Project Q: A Dogpatch Retrospective
Triple Aught Design: DOGPATCH WAREHOUSE SALE
For years and years I had wanted to come to the Triple Aught Design Dogpatch Warehouse Sale and until this year, I was never able to make it happen. The advent of the TADJunkies group had unified us with the common love for the brand and this was my chance to meet fellow junkies and the outstanding people that had been feeding my addiction for some of the best designed and manufactured garments in the world.
After a rendezvous with the man known as HJIC and his trusty sidekick Ora, the plan was in motion. We would meet at the steel doors before first light. I ordered a cab to pick me up at the place where I was staying for 4am Saturday. Rain was still coming down and I didn’t trust the unpredictable public transit to get me to Dogpatch on time and after all, I didn’t travel 2800 miles to be stuck in the middle of the line.
I had my EDC filled only with my camera and provisions for the day’s adventure and was dropped off on the dark and lonely corner of 3rd. and 22nd St. in Dogpatch.
To my surprise there was no one outside the TAD Warehouse! Could it be? Was it possible that I would be first in line?
Happy to have my Stealth LT to keep me dry and happy to be first, I took up my spot huddled next to the cold metal of the roll up door in an attempt to keep my pack and my shoes out of the incessant downpour. There I was, alone on the street in San Francisco just waiting for a junkie to meet me on the corner. Sounds a bit strange when I thought about it. “I was huddled next to a building in San Francisco, in the pouring rain at 4am waiting for a junkie”.
Only a few minutes into my shift, I got a message from Jay Kap, one of the most upstanding junkies I’ve met to date, “want coffee?” Java, bean juice, nectar of the gods…there wasn’t a time in my life that I had wanted to taste that muddy water more than that moment. “I’ll be there in 20 minutes”, he wrote.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, rolling up with 4 large coffees in hand and a smile on his face, Jay Kap was now the no. 2 man in the line.
I sent a message to HJIC and Ora to tell them that the line was forming. They responded that they would be arriving with the quickness.The Dogpatch Warehouse Sale-TADJunkie Style was forming before our eyes.
HJIC and Ora were greeted by us two junkies with coffee and couldn’t be happier. It was on…well in a few hours it would be. We killed time by showing off knives, talking gear, weather, travel details and the like.
Out of the darkness, figures emerged, brushing off sleep, clad in dark greys, greens and black DWR coated fabrics.
For the next five hours, the level of excitement and anticipation seemed to grow with each new suspect that showed. We were posted up, putting screen names to faces, greeting new friends and reuniting with old ones as they shuffled forward.
HJIC debuted the first run of TADJunkie t-shirts to those who had signed up for them and got a picture with each member of the crew.
HJIC handed out playing cards given to him by TAD Crew that would be the first part of what was to be known later as “Project Q”-an adventure through the streets of SF immediately following the sale.
Every so often a TAD crew member would show up, ready to start a 16-20 hour day, sharing a mutual excitement for the day’s events. The line grew and eventually snaked around the corner.
Finally the sun came up and the rain stopped and a half hour or so before the event, Raquel, Gear Goddess and queen of marketing, appeared with her crew from under the gate, bearing gifts. She had a titanium spork for the first junkie in line (Yours Truly) and handed out some Inconceivable patches.
The clock struck 9 and we were off to the race. I made a b-line for the prototype rack as I had been looking for things I had heard only existed in sample form. It was chaos, like a Black Friday sale, but quite cordial actually, without the stampede and without the trampling. Shoulder to shoulder, TADJunkies and suspected eBay flippers alike were furiously inspecting tags and sizes and fabrics looking for their grail.
I saw a few Arctic white Shagmaster prototypes, some smurfy blue Ares 270s, Covert pants in Amphibious Cloth, 40% off merino, a single pair of prototype merino base layer pants, which became known as “TADJammies”, snatched up by HJIC. There were rumored to be some dirt cheap OP1s and only two Stealth LTs, I never saw them.
A few hours later, as the dust settled, TADJunkies circled the racks over and over again, just to see if they had missed something, eyes glazed over and arms full of loot and the infamous checkout line from hell started to form. Actually it wasn’t that bad, I only spent about 25 minutes in line and it was cool to talk shop with TAD Crew and other customers. Kyle and the rest of the crew working the registers kept it moving quickly.
PROJECT Q
The brains at Triple Aught Design in their infinite wisdom devised a way to get us out of their hair and out of the store as fast as we had rushed in…Give these TADJunkies a playing card and an envelope with a staring point...let the games begin. It was a choose your own adventure with the San Francisco Metropolitan area as our theater of operation, a tour in fast forward, tabulating points as we had completed tasks at each point. Our point man, known only as "The Handler" described the event:
“Project Q’s purpose was to provide attendees a unique interactive experience with the Triple Aught Design brand. An extension of the Dogpatch Warehouse Sale that was meant to give participants an avenue to enjoy their new gear just purchased, right away, in the field.”
At 1700 we were to report back to Dogpatch and our scores counted and each score would give us a certain amount of entries into an epic raffle of rare TAD prizes.
A handful of us formed teams of TADJunkies to combine our skills. HJIC, Ora and I had the joker card and thus, #TeamJoker was born.
We had to go to a landmark or predetermined coordinate somewhere in the city, figure out the cryptic clues, photograph our Joker card and SMS it back to “The Handler”, who would be approving or denying our progress and then giving us another clue taking us to another corner of the city, often completely across town from where we were.
Little is known about “The Handler”, except that his clues were cryptic and his wit was quick. He was operating somewhere in the city maintaining a mainframe of clues and maps keeping scores on all of us. We high tailed it across town to our first dead-drop.
Clue #1: Lotta’s Fountain, located at Market, Kearney and Geary Streets and was a meeting place for people during the fires in 1906 following the great earthquake.
We later learned that the fires would be a reoccurring theme throughout the day’s adventure.
So we would text “The Handler” that we’d found and completed the task and he would then reply with new directions.
Our clues included bits of San Francisco history like the golden fire hydrant in Delores Park, that is repainted gold every year because it was this fire hydrant that was one of the only functioning hydrants during the fires of 1906 and is credited with saving the mission district from a certain fiery end.
We had clues that included QR codes, and tool boxes with numerical combination from previous clues.
Project Q was taking us to downtown Financial District, up to Presidio Heights to the scene of one of the grisly Zodiac murders,
back to Dogpatch numerous times, had us digging clues out of sewers, toilets,
dodging buses, and sketchy street urchins, scaling rocky shores, into dark alleys, man…this was getting good.
Occasionally we ran into other teams of TADJunkies on the same quest.
The tip-offs kept coming and we probably could have kept going long into the night searching the city for clues but we had to rally back at Dogpatch at 1700 for debriefing.
After working what had to be one of the longest days of the year, a bloodshot and bleary eyed TAD Crew was waiting for us to return from our MetroExpedition with an awesome raffle of exclusive prizes. “The Handler” tabulated our scores and handed out raffle tickets to each team which we put into the raffle of our choice. Some of the gracious offerings were a chance to win a TAD TiLensLight, to R&D a previously unreleased TAD item, a pair of prototype pants, a 2014 Litespeed, a prototype pouch and much more.
TAD Crew pulled together one of the most epic adventures for us to enjoy. As if they didn’t have enough to do that weekend, they made our Dogpatch Warehouse Sale an unforgettable experience. I can't imagine the scale of this project, logistically...It's mind boggling! Nowhere else in the landscape of garment manufacturers will you find a more thoughtful group of individuals that actually cares about it’s customers. Whether it was customer service, cutting edge designs and materials or constantly evolving styles that caught my eye, I'm not sure. But now after experiencing Dogpatch and Project Q first hand, I know now it’s the TAD Crew that is the reason I keep coming back.
Thanks to the TAD Crew for making it an awesome weekend and to the HJIC for bringing us together in fine style and of course…keeping us in line.