Demolition Collective & Protocol SF are FAMILY!

This story takes us back to the beginning of 2019. I was in college in the Bay Area and found myself at Treasure Island one Sunday for a flea/thrift market called ‘Treasure Fest.’ After months of living on my own and being immersed in my studies, this was an outing I always looked forward to. It’s where I met Demo.

By my third consecutive month at the flea, Demo approached me, complimented my outfit, and asked where I was from. I told him I went to school near Berkeley, and he quickly followed up with, “Let me know if you’ve got time for lunch. I got you. Literally anything, just let me know… Shit’s crazy out here!” I took his contact info but didn’t think much of it, not realizing at that moment just how great of a friend I’d made.

I continued attending Treasure Fest each month and kept running into Demo. Eventually, I realized I was shopping at his booth, ‘Demolition Collective.’ This man was truly a Bay Area gem—finding the best vintage clothing and selling it at prices no one could compete with.

Later that year, I took Demo up on his lunch offer, and from there, we stayed connected. Demo, now 46, has lived what feels like five different lifetimes in one. His life experience is unbelievable, but he’s so casual about everything he’s been through. Over time, I’ve come to see him as a Yoda-like figure in my life. When I need advice, he’s the one I go to. He’s direct, real, and never sugarcoats anything.

When the pandemic hit, and most vintage stores either shut down or got looted, I had the idea to screen print and hand out free cardboard signs and T-shirts to the people of San Francisco. This was in July 2020, and without hesitation, Demo was right there with me—driving the U-Haul, printing tees, and getting the entire vintage community of San Francisco to rally together for a good cause.

Now, several years later, I’m proud to announce that Demo has hustled hard and successfully opened ‘Demolition Collective’ in Chicago, ‘Protocol Vintage’ on Haight Street in San Francisco, and ‘Textures Vintage,’ also in San Francisco—all within the span of a year. His mission remains the same: keeping San Francisco stylish on a budget and making lifelong friends along the way.

Q: “How did Protocol and Demolition Collective get started?”

Demo: “We started off as Demolition Collective. The idea was just to be, you know, a growing vintage brand that had room for upcycling and also just being inclusive of the community of vintage. Fast forward, Protocol San Francisco shop opened on Haight Street in 2023. This year, 2024 we opened up the second location of Protocol in Hayes Valley with a partner of mine Jacob Lopez who is out in Salinas, CA and also owns Motherload with me which is in Santa Cruz, CA. The idea of that is just having that collaborative effort of having two really strong curations and being able to provide for San Francisco and beyond. 

Q: “When you first started selling vintage clothing, how did you get started?”

Demo: “I started getting into it through Brian who is Peter Griffin Vintage. Fast Forward to now we have the shop Textures over in Fisherman's Wharf. I would say there is going to be a second location that is coming. As of right now, I can’t disclose that location on camera, but off camera if things work out you’ll know about that too. We are both going to be owners of that shop as well. We pretty much started together. He is from San Francisco, I am from Chicago. I moved out here with my partner in 2016/2017. We met at the bins and I was traveling a lot. I had just exited a 13 year career in the music industry. There I was doing artist management, tour management. I ran street teams, record promotions, you name it. I took Kid Cudi out on his first US tour. I traveled with, rest in peace, Mac Miller, on tour, along with just a host of other folks along the way. When moving out here I knew I didn’t want to be in the music industry anymore because it would ultimately move me down to Los Angeles, when I was trying to build something with my partner here in the bay. And being that music and fashion follow each other, it was just a pretty easy transition for me to just fall into it. Also just like the east coast of San Francisco when you think of San Francisco, you think of vintage, they are synonymous with each other. I felt like this was the perfect market to be able to enter an industry like this in. At that point, I didn’t have any direction. I didn’t know how I was going to go about doing things. But, you know as I said Brian he was like a, he was just like a great friend, a great resource, and any opportunities he had available he opened them up to me. You know we would go down to the Rose Bowl together and sell, we would sell up here in San Francisco at markets like Treasure Island, Alameda Antique Fair, etc. And then fast forward we started doing vendership at different shops. So one shop was Indigo Vintage and that kind of spawned out to a bunch of other shops, then nowadays, us owning our own shops. So yeah, it was definitely Brian not knowing me from anything and us just having a liking for each other and creating that brotherhood early on, that let me know this was a direction that I could move in, a positive direction, but also like a lucrative business that I could really get behind. 

Q: “Before getting the shop, what were some notable steps within selling beforehand that you think were important before getting the storefront with Brian?”

Demo: “Well I think just really selling things over and over and over and over again. I felt like the more that I am able to have a better understanding of garments knowing the brands, the fabrics, touching thousands and thousands of pieces and talking to other people in the community, seeing other peoples curations, allowing myself to be inspired by other curations and just a lot of trial and error. Definitely pop ups and markets were really big for me and the one great thing about Brian is we can always talk about things. So after an event we would talk about what things sold, what things didn’t sell, what things worked here, what things didn’t work there. Overtime me being from Chicago I ultimately looked at outerwear and you know things to me would be like, “Oh it has to have a tight cuff! Because you can’t get wind to go in it.” Which you know here, it doesn’t necessarily get that cold but with him being from San Francisco where you wouldn’t think it was cold a lot of people come here and fail to realize this is California but it is very cold here and they end up you know buying a San Francisco sweater from Fisherman’s Wharf or wherever else.. But you know with just him understanding the climate here and the dress here it was just a really good match. Another friend who was notable at that time was Jay in Seattle. So it was like this cat from Seattle, this cat from San Francisco, and this cat from Chicago who were all kind of becoming their own and developing this. I pay homage to both of them to be able to collaborate or to really get a better understanding of the market here, another climate, and the value of vintage clothing. 

Q: “You told me back in 2021, ‘community over everything’ when you are making a brand or trying to put something out, What makes you want to bring community within vintage clothing?”

Demo: “It comes from the music industry. If you think about it, every band that you love, any rapper that you love, all came from somewhere. And that somewhere was created by a small community whether it’s friends that enjoy the band, then it became the city that enjoys the band, and then the cities that enjoy the band until it just starts to grow and knowing the importance of day one fan in the music industry is as equal to a day one customer, or you don’t even have to be a customer I believe when you and I first met you were just like, “yo this is dope!” It’s just like I am a creative in this industry others are creatives in the industry doing whatever they may do and your industry is likely very important as well because it runs parallel with my industry and understanding as far as I go, as far as you go, if we just continue to have those connections across paths across our journey it will only be beneficial to both of us. I think ultimately at the end of the day there is nothing better than having that community and having that support system. Being able to know that you can jog into your memory, or jog in your mind about who roots for you. I always feel like it is super important to have people in your corner. Any time I have had the opportunity to be that for someone else, I feel like, I don’t know..that is my life goal. Not everyone understands it, not everyone gets it, luckily those who do, do.