the story of Kweejibo Clothing Co., on the Haight in San Francisco, 1992 to 2008. Product designed by owner and staff, all locally manufactured in Oakland. Part of a series of stories written by Soon Yee Cindy Cho, owner of the former Kweejibo

Excerpts from :

Made in Oakland, Part One 

"1989, graduation"

our fair and wind chill factor city experiences the Recession forcefully in 1989. a Recession, waves of cash recede from the vicinity along with the tourists, all disappeared due to the thorough nation-wide media depiction of the whole of San Francisco as having fallen into the bountiful Pacific Ocean.

i must get a job, despite the city's current paucity in such. i cannot move back in with the parents who live in the Sunset. the Sunset District is the real San Francisco. it is built on sand dunes, ever sloped ever hilly, and where i have done my time already for fifteen of my formative years. all that gorgeous unrelenting grey fog which lacks even patterns of cloud formation, just greyness, and miles of repetitive stacked together perfectly medium sized houses, the same five barely differentiated styles of facade over and over and over.... oh the Sunset! vortex of uncoolness.

in 1989, i hope to exchange my free labor for pattern design or sewing lessons in the U.C. Berkeley costume shop. this shop is run by a gaggle of women who are not compelled to teach us anything, and do not. i put together costumes for shows by hunting and gathering in the maze of the costume collection, assembled from years of donations form wealthy graduates.

i am not really current or cool enough for my used clothing job at The Wasteland, which has a second store just opening in downtown Berkeley. i am the geeky girl, the only one with the useless college degree. My only advantage is my ability to identify the older vintage pieces due to my terribly valuable costume history courses. i am hired at a resounding five dollars per hour, standard for 1989 recession retail.

Fascinating to me, The Wasteland. days spent pouring over the bags of items brought in by people for cash or trade credits. these bags contain lifetimes of stories, important or just bizarre moments in personal history, perhaps even the restless spirit of ancestors, and mostly, just a lot of mustiness.

The Wasteland, is a T.S. Eliot poem. and the design of the store alludes, if not to poetry, to a more fanciful vision, a bit of eclecticism and nostalgia. a cool and messy museum of costume as clothing history. the store has the look of Charlotte Gainsbourg, cypher for French womanhood, with hair eternally sexily disheveled, somehow never washed just that day, but not too dirty either.

Cheryl, one of the owners, is very generous with her time as my impromptu business advisor. she worked previously at Buffalo Exchange, a chain of very moderately hip purveyors of the recycled fashion. she creates a business on the same model, but with an emphasis on vintage or even antique pieces.

fashion is often an informal act of plagiarizing. if one is never accused of copying, one is beneath notice. getting only good press can be a sign that one is beneath contempt.

The Wasteland has its own oddities, maybe more in the measure of generosity. in my time, the employees have lending library access to the entire store stock, ten items at a time. and to make icing on the cake sweeter, one can transfer a few items at the end of each week to the following. many people simply borrow instead of buying. there would always be some beautiful new item that could make you forget the loss of the old one. sometimes, this policy has the effect of keeping the best stuff away from the customers. one day, one of my colleagues spies a beautiful item on the retail floor, and says, "what the hell is this doing here?"