Camera Roll - LA Edition
Things that caught my attention on last week's trip to the west coast.
Coupla Things
Hey everyone - been a minute, hope you’re well. First off, welcome to all the new subscribers. A grip of you came over by recommendation of the homie Nolan and others just because you have exquisite taste and self discovery skills. Either way, welcome and I hope you enjoy it here.
Since my last newsletter, I was fortunate to have been interviewed a few times by some fantastic Substack writers and wanted to share the links with you.
The first is with
, a run culture newsletter written by . We chatted about how running has found its way into 3sixteen’s DNA - think of it as a bit of an extension on my last post. Here’s a link to the interview.- reached out to see if we could grab coffee and chat for his publication Front of Book. We had a really pleasant talk about all things 3sixteen, fatherhood, and more. Check it out here.
This last one is an interview together with my partner Johan and lead designer Wesley for fashion sustainability writer
’s publication. I feel like the spirit of Alec’s questions really allowed us to explore the why behind what we do at 3s. Read it here.
Sitting down to pen a full-on newsletter is something that I often find hard to do. I’m a bit neurotic about my writing and given that I already do it often for my day job, sometimes the energy levels are a bit tapped by the end of the work week. This caught up to me two years ago when the Substack went on hiatus and once again, I find myself falling behind. The thing is, I enjoy writing and I want to do more of it. So I am trying some new post formats to see whether they will allow me to fire off quick hit updates while still being able to work on longer form pieces.
I think that you can tell a lot about what moves someone by what they stop to take pictures (or videos) of on their phone. Yeah I hear you on the “be here now” stuff but I’m gonna keep taking photos of what I like so leave me alone. There’s something more low-stakes about a quick snap vs something you really take time to bust out the film camera or the “real” camera for, and because of that, I feel like phone photos can be more fun. Last week, I traveled to LA for the opening of our new flagship store and here are a few things that I saw along the way.
A beautiful sunrise I caught at JFK before taking off.
I spent the morning with my good friend Excel after landing in LA. He showed me some new stuff he’s working on with All Time High, we played fetch with Bruce, and I finally got to ride in his Porche 356. We got some crazy burritos for lunch at La Azteca in Monterey Park and then hung at the new shop for a while.
I’m told that there are a lot of cafe’s in LA that are worth visiting, but Go Get Em Tiger will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s where I got to know Jaymie Lao, our good friend who ended up overseeing our entire Wilson’s cafe concept last year. I also really love their approach to coffee and service (something that I’d be happy to take a deeper dive on another time). There’s something special about enjoying a coffee somewhere that you know you can rarely access; it heightens the experience.
What you’re looking at above is the Business & Pleasure, a flight of drinks that was created by Go Get Em Tiger’s founders, Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski. You start off with the Business - a single shot of espresso straight up. You chase it with a fizzy hoppy tea that acts as a palate cleanser, and then you finish it off with the Pleasure, a shaken coffee drink consisting of the other single shot of espresso, house-made almond & macadamia milk with a little bit of simple syrup. We used to have a GGET near our old shop in the Arts District (which sadly closed down mid-pandemic) and every time I visited LA, I’d stop by for one. In our new space at Row DTLA, there happens to be a GGET location a few steps away. It feels like home already.
Johan and I had the pleasure of visiting the Oakley global HQ in Orange County. Our good friend Bernard Antolin of Acquire helped set the meeting up and we were treated to a pretty in-depth tour of the facilities and the office space, including their museum. Some things that really stuck with me were Jim Jannard’s relentless approach towards problem solving and the high value he placed on design that did not need a logo to be identifiable. Few people know that Oakley has and still continues to manufacture a large portion of their lineup in house, in the very building we visited. Their obsessive approach towards optical accuracy and purity was also something that I enjoyed learning about. It’s kind of a drive from LA but if you’re a superfan and are curious, the ground floor lobby of the Oakley Bunker is open to the public, including the aforementioned museum. Worth a visit for sure.
We’ll be posting a lot more photos of the shop buildout soon but here’s one I snapped in the early afternoon as the sun was streaming through the curtains. We tried to be intentional with every aspect of the shop, working with friends and suppliers to create an identifiable throughline for anyone who is interested in digging deeper. For these curtains, we turned to our factory that we work with in India to help source and dye the fabric. The linen was woven in India and then dabu (mud) dyed by hand for a subtle, mottled color and texture. It was impossible to tell if the weight and color would work for our intended usage and we didn’t have time to sample out a bunch of options on such a tight timeline. They couldn’t have turned out better.
I always try to bring back gifts for the family, and one of our neighbors at Row DTLA is a specialty dog shop called Pretty Good Boy. I settled on this plush baguette chew toy for Ayla - you can put treats into the little baguette slits for enrichment. I’m happy to report that she absolutely loves it.
Since I started running two years ago, I try to sneak a few miles in every time I travel. There’s something about sightseeing on foot (or on bike) that is unmatched. I was blessed with cool temps last week which made for some nice easy runs around downtown. I still haven’t had a chance to visit the Broad; perhaps I’ll make it happen on my next visit.
I met a lot of great people at our grand opening party. Shop parties are kind of a whirlwind - you have to host people, greet people, introduce people, throw out garbage, make sure the beer’s cold, and ensure that everyone’s having a good time. It’s pretty intense. I noticed a young man who came on his own with a camera and hung out the entire time, snapping photos and chatting it up with our other customers. Towards the end of the party he came up and introduced himself to me. His name is Waylan and over 20 years ago, I was his youth group counselor when I was living and working in Chicago. I didn’t recognize him at first but was so thankful to reconnect with him. He asked to take my photo (right) and I said cool but let’s also get a selfie. He’s a runner so I invited him out to our community run the next morning.
We’ve now hosted a number of runs out of NYC but never in LA. This past Sunday morning we finally did it with the help of some friends from K/RC. Waylan showed up,
showed up, along with over 30 other people. This was a really nice thing to bring to LA and I hope that we can do it again.
Sunday evening after the grand opening festivities finally ended and the shop had closed, Johan and I stayed back to look over the space, clean up and tinker with the sound system. We realized that it was dinnertime and Johan suggested that we go to Villa’s Tacos at Grand Central Market for their famous queso tacos. I have never had them before and when we arrived they told us that almost everything was sold out except for the chorizo. We shrugged and got one each.
It starts with a nixtamalized blue corn tortilla; on the griddle, they cover it with cotija cheese, so much that it extends off the edge and crisps up on the griddle. Then comes the meat, crema, onions, and guacamole. In an almost-empty food hall, we ate these tacos and caught up on personal stuff after a long week of work. It was really nice.
It was a great weekend. I really loved seeing the relationships you've built over two decades. More to come, I'm sure.
And I'm very jealous of that Porsche.
Running and/or cycling in a place you’re visiting is the best. You’re able to see so much more of a new place at a pace that your senses can manage, as opposed to the incomprehensible pace of a car or public transit, and there’s something magical about that.