Tonight from 6pm-9pm, local apparel company Fresh Kaufee Clothing Co. will be holding House Blend, a pop-up event at Snowbird Coffee. In addition to live jazz and hand-brewed coffee, customers will be encouraged to browse clothing designed by Joonbug, the illustrator and graphic designer who founded Fresh Kaufee.
Joonbug, a coffee aficionado, packages each order in a brown paper bag with coffee beans. “I’m relating the concept of how coffee wakes you up to the idea of pursuing your dreams with the same vitality that caffeine gives you.” Snowbird Coffee co-owner Eugene Kim said he owns several designs, including a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, “Always Espresso Self.”
Joonbug rocks his design. (Photo courtesy Fresh Kaufee)
“You see a lot of lifestyle brands,” said Kim, “but not a lot of cafe-lifestyle clothes, which is funny, since so many of us rely on caffeine and coffee to start and finish our day.” All of the beans included with Fresh Kaufee orders are past their sell-by date, “since it feels more sustainable to use beans I can’t actually drink,” said Joonbug.
Kim said he and Joonbug became friends after the artist became a regular at the Inner Sunset coffee shop. “He’d come in here everyday drinking coffee and we discovered we had similar tastes in aesthetics and art. We took a liking to his style.”
Kim not only wears Fresh Kaufee clothing, he and Snowbird co-owner David Feng hired Joonbug to design the store’s T-shirts and labels for their cold brew coffee. “They’ve been a huge hit,” said Kim. “Packaging is more half the battle. If you present something in the right light, you can sell anything, and he’s definitely helped us get to that point with all of our products."
Hoodline/Walter Thompson
Before moving to San Francisco from Texas last year, Joonbug created original designs for Erykah Badu, Black Milk and other artists. Tonight, he’ll exhibit sketches from a comic book he’s creating for Bean Boy, Fresh Kaufee’s mascot. Joonbug is creating the comic over a year, drawing and lettering one panel each day. He’ll also display a large-format Bean Boy painting that he recently finished.
“I like to keep an open window,” said Joonbug. “I take a lot of inspiration from everyday life, but it all has a vintage aspect. I’m a sponge.”
Snowbird Coffee is located at 1352a 9th Ave. between Irving and Judah. Tonight’s event starts at 6pm and runs until 9pm.
