thing about that movie, very interesting, it’s one of the movies that makes me really vulnerable. It makes me very vulnerable, because you work so hard for something and you don’t want to let it go.

Earl: Mhmm.

Mike: Let me see. For instance, this is really interesting. It boggles me sometimes, I always wondered the way we determine our age.

Before Julius Caesar, because he made a year 365 days, how could we detect our age? How did we tell? Methuselah was 900, right? So back then it was probably weeks or something. So how did we detect how old we were, determine how old we were before Julius Caesar was born?

Earl: Before there was like a year system?

Mike: Yeah, how’s that one, that’s pretty tricky now, you think? So we don’t know how old we are.

Earl: Everything was based on the sun.  The sun. Setting, rising, over the course of the year, over the horizon.

Mike: Many moons, right? But when it comes down to really deep down, we don’t know anything. We don’t know anything. Nobody was actually there to tell, this is what actually happened. You know, no one can tell us; this is the real reason why Lincoln freed the slaves. No one can really say anything, they had to be there, you know, to tell us. When you think about it the world is, what? We don’t know how old the world is. But the written word is 6,000 years old. Six thousand years is a blink compared to the world, and the activity in the world. Six thousand years is nothing. Nothing.

Earl: That’s why all we got is right now.

Mike: Yeah, the moment. There’s no future in our past. Just experience. You know, we want to return to it, but we don’t want to close the door on it either. You know, that’s information so we don’t make the same mistakes.  There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, just don’t make the same ones. We don’t want to duplicate them.

Earl: I’ve got a quick question for you. One of the things I thought was really interesting you said in your documentary was: “There’s nothing like being young, and happy, and fighting.”

It sounds like such a contradiction, you know, to be happy and fighting.

Mike: Right you know this is interesting that you say that. That’s wild. Because when people see me and they say I’m coming back from what they say is the doldrums, or disaster, or something. But listen, you’ve got to be happy now. I’m not happy because I have received such success, I’m happy because – I’m not doing anything deceitful, I think, to my family. I’m successful because I don’t have to sleep with one of my friends’ girlfriends or wife or something. That’s why I’m successful, that’s success to me. I’m not dead, I’m not in the gutter – that’s success to me.

Earl: And it’s a profound statement because if you’re happy, you enjoy what you’re doing. And when you stop it just means you’re just going through the motions.

Mike: Absolutely, because you go through the motions and you are still successful. Until you run into someone who’s happier doing what he’s doing.

Earl: Exactly. So my question was at what point did you stop being happy? Like when did you start feeling that you were clocking in?

Mike: Wow, that’s awful, you know. Really early in my career, probably 14.

Earl: My last question, Mike, when you like achieve success like you have, how does that affect those around you – how do you get them to be motivated and not feel content?

Mike: It’s just strange to me how I have such a profound passion for my kids. I think about Just wanting to protect them. – You think id ever let my son fight a 14-year-old kid or something like me that has nothing, never had nothing?

Earl: Because he comes from a different place. It comes from desperation.

Mike: I look at my beautiful son, he’s so beautiful and handsome. And I think what a guy like me would do to this face. I would choke it, take a chunk of meat out of his head, bite his beautiful face. I would hurt him, and I’m just looking at him and I’m thinking your dad was one of them animals out there. I don’t expect my kids to be “fighters”; my kids never lived in a condemned building with their family. Most of them are at Ivy League schools, their mothers are good mothers, you know, they do good stuff with them. I don’t want my kids to be like me, I don’t want my daughter to date the guy like me. You know, a guy like me success is to take care of my children to take care of their life and make ‘em cushioned. I don’t want them to be around a people like me. You know, success for me would be that they never have the opportunity of being in the presence of someone like me.

 

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HEATH CERAMICS

Posted on by Jessica Bowler

THE ICONIC MID-CENTURY TABLEWARE BRAND HONORS ITS PAST AND BUILDS ON ITS LEGACY. 

Most couples filling out their wedding registries look for dishware and place settings at one of the well-meaning yet characterless chain stores that dot the suburbs. But for design enthusiasts with exacting eyes, and anyone with a passion for handmade housewares with real presence, there’s only one option: Heath. The ceramic brand was founded by Edith Heath in 1948 in Sausalito, California, and has come to represent the kind of pared-down mid-century aesthetic that looks as elegant and timeless today as it did more than 65 years ago. The company still makes rustic, muted-colored tableware in the original Sausalito factory, and its customers are so emotionally invested in Heath that they submit personal stories about their experiences with the products on the company’s website. And though the brand produces humble items like coffee mugs and dinner plates, some Heath pieces have made such an impact on the art community that they can be found in museums like MOMA and LACMA. While Edith passed away in 2005, her iconic brand is in good hands—designers Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic purchased the company in 2003, and are continuing her legacy of creating thoughtfully made “enduring objects.”

Bailey and Petravic first moved from San Francisco to Sausalito in 2002, looking for a slower-paced life and a closer connection to the natural world. Why Sausalito? “It was nice and clean, and the air smelled good,” says Bailey. “We had been living in the part of San Francisco and we’d go out to wash the side of the house, and it’d be covered with soot from the highway.” Unsurprisingly, both of them came from design backgrounds. “I was doing industrial design work for typical corporate clients, and sometimes taking that into the engineering phase,” says Bailey, who spent time as a footwear designer for Nike and also worked on tech products for clients like Motorola. “We were looking for something a little bit more fulfilling in our design work,” Petravic says, “where we had a stronger connection to the tangible element and the manufacturing process. When we worked together on the engineering side, we would create this whole plan and send it off to somebody, and they’d change it all. And you’d wonder why you bothered in the first place—somebody paid you for your work, and then somebody paid them to change it. That Heath was still manufacturing was what made it fascinating to us,” he explains. “As a designer, being able to close the loop on what you’re designing and what you’re making is what made it exciting.”

 

 

The two “disgruntled” designers were looking for a new project, says Bailey, “and we kind of stumbled upon Heath, because it was a fascinating building and we wanted to know what went on there.” “Not necessarily because, at that moment, we were thinking, ‘We should buy a pottery factory,’” laughs Petravic. Now they welcome admirers into their showrooms and studios to see where the clay is made, and how dishware is glazed and fired. But there’s not one “typical” Heath customer walking through those doors. “It ranges from the woman who got these 40 years ago on her wedding—and she’s completely nostalgic about the plates she’s had all those years—to her granddaughter who’s getting married, and her whole life is ahead of her,” says Bailey. “And her granddaughter just thinks it’s a beautiful, cool product that she appreciates for what it is today. We get a lot of customers from Japan, because I think they understand the beauty of the material and ceramics in general. But they also like that it represents this kind of American aesthetic.”

 

 

The long list of customer-submitted stories on the Heath website is a testament to the enduring mystique of the company and its products. “Cathy doesn’t believe me,” says Petravic, “but I swear someone came in one time and they told me about how they grew up off the grid with Heath dishes, and nothing but a potbelly stove in the house. And the dishes survived her raising three or four boys.” But the most common tale the couple hears is of Heath dishes being passed down to children, or even grandchildren. “Someone will come in with a story like, ‘I’m here because I just gave away my dishes to my daughter, who wanted them for years, and I want to buy myself a new set,’” Petravic says . “There’s a lot of pride in handing them down, because these kids have memories of these dishes they grew up with. That’s a very common thread, and I find it funny when someone wants to tell me a story like that, and I don’t let on that I’ve actually heard this story from someone else. They always think they’re the only ones, and they’re very excited about it.”

Aside from their work together, Cathy and Robin are also parents to a 9-year-old, Jasper, and two dogs “who are somewhat like children.” Working alongside a partner isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the couple’s very happy about their arrangement. “I think there’s certain people who have an affinity for working with their partner,” says Petravic, “and we are definitely those people. We were sort of looking for that—a life partnership that’s also related to what you do every day. You learn how to work together, and then all the sudden you have kids, and you realize you actually didn’t know how to work together. You just thought you did. And then you have to figure it out again.” Says Bailey, “But we probably had it better than a lot of people. When we had a kid, we were like, ‘Oh, we have to divide up the labor—this is like work.’”

 

 

There could theoretically be anxiety associated with taking over the reins of such an established brand, but Bailey and Petravic say the company’s legacy was a help, not a hindrance. “We have this wonderful path drawn, to reference,” says Bailey. “It makes so many other parts of our job easy. There’s already this story—we don’t have to make it up, we don’t have to make it something that it isn’t. I think the past fits nicely in the past—we’re just drawing a line off that into the future, and we can go in different directions. I think the company needs to share some of the values and some of the aesthetics [of the past], but it can go somewhere that we set it, somewhere it hasn’t been. So it doesn’t feel like pressure; it feels like an opportunity and it feels like something to guide you.” Petravic agrees: “In a lot of ways, we were fortunate in that we got a great jumping-off point. For a company, that first part of figuring out ‘Who are we? What are we about?’ is always hard. And what we got was a nudge in a certain direction.”

Neither of the company’s current owners feels compelled to change the way Heath’s pieces are made or move the aesthetic away from Edith Heath’s original intention. “We like making and designing things that are hopefully classic in some way, that are rooted in the materials,” says Bailey. “It’s not like we’re thinking, ‘Oh, should we make plastic lids for these things?’ It’s not even something we’d want to do.” That’s probably due in large part to the couple’s design background, says Petravic. “We appreciate the same values that created Heath and had driven it for decades before we even owned the company: the ideas around craftsmanship, and respect for materials, and drawing on materials for inspiration,” he says. “All of those things are things we share. We’ve taken it in our own direction, but there’s been that consistency throughout its entire history.”

 

 

But what is it exactly that has made Heath so beloved for so many decades, across so many cultural lines? “I think the aesthetic—that kind of classic ‘California’ thing is something that people feel is unique, and unique to Heath,” says Bailey. “I also think the nature of the product is close to people’s hearts, especially given how you receive it and how long you have it. It’s a product you usually buy slowly over time, or you get it when you move into a new home. And it’s an important part of your life—you touch it every day, you hold it, you wash it, you eat your meals on it with people you love. All that adds to why the product feels really close to people. But it’s also about the fact that it hasn’t changed too much. It’s something people can rely on.”

 

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