Fellow Barber

Since you grew up right by the beach in SoCal, do you think it was inevitable that you started surfing? There wasn't even a thought process to it really. When I started to get a little older, 9 years old, I just started to surf. It was on after that. I've always loved being in the ocean. Body surfing, surfing, swimming… everything, really. It was part of what you did growing up in Newport, CA.

Were you at all nervous about opening a surf shop in non-beachy lower Manhattan? I think we were aware of the challenges of starting a business in 2009, but it made so much sense to us that we were never detoured from closing our eyes and jumping over the ledge.

Interview by Ken Miller

What’s your background as an athlete and how does it influence the way you train? I was fortunate enough to have parents that started me at a very early age in all sports: soccer, baseball, judo, tennis, and swimming. So I unknowingly learned many different forms of movement and athletic skill sets that I continue using today. After two years of strength training as part of playing football at UNLV, I became burned out on weight lifting and on being in the gym in general. A few years later, I found Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and it revitalized my interest in movement-based athletics. In the 15-plus years since then, I have come to use strength and conditioning mostly as a way to increase my durability and ability to live a continued physical lifestyle.

Why is it important to take a holistic, total body approach to exercise? The human body functions as a complete system. It works that way, so it makes sense to be trained that way. The strength obtained from whole body exercise will be utilized in the same way: most of our activities – exercise or not – are whole body activities. And as I've gotten older, I’ve realized that rest and recovery is just as important as the actual exercise. Things like getting a sound night’s rest, doing corrective work, physical therapy, mobility work. Because in the end, it’s all about longevity. It’s about being able to do this for a lifetime

Interview by Ken Miller

After a couple years doing graphic design, I started to feel the need to return to working with my hands. Pulling a line the way a sign painter does was something completely new to me and at that time that was very appealing departure from the computer screen. Plus, sign painting is magical.

Graphic design was my first art form based employment, but I'd say much of that stuff doesn't apply to what I'm doing now. Different set of rules entirely. In contrast, sign painting taught me a lot about pulling a line, deep focus and as with tattooing, both art forms require a healthy amount of endurance.

Interview by Ken Miller

Fellow Barber Mid-Market postcard. Illustrated by Jonathan Cammisa. Designed by RoAndCo.

Jeremy Tooker of Four Barrel Coffee There seems to be a very strong sense of community at Four Barrel. How was this cultivated or did it just happen organically? We went to great lengths to cultivate that: treating each other well, as equals, with respect, like family (for better or for worse), goes great lengths and spills over into the customer interaction. We have a big focus on community here – with our actual neighbors, other local businesses, our wholesale clients, our coffee farmers that we buy from, and of course, our in-house staff. It did start naturally, but we found it something worth fostering.

Jeremy Tooker part 2 of Four Barrel Coffee How much of your time is spent on the road sourcing all of the beans that are roasted and served at Four Barrel, and what do you most enjoy about the process? My business partners / best friends Jodi Geren and Tal Mor split up the travel most of the time, sharing the burden, as we all also have kids. So these days, each of us travels about 3-4 months out of the year. And while all the travel sounds glamorous, it's usually not, and it's always hard work. But sometimes we all get to travel together, away from the daily stress, and talk about our business on a bigger level. Those trips together are really productive, and really special to us.

Interview by Ken Miller

What do you like best about Mission Chinese’s new neighborhood? Our Chinese bodega lady has a steamer of sweet potatoes that she sells by the piping hot piece as a healthy snack. There isn't a dilution of densely packed businesses like you would see north of Delancey. We've become good friends with the other businesses out here - all the cuties at Dimes; Helena and Fabiana at the housewares/art object shop Coming Soon; 169 and Upstairs Bar were always my favorite bars in the city; and I'm so so happy to have Pies and Thighs now! 

The former lease owner at our space was an architect. What a dream...! That means our restaurant shell looked great already. We had to just do a bit of ‘decorating’ to make the space our own. I got to spearhead all of this and pretty much curate. It was so much fun. Chen Chen and Kai Williams did the bar facade and mirror hallway. They used ingredients from Chinese medicinal shops (like dried fish bladder, fungus, mushrooms) and did beautiful resin panels inlays for the bar. Former Mission Chinese Food cook Hannah Black painted the cloud print fresco ceiling in the dining room using a paint brush duct taped to a broom stick. Eric Wrenn who does work for Art Forum and Eckhaus Latta did menu design and a bunch of other cool items like our pens and matchbooks. I collaborated with Massive to do our first piece of Mission apparel: a hunky Japanese man eating a bowl mapo tofu. Grace Villamil did the flower sculpture in our Twin Peaks hallway and the gorgeous mylar backdrop. I had a very specific design in mind for our signage, and I wasn't happy until I found a sign maker who could make us our awning in high saturated pink with that specific font; no one likes that pink anymore, so it took him a month to source some deadstock colorsafe canvas and drive down to Pennsylvania to pick it up.

Interview by Ken Miller