howies®

So I have been on a mission for a while now, to find the perfect waterproof jacket.

In the past I have bought 2.5 layer polyester man made jackets and find they feel horrible to wear one minute your hot, then your cold and noisy and you look like your wearing plastic.

You get the feeling you had when you were a kid and your mum told you it was going to rain and put your waterproof on, groans and mumbles followed of course.

Now more recent ones have looked better but they still feel the same.

Then a few years ago I borrowed an old howies ventile jacket which had been returned due to a minor stitching problem, with a lining and a detachable hood and although I found the fit not quite right for me and my jumpers and dog walking it always kept me dry, felt good and I saw there was potential.

The problem was I got quite hot in it, the collar was tight and the pockets were fiddly, its amazing how things so simple can be a pain in the rain…haha poetry.

Anyway I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the new howies ventile jacket, all I wanted was a shell which I could layer over my jumpers, covered my bum, breathed well and  kept the water out properly. But it also had to look like cotton and not a plastic jacket so I could wear it with a dress and flip flops on holiday and it would look as good as

if I was wearing it at home walking the dog or in Paris or London running between the shops doing research in the rain.

Finally they have come in and I have one.

I have tried it on with jumpers, t-shirts and it looks and feels great, not like a waterproof at all.

Now all I need is for it to rain.

No I don’t mean that really, but if it does I am now prepared and I won’t get wet, hurray.

Our good friend and howies team rider Will Jackson sent me a great email last week. Here’s the meat of it.

“As an aside, Northern John and i are organizing a jam next month at Blackpool skatepark. its is being dubbed a ‘War of the Roses’ with ‘teams’ being rallied from Lancs and Yorks. the jam will be pretty informal but were going to be hosting a number of ‘comps’ and giving out prizes to those people deemed to be having fun, thinkin outside of the box or pushing themselves and not their profile. All prizes will be going to people without sponsors and were trying to both plug the hole in the number of BMX events in the north and do our bit to reaffim a vision of BMX that is rider run and aimed at having fun.”

It got me thinking about war and an old favorite quote i stole came to mind. “It was regarded as evidence of bravery for a person to into battle carrying no weapon that would do any harm at a distance.”

Seems to me there are some corporations, companies and individuals out there who are lacking on the bravery front then but dont get me started on that.

We have spent some time with our team riders/skaters over the last few weeks. They migrated from from The Brizzle, the Oxford, The Fort William and the Loughborough to spend a week in Aberteifi shooting for our summer 2010 catalogue. It rained, winded and basically made it near impossible to believe that summer was ever here. The boys left a lasting mark on the town and the hills. Here’s a pic of Robbo from Leon Stimpson (not from the shoot) to keep you going till we can show you a few more that we did get.

This arrived today.

On to the next one now.

The Dolectures has been and gone once again, this year was the Do’s second year and by all accounts and feedback the best yet. howies (amongst others) is a founder member of the lectures and plans are already being made for next years series of talks. In a few weeks all of the talks will be up on line for all to see. if you want to keep up with the dolectures then check out who spoke this year, it was a full house of creative minds for sure.

You might also want to subscribe to the newsletter and get updates which you can do easily by going here. If you want to know how and why the dolectures were born then read the story here.

Here’s Matt Jones talk from last year.

If you get the chance to stroll down Queens Road in Bristol or Carnaby Street, London it’ll be worth checking out the newly updated howies stores. We’ve been frantically sawing, painting and installing the new window displays as well as in-store graphics (we even had the ever talented David Sparshott in to do some big scale illustration). And, of course, the new Autumn clothing range is in too. So go check em out and let us know what you think.

Got this email from a guy called Sean the other day;

“Hi,

Just a quick one. You probably get requests like this daily, but I was
wondering if you had any plans to revive my favourite tee ever (and I’ve
bought a few from you.) This one was from before 2000, pre organic days.

Not sure if it had a name (did they even have names then?)

To describe I
would say it is Royal Blue, with a square print on the front
depicting an
alien/ewok/ja-wa figure sat in a messy front room, playing playstation.
There’s a small howies sticker on the TV and it also says ’we are not zombies’,
The square image on the front is split into 4 smaller squares.

It’s wicked and I’m still wearing mine, though the print is gradually
fading and peeling and has a perma oil stain from bike repairs.
If you are stuck for Archive-Tees’ (I’m guessing not!) then please
consider this one soon.

Cheers,
Sean.

If you can recommend any classic howies tees that you’d like to see revived, add your suggestions below.

Ta.

Another ripper from the T1 terror squad.

And it smells good.

the first time for chris on a fixed wheel bike.