Arkansas Style + Tech Blog
- How our mission came to be
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It’s been over a year now, since the thought process for Style and Tech began. I was trying to come up with a permanent outlet for my writing and graphics, which could produce an end product that would be worthy and in some way portable enough to take it into a job interview. Much of my creative work is far too unhinged and challenging to be a casual representation of my abilities. I also needed something that could house mine and my buddy Trey Wilbourn’s year-end lists of albums we loved from 2015. However, the longer we stalled, the more the concept morphed. At first it was intended to be a website, then a printed zine, but now we are arriving at the reality that it's best presented in the form of a blog, that would feature online content somewhat like a zine, in the form of printable PDFs in various visual styles, and with as much tasteful graphics as we could conjure in the small amounts of free time we could find.
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In the beginning, it was only about music, but we wanted something less limited and more unique. We wanted something that could appeal to a broad group of people, something that had the potential to help unify our local community in a way that bridged gaps and defied preconceived notions in some way. I suggested to another of our close friends whom I often bounce my crazy ideas off of, Derek Brooks, that our zine could be about style and technology. I suggested this because style is typically thought to be a feminine interest, and technology a masculine. However, both my mom and my wife like to take me with them clothes shopping because I like to comment on garments and how they go together. Also, my wife is a supervisor for coders, and no matter if we are at home, at her parent’s house, or at my parent’s house, she is the default tech person. So, style and technology very much seemed to be topics that brought together different personality types, and bridged divides. Derek suggested that we should just call it style and technology. I just shortened it to Style & Tech, and added Arkansas to the subtext. It seemed simple enough.
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Trey, Derek, and I, are part of a larger group of guys who do a radio show and sometimes make our own rap music together. We call ourselves The 4817 Crew, named after the childhood address of my brother Matt and I, who started the crew. My brother has his own shop, installing electronics in cars. Considering his interest set, was a big part of the reason why I thought to include technology as half of the focus. Trey, my business partner in this zine, is a big fashion buff himself. At one point I considered focusing just on fashion and music, but opening up to the broader term “style” also left open the chance to include the work of visual artists, if we want to.
The missing element was how to really double-down on our promise of unifying our community. The main problem I encountered, as we thought this through, was that I didn't want to exclude people who could not afford to keep up with the latest technology, fashion, music, or even trends in general. Also, we still wanted this thing to be unique, and even though it sounded like we had something unique, other blogs are out there focused on style and technology, believe it or not. So, our solution, and the icing on the cake, really, was to open up the timeline for a sort of retro/vintage angle. Instead of articles about the latest Apple roll-out, or gaming console, we would take it back to technology like Nintendo 64, and repurposed thrift store garments, not exclusively, but just enough to level the playing field for different economic backgrounds, and to treat everything as potentially timeless. This is an interesting approach for music, because it puts pressure on us to not simply skim the surface of current trends, but to consider what albums from 2015-2016 we hope we can vouch for forever. With all this in mind, our concept is now complete, and it’s time for it to finally get up and walk, with a life of it’s own.
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- An introduction to the editors
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One time when I was in my 20s, I heard there was going to be a little hip-hop event at this very small Jamaican restaurant down in the Quapaw Quarter area of downtown Little Rock, AR on Main St. I forget the name of the restaurant, since it came and went, but they served a lot of vegetarian food like I usually eat, including fried plantains, which are kind of rare here. I was a big fan of Wu Tang and A Tribe Called Quest, and other types of rap that I considered to be positive or intelligent, and this event advertised an open mic segment, so I took a chance and popped in there to check it out. I was correct that it was my kind of intelligent and creative type people, in a small intimate type scenario. I had this one descent rap verse I was in the habit of pulling out as a sort of default demonstration to people that I could actually rap. It was a verse I used in my little hippie-type funk band, called Fire in the Treehouse. If I recall correctly, I think I went to this event alone. So, I got my chance on the mic, and I recited my little verse from memory. There was no stage, but just a flat area and a tiny P.A.. Well, I think I must have just looked like a longhaired white goofball who they suspected could not rap, because when I finished my verse all the dudes there erupted in praise and astonishment. Those guys were a clic I would come to know as The Bru Records All-Stars.
Meeting these guys helped start a snowball effect of enthusiasm that lasted a long time, through my participation in multiple hip-hop event series’, multiple published albums, and now a new crew that has a radio show. Two of the people from Bru records who are now in The 4817 Crew, who do the radio show with me, are Trey Wilbourn and Derek Brooks. Trey is co-editor for this zine, and the cover model for the first issue, and Derek is one of our consultants who plans to be a regular contributor and grammar editor. The same feeling of inclusion and confidence that they gave me when I first met them, is what I intend to inject into the direction for this zine, and the blog that contains it. We are not here to promote elitism, but to simply highlight some aspects of our community in a way that is diverse, and open to perspectives from every type of person, within the loose parameters of style and technology. We are very excited to see where it goes.
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JASON M. HARRINGTON - EDITOR IN CHIEF