GQ USA - 2019-05

V IN TAG E WATC HE S

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 52 paid for them. Even then he was creating value inflated the prices of watches. “That’s their
out of previously unloved watches. marketing: Make everything sound special
Brands pushed craftsmanship, created when it’s not special,” he says. “There is too
innovative or eye-catching pieces—like A decade later, when he was 24, Bacs left much story. Watches were made in the mil-
Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak or Patek law school for a job in the watch department lions. These are commodities. When an oil
Philippe’s Nautilus—and promoted the idea at Sotheby’s auction house. And in 2003, he trader is going to trade oil, he doesn’t give a
that mechanical watches, unlike their quartz joined the watch department at Christie’s, story about where in the ground it was taken
competitors, had souls. “Crisis created won- which brought in a modest $14.8 million in from and which state and who did it. It is what
derful things,” says Paul Boutros, Phillips’s global sales the previous year. When he left, it is. It’s a common good.” Rottman admits that
head of watches for the Americas. Probably in 2013, global sales were $134.7 million. The this isn’t true of all watches—the Rolex owned
not coincidentally, a group of collectors will- run solidified him as a folk hero in a market by Paul Newman is an exception—but for the
ing to pay high prices arrived a short time that seems to reach a new peak every couple most part, he believes watches are a simple
after. The emergent spirit echoed an adage of years. business. “This is a watch, you wear it on your
that Bacs still likes to employ: Any watch can wrist, it tells time,” he says. By treating them
tell time, but only the special ones tell sto- Vintage watches have been so hot over the otherwise, Bacs is creating artificially high
ries. In the ’90s, Patek Philippe introduced its past decade that the demand for them has prices, Rottman says.
famous advertising campaign selling custom- been siphoning cash from the new-watch mar-
ers on the idea of the watch as historical link: ket. Sales of Swiss luxury watches slumped The Paul Newman Daytona, despite all the
You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You in the middle of this decade and bounced glory it’s brought Bacs, might be the perfect
merely look after it for the next generation. back slightly only last year, according to the example of this. The yarn spun around the
market-research company NPD Group. That watch has calcified, even if it’s become slightly
Before, collectors preferred pristine these markets are at odds makes perfect exaggerated. The apocryphal story that Rolex
watches. “In the ’80s, the first thing you sense: If suddenly the most prized watches made only a limited number of Paul Newman
would do if you had a dial with a yellowish- in the world are dusted up with stories and Daytonas because customers in the ’60s
ivory-colored patina is you’d run to your nicked with love, customers won’t find them found their design garish is more marketing
watchmaker and say, ‘Please clean it,’ ” Bacs in watchmakers’ boutiques. “A brand-new than totally factual statement. “If you ask a
explains. Perfection was the goal. watch I buy on Madison Avenue is perfect,”
Bacs says, “but in the eyes of many, cold has These markets are not
In the same way it did for pubescent base- no charm, doesn’t seduce you with its smile.” bound by logic. The truth
ment-dwelling teens with dial-up access, with all these intergalactic
the Internet changed everything for the Still, Bacs believes that there is plenty of
watch market. Ku says that the forums were room for growth in a watch market that’s prices is that these
like safecrackers. Before the dawn of the become what some experts believe is worth watches are worth exactly
Internet, collectors held on to their secrets: $2 billion to $3 billion. Because there’s no what two people are willing
They could sieve the treasures from the junk regulating body warding over pre-owned
or take advantage of unwitting buyers. With watches, there are no spot-on estimates. But to pay for the piece.
the forums, though, suddenly everyone could one way to consider the growth might be to
access information about which models were look at the market’s biggest auctions. The novice collector,” Ku explains, “ ‘Why is the
valuable and which cases, dials, and hands most expensive timepiece ever sold, the Patek Paul Newman Daytona so valuable?’ The two
were most proper and prized. The hieroglyph- Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication things that they will say is: ‘Paul Newman
ics had been translated. pocket watch, went for $11 million in 1999. By wore it.’ And ‘It’s really rare.’ ‘It’s really rare’
2014, it fetched $24 million. is totally not true. There’s a few hundred of
As interest grew, connoisseurship became them, which I don’t really think makes it that
more sophisticated. Websites like Hodinkee “The baby years are over,” Bacs says. “If I rare. They’re regurgitating whatever spiel
sprung up, parsing various watch-world intri- may put that in perspective of a human being, they’ve been fed.” Still, prices at auction for
cacies and rhapsodizing about timepieces I think the watch market is just about to grow Paul Newman Daytonas remain stellar.
in sprawling multi-thousand-word reviews. out of its di∞cult adolescent years and is now
Suddenly everything about a watch was up starting to become a very serious adult.” Stories are e≠ective in other, more mature
for inspection and discussion: its history, markets, though. The collectors market most
abilities, movement, case, dial, bracelet, feel B U T O N A F R I G I D night last December, during analogous to watches is cars: Both are luxury
on the wrist. Collectors grew obsessed with Bacs’s most recent watch auction, prices were items put together in factories, assembled by
this sort of nerdery. Dealers did, too. “We got deflated. So much so that it got some collec- a line of people. Both watches and cars derive
really overly romantic sometimes,” Lamdin tors in the easily rattled room talking. And value from what happens to them after they’re
says of the retailers. “I’ve written 2,000-word fretting. “Magic may be waning,” another created—the people who drove them, the races
descriptions on something that I’m passionate auction-goer there that night texted me. A they’ve been in, who accidentally dinged them
about. I have diarrhea of the keyboard because chatty dealer behind me painted a Boschian up. Whereas art derives value because of the
I am passionate about it.” nightmare: What if the vintage-watch market artist. Wine is di≠erent, too: Collectors need
tanks? What if the bubble bursts? He’s seen a trained palate to understand the bottle’s
This environment was tailor-made for worrisome signs, he tells me. He’s sitting on value. Stories, on the other hand, are easy for
someone like Bacs. Growing up in Switzerland, 30 or so watches, but no clients are inter- collectors to understand and a simple pitch
Bacs—after regrettably fawning over a Casio ested in buying. What could this portend? He for people like Bacs to make. With a car or a
calculator watch when he was younger—fell piles onto the calamity. Rich people are the watch, says Lynn Raynault, a former market-
in love with vintage timepieces at age 12. He best weather vane we have for a recession, ing executive for Sotheby’s who now works for
would scour flea markets and buy old pieces, he notes. If they’re not willing to spend on a consulting firm focusing on the ultra-rich
which he quickly realized he could sell back to luxury goods, it’s not just the watch market called Segments of One, “there are very obvi-
his father’s collector friends for more than he that’s tanking but the whole damn economy. ous brands and models for you, and there’s so
He’s prone to rambling, he admits, but he’s much more information on the Internet for
got a point. He wears a neat haircut and them. So you have low risk in terms of your
an azure blue Vineyard Vines quarter-zip. own taste.”
When he stops to take a breath, I ask his age.
“Nineteen,” he says. The famous Italian watch collector Auro
Montanari, who writes books about time-
Luke Rottman started buying watches pieces under the pseudonym John Goldberger,
when he was 14, flipping $500 Seikos until he’d laments that after drinking a bottle of wine—
made enough profit to buy into more expen- poof—it’s gone. Unlike a car, the watch can go
sively priced brands. He’s far less romantic
about it all than Bacs and the crew at Phillips,
who, Rottman argues, have unsustainably

102 GQ.COM MAY 2019

V I NTAG E WATC H E S C O N T I N U E D T HE H OTS H OTS O F HE L LTOWN

anywhere, able to provide a buyer with the C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 93 through the massive ponderosas burning
most seconds of satisfaction for their money. on both sides of the road. Eventually, after a
“[A watch] is the best portable collectible in Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, few more near misses, they made their way
the world that you can enjoy every hour of has not yet definitively established that a downhill. The sky turned from black to
your day,” says Montanari. spark from the utility line started the Camp bright blue. When Kontaxaki got phone ser-
Fire, but earlier this year PG&E acknowl- vice again, she called her husband, who was
Others believe that watches are the best edged to its investors that its equipment was near Chico. She asked the driver to take her
way to preserve history. During the December likely to blame. to him. The tra∞c there was stop-and-go, so
auction, a Bulova with a black dial and egg- Kontaxaki got out and walked among the cars
shell-colored numbers so faded by the pas- O U T S I D E T H E C A N YO N , the fire was caus- until she found him. He gave her a hug, and
sage of time they were nearly illegible sold for ing whole towns to take flight. Anastasia she broke down crying.
$25,000. What really makes the watch spe- Kontaxaki, a surgical nurse at the main hospital
cial appears on the case back—an engraving in Paradise, had already begun her first proce- Kontaxaki e-mailed the teachers at her kids’
that reads: “To Genl. Dwight D. Eisenhower dure of the day when the first spot fires arrived school, in Chico, and said she was coming to
as a Token of My Admiration and Respect.” that morning. Just after 7:30, a colleague pick them up. Her fourth-grade daughter
The legendary watch collector and Lebanese entered the operating room and announced hadn’t heard anything about the fire. “Why
gemstone dealer Claude Sfeir tells me he that the building was being evacuated. It took are you wearing work clothes?” she asked
purchased it. He’s adding it to his collec- a half hour more to finish the surgery. when her mother showed up in her classroom.
tion—which also includes a watch owned by “Why do you smell like smoke?”
Winston Churchill—in hopes of one day open- Still in her scrubs, Kontaxaki joined a crush
ing an entire museum filled with historically of nurses and nursing students wheeling H O W FA R I S I T from heaven to hell? In his
significant timepieces. patients in beds and wheelchairs to the emer- Theogony, the Greek poet Hesiod said a
gency department to be evacuated by ambu- bronze anvil would need nine nights and
Bacs tries to poke holes in any argument lance. Once the last patient was gone, she went ten days to fall from the heavens to earth,
that watches can’t be worth the same amount to the parking lot to find her car. The smoke and just as long to fall from the earth’s
of money claimed in other auction markets. outside was dense, the sky was pink, and the surface to Tartarus, the home of the damned.
“Is it because a car is 12 feet long and a Patek wind was whirling ash like snow in a blizzard. Other authors would have other ideas—
Philippe is not? Oh, because it’s bigger? Fair Intending to drive down to Chico, Kontaxaki Milton pegged it at three times the radius
enough, let’s apply that parameter, but then quickly found herself locked in tra∞c. of the universe—but according to the
the diamond should be worth nothing, but it all-knowing Internet, the straight-line dis-
is worth a lot of money, so it cannot be size. Already the fire was so big and so fast that tance between Paradise and Helltown is just
Oh, material value—a Ferrari is a ton of metal there was no question of trying to put it out. under three miles.
and stu≠. Well, oil on canvas, you buy it at The first responders in Paradise had two main
the supermarket for $5, $10, so the oil that priorities. One was to keep the roads headed Around five o’clock that first evening, while
Picasso, with his brush, applied on the can- out of town open as long as possible. The other Sam was frantically clearing combustible fuel
vas cannot be worth more than $5 or $10, so was to set up temporary refuge areas to pro- from around his family’s houses in the can-
it cannot be the material value. Oh, it took a tect people who couldn’t escape. Neither task yon, he saw the fire tip over the ridge from
month to put the Ferrari together. Oh, but wait was a given, and a car was not necessarily a Paradise. Fire does not usually move fast
a second, it took six months to put the Patek safe place to be. The first five confirmed fatali- downhill, but the winds propelled it into the
Philippe together.” ties from the fire, and several more thereafter, canyon with terrifying speed. It was, he’d say
were people who died in or near their vehicles later, “like a dragon was barfing fire. It threw
Bacs is happy to extend his argument, but while fleeing the flames. up all over the hill.”
a point that he might concede is: These mar-
kets are not bound by logic. The truth with Kontaxaki was nearly one of them. After sit- By the time Dharma, Jason, and Jeb caught
all these intergalactic prices is that these ting without moving for ten minutes, she was up with Sam below the Steel Bridge that night,
watches are worth exactly what two people overwhelmed by the instinct to run. Though the winds had eased. The newcomers were
are willing to pay for the piece. Bacs hopes to Kontaxaki had bad phone reception, she man- relieved to see that the situation on the can-
seduce buyers from the higher-priced mar- aged to send a text to her husband. She told yon floor was not as dire as it appeared from
kets, to help them understand what makes a him she loved him, and figured it would be the the ridge. North of them, a sliver of land that
watch so wonderful—and valuable, precious, last he’d ever hear from her. Then she pulled included Helltown, Jason’s house, and much
costly. He wants to make an item worn on the her surgical mask and goggles onto her face of Centerville was still unscathed.
wrist equal to those parked in garages and and set out on foot.
hung on walls. None of the three men had come prepared
It didn’t take long for Kontaxaki to realize for the task they were about to undertake.
After the event in December, Bacs and I are her mistake. Despite her mask and goggles, Jason, who co-owns a fertilizer company,
talking in a skybox above the auction room the smoke and the heat caused her eyes and was wearing a blue North Face jacket and
when he points to an LCD TV mounted to the nose to water and run. Fortunately, a man sneakers. Dharma and Jeb, a finish carpenter,
wall. It’s powered o≠, the screen a dull black. driving a minivan asked if she needed a ride. were in hoodies and jeans. Sam, in Carhartts,
“What story does it tell you?” he asks, starting He was evacuating his wheelchair-bound sis- hiking boots, and a ski cap, gave them an
to pity this defenseless TV. “None. Look how ter, along with three older women. Kontaxaki impromptu lesson in firefighting. Wildland
sterile, look how boring, look how senseless climbed inside. fires move by spotting, throwing embers
this flat screen here on the wall stares at us. ahead of themselves that blossom into flames.
What a sad object.” She wondered if she’d made another Left unchecked, those spot fires spread until
mistake when she saw the fire jump across they connect back with the main body of the
He pauses for a measured beat. the road in front of the minivan. The driver blaze, e≠ectively pulling the whole mass for-
“And then you go downstairs,” he says, his turned the car around and drove back ward. But the time spot fires would need to
eyes widening, “and you pick up a Bulova ignite gave the men a crucial opening. If they
chronograph that was given to General could stamp out the embers—or, failing that,
Eisenhower.” There’s awe in his voice and a scrape a circle of bare earth to isolate them—
vision in his mind of old Ike himself. Bacs is they might be able to check the fire’s advance.
giddy now, like he can’t believe it. “You hold
the watch in your hands, you close your eyes Sam told his friends to keep their backup
for a moment, and you say, ‘Gosh, please, tell plans at the front of their minds. They should
me: Where have you been and what have always know where the fire was, where the
you lived with General Eisenhower? Where? wind was blowing, and which direction
When? Battlefield or at home? Secret meet- they’d need to run to keep themselves safe.
ings? Amazing.’ ” Jason should keep his truck away from power
lines and pointed downhill. If things got bad,
cam wolf is a gq style writer.

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 103

TH E H OTSH OTS O F H E L LTOW N C O N TI N UE D

the men could huddle under the span of the house, where several Helltown refugees had told them. “There are a lot of houses up here
Steel Bridge till the danger passed. If things gathered, Dharma’s sister, Maria—Jason’s still untouched.”
got really bad, they could jump in the creek. wife—tried to calm everyone down. The
men knew the terrain in the canyon bet- By four o’clock that afternoon, the canyon
With the most immediate threat com- ter than most people, she reminded the was swarming with firefighters, engines, even
ing from the east, Sam said, they needed to others. They were all strong swimmers, a helicopter. Sam briefed the new arrivals,
hold the line at Centerville Road, the nearest and they knew several abandoned mining explaining how and where the fire had been
approximation to a natural firebreak he could caves where they could shelter in an emer- moving and showing them where Jason and
find. Keeping the fire on the far side of the gency. Still, there was considerable concern. David had cut defensive lines. He pointed them
road would give them a fighting chance to Dharma’s girlfriend and 15-year-old son to a house above the cemetery that was at risk
keep it out of Helltown until the professionals were on the verge of panic for much of the of burning and was gratified to see an engine
showed up. Given the disaster in Paradise, and night, and his father was so worried that he company arrive in time to save it.
the fire’s approach to Chico proper, when that didn’t sleep.
might be was anyone’s guess. I F I RST H E A R D about what was happening
Early the next morning, November 9,
Once the men got their instructions, Jason Dharma caught a signal from a distant cell in Helltown while the fight to save it was
went to his house and drove back the tracked tower and was able to get word to his girl-
excavator he used on his property. Dharma friend. “We need help,” he said. “We’ve got a still under way. Like Dharma and the others,
and Jeb grabbed shovels from the truck and lot of homes up here. We’re not burned out yet.
started working up and down Centerville Call somebody.” I grew up just outside Chico, albeit on the
Road. The job was hard but not complicated,
and it kept them focused all night. While As the professionals arrived, opposite side of town. Sam and I were on the
Jason used the excavator to dig lines around they were perplexed
vulnerable buildings, Dharma, Jeb, and Sam ski team together at Chico High, and Nyema
kicked down fences, scratched firebreaks, by the sight of civilians
and threw dirt on burning embers. They used working the fire with and I played together in a very amateur rock
their shovels and boots, even a kayak paddle,
to knock down small spot fires. Around one shovels, a chain saw, and band. Jason’s wife, Maria, was a close friend of
in the morning, Sam warned the others that an excavator. “We held the
the fire was closing in on the old Centerville my next-door neighbor’s, and Jeb’s sister was
School, a squat yellow wooden building that line,” Dharma told them.
was built in 1894. The schoolhouse was the a few years ahead of me in school.
nearest thing to a community center the area Maria arranged for a Cal Fire bulldozer
possessed. Bands played there in the summer, contractor who also lived in the canyon to If I wanted to be neat about it, I could say
Santa visited in December, and potlucks were take Nyema Jankuska, a friend and neighbor,
held year-round. as well as a few other men, up to the can- that the Helltown guys were raised among the
yon. The contractor, whom I’ll call David—
As the flames poured down the ridge, like Sam, he couldn’t be sure that his bosses hippies while I grew up among the farmers,
threatening to envelop the schoolhouse, Jason would appreciate his freelancing—had been
brought the excavator around. He started cut- working another part of the fire. As soon though the truth is that those distinctions had
ting a line with his scraper blade. “Watch my as he found someone to take his place, he
back,” he told Dharma. jumped in his truck and picked up Nyema, long since eroded. Still, there were di≠erences
who’d brought burritos and water for the
“Dude, it’s all around you,” Dharma said. guys in Helltown. His credentials got David in tone. In the canyon, they had jam bands
“I got it, I got it,” Jason assured him. waved through the roadblock at the base of
The fire hit the line just as Jason finished the canyon that had stymied Dharma the day that played together for decades, sweat lodges
scraping. He pulled the excavator away in time, before. As David and Nyema approached
but not before one of its tracks popped o≠ the Centerville Road, swerving around downed on the creek, and organic food and midwives
wheels. As the excavator limped around the power lines and toppled utility poles, they
corner of the schoolhouse, Dharma watched saw that the Honey Run Covered Bridge, a quite long before organic food and midwives
the abandoned track light up and disappear Chico landmark that was built in 1886, had
in a pu≠ of black smoke. Like a breakwater, burned to the ground. were everywhere. Down in the valley, we
Jason’s line stopped the fire from advancing
any further. The schoolhouse was saved. After checking several houses, David and had almond and walnut orchards, boot-cut
By two, the men were flagging. The soles Nyema found Dharma, Jason, and Jeb on
of their boots had melted from stamping Centerville Road, just below the cemetery. It Wranglers and silver belt buckles, and the 4-H
out fires, and their clothes were pocked with ought to have been a congenial reunion, but
burn marks from embers. They had no water; in those first minutes, the three men, delirious auction each spring, where we brushed our
the only liquids they had on hand were two with exhaustion, thought David and Nyema
half-bottles of wine from Dharma’s family were looters. Shovels in hand, their faces hogs with baby oil and balled the tails of our
vineyard and a few kombuchas. streaked with charcoal, they started chasing
For six hours the men had held the line at them, yelling, “Get the fuck out of here!” Charolais steers with hair spray. Between us,
Centerville Road, and for six hours the fire had
showed no signs of abating. But just as they The confusion didn’t last long. David both literally and metaphorically, lay Chico
were wondering how long they could hang brought a dozer back up Centerville Road
on, the winds started blowing in their favor. and started digging lines. Nyema went to his proper, which for decades had depended on
All night Dharma had been thinking of his mom’s house to cut trees, clear brush, and
wife, Kelly, who was buried in the Centerville blow leaves. the farmers to stay prosperous and the hip-
Cemetery near a friend named Callie, who had
died of a stroke at 27. “Callie and Kelly gave us The professional firefighters showed up pies to stay interesting.
a little love,” he told the other guys. “They’re around noon. Expecting to see the same
looking out for us.” scorched wasteland the fire had left behind The first night of the fire, I was home in
everywhere else, they were stunned to find
D OW N I N C H I C O, the family members of the a cluster of houses still standing. Even Brooklyn, where I now live. I got a text from
four men knew none of this. A cell tower at more perplexing was the sight of civilians
the top of Center Gap had burned, leaving working the fire with shovels, a chain saw, one of my closest friends, Joriah Dering,
the canyon without service. At a friend’s and an excavator. “We held the line,” Dharma
who lives in Helltown with his toddler and

his fiancée, Nyema’s sister. “Our part of

the canyon is starting to burn above the

schoolhouse/museum,” he wrote. “Fuck

me.” Online maps that made use of satellite

and aerial infra-red data allowed me to follow

the fire’s progress from across the country,

nearly in real time. With Joriah’s house on

my mind, I couldn’t help but notice a jagged

finger of unburnt territory, shaped like the

hinged barb of a harpoon, that dropped down

from the north and came to a point below the

Steel Bridge.

Two days later, Joriah wrote again: “Just got

word. Our buddies…are up there with bulldoz-

ers cutting fire lines. They’ve been up all night

fighting spot fires, saving houses. Helltown

hasn’t burned yet. Gotta get through the wind

event tonight. ” He sent a picture of

Dharma and Jason and Jeb. All three were

flushed but smiling.

O N F R I DAY A F T E R N O O N , soon after the pro-
fessional firefighters arrived, Dharma and
Jeb caught a ride back to Chico. Sam, Jason,
and Nyema stayed behind to look after their
families’ houses. Jason o≠ered his property
as a staging area for the firefighters. He made

104 GQ.COM MAY 2019

T HE H OTSH OTS O F H E L LTOW N C ON TI N UE D

signs to show where the engines could pump Finland had told him Finns don’t have trou- will burn down. Because the house that
water from the creek. ble with forest fires because they “spend a catches on fire, that puts o≠ the big embers
lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing and catches the other houses on fire.”
All Friday night and into Saturday, the things.” The Finnish president later said he
third day of the fire, the firefighters were told Trump nothing of the sort.) Later that The authorities, of course, do not recom-
able to check the flames’ advance in part by day, Trump compounded the insult by twice mend this course of action, especially for
back-burning: literally fighting fire with fire. referring to Paradise as “Pleasure.” civilians. Scott McLean, a Cal Fire spokesman
By Saturday, when I got Joriah’s second text, it who raised his family in Chico, says he under-
looked like Helltown would make it through. Nine days after Trump’s visit, the day after stands the temptation to try to save one’s
Sam lay down at his house—the first sleep he’d the authorities announced that the Camp Fire home. Nevertheless, he said, “I don’t condone
gotten in two days. Jason found a bottle of had been fully contained, I returned to Chico it. I mean, 86 people died.” (The death toll has
champagne at his place and popped the cork. and found it in the grip of a deep, nearly tec- since been revised downward.) “I’m surprised
tonic re-orientation. The town had been the they didn’t die in Helltown. I understand the
Around eight o’clock that night, however, obvious destination for most of the fire’s evacu- reasoning, but it’s stupid.”
David and Jason heard some bad news: ees, because of both its proximity and its size. At
Fueled by gusting winds, the fire had blasted just over 90,000 people, it was the largest town “I don’t know if you want to call us stupid
into the northern end of Helltown, where it in an 80-mile radius. Almost literally overnight, dumb-asses,” Dharma told me. “That was four
destroyed two houses and burned so fero- its population swelled by nearly a third. dumb-asses not wanting their families to burn
ciously that the firefighters had to pull out of out.” Still, he and the others were keenly aware
the area to stay alive. The influx of evacuees meant that the trag- that they had a lot of luck on their side: At
edy that had started in Paradise had now come several crucial points, the wind might not have
In that instant, it seemed as though much to Chico. RVs and fifth-wheels showed up on shifted to help them. Mostly they feel grate-
of their e≠orts were for naught. Jason called city streets all over town. (“If you see it, there’s ful that they had Sam guiding their e≠orts.
Maria. “Helltown’s gone,” he said. somebody living in it,” one evacuee assured “He’s got the mind of a firefighter,” Dharma
me.) Hotel rooms, Airbnbs, and apartment said. “He would be like, ‘I think this place is
Shortly after midnight, Sam awoke and saw rentals disappeared from the market, and under control,’ and I was like, ‘Really? There’s
the glow over Helltown out his bedroom win- Chico briefly became, in the unthinking argot a 40-foot flame there.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, but
dow. “Oh, hell no,” he said to himself. He drove of the National Association of Realtors, the it’s burning out of fuel and the bottom’s all
up to talk to the dozer operators who’d been “hottest” real-estate market in the country. done. It’ll be fine.’ ” When they’d come back,
working the blaze. Recognizing that the winds Restaurants o≠ered free meals to evacuees later in the night, the fire would be out. “He’d
were changing course yet again, he concocted a and first responders, fund-raisers and clothing be like, ‘Yep, I knew it.’ ”
plan. He told the men on the dozers that if they drives were ubiquitous, and a former Sears at
were able to choke the fire where it had entered the Chico mall was reconfigured as a FEMA Not everyone who stayed behind had the
Helltown, it would have nowhere to go. “We cut disaster-recovery center. same good fortune. Gordon Dise and his
this thing o≠, this fucking fire’s done,” he said. 25-year-old daughter, Anna, also lived in
Other relief e≠orts were ad hoc, impromptu, Butte Creek Canyon, on a two-acre property
The bulldozer crew cut a broad line at the invisible to all except to those on the receiving a few miles downstream from Helltown. After
spot Sam had in mind. Once again he was end of them. Houses opened to friends, friends watching news about the fire until the power
right: The fire, at least in the upper canyon, of friends, and even strangers. Donations went out, Gordon asked Anna to help him
was finished. filtered into Venmo accounts that paid for gift rig up a fire hose to their large water tank,
cards pressed into the hands of people still too which they used to spray down the vegetation
IN THE DAYS and weeks after the fire, proud to think of themselves as charity cases. around their house.
media from all over the world descended Companies paid their a≠ected employees to
on Butte County. For anyone who grew up come to work and cry with their colleagues, or That night, after eating dinner in the dark,
in the area, it was an unsettling spectacle, not to come to work at all. At least one person Gordon and Anna saw flames as tall as trees
for reasons that had nothing to do with I know moved out of his apartment to make approaching their property. They rushed
modesty. If anything, in fact, our problem room for a displaced family. to pack a box of paperwork, a bag of family
was a surfeit of self-satisfaction, a super- photos, and an assortment of clothes. By
abundance of conceit. Possessed of more When conversation turned to Paradise, the time they’d finished, the fire had reached
native pride than we know what to do with, the talk got melancholy, at times almost the deck of their house. The blaze was as loud
we Chicoans tend to lionize anything that has despairing. I met several former residents as a waterfall and hot enough to chap their
even a glancing association with our home- who insisted they would move back as soon faces like a sunburn. They put their belong-
town: Sierra Nevada, the Chico brewery that as the toxic soil was removed and the charred ings in their car, along with their two dogs,
helped launch the craft-beer industry; Aaron trees were felled and the incinerated houses and were about to leave when Gordon ran
Rodgers, the Packers quarterback who played were rebuilt. But even they were aware that back to the house.
for a local high school; Raymond Carver, who the choice might not be theirs to make.
took writing classes at Chico State. But we People need more than houses to live: They Anna yelled after him, and when she real-
also know that for a town like Chico to claim need friends to visit, places to work, stores ized that he couldn’t hear her over the roar of
a dateline in national newspapers for several to shop for their milk and beer and Scotch the fire, she honked the car’s horn. There was
days running is, as my physician wife likes to tape. By the time Paradise High School held no sign of her dad. When she saw her kitchen
say, a poor prognostic indicator. It’s not the its first day of classes after the fire—online collapse, she started the car and tried to drive
sort of place that makes international news and in a vacant store at the Chico mall—some away from the burning house. Only then did
when things are going well. 350 students, more than a third of the total she realize then that the tires had melted.
before the fire, had enrolled elsewhere. Even
Now, all of a sudden, things were bad the most optimistic estimates predict it will Anna took the dogs down to a ditch that
enough that even America’s homebody presi- be years before anything like an independent connected her neighbor’s duck pond to Butte
dent felt obliged to come. Standing among the Paradise returns. Creek. She soaked her clothes and hair, and
glossy black trunks of the scorched pondero- watched her house burn. Temperatures that
sas in Paradise, Donald Trump spoke about AG A I N ST T H AT BAC K D RO P, the rescue of night were in the 40s, and though she knew
the devastation. “Hopefully this is going to Helltown stood as a small, happy story that it was insane, she was tempted several times
be the last of these, because this was a really, no one was too stoic to admit needing to hear. to go back to the fire to warm herself. At
really bad one,” he said. “I think people have Somewhat to my surprise, Sam was not the one point, one of her dogs ran o≠ and didn’t
to see this, really, to understand it.” only firefighter I spoke to in Chico who said return. The other remained with Anna, watch-
that he, too, would stay behind to fight a fire ing for wild animals.
Paradise is Trump country, and plenty of threatening his home. “There’s a saying,” a
people were happy to have him visit. But the city firefighter told me. “If you can keep the Though cell service was spotty, Anna even-
president did himself few favors with his first house from burning, none of the houses tually got through to 911. They told her they’d
local fans when he blamed the fire, essen- send someone to get her, but no one came.
tially, on the people who had su≠ered from Worried that the wind might shift, she kept
it. (Trump claimed that the president of herself awake all night, watching for hot spots
and dousing her clothes whenever they got

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 105

TH E H OTSH OTS O F H E L LTOW N C O N TI N UE D

too dry. The fire at her house burned through On the way into the canyon, I rode in Sam’s Before long, a few sheri≠s and highway
the night and spread down to the trailer park car with Dharma and Jeb. In the lower canyon, patrolmen arrived. “I know you’re frus-
across the street. the fire had been hasty and capricious, leav- trated,” one of the patrolmen said. “The
ing some areas unharmed and burning others bottom line is that until the body count gets
At dawn the next morning, Anna drank some completely. All along Centerville Road we saw recovered, they’re not opening these things
water from the duck pond before walking over scorched houses, twisted knots of sheet metal, up. I’m going to tell you frankly, they’re not
to her house to see if she could find her father. and trees that had cracked down the middle, concerned about you guys being out of your
She found her missing dog, alive, but there was as though struck by lightning. “It looks like an house. They are preoccupied right now with
no sign of Gordon’s body. The heavy burr of atom bomb,” Dharma said when we crossed 700 dead bodies.”
chain saws on the main road led her down to a through one particularly bleak area.
clutch of firefighters who were plainly shocked It was understandable, even if we would
to see her. They fed her and her dogs before We passed a stone house that the flames soon learn that there were nowhere near
driving them out of the canyon. Twenty-four had rendered a blackened pile of rubble. Sam 700 bodies to be found, but also aggravating.
days later, her father was o∞cially confirmed recalled seeing the owner during the first The evacuees had been out of their homes for
as a fatality of the Camp Fire. Anna still doesn’t night of the fire. “He was just sitting there, nearly three weeks. They wanted to go home.
know why he went back to the house. and he’s like, ‘Man, all I’m gonna do is just
watch the fire now.’ His house had already Finally, a few days later, the Steel Bridge
O N A C O L D S U N N Y DAY in late November, I met burned down. He was like, ‘Yeah, I said good- opened again. Not long after the evacuation
with Dharma, Jeb, Sam, Nyema, and Joriah in bye to it, and I’m just gonna watch it.’ I think orders were lifted, a placard was a∞xed to the
a parking lot just outside the canyon. Jeb’s he went to bed for a while under the bridge. street sign at the base of Helltown Road:
parents were there, too, as was Nyema’s mom. It was trippy.”
Though it had been more than two weeks since Thank you: All firefighters & emergency
the fire was extinguished in their part of the At the Steel Bridge our small convoy was personnel
canyon, the evacuation orders were still in stopped by a baby-faced National Guardsman
place. A few neighbors had been allowed back in a Humvee. He said that he couldn’t let any- Butte Creek Canyon Volunteer Fire Co.
to feed their animals, but everyone else was one through, which made the Helltown crowd Our secret weapon: the Helltown Hotshots
getting antsy. furious. “I saved my home from burning,” Jeb
told the guardsman, “and now I can’t get into robert p. baird has written for the
my own home.” ‘London Review of Books’ and ‘Harper’s
Magazine.’ This is his first article for gq.

KEANU REEVES

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 4 data port in his brain died fast at the box version of Keanu who shows up for inter-
o∞ce. Longo went straight back to art and views keeps a tight grip on the personal. He
Was it strange to see that Ted persona come never made another Hollywood movie. negotiated the terms of his relationship with
back at you in the mirror of the press? celebrity culture a long time ago and isn’t
Of course the film gets nothing right interested in re-opening the conversation.
“No. I think they still use, like, ‘Keanu’s about the future except for all-consuming
Excellent Adventure.’ Or ‘dude.’ That’s still evil corporations and the mainstreaming So you go to the Chateau, and if you want,
around.” of the touchless faucet. But it’s way more you can see his bike shop—ARCH Motorcycle
fun than it’s gotten credit for, a B movie Company, out in Hawthorne, California. He
Are you kind of at peace with that now? Is as cocktail party to which inexplicable but started it in 2011 with a motorcycle designer
that okay? welcome guests keep on arriving: Ice-T, named Gard Hollinger.
Henry Rollins, “Beat” Takeshi, Udo Kier, a
“Yeah. I mean—for me, it’s like—that’s easy. dolphin. It’s found its audience, years down The original ARCH motorcycle is the
But, um, yeah.” the road—once, in Berlin, some black-hat KRGT-1, which will run you $85,000. There’s a
hackers came up to Longo, started reciting fancier model that goes for $120,000. They’re
Was there ever any comfort in having your dialogue, told him they love it. “They said, ‘If in the process of designing a new one called
intelligence underestimated in that way? Did you ever need us to hack anything, just let us the Method.
it feel like you could then surprise people? know,’ ” Longo says. “So I have friends in the
Dark Net, which is really great, courtesy of “That one,” Reeves says, “is just gonna be
Reeves smiles, coy as the Mona Lisa. “I Johnny Mnemonic.” ridiculously expensive.”
don’t know how much intelligence I have.”
He also has a friend in Keanu Reeves, to He talks about the motorcycles in tech-
T H E A RT I S T R O B E RT LO N G O directed Reeves this day. Sometimes when he’s in New York, nical, motorcycle-y words that I forget even
in 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic. Longo and Reeves comes over to Longo’s studio with a as he’s saying them. They’re beautiful bikes,
William Gibson, who adapted the script six-pack just to hang out and watch him work, cut from blocks of solid aluminum, all mir-
from his short story, had imagined it as a and people in Longo’s building ask him after- ror and negative space. We walk the factory
cyberpunk Alphaville. The production was ward why he was riding the elevator with a floor, checking out Keanu Reeves’s milling
snakebit from the start; then the studio— bum who looked a little like Keanu Reeves. machines. At one point he brushes against
realizing it was sitting on the new movie by On more than one occasion, Reeves has gone something, and for the rest of the afternoon,
an actor who’d just become the mega-star out to Bay Ridge to watch Longo’s son play tiny metal shavings cling to his pant leg like
of Speed—shredded the film in editing, try- Catholic-league basketball, obliged the result- flakes of bright snow. The best part of the
ing to engineer a blockbuster. The original, ing swarm of autograph seekers, then gently tour is the end, when Reeves turns the key on
anime-influenced ’90s sci-fi movie with suggested everybody sit down so the kids an ARCH bike and says, “And they sound like
Reeves playing a black-suited hero with a could play the game. this.” The sound of the engine almost lifts the
ceiling o≠ the room.
“Keanu came to see me,” Longo says, “to
show me The Matrix before it was out. He Excellent.
had, like, a VHS tape, and they hadn’t finished Reeves goes outside to smoke, positions
all the special e≠ects. You could still see the his body so it blocks the sun from his visi-
strings and stu≠ like that. I thought it was very tor’s eyes. We talk about the moment, in the
sweet, that he came to show me that. Because mid-’90s, when his fame was at its pre-Matrix
The Matrix, in a weird way, was like trying to peak and he decided to play bass in a grunge
get Johnny Mnemonic right, y’know?” band called Dogstar with a drummer he’d met
at the supermarket.
You have to go to people other than Keanu He got roasted as a dilettante, of course.
to hear about this version of Keanu. The He says he felt bad for the other guys in the
band, regular musicians who had to face the

106 GQ.COM MAY 2019

KEANU REEVES CONTINUED RE S TAUR A NTS

skepticism society reserves for moonlighting pocket and writes down notes, like some C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 3
actors, but adds, “I guess it would have helped book I read or something like that. And I
if our band was better.” know that the motherfucker is actually read- dramatic that had there not been two months
ing that! He’s going to find that book and between the meals, I might have gotten
The truth is, they weren’t bad, just service- read it, I know it.” the bends.
able, in a KROQ commercial-alt kind of way.
Sort of like a noisier Live, if the bass player I T I S I M P O S S I B L E not to want to bounce your Shabushabu Macoron is the domain of
was really into the way Peter Hook’s bass car- Keanu theories o≠ Keanu. Impossible and Mako Okano, a 33-year-old from Osaka. She
ried the melody in Joy Division, and was also fruitless. He won’t go there, won’t see the has turned the humble art of hot-pot cook-
Keanu Reeves. through lines in the work. ing—far less fetishized than sushi—into some-
thing nurturing, revelatory, and precise. The
“We played Milwaukee Metal Fest. Got In 2012 the director Christopher Kenneally phrase that comes to mind is “slipping into a
killed. I think we played close to [belligerent made an earnest, evenhanded documentary warm bath,” except that’s too easy, given the
New York hardcore-punk legends] Murphy’s about what cinema might gain and lose as context. Assisted by two other women, Okano
Law. Imagine. So we played a Grateful Dead digital moviemaking technology eclipses film. begins with a handful of bites: a square of
cover, at Milwaukee Metal Fest.” Reeves acts as narrator (“The film is covered char-grilled Wagyu beef, adorned with tiny,
with an emulsion.… The crystals change into bitter flower petals, to wake your taste buds;
(It was actually weirder than that. They silver metal when they are developed”) and then a curled sliver of sweet abalone and a
played after Murphy’s Law, Agnostic Front, interlocutor (David Lynch, asked by Reeves rolled Japanese omelet Jacques Pépin would
and the Mentors—hardcore, thrash-punk, if he’s done with celluloid: “Don’t hold me to be proud of. The menacing black slab of an
punk-metal—and before Cannibal Corpse, it, Kee-ann-oh.”) induction burner then appears before each
Obituary, Deicide, and a band that was just seat, surrounded in short order by a basket of
called Cancer. Today Reeves doesn’t recall It’s not a Keanu Reeves movie, exactly—it’s raw vegetables, five dishes of di≠erent sauces,
which Dead song they played, although an exploration of how technological innova- and a palette with slices of beef and pork
Dogstar set-list research suggests it was prob- tion shapes aesthetics, to which Reeves is so thin they look like smears of paint. This,
ably “New Minglewood Blues.”) lending his clout. But it feels unavoidably essentially, is Okano’s mise en place. For the
like an autobiographical gesture on the next hour or so, she moves up and down the
“We were like, ‘They hate us. What are part of its narrator—an attempt by Reeves counter, dipping and swirling meat or vegeta-
we doing here? What can we do? Let’s do to understand the mechanism by which his ble in each pot of broth while giving instruc-
the Grateful Dead cover,’ ” Reeves says, laugh- image has been constructed. There is a clip tions on which sauce to use before eating. I
ing at the memory. “They were just like, Fuck of a small child asking Reeves, “How did you was bereft and slightly panicked when, in the
you, you suck. I had the biggest grin on my go into the computer?” Then Kenneally cuts final stages, she said, “Now you’ve tried every-
face, man.” to Reeves as Neo with liquid information thing. You can choose.”
dripping down his arm.
He’s the world’s most famous aging indie- Shabu-shabu is not the most aesthetically
rock guy. He is probably the only billion- In a lot of Reeves’s recent work, he tends pleasing food: Vegetables emerge from the pot
dollar-grossing movie star to have once listed to play bad guys, and specifically bad guys looking more or less like wilted, wet vegetables;
Steve Albini’s confrontational ’80s noise- who help feed the young and vulnerable into the ribbons of curled brown beef resemble dis-
terror band, Big Black, as a current fave. what another great Canadian once called the carded pantyhose. Okano and her assistants
When he’s reminded of this, he lets out a “star-maker machinery.” In The Bad Batch, turn it into not only a delicious meal but an
quiet nonverbal dinosaur howl—raaaaaah- he’s a post-apocalyptic cult leader who embrace of hospitality. “May I add ice to your
hhh—and does a little Ted Logan air guitar. knocks up his acolytes. In The Neon Demon, water?” one asked me when she noticed me
he shows up in ingenue Elle Fanning’s night- sweating in the steam of the hot pot. And there
Just a little, though. mares to violate her with a knife. In the wild can be no more elementally comforting gift
He doesn’t listen to as much new music martial-arts potboiler Man of Tai Chi, his than the final savory course of soba, cooked in
as he used to. Hasn’t gotten heavy into 2013 directorial debut, he’s the underground a blend of the stock that has been formed in
a new band since he discovered Metz, an fight-club proprietor who wants to turn the your hot pot and a flavorful broth of tomato and
abrasive Toronto punk group whose songs honorable hero Tiger Chen into a killer so Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese—an explosive
have titles like “Escalator Teeth” and “Mess he’ll be a bigger draw. flavor burst to match the opening taste of steak.
of Wires.” He’s worried about this out-of-
touchness, a little. Toward the end of that first afternoon at Without consigning two extraordinary
“But once in a while, I have the moments, the Chateau Marmont, Reeves finds another chefs to the prison of type, there are obvi-
where you drink the whiskey and you get the secluded area, shielded from the rest of the ously deep issues of culture at play here, and
records out and you start doing the DJ thing patio by a rain tent, where he can smoke. even deeper issues of gender. What is per-
until four in the morning.” missible for what kinds of restaurants? Who
He’s better in this zone. He’s engaged, ask- He’s asked if he’s trying, in some of these gets to brag? Who needs to brag? Who gets
ing questions. When I bring up 1981’s Valis, projects, to examine the way his medium rewarded for what kinds of performances in
one of the later, weirder novels by Scanner and his industry have conspired to construct the wide-open world of what it means to be
Darkly author Philip K. Dick, he admits that a notion of Keanu Reeves. A false self with a chef today? I don’t have definitive answers.
he hasn’t read it, then makes me explain the its own life. To me, these meals, plus dozens more I ate in
whole backstory of the book, purportedly the first months of 2019, exist in ongoing con-
Dick’s attempt to process through fiction a Is this something you’re consciously trying versation—if only in my belly and later in my
series of quasi-religious experiences in which to do? rapturous recollection.
an extraterrestrial intelligence blasted his
brain with a pink laser beam made of pure “I think you could do that in, uh, a cinema brett martin is a gq correspondent.
information. It’s what the Sonic Youth song class,” Reeves says. Then he laughs. “I guess
“Schizophrenia” is about; Reeves knows that I shouldn’t make that sound so pejorative.”
one, starts singing it. He takes down the titles
of the relevant Dick books to check out later. At the moment he said it, he was sitting
Before shooting My Own Private Idaho, on a Chateau chair. The chair was positioned
Gus Van Sant says, “I think I gave both River right at the edge of the patio, where the stone
and Keanu John Rechy’s book City of Night gives way to dirt. One of the chair legs hung
as a reference. River read a few pages and in empty air, its chair-foot resting on noth-
called it quits. Keanu read all of City of Night ing. Someone else in this position, having a
and as many other John Rechy books as he smoke, might have leaned back too far and
could find. He was always very thorough.” tipped over. Keanu just floated, perfectly bal-
This is more or less what it’s like to know anced, somehow sitting in the chair while also
him. “There’ve been times I’ve mentioned not being there at all.
something,” Longo says, “and he all of a sud-
den takes this stupid thing out of his back alex pappademas is a writer who lives in
Los Angeles.

MAY 2019 GQ.COM 107

ERROLSON HUGH

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 89 from her. (To that end, he and his younger license) and starts cussing them out. The fight
brother are “the only two [in the extended math was already unfavorable—five versus
but the prospect of scaling the company in a family] who don’t have the Jamaican accent,” two. Then Errolson did something, let’s say,
world that will soon be uninhabitable worries he says, though he wishes he did because he’d unorthodox: He planted his feet into a half-
him, and no solution is going to avail itself be “so much cooler.”) moon, put up his hands, and got into a karate
anytime soon. stance. Just sort of stared at the guy. Not even
His dad’s name is…Errol. An architect by saying anything, Peter Cetera instrumentals
He’s also a bit flummoxed by some of his trade who kept books and magazines around presumably wafting through the pine needles.
more charitable devotees—the ones who pro- the house when his kids were growing up.
cure thousands of dollars’ worth of Acronym Who talked about architects with names like And the dude just…stopped.
with every drop: “Acronym is also fundamen- Richard Meier (Dad’s favorite) and Arata “You use some kung fu bullshit!” Errolson
tally about buying less stu≠. Don’t get the five Isozaki, a Japanese architect with a modern- says. “I was too scared. I didn’t even say any-
disposable, ephemeral [pieces]. Just get the real ist approach to structure who, I should note, thing. I just stood there, and he cussed us out
one and keep it as long as you can until it falls seems to wear a daily uniform that consists so much that the lady across the street called
apart.” Individual Acronym staples are oddly of all-black everything. Errolson’s parents the cops. But he never attacked me.”
iterative; a jacket might at first glance be the were workaholic creative types (Mom was an The guy got back in the car and drove
same as a previous season’s, with one or two interior designer), and the family home was o≠. The fight was won and not a punch
new features. A firmware update, essentially. divided into a living space and a design stu- was thrown and the metaphors just write
dio. As Errolson tells it, they were the opposite themselves.
“When we make something, we’re not try- of Tiger Motherly and encouraged their kids’ Afterward the Hugh boys were mostly left
ing to make it expensive to have some kind creative impulses in a variety of mediums. He alone. They fought each other a ton—real
of clout or status factor,” says Errolson. “It’s a doesn’t not credit them for transmuting their aggro teenage-boy stu≠ amplified by martial
function of the materials that we use and how work ethic onto him. “I mean, it’s that 10,000- arts—and left a few holes around the house.
[the product’s] made and the time it takes to hours thing,” he says. “I don’t think that’s They attended Archbishop MacDonald, an
design it. It costs what it costs.” really enough hours. It’s like, I think you can academic high school in Edmonton, where
get pretty good with that many hours. But to Errolson got his first taste of merchandising
W H E N YO U STA RT to take a closer look at all of really be the best at something—if you’re into when he sold “bootleg Chanel tees” to girls,
this, you might notice that 90 percent of the your craft, you don’t even notice the time.” made using his dad’s drafting table. Prior to
Acronym Hivers on Instagram also appear enrolling at nearby Ryerson University in 1989,
to be Asian guys—Japan, Taiwan, Irvine, At one point, Errolson mentions one of he mulled majoring in graphic design, archi-
Brooklyn (that one’s me). I was curious if that his favorite books, The Book of Five Rings, by tecture, or fashion but ultimately chose the last
was something Errolson paid attention to. Miyamoto Musashi, the 17th-century Japanese because he “literally figured there were going
We’re at a Chinese-fusion restaurant not far writer and ronin who, according to myth, to be more girls in fashion,” and that was that.
from the Acronym studio, nursing lychee high- dual-wielded swords like a ninja turtle and And wouldn’t you know it, that hormonal
balls that he recommended. He doesn’t cook went undefeated in some 60 duels. It contains decision-making process paid o≠. At Ryerson
much. And since the place is open late and he’s the following passage: he met Michaela Sachenbacher, his eventual
friendly with the owner, he eats here alone a Acronym co-founder, silent business partner,
few times a week after work. The interior is It will seem di∞cult at first, but everything and, for many years, his girlfriend. She’s still
intimate and moody. A simulacrum of a Wong is di∞cult at first. Bows are di∞cult to draw, the company’s CEO. But when they gradu-
Kar-wai set piece. Evidently it’s a popular spot halberds are di∞cult to wield; as you become ated, Errolson finally got the chance to escape
for Berliners in the mood for love. accustomed to the bow so your pull will Canada, so he followed Michaela back to her
become stronger. hometown of Munich, where they lived with
Ten years ago, he might not have paid much her family.
attention to the identity of Acronym buyers. Mostly, though, growing up in Canada This was the early ’90s, at the height of an
But we’re a smarter, wiser culture now, more meant it was Errolson and his brother—two economic depression. Unable to find work,
attuned to our proximity to whiteness and years younger, who now has his own software Michaela decided to uproot to Kyoto for a
the sum of our identities. Re: the Asian thing: company in Los Angeles—left fending for year to study Japanese, leaving her Chinese-
“It comes down largely to representation.” In themselves. It was an isolating experience: Jamaican-Canadian-immigrant boyfriend
some ways, he says, it’s the O.G. streetwear two Chinese-Jamaican kids, blips in the social behind in Europe with her family, where he
brands from Japan—the BAPEs and WTaps fabric, growing up outsiders in the Great learned the language, thanks to Michaela’s
and Neighborhoods—that “kind of let the White North. And Errolson couldn’t wait to grandmother. “She didn’t speak any English
doors open” for someone like him. The ones get out of there. “The walk to school was like at all; she just spoke to me for all that time
that allowed all these kids to carve out an ten minutes, roughly, but in that ten minutes in German,” he says. “And then one day I was
identity beyond their inherent Asianness. In a you had icicles hanging from you. All that shit. watching TV, and I was like, ‘I just understood
way, Acronym is just extending the blueprint. It was a winter wasteland, which I’m sure sub- everything that guy’s saying!’ ”
consciously a≠ected…” Crucially, while Michaela was abroad,
“There was space for them to be themselves Errolson got his first break as a fashion
inside [Acronym], but it was still this obvi- Anyway, when he was 10, his parents signed designer, consulting for a now defunct
ously Asian thing—mostly me.” him and his brother up for karate classes, which German streetwear line called Subwear.
proved useful, not just for predictable charac- The gig “paid no money at all.” For a mas-
Errolson was born in Winnipeg and grew ter-building and self-assuredness but literally sive 30-piece collection, he got paid roughly
up all over Canada. His parents are of Chinese as a bully deterrent. When I ask Errolson if he $3,000, but the gig had an unpredictable
heritage but are third-generation Jamaicans had a favorite clothing item as a child, he says it benefit: Subwear functioned as his entry
who migrated there by way of Montreal; Mom was definitely his karate gi—a fact that his dad point into the nascent world of technical
was geographically restless, and Errolson had alluded to recently: “He was like, ‘As a kid outerwear. After Michaela returned from
thinks he inherited some of his wanderlust you could never find pants that fit you the right Japan, they co-founded Acronym Studio in
way. Because you were always trying to kick.’ ” 1994, just the two of them. And slowly, over
time, they started designing snowboard
There was one instance when Errolson collections for a client list that would grow
(then about 13) and his brother were biking to include Burton, a titan of the activewear
around the neighborhood and some white industry, resulting in a partnership that
kids drove by “in their car, throwing stu≠ at us would last 13 years.
out the window.” Young Errolson flipped them Errolson didn’t even snowboard. Just never
the bird. The older teens slammed the brakes. got into it. But one year Errolson and Michaela
secretly designed “seven or eight snowboard
“I was just thinking, I’m gonna get my ass
totally kicked now,” Errolson recalls.

So the main guy gets out the driver’s seat
(and mind you, this kid was older and had his

108 GQ.COM MAY 2019

ERROLSON HUGH CONTINUED

collections” for di≠erent companies that were fashion space. If you look at it a certain way, to test-drive in an enormous unreleased
showcased in the SportScheck catalog (think Acronym is what happens when you focus on Acronym backpack that would prove valuable
Sport Chalet but German). Acronym Studio pure design. It’s a sandbox. The dominoes fell should we need to abduct the Liberty Bell. Me,
designs took up half the catalog, and no one in a way that allowed the brand to operate I’m trying out a pair of tactical shorts (model
had any idea. outside the traditional runway-show fashion SP28TS-DS), made of a lightweight nylon
cycle, its own satellite planet at the edge of jersey material, that happen to flare out like
“I was so broke and so poor that I didn’t the universe. Out of the primordial goop, some samurai pants—presumably to protect my
care,” he says. “I’d do anything. I’d take any job pants and jackets. quadriceps from enemy archers on horse-
and just crank through it.” back—while Eskindir and Yichy are testing
“Errolson has something super rare, which pants made of a moisture-repellent stretchy
These days, the Acronym consultancy side is that he balances being wildly innovative material that Errolson’s excited about. They
is ultra-selective about whom it partners with. with being incredibly disciplined,” says John look like trousers—some version of which
Right now there are two primary collabora- Mayer. “The right things move forward, and will hit Acrnm.com in the future. It’s a sort of
tors: Nike (until recently, Acronym designed the right things stay in place. That’s what informal R&D lab, this place, where the stress
the All Conditions Gear series, but a new keeps a following.” test is a facsimile of hand-to-hand combat.
hush-hush collaboration is in the works) and Hence the punching thing.
Stone Island (the Italian outerwear brand that I T I S N ’ T O F T E N that you’re trying to punch
similarly obsesses over innovative textiles, for a subject you’re attempting to interview Most of the time that we’re together, and
Stone Island Shadow Project). in the face. And yet here we are, two Asian especially over drinks, there is something
dudes with a childhood of karate under their else on Errolson’s mind. Errolson’s girlfriend,
Designing all those snow collections early respective black belts, ready to rumble in the Melody, isn’t in Berlin right now. But he talks
on gave Acronym a few competitive advan- Acronym Dojo. I had floated the kooky idea about her fondly—which is to say, a lot. Melody
tages. It forged an early relationship with in an e-mail to Errolson. And he responded: grew up just south of Los Angeles, spent most
“Hell yes, let’s throw some kicks!” of her adult life working in Tokyo, and just
“Errolson balances being recently moved back to California. Errolson
wildly innovative with Okay—it’s not really called the Acronym is considering joining her, and the gravity of
Dojo. On Google Maps you will find it indexed that decision, to relocate a major piece of the
being incredibly disciplined. as Chimosa, a yoga studio–slash–holistic operation (i.e., Errolson Hugh), seems to be
The right things move wellness center with a focus on empower- weighing on him.
forward, and the ing women via martial arts that’s run by an
enthusiastic Taiwanese man named Yichy— At least a little bit. He’s as global a citizen
right things stay in place.” himself tall and sinewy, like if Bruce Lee were as they come, someone well versed in uproot-
stretched on a ta≠y machine. Errolson’s been ing everything on a whim when the situation
—john mayer practicing here for the past six years. Each of calls for it.
the various training rooms has an element
Gore-Tex at a time when other designers theme—water, fire, earth, mid-renovation, “The advantage of being home nowhere,” he
were averse to using it. And the Acronym etc. They brew us loose-leaf tea when we enter. says, “is you’re home everywhere.”
team was sometimes given these ambitious
yet bizarre mandates, namely from Greg Also present is their friend Eskindir, That sense of placelessness, that sort
Dacyshyn, then creative director at Analog a cheery multi-hyphenate martial-arts guy of post-geographic-outsider perspective,
(a sub-brand of Burton), who had something originally from Eritrea whose biography that kind of oppositional self-positioning—
of a punk-rock-anarchist streak. “Greg had includes the word “stuntman” and who has whether you’re a Chinese-Jamaican-Canadian
this thing where he was sort of trying to piss modeled for Acronym in promotional photos immigrant living in Germany or something
everybody o≠,” says Errolson. “He’s like, ‘Let’s and videos. He rounds out a multicultural else altogether—helped make Acronym what
do something that everybody’s gonna hate!’ ” gang of Errolson and crew (mostly Acronym it is on a substructural level. There’s grace in
employees), and the total e≠ect is something the foreign, fortification in doing the new,
One memorable and non-hateable mandate like a Benetton ad made anime. hard thing. You become accustomed to the
was for a transformable “full-leather Gore-Tex bow and your pull becomes stronger.
jacket” with a million pockets. (“I think it actu- And the four of us are wearing…
ally had 26 pockets,” says Errolson.) It had a Lululemon! Just kidding. We’re all decked “People ask me, like, ‘Where’s home?’ ”
passport-wallet thing that Velcroed to the out in Acronym, courtesy of Errolson, who Errolson says. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know. Where’s
front. It quite literally had lights in the hood, brought like $4,000 worth of clothes over my laptop? Where’s my jacket?’ ”
and to top things o≠, you could transform the
jacket into a briefcase, should you need to go gq is a registered trademark chris gayomali is the site editor of gq.
from mountain to boardroom. of advance magazine publishers inc.
ADDITIONAL CREDITS
There was one prompt that Errolson could copyright © 2019 condé nast.
never quite solve, however: “We had to figure all rights reserved. printed in the u.s.a. Pages 22–23. Kate Moss and Tyra Banks: Jim Smeal/
out how to make a jacket that you can light a WireImage/Getty Images. All other photographs: Ron
spli≠ on while you’re on the chairlift in high VOLUME 89, NO. 4. GQ (ISSN 0016-6979) is published monthly (except for Galella/WireImage/Getty Images.
winds. Like, that was the request. Which I combined issues in December/January and June/July) by Condé Nast,
never figured out.” which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL Page 32. Rabbits, clockwise from top right:
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When Acronym finally launched its first Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr., President & Chief Executive O∞cer; David Stefan Petru Andronache/Getty Images; chengyuzheng/
stand-alone product, in 2002, the team was E. Geithner, Chief Financial O∞cer; Pamela Drucker Mann, Chief Getty Images; Ekarin Apirakthanakorn/EyeEm/
ready for anything. It was the Acronym Kit-1: Revenue & Marketing O∞cer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, Getty Images; ptaha_c/Getty Images. Butterflies:
a jacket-and-messenger-bag combo that NY, and at additional mailing o∞ces. Canada Post Publications Mail proxyminder/Getty Images (3). Trees, clockwise from
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MAY 2019 GQ.COM 109

FINAL SHOT

Acronym designer
Errolson Hugh,
pictured here at
his martial-arts
studio in Berlin.
See page 84 for our
profile of Hugh
by Chris Gayomali.

110 GQ.COM MAY 2019 PHOTOGRAPH BY NIKITA TERYOSHIN