One Year Later

A year ago today Orfn died.

We shut down the blog for a week and made it password protected.

We let a select few friends and people that bought kit in.

All the homies posted. Told stories. Showed secret pictures.

It was probably the best it will ever be here.

I deleted every post after it was over.

It all went back into the void.

……
I wanted to go back into that “What is Landlords ?” question.

At it’s heart Landlords was the name Gkae came up with when we worked together in New York.

That’s in the early 00’s.

Can’t tell you exactly when.

You got to check out the Cheryl Dunn short film “bicycle gangs of new york” to get the perfect GKae quote.

I’m paraphrasing here because I haven’t watched it in a while-

Joey Garfield is like

“What is the Landlords. Why the Landlords?”

Gkae answers:

“Cuz we are the landlords. We own the streets, the buildings. Everything.”

……

Alright.

so here’s another part.

In the mid to late 90’s there’s this generation of messengers that were into track bikes. A lot of them (all of them?) used to be skateboarders and graffiti writers. Hardcore and punk music was part of the soundtrack. So when you met any of these people at the time or a couple years later, everyone was cool.

“cool, we have this weird background in common. ”

Cuz there was only a couple people into this shit in the early 90’s and then by the late 90’s it was already getting blown out.

So we came in the middle of that.

There’s important people in every city for it.

We respected the real OG’s.

We met people from other cities. We did our thing. We made it happen.

We were mean to the scrubs who came up under us.

As was the custom at the time—

on some kind of locals only vibe that was up in every scene

So a lot of these messengers that were part of it, you might have only heard their name before or you friend was friends with them or you never knew about them because they were so purely for their city.

There were dudes that were so ill everywhere that never left their city.

Or rarely left. But they were ill. Like no joke.

Some people stuck around some people drifted around.

So ORFN was one of these messengers.

Stefan from Hamburger Eyes introduced me to him.

He took me to a wall Aaron was working on.

Someone had dissed it the night before and he was going back to fix it up. I have flicks somewhere.

Oh you know in the Landlords book, the picture of Aaron’s zeus with the zo bag leaned up on it and the Hungry Waif stencils on the side walk? It’s that day.

Aaron was super cool, like instant homie.

We were there doing this art show and put him down with it right when we got there.

So time goes by…

He came and stayed at Danlord’s in Germantown years later.

It was that kind of connection with in the crew.

That was around 2011.

He stayed in PA for a little while and then moved back to SF.

I always figured I’d run back into him, you know, 10 years later .

But that’s not how that story was going to happen.

….

I’m guilty of thinking there’s always going to be time.

—–

After Aaron passed I wanted to tell the story of all these people that were part of that time.

And i wanted to make the name bigger.

I pictured all these different crews in different cities that had the same vibe and same passions.

But representations of their city.

Not like a generic all city brand kind of thing.

So all the kit goes along with that.

The oversized logos. The black and white. The constant pumping of it.

It’s for rep.

I know it’s not for everyone into bikes.

I think really we repel a good amount of people with our attitude and interests.

But I don’t want those people anyway you know?

This shit isn’t for everyone. It’s not for squares.

I just want a ill crew of landlords in every city.

So that’s what we’re doing.

—