Interview

GO: One of the great things about Jeff is that he has the original spirit of Pop art. Pop art was supposed to change the world, and then it got sort of co-opted by the market. But it’s great when artists make product that gets out there to lots of people.

JJ: There have been a couple of artists who we’ve thought it would be good to work with, and then they’re like, “I can’t have my artwork on a skateboard.” But I don’t think somebody like Jeff needs to worry about his place in the art world. Now when we work with people, it’s because they get a kick out of it more than anything else. It’s as simple as that. Nobody’s making a ton of money off of it.

GO: I’m friends with Christopher Wool, and he can get a little tortured because he’s a perfectionist. I said, “I really like the decks you did.” He said, “Yeah, but the brown one isn’t the right color. It doesn’t look enough like shit!”

JJ: [laughs] Again, Christopher was quite easy to work with. I wish we could have done the text ones, but he didn’t want to do them. But while it’s important for us to work with these big artists, it’s just as important to us to work with people who nobody knows. It’s just as important when somebody sends us something like a graphic or whatever, and we think, Wow, that’s great. We’ve got to keep our balance because we don’t want it to be like, “Oh, they’re just doing this high-end stuff.” I feel the reason that we get to work with a lot of people is because it is a street-level kind of thing. And we don’t number these things, but they are of a limited run. It’s funny, because we often get these art people who come in and get really mad when we don’t tell them the edition . . . They get really pissed. It’s like, “Look, it’s 68 fuckin’ dollars. Don’t worry about the edition. If we really wanted to do that, we’d be selling these for a thousand dollars. Buy it and like it and get the fuck out.” So it’s funny how some of the people who come in just don’t understand. We know we could sell these things for more, but we want young people to be able to buy them.

GO: But that happens with the shoes, too, when the kids are lined up around the block . . .

JJ: Yeah. But when we do a pair of sneakers, they’re never that limited—for us, at least. They’re limited to our stores, but I’m not into making six of something. If we’re doing a pair of sneakers and they’re 90 bucks, then, yeah, there are probably going to be 1,000 or 1,500 pairs. I hate things when they’re too precious. That’s why we never, ever classify our stuff as limited. Ever. In an ideal world for us, I look at it like the product sold out within two weeks. Ideally, we have it and it’s gone in two weeks and then it’s done.

GO: A lot of those kids must be selling the sneakers. I see them on eBay or whatever.

JJ: Yeah. But I just look at it like that’s what kids do nowadays. You get a lot of young people who will come and line up and sleep out overnight to buy something, and then they put it on eBay. If they’re hustling to make a hundred bucks, fine. I have no problem with it. I used to think more of it. But now I just think it’s no different than somebody going and checking out a blog or something. To be honest, I’d worry if that didn’t happen, because then it’d mean that people don’t like our product.

GO: I have some friends who collect sneakers, and they just keep them in the box. Do people actually wear them?

JJ: I think people do both. A lot of these sneaker collectors buy two pairs—they wear one pair and they save one pair. But that whole sneaker game has fizzled a bit in the last couple of years because the sneaker companies started to actually market to that customer and kind of ruined it. Before, it was a phenomenon. People would be collecting Jordans and all these unique pairs. But the sneaker companies started to look at it like, “That’s a customer we’ve got to go after,” and, as always happens, they kind of did it too much . . . And the customers aren’t dumb—after a while they say, “Hey, they’re just playing us.” So every single time we put out something new, I’m nervous. I’m never like, “Yeah, these are sold out.” I’m always nervous. Because you never know. We always try to make things as good as we can, but I never count on that. So when I do see a line in front of the store, I’m like, “Cool. People still like the stuff.”

GLENN O'BRIEN IS INTERVIEW'S EDITORIAL DIRECTOR.