Get on your Bike and Ride!!!

Stay Wild: Ride a Motorcycle from Chris Lopez on Vimeo.

We posted this tiny video on our instagram feed last week with like ZERO info abut it.

Here's a Q&A with the film-maker and Stay Wild's bad-ass intern Chris Lopez!

What is the footage from?

This footage is from the summer of 2013. My friends, Jake Skirving, Tyler Heyl, and myself were toying around with the idea of starting some sort of small video production, design, and photography collective. Tyler is a photographer, Jake and myself are designers and dabble in photography. We all want to do something creative and eventually want to work together, so we decided to make the work that we want to do for fun. That way we learn hands on and if the end product turns out good enough we can use it to show others what we can do.

So Jake built a giant dry erase board and we set up outside his band room in Boring, Oregon. We  brainstormed topics for a video, until we decided on making a short motorcycle video. There are a lot of windy country roads with great views through forests that open up to a killer view of Mt. Hood out in Boring. We decided to film my friend Jake who rides a stripped down 1975 CB360, it’s about as cafe racer as it gets. The bike is dark and aggressive so we wanted the riding and music in the video to stay consistent with the tone we had set.

The story is that an anonymous guy (we never show his face because we wanted the viewer to be able to place himself/herself in this guy’s shoes) with street clothes slowly prepares himself for a ride but as soon as that garage door raises he’s balls to the wall shreddin’. Our goal was to show that for this guy his bike, is his escape. When he gets on it he can’t help but to redline it.

We were going to make another video that features myself, riding more lightheartedly. Using my bike for going on camping trips, hauling crap around, breaking down, etc.

Think you’ll be able to finish the video this summer?

We have most of the b-roll shot, locations scouted, and the rest of the shots storyboarded. We all just need to coordinate our days off so that we can shoot one or two days a week. So to answer your question, yeah I think we’ll be able to finish it this summer.

What’s up with that music?

The music is by King Dude from Seattle, Washington. The song is called “Holy Land.” My friend Jake recently found out that one of his co-workers at Tanner Goods was King Dude’s roommate at the time he wrote “Burning Daylight” the album that “Holy Land” is on. Small world.

We put Jake on music duty while Tyler and I were looking up shots we wanted to get and camera techniques. Jake showed us a handful of dark sounding songs that evoked the emotion we were trying to go for. King Dude’s Holy Land felt the best so we went with that.

What’s the wildest you’ve ever felt?

Maybe skinny dipping in the Willamette off the dock by OMSI, or making sweet love on the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night.

Classic: Shrooming in the Desert

So get this. One day I decided it’d be a really fun idea to take shrooms and watch the sun set over the mountains. I convinced one of my friends to do it with me. We rode out to the desert and parked in a deserted lot. We each took two stems and two caps, but after an hour of watching the sun finally set, we grew impatient and couldn’t feel shit. So we ate a couple more.

Let me tell you, it definitely hit me out of nowhere. It grew dark. I looked up at the sky. I started making up legit constellations with the stars. You know, straight up being an astronomer rollin’ balls. Then clouds rolled over and I solemnly swear I saw pirate ships made out of clouds throwing bombs at one another. I could literally see pirate war action going on in the sky in front of my beautiful, made-up constellations. I was freaking out! I tried showing my friend, but he was in his own little universe...as was I.

 Story and photos by Gaby Jeter

LAND: Their Hands are the Face of Your Favorite Outdoor Brand

Hey Caleb & Ryan,
If you let me interview you, it might be more fun than a knife fight.
Yo Man,
Send over some questions. I’ll take a shot at ‘em. Please be a bit patient as we’re swamped!

What are you so swamped with?
Swamped with branding a hotel, liquor label,
stoked to work on more Deus doodles, and a couple of art shows with friends.

Why do you call yourselves LAND?
Caleb had just moved back to Austin and felt more connected than he had in awhile to the land and sky and space here in Texas. We were trying to find a name for joining forces and it just felt right. It’s ubiquitous enough that it doesn’t define what we do and want to do.

Where are you located?
We work in a brick warehouse shop in East Austin. The building was built in 1941 for making wire ropes and chains.

What percentage of your work is done off the computer screen?
About 50 percent. If time permits, we try to draw as much as we can; typography and illustration. In the end, it all ends up in the digital world.

What have you been drawing lately?
We’re always experimenting. Motorcycles, nudes, animals, portraits, any objects or life with symbolic value.

Can you tell me what the symbolic value of these things are?
I guess it’s like trying to talk about art. We figure the meaning we draw from an image will be different from what you might take from it. You take the chance that someone may feel your art doesn’t make sense at all, but we like that. Sometimes designers put too much concept into something and it’s a turn off. Just get weird and have fun.

The work you’ve done for clients like Poler, Patagonia, Deus, and the like has really solidified the look of this newfound outdoorsy branding. Has it been hard to keep growing your visual voice since you could basically have a seat in the throne you built?
That’s kind of you to say, but the only thrones we sit on are porcelain. Growing our visual voice is something we strive for and it does get tough sometimes to do something new that you’re stoked on. It’s all about trial and error, and the urge to progress. It’s a bit easier to do that with your own art, but getting a client on board with pushing things isn’t. Fortunately, we’ve been able to work with folks that let us run wild and trust us.

Where do you get your typography influences from?
Early American signage, even up into the 60s. Anything hand painted or hand set, so that includes anything from the Gutenberg Bible to the dawn of computers.

What would be a dream project for you? What would you make if money and time didn’t get in the way?
Weed packaging is a dream. Soon. We would probably abandon desk life in general and get into sculpture, painting more, building motorcycles or just painting with mud nude in the woods.

What’s the most wild you’ve ever felt?
Visiting the full moon under purple skies in Bali on mushrooms.

A Stopnik Family Portrait by Carey Quinton Haider

A family penned The Cycle Zombies from Huntington Beach, California, seems to have missed the boat, pushing the pedal to the metal 24/7 on a permanent vacation fueled with highways, getting high on speed (I don’t mean the shit truck drivers smoke), and swimming in shark-infested waters, all while completely sober.

Chase, Scotty, and Turkey Stopnik all do it because they are passionate humans believing 100 percent in their journeys. A rare sight in today’s shopping mall society, where everything is made safe and convenient. It is midnight at the Stopnik ranch and instead of soaking in potato chip blankets watching reruns of Dr. Phil, the boys are instead out in the garage covered in grease slamming together a pre-1960’s Harley wheel. The whole neighborhood is asleep. These moments are good reminders that if you are true to yourself you can live a fulfilled life and get by because of it.
Chase, a tall lanky fellow, has the personality of a stray dog that ate too much MSG-filled chicken discarded in the bushes. Always nice as can be, he is never sitting and always on the move−whether it be making art, building rideable art, or skateboarding a ditch.  

Turkey, Chase’s cousin, is soft-spoken. He pays great attention to everything he does−from his bike builds to the way he moves about his board.

Turkey’s brother, Scotty, lives across town. He is a business man, always buying and selling past-era chopper parts while finding time to surf, skate and raise a family.

More often than not, you see these men strolling a swap meet together or on a motorcycle roadtrip heading up north.  The spontaneity, need for adventure, and passion of the Cycle Zombies is the real deal.

Carey Quinton Haider