HARDLIFE APPAREL CO.
I need to tell you where this hoodie actually comes from.
Not the design process. Not the colorway selection. I mean the real origin — the place that's been sitting in the back of my mind since I started this brand in Philadelphia in 2006.
Venice Beach, California. Specifically the stretch of concrete along the boardwalk that most people walk past without knowing what happened there.
In the 1970s a group of kids from the neighborhood they called Dogtown — the area sitting between Venice and Santa Monica — changed skateboarding permanently. They came out of the surf scene. Jeff Ho had a shop on Main Street in Santa Monica, and the Zephyr Skate Team that came out of that shop became the Z-Boys. What they did wasn't technical. It was instinctual. They took how it felt to ride a wave and put it on concrete. Empty swimming pools during the California drought became their training ground. The way they skated hadn't existed before them.
Jay Adams was unlike anyone. You couldn't teach what he had. Tony Alva made it look like controlled chaos — he was the one who took skateboarding vertical and proved it could go somewhere nobody had imagined. Stacy Peralta had the vision to see beyond the moment — he went on with George Powell to build Powell Peralta into something that defined a generation of skaters worldwide. Jim Muir carried the Dogtown name forward and made it a legitimate brand. Peggy Oki was doing what the guys were doing before most of them figured out it was possible — and she did it without making a big deal out of it.
By the early 1980s Venice Beach itself became the spot. No official park. Wooden ramps that the elements and the skating would destroy and someone would rebuild. Wall rides. Airs off whatever was available. The ocean sitting right there behind everything like it always had.
I was fortunate enough to be there for some of that. Skating those temporary wooden ramps, getting to know the people who made that place what it was. Jessie Martinez — who most people know as the man who later fought to get the Venice Beach Skate Park built and made it happen — was part of that world. Being around those people, in that place, during that time shaped how I think about what a brand is supposed to mean.
[PHOTO: Brooks of HRDLF — Venice Beach, California, 1980s]
The Graffiti Beach Hoodie is a direct line back to all of it. The color. The lettering. The energy. Philadelphia built this brand but California lives in its DNA.
150 units. Black zip-up. Dropping April 2nd.
You're on this list. That means you get it 24 hours before the public.
April 1st. Midnight. hrdlf.com.
— HRDLF
"April 1st. Midnight. hrdlf.com/products/graffiti-beach-tie-dye-black-zip-up