Went to my first Haight Street Fair last sunday which is a huge annual street fair in San Francisco with lots of different vendors, including a hell of lot of T-Shirts. The fair runs for at least a mile with a stage at each end with bands and DJ’s performing all day. I’m glad to say I found some new T-shirt designs and designers, and also ran into some old friends as well.
I think one of my favorite new designers/artisans is Jenifer Kirsch who’s line is called Juror2 - Exceptionally Curious T-shirts. Jennifer is an amazing “one man” t-shirt band, who designs, draws and hand screens all here shirts. She was even screening shirts right there at the festival when I met her. I took a few pictures of her at work.
Oaklandish was also new to me, and which appears to be another Oakland based T-shirt company fiercely loyal to their town. I wonder if Oakland suffers the same sort of feeling that it’s playing second fiddle to San Francisco, as Cambridge does to Boston? I wonder if this kind of urban nationalism stems from a kind of inferiority complex, I mean they don’t call it the Peoples Republic of Cambridge for nothing 
Anyway, Oaklandish has some great prints and are worth checking out whether you live in Oakland or not.
One thing they do have on San Francisco is it is warmer
More Oakland love from another new t-shirt company, Like Minded People. These guys aim for designs that aim to be a bit more thoughtful and meaningful than the often flip slogans we find on a lot of T-shirts. Their tag line “clothing for the conscious inspired by life” expresses pretty well what their sentiments are, and they have some great designs as well. All the shirts are hand printed using water based inks on AA.
The Town t-shirt of course has the famous Oakland dock crane that is said to have inspired the AT-AT’s in the Empire Strikes Back.
likemindedpeople.us (also i’m listening to an amazing CD these guys gave me as well, apparently the founder is a bit of a DJ as well)
TwoTreeDesigns also new to me but has some nice prints, lots of audio inspired goodness.
Dreamtime Creations were there with all your burningman costume needs, and some really nicely detailed shirts. The addition of another fabric as sort of piping around the sleeves, collar and the hem made these shirts really stand out.
(unfortunately the web address on their card doesn’t have anything related to this http://dreamtimecreations.eu)
Custom Industries who I’ve met before at Threadshow were there and are having a huge clearance sale, 50% off folks, check them out, they’ve got Hoodies, Zippies, Long Sleeved themals and of course a bunch of T-Shirts. I can vouch for the nice quality of the shirts.
Old friends I caught up with included Fiftyseven-Thirtythree who were rocking some amazing new hoodies, the details on the linings to the hoods, the airbrushed designs, and details made these really stand out. They also had some new t-shirt designs that I was digging as well.
Check out their Etsy store for all their stuff
Of course San Franpsycho were there doing their live screen-printing in front of what seemed to be a sell out crowd, these guys always attract a lot of interest with their screening shenanigans
One of the few things I bought were some sunglasses from a new indie eyewear company called Irie Eyewear, check them out.
Oh, and this is not a T-Shirt but damn well should be
You can see all my pictures from the fair here on flickr.
This post is tagged haight, haight-st, haight-street, street-fair
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