ON SNEAKERS, T-SHIRTS, GETTING OVER AND SELLING OUT

SOLVING THE RIDDLE OF HIS $250 MYSTERY SHOES

THE GENIUS AND STUPIDITY OF DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN

There are two ways to play the consensus game. You can play it like a tug of war, where you pull as hard as you can and try to drag everyone a few inches in your direction. Or you can play it like bowling, and try to knock down all the pins by rolling straight down the middle. Cronkite, the Times, and the New Republic are bowlers. O’Reilly, Rush, Chomsky, and the Nation are tug of warriors. You get the idea.

Tug-of-war gets quick results, but bowling has its advantages as well. Roll a few strikes in a row, and pretty soon people are looking to you to define exactly where the middle is. The best bowlers, in other words, can wind up get promoted from player to referee. Rob Walker is just such a bowler. The New York Times Magazine “Consumed” columnist has spent so long mapping the territory where notions of cool and consumer product lust hit the marketplace that he’s been appointed the semi-official keeper of the map.

In between the lines of Walker’s Times articles are hints of a guy who reads the Baffler, listens to punk rock, and feels deeply for the plight of real people with problems larger than what Bape colorway to wear to tonight’s Misshapes. He did, after all, write an entire book of ruminations on the landscape of his old hometown, New Orleans. You feel like he’s gamely trying to suppress his gag reflex as he wades through the diamond-toothed junkyard of New York’s “underground” street culture.

Or maybe we’re just projecting. Like we said, Walker knows how to bowl.

Walker’s most recent Times Magazine cover story, “The Brand Underground” closes with aNYthing impresario A-Ron the Don dropping this bit of science: “If you don’t sell out, you sell out on yourself.”

The question that A-Ron doesn’t answer, a question that Walker’s piece hints at without ever quite coming out and saying, is who or what are you selling out when your “personal brand” never stood for much of anything to begin with? Is there even such a thing as selling out any more? “We no longer live in a world of the Mainstream and the Counterculture,” Walker writes. We live in a world of multiple mainstreams and countless counter-, sub-, and counter-sub-cultures.” The difference between the subcultures of the past and the subcultures of today, he explains, is that the brands themselves are not just an expression of the subcultural movement. They are the sum total of the movement itself. Creating a new brand of sneaker or t-shirt is now accorded the same kind of rebel approval that once was reserved for real cultural output—stuff like art, writing, music. The stuff that no one seems to have the time to make any more.

Walker himself has managed to avoid the national epidemic of technologically-induced creative impotence, a condition that’s reduced an entire generation to keyboard-clacking Starbucks Borgs. This is a guy who knows how to observe the tempest of New York without getting swept away by it, a man who wields his daily information flows like a jockey wields his crop. As a writer, Walker seems to have the ability to make the economy’s lightning flow of products and trends time stop on dime, and then disappear into his magical wizard jar to ruminate. We know he has a jar, because he cranks out analyses of stuff we only heard about three weeks ago that seem like they must have taken a year to write. Where we see flux, he can make it seem frozen. We began our conversation by telling him as much, in hopes that he would reveal his wizardly secrets.

HOW TO KEEP PACE WITH THE PRESENT WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND

The Vulture: For most of us mortals, keeping up with what’s going on tends to turn your brain to putty. If you really want to keep up you wind up staying out late and partying and that makes it even harder to do anything with whatever ideas you might have obtained. How do you find these points of balance between timeliness and timelessness, between collecting information and forming it into something, especially when the news is turning over so quickly? What’s your secret?

Rob Walker: Hah. Wow. Hmm … what’s my secret. Many people would dispute the idea that I’m keeping up with everything.

V: Well, you did a feature story on the iPod in 2003. A story on Pabst Blue Ribbon in 2003. Red Bull in 2002. And now aNYthing and the Hundreds, once again right on time. There are a lot of twelve-point bucks hanging up in the Rob Walker lodge. You can only chalk this up to luck for so long.

Rob Walker: The exact culture you’re referencing when you mention aNYHthing and The Hundreds, that can be mind numbing to keep up with —blogs like Slam X Hype, Hypebeast, High Snobiety, or even Cool Hunting, they’re posting 20 or 30 things a day, and it’s like, well, how can you keep up with it all? So I guess for me it’s two things.

First, I’m not a cool hunter. If you’re like “oh, you just wrote about this thing that I mentioned on my blog an entire year ago,” I don’t really care. For me, that’s not where the action is. It’s fine to go and do that and there’s clearly plenty of demand for it. But it’s not really something I want to compete with. I don’t how that stuff works. I can’t play that game, and maybe most important, I don’t think my personal taste is particularly relevant to what I’m trying to do. My thing isn’t predicated on the idea that I have amazingly great taste and that I know what’s cool. I don’t really know what’s cool. Instead, what I’m doing is trying to look at what has an audience and ask: why does it have an audience, what’s interesting about that audience, what’s different about that audience? So I have a little bit of a longer view as a result of all that.

The other thing is that if you have that heat-seeker mentality, if you’re always going for what’s cool right now, well, the only thing people love more than declaring that something’s “next” is declaring that it’s “over.” But if you take PBR, people have been declaring that brand over for years now, but as far as I can tell, it’s more popular now than when I wrote about it. So he fact that something is over with ten people in downtown Manhattan isn’t terribly relevant to me. I’m not a consultant brought in by Pepsi to tell them what will be cool six months from now. I’m not dealing in futures, I’m dealing in realities. I’m looking what’s actually happening, not what we think will happen.

V: But compared to the rest of the mass media you appear to be something of a coolhunter or a heat-seeker. That’s one source of your authority, is that you’ve consistently managed to hit things when they’re about to cross over from these little blogs to being bought by millions of people.

Rob Walker: I talk to my editor or to my wife or just other people I know who are smart but maybe not deeply involved in whatever consumer trend it is that I’m looking at, and I try to tell what’s the part of a story that’s got their attention. I’m not locked into a single peer group that’s hyper tuned in all the time to this idea of “this is the latest” or “that’s so over,” and I think that probably helps me a little bit with filtering. You’re right that there’s a lot of stuff I’ve known about for a long time and I don’t write about, largely because I don’t know if it’s really going to cross over or not. I sort of think: Let’s see if this thing really takes hold. I started this brand underground story a year and a half ago, in a very speculative way. I’m working on a book, and I approached the Hundreds and Barking Irons as a part of that project. I told my editor I was going to keep an eye on them for a while, because I thought there was something interesting there, and I didn’t know if it could be a magazine story or not, but it might be. In the beginning, you don’t know how it’s going to shake out. Then, in the middle of all that, the Retail Mafia shows up at Magic with an immense booth underwritten by these big partner brands. That could have really put all the Retail Mafia guys on the map. But it’s just as interesting to talk to A-Ron months and months after the fact and hear him say, “You know what, I wasn’t really happy with that.” It’s interesting either way. I could have written about the phone when it came out and been like “Look! The hot new phone!” I could have done a column on that phone as a window into corporate collaboration with the downtown scene. They threw a big party. There was a lot of hype. But it seemed like it was better to wait, to see where it would go from there.

V: So you keep a few burgers going on the grill and you have a good gut sense of when they’re ready and when they need a little more time.

RW: Exactly. If you do it this way it allows you to have a little more control. For the Consumed column, the companies always want you to write about something right when it’s being released. I don’t do that because, well, it has to prove itself in the marketplace and then I might write about it if there’s something interesting to say. I’m not giving readers tips on what you should buy. I’m trying to play a slightly different game, which is, again, why are people buying into this and why is it interesting?

WHY MARK ECKO IS DOWN WITH THE MASSES

V: What kind of feedback have you be getting on your Brand Underground piece?

RW: Some people read a story like this and think ‘Well this is no different than every other subculture that’s had a style element, a material element,’ you know? Whether it’s what kind of shoes the Ramones wore or how the Sex Pistols dressed or even the way that the beats dressed, there’s always been some kind of style element to subculture. Skateboarding, hip-hop, punk, whatever. What they can’t quite get their head around and what’s different—at least to me—is that in this iteration of subculture, the material is the subculture. The brands are what it’s all about. They’re not referencing back to some other thing that’s happening right now, some new music genre or political movement or whatever —they’re it.

And then some people who are more directly involved in this subculture of course read it and so: Oh, he doesn’t get it, or that’s old news, and so on. That’s all par for the course, whatever you write, people are going to come to it with a wide range of perspectives – a Baby Boomer who’s never heard of this stuff is obviously going to react differently from a 22-year-old whose part of the LES scene right now.

There’s been intense interest in this story in certain quarters, but the truth is I don’t think this story had quite the same broad appeal of, say, a story on buzz marketing, where the cocktail party version of the story is: “Hey, your neighbor who is talking to you about a jar of pickles might be on the take.”

V: Not that your other pieces haven’t hit people, but maybe when you pick a slightly narrower topic it connects on a deeper level with the people that it does connect with. I think a lot of folks were like “Whoa, maybe there really is nothing meaningful underneath all of these t-shirts and sneakers.”

RW: Well, I want to be careful about saying there’s nothing underneath it. I’m not really saying that. It is what it is, and I’m not suggesting that it’s vacuous.

V: No, vacuous is the wrong word. I’m just saying that self-contained. It’s not referencing any broader cultural movement outside of itself.

RW: A lot of the people who are involved in this world, a lot of them are sort of at a crossroads right now. They’re trying to figure out where this is all going to go. Are these entrepreneur brand people going to cross over and succeed, and what does it mean if they do? What counts as success? Will the whole thing be reduced to a section in Target, a series of knockoffs?

V: How do you think these questions will be resolved?

RW: I think some of them will find a way to make it. I think a lot of them will probably learn the hard way that scale is difficult, especially when you’re trying to protect these really careful architectures of meaning. A year ago I wrote a story about Mark Ecko. In some ways he reflects this thing, but his brand was always attached to the idea of hip-hop. There are people in the brand underground who say they don’t want to end up like Ecko and be all over the place and lose their cred in the process. But the thing about Mark Ecko is that he was never a downtown scene guy. He never had any qualms about appealing to a broader market. He had this particular idea and wanted to project it out as far as it could go. He didn’t agonize about whether he was going to be invited to some party, because he wasn’t invited to begin with. A lot of these brand underground entrepreneurs are going to come to the same crossroads eventually. Every day you get a day older and reach a certain point where maybe you want to have kids, so you have to find a way to make a real living.

WHY NO ONE SAYS “NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF” ANY MORE

V: So do you see anything wrong with where downtown New York culture is right now?

RW: The thing I sometimes had trouble with was how self-referential it all is. There are a lot of really creative, smart, energetic men and women involved with it who are passionate about what they’re doing. My only criticism of them would be that a lot of times there’s just not a lot of content beneath it, it really boils down to just the coolness of itself, and the scene itself. I’m not against the idea of having a brand that actually says something, but then, well, what are you going to say? I mean what is your idea? I’m sort of open to the possibility that a brand can express an idea, but it would be interesting to see some more adventurousness about actually having ideas. And I think there are people involved in this brand underground thing that feel the same way, and they’re trying to here and there to take it to some other level. We’ll see.

V: But like you said, this is where the heat is. Sometimes it seems like the fewer ideas there are underneath something, the more heat it tends to draw through ambiguity. Sometimes it seems like the less meaning there is underneath a brand, the more the heat will rush in to fill the vacuum.

RW: I think that happens a lot.

V: I like how your piece avoided blaming any of the vacuousness on the individuals involved. You showed them grappling with it too, which suggests the lack of meaning is a function of some external condition. Why is this the way it is right now?

RW: There are always going to be people that want to be in on something that other people don’t understand, that want to get something that you don’t get. It’s a common human trait. Subcultures change, but the way they operate remained the same for years, until very recently. In 1985, I was someone who listened to records that weren’t on the radio, before Napster and all that, and of course part of the attraction was precisely this fact that it was all under the radar, most people didn’t get it, and so on.. To hear a Dead Kennedys record in 1985, you had to go somewhere. Someone had to actually tell you about it.

V: Like an older sibling or record store clerk.

RW: Or a friend or whatever. And that by itself just made you feel like, “I’m part of something.”

Anyway,, there’s so much discussion of this brave new world that will be less mainstream, how there will be all these niches that we all have access to. But that’s always been there. In some ways it all seems a lot more mundane now. When the Dead Kennedys did songs like “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” — that’s not just outside the mainstream. That’s making an aggressive decision not to participate. That’s deciding that you’ll never be in the Top 40.

V: Yeah, they’re defining the whole thing.

RW: And there’s sort of a parallel there with this culture, the brand underground’s desire to be insider-y and off the grid.

V: Do you see any of that “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” approach now? Going to a trade show and putting a sheet in front of what you’re selling seems more like forcing the mainstream to line up behind a velvet rope than rejecting it.

RW: You’re right. It’s not a complete rejection. And it’s the other element that’s been injected in this: an attitude of luxury and exclusivity. That does suggest some rejection of the mainstream, but it isn’t just from the position of the rebel outsider. Some of it is almost snobbery.

V: There was some of that in your piece, the bit about the “masses,” and the people who don’t “get it” and the worry of a product being dumbed down …

RW: Another striking thing is the quantity of referencing to hip-hop and punk in this subculture. Those are very old cultural forms at this point! They date back 25 or 30 years.

V: All the people peddling this stuff were born way too late to have possibly been there.

RW: The story mentions the Hundreds’ Circle Jerks / Tommy Boy shirt. The Circle Jerks were operating in the early 80s. More than 20 years ago. Can you imagine being some indie rock person or whatever from 1986 giving props to the sort of bloated Zeppelin-style rock of 20 years earlier? That’s about the point when that stuff started to be called “Classic Rock,” and everything about that idea just seemed absurd.

WHY CERTAIN SNEAKERS MIGHT BE WORTH $250 ON SNEAKERS, AND WHEN YOU OUGHT AND OUGHT NOT TO WEAR THEM

V: What’s the last thing you bought that you didn’t need? Something that you agonized over buying and then finally sprung for.

RW: As a consumer?

V: Yes. And I understand that your column is in no way an expression of your personal consumer tastes.

RW: Right. But I have to admit, the column doesn’t reflect my personal consumption habits, but it’s probably affected them. I can give you one example. As a result of being sort of aware of the brand underground culture, I ended up buying V: —they would they think you were trying to be down or whatnot—

RW: Those were the TUK Monkeyboots, good solid $60 boots. On a personal level I try to have as little logo-ing as possible, which is tough with sneakers. The Nikes have the swoosh, the Jordans have the jumpman, the Adidas has the stripes, the Reebok stuff I couldn’t really wear. The Chuck Taylors I stopped wearing at some point … that’s a long story. I tend to like clean simple stuff. I’m not looking for the blowout colors, the Bapes. I’m not trying to attract attention.

V: I really liked that piece you wrote for Powell’s Bookstore about your name. You’re right that most everyone who’s involved with this scene has altered their name into some kind of quasi-tag or flyer-friendly logo device.

RW: That’s the influence of graffiti in a lot of ways. There are a lot of parallels between street art and branding. Having a memorable name gets you a long way. Look at Neck Face. I think his name has helped him a lot. I mean he’s done all the things he needs to do. He’s up everywhere and he’s untouchable and for real, but I think his name is part of it too. It’s just fun to say “Neck Face.”

V: Yeah, it’s a weirdly gross name. And his stuff is aggressively gross too.

RW: Yes, it’s disturbing and intriguing. I think if I had to do it all over again I’d have a cooler name. People regularly send me the PBR story and say “you should check this out,” and I’m like “yeah, I wrote that.” If I had a more memorable name, maybe that wouldn’t happen.

FOR THERE TO BE A SCENE, THERE MUST BE RULES

V: Your story shows a real fluency in the orthodoxy of the downtown New York scene. There are certain things you’re supposed to do and certain ways you’re supposed to act, and part of your story is how making yourself into a giant brand that collaborates with corporations is no longer forbidden by the orthodoxy. Are there any other tenets or unwritten rules you can share?

RW: There’s a very powerful orthodoxy about where you sell your stuff. Say you have a start-up shoemaker who puts something in Urban Outfitters. Certain people will shun it. It’s hard to say why the rules are what they are, why it’s okay to be in Barney’s but not Urban. And for some people it’s not okay to be at Barney’s. In the story I talk about parody shirts, where you tweak a famous logo and put your own logo on it. Fresh Jive did a shirt where they bent their logo into Stüssy’s. It looks like Stüssy but it says Fresh Jive, and Stüssy sued them for it. Someone who explained this to me said Fresh Jive was in the wrong, that it’s okay to remix stuff from companies further up the ladder, but that you’re not allowed to go across. You can tweak big brand logos but you can’t mess with the logos of other scene-oriented streetwear brands. That’s another rule that exists for no particular reason, and that’s something you have to absorb if you want to be a part of the culture.

V: The rules aren’t written down, and if you have to ask, well …

RW: It’s interesting to me where this stuff comes from. Like New Era caps, well that’s the cap, that’s the only cap. You can’t do anything with any other cap. That kind of thing seems to come out of nowhere. It’s not that I think the rules are wrong. You have to have those kind of rules to have a scene.

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