Please do not buy these overpriced rip offs. What the bag makers are calling a homage is actually them using Neil's artwork without his permission for their $300+ messenger bags. The bags themselves look like a rip of the old Zo Bags from San Francisco anyway. I heard from Neil today and he had this to say:"That bag is a shocker.They're using all kinds of graphics from companies.Vision?T.Hawk?Weird,wonder what can be done?wonder if they even sold any bags,terrible looking items." -Neil Blender
In addition to the companies Neil named they are also using designs from Jim Phillips/Santa Cruz, Hosoi, VCJ/Powell Peralta, and Alien Workshop.
If you want to buy Neil's artwork, get it straight from the man himself here. He's got 2 pieces up right now. He closed The Heated Wheel site a while ago but he's now selling his stuff on eBay. Support Neil not those trying to make a buck off his efforts.
UPDATE:
The bags have thankfully been taken off their site. Here are some of the other bags. I couldn't find the Hawk or Alien Workshop ones.
Here's a letter of apology from the offending company, Reload Bags via our friends at Skate Daily. A big thanks to Chris, Bryce and crew for getting my post out to the masses. OK, now that this is over I can get back to doing 15-block alley-oop 50/50's at Potrero. See you at the park.
20 comments:
Dude, those are tribute bags. Read up before you mouth off. http://reloadeast.blogspot.com/2009/07/skateboard-tribute-series-released.html
Seriously, fuck these people making these bags. *Damon
Tribute? It's a straight lift of the original artwork. How about the bag makers ask permission from the artists before making these pricey "tribute" bags?
@Gonzo...Using the word "tribute" is no excuse to lift someones artwork, put it on your product and charge 300 bucks for it, no matter how much time you spend in front of a sewing machine to do it.
Tribute? How about every one of these is a trademarked piece of artwork owned by a company that spent a lot of money making these products in the first place. You can't just use someone else's trademarked art however you want. These guys are idiots and possibly looking at legal action.
It looks like a lot of work went into making those bags, just not much thought...
Looks like they took them down. Ha, people LOVE to rip off skateboarders and have been for years.
They're all ready shut down. Don't fuck with skateboarding Re(tard)bags!
the one with a skull on it..on the main bag page...is a Karp 7" rip off. lame.
Just another square ripping off a culture that they will never understand. Maybe they come with chain wallets and sandpaper so you can make an ollie hole without ollieing.
Apparently, they haven't pulled everything off the interwebs yet...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/reloadbags/page2/
"Tribute" is a joke. This "artist" Gerik Forston may be a very talented applique artist, but so what. The website listed Forston as the designer. No mention of the original artists at all. No "Re" and all "Load". This company and this so-called artist are jokes are the lowest order. Gonzo, please let me know what you do so I can figure out a way to rip you off and profit from you labor. Tribute. Yeah right. This is pure unadulterated theft and profiteering. The saddest thing of all is that many skate artists are down to do collabs, provided someone asks.
-BLKPRJKT
Christian, thanks for chiming in. Couldn't agree more. When's that piece on Small Beating and my boys Jackon & Nelson coming out? -Jason
Hey Jason,
Chud & crew will be featured as soon as we get a chance to hook up with those boys once more, we've got plenty of good shots of Josh, just need to sit with Chud and get the Small Beating historicals and that stuff. It's going to be a good one.
Hell yes, thanks Christian. Looking forward to it.
Long comment, but here's a statement from ReLoad via skatedaily.com:
First and foremost, we sincerely wish to apologize to the skateboard community, the companies that used the artwork we used in the series on their decks, and most of all, to the artists who created the graphics that inspired the series in the first place. I hope they can believe that it was never our intention to create something that would be seen as offensive and insulting. Honestly, the series just sprang from a desire to relive some of these graphics, and to push the limits of our sewing technique in the process.
We are in no way trying to make any excuses for the bags, or to defend against the reaction of the skateboard community as a whole. We fully understand the reaction that has come from the community (although unfortunately, we obviously did not anticipate it) and we just want to share what our thought process was, as far as releasing these bags, so that people understand where we were coming from. Basically, we are a company made up of six people, and we make everything from scratch, from start to finish, in-house. Only one of each bag was ever going to be made...meaning, to us, these were all one-of a kind bags. We are an
extremely small company, and we don't do "production runs" or make any huge marketing plans or anything like that. We basically make bags
according to specs that our customers supply about 90% of the time, and the little time that's left over we use to make a few bags that interest us specifically.
Again, to be clear I am not trying to make an excuse for why we did it....we did it because we thought it would be a fun project to work on. And it really was. However, we also thought - rather naively, as it turns out - that it would be a fitting tribute to reproduce the artwork in a form that isn't currently available: a messenger bag. We were trying to pay a compliment to the artwork itself, because we absolutely loved the designs. We were all really excited about how the bags would turn out, and initially we seemed to receive a lot of
positive comments from both skaters and cyclists regarding the series. In our minds, it was tribute of the of the highest order, actually. However, we now understand that this is not the case in the eyes of
the artists.
The bags were priced the same way we would price any customer order that was submitted to us: we estimate how long it will take to cut and stitch the artwork onto the flap, we add that to the base price of the bag (in the case of the "Deluxe" models used in this series, $194), and thats the price. We have been operating in traditional fashion for almost 12 years now; training stitchers to make quality items from scratch, using U.S. made materials, paying our small staff as best we can, and most of all trying to give them the tools to succeed in whatever capacity they choose after they leave our company. Believe me when I tell you there is very little profit in this. If we didn't love what we do everyday, we would have been out of business a very, very long time ago.
The bags have been taken off of the website and we have no intention of selling them, and again we sincerely apologize to the artists we have offended with this series.
roland
R.E.Load Baggage
KW, thanks for the update. -Jason
It's enough of this culture of theft/recycling...people start coming up with some fresh new ideas. Put 5 minutes of thought into it, and if nothing grabs up, put in another 5.
Once you start blatantly ripping shit off you're cooked as an artist and business.
You are right on the money. Thanks for posting. -Jason
After looking at their website I'd have to say that the bulk of their designs are rip offs. The Andy Warhol banana from the first Velvet Undeground LP is one of the more obvious offenders. Hacks!
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