Prototype Issue
Up to No Good
By Jason Venzor
(page 1 of 1)Over the course of three years, local silk screening crew Hit+Run have appeared at hundreds of parties, screened thousands of T-shirts and came dangerously close to becoming a mainstream success story.
In the potholed alley behind an apartment complex, someone has brought a skull and set it on the ground. The men assembled around it set about painting it black, first by brush and then by pouring the can of dark paint over it thickly. A large black bubble forms over the left eye socket, swirls slowly and then softly bursts.
It’s another gray day on the Westside. About 10 young men in their twenties and thirties are drinking beer and talking shit. The windows of a small pick-up truck are open and the radio is playing old school jams. Occasionally a Latino abuelita and her grandkids walk by or someone from one of the neighboring buildings take their trash out, pause, check out the assembly of guys, smile and go about their business.
The reason they smile and don’t just hurry along is because of the operation set up outside: a silk screening press that is being operated to print up a thousand T-shirts by the infamous crew, the Hit+Run.
For years the Hit+Run have been working like this. In parking lots, apartments, parties and anywhere else they haven’t been told to vacate, the Hit+Run have been screening clothes in a guerilla style operation that has illuminated a process which has become so ubiquitous it’s been taken for granted and remained mysterious to millions.
However, in the United States virtually every T-shirt or hoodie with a print on it has gone through a hand operated process. A designed screen is pressed to the material, ink is applied to the screen then squeegeed on the press to imprint the design that will be worn forever. People tend to look at the designs and figure that a machine probably is programmed to create the clothes. Everything is done with computers these days, why wouldn’t T-shirts be done this way too?
The truth is that tees are usually pressed in large industrial factories that smell like chemical death. They are screened by low wage operators on many presses at a time, but always by hand. It is a craft that is performed out of view from the faces that will later pay lots of money for them. Out of sight, out of mind.
The Hit+Run have been setting up small screen presses at parties and events for 3 years now. While DJs are working the room and guys and girls are trying to work each other, the crew are steady hitting their screens to create their own style of street wear that thumbs it’s nose at the mass-marketed style peddled by the puppet masters of today.
Which brings us to today’s workshop: the crew has been contracted by Levi’s to screen the small company logo on 1,000 nondescript tees to be given away at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas the week after next. A corporate job. This is a little strange coming from a group that has partially made it’s reputation on the dissing of corporate brand power.
Brandy Flower and Mike Crivello,the creative spearheads for the Hit+Run, started out the collective with mock-corporate logos that ran the gamut from stoner inside jokes to politically and religiously subversive gags: The logo for Kodak re-texted as Kronik. The LA Lakers emblem twisted into LA Fakers. El Pollo Loco to El Po Po Loco and the Malibu rum label refashioned to read TALIBAN.
They even parodied Levi’s, who are ostensibly buying today’s pizza, beer and whatever else is being passed around the car lot while the crew is pressing, folding and boxing shirts at a clip of five per minute. In the past, they refashioned their logo to read Devils. Flower doesn’t dwell on any irony around the situation. “If they want to be a part of what we do, that’s fine. Because of them, I’ll be able to take some of these guys to South by Southwest and screen shirts for people who come see us.”
It’s kind of a Robin Hood mentality and today the spot definitely feels like Sherwood forest. Flower walks around attending to the young guns, giving encouragement and making sure no one needs food or something to drink as they blast through the order.
Having just returned from the MAGIC apparel show in Vegas, the crew seems to be getting itself more organized into a place where they will soon be manufacturing their clothes beyond just screen printing designs onto blank American Apparel items. Crivello, whose worked for several fashion lines before, sees this as a direction he’s eager to take the Hit+Run.
“It’s been great screening people’s clothes, but I’d definitely love to move beyond this to create a full cut-and-sew line.”
“Capitalist Globalization is no longer an evil threat but a dark reality in the 21st century. Multinational companies condition the consuming masses with lies, deception and manipulation in the forms of advertising tricks and fetishized logos. These mega-corporation have infiltrated the world’s governments, created legislation in their favor, and become global superpowers.”—Mark of the Beast, Hit and Run show booklet, 4/23/05
In a few hours, the “work” is done and the soldiers can get to what they are really there for. They go through the library of screens and start pressing their own clothes with prints, mashing up several designs on the same shirt. Exotic art prints done by Flowers and Crivello and other artists they’re intimate with—designs that are both flowery and caustic —will now have walking canvases to be seen on.
The skull in the corner that has been steadily dripping with ink for hours is starting to come together. It’s beige plastic frame has been completely blackened and formed a shiny black shell. Flower walks over to it, picks it up and examines it wearing a mischievous grin.
For the lowdown, check out their site www.thehitandrun.com.
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