Burro X Jax Film Fest

October 10 2011 posted by Jack

Burro proudly presents custom merchandise for this year's Jax Film Fest

Y’all like movies right? Of course you do. So do we. So when the Jax Film Fest approached us about making some swag for the festival this weekend we were like “hell yeah!” This year, the Jax Film Fest has undergone a facelift thanks to the talented folks at Brunet-Garcia, an advertising agency here in Jacksonville. They felt that the old cheesy turtle logo was a bit too suburban and decided to completely rebrand the entire property. The look and feel of the new branding is much grittier and urban so they came to Burro to help merchandise the festival with a product that fit the new look. After a few meetings with B-G, we decided that our classic 6 Pack Bag would do the trick. Jorge and Jefferson came by the shop and chose the Steel CORDURA® brand fabric and a few different trim colors for the bags. They brought with them some canvas Jax Film Fest patches that we sewed on to make them unique.

There’s only 25 of these and a limited number will be available for sale a the film festival this weekend, so be sure to pick one up!

The Jax Film Fest starts this week!

This year’s festival is of particular significance to me personally. Just over a year ago, I created a project that showcased local music videos and named it the Jacksonville Music Video Revival (coming up with catchy names on the fly is not my strong-suit). Co-produced by EU Jacksonville (the local entertainment mag I write for) and Drips Black (a Jacksonville-based animation house), we put on two programs over the last year. At last year’s film festival, we presented the top 5 videos from the first program and presented an award to L Gustavo Cooper for Best Emerging Director. If you’ve been keeping score, Gus has done several video projects with Burro since then.

Fast forward to the present and the third installment of the Music Video Revival will receive a full slot as part of the Jax Film Fest! I’m so proud and excited to present this event this year and invite everyone in the area to come check it out and celebrate the local musical and video talent of Jacksonville. The event will be held at the 5 Points Theatre (where it all began) on Friday, October 14th at 9:15 PM. Tickets ar $5 and can be purchased here.

Thanks to the Jax Film Fest, Brunet-Garcia and all of you in advance for your support. Let’s make this year’s Jax Film Fest one for the books!

Halloween Race Bags

October 08 2011 posted by Jack

custom prize bags for ghouls

I don’t know about y’all but at some point, my favorite holiday went from being Christmas to Halloween. Maybe it’s just a better excuse to get stupid drunk or perhaps it has something to do with acting like a kid and dressing like an idiot. Or most likely, it has to do with all the skulls and evil shit people use to decorate their otherwise boring existence. It’s like for a couple of weeks, the world kinda looks like it belongs to us. Either way, point being - FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR!

Halloween also seems like the perfect excuse to throw a themed alley cat. We love sponsoring events and making cool custom bags when there’s cool imagery to work with. If you ask me, we may have gone a little overboard this year but this shit is fun!

We made some pretty radical custom bags for three Halloween-themed races this year. Check these bad boys out…

TALLOWEEN 7 (Tallahassee, FL) - October 16

This one is pretty much a no-brainer. The kids in Tally have been throwing one of the biggest alleycats in Florida for the past even years. We love helping out Florida events and now that Fixed Fight is over, this might well be Florida’s finest! John used the sweet lettering from the flyer and that purple / orange colorway reminds me of the Phoenix Suns. So fresh!

RACE OF THE DEAD (New Orleans, LA) - October 29

We sponsored this race last year because we liked the concept so much and New Orleans is probably one of our favorite cities. It might also be the spookiest/most evil place in America besides maybe like Salem or something. We decided we had to outdo what we did this year so John made his own ROTD design. Stoked on how this came out with the simple Grey / Black combo.

HELLONWEEL (Rochester, NY) - October 30

Don’t know much about this race, but we couldn’t refuse doing this image. It is probably the sickest thing we’ve ever put on a messenger bag. The Misfits / Danzig mash-up is classic! So jealous of whoever wins this race!

METAL MONDAZE PRESENTS: The Atlas Moth, KEN Mode, Khann and MORE

October 04 2011 posted by Jack

metal show at Burro Bar

Reeder and I are super stoked on this show for obvious reasons. If you aren’t a Duvalian (or Floridian fo that matter) Metal Mondaze is a Jacksonville tradition. Started some 4 or 5 years ago by our good pal DJ Metadonnie, the reigns have been passed down over the years to myself (Jack Diablo) for a short period and most recently and currently, DJ Reedtard (aka Erik Reeder, the guy who shows up late and hungover to ship the stuff you order). Reeder has turned Metal Mondaze into something of an institution and transformed what was once an excuse for a few friends to get plastered on a Monday night and listen to metal, punk and hardcore into a booking service and record label.

Rather than confining himself to heavy bands that just so happen to be coming through town on a particular night of the week, he is hosting a Thursday night show at Burro Bar featuring some real powerhouses in the metal scene (including my band!).

Headlining are psychedelic sludge doomers The Atlas Moth from Chicago, IL. The last time they played Jacksonville was a few years ago along with Northeast Florida’s own Dark Castle at Warehouse 8B and they blew us all away! We are stoked to have them back in town and even more stoked to see them at Burro Bar. Check out what Aquarius Records had to say recently about their new album An Ache For the Distance out now on Profound Lore:

Latest batch of psychedelic sludge from this Chicago crew, their second album, but the first we’ve actually heard from these guys, and we have to say, we’re digging this quite a bit. There seems to be something going on in Chicago, or something in the water as they say, with bands getting way weirder and more tripped out and psychedelic, the most obvious recent example has to be Nachtmystium’s shift from grim blackness, to hazy black psych, similarly, we always thought these guys were much more doomy and sludgey and crusty, and perhaps at one point they were, but now they’re conjuring something up much more in the spirit of groups like Kylesa or Rwake or other bands who have augmented their buzz and pound and howl with something much more experimental, melodic and psychedelic.
The Atlas Moth lay the foundation with big, downtuned riffs, a little stonery, way sludgey, plenty of classic metal going on too, the vibe very much like a smoldering post rockier Neurosis, but the riffs are spread out into strangely proggy arrangements, the band taking full advantage of their THREE guitar lineup with twisted serpentine harmonies that wrap themselves around everything. And the vocals are more like black metal shrieks, heavily effected vokills, that could sound out of place, but instead add a different element to the proceedings, but there’s also lots of keyboards, some dramatic crooned clean vocals, even some trumpets, all woven into a sound that’s epic and majestic, psychedelic and heavy, songs that unfurl gradually and slowly suck you in, not blasting or pounding or buzzing so much, but more sort of spaced out, and darkly dreamy, moody midtempo dirges that are totally mesmerizing.
Super striking Jesus Lizard Goat style artwork, with all manner of strange images projected onto a naked woman, like the music, very psychedelic.

Joining them are KEN Mode, all the way from Canada. Super stoked to witness their punishing metalcore first-hand. Plus, any band whose name references an obscure Henry Rollins quote has got to be pretty badass!

We’re even more excited about KEN Mode because they are currently sharing a member with one of Florida’s favorite Southern stoner metal outfits, Khann. Which means that yes, Khann will also play their first show at Burro Bar. They’ll be returning in November as part of their Fall tour but stay tuned for more developments on Khann in the future…

And of course we have some Jacksonville locals as well. Vomikaust brings their blackened thrash alongside drone doom newcomers Remains (my band!).

So come out to Burro Bar on Thursday and get ready to RAGE!

Bust Out the Longsleeves, Fall is Here!

October 01 2011 posted by Jack

dress for the season

It may have been Fall for about a week but it’s finally starting to feel like it here in Florida. At noon today, the thermometer was at 70! I was so personally stoked on this temperature development that I took the opportunity to give our Ace High Longlseeve T-Shirt a try.

There’s not a whole lot more to say about it, it is just a t-shirt after all. But damn, it’s an impressive one. Designed by Eyes Wide Awake for our Fall / Winter 2011-2012 collection and printed down at LYM Printshop in South Florida, it features a classic Ace of Spades card design filled with all the parts of an exploded fixed gear bicycle. I mean all the parts, and to scale. This might only impress design nerds and super-enthusiasts but even I marveled at the design as I stood in front of the mirror identifying all the various silhouettes. It’s so detailed you can een make out the lockring! Check out the original design below.

The Ace High Longsleeve T-Shirt is available now in the online store along with the rest of our apparel offerings.

“I don’t wanna live forever!”

Upcoming Burro Sponsored Events

September 26 2011 posted by Jack

Burro Fall / Winter 2011-2012 Lookbook is HERE!

September 15 2011 posted by Jack

Lookbook is live

The Burro Fall / Winter 2011-2012 Lookbook is up and active and ready for your eyes to be feasted upon it! It features all of our new colorways of messenger bags, hip bags and our new t-shirts. We’ve been working on this thing for months and we’re super stoked that it finally gets to see the light of day. As it is our first attempt at a project of this nature we wanted to be sure it was done right, and with the help of some friends, I think we pulled it off rather nicely!

For starters we recruited the photographic wizardry of Daniel Goncalves (fotobia.com) to capture the spirit of the new collection. Smoky, Chris, Meg, Melisande and I has a blast doing the shoots and I think it comes through in the photos. Burro Bar and Mel’s downtown loft provided the perfect backdrop to display the new colorways and t-shirt designs.

When it came time to put it all together, we chose our new design ninja of choice, Patrick Carter of Patrick Carter Design. Our vision was simple, but Patrick convinced us to step up the interactivity and the results far exceeded our expectations. Tight work all around!

As for the line, well, we hope you dig it. There’s a couple of loose themes I guess as you can see from the t-shirts and the naming convention of the bags, but for the most part, the new colorways are a bit of a hodge-podge that accurately represent the issue of our scattered (and perhaps a bit scrambled) brains. Bottom line, we couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out and we hope you will enjoy looking at (and perhaps even buying!) some of our new stuff.

Everything in the Lookbook is available for sale now in the online store and we’ll be rolling out additional sizes and styles in the next few weeks.

Pretty sure this calls for a celebration, and no celebration would be complete without a good sale to accompany it! All of the old stuff is marked way down and on top of that we are running with coupon code fall2011 to save 15% off everything (ONLINE ONLY!). The old stuff won’t last long and the coupon code expires next week so get on it!

Keep It Wheel y’all and thanks for your continued support!

Welcome to the Team Miguel Reyes

September 06 2011 posted by LAF

Miguel Reyes joins the Team Burro Polo Squad

When Jack told me about Miguel getting on Burro, I was super stoked to know I would be shooting pictures of another long term friend. Burro guys really know what kind of dudes to rep. Miguel is a talented BMX rider so it blew me away that a badass polo rider would come from a BMX background. I’m stoked for Miguel to be pushing himself in such a sport. Meeting up with him and catching up was awesome. He showed me his Polo bike and all the sick parts that Burro hooked him up with. Expect much more news from Miguel Reyes. Texas goes hard!

Polo Jack T-Shirt