In June I wrote about moving up a waist size in my Levis and lovingly packing away  jeans I’ve had for 20 years. I didn’t think of them as “distressed,” rather just getting good and broke in. I would never buy jeans that were made and sold to look like you’d been wearing them for a long time. That’s just… just… just such a neocon thing to do.

But that should not diminish our appreciation for the men (and women?) who work so hard to make your jeans look like they once belonged to a cowboy.

Boing Boing points us to this photo essay (The Denim Factory) by David Friedman featuring a denim factory in Kentucky that specializes in distressing high-end jeans for a few top designers.

“I used to scoff at paying a premium for jeans that come with holes in them already. Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realized that these people are artists. You can’t just have any loose threads, you have to have the right loose threads. They can’t just be faded. They have to be the right color. A lot of work goes into making these jeans look just right.”

We’re running low on cow shit! Somebody bring in another tub!

I’ve done something rash. Another impulse purchase. No, not an Apple product this time. That comes next week (or whenever) when the new MacBooks arrive. I popped for a Herman Miller Aeron chair. Here’s the back-story.

Barb has been having some repetitive stress pain from a really shitty ergonomic combination of chair and desk. It got me to thinking about how much time we spend in an office chair in front of a computer. Six, eight hours a day? So I pulled the trigger. Stay tuned.

On the way to dinner on our final evening in Seattle, we discovered a team of artists finishing up what I would describe as a graffiti piece. They’d been spraying away all day and looked a little pooped. We chatted with what appeared to be the boss artist and learned he was a graphic artist and this was a paid gig.

We also learned they don’t use any old paint from the hardware store. It’s special spray paint created for this kind of art. Costs about nine bucks a can and comes from Germany. There were a lot of cans strewn about but the company apparently gives it to them for promotional purposes.

I mean no disrespect in using the word faux to describe their work. I’ve always liked the raw, bold look of graffiti art but suspect the owners of the building would like for passers-by to assume some talented street urchins and done this in the wee hours with back-packs full of Krylon.

UPDATE: Received email from one of the artists, asking me to pull the images from flickr. At least the ones that showed the artists faces. While this piece was commissioned by the owner of the building, sometimes these guys get creative without being asked. I was happy to yank the images. It never occurred to me that a tagger (?) might do a legit job by day while still answering the call of the wild. The artist offered to send me a photo of the finished wall. I’ll post it if and when.

UPDATE: Here are some more photos by one of the artists who did the wall we saw in Seattle. Sneke, Myth, Hews and Kel 1st who is one of the original NYC subway writers from the late 70’s – mid 80’s.