I gotta admit I wasn’t too sure what little ole’ Rhode Island could produce but the Rhode Island Sneaker Xchange blew all my expectations out of the water.Rather than your typical function hall style format, this show completely took over McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon. Tables spread throughout the whole location with a stage in the middle for DJ’s and artists to keep the music bumping. Unlike Deadstock (which was also an awesome event, I’m not hating!), the table selection was a bit more eclectic with clothing brands, shops, and of course sneakers filling the place.The sneaker selection itself was also pretty diverse. Lots of the usual but some standouts too like a pair of Nike Air Mags, Yeezys, and even the custom light-up Electrolime Foamposites that hit all the sneaker blogs last week.

As for us? Killed it!! We met a ton of great people and had a ton of LGNDS gear leave the building. We learned a couple lessons at last week’s event and made the necessary adjustments to make our whole operation smoother. You live and you learn!Thank you to Lost Soles for putting on the event and for having us and thank you to all who purchased something!

Also a quick shout out to our new homies from Spit N Image…they put together this quick video of their table and some of the rest of the event:

Before the move to AZ, the return home, and everything we’re doing now was the original LGNDS store in Salem, MA. The one year anniversary of it’s grand opening passed a few months ago and now we get to celebrate, or should I say observe, other anniversaries…our first Rye Airfield trip, our first in-store signing event, and lots of other great moments except one: the robbery.

A year ago this week I locked the store up late on a Sunday night because my friend Mike was on leave from his Army duties in Afghanistan. A few of us gathered at the store to spend an extra couple hours with him before he shipped off again in the morning. The shop was closed on Mondays so I was excited to sleep in a couple hours after a long week.

My phone started ringing around 8am the next morning…it was my landlords calling. I let it ring a couple times before realizing they weren’t giving up. I picked up the phone to my property manager frantically telling me to rush to the store and that I had been robbed. I was unaware of the damage and drove there slowly – bracing myself for what I may encounter. I figured the cash register was going to be empty and just hoped not much was taken.

When I arrived I could see a handful of police officers swarming the same shop I locked up the night before. The door handle was on the ground and the door wide open. Wood shards surrounded the entrance from where the robber(s) crowbarred their way in. Before I got any further the detectives instructed me to immediately start tallying what was missing. I almost had to laugh as I made the list…the plasma TV, Playstation 3, our iMac was all gone. The cash register drawer was broken on the bathroom floor with nothing but some change left in it. I then started noticing all the missing merchandise. Longboards, skate decks, a pair of Space Jam’s and some other Jordan’s and SB’s we had on display. We had a table setup for our recent Play Cloths shipment and most of that was cleared out along with a few other misc. items around the store. Several thousand dollars worth of merchandise and equipment was all gone. To this day, we still don’t know how they managed to get all of that out.

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The next couple weeks were tough. The first battle was proving to my insurance agency that I actually owned all of the items I claimed to be stolen. Thankfully, I did a good job keeping records and was able to get compensation for mostly everything. While that helped with the financial loss, nothing could quite pay for the emotional toll of everything.

The next battle was finding the bad guys. I routinely took rides with policemen around the area to try and spot out any of the stolen items. The whole investigation seemed fruitless until Sgt. Hansen and his men showed up one night to the shop. They were detectives from a different unit of the Salem P.D. and grilled me with questions about the stolen merchandise, any suspicious people I may have seen, etc.

Within a couple of days they had a lead. During a routine traffic stop they noticed a man wearing a red Play Cloths New Era Fitted. Several of these were stolen from the shop and I had yet to sell one. This was enough for them to obtain a warrant. A day later I was in a Salem P.D. garage sorting through piles of stuff, picking out what was mine. Not everything was there but we knew we had our guy.

Joey Negron was the name. We were able to find pictures of him and I got chills as I immediately recognized the man. Just days before the robbery he was in the store with a child pricing out skateboards. He told me it was the kid’s birthday and that he was going to be buying him a skateboard. They picked out a whole skateboard setup and told me they’d be back to purchase it within a day or two. My Mom was even at the shop that day and was talking to them.It took a few weeks to get everything back to normal but eventually we did. This wasn’t the first time we got knocked down and certainly wouldn’t be the last but we were able to grow from the experience and still use the lessons learned daily.

I can’t be sure where Joey Negron is today but hopefully it’s behind bars.

> Hat does the trick to help solve burglary case
> Man admits wearing stolen hat even as girlfriend fights case

We’re featured this morning on the new sneaker site KICKSBLVD.com! Our friend Peter, who ran Wise Kicks, just launched this site as the new online home for all his sneaker selling and buying. Kicks BLVD is also a LGNDS online retailers in place of Wise Kicks.

They’ve got some SERIOUS heat in their online store right now. Everything from a pair of Galaxy foams to the Dave White Jordan 1 and all kinds of Lebrons. Go check them out, grab a pair of kicks and a matching LGNDS tee to go with it!

After the success of our event last weekend, we’re going to be setting up in Providence, RI this Sunday at The Rhode Island Sneaker Xchange presented by Lost Soles. We’ll have a table alongside other great brands, sneakers, and live entertainment. Check the flier for more info and we hope to see you there!!

The first annual DEADSTOCK sneaker convention went down yesterday at the 4th Wall Project in Boston. Laced & Sneakin’ It In put on the event and what a success it was. At times, the show floor was so packed the table almost got knocked over.

This was our first time setting up a table at an event so we weren’t sure what to expect but we got a great response, sold a lot of gear, and met a lot of great people. They hooked it up with the LGNDS banner right in the window as you walked in which was a pleasant surprise when we showed up.For such short notice, our table came out great. We used one of the photos from our recent lookbook for the banner combined with an old ladder, a pole, and some ingenuity. The result was a unique table experience that I felt really represented the brand. Our tradeshow table setup will only get better from here!There were a couple other clothing brands at the event but everything else mainly revolved around the sneakers. Here’s a couple shots of the Sneakin’ It In table:I’m not a huge sneakerhead by any means but even I was impressed with what came through the doors. There was some serious heat and a lot of sneakers that I’d only seen in pictures. Everything from the Jeremy Scott x Adidas collection to Nike Foamposites to Air Yeezy’s was on display.The best part of the day was definitely all the great people we got to meet. The Green Street Vault dudes were holding it down out front…if you’re from Boston and don’t know about GSV, you need to get on that. The truck is way too dope. If you catch up with them soon, tell Howard we sent you!Performances went on throughout the day so you know there were tons of great artists on hand. Bad Boy’s very own LOS was even in the building. Here’s the homie Ace Major in his new gear:
Overall this was a great day for everybody involved and we hope to be a part of many more shows. Special thanks to Laced, Sneakin’ It In, all the vendors, and to everybody who bought some gear. We’ll be seeing you all again soon! If you’re aware of an event in your area or are putting on an event, make sure to hit us up so we can come through!!

We’re going to be exhibiting in our first convention tomorrow! DEADSTOCK, put on by Laced and Sneakin’ It In, is a sneaker and fashion convention located at the 4th Wall Project gallery in Boston. The spot is right next to Fenway park and is where the recent Odd Future pop-up shop was located. We’ll have a table set up with all of our goods along with many other brands/retailers. The flier has all the info..we hope to see you there!!

Our simple logo tees are now available in 2 colorways – royal blue on white and black on heather grey. This is the first time we have released a logo tee in about a year. We don’t do it often and they go quick! Available now in our ONLINE SHOP.

It’s been a while since we’ve done some nice lookbook pictures so I got a crew together over the weekend and we had at it. You may remember the model, Aaron, from some pictures we took for the release of the original LGNDS logo tees. We enlisted his help again and had our friend Spencer Tarbox take the pictures. We hope you enjoy what we came up with!

That’s right! Our first mixtape entitled, “Across The Map” is now available for download and stream via BandCamp.

The idea for “Across The Map” came from LGNDS ongoing relationships with artists across the country. I started thinking that a mixtape could be a great way for everybody to connect and help share each other’s work.

The first area representing is our home state of Massachusetts. We got Early Adopted, NokSide, and D Money Pros holding things down, each showing off their own brand of hip hop. I think NokSide’s track “It Was You” is a sleeper song on the tape because anybody with relationship issues can relate to every word said.

We move over to the midwest with Mark Battles holding down Indianapolis and Flam Feeva repping Dayton, Ohio. Mark is accumulating a huge buzz right now and contributes a couple of great tracks with original features from Kid Ink and Lil’ Wayne…yes, THAT Lil’ Wayne. Flam shows off Ohio’s style with his track “Ridin.”

Babnit, based out of Sacramento, drops a song to smoke to and holds down California in the process. We then move south a bit to Tucson, where we once called home. Cash Lansky, one of the city’s finest, gives us his latest track in “Shot Caller” and Tarzan, part of SBP, drops a party song off his new mixtape “LiquorTalk.” Tarzan’s song features a New York based artist, Skulli, and actually has a LGNDS reference in it: “LGNDS, yeah I’m wearing that” so listen closely! A last minute addition in Sneaky Jay rounds out Tucson’s contribution.

Austin is the next city up and is a city we’ve been growing a huge following in, largely thanks to our homies in Dirtbags. We have Cutta, Qlee, Dear Ashton, and Cain Marko repping the city. Cutta and Cain are the MC’s while Qlee gives us a smooth RnB track and Dear Ashton shows off her impressive vocals.

I hope everybody enjoys the tape and it’s success will only lead to more tapes! Please give it a listen and share it with your friends!

While on BandCamp, you can click each track to get more info about each artist and where to find more of their music. A big special thanks going out to all the artists for contributing music to this tape and for helping to support the LGNDS brand. People helping people – only good things can come for all of us!!

I’ve teased about this a bit over the past few weeks but now it’s time to pull the curtain back on what we’ve been working on!

Since day 1, LGNDS has been committed to working with rising artists and staying as active as we can in the local and national music scenes. It’s my belief that we’re all in this battle together and the only way we can succeed is together.

The “Across The Map” mixtape is a collection of artists spanning across the country that all believe in this message, support the LGNDS lifestyle, and represent their hometowns to the fullest. You’ll see some artists we’ve worked with or mentioned in the past like Early Adopted and Qlee but there are mostly fresh faces that I’m really excited for everybody to hear!

The tape will be released here at shopLGNDS.com for free download on Sunday April 1st, 2012. No jokes!