It is an understatement to say that this apparel release was complicated. We started this release back in December of 2014 but because of internal debates we didn’t really hit production till August 2015. Once we started production that was a whole other nightmare in itself. We learned a lot because of this huge headache which has made ongoing apparel releases that much smoother. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

So with every apparel release, it starts with drawing, a lot of drawing! This time we came up with a bunch of inspiration to lead the overall mood of this release. Mike Spizzirri, the very talented Illustrator normally tackles all of sketching because of his very fluent and natural hand that he has. He’s been doing this for years and so far we haven’t been able to stump him yet.

Once we have a decent amount of sketches, we start to scan everything in. Then we vector the chosen scans we like which takes plenty of time in itself. In addition to the scanning we also come up with a bunch of ideas on the computer because not everything needs an organic touch. The problem with doing things on the computer is it can get out of control very very fast. What if we tweak the lines, what if we shear the entire graphic, what if there was some color, ect. ect. you get the point. We normally try to design grey scale because color can really force your opinion about a design.

Back when we were sketching, we ordered a bunch of samples to figure out what fit we liked the best and how we envision the line going. Since we are all over the place in the United States we are forced to take photos of our selves wearing everything to explain the fit. Plenty of debating happens. We also spec any tags that will be apart of the final product like sizing tags.

After most of the sketching and designing is finished, Collin, Chris & Mike do a hangout to pick what graphics they think are the best and finalize them. We always mock up the design by placing them digitally on garments. This helps us visualize the final product and determine if we need to add anything else or to scrap the design entirely.

Now that we can narrow down the line, we show the team what we are looking to produce. This time we did it in person while we were in San Francisco during our “Tilt in the bay” trip in early 2015. The meeting was held in a hotel room at midnight and went till 2am. The team normally hates it or would rock it. This normally involves us going back to the design phase and changing things. After we are confident the team will be good with it, we start producing actual products. What was suppose to be a summer drop turned into a fall/winter release.

The companies we ended up using to make the apparel turned out to be a nightmare. The hat company only had a few molds which weren’t to our liking so we were forced to have a line without hats. The people that were printing our tops ended up not following our stylesheets and placed all of our graphics in different locations. The consistency on the printing was pretty bad which left us with inventory we didn’t feel comfortable selling.

Since we have the final product, it was time to shoot photos. Jona, Dylan and Chris pack their bags for a trip to Washington D.C. to get photos of the apparel in action. Matt Mckeen was kind enough to show them around and let them crash at his pad. The hardest thing about shooting apparel for action sports is making sure the part you want to capture on the garment is visible while the rider is doing their tricks. It’s not easy at all. Also, most of the riders just want to land tricks while the photographer wants extra stuff like riding around the city.

Throughout this process, we get to test our apparel just like any other product we put our name on. Now in the final steps of rapping up the fall/winter apparel line, the last things left to do are, take product photos, retouch the photos, upload them to the website, write product descriptions, send out emails and create marketing material to go with it. Just like this lookbook. What seems like something that should be pretty simple is never simple for TILT. We work hard and don’t cut any corners.

The weekend hit off with the TILT Shop BBQ. No advertising keeps things tight with the homies when we pull the ramps and grill out. The night is always rad. We get to see our best friends from all corners of the world. Behind the scenes, some of the crew had a long day up in Chicago setting up for the CSJ and TILT2 Premiere. The next morning, the CSJ met up at Grant Skate Park. Little did we know, Zumiez was hosting a skate event there later that day. Thankfully we didn't shut too much down. A heavier trick selection was thrown down on scooters while we were just meeting up than at the actual skate comp. We got out of there just after noon. The first spot was a giant bank to bike rack gap. Everyone threw down hard over the gap, down the rail, down the set, everything. The cops came by and shut things down. Donkey Dick was up next - a classic Chicago rail spot. Shoutout to all the gnarly combos that were thrown down. We peaced out once the tricks started dying down. Next up was an angle iron ledge in the Fulton Market, but cars were in the way. All the pros sesh'd a dumpster and a van while the ams battled it out for prizes on a ledge nearby.

A short cruise over to a couple stair sets was a prime spot for a best line. Plywood was staged on another stair set for easy run up. Heavy combos went down the sets and the rails. The last spot was insane - Halsted Gap. The gap is setup on top of abandoned shipping containers and was a staple spot in Chicago for years. A homeless guy calls it home and litters the spot with 40oz bottles. About half the bottles double as his bathroom. Coming up short isn't an option unless you're down with getting peppered with glass and pee. Even though we're just scootering in an abandoned lot, the cops came in hard. Five police cruisers rolled up, and the jam was shut down for the day. Everyone took a chiller for a couple hours and rendezvoused at the TILT2 Premiere for a high jump, product toss, and of course the video. Things got tight when everyone crammed in for the single showing. The TILT crew got together in the lobby with free posters and a signing after the showing. Thanks to everyone who made the trek to Chicago, parents who were down to support their kids, and everyone who came out to the TILT2 Premiere. See you all next year.

We headed out early the next day, hit our classic bagel shop and then we were off to Cleveland. The first Cleveland spot was this huge DIY with quarters everywhere. It was sketchy, but also had some of the best DIY tranny we’ve seen. There was a dude living there who made us help out with the work in exchange for letting us ride. At first he questioned every trick we did to make sure we didn’t destroy the copping but then he realized we knew how to ride.

Next up was a dam in the back of a cemetery. It really confuses us sometimes how Dylan finds these spots. Once we get there some of us realized this was in the vans movie. Tom and Issac weren’t too hyped at the spot and felt like they couldn’t do much but then they pulled some tricks out like they normally do. Tom got a downside fullwhip, Issac pulled a downside fingerwhip and Dylan stuck a 360 over the guard rail.

One of the most fun Cleveland spots was the infamous brown banks. What was apparently a skatepark way back in the day is now ridden as a street spot. While TomK and Erik filmed real clips, Jon and Issac were getting barefoot clips and hopping a fence to get into the pool to get their hair wet.

It was pretty hard to shoot photos here and Josh was already trying to claim his spot to film so Chris slid in-between his legs and snapped some pics. It definitely looked weird but whatever you got to do to get the shot.

It’s always an experience going to spots in the projects. We hit up this weird old fountain structure in a school in the ghetto because it has a really good fly-out step-up. This spot is notorious for crews getting jacked and full camera setups being stolen. We figured we had a big enough crew that no one should mess with us. It wasn’t long before hordes of bored, unsupervised children came to see what was happening.

We had to keep a close watch on our scooters because they were all asking to ride them. A couple of the older kids were actually really cool and fascinated with the riding but the majority of them stayed in the way. One kid was riding around on his own little electric ATV. Unfortunately, he didn’t let us give it a go. He did, however, let Collin skitch the back of it and took him for a spin.

The last spot of the trip was the banger spot. We showed up to this rail hop right as the sun was setting right next to the Browns Stadium. There were some other rails there, but we weren’t sure what was really doable. Sure enough, the crew started throwing down. Jona hits the double rail hop into bank while Issac does a lipslide down the 14 stair handrail.

Tom got funky with a boardslide through the kink hop over and threads the needle while dodging freeway on ramp traffic. Jon ended the trip with a huge fingerwhip over a bar height rail to a six foot drop. Other Cleveland highlights include getting ice cream at a shop converted from a movie theater, celebrating Ralph’s birthday at the hotel, and extreme pool chair jumping at the hotel. It was one good ass trip.

Every year before the Chicago Street Jam, the boys pack up in the van and take a trip somewhere around the Midwest. The entire crew was in town for this one which was a nice treat. Since it takes a whole day to gather up everyone, some of us cruised the city and hit up a couple parks with some friends. As the day continued, the crew got bigger. We caught a nice sunset sesh at burnham and headed back to Mokena.

Half the crew stayed at Shane’s apartment, our sales manager and the rest stayed at Collin’s. There was limited couch/floor space and it was a nice night so Jon and Issac decided to sleep on the balcony. Once everyone was up and fed, we met at the shop, snagged any last minutes parts, packed up the van and hit the road.

This year we decided to hit the Rust Belt cities of Detroit and Cleveland. The crew consisted of Jon Archer, Erik Feenstra, Jona Humbel, Jordan Jasa, Dylan Kasson, Tom Kvilhaug, Chris Martin, Ralph McMoran, Issac Miller, Josh Smukal, and Collin Snoek. After hours of driving, we were just minutes from Detroit and we still hadn’t nailed down a hotel to stay at. This is pretty normal for us for some reason. As one person drives, the other books a cheap hotel, or finds a place to eat, or locates the next spot.

As we neared the first spot we knew right away the neighborhood we were in was sketchy. The gas station we stopped at for drinks had a couple cops posted up and the checkout area used a sort of rotating lazy susan for the teller to take your money, because the rest of the counter had bulletproof glass separating the customers from the teller. We expected a bit of sketchiness, but what we didn’t expect was the wind!

The first spot had some of the gnarliest wind we have ever rode in. But the spot was so good that it didn’t even matter. Northwestern High School is filled with crazy banks, ledges, and transfers everywhere. You could start at one end, carve one wall for speed, then push up to the biggest wall with perfect tranny at the bottom to hit your trick. It wasn’t long before the tricks started going down.

Tom K switched things up by hitting the wallride off the side of the bank, and almost whipped into it. He got the whip in a couple of times but just couldn’t pull out of it to land. Some local homies showed up to the spot and helped us get into the abandoned building across the street so we could shoot some b-roll and explore. Tom K eventually broke his deck and we were outtie to the next spot.

This was one spot we knew some tricks would go down. It was a perfect 9 stair rail down a bank at some ATV dealership. This thing was seriously so low, it was like a park rail. So immediately Tom and Jon started trying tricks up it.

People were looking at tricks over the rail into the bank too. As Jona was working his way up to back sugarcaning down it, Tom and Jon both laced their tricks and Issac was able to lock into a backside over 5050.

The sun was beginning to set so we decided to make our way into the city for some extra light to see if we could find anything. We ended up at a random street by the river that of course Dylan knew a spot on, so we scoped it out. The place looked insane and had banks, tables, ledges, stairs, even manny pads.

This place looked like fun and was all downhill, but a lot of the obstacles had some minor flaw to it that made it hard to ride. The whole team was pretty tired so we decided to just head back to our hotel that was behind Hooters.

After breakfast and a round of crabapple dodgeball (which Chris lost), we hit up a really cool DIY. Everyone got clips despite the soaring temps. Some people came out and took some modeling photos which was strange because that DIY was just in a basketball court next to an empty field. The local homies ended up meeting up with us and we hit the next spot but not before we had some pizza at a bowling alley.

Once we finished we headed over to the abandoned building with a sunken in 2nd floor that created the perfect tranny you could hit. There was also a sketchy bump to rail and a random cinderblock ledge. This spot was low key famous. DVS, Rome SDS and some ski company have all ridden here. While some people were trying to film tricks, others went and explored around the building, and even got up on the roof for a bird’s eye view.

After leaving the warehouse we ended up driving up and down random roads to see if we could find anything. We did end up finding a wallride gap to sidewalk that Dylan attempted. It had a weird run up and of course Dylan had to go full speed at it.

We were there for about 30-40 minutes before he started getting sun sickness and had to call it otherwise he would of been drained the rest of the day. While we were there some of the crew noticed a 5 kinked rail that we would later come back to.

We continued to drive up and down roads and stumbled on another small DIY which was right next to another abandoned building.

Some of the team rode and some of us explored the building trying to find a way up on top of the roof to get a good B-roll shot but there wasn’t a way.

We headed to downtown Detroit, to Hart Plaza. We did get the kickout but not before Tom was able to sticker slap one of the sculptures. After driving around for a long time not finding anything, we came up on a red bump to bar outside a local youth boxing gym. After about five minutes there a dude in a van drove up on us super-fast, and started yelling at us to leave. He was saying how he owned the place and it was for the kids, and that they just painted the rail that Jon was about to grind. Over and over the guy yelled, “I did it for the kids” while he kicked Jon’s backpack and got in his face.

Jon just replied with, “chill man, I like the kids too”. We were fine with leaving but the dude was being unreasonably angry and nearly fought Jon. It was a tad scary because we were learning how sketchy Detroit can be and we didn’t know if this guy had a gun or anything. Everything happened pretty fast so we packed the van up and drove off while he was taking pictures of our license plate. We quickly realized Dylan wasn’t in the van and we had to go drive up and down the roads and try to find him and hope this guy wasn’t following us.

Once we got Dylan in the van we headed to the 5 kinked rail from earlier. Tom scoped it out and turns around and says, “Yeah I’ll hit it. This blew some of our minds how casual he said it. We got the lights out and the kids started flocking to us. Since the kids have nothing better to do, they come hangout with 11 dudes traveling in a van. These kids were a pain because they kept getting in the shot or using the rail as a gymnastics station. Tom gets about 10 or so tries into it and makes it past the 3rd kink but slips out.

The whole team gets hyped but shortly we get kicked out by a janitor. She said she already called the cops. Tom tries 2 more times and realizes he needs more time and not to be under pressure so we pack up and go. On our way back to the hotel we find a cool little manny pad and 4 or 5 benches sitting around it. Dylan and Jordan end up getting clips while some of the team ventures off and grabs some tasty beverages to bring back to the van for everyone.

With about a weeks notice, some of the Columbus homies took the CR-V to Cleveland to ride some new spots. The crew consisted of Dylan Kasson, Chris Martin, Josh Smukal, Kyle Arnholt and Max Lemonds. We got to Cleveland later than we wanted because Kyle left his scooter in his other car but we still cruised around and checked out some spots. A Clevelander and fellow rider, Nick Schroth was nice enough to house us for the night. The next morning we rode some spots outside of the city. Eric Zanath ended up hopping in the CR-V which meant 4 deep in the back seat. Every spot except for one that we went to, someone got a clip or a photo which is pretty odd. We only got kicked out of two spots. The first one, the security guard said it was cool and just be safe

but then the owner came out and told us we had to leave and that we couldn’t play here. Dylan got heated when he called scootering playing so we stuck around and rode for another 5 minutes until Dylan got the clip. The second time the cop was really nice about it. He understood that it was a nice day and we were just trying to have a good time. The whole trip involved endless chipotle lines, mobbing the streets of Cleveland, Skitching cars, talking Kyle into trying tricks, Josh and Kyle’s first trip together while being on Downside, Finding the two Hellagrip sheets that Jonny 2b left behind, dodging people as we cut through the rock and roll hall of fame ceremonies and hitting up a weird fountain bank spot right next to the projects.