How Slobby Robby Turned Nostalgia Into a Lifestyle

T8: “Alright everyone what is going on my name is Tate Canyon and we are here with Round Two Magazine and today we have got a really special guest we are here with Slobby Robby, please introduce yourself.”

Slobby: “Yo what up man it is Slob Rob with no job, your main pillow stain. Your mom’s favorite friend, all that stuff man. I am here in my store Generation Cool out in Arizona.”

T8: “Hell yeah alright man, so to start off we are going to get off with the super simple basics. How did you get the name Slobby Robby? Where did that come about? Where did the alias come from?”

Slobby: “Oh well that is a good question! Mostly from early, early, social media like MySpace! Just messing around and I had different nicknames and I called myself “Slob Rob” and “Slobert” and all this. One day this girl started calling me Slobby Robby on MySpace and it just stuck. She wrote me a poem and I met her one night and she was like “you are Slobert from MySpace right?” and I said yes. After that she said she was going to write me a poem and so I wake up in the morning and on my MySpace wall she had written me like a nice little post and it said:

Slobby Robby

He is my favorite hobby

If I was a hotel, he could sleep in my lobby

And then after that I changed my MySpace to Slobby Robby and all my homies thought it was funny and it was kind of almost like a joke you know? Like my homies DID NOT call me that, they called me Rob. But a lot of girls and a lot of people, we were in the nightclub scene so a lot of these people really did start calling me Slobby and you know you can’t choose your own nickname man it is usually what latches on with the public. That was an early social media nickname and also a famous Garbage Pail Kid character!  I ended up using that in my photo and then ended up sort of branding myself with this rhyming name and Garbage Pail Kid motif. That was early on in the MySpace days so by the time I hit Facebook and Instagram you know  wasn’t really having to think about what my handle was, you know what I mean?”

T8: “That is super fire, I love that, you don’t get to pick your own nickname, it is just given to you like this god-given thing that shoots down and that is who you are for the rest of time.”

Slobby: “Literally.”

T8: “You are a man of style bro you are always dripped out, so to start off with how you got into your style can you give us a fit breakdown of what you got on right now?”

Slobby: “Yeah! I mean for the most part I like to say that I have been wearing the same type of stuff since middle school and high school because I still, although I couldn’t afford Gucci and some of this stuff in high school, it was the stuff I liked. I always liked beanies, you know ever since I was skating in 7th/8th grade. In the winter it can be cold here in the morning, and then get really hot in the day. I’ll wear a beanie in the morning and take it off by the afternoon. So I have always worn beanies, always liked big glasses, “Locs” if you will, like gangster glasses. I always wore big glasses. I was known for wearing Locs in middle school. After high school when I started making more money and whatever I started getting more into jewelry. For instance a baseball jersey is something I have been wearing since high school. I love a baseball jersey, sort of that classic idea of streetwear sort of like a NWA you know, Socks, Raiders, LA Kings, you know I come from that sort of. Especially this outfit comes from that late 80s LA School of Style you know I got a little Dapper Dan in me. I like what Dapper Dan calls logomania. You know I like a good monogram. But then, I like modern stuff! I like shit like I got the Yeezy Foam Runners on the feet. I like futuristic piece shoes. I like weird footwear so I would say my outfit today is a combination of LA street shit and a little bit of futuristic, you know?”

T8: “That is so wild man. I feel like I am looking into a mirror of a few years into the future because that is the literally exact drip I be wearing on a regular day. You know I am in the Round Two uniform right now but what you are wearing isn’t too far off from my everyday fit. Going back to nicknames, you are wearing the 8-ball chain right now which is super tough. I wanted to point that out because my nickname is T8 because my name spelled out is Tate like T8. Shout out to the 8-ball chain because that is definitely a piece of me. Super tough with the fit.” 

Slobby: “I think stuff like pop culture references and again this whole like idea of pop-mania, logomania, and you know I really embrace that you know I got from Wu Tang, to Versace, Mercedes, you know I got this like old bootleg street like New York homemade Nike ring. Ever since I was a kid I was into skating and shit, the 8-ball has always been like a really cool sort of symbol. So I made this myself with a real authentic Gucci chain, so I do DIY! A little DIY!”

T8: “That is hard!!! I fuck with that. So you mentioned the bootleg, and we will talk about the store and the show in just a little bit but because you brought it up I have to bring it up. Growing up I was watching Slobby’s World and your show. You were such an advocate for bootleg and knowing the difference between real, fake, what would you call a realistic fugazi? Something like that?”

Slobby: “So you know you are running a whole gambit there of authentic, there is stuff like fan-made stuff, and there is bootleg, and then there is replica, and then there is just straight up fake, you know? So there's this whole sort of spectrum of stuff. Especially when it comes to designer or with anything really, you know?”

T8: “And you were such an advocate for that, back before I watched your show, I would hear fake and it had such a negative connotation or bootleg had such a negative connotation. Hearing you talk about it on the show, you also celebrated it and loved it and have always shown love to the designers and all the stuff outside of it. You showed a very clear distinction between fake and bootleg and what was beautiful and what was a clear rip off. Can you explain to the people your version of what you believe in and what that brings to the table for real or fake or bootleg, all of that?”

Slobby: “I mean yeah, I go way back in screen printing, which is a very DIY screen printing is a very skate and punk rock practice and its root in a way. So I took screen printing class in 5th grade at summer camp and I took the asterisk from the Red Hot Chili Pepper logo and then I took the Stussy lettering, like the classic wide graffiti one, his old one, and I put Stussy with Red Hot Chili Peppers. I made a shirt, came home from camp, didn’t really think anything of it and then was riding my BMX bike around and some college dude pulled over in his car and was like, ‘Hey bro where’d you get that shirt bro?’ and I told him I made it! And he was like ‘Can I buy it from you?’ and I was like no? But that was an early moment for me when I realized that you can like you know have fun with it #1 and you can make your own stuff, make it whatever you want. You know we all have like a toy we couldn’t afford and so we drew it out of cardboard or like I made like bases, I made sewer stations for my Ninja Turtles made out of cardboard because I didn’t own the sewer playsets so this was sort of like an early version of that. Making clothes that I wanted or that I saw and then as I got older in my late teens, early 20s, I started looking on Ebay and finding stuff like bootleg Nike hoodies and bootleg Jordan stuff and I was thinking like why is it Air Jordan but it is printed on a Froot of the Loom? So these were early ideas that I had and I was like damn I’m kind of down.. you know? This was before the terminology or vernacular was there I was down you know and it wasn’t always because of the price. Some of these bootleg Nike and old Flight stuff can be more expensive than some of the Nike pieces from the era. Same could be said with Gucci. Gucci went back and used all their bootleg designs for real designs years later because of people like Dapper Dan and myself. If anything I was early on the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ train when it comes to wearing whatever you want and especially being unique. Sometimes wearing 1 of 1 custom, fan-made, bootleg if you will, is a good way to be unique, especially back then. Vintage bootleg I think is the key of the modern boot sort of era that we are in now, I love it. I love all the Marvel stuff. All the Marvel modern boot wrap tees. I could name dozens of homies that make great modern boot stuff, but I like the vintage bootleg stuff and of course Bootleg Bart. It is something within the bootleg genre that became its own sub genre. There is a lot to it and art to it also that I love the look of. I love the collectibility and I love that whole movement and that energy of like if I put a fucking Fred Flinstone Grateful Dead shirt and call it Grateful Fred I have it right here on my wall. It is Fred Flinstone on acid like I love that where two things can meet through a bootleg process.”

T8: “I think that is really well said. Moving forward with the store Generation Cool you are talking about a lot of really dope old vintage pieces and with your store that is basically exactly what you specialize in is 80s and the super vintage stuff just aside from like you know maybe what is in Round Two which is like maybe some higher end Supreme stuff or some different terms of what vintage and streetwear is. So for the people at home can you kind of explain what the store is and what your profession is and finding like the 80s vintage?”

Slobby: “Yeah the store is a direct reflection of me. I celebrate and I come from the school of a true boutique, where a boutique is a smaller very specialized store. In Paris I went and visited Europe a lot in my early 20s and I visited very specialized stores and boutiques. A woman who just makes all bows, a guy who sells all hats, just ball caps, just hats and that is so cool to me. So in the sense we are a true boutique and the other sense where we actually encompass a lot of different things because we are so like pop culture, collage, like BLAH! You know? But we are 80s and 90s boutique at our core because of my life. I was born in 1980, so the 80s was my childhood. In the 90s I was more into Polo and Wu Tang Clan and you know selling drugs and that whole culture, real east coast rap, Mob Deepp, as opposed to when some people were getting into Pokemon and Power Rangers. The 90s for me is a little bit more like my lifestyle now. The store is a direct reflection of me in every way and that everything I sell is something that I was either into or collected or something I wanted or something my homies had, or something that I admire from those two eras that I remember. It is rare that I deal with anything that is not true to me. This is why we don’t have a lot of Carhartt double knees because that doesn’t mean anything to me, that has no connection to me so it wouldn’t really be in our store.”

T8: “That is super fair. That is a very good comparison to exactly what was popular in that era as well. Talking about the curation of this store there are a lot of pieces behind you right now that are probably extremely hard to get, so maybe for the people at home maybe give a little sauce to the people who want to be in your shoes. How do you source stuff like that? And how is your shop constantly filled with the crazy shit you got on the shelf?”

Slobby: “Yeah well you know, vintage has been through so many phases that a lot of people would consider what we have to be like lower-top-shelf or upper-mids maybe? Stuff that I used to call mids is now kind of our bread and butter and stuff that most people would consider top-shelf is probably not our bread and butter mostly because we want affordable clothes. So we range pretty heavy in the $40-200 price point. That goes really well for us. I am looking at a few $500 tees here but we will leave the $2000 shirts to the faded whatnots of the world because that is not really MY cup of tea. Even when we were doing the Marvel tees, I love Marvel, we weren’t really charging those really high Marvel tee prices because we kind of in a way have stuck to the same thing for better or for worse. Financially we probably stuck to our guns a lot more than most of these stores because we kept our prices the same generally, and we didn’t really succumb to the hype, you know? I wouldn’t really carry a Kanye $1000 rap tee and I never have carried something like that. As far as sourcing and keeping things consistent you know having good relationships, I have great friends and great people and family and business partners and people who find stuff and we have a great relationship. We have a great relationship with our customers who still bring us stuff everyday, buy sell trade, like you know that Buffalo Exchange really straight forward model. Trade high, cash out low and frankly the internet and social media. If I feel like I am lacking anything I definitely have, gosh, thousands of resources to reach out and fill in when we need special collections, curate special things. Phoenix Suns had us out there for the Phoenix Suns v.s Lakers game and I curated a bunch of vintage stuff for the Phoenix Suns so I was able to reach out to followers and people I follow and source, but I would say most of our stuff comes from my pickers and the relationships I have built with pickers and our customers bring us stuff on a daily basis. All the best stuff I have got in the past 2-3 weeks have been from walk-ins. And not other vintage sellers trying to wax me, straight walk-ins. People selling stuff from their house, the good stuff.”

T8: “That is super fire. So talking about vintage and all of the stores, I mean I wasn’t there, but I am super familiar that you and Round Two had a really great relationship in the early days when we were still on Melrose and still in Virginia in the hay day, you have any good memories we could throw out there of you and Round Two early on?”

Slobby: “Oh gosh! You know.. A LOT! We opened within a week of each other, the original Virginia store and us. They do say a lot of really good ideas or sometimes really good designs or certain movies will come in twos, sets of twos. I think there were a lot of stores that opened around that 2012/2014 that are still some of the OG stores, like OG dealers that all came into this concept if you will, around the same time. I will say Round Two is one that I was much more aware of. I saw Round Two and I was like wow that’s cool, and I saw that they had a gallery and were sort of archiving stuff and was like oh that’s cool. I saw that they were doing stuff a little different than others like having Supreme and Bape or whatever and maybe more skate stuff and I was like oh wow that is cool. That made me think about us having different elements. As far as Round Two LA that is when the floodgates opened. I think that is when everything changed between the Round Two show, the Round Two store opening on Melrose and my show. I’m sorry but a lot of people learned about shit through those channels. Early on as far as me, I had never really seen too many people who were as passionate about it as Sean and I were. I started realizing early on with my store that I was sort of the face of the franchise and I was getting more followers in my store. So to see someone like Sean when they moved to LA, for him to be blowing up as his own persona, you know and I don’t mean that in a shallow LA way, but in a very unique and a truly organic way. I was like who is this guy? You know? And so when I came I was not really caring like I wanted to meet this person, I just made friends easily. So I feel like I just went to Round Two and he was there and we were both just interested in the same stuff. Old polo, cool toys, being unique, being enthusiastic, finding stuff, and sort of being at a cutting edge of something that we probably didn’t know was going to be a fashion revolution. And I don’t think that is an over-statement. So we were sort of the first ones to start setting prices for bigger high end stuff. Round Two had the Polo and space jackets and Mac Miller bought them and Sean was setting the bar for that cost. I had $250 bootleg Gucci sweatshirts and I would sell them to Black Eyed Peas and I’m like yeah those are $500 now. And people would be like wow $500 for a bootleg? And I would be like yup. Nobody was using Ebay comps bro. I don’t even know if they had a sold auction app on your phone yet, I don’t even know if all that data was available those years. We weren’t using the word vintage, you know? We were just cool stores. I didn’t really start thinking of myself as ‘vintage’ until a couple years in when it just became the buzz word for our type of store, right? I go to LA and go to Round Two and go to Rose Bowl and it wasn’t my first time going to Rose Bowl but it was my first time going to Rose Bowl in like competing with somebody like Sean or maybe a friendly competition where we are just seeing each other there and that was new for everybody but I think Sean and I were people that people looked up to and the people probably aspired to be like us because we our own bosses and good parents and we were good family men and we were making a name for ourselves, and we were making a career for ourselves by doing something that we were having fun with. We were super authentic and actually wearing and collecting stuff ourselves and that is a big deal. Sean and I were collectors and if you are just in it to be a reseller it just takes like shit, half the fun out of it. The other half is you know feeding your kids and living off of it and that is great but the other half is where you actually enjoy it, I think that is something that brought him and I good fortune and positive energy, and a very authentic version of what everyone else is doing now. Sean and I were the authentic OG version of that.”

T8: “I totally agree, very very well said. At the end of the day why both the shows, the Round Two Show and Slobby’s World performed so well was because you guys were a completely organic peephole into what this niche was which was vintage, but like you said you were making the show and when you guys were first starting out it was just what you were interested in. So now that there are these buzzwords like vintage, and all this stuff popping up around now, it is like you guys have been interested in what this buzzword has now become so just people being immersed in what you guys are interested in and seeing it kind of be fulfilled. You guys now have this path sort of set.”

Slobby: “These were the good ol’ days, you know? I think my show was a lot more of like it was a “reality show”, less organic of a show than the Round Two show, the fact of the matter was that a real person in me, a real person in Sean, Chris, other people on the show, these were real people making a real living off of having fun and selling stuff that they also participating in and wore. I think that was and I hate to say the good ol’ days or the golden era but that was the real deal and it was before people did it. You know people started skating to be a skater at one point right? And those were posers. So Sean and I come from the pre-poser era.”

T8: “I definitely agree with that. The one thing with your show, like I said in the very beginning of the interview, everything you were interested in and everything you talked about wasn’t just some ‘alright I got this piece’ it was like you screamed in the camera, and let people know why you specifically cared about the thing and why you were really excited to bring this to this person because it was a mission and you knew the mission and you knew in your head, and correct me if I am wrong, like this is where this piece belongs because you knew the lore and knew why it should go to that place and if you see someone reacting a certain way, maybe they don’t deserve to have that piece, or maybe you raise the price a little bit because you know the rightful belonging place to the piece.”

Slobby: “WE’RE THE ORIGINAL GATEKEEPERS! We didn’t do a good job of gatekeeping this business though my bro. I have a feeling everyone caught on.”

T8: “I have a feeling as well. Especially doing this magazine and trying to show more of the sauce, you guys were the early people that really showed people how to sell online, because before hand it was just what it was like it was retail. Seeing Slobby’s World and seeing Round Two’s show, the literal only two examples that you have not like some of the other sneaker stores that we won’t mention but it is like the real authentic version of selling at retail from behind the scenes thing, whether it was on Youtube very in parallel where people were showing exactly what they wanted. It was one of those things where you got that sweet opportunity to put it on a streaming platform and Sean was just like yeah screw it, we will do it on our own.”

Slobby: “But you know I was on that show too, and they were on my show too, and it was a great time! In real life man I was just showing up and they were holding Versace shirts for me and like we were all selling clothes to each other back then. It was real. ”

T8: “That is super fire and you mentioned Rose Bowl as well, for the people back at home can you explain just a little bit what that is for a reseller because the Rose Bowl is a really big event and like you said there is a little bit of friendly competition. So for people who aren’t aware what does it mean to a vintage reseller and how big of a deal is that for you guys to get that opportunity to do that for the day?”

Slobby: “Well first of all it is a flea market, what you guys in California call a flea market in Arizona we call a swap meet, and it is outdoors, I like that. I come from Arizona where we do outdoor swap meets so I had always been going to Kobe’s Swap Meet in San Diego. I had been to Rose Bowl once or twice in my early 20s, but it was a lot to digest, and I didn’t really have a local LA person showing me the ropes. When I started coming back into Round Two that was in 2013, 2014, 2015, I started coming out to LA lot to start buying but what all the dorks call sourcing now, we used to just call that a buying trip. So I’d go on a buying trip and I’d go to LA and see Sean at Rose Bowl, see some of these great Japanese sellers and buyers, but if anything it was a great place for me to find some top-shelf stuff and really exotic and sort of fancier stuff to bring back to Arizona. Then while I was there, I was always able to sell some stuff to Round Two like some Supreme or stuff I had come up with on the side. It was just good business and for anyone who doesn’t know, Rose Bowl is a big, big flea, where one side of it is almost all clothes, another side is really cool for toys, collectibles, and houseware, so I loved it for both things. It can be really high end but you can also find some really weird stuff. And if you are somebody like Sean in his hay day you would go at 4am and it was almost a competition to see how early we could all get in. People were pretending to be sellers, people were.. I’ll be honest with you bro we hopped the fence dog. They wouldn’t let us put it on Netflix but it was one episode where I was going to hop the fence to try to get there earlier before Sean and I brought a carpet on some military prison style, threw a carpet over a fence and I got in at like 3:30am and the Rose Bowl freaked out and wouldn’t let us use it.”

T8: “That is so crazy what the hell!? I can’t believe they didn’t let you use that, that is brilliant footage. That is basically like making it happen by any means necessary.”

Slobby: “The Rose Bowl is the grandfather of all fleas. And it can be a little hypebeast, overpriced, oversaturated whatever you want to call it. I would still say it is the great grandfather of all fleas in the U.S. for sure. It is the biggest that is for sure.”

T8: “Moving forward, can we get five 2025 fashion predictions? What do you think the style is going to be this year?”

Slobby: “Oh wow. You know I think that we are already kind of seeing this but back to basics in a certain way, where I think people are going to lean into simple stuff without graphics and as we have seen with Russell after hoods, Champion after hoods, and all this really cool athletic wear. I think we will see that going into like a lot of matching sets and one pieces. I think oversized mechanic suits and sweats where the top and bottom are matching. I think that is sort of in a weird way it is very primitive but also very future, so I am seeing a lot of future primitive which is kind of what I was talking about with mixing all the new postmodernism if you will. And so I think in the scope of postmodernism we are going to see. Some more of anything that seem futuristic like a one piece, like a  pullover, weird like silver hoods and silver metallic and gold metallic pieces that feel futuristic. I think that people are probably going to care about brands less and less. I think we have seen a lot DIY and 1 of 1 and cut and sew and I think that will go away. I think really simple cartoons will come back, like smaller ones. Just the Mickey head, you know I have been a fan I always have been, but I think this will come back in a sort of by scope of popularity, but really simple one small image on a shirt. You know not that it ever went away but as far as being super trendy. I think we're over camo and all that bullshit. Thank god. And I think that we are going to get back into you know in a way, not that I am going to get into this or not that my store would change but the indie sleaze and sort of the MySpace era. I know I mentioned MySpace before but you know I am seeing a lot of collared stuff, I am seeing a lot of that, so prep polos, not on the hood side but back to the prep side of Polo, and I am seeing a lot of collars coming out of a sweater and people getting back into that and preppy stuff coming back a little bit more. When you are on MySpace and you would probably have a graphic tee and just some really simple pants and an oversized hat that is silly, you know? Like a trucker hat with nothing on it, you know? Or a trucker hat with just one small thing on it. Almost like early skateboard tees, I could see that. As far as just things that I think I am personally seeing right now hella, hella Tommy and Polo and button up and collared and stuff with you know.. I just put out a really nice Polo jacket with a corduroy collar and it is like wool on the inside you know, it is not too old. Back to that 90s prep but through the vehicle of Tommy, Polo, Nautica, and all that. And in a weird way the stuff that Sean and I were on in like 2012/2013 you know? Rugby, Chief Keef rugby polos are back. I would say if I had a bold, a more bolder prediction, I am leaning towards less beat up stuff and less raggedy, less beat like with all these holes and showing skin and more bigger thicker heavier stuff like in all black shirt, all black sweats, almost back to like Hood by Air aesthetic. I think we are going to go back to very straight forward like the early days of streetwear.”

T8: “That is why Slobby Robby is a man of style because man I definitely agree.”

Slobby: “Bro on my show I said big design houses were going to start working with the 4 major sports and then what happened? Gucci and Polo and major league baseball all started working together, and you know what I mean? All of the NBA started working with Louis Vuitton. So yeah if you are talking that shit you are going to be right sometimes.”

T8: “That is super fair, just because I am a guilty man, I am wearing the camo so give me a few things that absolutely need to stop in 2025, so I can take some notes!”

Slobby: “Hey bro my rule is #1 have fun wearing whatever you want. Camo will actually never go out of style but I think you know what I mean though as far as the college kids uniform of camo pants, you know? Camo will never go out of style and it has never been out and never not been cool.”

T8: “Hell yeah. Anything that you personally think should stop in 2025?”

Slobby: “You know I mean I am a hater in general so I could go on and on but the cropped shirts and the belly and the cropped shirts with the big pants and showing your belly button.. Like hey look.. I am overweight so maybe you know I wish I could rock a crop, but I don’t know what. I just am sick of it and truly I am not a huge fan of people cutting shirts. I like to maintain t-shirts original integrity and I have no dog in the fight other than I don’t like when people chop the bottom of a shirt off. It hurts me. It hurts my feelings.”

T8: “Well I am going to end this interview with hurting your feelings a whole ton because if anybody would like to get an issue of Round Two Magazine every single magazine is cut from vintage t-shirts, so if you would like a t-shirt that has been—-”

Slobby: “AY WAIT, YOU KNOW WHAT! Recycling is different! I like it! Recycle and we are good! I am on board with that. Like everything in my store bro! We reuse all of our tags, I don’t let anything go. Like that is why I have so much back room, because we use everything. I fuck with it!”

T8: “Fire! If you guys want to get a copy of this magazine with Slobby and his interview make sure to go grab it at roundtwomagazine.com, @roundtwomagazine on Instagram. Robby is there anything we could end off this interview with to let the people know where to find you?”

Slobby: “Yeah I got my Youtube channel, Generation Cool TV is launching at the end of this month. We are going to do top 10 from Slobby’s World, we are going to bring back old Slobby’s World content and a bunch of new stuff where I do like toy reviews, hat reviews, getting more specific about really cool items that are slept on from the past. A lot of meta glasses and Raybans stuff where I will be going to fleas and be able to talk some shit and have some banter with people at flea markets. So a lot of stuff coming on Youtube! Shoutout to Round Two, Sean Chris, Luke. I don’t really fuck with most people but I fuck with Sean, Chris, Luke from day 1, and a lot of people didn’t fuck with me in LA back then either so I want to thank them and no joke shoutout to Round Two in general,.