I was thinking on my way home last night that I wanted to show off my new bag here, but I felt conflicted … you see, it’s from Portland.

Is there a weird us vs. them thing between, um, us and them? Sometimes, right? Maybe I’m just being extra sensitive because my coworker, the Tablehopper, recently posted about the amazing dessert she had down south. At any rate, I do think a little healthy competition only makes us all better. And typically, the stuff I hear from citizens of both cities is of the grass-being-greener-o’er-there variety, and I feel like the end result of that kind of competition can only bode well for everyone’s weekend tourism trade.

All of this is just to say that last weekend my friend Lauren gave me one of Stand Up Comedy’s highly usable and wearable WT/SUC book bags. Stand Up Comedy is an art-minded high-concept style, media, and stuff shop in Portland; their collaboration with Werkplaats Typografie yielded a collection of locally hand-sewn, hand-silkscreened impeccably crafted canvas bags that riff on graphic design, typography, and, well, Garfield. Only 5 were made of each of the 12 designs, and each bag is stamped and numbered.

Yep, mine says “Crips” on one side, and “Bloods” on the other. I won’t call it 90s nostalgia, but I will say that I think Boyz n the Hood is as ripe for rediscovery and trend resurrection as Reality Bites is—and has been … and I’ll say that I couldn’t dig this bag any more if I tried.

I think we have pockets of Stand Up Comedy’s art-as-commerce, commentary-as-art, and style-as-discipline ethos in Seattle, though I will say I’d love to see more printed matter mixed in with pleats, more one-offs and fewer mass-production numbers, and I’d love to see a shop in the 206 area code treat artisan-made books and zines with the same reverence as artisan-made batik tunics and the like.

Maybe what I’m saying is that I really like having a healthy dose of life in my style. If you do too, be sure to support shops like Fancy, Peter Miller Books, and Pulp Lab, and galleries and unclassifiables like Western Bridge and Society Co.