quint didn’t know it, but he was our employee of the month for last november. he comes in every week to sift and aerate the matchbox cars while his dad spouts aphorisms like “if you don’t know a knot, tie a lot” and “you should always get the right tool for the job, but any tool is potentially a hammer”. hey matt, can you get me a picture for the wall?

jess was our first employee of the month, elected as such unanimously having only come in the store once, but bringing with her really perfect garbage, made by herself and her friend lori– relabeled 7″ records with beautiful collage covers, snow globes with so much glitter that the object is obliterated, cans of strange food with new labels (”mystery can! the food tolerance racing game!”), and letters written and sealed that you write someone else’s address and your own return address on and mail unopened. jess is a brilliant dresser, an avid conversationalist, a casual student (of firefighting), and i a fine citizen of a very strange world.

jess, make more stuff!

jess van winkle- priceless!

full disclosure- i put this tape out. this tall grey dude with rose-colored glasses and black fingernails started coming in the store and buying only halloween shit, and we started talking about only horror movies. one day he’s holding this cdr, and i’m like hey buddy what’s that? oh, i’m supposed to give this to you. two words on the disc- “SNOW GHOST”. cut to now and he comes to the store every wednesday first thing (even though i’m *always* late) and i give him a little envelope with money from all the tapes sold in the previous week. and just before halloween he put out a book of halloween jokes, which is downloadable here.

snow ghost “on top of a silver mountain” cassette $3

full mp3s of this tape, plus an extra cut!

artwork on the tape cover by penny leslie

also, snow ghost was our employee of the month for last october! you go ghoul!

“little matt” is our one-man street team- a handsome mile-a-minute talker, sharp as a damascus blade, with awesome full sleeve tattoos he gave himself with a homemade tattoo gun at age 14 (!) and an almost inextinguishable font of maniacal schemes. we give him huge stacks of flyers which grant him just the angle to hassle mercilessly all manner of folks he runs into- fresh punks, secret goons, clever animals, street poets, weird babes and so forth. he recently shaved his head and got a job as a salesman for a promotions company, wearing nautica shirts and running around the mall trying to sell salon packages and not get nabbed by mall security. i was worried at first that he was using his incredible people skills for evil, but then his second day on the job he got drunk with a co-worker and the usual madness re-ensued. he writes the zine “poor and forgotten” and can always be counted on for a solid high-five and a great story. lately he’s taken to pretending to be canadian. if you see him and he starts this shit, just roll with it.

matty johnson for mayor! D.I.Y.L.A.M.F.!!!!!

bert is a fifth grade kid that lives next door. he comes in about every day we’re open, walking a shitty little dog that barks at me and bites me if i try to pet it. one day he asked me “what would you pay me if i worked here?”. i told him i would pay him nothing and he accepted. now every two or three weeks i let him hang out all afternoon drawing caricatures of people that come in. he charges a dollar and it’s well worth it. for no extra charge he will color in your approximate eye color with crayons. it’s cool but when he’s not drawing someone he’s tearing around the store breaking stuff.

caricature by bert $1

scully is a great guy, he runs tasty skateboards (which we sell at the shop), and he sings in a great band- “the rowdy ones”, which you should never see if you don’t want to get spit on. also he’s psyched about absolutely anything you could point out to him. “epic!” “sick!”. we made scully our employee of the month a few days after he showed up over the summer, shirtless, pounding an arizona tall boy, laughing and telling us “hey, guess what, i work here now!”. pat scully, god bless you!

pat scully employee of the month august 2006