Around 8 years ago I began this artistic adventure, first in Wynwood (Miami’s Art District for those that still haven’t heard of Wynwood) and I’m proud to announce our first growth beyond there. Jaco, Costa Rica will be the 2nd home of EVLworld.
How does a thing like this happen you may ask? Or probably didn’t ask but I will ramble upon it regardless.
It started oddly enough several decades ago when I was doing murals in Boca Raton, for reals, I love when life does these strange and bizarre surf circles around your head. In Boca, I painted many a club and one of the places was a sushi restaurant attached to a club called Boca Rock and Sushi and I met the dude in charge, Adam. A very cool and honest guy swimming in a sea of sharks and as the murals came to life I couldn’t almost feel bad knowing his enthusiasm would be destroyed by the dirty business around him.
Long story longer, I do believe that that’s what happened to him, like soooo many others I had seen swallowed by the hospitality beast, I was only spared because of my wicked sharp wit and powerful insight on human nature. I’m kidding that beast nearly swallowed me alive as well! That all happened sometime in the early to mid 90s I think, as my career pulled me away from that scene into a Hollywood mural frenzy (another post for that) I just thought I would never see or hear from my Boca friends again but thanks to that pesky facebook thingy somehow I reconnected with Adam from Boca.
Only he was no longer from Boca and I was to find out that not only had he grown into a really cool, fun, brotha he also had relocated to the tiny surf town of Jaco, CR. I had not seen or heard from him in over 15 years or more but he sported a wonderfully positive attitude, a beach lifestyle and what seemed to me a super sunny disposition on overall life in general. He also had opened a nightclub in Jaco, Le Loft and asked me to come down, meet the lovely beautiful wife and throw some mural love around. I was skeptical, as I am with everyone from my past, sadly, people do change and what I once thought were unbreakable bonds I was coldly bitchslapped by reality. People change, things change, that’s a truth I learned.
But since I love the adventure of exploring a new city I accepted the invite and all I can say is I am so happy I did. It seems Jaco had done wonders for my friend Adam and we found that although we had been on soooooooo opposite journeys we had learned the same lessons and we landed practically on the same page of life together, quite an amazing feat, I scratch my head so much I have a bald spot coming on.
So that’s the longer of the short stories, I have visited Adam, his beautiful wonderful wife a couple times but the most recent being 2 weeks ago, when I got to meet their beautiful baby boy, Rocky, a child of amazing spirit with a wickedly infectious smile. What an amazing trip, a trip full off food, fun, drink, laughter and work, yes of course I did some work, a simple, retro styled (more retro than I wanted but still, I get to do graffiti for a living) piece on the front of Adam’s new place, Mancave in Jaco.
Mancave in Jaco will be a game changer in this surfer laid back community of people who don’t want to be entirely laid back and don’t want to be that out of touch anymore and lo and behold, Mancave has a nice corner spot that was offered to us as the first extension of EVLworld. The pieces had fallen into place, it took decades but right now it feels like exactly what we should be doing. EVLworld was never thought of to become anything but it was based on, and that’s Keith Haring’s Pop Shop in NYC back in the 80s. I have had many offers to grow the brand and I turned them all down, I have had many investors offer huge sums of cash to own a piece of EVL but we turned the all down, worked harder, struggled more and now we can make the decisions without any outside influence. Any artist in the world understands what a freedom like this allows to the final products of your efforts.
EVLworld Jaco is tiny, way smaller than our Wynwood store and we think it will bring us a moderate profit but the bigger message is that profit no longer has to be our goal, having a natural and pure journey is the key for us and having a reason to visit our newest best friends, Rocky and co. becomes more important than any other reason to grow EVLworld. Adam is my thumb too! (inside joke!) Pura Vida! Here we come Costa Rica!