“Before fixed-gear bikes became de rigueur for urban aesthetes, they were the weapon of choice for Japan’s fearless Keirin cyclists. A gladiatorial incarnation of track cycling that dates back to 1948, the Japanese sporting phenomenon operates by an intricate set of rules that sees competitors jostling for position on steeply banked tracks at lightning fast speeds, all but encouraging spectacular crashes. In today’s film for NOWNESS, Jonathan de Villiers (whose fashion photography and portraiture has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wallpaper* and Fantastic Man) traveled to the national Keirin school in Tokyo and the Tachikawa and Yokkaichi velodromes to decode the strategy that governs the racing phenomenon. “I knew next to nothing about it when I went,” says de Villiers, “but I’m a big admirer of the anthropological documentary where you get taken into a whole different world. And what a strange, special and complex universe it turned out to be.” The state-run industry amasses tens of billions of dollars in gambling revenue each year.”
To Whom it may concern:via High Snobiety
After 9 years of having retail spots in SF, I am selling our last SF shop on Hayes street. We had a great run in SF and I appreciate all the customers and friends we made through the shops over the years. As most of you know, I started my brand, HUF, through the shops. I never could anticipate how well it would be received and what it would grow into. In order to be the best I can be at producing clothing and footwear for my brand, I have to give up my original vision of having a shop where I sold other people’s brands. I’m pretty happy about the opportunity to focus on the HUF brand full-time and feel its time to pass the torch in SF to a new owner that will provide a cool, multi-line sneaker shop for the shoppers in Hayes. We will still be open for a little while in SF while the shop changes hands. We will continue to keep our HUF shop open on Fairfax in Los Angeles where we carry the complete HUF line as well as HUFshop only specialty product, from time to time. Being a skateboarder was a great launch pad for me to own a shop and the shops were a great opportunity to learn how to make clothing. Making clothes helped me learn to make shoes and skating in them helps me learn how to make them better. The business is an extension of myself and ever evolving. Many of the familiar faces you saw in the shops behind the counters over the years have moved on to help me at the brand with design, sales and marketing. The original HUF crew is alive and well. We look forward to bringing quality skateboard lifestyle apparel and footwear for years to come. If you are looking for something and can’t find it elsewhere, check out our site. www.hufsf.com . Thanks to everyone who ever set foot in a HUF shop in SF. We had a great time and hope you did too!
Sincerely,
Keith Hufnagel" - High Snobiety
As Melissa Bowerman reached deep into a cupboard for a blanket against the night chill, she discovered a box stuffed with mud-caked shoes and a rusty appliance.The article in its entirety can be read here.
She showed the things to her husband, Jon, and his brother, Tom, who had found them buried near the house in Coburg where their father, former Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman, lived for decades with his wife, Barbara.
Melissa said she could sell the things at auction — she had a good cause in mind — but the two men laughed.
“‘No one’s going to want those,’” Melissa recalled the men saying last spring.
Oh, how wrong they were.
Excitement from the discovery would ripple across the state, from the headquarters near Beaverton of the company Bill co-founded to the tiny town of Fossil hours away where he spent his childhood. In addition to shoes with treads handmade by Bill, Melissa had stumbled upon Nike’s Holy Grail: the long-lost waffle iron that inspired him to craft the revolutionary sole that launched an athletic empire.
