KCRW, The Echoplex, LA Weekly, and ArtDontSleep, are sponsoring an upcoming show featuring Platinum Pied Pipers Cast No. 2, Muhsinah, Kutmah, and Gaslamp Killer. PPP returns, after the duo’s second album release, “with a new mash up of vintage and modern influences, including pop, house, funk and Detroit techno.” The show will go down on August 8th at the Echoplex in LA. Presale tickets are available, and you must be 21 to attend.

For more info: http://www.myspace.com/artdontsleep

Hong Kong brand N4E1, pronounced Not For Everyone, has debuted their Fall/Winter collection. This season is a full cut and sew program, featuring leather quilted jackets, denims, button up shirts, flannels, crewnecks, hoodies, tee’s, and accessories. It seems N4E1 is heading towards a cleaner and more mature aesthetic.

Check out their site for details.

For the most part, Jordan sneakers are one of the strongest contenders to beat when ball players are looking for on the court footwear. Living up to its namesake, the Jordan brand is ultra competitive and has come out with the Jordan PHLY as an attempt to be the number one pick off the court as well. The PHLY’s are a low and are available in a few noteworthy color ways. However, the two colors pictured above are exclusive to Finishline. Allegedly the shoes are named after Jordan’s Laney High School coach, Clifton “Pop” Herring who cut MJ from the team in his sophomore year, which fueled him to become the legend that he is today. I think it is fair to say that the NBA and the industry that surrounds it, owes Pop big time.

Special birthday shout to my boys Mo.B & Todd Kane of The Movement! Wish I could be in Chicago this weekend to toast to The Good Life and spend 3 days blowing out candles with you. For those of you lucky enough to make it to this certified banger look out for Rocksmith Giveaways on August 1st.

love & kisses xoxo dg

The Nike Free Hybrid boot is a marriage between a running shoe and a stylish boot. Released to mixed reviews, the boot has a thick all white sole, a tan suede upper and features pops of navy along the midsole and lacing on the back heel. The Nike Free Hybrid boot reminds us that Nike is definitely taking some chances this year, but it is hard to hate on them for trying. With a price tag of $150, chances are this hybrid won’t be on too many shopping lists. But if it helps, most are agreeing on how comfortable the boot is. You be the judge.

Info. Image: Standard ATL

Soul Assassins is getting ready to release a line up of new fitted caps. The “Sword” caps have a soft suede finish and feature “SA” lettering with a sword design in a 3D thread. Look out for the “Sword” Fitted caps as of August 1st at the Soul Assassins online store.

Info. Image: Booooooom!

Dutchmassive has been producing music for over a decade, and is the force behind “The HobbyShop Hero” blog. Recently Dutchmassive has compiled and released The Drumlove EP, which is a 25-minute instrumental compilation that sets the tone for his upcoming projects. The Ep –available through Dutchmassive’s myspace- has been described as futuristic, jazzy, and mellow. Go and give it a listen, you may find a new favorite track.

Gravis’ fall 2008 skateboarding collection is causing chatter amongst sneaker enthusiasts with their polished designs and collaborations. Finnish skateboarder, Arto Saari has jumped on board with Gravis to create the Viking Hi LX pro model, which is available in limited quantities.

Take a chance and check out the entire Gravis lineup, featuring a full variety skate styles. Including the Viking Hi (pictured above), which will be released in August and is available in a few colors and textures.

Info. Image: C to the JL

Dov Kelemer has done it. He is the picture of the toy collector’s dreams and a slap in the face to those people who scoffed at the idea of a grown man making money off an extremely expansive knowledge of toys. Kelemer is heart and soul and…tired. The man behind DKE toys, a vinyl and specialty toy distribution company growing by leaps and bounds, Kelemer is an artist despite his best attempts to claim otherwise. He was that kid in your sixth grade class who always had the incredibly rare issue of your most beloved comic book or that limited edition baseball card of your favorite player, and he would sell them both to you in an instant (for the right price).

“There are lots of toys where critics say “who would ever buy that piece of shit?”. They may not popular with the masses but someone somewhere will fucking love it.”

Format: You said you were getting ready for Comic-Con, which for some means merely assembling their Wookie costume. I know it’s a bit more complicated for you; what are you doing to prepare?
Dov Kelemer: I’m a distributor, so basically Comic-Con is our once a year trade show. It’s a preview of our new toys that will come out this year. The designer toy section of the show gets bigger every year; so its a lot of work and a lot of stress.

When I was younger it was much more of a collector-oriented show. The dealers would clean out their garages and bring in all the stuff they wanted to get rid of. I’d drive down there in my little car and leave with stuff up to my neck. There were so many treasures to be found. It was a fantastic time before it all became part of the popular culture. Now it’s where all the Hollywood money is, a chance to premiere the newest comic book gone Hollywood film. Its more of a spectacle and a trade show and less about collectibles. It’s so expensive to do the show that the retailers are more likely to have a $10,000 copy of Spiderman #1, but not the $5 item you have been looking for!

Format: What’s an ordinary day in the life like of a toy distributor, underground art curator, and avid personal collector?
Dov Kelemer: Well, I have a warehouse in North Hollywood and my normal day is going into the office to work. I definitely don’t hate getting up and going in the morning, but it’s still a job for me. I could be wearing a suit and a tie and showing up at the shower ring convention, and would probably be making more money; but I would not be dealing with anything I care about. My mom once asked me, “You turn all your hobbies into businesses, so what do you do for fun?.”

Format: What do you do for fun?
Dov Kelemer: (After a tired sigh) Nothing…..Well, sleep. Sleep is still really fun.

Format: “Distributor” can mean a lot of things. Where exactly do you enter the creative picture and where do you leave?
Dov Kelemer: Most of the time I’m not involved “creatively” at all. I’ll always give my two cents, and sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes I’m right. Last year I told a manufacturer who ended up making my bestselling toy they were nuts for making so many. I just do my best to stay neutral, treat everyone equitably, and pay my bills.

There are lots of toys where critics say “who would ever buy that piece of shit?”. They may not popular with the masses but someone somewhere will fucking love it. As a distributor I work with a lot of different vendors; mom and pop toy stores, museum shops, galleries, record stores, bookstores, apparel and lifestyle stores, tattoo parlors, and even a tea house; so tastes vary greatly.

“Some say rock and roll will never die. I think it’s the same for designer toys.”

Format: How did you decide to do what you’re doing? Did you just wake up one day and think, “I want to be a toy distributor?”
Dov Kelemer: When I was a kid I sold baseball cards and comic books. Around age eighteen I started with Star Wars toys, and I still sell them to this day. I put a down payment on a house by selling my vintage Star Wars toy collection.

Format: Side note then–what is your favorite Star Wars movie?
Dov Kelemer: I haven’t seen any of the Star Wars since they were digitally remastered in 1997. I have a love/hate relationship with Star Wars…. that’s a whole other interview though.

Format: If someone had asked you when you were ten years old what you wanted to be when you grew up, what would you have told them?
Dov Kelemer: Oh, I knew I wanted to be a special effects artist. But then I found out most of that job consisted of digging ditches so I changed my mind really quickly. I did go to film school though, but continued to make a living selling toys.

Format: If your house was burning down and you could only save what you could carry, what would we find in your arms?
Dov Kelemer: I don’t think I would save any of the toys. I don’t have that many at home anymore, but I do like collecting original art. I’d take some of my Frank Kozik stuff though, which I continue to collect but still always say is a mistake. They are ever-present, life consuming, and continue to pour out.

Frank Kozik revived the rock poster in the early 90’s. He was so prolific. He had his own silkscreen press and would make deals with bands to do their posters. I was a huge fan so when he started making toys I got the bug immediately. The interesting thing though is that he completely abandoned his fine art career and is only designing toys that have no crossover with his rock-n-roll past. Normally toys are just a 3D representation of a 2D artwork, but not in his case.

Format: The Vader Project is a personal obsession of mine. It is a representation of where pop culture and underground art intersect. Do you have any future curatorial plans, or secret projects in the works to tug on people’s heart strings along with their aesthetic appreciation?
Dov Kelemer: My wife Sarah Jo Marks and I will continue to create art shows, but will probably never achieve anything close to the Vader Project ever again I don’t think. As a platform or blank canvas to work on, the Vader helmet is so archetypal, everyone recognizes the Vader helmet. Whatever the artists did to them made a statement. There were lots of anti-war inspired themes. Star Wars has always been really good for that kind of thing. I just bought a shirt off E-bay in fact, that has images of Han, Luke, and Leia on it, and underneath them it says, “Terrorists.”

Format: You deal with people in about every art and entertainment circle; do you see yourself ever branching off in another direction?
Dov Kelemer: The distribution business is a handful, and eventually we will have a proper infrastructure in place to really take on more items like apparel, art prints, and books but that is the same direction really. Designer toys have a soul, unlike many other mainstream toys where you have a licensed property that a company exploits to make as much money as possible, so it gets boiled down to a mere commodity.

I work with artists who make toys because they love it. Hopefully the make money or at least break even, but the coolest thing for an artist is going into a store and actually seeing their own stuff for sale.

Format: Since Comic-Con has grown away from the smaller scale meeting of legitimate collectible fanatics to a massive money-making premiere for the newest comic book film, are there any other trade shows you really enjoy?
Dov Kelemer: The VTN show (Vinyl Toy Network), in Pasadena twice a year. It’s like all of the people who hang out in our little section at Comic-Con but minus the 100,000 others. Comic-Con is a zoo, and I don’t like it hanging over my head. When it’s over, I sleep much better at night.

I don’t go to gift shows or toy fairs. I’ve stopped trying to push product on people who don’t want it or understand it. If there are people who really want the product, they’ll find us. There are boutiques and galleries popping up all over, and really teaching people about designer toys. It is the coolest thing I have ever seen, but you can’t put a $50 specialty vinyl toy next to a $5 Mickey Mouse. People are not going to appreciate the designer toy unless they’re educated about it, or it’s not going to sell.

The public is starting to appreciate the person behind the creation of an object. Even if you’re buying a chair, you’re still buying someone’s design. Look at Target and DWR (Design within Reach), they are featuring pictures of the designer on the tag and in the catalog, selling it as something created by a person, establishing that relationship between the consumer and the artist.

“Around age eighteen I started with Star Wars toys, and I still sell them to this day. I put a down payment on a house by selling my vintage Star Wars toy collection.”

Format: Technology has made it possible for everyone to be a writer, everyone to be a producer, a filmmaker, an artist. Do you think this will effect the toy market at all?
Dov Kelemer: Artists used to have to study and know their craft; but now you buy a script writing program and all of a sudden you are a screenwriter and you get Photoshop and you are a graphic designer. Artists used to have to know which mountain to climb to find that special flower to make a certain pigment. Now you can just go down to the art supply store and buy a whole spectrum of colored paint. I guess what has changed is that you have to be really good to stand out. Due to politics of China, good or bad, people can now produce their own toys for ten thousand dollars instead of hundreds of thousands. So this is a great time for people to go out and do it themselves but in the end like anything else many artists will be weeded out.

Business will probably never go bad, as there will always be a need for toys. Specific designs might fall out of style, but others will continue to be successful.

Some say rock and roll will never die. I think it’s the same for designer toys.

Frank Kozik’s cute, pack-a-day smoking animals have now become iconic in the vinyl toy scene. But before anyone had even dreamt of the possibility of a thriving toy collectors market, Frank was one of the most in-demand rock poster illustrators in the world. Making the jump from rock ‘n’ roll freak to plastic toy geek may seem like a stretch, but Frank has been a collector his entire life. Read on to find out the origins of his incredible powers.

“I have no claim to know what I’m doing, but I know that it is contrary to what everyone said I should do.”

Format: How was it making the transition from poster art to vinyl art? Was there some kind of stepping stone between the two industries?
Frank Kozik: Yeah, maybe six or seven years ago, I was approached by these advertising guys to do some work for them. They came to my apartment and saw all these toys, so I explained that it was something up-and-coming that I was trying to get off the ground, but there was not much access to China at that point. And the people that I knew in Japan weren’t ready to divulge their sources. So they told me that they actually wanted me to design some toys for them for their vending machines. I did that for about two years. Basically it was a combination of Kubrick mixed with other kind of stuff. It was nothing to be proud of, like it was strictly commercial work, but what I did was learn the process of finding contacts in China, and how not to do stuff. It was a pretty good learning experience.

After that I hooked up with Kid Robot. At that point, I already had the ability to design toys cinched. It made making toys with Kid Robot and other companies that were much more successful because there weren’t a lot of mistakes or problems. I had almost zero manufacturing problems because I already knew how to make my own toys. A lot of guys take a 2-D idea and don’t really understand the limitation of making a 3-D item. I would just send the files over and they were correct. That really commercial gig was my training ground, if you will.

Format: So are you working in the music industry anymore?
Frank Kozik: No, I did that for almost twenty years. I did a million posters and got involved in every level and even had a record label, but life goes on. I stopped enjoying it. We did manage to launch a new genre of music with a somewhat successful label, but nobody wanted to hear it really. We were the first guys to do the whole stoner, psychedelic rock thing, like Queen of the Stone Age and High on Fire. I did all the first records.

The label was interesting, but I had about fifteen employees, and it just became an insane hassle. We had distribution problems and stuff like that. By that time I was forty. It’s like, you know, it’s time to get out of the music scene when you’re forty. That’s a young person’s gig.

Format: Have any bands come to you to make a vinyl toy for them?
Frank Kozik: I’ve dealt with tons of bands and it’s not the most pleasant experience. It’s complicated. Unless you want to be a total rampant asshole, you have no control over things in that business because you’re dealing with so many different parties. You have to take in the fact that you’re dealing with other peoples’ intellectual copyrights, other people, their public image, their management, their record label, their promoters etc. When you deal with a band, you’re dealing with fifty people and they all have colliding interests. It can be a major pain in the ass. I like doing my own toys because the only person I have to deal with is me, and I never argue with myself, so there’s no reason for me to go and do a band toy. They should just do their own toys. I do my own stuff; I like to do my own stuff.

Format: Do you have toys that do better in one market than in others?
Frank Kozik: Yeah, sure. I play the field. I have a wide range of interests. Basically what I do is offer four kinds of toys. I offer cute animal toys that are a little weird, like smoking rabbits. Those are popular pretty much everywhere, except for the hardcore kaiju collector scene which comprises about a hundred people. So that’s what I consider my mainstream toys, the kind that cost about $6.00–the little bunnies, and the mongers. I love them because I collect that kind of stuff myself. I’m a big Hello Kitty collector, and I like weird little animals, so I like them a lot. They’re also easily the most popular because they’re accessible to everybody, mentally and economically. Everyone likes a cute little animal, and everyone’s got $6.00.

So then there are the Western toys, which are the things that cost you $20-$80–the 8” size. They seem popular everywhere. I do a lot of stuff with Kid Robot, Qee, Adfunture, Muttpop, etc. Those are smaller editions, and a lot of them tend to retain after market value. I do all the colorways for all those companies, stuff like the 10” Labbits, full sized Dunnies, and the Dr. Bombs. Once again, those sell well everywhere because I do the exclusive thing.

The next level up is a really different genre. I do the made-in-Japan kaiju influenced toys with Wonderwall. Stuff like the Ika-Gilas: squid monster in the business suit. That’s me riffing off of classic kaiju. Those do ok everywhere. They don’t do outstanding, maybe because they’re little expensive; they cost $200 and up. There are more collectors for those in the US or Europe because the Japanese collectors want the authentic stuff. I will also occasionally collaborate with guys like Real X Head but those also do better in the US.

And then I do the high-end stuff, like art pieces They draw on the techniques of the toy thing. I’ll deal with really expensive high-end bronzes, rabbit furniture chairs, busts, etc. I would consider all the clothing part of that, because most of that is at a pretty high price point. That stuff tends to sell well too with the higher end toy collectors and real art collectors. I sell more and more of my political busts to people that own actual art galleries and boutique stores, rather than toy collectors. The hardcore Kozik collectors of course want them all, but those pieces were really intended for the art people. That was my purpose for them; I wanted to introduce my work to another world. I like to hedge my bets and see my stuff everywhere. By and large, everything I have done has done really well. I’ve probably made over 300 or 400 releases since 2001 and they’ve all sold through on a store level. Most of them have retained after market value, with the exception of a few, but maybe that was because they made too many of them. I have no claim to know what I’m doing, but I know that it is contrary to what everyone said I should do.

I do tons of stuff, and they sell all over the place. Just go to the Kozik Flicker pool and you can see tons of photos. There’s no real statement involved. I like toys, I thought it would be a cool thing to get in to, and it ended up being successful. I get more offers to do toys than I can fill. I get to select what tickles my fancy. There’s a certain level of forethought, but it’s more of me going with my gut instincts in the different genres. I like mixing genres over too. Cohesively, if you collect my toys, a $5 toy looks pretty good next to a $2000 one. It’s a world unto its self.

Format: In the future, are you planning to make your toys more interactive, like the Bob the Slug from Kid Robot?
Frank Kozik: I’ve been trying to push that but nobody’s really gotten down with it. Kid Robot has some stuff like that, and they do a full series like the chumps with twelve different characters, but they didn’t make, like, the jail. I keep trying to push that kind of thing, like a piece of furniture, but it’s so complicated, so I thought maybe we could do it by cross platforming, like you could swap parts with a Kid Robot toy. It’s kind of happening a little bit. Someday I hope to sell an inclusive circus theme or something, where you could get a tent and all the characters. I’m interested in doing things like little toys for collectors, but at the same time, I’m not making representations of my paintings or my weird clothing line. It’s a reverse; I’m trying to design these things to just be their own things, like a collectible toy. I do want to have as much play value as possible. I want people to pose it and take interesting pictures, and be like, “oh I can put it in my Castle Gray Skull” kind of thing. That is the long-term goal, but financially, it’s huge: a ten million dollar investment. The one guy that’s been able to pull it off is Patrick Ma from the Insurgents Wilderness Gruppo (IWG). He’s done a rocket ship, UFO, and all the animals. That guy is doing it.