When: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 9am-midnight 8/27-8/29

Where: The Armory at 68 Lexington Avenue (between 25th/26th streets). 6 train to 23rd or walk 11 blocks north on Park Ave. from Union Square, NYC, and make a right on 25th st. Entrance is on Lexington Ave.

We are stoked to participate in the upcoming Convergence art show happening at the 25th street armory in Manhattan this weekend. We’ll have a display somewhere on the left hand side of the space, we’re not sure yet of the exact location. The show itself is organized by an arts collective called The Marketplace Gallery based in Albany. The show is a benefit for Operation Homefront, a non-profit dedicated to helping families of fallen soldiers in the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. 50% of all show sales go to this worthy cause.

The first Convergence show happened in Afghanistan at a US military base, and the artwork was created by active duty soldiers and contractors. The second Convergence show happened in the USA last year with some of this art from the Afghanistan show, together with other art submitted from artists around the country and the world. This third Convergence, also at the 69th fighting regiment armory, on Lexington and 25th street (the site of the historic 1913 Armory show).

This art show has a cool mission – to create an artist-centric art show, as opposed to the norm of gallery and dealer-centric events that are the basis of art fairs around the world. I spoke with Greyegg, one of the organizers of the show, and he was passionate about creating parallel avenues for artists to show their work – in many ways bucking the system that favors franchise art galleries and other power brokers of the art world. Since it is still very much at the beginning of its existence, the show feels new and unencumbered – hopefully it can retain this “new kid” energy in later years.

SpankTheMachine will be moving as much of our catalog as we possibly can! We’re going to be scaling our prices down in favor of moving volume – something like two garments for fifteen bux. Cheap, right? We’d like to clear out as much of our current collection as we can, in favor of raising cash for new designs coming in the fall with the site relaunch. So if you’ve been wondering when in the hell you’ll be able to hook into some STM awesomeness, this is the time. Ya got three days, so c’mon down!!!!!

Facebook Event: shoink.

A 30" X 8' work table, with overhead frame storage. Hell's yeah

Ze tool rack, dehumidifier, and mini workbench

more overhead frame storage, and a partial view of the fixed 4X8 work table. Can you spot the table saw?

The other 30" X 8' work table, somewhat cluttered by electronics. And yes, the screen does read "HASSLEHOFF" with the number 0, something I printed on a German soccer jersey once upon as time...

We’ve got one more table to build, along with an exposer unit. But we’ve already got three 8′ worktables on wheels, two 30″ wide, and one at 48″. Basically, we’re set for workspace. Now it’s on to setting up workstations for printing and sourcing the last pieces of printing equipment. Once we make our initial purchase of inks, emulsion, etc, we’re good to go. We’ll be fabricating our own frames from 2X4s, more on that soon.

“Democracy is a game in which we all make the rules. How do we make this serious game more inclusive, more fair, and more fun?”

Here’s the banner I submitted for the event. Boy I have a big mouth.

1) Our workshop has been set up! We’ve got a slammin’ space in East Williamsburg. Over the next ten days I’ll be building worktables on wheels and acquiring several dozen frames to be burnt with our new catalog. I’ll post pictures of the space soon, promise.

2) After much dilly-dallying with a variety of webspaces (a wiki at pbworks.com, a Google Group, and Google Docs) I finally decided to set up the channel to discuss the implementation of the site and catalog right here. There’s a mix of public and private stuff, and that’s what took time to sort out. I like the idea of keeping it all in one space, and the only thing I don’t yet want to disclose is the slogan list, so that’s not hard to get around. It was my first instinct to publish a meta channel here anyway, and WordPress has enough plugins to set up the collaborative features I was looking for as far as suggestions/designs etc. So here we are! The answer lay within all along…

3) I finally got enough money set aside to buy our first round of blanks, restock on inks and supplies, and generally get the wheels turning. We will be looking to do a photoshoot over the next 3-4 weeks, so if you are interested, shoot us an email (info@guess-the-domain-it-ends-in-machine.com). All body types & coolness levels are welcome (bonus if we can get someone in a 3-piece suit & necktie with a t-shirt over their getup).

4) Working on jailbreaking a semi-busted gen 1 iphone, which means I’ll be able to do a better job documenting the day to day stuff of building & printing. If anyone has an extra iphone with an AT&T contract that they want to give away because they love unicorns, we’ll take that off your hands. Just sayin’.

SpankTheMachine,

SpankTheMachine

Learning a new CMS system adds significant time to a deployment. That’s what we’ve learned over the past month, and while we’ve made progress, we’re not ready to launch tomorrow

THAT’S OUR STORY AND WE’RE STICKIN’ TO IT!

But we’re excited to launch, as we have several great new slogans that are getting rendered as we speak. And between American Apparel and Article1 clothing, we’ve got literally dozens of styles of clothes we’re choosing from. The site is going to look great, the catalog looks dope, it’s summertime, and the economy hasn’t folded entirely yet. Smiles all around. [smiley face] See?

We’ve gotten your emails (nothing makes us happier than hearing from a customer who wants our shirts, after we’ve been offline for so long!), and we are doing everything we can to get this site done properly pronto!

While no one can accuse us of being in the tshirt business for the money (since we haven’t exactly been hustling over the last two years we are excited to get back online and reconnect with our customers and the friends we made selling in Union Square back in ‘04-’06.

Question for YOU: Do you live in New York, and if so, do you know of anyone who has access to a great rooftop where we could hold a combination pre-launch party and photoshoot for SpankTheMachine? Maybe early June? Thinkin’ moosique, entertainment of one sort or another, happy beautiful people all over the place, you know – summertime.

SpankTheMachine,

SpankTheMachine.

-STM

So we look at this timing disjoint with ZenCart an opportunity to dive in to Magento. So far, so good, although learning a new CMS is always a trial in the beginning. Patience, glasshoppa…

-STM

We got plans, dreams, slogans, and a sense that after eight years of El Bush, it is time to laugh again. We’re stoked to claim our corner of the interwebs, and if capitalism holds out long enough, we might be able to sell some shirts in the months ahead.

SpankTheMachine,

SpankTheMachine

4/1 – 4/2/09