What if we told you five years ago we had no idea what were going to do when bells would stop dictating our schedule. What if I told you sprawling around on four poly-urethane wheels, or a set of skinny wheels, we all were able to be introduced to culture of folks that were into the same shit we were into. A culture of people who went against the grain and felt out of place all the time. A culture of misfits, weed-smokers, skateboarders, and graffiti writers. A selection of folks with so much shit going on at home and in our heads but never really speaking about it. So we let those thoughts roll around our heads like pinballs and let it shape us. We got lost, downtown hearing different vernacular. So those conversations never occurred and to say the least, we felt a little out of place. Where do we exist in a world that doesn’t like us? Where do we exist in a world that doesn’t want to relate to us? Where do we exist in world that is against us? We didn’t know. So we wrote. We wrote on walls. We wrote on city poles. We wrote on trashcans behind school. We wrote to exist because we didn’t exist in this world. So we wrote our names on objects, so when we left this existence, we would be known. Not known by everyone, but only a circle of close friends. Hey there he was or she was here crouched in a pair of vans holding a Pentel white marker scrawling on the back of a dumpster. I was here at a time and place, so fuck you I exist. We did this every day on top of a skateboard or on skinny wheels, not really knowing where we’re going, but we knew we’re going somewhere. And that was all that mattered.
What if I told you five years ago, we had no vision of the future. So who would’ve thought that we are behind this table selling what we stood by five years ago and it still resonates to what we are doing. Word is Bond. That was all we had back then, and that is all we have now. We still got the same group of friends, going in all different directions, but we are sharing a culture that shaped us. A culture that one-day we thought would swallow us up into a jail cell, the plastic seats in the back of a cop car, or stuffing shit up our nose every night. But that’s not us. We came to the surface and every once again we swim back down to reminisce about what has shaped us and how it defined and how it made us who we are. So breathe in the culture of San Jose. The culture of standing up for what you believe in, no matter what. Word is Bond.
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