{"id":117,"date":"2010-07-09T19:01:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T19:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/?p=117"},"modified":"2018-06-25T00:13:06","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T00:13:06","slug":"15-ways-of-looking-at-a-levis-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/?p=117","title":{"rendered":"15 Ways of Looking at a Levis’ Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published in Mission Loc@l<\/a>, July 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

1. \u201cCome in. Roll up your sleeves. Get your hands dirty,\u201d says the sign outside of the Levi\u2019s Workshop<\/a> on Valencia.<\/p>\n

\n

2. Inside, nothing is dirty. It looks something like\u00a0 a print studio, but a print studio in the hands of a set designer. The pump bottle of Gojo hand cleaner is immaculate, and perfectly complements the bundle of twine a few feet away. The printing presses\u00a0 are labeled like museum exhibits. In the center of the room, two men with very large cameras are busily taking photographs of Alice Waters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. This is the story: Levi\u2019s is launching a\u00a0new line of work wear<\/a>. Among its offerings: trucker jacket ($89.50). Chambray work shirt ($79.50). They hired Weiden + Kennedy, an advertising agency based in Portland, Oregon, and Weiden + Kennedy came up with this slogan: \u201cWe are all Workers<\/a>.\u201d They rented vacant retail space owned by Charles Phan, owner of the Slanted Door. Because the Levi\u2019s workshop is\u00a0 open for only two weeks, they were able to\u00a0 circumvent the hearing process<\/a> that chain stores are typically subjected to before renting commercial space in the Mission. Pants will be sold, but the proceeds will go to the nonprofits that are co-hosting the workshop events.<\/p>\n

4. Among the offerings at the Levi\u2019s store: free carpenter\u2019s pencils in red, white and blue, printed with the messages \u201cWe are all Workers\u201d and \u201cReady to Work.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. 104 years ago and two blocks away, Levi\u2019s opened a three-story factory at 14th and Valencia. A crowd stood around the building at the opening, applauding. It was 1906. Most of San Francisco was still in ruins from the earthquake earlier that year.<\/p>\n

6. When that factory closed \u00a0in 2002, only 100 employees were still working there. Manufacturing had moved to Asia, and only the most expensive jeans in the Levi\u2019s line were still sewn on site. Like replicas of the\u00a0Nevada jeans<\/a> \u2014 a pair of ancient Levi\u2019s discovered in a Nevada mining town and sold back to the company, on eBay, for $46,532. Their design was one that the company no longer had any record of\u00a0 \u2014 lost technology, destroyed in the quake.<\/p>\n

7. The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Levi\u2019s CEO Philip Marineau as saying that the closure was \u201chard in the sense that there are emotions associated with that history. The pure economics weren\u2019t so difficult.\u201d This was, the article said, Levi\u2019s attempt to \u201cright its troubled finances by becoming less of a jeans maker and more of a jeans marketer.\u201d<\/p>\n

8. But selling jeans requires emotions in a way that making them does not. And so, at Weiden + Kennedy\u2019s suggestion, the models in the advertisements<\/a> for Levi\u2019s new workwear line are all residents of a city called Braddock, Pennsylvania. Many of them are unemployed.<\/p>\n

9. Braddock is an interesting place. It was the site of Andrew Carnegie\u2019s first steel mill and Andrew Carnegie\u2019s first library. It has done about as well as one would expect of a steelworking town in a country that no longer makes steel, which is to say: not well. Since the 1950s, Braddock has lost over 90 percent of its population.\u00a0In 2005, Braddock gained a hip mayor with master\u2019s degree in public policy and economics from Harvard. His name is John Fetterman. He arrived in 2001 as an Americorps volunteer. He now has Braddock\u2019s zip code tattooed on his left arm.<\/p>\n

10. Fetterman\u2019s plan to refurbish Braddock? Marketing. One of the first things that he did as mayor was to put up an edgy\u00a0website<\/a> advertising the town. \u201cDestruction Breeds Creation. Create Amidst Destruction\u201d is spelled out in bold capitals on the front page. There is a section with blurry black-and-white Polaroid photos of abandoned buildings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

11. Fetterman has offered free studio space to artists<\/a> who agree to move there. He\u2019s turned the old church into a community center that hosts avant-garde events and all-night dance parties. Fetterman is pitching Braddock as\u2028 an ideal location for startups. \u201cAn unparalleled opportunity,\u201d as the website says, \u201cfor the urban pioneer, artist, or misfit.\u201d<\/p>\n

12. It could be argued that Fetterman is trying to replicate in Braddock what happened in the Mission \u2014 a working-class, industrial neighborhood that is well into its transformation into a place that doesn\u2019t\u00a0 make much except for ideas, and exceptionally good coffee. The theory has often been floated that urban pioneers, artists and misfits are integral to transformations like these.<\/p>\n

13. Levi\u2019s reports that it will be giving the town of Braddock more than a million dollars, plus some help with its urban farming program, in exchange for becoming its poster town. San Francisco gets donations for nonprofits like the Edible Schoolyard and printmaking workshops. What neither city is going to get much of from Levi\u2019s, though, is a job that lasts longer than a few weeks.<\/p>\n

14. \u201cIt\u2019s great to be able to work full-time as a printmaker,\u201d says Rocket Caleshu, normally employed by the San Francisco Center for the Book<\/a>, one of the nonprofits involved with the workshop. \u201cThose jobs are hard to come by.\u201d Caleshu is working three jobs at the moment, she said.<\/p>\n

15. It almost goes without saying, but every local person temporarily employed by the Levi\u2019s Workshop comes across as fully aware of the strangeness of their circumstances \u2014 temporary workers, in a manicured environment. A young worker motions me over and says, sotto voce: \u201cAll of these ads say, \u2018We are all Workers.\u2019\u00a0Look at this,\u201d she says, pulling back the waistband of a pair of work jeans ($97.50) to reveal the label, \u201cMade in Cambodia.\u201d<\/p>\n

She looks so earnest, as though she is discovering this for the first time. \u201cWhere,\u201d she says, \u201cam I supposed to go to do this work?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Printing presses labeled like museum exhibits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}