I have been thinking back, over the last few years, and going over all of the stuff that I did, tried to do, wanted to do and didn't, thought of doing and forgot to, obsessed over, and so on and so forth. Let's look back on a few of these things. I thought that these zippos were going to be the last word in cool. They didn't sell worth a damn in Japan. They sure were fun to design and lay out. I found a guy down a back street in a bad neighborhood in Saigon. A referral from some other shady dude at a used zippo shop. The engraver guy, his son, and I negotiated, haggled, went over designs, kicked around this and that, ate pho, haggled some more and finally came to an agreement on eight designs and a logo thrown in on the backside. Looking back, it was a really good deal at the price I ended at when you break it down per zippo but I could have done better if I had more time to source the zippos. I decided to do this two days before I was to fly out so I was on a tight schedule. Drew the designs out on a bunch of napkins in a noodle joint under the shadow of New World Hotel. I'm sure it was humid as hell. Takes me back to that shop every time I watch Apocalypse Now.
