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Learning to Speak the Language with Keith Carver
232 Plays6 months ago
Pulling back the curtain on one of Instagram’s most mysterious recluses: @fez. We secured a global exclusive, an hour-long interview with an inspiring, enigmatic creative. We go back and forth about writing, writing clothing, motorcycle gangs, thrifting abroad, Kalamazoo, hoarding and other compulsions, resellers, Steely Dan, and a gobble more…because Fez lives in Turkey…
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, I'm Connor Fowler. And I'm Matt Smith. You are now listening to Apocalypse Duds. Our next guest, dear listener, was secured at great cost to our program. Several of our interns gave their lives to secure this interview.
Fez's Background and Life in Turkey
00:00:28
Speaker
On the bustling streets of Turkey amid the vibrant mosaic of cultures and languages, there exists a man who conceals his shadowy past under the guise of an Esol instructor. Fez, a name only whispered in the underground, is a figure shrouded in mystery and infamy.
00:00:48
Speaker
Once a notorious criminal whose exploits sent reverberations through the criminal underworld, Fez now navigates the corridors of legitimacy, seamlessly blending into the fabric of society. Behind his mostly affable demeanor and impeccable dress lies a past riddled with dark deeds and clandestine operations, a diamond heist in Monaco, an art forgery in Brussels, a sophisticated money laundering operation, ironically, in a Taiwanese laundry.
00:01:15
Speaker
As the students file into his classroom, little do they know that they are in the presence of a master of deception, a fugitive who has chosen to hide in plain sight, weaving a new identity amidst the hubbub of the Turkish streets. Pez, welcome. Thank you very much. What's going on? Lovely, lovely intro. Hello. Thank you for coming on. Yeah. Yeah. That might be one of Connor's best, if I'm being honest.
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, we can talk about that hiding in plain sight later. It's foreshadowing. Yeah. How are you doing today? Wonderful. It's almost 11 at night. The day's finished. It was a lovely day. It's Eid. I don't even know if I'm saying it right after all these years here, but it's the end of Ramadan. Yes, yes.
00:02:18
Speaker
Everything is sort of coming back to life here. Right, right.
00:02:22
Speaker
So it kind of shut it kind of shuts down in like a Catholic sense Like yeah, well everybody's fasting a lot of the businesses are closed and today's the first day of Eid so especially in the morning like everything is shut down you typically go and Feast at your friend's house you go back to the village if you're from the That's cool, everybody's traveling Yeah, so
00:02:49
Speaker
Where are you from? And we've established we live in Turkey, but what part of Turkey are you in now? Now I live in the northwestern part in between Istanbul and Ankara, about halfway. Cool. I've heard great things about Istanbul. I've never had the delight to go, but it seems like a rad place.
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. If you ever get the chance, you should go. I might be going. I have not really. I should have said something off the air. Yeah. I might be going. So we'll have to really discuss that. Yeah. Let me know if you come. Yeah. I'm close. For fucking sure, dude. Yeah. I think that would be amazing. And if you pass through like from Istanbul to Ankara, I'm on the road. Like you'll go right past my house. Oh, that's cool. Interesting to see it from the highway. Yeah. Maybe I'd get one of those cars.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah. What kind of car? I don't know. I feel like the cars that I have seen you post are like extremely square. Oh, yeah. Yeah. My car. Yeah. You get a little Euro car. Yeah. I love. I love that. Yeah. It's a little Czechoslovakian or Russian Moda. Right. Right. And you're from the States originally? Yeah. I'm from Michigan. Okay. Cool. Michigan to begin with. Cool. How long have you been in Turkey?
00:04:12
Speaker
I've been in Turkey for let's see, since 2015. Oh, wow. Break. So yeah, yeah, I've been here for a while. I've been here for a while. That's awesome. Yeah, I didn't realize it had been that long. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't seem like well, I guess you are pretty established. I mean, you like have a family like you're there there. I have a Turkish wife. I have kids. I have a house. Yeah. Yeah.
00:04:39
Speaker
So I guess to skip ahead a little bit, what is the process of assimilation been for you? Acclimation, I guess. Oh, that's a good question. Well.
Language Challenges and Teaching
00:05:00
Speaker
You know, I live here, I teach at the university, so I have a very regular sort of life. It's a somewhat prestigious job, I guess, like within the community or whatever. People know me. It's a small, I live in a small city. It's called Bolu, is the name of my city, by the way. It's 300, 400 people. How do you spell it? Yeah. B-O-L-U, Bolu. Okay, cool. Formerly Constantinople. Nice. Really? And it's like,
00:05:29
Speaker
Really people know me around town. So I don't speak the language especially well But i've been here long enough like people know my kids people know my wife My wife has also been my wife has been here for like 15 years. She's not from this city. She's from the black sea coast and You know like it's so it's weird when you don't know the language and you live a place a long time because you still assimilate
00:05:54
Speaker
you still sort of get into the routine of living in a different culture and day-to-day life but it's all it's like kind of surface level in terms of your communication with people but you see the habits and you still pick up on them and you can still get to know people without speaking to them and not speaking to them and you see how they act they see how you act they can i speak english with my kids in public because they need to learn english
00:06:20
Speaker
And people can see the way I communicate with them, like they get to know me too. And it's to the point where I've known some people here in this, I've been in this city for about seven years. And it's to the point where people sort of know me by now, even though we've never had like a real conversation. Right. Being a regular or being recognized as one of the best things like in the world. Like I live in a small town and like the ladies at the gas station know me and like know what cigarettes I smoke.
00:06:50
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That feels good. Totally. Totally. And it takes a long time to establish, I think, especially in a foreign country. It takes a long time for people. And where I am, it kind of has a reputation, I think, of being a bit sealed off. People are somewhat cold. Like, it was not open to outsiders until recently, or no outsiders had much interest in living here until the last 10, 20 years or something. And so the native people, the kind of native people here,
00:07:19
Speaker
They're seen as pretty standoffish and cold and guarded, I would say. Right. So it took a long time. It's like you see the same person 100 times before they finally give you a little smile or say like, hey Ho-Joum, which is the teacher. They refer to me by my name. OK, that's fine. Yes, you really are. You really are like a secret agent kind of. It's like, hey, teacher. Hi, teacher. Hey, Ho-Joum is the word. Hey, Ho-Joum.
00:07:47
Speaker
that's really funny and so i'm i'm almost positive that you were a person who uh you say that you don't speak the language but i imagine that you kind of do what i do i don't speak it well yeah yeah yeah i speak i don't speak it well i speak it every day of course is it a hard language to learn i mean that's something right to speak it every day is a yeah yeah yeah it is hard i would say it's hard yeah and it's like
00:08:14
Speaker
I get by, I bought a house and I managed and navigated all that in Turkish. Like I found a wife and married her. You know, I found a wife and I married her and dealt with her, dealt with my in-laws who only speak Turkish. Like I do it. I speak, I have a relationship with my mother-in-law. She doesn't speak a word of English.
00:08:32
Speaker
We manage. This is extremely ignorant. What does it sound like? What does the language sound like? I wasn't ready to talk Turkish. That's more than adequate. That's more than adequate. I was just wondering what does it kind of sound like? You know what I mean? Language is sound in a certain way, I guess.
00:09:01
Speaker
uh-huh yeah yeah like there's a lot of shh in it i think like um
00:09:23
Speaker
It's rhythmic though. It's rhythmic and it's got a beauty to it compared to other languages.
00:09:33
Speaker
I guess that would be the Mediterranean influence, because I feel like there's a lot of more beautiful languages in the Mediterranean region. Yeah, I think so. And that's what I meant. Generally, what does the language sound like?
00:09:49
Speaker
Right. Right. The kind of rhythms of it. And it it's a glutenate. How do you say glutenate or glutenative? It means they add suffixes at the end. OK. So like, for example, give your them all of that. That's like I was going. All that information is contained in one word, the tense, the the I, the verb to go, the continuous. It's all one long word. And each kind of like German part of it. Yeah, exactly. I think German works the same way.
00:10:17
Speaker
I really wish that which is just really just a different way of speaking I mean Yeah, it's such a simplified way of speaking though like compared to our dumbass English language
00:10:31
Speaker
Well, there at least, there at least are uniform rules. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been, right. It's been standardized within the last hundred years. It's been standardized too. Like when the, when the Republic started, they sort of, they standardized it. They tried to get rid of a lot of the irregularities, switched to Roman script from Arabic script. So it's easier to learn that it would have been like in the Ottoman era or something like that.
00:10:59
Speaker
And if you were to hear my wife speak it or a native speaker speaking, anybody, it is kind of beautiful. When you hear somebody who speaks very well, it has a nice rhythm and it's not like, I don't know, it's not harsh, it's not abrupt, it's very kind of flows. And like I said, it's a lot of this schwa sound. And it doesn't have any of those crazy throat sounds like German or Arabic. It can be a little frightening to English speakers.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. German and like Russian just sound mad to me, like at all. You could be saying the sweetest fucking thing on the planet and it sounds like you're saying, I'm going to bash your head in. Yeah, yeah, it's scary.
Fez's Fashion Journey
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah. So when did you start getting into clothing? Oh man, that's a good question. Should I, let's see, where can I start with this?
00:11:54
Speaker
I would say like, and I know this has come up a lot on the show. You guys talk about subcultures a lot. Right. And how that kind of develops like an eye for certain items of clothing. And I think that was it for me too. Like I mentioned to Connor the other day, my father was a biker and like all my uncles were bikers, which there's a uniform and there's like stuff that's cool to wear and stuff that's not cool to wear. Side but quick sidebar.
00:12:25
Speaker
Were they, were they in a, were they in a club, like an actual club or like a well-known club by chance? Gang? No, no. I knew some guys. Yeah, I don't necessarily.
00:12:39
Speaker
I don't know. I don't totally mean 1% are clubs, but like, you know, there are other motorcycle clubs that are like somewhat well known, um, that aren't in that. Yeah, yeah, sure. Like Iron Coffin to Hell's Angels or something like that. Yeah, those are, those are all over Michigan. There are chapters all over. My landlord at one point was in Iron Coffin. I had a landlord who's a family friend who was in the Iron Coffin. Oh, that's cool. Iron Coffin, so that's a great name. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, motorcycle clubs interest me so much that given the opportunity, I have to ask. Yeah, no, I wish I knew more about that. My dad, my parents had friends, of course, that were involved in motorcycle clubs. And occasionally, you hear of drug busts and those exciting rumors in the 90s. I don't know how active they were by then. I think a lot of it is just sort of in name.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, it's just like there's a clubhouse where they hang out and do all this stuff, party or whatever. Party at my stepdad, who is not of the criminal element, is in a BMW Airheads club.
00:13:53
Speaker
They're, my stepdad, they're air, I guess they're air cooled engines. And that's like, they have rules for the club, which are like, you have to do something the simplest way. Like you're not allowed to do X, Y, or Z. Like the engine has to be air cooled, you know, which I think is kind of tight, like that. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. That's sort of whatever, that's sort of code.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Right. What's another thing? Like, it's like clothing. You have, you follow these rules. Or you don't, like you transgress the rules for specific reasons or to ruffle feathers or whatever. My dad, one time, like he reunited with his best friend from childhood.
00:14:40
Speaker
in their 50s or something, their early 60s. And his friend gave him this list of rules for their skateboard club from like 1956 or something. Oh, that's amazing. Number one. Yeah, it was cool. It was like, number one, no girls. Number two, you put the roller skate wheels in this certain way, and then, you know, no blue wheels. Like, it's just random stuff, like six, seven-year-old kids would ride in the 50s. Right. But it was so cool. It was a cool document. That's fucking awesome.
00:15:09
Speaker
Okay, so you're down and uncles for or bikers and so you're around that we're into motorcycles Yeah, so I never was super into that But he's I think I became aware that there was like they dress this way and it was a little bit different than everybody else Right way to signal that you are part of that group and then there were specific items that were cool about that like
00:15:33
Speaker
perfecto style jackets or whatever. I remember my uncle, one of my uncles got a cafe racer, which I think if I'm right, the kind without the, I don't know if it was the real one, but the kind without the collar, right? Yeah, yeah. The cafe racer, yeah. Which I don't, I don't really like those. I like the perfecto. I think it's like beautiful, beautiful. The cafe racer is like,
00:15:56
Speaker
Because that has racing stripes on it, right? I'm just talking about this collar, this stand collar. Yeah, like a banded collar has a strap that closes it usually. I just thought they had the racing stripes on them. English is just something European to me. But anyway, when he had that, it felt like he had stepped out or something. He'd gone outside of the group.
00:16:20
Speaker
And this thing about a Ducati, eventually, when everybody had Harleys. Like he was sort of intentionally going away from the brothers. And a feat European. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And he wrecked it, too. It was a bad move. Should have had a hog. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He was doing wheelies on it, and he wrecked it. It was terrible. Wow. Oh, man. Yeah, that's rough. Yeah.
00:16:46
Speaker
And so there was that. And then later on, I was into our little small town punk rock scene. I think I was talking to Matt. We were talking about Small Brown Bike the other day. That was kind of the biggest group to come out of my little town. My town was like 7,000 people and shrinking. Little town in Michigan. Damn. But there was Small Brown Bike. And then before that, they were LESC. It was the same guys from Small Brown Bike, plus one other guy.
00:17:16
Speaker
And then there was another, there were like some, there was a kind of little punk scene and where my town is halfway between Detroit and Chicago. So occasionally you would get like bands from those cities or from surrounding little towns. And then I moved to another, to a college town, like maybe 40 miles away and kind of was like, I wasn't, I was playing in bands in my hometown. Later on, I was like living in a punk house and we were hosting bands and having basement shows and stuff.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I think that's another thing, like a subculture where I became aware of like what certain clothing items could mean or signal or something like that. That was skateboarding when I was a kid too. Yeah, all that stuff. Out of curiosity, how old are you if you don't mind answering? Yeah, it's all right. I just turned 39 on Sunday. Oh, happy belated birthday.
00:18:11
Speaker
Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. So I turned 40 last year, so I'm in the same, like we're in the same kind of era of shit. Yeah. And like, I grew up in a small town. We didn't really have a music scene here, but like 20 minutes away, there was a college town and like, you know, some of the first shows that I went to were in that town. And it was like,
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, you might get a band from Atlanta come play or some random indie band that wasn't huge but was known. It's a fun experience doing that shit. Yeah, it was so exciting. It was really cool. And out of that, I think... Well, those small town punk scenes are so cool too because
00:19:03
Speaker
If you're, if you get involved in, I was just, I played in a band, but a lot of my friends were helped. Like they would set up the shows. They would get ahold of people that make flyers. Like you got all that stuff has to be coordinated. And then to do other things was just kind of skills that they picked up. Like all this kind of DIY type skills. Right. The other cool part about it is that like when you're in that kind of small scene.
00:19:31
Speaker
You know, there, there aren't really rules or anything because you don't like, none of you know what the fuck you're doing. You're just figuring it out. Right. Yeah. Cause you don't want to be more freedom. Yeah. Let's talk. I think, I think so. And there's not, it's not as segmented either because anybody who's into music is going to hang out. Like everybody went to the same shows.
00:19:52
Speaker
And so we had like one place basically in the town where we could have shows. It was the VFW, I think, if I remember right. And- Of course, of course. That's where everybody went to hang out. Of course it was the VFW. Yeah. And we had one other place to actually know anything about it. But it's so cool. And like the sort of surrounding
00:20:08
Speaker
Punks from every little podunk town and village in a 60 mile radius would come out for the shows because what else were they gonna do? It's the only right is the only thing going on Maybe that month or maybe in a six-month period. It's like so rare For that stuff to happen. Sometimes sometimes it would be like long
00:20:25
Speaker
long gaps with nothing at all if you're like looking to go to a punk show or whatever and also like indie bands and other stuff it all got sort of lumped in and when I moved into a college town Kalamazoo, Michigan I don't know if you guys have been up there.
00:20:39
Speaker
I haven't been there. I know it. I haven't been there. It's time. That's where I live for most of my 20s. It was a very good time. And it was close enough to my hometown that I ended up, like in my last year of university, I was living in a house with a bunch of dudes from my hometown who were just there basically for the music scene and for other stuff. And I was going to school and it was their friends from work, my friends from university, their friends from college and other kind of music scene stuff.
00:21:07
Speaker
And that was a great experience, too. And everything is mixed up, as you say. When it's a small scene like that, the metal kids hang out, and then the punks hang out. Right, right, yeah. Every weirdo just finds this other... Oh, sorry, Connor. Everybody congregates in this. Yeah, yeah. You find your people, as Tony says.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. So I was going to ask you, I was going to quote you even. So I asked you about your thoughts on dressing people in writing. And you said, yes, the characters are rarely naked.
00:21:47
Speaker
And maybe one early motivation to learn about clothing is because good writers almost always understand clothing and mediocre authors always ignore or misunderstand it, which I thought was so sharp.
00:21:59
Speaker
um and that's true like if you think about a book that is good like it's not like clothing is always there but like no one is is naked right for the most part people are not naked very often in good books um yeah so i was wondering you can ignore it you don't have to write about it but generally your peril was that that you can ignore it at your peril yeah right i think
00:22:29
Speaker
The way clothing is described or what they're wearing, it's going to say something about social class. It's going to say something about their interests, about their engagement with fashion, about what they do for a living, their aesthetic sense. It's going to communicate a lot of things, I guess. Although I should say I'm hesitant to... Well, I'm a little bit iffy on this idea that clothing speaks or is a language or communicates something. I don't know if it's the best way to think about it.
00:22:57
Speaker
I mean, I don't think it's the best way to think about it. I think that it is, I think that it is a nonverbal communication. Yeah. I feel like it's one of those things. It can be that if you, if you understand that you want it to be that, but, uh, you know, in just everyday normal life, like the people at the grocery store, for the most part, aren't thinking about posing the same way that say one of the three of us does.
00:23:26
Speaker
Right, right. And if you can't speak something and be understood, then it's not like the language doesn't work like that at all. That's sort of a basic necessity of what communication should do. Right. It has to be very intentional. So you know what you're saying and somebody knows
00:23:45
Speaker
what you're trying to say as well it's like a very limited amount there's a very limited amount of people that are going to understand that language if you're thinking about it like a language i think for sure but anyway yeah like back to back to all this kind of subcultural stuff and the stuff that we're into now like vintage clothing and fit pics and and whatever else all this stuff like we know the audience we know the language we all speak that language we sort of know what signs are we know the difference between this and that
00:24:15
Speaker
uh yeah well and there was there was like training to pick those things up as a kid as an adolescent like uh hanging around with these people i think that might have been part of the basis and then later on when i got into writing like i just started to notice that writers knew about that stuff it's like writers generally know about architecture they know about clothing you need to describe a place you should know about trees you should know about this kind of stuff you need to know about everything
Influences and Personal History
00:24:39
Speaker
But clothing was like a good place to start. And another important thing I guess I should mention, my father, my grandfather, my grandfather was like a kind of the historian of my town. Oh, that's really cool. He was a
00:24:54
Speaker
yeah he wrote a book like he's a known kind of dude there and my great-grandfather like they're very civic-minded people my great-grandfather was the guy that wrote the calligraphy on the on the high school diplomas for graduation he'd write them out by hand because he was a calligrapher and he also was like a gunsmith and he did some he did some other i think maybe he also was doing some kind of like guilt
00:25:20
Speaker
uh insignia on the diplomas as well and he was just doing this stuff for free just like as a public service and my grandfather was like a photographer the sports photographer for the local sports teams it was for the newspaper and stuff so they were like very involved in this and as a result of this kind of
00:25:40
Speaker
historian stuff and he was into genealogy. He was also like a compulsive hoarder of a lot of objects, especially old photos. And he's sort of like, if you want to know about, for instance, early Michigan history and that southern part of Michigan, especially, you're going to want to see the collection. Like you're going to refer to his collection, which is now in the hands of his oldest son, my uncle. And, but it didn't stop there. Like he would also save bars of soap from every hotel he went to in the world.
00:26:09
Speaker
And like packs of sugar from every meal he had in a diner his whole life. Yeah, yeah. And he arranged them in his booklets. You said this was your grandfather, right? My grandfather, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he would have been from the Depression era. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely makes sense that packs of sugar and things like the soap for a second, I was like, that's kind of funny because, you know, it's not that dissimilar from matchbooks.
00:26:35
Speaker
but it's kind of weird compared to matchbooks. But yeah, like my grandparents, yeah, my grandparents were the same way, like in a lot of ways. It got better as they got a little bit older, but yeah, just like every fucking thing saved. Yeah, I might be able to- I never thought about that angle on it exactly because it was so like,
00:26:58
Speaker
like organized like a collector, but you're right. Yeah, that was probably part of the mindset. Well, I mean, you know, there's a difference between being a collector and being a hoarder. And I feel like
00:27:07
Speaker
hoarding tendencies especially for random shit like a pack of sugar comes from growing up in the depression from my experience with with this trauma it doesn't oh yeah for sure but but i i guess what i'm saying because of what i do i have seen this firsthand so much at like estate sales of you know greatest generation folks and i i feel like it's uh
00:27:34
Speaker
you know, compared to other types of situations. The boomers are not slacking though. You're going to be seeing the boomers. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like that maybe is a learned behavior in certain ways too. You know, oh, my parents did this, so I have to do this too.
00:27:51
Speaker
we all it's like all those TLC shows you know that are like well so-and-so is like doing this wild behavior and then the woman is like yeah and so this is the spot where my husband was shot in the head and it's like
00:28:13
Speaker
So that's why you never leave the house. Got it, yeah. This is like what my daughter drank on December 3rd, 1991. Right. After she was spelling me. You know, it's just like, it's insane. Right, right, right. It's not just...
00:28:29
Speaker
Not trying to discount that kind of, anybody that suffers through trauma and does- No, no, it's just like, TLC pretends that there's no cause. Right, right. That is not a medical, it is not a medical issue. It is like just a weird coincidence. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:28:53
Speaker
That's what I had this tendency and I think my father does too of Collecting basically, I don't know if it's genetic. I suspect there might be something Sort of genetic about it maybe because I don't you know, like I can kind of see the depression there a trauma thing for my father I can't quite pinpoint something. Oops Hello, okay, okay from right there
00:29:20
Speaker
As I was saying, I lost what I was saying. Both my father and my grandfather, my dad and my grandpa, they hoard. And I had this tendency to hoard or collect stuff. And I guess the point is that I grew up around a ton of stuff, a ton of old stuff. I grew up in thrifties and antique shops. My father also buys and sells
00:29:47
Speaker
antiques a bit. He does a bit of, oh, I'm antique dealing, like very small time. And he just started maybe the last 10 years or so after retirement. But I grew up in that, in that world of like, their stores and antique shops and junk and stuff, basically. And I was always into it and attracted to it. And I was always, always thrifting from the time I was a kid. Like I started buying my own clothes when I was, I don't know, 13 or 14.
00:30:13
Speaker
at the local Goodwill or whatever, and then buying records and stuff too. It shows, dude. I mean, it really shows. It's like you have a distinct style. Also, do you happen to remember like one of the first, or maybe the first item, like clothing item you thrifted? Oh, I got a pair of Doc Martens that didn't fit, probably like 1996.
00:30:41
Speaker
I thought they were so cool. It was the sort of thing where like, I didn't know exactly what it was, but it had some appeal. And then I found a way to research. I don't know how I found out what they were. And I didn't know like all the kind of legacy of Doc Martens or whatever. And there was something intriguing about that weird soul and like the weird yellow stitching. And it was close enough to fitting. I didn't know any better. I was like, maybe I can finesse it. So I took it home.
00:31:10
Speaker
And somehow I found out about it, or maybe actually, because at the time I was reading like Hit Parade magazine. I don't know if you remember that. Oh, yeah. I definitely do. And I think they sold Doc Martens. I think they had mail order for like, there would be those inserts for the t-shirt companies. And I think they also sold like, you know, spikes for leather jackets and Doc Martens and this kind of like. Yeah, yeah.
00:31:37
Speaker
I think this is what I have. And I really love that because it's like this. I found this in this little dusty thrift store in my small town in in Bumblefuck. And it has this connection to the larger world and it has like this history and this is right. Yeah, that that was cool. And some some bit of culture.
00:32:03
Speaker
right where I was, which was a place of maybe not so much culture. Or so it seemed. Yeah, I feel it entirely. Like for me, I think we got internet when I was a sophomore. So I was like 15, almost 16. And, you know, was like a punk kid, but didn't really know what punk was. I guess I just like wanted to, you know, I understood it in a way, but like,
00:32:30
Speaker
didn't really know anything about it. And then I found a website that I think is still in business called angryyoungandpoor.com that sold ducks and grinder's boots and studs and spikes and then mass produced punk patches. But I distinctly remember the hip creator thing too. They had that kind of
00:32:51
Speaker
You know, at that point, I guess it probably would have been like grunge or mostly post-grunge stuff, but it's like, oh. Yeah, yeah. This is like a rock and roll outfitter. Right. That's it. Yeah. I was specifically looking for the Marilyn Manson articles at that point. Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally. But yeah, it would have whatever style that they were pushing. But it was the same thing. They were selling rock t-shirts and, yeah, spikes, spike collars or whatever it was.
00:33:19
Speaker
oh yeah yeah we all had studded studded belts yeah i mean i guess that was like early days of hot topic too because i started shopping there when i was like 12 or 13 oh wow yeah that the quote unquote nice mall had one yeah i mean i stole a lot from there later on too so you know that was that was always fun but like dude i've said it before probably it was hot topic like oh we kind of
00:33:49
Speaker
We kind of laughed at the Hot Topic kids, but looking back on it, that was another way, like it was another just connection. Yeah, it was exposure. It was exposure to something. Right, right. It's hard to say. I first heard the Misfits, for example. Like, did we know about the Misfits first? Or did we see the logo first and then figure it out later? Right, right. It's hard to trace back originally. Yeah, especially if you're like,
00:34:16
Speaker
If you're in a rural spot and there's something that's vaguely cool near you, it helps. I feel like there's no detractor for that, even though, of course, I think all of us have made fun of it at one point or another, but it is what it is. It has its place. I got my first Fugazi record at Hot Topic. Yeah, right. They sold records and stuff too, yeah. Yeah, they sold records.
00:34:45
Speaker
gave away records in my case. They were available. They were definitely available.
Thrifting Adventures in Turkey
00:34:53
Speaker
So yeah, it sounds like you've been in the kind of thrifting and vintage, basically your whole life. So I guess where you are now, is there anywhere that you like to scratch that itch? Oh, well.
00:35:12
Speaker
For that stuff, when I first moved here, I was in a different city. And there was a flea market. But it was very low quality stuff. They have these guys that go around. I don't even know what you call it. Like a junk or something. They go around. You have to imagine this very old world kind of scene. They go around with a hand cart. And they say, it's the junk man. Give me your junk. And then if you have some junk, you take it to them and you put it on the cart.
00:35:42
Speaker
And then some guys go around in trucks, but still you'd see people with hand carts going around like that. And they'll pick stuff out of the garbages. So anyway, that's as close as I got for the first year that I was here. There was nothing. I bought a leather jacket and I bought a Killamal t-shirt, a bootleg Metallica. Oh, nice. It's sick. It's weird. It's Killamal on the front, but it has the four M's.
00:36:06
Speaker
uh i think that's from the load or reload era metallica logo on the back so you can tell instantly that it's a it is a yeah right that kind of makes it cooler though yeah yeah i thought it is cool yeah i like that bootleg shit like that so i got that and i got i got the leather jacket from there and i was like man uh so this this is good actually this is how i got like seriously into vintage in the last
00:36:33
Speaker
five years or so. Like I missed that because I got to know all this stuff in this very physical way of growing up in thrift stores and like going through stuff and feeling it and being around it all the time. Like, you know, so several times. Right. The experience and the like feeling of things is really like something you can't learn anyway else.
00:37:00
Speaker
That's absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. To learn fabrics and things like that. And to like recognize. I mean, it's not totally, it's not subjective. If you get your hands on like an old fifties varsity cold, you can feel instantly like that's nice leather. That's good wool. That's like good. It's a good garment. And they're like, it'll stick out if you have a rack of 50 different things, like cheap, whatever Kmart stuff that's going to stand out and you're going to wreck before you even look at the tag and learn about what it is. You're going to know like that's something special.
00:37:31
Speaker
And I miss having my hands on that stuff where I live. Most of the clothing you buy here in Turkey, it's made in Turkey. They have a huge textile industry. They export a lot, I think, to Europe around the Middle East, and they sell domestically too, but it's cheap. It's cheap clothing. It's not particularly good. It's hard to find quality clothing. And I was wearing that kind of stuff probably for the first time in my life.
00:37:57
Speaker
really really missed thrifting and this like touching nice cloth I guess I think that's the gist of it and so I started to get like increasingly sort of desperate to get my hands on some American clothing and in my town now my current town there's just one place and it's like it's in a kind of like I think we're talking about basement you were talking about basement thrift stores or church thrift stores with somebody recently yeah with the wooden sleepers guy maybe
00:38:27
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's in the, it's in the basement of a mosque, but it's not the mosque exactly. It's like this abandoned Ottoman era mansion right next to the mosque that I assume the mosque owns. And they sell, there's one guy, he stands out there and he sells clothing out of there, but it's not organized. It's just in this huge heap, just a huge pile. Sounds fun. Sounds fun.
00:38:53
Speaker
It's, it was fun. Like if you go to the very, very, very first picture I posted on Instagram, it's me, like in a mask. And I'm in that place looking through, through clothes. There's COVID air, but I would wear a mask there anyway. It's like, foul, foul, foul. So rotten. And it's this old, beautiful mansion, but it hasn't been maintained. It's falling apart. It's just got like piles of clothes in there and you go and dig in there. And that started to scratch the itch a little bit. I found some, uh, what did I find? I found this like shawl collar denim jacket I have and I have a Sherpa thing.
00:39:23
Speaker
And I found some 80s Ralph Lauren, Andrew pants, like the big pleated ones, the really big ones. I found those in a pile there. And I found like some cool Glen check jacket there. I found some good stuff, but it still wasn't enough. And I started like in the eight years I've been here, the online reselling market has developed and has taken off like crazy.
00:39:47
Speaker
And finally there was some reselling sites. So I'm almost totally online now with my, with my purchasing. And I sort of like just learned how to manipulate the algorithm. And I know how to find stuff basically. And a lot of it involves like people just post stuff. They don't know what it is. It's a huge mystery how this stuff gets here. Like you guys have seen what I post this kind of stuff that I found. I have no idea what it's doing in America. Like I have no idea how it got like a forties, a M 69.
00:40:17
Speaker
Air Flight Controller code or whatever that thing's called. I don't know how on earth that got to Istanbul. It just doesn't make any sense. I just got an M69 the other day from 1974. The person selling it had no idea what it was. They just said, green jacket. Green jacket with insulation or something like that. And I was like, hell yeah. I have an idea. Did you get that round sweater? Did you get that crazy, like the 9-11 tribute one?
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, did you get that? Yeah, hell yeah. Holy shit, that's fucking wild. I have never seen that sweater in person. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. God damn, dude. Yeah, I've found some really good stuff. Yeah. Are you the only person in Turkey searching for shit? No, but there's like five of us. There's a few of us. Yeah, yeah. And I've gotten to know them. Wait. That's really funny. With each other's stuff.
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, we speak turkey. Have you met any stuff for me? I buy stuff from them Okay, that's cool. Are they close to you or are they kind of like all spread all over? Well Kind of very some of them I know like I there's one guy attacks I'm friends with him on Instagram the others we just sort of have interactions on these sites on these reselling sites But there's one guy he's in he's in Istanbul
00:41:39
Speaker
He bought some things for me and he came through and he's like, Hey, you want to meet? But I didn't, I got cold feet. I didn't end up going through it. I didn't meet him. Oh yeah. I got you. I got you. Maybe sometime we'll come and I'll meet up with him. Yeah. People always, people have meetups that like, they're like, meet me in the, meet me in the parking lot of the police station. It's like, I'm not fucking. Yeah, right. Yeah. Sort of like this, like, meet me at the mall. I've known him for a while. I'm sure he's cool. Bye.
00:42:06
Speaker
Like Sunday I was with my kids, I mean, get up and meet a stranger. Yeah, right. At the dead drop. Right, right. I just told them some red wings too and they were squeaky because the shank had come loose. And I was afraid he was going to drop me about it. He was going to shank you. I told him it was squeaky, but I was afraid he was going to walk up in these squeaky red wings and I wasn't going to be able to deal with it. Wow. I told him, I said, there's squeaking. The shank's broken. He's like, I don't care.
00:42:37
Speaker
Right, but I couldn't It was warned about the shank yeah, he was worried about that he was happy with him he's wearing I mean he wore him he probably resold I Don't sell any shoes with squeaky shanks. By the way, I will warn you if there's a loose shank not squeaky squeaky
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, we wouldn't besmirch your name, our program. Look at my reviews of Five Star. Right. And they're not a squeaky soul among them. No, no, no.
00:43:09
Speaker
No loose shanks. I was going to ask you, and you're not going to answer this question. You're not going to take this well, I don't think, but I'm going to say it anyway. How do you keep innovating with your outfits? Because they always are fresh. So like, what is the deal with that? Well, thank you. That's a nice thing to say. I don't know. I mean, I just buy stuff. I compulsively buy things constantly.
00:43:36
Speaker
I sell stuff to buy more stuff. I'm obsessed. I search every day. I look for new stuff. And then when I have stuff I try to wear and everything I have, I try to wear like everything, everything, everything I own. I try to fit it in like in the appropriate season. So if I notice, like I go through things, I feel like something's being neglected. I'll try to work it in.
00:44:02
Speaker
I'm just wearing the same shit sometimes. And it's like, why do I have 50 shirts if I'm only going to wear three of them? Yeah. My, my general rule is if I don't want to wear something literally every day, not that I wear something every single day. Well, sometimes I wear things every single day, but like I don't want to own it. Like if I don't wear it, if I don't want to wear it all the time, I don't need
00:44:28
Speaker
Do you have like a pretty small kind of capsule? Yeah. You've got kind of a set. I haven't seen as many of your picks, but you have kind of like a very distinct look. Yeah, I feel like I'm. I think it kind of works. It seems like it could keep it really limited and still achieve that same kind of silhouetted look, which works for you and it's solid.
00:44:54
Speaker
So like, a lot of that comes from the fact that I destroy clothing. That is just something about me that I, it's how it's always been. And so like, I wear, I wear a work jacket or like a bowl of sport coat the exact same way. And if that sport coat gets fucked up, I'm just like, okay, I'll safety pin the pocket back on because I caught it on something. But yeah, like, I feel
Fashion Maintenance and Community
00:45:23
Speaker
like
00:45:23
Speaker
I have a pretty broad range of interests and I have a few different vibes, but yeah, I rotate stuff out that's not a core part of my wardrobe enough where I've got a bunch of t-shirts, but I've got four flannels. I don't have a really broad range just because if I'm not wearing something all the time or wanting to wear something all the time,
00:45:53
Speaker
I don't need it. So I get, I get, I like the idea of the uniform and that uniform shifts slightly like on occasion. Yeah, tweak it depending on the season. And I think with work wear stuff too, like the whole point is to wear it out. It's going to look better. Oh yeah, totally. What's the point of having like a bunch of new jeans and like crisp flannels? Right, right. Yeah, like a couple knees, for example. Yeah, I'll get like
00:46:20
Speaker
the double knees. The double knee is there for you to wear through it. I bought some crispy ones and I couldn't wear them. We stand up. They stand up, they don't hang right. I have these Dickies that are way too stiff. I feel like they look sort of like trousers. My favorite pair of pants right now is a pair of not even that old black Dickies that I got for like two bucks at a thrift store.
00:46:47
Speaker
I need to do some repairs on them, but like I could just go a mile and a half up the road and get a pair of like brand new ones at Walmart for 20 bucks or whatever. But then they're going to be sniffing and uncomfortable as fuck until they get broken in. And I'm like, I could go and then like, you know, soak them and then run over them a few times. Like with my man, I've had the soft process. I just haven't, I haven't gone through with it.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah, my days of wearing like uncomfortable heavy like super fucking rigid shit is over No, I'm not into it. And then which dickies are they? They're just They're the ones that look like car hearts They're like duck, you know black duck canvas with a like hammer loop like carpenter pants style Double knees. Yeah. No, they're just right. You know
00:47:40
Speaker
Oh, just regular carpenter pants. Okay. Yeah, not, not the double knee. Yeah. Like even, you know, the duck canvas is just like so stiff. I want to find a bear, another bear in a thrift. And it's like one of those things where you find some, you find something you love and then you used to see it all the time and then you never see him again. I haven't seen another bear in my size. It goes away. I've got the white, you have the off white level knees and I felt like they broke in a lot easier than the car hearts.
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, because I did buy some new Dickies and they didn't take too long. I don't think you have to. Right. Right. That was too much compared to cars. I had the natural double knees. They were extremely wide. Very wide Dickies. Yeah, they were extremely wide. Maybe I have like a modernized pair or something. I don't know. Might feel a little bit. I mean, there's no quality control.
00:48:38
Speaker
yeah yeah it's just all over the place i wish mine were some yeah some white boys but they're not really they're a little bit yeah mine are very soft now which is like where you have to get them i think you have to get them to that point or they otherwise are just like a weird plastic bag yeah
00:49:03
Speaker
and Dickies are cool. This is when I was, I worked at Kmart for many years and they sold Dickies and that's when I just like wear one, wear through it and start again. Yeah. My first job, I was there for years and I was like, you know, just buy a pair of Dickies and wear them until they were threadbare and then buy another pair. And I had all the different iterations. And I think at one point they made like a kind of Carhartt style. I mean, I don't, you can correct me if I'm wrong, man. I think you know more about the work wear stuff, but I think they had like a kind of a, like Carhartt
00:49:31
Speaker
double knee style with the cutout double knees. Yeah. At one point. And I think I had something gray, like a light gray, heavy doc. If I remember correctly, they were crazy. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Like in high school. Right. Yeah. Like basically from I think late ninth grade, all through the rest of high school, all I wore was like the regular 874 work band.
00:50:01
Speaker
in like, you know, black that's around. Yeah. Like the, that kind of like petrol blue is my favorite and fun fact. Yeah. This is like the classic Ed Templeton pants. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't remember if I posted this when we were doing the old Fitz thing that we were doing, but my senior photo, I'm wearing those and like a pair of black chucks.
00:50:26
Speaker
And yeah, that's my claim to fame. There you go. Yeah, I feel like at this point. You were ahead of the curve on that one. Yo, honestly, I've said this to like other friends. I feel like at this point, I've just come back around to dressing like I did in high school. It's like, you know, with with better shit, obviously. Right. But just like work pants, older shit, work pants, a T-shirt, a light jacket and then like
00:50:53
Speaker
you know, or it's or like chucks or vans or something. There you go. Yeah, it sounds like you're you're carving out kind of a good clothing life for yourself. Carving out. Carving out. Very funny. So this is a random thought that I had when you were talking earlier. Have you been to any shows while you've been in Turkey?
Cultural Experiences and Online Presence
00:51:22
Speaker
No, I haven't. I have not. I have not. Surely like Istanbul has a music scene of some sort. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could find something in Istanbul. Yeah. I can't, I was 30 when I moved here. So I was already like, I wasn't really going to shows in the States. Right. Right. You know, like at that age, at that time I was going once in a while I would go see something, but it was very rare and it was like a special occasion.
00:51:49
Speaker
Like I was in grad school, I was living a very quiet life at that point. And the friends I had, then I was involved with that stuff. Like I just sort of grew apart from a little bit. Understandable. Yeah. So no, not really. And then when I came here, I was just into other stuff. So no. And I bought tickets. I was going to go see Khaki King. I don't know if she was a guitar player. She was in... Oh yeah, dude. I fucking know her. Yeah, I saw her early. Really? Yeah. Did you see her? Involve me?
00:52:19
Speaker
No in DC and that, you know, that record label candy rat. Yeah.
00:52:27
Speaker
records um they were all it was like justin king and i think don ross candy what is candy red is it blues label or something anywhere records is a record label out of uh seattle that does all acoustic guitar music oh andy maki yeah okay andy maki yeah yeah yeah
00:52:53
Speaker
But K.K. King's way better than Andy McKee for anybody listening. Oh, yeah, my god. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, the Candy Rat stuff, right? It's like, they do that. Yeah, right. Joni Mitchell thing with the right hand. Yeah. But I'm just gonna go see her. I think, I can't remember if she canceled or if I, I think I just decided not to go. I think I backed down at the last minute. And there was a metal fest coming up. Who's coming? Samuel is coming.
00:53:21
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that would be a I guess that would be a hike It's just yeah, it's a pain. It's a bad. I'm old. I have a job. I have two jobs. I'm busy. I got two kids I got you know the downtime I'm generally with my kids or Doing something run out
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you tremendously for giving us your time on this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, this is a pleasure. This has been a pleasure.
00:54:00
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, so we usually we usually allow our guests some of our valuable air time to plug or promote whatever they want, which it can be your own Instagram if you like. So you have the floor. Oh, thanks. Well, I mean, you can look at my Instagram's Fez. By the way, originally it was without the Fez from the Steely Dan song.
00:54:25
Speaker
And it's a reference to the outlawing of the Fes in Turkey at the time of the founding of the Republic. And that's my name. That has been my name for many, many years before I even knew where Turkey was. So it's just a weird coincidence that I ended up living here. Very strange coincidence. Wow. Yeah, so there's that. And you can find it like there's a bunch of characters. I'm going to try to change it back to without the Fes. You can look at that. I make music.
00:54:54
Speaker
Asbestos, Como Incorporated, INC. I make guitar music, not like Andy McKee, maybe a little bit more like Jackie King or like Early Windham Hill or American Primitive, that style. And I also have a house music record. Maybe I'll finish this year and put it up there. It's Asbestos Incorporated. Inattempt. Asbestos Incorporated is a great- Yeah, that's a fucking killer name. Yeah. Fucking killer name. Thanks.
00:55:19
Speaker
There's a few up there. I don't know if it's good or not, but that's, that's my, those are my records and I'll make more in the future when I get around to it. And my name is Keith Carver. I write, you can find my poetry online fiction. I'm working on a novel and I said, we weren't going to talk about that, but you know, it's like I'm writing it someday. It'll come out. In the meantime, I do have some published workup. So that's it. Great. Great. Okay. Okay. So, uh, I would be remiss if I did not ask.
00:55:48
Speaker
You're making guitar music. What are you playing right now? Nothing right now. Sadly, I'm not making any music. I have no involvement in music right now. I'm writing, I'm trying to write a novel. Yeah, I'm working on a novel. Okay, okay, gotcha. But I do, I follow your, I follow your Instagram, your posts about your gear and stuff, which is... Oh, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah. If there's a guitarist that comes up... Congrats on the record too.
00:56:17
Speaker
Oh, thank you, man. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate that. That's a great name. Thank you. I don't know if it's as good as asbestos incorporated, but that's pretty fucking safe. I was going to say asbestos incorporated opening for extinction. Sounds great. Let's make it happen. We'll do it in your small town in Turkey. Yeah, we'll do it in my house. We'll play for your family, and that's about it. Anyway.
00:56:46
Speaker
Hell yeah. Keith, dude, thank you so much. Once again. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you very much. Yeah. Everyone, thank you for listening. Please follow, rate, subscribe on your platform of choice. Shoot us an email if you feel so compelled, apocalypsestuds at gmail.com. Give us a follow on Instagram at apocalypsestuds. And once again, I am Matt Smith at Rebels Rogues.
00:57:18
Speaker
And I'm Connor Fowler at Real Connor Nunez. Now, still, I haven't changed it back yet, but maybe I won't. We'll see. Yeah, well, follow along for the saga. Anyway, we'll see you next week with a new episode. Bye.