so what's it mean?

Note: This is pretty much a very personal entry. Forgive me if I get a bit in-depth.

I must get the "what does bsbcbu stand for?" question at least once a week. I'm not mad, I mean, thanks to everyone who was curious enough to ask. I'm flattered, really. But in all honesty, I don't have the answer for you. Truth be told, it started out as a tag line I used at the end of my blogs circa 2005. I would end everyone blog the same way. 

"be safe. be cool. be u"

It was just something I thought up one day. It was basically how I felt about how people should live life. Not so much the "play it safe" mentality, but almost as like a farewell to someone you care about. Like when a friend is leaving the house you say 'Peace' or 'Later', but really, you also want them to 'be safe' as you want all your friends to be taken care of. So that's where the 'be safe' comes from.

As far as 'be cool' well at the time, I was in the beginnings of becoming the person I am today. Basically, 2005 was about when I stopped caring what was "cool" and decided to define "cool" for myself. When I told people to "be cool" which is still a common way for me to tell someone goodbye to this day, it basically means to have a nice day. And that leads us to the last part...

be u. it's that simple.  I just wanted people to accept who they were, as I was beginning to accept who I was. late 2005-early 2006, I came to the realization that I was not invincible. I was not perfect, and things were not always gonna fall into place like I just thought they would. However, I had also realized that if I were just true to myself, that everything would come full circle.

So I would write these blogs, and surprisingly enough, they become pretty popular with most of my friends. Most of them didn't see me on a regular basis anymore, so these blogs were almost as a way for me to be with them when I was away at school. I never really thought of the tag line as anything more than it was until the summer of 2006. I was hanging out with a bunch of friends from high school and some friends from New Orleans and someone looks at me and says "be safe. be cool. be u. man, that's some real shit." 

that was pretty much when it dawned on me that people could relate to that. So when the idea to start my own clothing line (the initial ideas, designs, everything, were really elementary) I thought what better than BSBCBU, the acronym for my now 'famous' tag line. And at first, that is what it meant. 

But then I realized something. It didn't come to me right away. As a matter of a fact, I can't put an exact date on the day I came to this conclusion, but sometime in the last 6 months, I decided that bsbcbu wouldn't be the acronym for something else.

I am not and was not ashamed of the 'be safe. be cool. be u' but it just wasn't what I wanted it to be. You see, all my life, I've needed the meaning in everything. I needed the answers. I had to have the definition. I couldn't and still can't handle the unknown. It scares the fuck out of me. But as I got/get older, I've realized that sometimes we won't know all the answers. Sometimes, no one will know the answers, and we're just going to have to close our eyes and jump and hope that someone catches us, or we jump far enough to get across. And that's basically how bsbcbu truly came to be. I closed my eyes and jumped.

Present day, I'll let you in on a little secret. I won't tell you what bsbcbu means. Only 3 other people know, and I think we're going to just keep it that way. But that doesn't mean it can't mean something to you. As a matter of a fact, I want it to mean something to you. Whether it be the idea of the brand itself, or the name, or this stupid blog entry, I want you to relate to the brand. Nowadays, too many people are tied down by labels and branding, not only in clothing, but in all walks of life, and I don't want that.

I don't want you to feel obligated to represent something when you put on a bsbcbu shirt or a bsbcbu hat. I want you to wear it because you make the shirt cooler by being associated with you, not because the shirt makes you.

You might like everything we do. You might hate it all. You might like some and hate some. But if all you have is an opinion and a mind of your own when it comes to how you feel about bsbcbu, then that's enough for me.

so in closing...

be safe. be cool. be u.