New shirts/Pool Trade Show

So we're off to Vegas. It's been a really busy couple of weeks/months and it's finally here. We've got around 30 new shirts so we're pretty excited, plus we have a corner booth at the show on the middle aisle so that's fucking great. Shirts pictured above include Rasputin, Oh Diana!, Wolf Tear, Soupy Sal's, Fingerless, Student of Life, Hot Air Balloons, and Crocodile. The Croc tee is a remake of an old favorite of mine, Last Night a Sticker Saved my Life, but this time in Japanese, why not right? If you're going, we're booth #1006. Gonna be hot in Vegas!

Jeff Claassen Grand Opening Party

Last night was Jeff's Grand Opening Party and it was a ball. A ton of new art from Jeff, Stenzskull, Blake Foster, and Mnkr, the walls were filled, and his new gallery has some huge fucking walls. Music by DJ Wiggins?, cupcakes by Eclair Bakery, Pyramid brewskis, and a raffle (no party is complete without a raffle right?). We didn't win shit. Anyway, it was fun.

John Hughes Memorial Breakfast/Eclair Bakery

If you're ever on the Central Coast looking for some tasty baked goods, from vegan cupcakes, to fresh eclairs, the Eclair Bakery in Arroyo Grande is the definitely the joint. It'll probably be Jeremy (he owns the place) or Kielly that greet you. We're headed there in the morning for a John Hughes Memorial Breakfast. Gonna be tasty, can't wait. RIP John, thanks for all the laughs.

4th of July weekend continued

Here we are at our ever so giving friends house in Pasadena for the 10th time this year. Tessa & Derek are the most generous people I know and their house has become sort of a middle of the road hangout for everybody from here to there. 4th of July weekend=lots of poker, food, booze, poker, booze. Poker picture, starting on the left going clockwise, that's Derek and Tessa (both amazing in many ways), Kandy is unfortunately hidden by Amy's chin, Phil, Jeff, Me (apparently super fucking excited to have a chair full of beer), and finally Amy.

Second photo, pictured left to right, Kandace, Amy, Emilie, Elizabeth, and Tessa.

Emilie Simon/Pasadena 4th of July weekend

Not quite sure if jumping through time and space is the proper way to write a blog, but I didn't really anticipate the effort it would take to keep up with it. That being said, if you haven't heard of Emilie Simon, you're crazy.

She has a beautiful voice, she writes her own music (besides the covers of course, Bowie, Nirvana, etc.), mixes her own beats, and on top of all that, she has this incredibly bad-ass arm contraption thing that controls her sound effects! You can see the silhouette in the pic. Look her up.

Renegade Craft Fair L.A. & S.F.

This is Nick and Andy from Campfire Goods . These awesome dudes were our neighbors the first time we attended POOL in Vegas and we were lucky enough to run into them again at Renegade L.A. Got me a Helvetica shirt from em too. After L.A. is was on to S.F. for the next show at Ft. Mason. We headed up a day early and had dinner with a bunch of other brands from all over the place. Loyalty&Blood from Brooklyn, SuperMaggie, Mary Ink, half of Campfire, Sue, Kate and the whole Renegade crew. It was a gloriously crappy S.F. evening but fun nonetheless. Sold some shirts, sold some art, gave out a crapload of stickers. After the show we went out for some burritos and beers with our behind us neighbor at the show, very talented photographer Misha Ashton and her boyfriend Cade. The night was relatively short but they were awesome and we had a blast.

Michael Jackson Tribute Poster cont.

Here we are at Renegade L.A. and this is M.J. super fan Nicole Papincak. Nicole was the most gracious recipient of our first M.J. double print. She was also one of the lucky few who were able to attend the memorial service at the Staples Center, and as you can see in the pic, still has here entrance bracelet on. Nicole in her own words:

Michael Jackson R.I.P.

First off let me start by saying M.J. was a bad-ass. He pulled off most everything he tried. One glove, check.

Crotch-grabbing, check. Moonwalking, a monkey friend, check check. He couldn't be touched and probably never will be. He did however, seem like he was continuously sliding further and further into Crazytown. We all know the slide was built by an accumulation of things ranging from a far less than normal childhood to being one of the most popular and recognizable people on the planet. He also left some questions unanswered. Michael was one-of-a-kind, and during those days after his death it really hit me that he had been part of my life pretty much forever, and as much as I enjoyed giving him a hard time, I was truly going to miss him.

I stayed up pretty much all night the day he died making this poster. It's obviously of a much younger Michael. Call me nostalgic.

It's too bad that now that he's dead, he'll finally skyrocket out of debt, and back into the black.

I know I know, I'm Bad, I'm Bad.

The beginning of our MNKR blog

Hello to all you wonderful people out there. This is Kandace from MNKR and this is our new blog. I am thinking I will write these blogs sometimes and hopefully Matt our designer will get in on the action as often as he can. I might need some assistance coming up with fun things to entertain you with. So here's to new beginnings!
We started this blog because of Jeff Claassen of the Jeff Claassen Gallery in San Luis Obisbo. He has once again inspired us to venture into new areas for our business. This seems to be a fun way to keep you up to date on events and new things going on with ourselves and all things MNKR. Also, we can post fun stuff we enjoy from videos, cool artists we meet at shows, places we go and whatever comes to mind. We are hoping to start out writing on this blog at least once a week and as it gets easier and more familiar we will try to post things more often. So that's about it for now. I will leave you with a photo of Matt putting together the 'Candy Kaleidoscope' puzzle that his sister gave us. Let me tell you, we thought it would be a quick fun puzzle to put together, but man this was quite an endeavor. After a few beers some stealing of eachothers pieces it all worked out just fine.