So Sept. 24th was a huge day of protest...

...across the United States - though apparently it barely registered in much of the mainstream media. Rita, the hurricane that followed Katrina, dominated the news through the weekend, and many of the major news outlets couldn't find much time for other stories. I'm not a big believer in media-related conspiracy theories, but when CNN et al basically ignores hundreds of thousands of Americans who spent a Saturday protesting the actions of their president, I start to wonder.

Anyway, truthout.org was all over the protest in D.C., and they've got a great collection of articles and video clips here...if nothing else, check out the video with the bare-breasted woman...it seems to do a good job of showing the wide range of anti-war and anti-Bush activities that went down in D.C.

San Diego had a rally of its own in Balboa Park, and the San Diego Union-Tribune put the number of attendees at 2,000. My parents, who were kind enough to set up the Wavelength Clothing booth at the event, confirmed that there were thousands of people in attendance, some great speeches delivered, and a whopping 40 t-shirts sold - Wavelength's biggest sales day by a wide, wide margin. I'm not sure, George, but I think the natives are getting restless!

Added ladies shirts a little while ago...

...and, with the help of my talented photographer buddy Tomas, I added photos to go with them. Previously, we only featured men's tees, but now the Wavelength website is graced with images of some of Ocean Beach's finest females in the Lies, Wanker, and WMD Fool designs. Many thanks to my amigas for participating - I think it's safe to say that the site is looking quite a bit sexier these days!

In case you were wondering, it only took Tomas about an hour to take the necessary photos; the only equipment he used was his high-end digital camera and a sun reflector that helps eliminate shadows. He gave me the images on a CD, and I then spent about an hour (maybe two) cropping the best ones and incorporating them into the website; the only programs I needed were Adobe Photoshop and Yahoo! Sitebuilder. The digital era is nothing if it ain't DIY...

On vacation in Hawaii...

...I had a chance to do some good thinking about the business. One conclusion I came to is that, while Wavelength will probably never make enough money to pay all my bills, I'll still keep it going, as a side project at the least. The whole thing has been so enjoyable - learning how to start a business, designing the shirts and getting them printed, selling them over the 'net and in person. I've probably sold between 200 and 300 shirts at this point, so they're out in the world, being worn by people who want to spread the message...and that's enjoyable, too.

Anyway, it's easy to reflect when you're chillin' in a setting like the big island of Hawaii. At first I was surprised by the island's terrain, much of which consists of flat, desert-like expanses and fields of black lava rock. But the beauty of these areas grew on me, and the island offers lots of beach and jungle, too. Here's a small sampling of big island beauty...

"Think Globally, Act Locally"...

...is a great motto, I've always thought. Like Gandhi's "be the change you want to see in the world," the line helps me remember that the most fundamental way to fight the high-level offenses of Bush and his ilk is to do what I can at my own level - in my neighborhood, on my block, even in my home. I got a similar message from Bob Filner, a U.S. congressman who represents part of San Diego in the House of Representatives. Filner spoke at a meeting of the San Diego County Young Democrats; after hearing his speech, I wrote the following summary for the SDCYD newsletter:

SDCYD Members Fired Up by Congressman Bob Filner

“The country’s going to hell,” said Bob Filner, who represents California’s 51st District – generally, the southern portion of San Diego – in the U.S. House of Representatives. Calmly but passionately, the congressman explained that Americans are currently being “attacked” by rising gas prices and pharmaceutical costs, and that George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans have rolled back many of the gains the progressive movement has achieved in recent decades. Overall, Filner contrasted the core Democratic idea that “we’re all in this together” with the GOP’s “law of the jungle” mentality and lamented that, in recent years, “their ideology has triumphed.”

Does this mean the average person should just give up? Filner doesn't think so, and he shared stories from his past to illustrate how ordinary people can have a real impact on their country’s affairs. In 1968, for example, a young Filner joined hundreds of other activists in New Hampshire to campaign for underdog candidate Eugene McCarthy in the state’s Democratic primary. McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in that contest stunned the incumbent Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from the race soon after.

Filner, who is currently in his seventh term as the 51st District's representative, took some time to ask for help with his 2006 re-election campaign, where he will be facing a primary opponent who plans on accusing him of being "too liberal." But the congressman's main point seemed to be that Democrats need to stay motivated in the fight against the Republican agenda - and that individual Americans cannot get discouraged about their role in the country's democracy. "At the municipal level, in particular," Filner noted, "a little organization can go a long way."

I'm heading off to the big island of Hawaii...

...for a week-long trip that will culminate in my friends' wedding on Saturday, Sept. 24. While I'm looking forward to the trip - my first real vacation in a while - I can't help being a little bummed about the timing. The day of the wedding happens to be a massive day of anti-war protesting across the country, and if I wasn't already booked, I would be representing Wavelength Clothing in Washington, DC, where hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected.

Being in DC would be a great business opportunity and also a lot of fun. I think my shirts would play well, even if I was simply wandering around on foot and selling them out of a backpack. More importantly, I think the atmosphere would be incredible. Hundreds of thousands of people brought together by their passionate disdain for war? I've never had the chance to participate in an event like that, and I think I would really enjoy it.

But there are only so many days on the calendar, and it'll be great to see my friends Chris and Maggie tie the knot. In addition, my parents have volunteered to set up the Wavelength Clothing booth at San Diego's anti-war rally on the 24th, so with their experiences and their t-shirt sales, I'll feel like I got at least a piece of the action.

I've received a handful of negative emails...

...since opening Wavelength Clothing, but only a few have been truly mean-spirited, and a couple have asked an interesting question: am I close-minded politically, or put another way, am I demonizing a politician who is not malicious and dark-hearted, but merely interprets the world differently than I do?

Sure, President Bush's stances on the contentious issues tend to strike me as dead wrong, and I find it hard to believe that half the nation feels otherwise. But I also cannot believe that anyone would prefer a tough, flavorless Twizzler over a moist, yummy Red Vine, or pre-stirred yogurt over its obvious superior, fruit-on-the-bottom. When it comes to licorice and yogurt, I recognize that my "beliefs" on the "issues" are purely a matter of taste, not of actual right and wrong. I also recognize that part of me actually enjoys engaging Twizzlers fans in endless "how can you be so stupid" debates over which of us is right - and I would probably do the same with pre-stirred yogurt lovers if I ever bumped into one.

So does this have any bearing on my political orientation? I might have thought so a few years ago, but I don't anymore. In debates over licorice flavors, nothing is at stake. But a vote for a politician with priorities like George W. Bush's is a vote a world with fewer environmental protections, with less intranational and international cooperation, with less of the Golden Rule and more of the Almighty Dollar, with more poverty, with more guns and ammo, with more suffering and death.

Bush, in you have done anything for me, you have given me conviction in my core political beliefs. You have also given me the motivation to fight for them. Punk ass.

Made an interesting contact through KLSDam1360...

...which is San Diego's outlet of the Air America radio network. A few weeks ago, I had sent free shirts to the 5-person team behind the Stacy Taylor show, a local talk segment that broadcasts from 6am to 9am (Pacific time), before Al Franken comes on nationwide. Stacy and the rest of the gang got a kick out of the shirts and mentioned them repeatedly on air, which I appreciated a great deal.

Anyway, while Cindy Sheehan was camping outside of Bush's ranch in summer 2005, a San Diego woman named Barbara Cummings spent time in Crawford with Sheehan and called in to the Stacy Taylor show regularly to provide updates. I sent Barbara some shirts via the Crawford Peace House, and a few weeks later she got back to me to introduce herself and to let me know that the shirts were appreciated.

Barbara mentioned that Cindy had just left Crawford on a multi-week bus tour that would end in DC on Sept. 24, a day of massive anti-war protesting in DC and elsewhere. She noted that Katrina survivors would also be joining the protest, as new members of a group called Bushville, a traveling encampment that also consists of people who are homeless because of other forms of negligence at the top. The Bushville group needed hats for its coordinators, and Barbara asked if Wavelength Clothing could help provide these hats, so I came up with the design in the picture and donated 50 hats to the cause.

Calculating the cost of an individual shirt...

...is harder than you might think. It involves the challenging game of "cost accounting," or the process of looking at all the different expenses involved in running the business and crunching them to come up with an idea of what each unit of output actually costs. This cost estimate is critical to the long-term health of the operation: without an accurate feel for the true cost of your products, it's very difficult to price them at a level that will provide an adequate return over time.

But coming up with even a ballpark cost estimate can difficult, as the photo at right might help illustrate. It's a shot of my merchandise at a recent farmer's market, and it includes a few examples of how cost accounting can get wacky pretty quickly.

My products are t-shirts, and the first cost associated with them is the cost I pay to get them from the printer. This one is easy...the print shop charges me somewhere around $6 to $10 per shirt, mainly depending on how many ink colors are involved and whether it's a Hanes men's shirt (less expensive) or American Apparel women's shirt (more expensive).

But take a look at some of the other stuff in the picture. The shirts are hanging on a neat fold-up clothing rack that cost me $70, and which I should be able to use for at least a few years. The blue strip you see in the upper left is part of my canopy, a necessity at outdoor selling events; the canopy cost me $50, and I'm hoping to get a couple years out of it, too. Other equipment includes a $25 portable table and an old patio chair I've had for years.

There are also lots of little supplies I've had to either make or purchase to be able to sell on this day and others like it: the signs that explain the shirt designs ($10 and an hour of work at Kinko's), the hangers the shirts are hanging on ($1 or $2), the stickers I hand out to people who sign up for me email list ($.25 each), the book of receipts I bring in case a customer wants one ($5), the four storage bins ($3.50 each) of shirts that I've brought with me as my inventory for the day.

One more number to throw into the mix is the participation fee for the farmer's market, which was $25 for the session pictured above - a session that saw me sell 10 shirts at about $15 each. So what did those 10 shirts actually cost me? And more importantly, should I consider this day of selling a success? Hmmm...let me know what you think.

Had some fun at Cal State Long Beach...

...my day started unusually early, at about 5:30 AM, when I left my buddy's place in Beverly Hills Adjacent (that's actually the name of the 'hood right next to 90210). As I drove down to Long Beach, the sun had just risen on my left. It was the first time I'd seen the sunrise in awhile, and I noted that getting up early - which I typically abhorred - is a lot less painful when you're excited about where you're going.

CSULB is a huge school, with about 34,000 students, most of whom are commuters, I assume. While most other big California schools offer limited or no opportunities for a guy trying to vend t-shirts (some require $1 million in liability insurance, some only open up the campus for one week per semester, some don't allow shirts because shirts are sold in the bookstore), CSULB has a program that lets me set up a table in the Student Union for $65 a day, with only two weeks notice. So a couple weeks back, I made a reservation for August 30, the second day of the new semester.

I was set up by 7:30, and of the hundreds of students who marched by during the day, several stopped to check out my merchandise and about a dozen bought shirts. I had two very interesting conversations as well: one with a young white guy who talked about the potential Democratic contenders in 2008, and one with an older black guy who had some interesting views on Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as well as Republicans and Democrats in general. These chats helped remind me that part of the reason I'm doing this is to get out in the world and talk to people about our country's leaders and their policies...it felt great just to talk, to hear other's opinions and hash out my own.

Another nice part of the day was when my uncle Steve, who lives in Long Beach, surprised me with a visit. He's a staunch Republican, so I hadn't even told him I was going to be there, but he found out from my folks and stopped by, and even offered me lodging for future CSULB visits. Very cool.

Anyway, after CSULB I concluded that college vending has potential, and I resolved to look for similar opportunities at that school and others in the days ahead.