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Fashion Peace – Love – Spandex

September 12, 2011 - 10:48 am

The future of super hero party style.

For fashion designer, wardrobe stylist, Angela McBride, spandex is a way of life. The self-taught seamstress has created countless amounts of stretchy goodness while hustling her way to the top. Working runway shows, styling photo shoots, to dressing the biggest names in entertainment today.

She’s currently taking over the city with Aptemal Clothing on a line of “DETROIT HUSTLES HARDER” spandex and booty shorts. She continues building her brand while promoting her work as a stylist for all types: hip hop, rock stars, whatever, she can do it all. Angela’s latest gig includes making some gear for the ultimate party band –LMFAO- who totally embodies what Peace Love and Spandex is all about: High energy fun, dressing up and getting down!

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Austin TX Featured Gallery Shamrock Shades: Doing Our Bit To Keep It Green

by Lisa Johnson

March 19, 2011 - 9:30 am

We at ChinaShop spent the day Thursday in Austin, Texas celebrating St Patrick’s Day. What better way to share our love of the Emerald Isle than to whip out our favorite pair of shades and help with the green effort in the process.

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Fashion Gallery Molla Space: Good Design for Everyone

by Barbie Brady and Dustin Downing

February 16, 2011 - 6:21 pm

Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I like things that look like things that are really other things. For example, a ceramic grenade that is actually a bank, or a lollipop made of plastic that’s actually a speaker for my mp3 device. It’s no wonder then that I have loved Molla Space for a long time now.

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Music Having Fun with Hip Hop: Redman

by Shop Keeper

January 10, 2011 - 7:08 am

Redman has jumped off of stages and into crowds – and off of airplanes into clouds. It’s that kind of recklessness and willingness to take extreme risks that has enabled the New Jersey rhymer to sustain a wild rap career that has lasted nearly 20 years.

“It’s like my personality in the music,” says Redman during an interview from Def Jam Records’ New York office. Redman’s seventh album, Redman Presents…Reggie, was released on Tuesday. “It allows me to branch off into any area that I want because I’m open,” he continues. “I could be your hardest asshole and I can be the easiest guy to get along with. That’s what my music is. I have people music. I don’t just have, ‘OK, I’m a thug. I can’t smile.’ Or, ‘Fuck that. I don’t do that X Games bullshit.’ I don’t have that kind of look. I have the kind of look like, ‘Hey. I like that guy. He smokes. He pays his bills. He steps in his pants one leg at a time just like we do,’ and that’s the feel and the vibe that I give off to people, so when I do things like the X Games or a Gillette commercial people see me and be like, ‘Wow. Look at this dude,’ not, ‘What the fuck is he in there for?’ It was like, ‘Yeah, well, why not?’ It’s just his personality.”

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Music What Its Really Like to Try to Break Into the Music Industry

by Shop Keeper

December 10, 2010 - 1:54 pm

Thanks to the fine folks at xtranormal.com for developing this amazing technology that allows you to create your own movies by typing. Its pretty fun playing out your most irritating conversations, or your most fantastic ones. I particularly liked the above commentary on the state of the Music Industry. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Only, you know, in a slightly less creepy robot voice.

Art/Design Featured A Cardboard Los Angeles Emerges

by Nicole Pajer and Dustin Downing

October 11, 2010 - 11:11 am

Even with this crazy recession, there is no way around the fact that real estate is expensive in Los Angeles. What if you could purchase a brand new home for $12, decorate it the way you want to, and place it in whatever LA county community your fancy? Would that resolve your house hunting woes?

The British Theater Company made this daydream a reality when they brought the Home Sweet Home concept to the Skirball Cultural Center. Over a ten day period, visitors banded together to create a cardboard City of Angels complete with homes, stores, bridges, billboards, zoos, farms, skateboard parks, circus tents, Capitol Records Tower, Disney Concert Hall…you name it.

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Music Major Lazer: Guns Don’t kill people, Ladders Do

by Dustin Downing

August 10, 2010 - 1:35 pm

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) Standard for portable ladders contains specific requirements designed to ensure worker safety when using portable ladders. #1926.1053(b)(4) States: Ladders shall be used only for the purpose for which they were designed. Shit! I swear, if any of you tell Skerrit Bwoy from Major Lazer that OSHA may frown upon his leaping through the air from said ladder and into the crotch area of his lady friend, I will turn this car around and no one will be getting a drop of MDMA. Not even you DJ Diplo.

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Featured Gallery Music All Eyes on Flying Lotus: Hard Fest 2010

by Dustin Downing

August 10, 2010 - 1:21 pm

I have photographed Steven Ellison, a.k.a Flying Lotus, 5 or 6 times in the past 2 years. It was during the first set of his which I photographed that I noticed Flying Lotus had certain, “tell”, as they so call it in poker. Just before the baseline is to drop through the floor, into the basement and most likely end up in the water table, he would pause as if floating Wylie Coyote style in mid air. Just hovering there above his Eve bitten clamshell which contains the soles of well worn Samiyam 8-bit beats and most likely photos of a black tee clad Thom Yorke.

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Music DJ Tina T Presents ‘Camp Spin-Off’: DJ Camp for Kids

by Shop Keeper

August 3, 2010 - 11:25 am

Camp Spin-Off (Aug. 1st-5th) will bring together 50 boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 17 with the common passion and desire to learn the art of being a DJ. The program is designed to bring all the elements of the DJ culture together in an outdoor environment. Campers are not only immersed in the culture but also experience an action packed week of traditional camp activities with their favorite DJ role models. The DJ community is unique in that, the “pioneers” of the art form are still alive. Some of these very pioneers are scheduled to make appearances during the duration of camp. Confirmed heavy hitter DJ and music industry involvement includes but is not limited to, DJ Kevin Scott, DJ Spider, DJ Enrie, and DJ Scene. Famed DJ Hapa will be teaching instructional DJ courses. Camp Spin-Off aims to give access to not only these pioneers, but also the proper DJ instruction and equipment, paired with a team-building environment in the great outdoors!

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