Our friend Mark Growden is a storyteller and professional musician from my hometown. Several years ago, he asked us to make him a bag to use during his songwriting workshops that could hold his Sruti Box, a tambourine, and a notepad.
I have been watching 'Ax Men' with my 2 year old, and it conjures layers of memory from childhood in a logging town.
Our childhood hero was Mangin, the bachelor timberfaller across the street. He was home from the woods at about the same time that we were free of school - logger childcare. As kids with the whole afternoon to kill before our folks got home, we would sit in his yard in the shade of a big fir tree and watch Mangin and Kent take off tall boots, sharpen saw chains, drink Mickey's bigmouths, and spin yarns.
Mangin was also a Volkswagen mechanic. He wore the same pair of black Key Jeans every day in the woods, and they could stand up by themselves. His house smelled like fir pitch, sweat, and peanuts. He was half deaf from logging, and spent a lot of money on stereo equipment, on which he played very loud ZZ Top and rock radio. He welded a secret compartment in some bozo's gas tank, and when that guy got popped smuggling a whole bunch of cocaine in from Central America, Mangin had to spend some time in the Federal Pen in the Mojave. My dad the homebrewer put a six pack of beer into root beer bottles that - delivered to Mangin - proved a great hit with the boys down there in Barstow. I was about ten, but I still remember Mangin's going-away party before he went to prison. August in Goodrich Meadows, with kegs of Budweiser cooling in the back of Mangin's Willys pickup under a load of snow from Swain Mountain. Dave Foat roasting a pig over a pit fire.
Kent was killed falling a tree about 10 years ago, and there were a lot of broke-down burly woodsmen in his yard for the wake. A section of the street was flagged off for the overflow crowd using 'KILLER TREE' flagging. The preacher was from the church that Mark's dad helped to start about 30 years ago. When he said that Kent was going to heaven not because of his good deeds but because he the preacher had saved him not 2 months before, a surge of anger flushed through me, and a good part of the crowd too. Kent's good friends from the bar stirred angrily out in the street, and Kenny Bruns grumbled 'Bullshit! He is going there for his good deeds too'.
I have come to realize that we had a lot of male role models, and that we are of a storytelling culture.
My (Zeke) bagmaking has been slowed up by two young boys and starting another business - I've made three bags in the last 10 months.
I took measurements for this bag 16 months ago, and Mark has been very patient. Finally he called a month ago and said gently 'the bag I have been using has completely disintegrated, how's that bag coming?' I needed a prod.
Two or three years later, this one is finally done. Making it brought up a lot of these stories.
Fire hose, cordura scrap, necktie, a classroom map, a jacket lining, surplus webbing, treebark camo pantleg, and some aluminum tubing from the ReStore.
Under the flap is more necktie and map. Mark is a few years older than me and his dad was my track coach/crafts teacher in high school. Mark has been studying music for most of his life with influences all over the world ranging from Ravi Shankar to old slave songs. He came back to town when I was still in high school to regale us with tales of traveling around the West Coast juggling, making music, falling in love, and being offered a blowjob by a strange traveling salesman while hitchhiking across Eastern Washington. He knew how to make weird Vietnamese-shaped hats out of felt, and spent a few weeks telling us stories and teaching us to juggle, playing music, and generally blowing our smalltown minds. Then he was off again.
Old camo as a nod to shared millpond roots. This project brought up memories of growing up in Westwood, and the interweaving of lives there. Of track practice in the gym with 6 feet of snow outside, or running on melting slush through streams of icy runoff; of shooting guns at the sewer ponds with Dean Growden - Mark's brother who is now Lassen County Sheriff.
Or of the 1970s Cutlass that Mark's younger brother - my best friend Jeremy, filled up with gas one day during our senior year and just drove away.
And Mark has always been flamboyant, of course, so I had an excuse to go big with the bag. People in Westwood are still probably talking about the time that they turned on 'Real Sex' on HBO and saw Mark there in some sort of men's tantra workshop circle thingy. My crew boss marking timber for the US Forest Service told me that he had the episode on videotape.
Mark's sister Janay makes amazing clothing, window displays, and anything else. We painted flowers and peace signs on her VW bus before we knew that we weren't really hippies, or that hippies weren't really very cool, and drove it down Highway 32 to Chico to shop for school clothes at Pegasus, wondering why the guys in the big trucks were flipping us off or screaming at us. Janay is a master textile artist who gives me courage to sew in a stream of consciousness way - we share a love of the zigzag.
Time passes, and the meaning of songs change. Mark wrote a song about Westwood years ago that means something to any person who is from there. Trying to reconcile his love of the land with the hardship of the place and its baggage. I used to think that he whined too much about his life, that he was being a drama queen. Later I realized that he was just a few years ahead of me in trying to come to terms with, or express how you identify with (or don't) the important places in your life. As time goes by, I am glad that we have a place that we know is home, and stories to share about it.
April is a wild month in Chico. A budding, blooming, creative explosion of lengthening light and lusty life. We were lucky/taxed to have two deadlines fall at the end of it - RayRay's 'Bike=art' show and Chikoko's 'Bizarre Bazaar'. We overextended and are glad that they are over! But we got to make a lot of new art - a spectrum from Bumblebee habitat boxes, psychedelic micro messenger bags, and rice harvester steel sunflowers to 'Opium Den' leather collage purses and fire hose totes. Here are some photos from the two shows.
Hillbilly yard art, firehose snakeskin samba belts, tough-mama firehose totes, and rake+ski pole garden diggers - our uncategorizable booth at Chikoko's Bizarre Bazaar.
Pulled together some new and old bags with a bike theme and decided to use my old chopper 'Pinkie' as a rack at the last minute. Welded a stand, loaded up the goods into the hemp panniers and rode it to the show. The bags on the handlebars are a new design that I am calling the MicroMessenger - they are big enough for a mini Kryptonite lock, cell phone and wallet; they have a loop to go on your belt, or we can add a traditional messenger strap and stabilizer.
Our hemp panniers and large and mini messenger bags - I added a new stabilizer strap to the messenger bags.
Stopped at the newspaper recycling shed at 6th and Flume to get some paper to stuff the bags with and found a paper bag full of old maps! Score! RayRay decided to put us in the window - I like what they did with the maps - they are prolific and amazing.
My folks were in town and pops took these photos - you can see him in the reflection, below.
Down to the wire for the Bizarre Bazaar this weekend, and we have been scrambling to finish all the random projects that we have started in the last few weeks.
Here are Erika's new handbags, a hemp and camo collaged fullsize messenger bag, and some small hip pouches that are big enough for cellphone, camera, and wallet.
We are getting ramped up on our large messenger bags for the Chikoko Bizarre Bazaar. We are making 10 each small, medium, and large bags. Here are some details from the large ones.
We love details. Being a custom, one-off kind of shop, we can spend the time on the sorts of details that get cut out of a cost-cutting mass-production operation. We are using camstraps backed with heavy fire hose to connect our straps to the bags. The camstraps allow quick adjustment right at the front of the bag, and they cinch and hold like no other buckle.
Batches of ten. Ten is a good number. Not so many that you get bored sewing the same detail all day, but enough to really notice some efficiencies in production. The black webbing on the buckles is from a thrift store dog leash. Buckles are new.
This years' bags are almost 100% synthetic fire hose. We scored some nice light stuff this fall, and all of the trim, pockets, and body are recycled hose.
Panel ready for trim, hardware, and sides. Our large messengers are larger this year, 19" wide, and 1" deeper than last year - big enough for most large laptops.
Powered by Chai, and art-spired by DragonBoy. Buy fresh, buy local! See you at the Bizarre Bazaar!
We had a productive weekend in the shop. Ezra is a little sick, and yesterday was Erika's birthday. I asked her what she wanted, and she said: "Watch the baby so I can work in the shop!". She made the Beanstalk Bag, and also, did some work on a few new book bags. I finished two messenger bags.
Playing with a new way to make reflectors for the straps of bike bags - holes punched out of inner tube sewn over reflective tape.
The straps are a sandwich of rubber-lined poly-cotton fire hose and two layers of nylon webbing. Idea with this is that the poly-cotton will wick sweat, while rubber will spread the load and keep the whole thing lying flat.
I started this bag last fall for the Chikoko Bizarre Bazaar, and ran out of time. It, and about 6 other panels have been sitting, waiting for us to tackle sewing in the sides, which is a pain in the ass. We just got a better sewing machine, and it is still a pain, but at least the bobbin thread is no longer tying knots half way thru a side.
I call this bag the 'Messenger X'. Body is from fire hose, with inner tube for trim around the flap. The white X is from chicken feed sack, with the actual X being cut out of inner tube. We'll make more of these...
Strap on the other new bag - proto #35 - a prototype from last fall.
This pocket detail was the prototypical part - I like it, but it makes the assembly quite a bit more time consuming. More practice needed.
This one is a little rougher that the X bag - didn't trim some of the hose for a shaggier look.
Proto #35
Straps are funny, you can put a lot of time, foam, pockets, and other work into one. We are focusing on making bomber, simple designs that will last.
We'll make custom straps, but try to avoid buying new virgin materials if we can. I like using the fire hose for that reason. That said, good clean webbing is hard to find used, and we buy rolls of surplus strap from an unnamed, evil, army surplus place that also sells army jeep parts and barrels or methyl-ethyl ketone.
These bags are available for sale. X bag is $120, and Proto #35 is $80. Contact us for more info.
ZeekoBag has had the privilege of participating for the last two years in Chikoko's Holiday Artisan's Faire. This event is great in that we get to be part of a larger community of artisans, and that it forces us to produce enough inventory for an event. At this time, this has been the only event that we sell at.
Here is a sampling of the items that we made for sale at the 2009 Winter Faire.
Messenger bag - body is 100% fire hose. Recycled strap and hardware.
Messenger bag with 2 bike purses - 100% fire hose body.
1 off messenger bag made from fire hose, inner tube, and surplus cargo parachute harness canvas.
Messenger 'X' bag - This is a design that we plan to focus on. 'X' available in 3M retroreflective sticker.
Bike purse/day bag
Messenger bag detail. Body from fire hose, strap from surplus army parachute harness. Rivets at all stress points.
All of the bags above are spoken for or gone, but similar bags are available. Due to the nature of using found objects, sometimes we run out of a certain kind of material or hose color.
Zeeko Salvage is a collective. We are a married couple living, scrounging and sewing together. Many of our items are co-created; we like making lots of different things - that's why we have a variety of products to offer.
Zeke Lunder started out making farmer's market bags out of chicken feed sacks in 2004. Erika Dietrich Lunder learned to sew and make clothes from her grandmother, and worked as a clothing designer from 2005 to 2007.
Zeeko Salvage formed when we met and began collaborating on a line of purses and totes from feed sacks and mylar-printed Hindu comics. Lately we have been working with fire hose, firefighting surplus, inner tube, and leather, but we'll work with just about anything that can fit thru an industrial sewing machine.
We are a micro-scale DIY industry. The two of us do the sewing, repair our own machines and make as many tools and parts as we can. We sell online, at Chikoko sponsored events in Chico, California, and at the August 'Prepare for the Playa' Street Fair in San Francisco. Feel free to contact us if you have an idea for a custom bag. {Email Us}
