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As always, SoJones.com is proud to introduce up-and-coming American brands every Friday, and from the streetwear front, we have Check your six this week. the Minneapolis-based brand shows what it means to have passion and how the passion is now wearable to you. SoJones talked to Matt from Check your six. [Also participate in our other giveaway with Acropolis]

Introduce yourself and describe how your brand was started?My name is Matt McManus, I am the co-Founder of Check your six, a Minneapolis-based streetwear brand founded in 2009. my brother James and I started the brand with no money, no connections, and no understanding of the streetwear industry. We were printing t-shirts in the basement of our parents’ house, doing our best to sell our products to local shops in Minneapolis.

With no strategy and no investment, my brother and I worked day in and day out to build the brand from the ground up. Today, our brand is stocked by select retailers around the country, online by some of the industry’s largest distributors, and has enjoyed exposure on some of the most influential media outlets in streetwear. None of these accomplishments would have been possible without a continued effort to push our brand and develop our image.

For a small, independent brand based out of the Midwest, what keeps our young brand growing is one thing: our supporters. Without our customers, there would simply be no Check your six. in a lot of ways, I think that people see themselves in Check your six. A brand that was built, truly, from the ground up, by two brothers who have a passion for what they do. no cheap shots, and no smoke and mirrors. just a good, old-fashioned American clothing company.

Describe this season’s theme for your line. Include any sources of inspiration (examples: 80′s punk, muses like Amber Rose, 70′s disco bands, Kanye, etc)The latest collection, which was entitled “Young Americans”, incorporated basic American imagery in some of the pieces. We wanted to do a Lookbook that matched this “Young Americans” idea, so we went into the woods and did a good, old-fashioned shoot. the Young Americans idea was actually influenced by an old David Bowie single with the same name, but the shoot itself was motivated by something entirely different.

We really feel like in the last 5 – 7 years, for a number of reasons, you don’t hear much about patriotism. aside from country music & the occasional July 4th celebration, it seems that a lot of people nowadays wouldn’t necessarily claim they are “proud to be Americans”. We put a lot of American imagery on some of the pieces, shot out in the woods, and said “You know what…we’re proud to be Americans. and always will be”.Any product placements on celebs to keep an eye out for (examples: publicity photos, magazines, movies, music videos etc)Last year, Check your six was seen in a few shows on the back of Wiz Khalifa. We also had support from producer Nima Fadavi and an up and coming Minneapolis-based artist Mally. our products have been given a lot of love in the past by the UK-based FRONT magazine, something that has helped immensely in us building our following overseas.

What has been a surprise fashion hit over the last year? (a particular piece, a look or even another brand)I might be a little late on trends, but I have been happy to see a more subtle look coming back into the spotlight. It seems that flannels and snap-backs are becoming more popular with each passing day. while Check your six has not quite jumped into the cut & sew industry, rest assured that when we do make that transition, basic flannels will be a staple of the brand. Growing up in a state where the temperature is below 25 degrees for 3 months, and below 5 degrees for 1 month, a warm, basic flannel is a wardrobe essential. the classic Paul Bunyan lumberjack look isn’t a style for us Northerners…it is a necessity.

What current fashion trend would you like to see thrown overboard?Are smart phones a fashion trend?? Haha I’m kidding, but man…those things are going to be the death of me! I know that most people nowadays live and die by the iPhone and Android, but after spending the last five years with a Razor (I know, ridiculous), a smart phone goes right over my head. and I feel like every single girl in the city of Madison is better friends with their cell phone than they are with their actual friends. If I had my way, everybody would go back to the classic 90′s cell phone that is too big to fit comfortably in the front pocket! Ok…maybe not everybody.

TuPac or Biggie?Biggie. always been a huge Biggie fan, it was actually some of the first rap music I ever listened to. I remember back in middle school some of my go-to songs were ten Crack Commandments, 1970 Something, and the deep cut the What – Which was off of a great album called Wu-Chronicles.

Brush up your lookbook knowledge of Check your six by visiting the brand’s website: checkyoursixclothing.com, Like them on Facebook and follow on Twitter!

CHECK YOUR SIX CLOTHING GIVEAWAY!Check your six is giving away 3 (THREE) shirts from the brand’s most recent collection and a surprise gift -maybe an unreleased t-shirt from the past? We don’t know. What we know is, the brand is giving the package to only 1 (ONE) super lucky SoJones.com reader!

Here’s how it works:

1. Answer the following question: What’s the name of the streetwear brand featured in this Streetwear Spotlight article?
2. You can give your answer between November 4th – November 18th, 2011. Make sure that when you comment you provide a link of where we can contact you (like your SoJones account, your facebook, etc.). It makes life easier to be able to contact you should you win.
3. Drawing for ONE WINNER will be held on November 21st, 2011. the winner will be announced on this page and on the forums page (sojones.com/forums/).

Article Comments Lottery Rules

• One package per winner

• Previous winners must wait 30 days before entering this contest

• Duplicate comments will not count, like posting “I love this forum” or “hi” 50 times.

• Garbage or nonsensical pounding-on-the-keyboard comments will not count, like “awr#$ASFasdfkl”

• Comments hating on other people will definitely NOT count.

• U.S. residents only

Don’t forget to visit SoJones.com’s Facebook page: facebook.com/SoJones and become a fan!

Get more Check your six images right here on our gallery:

published: Sunday, September 25, 2011

Paying it forward

Homeless grandmother given a home

THERESA CAMPBELL | Staff Writer

Greeted by a surprise crowd of about 30 people cheering in front of an Eustis apartment, a homeless grandmother broke down in tears hearing the words “Welcome home!”

“I feel like I’m on Extreme Home Makeover,” Sandie Wilbanks, 53, said as she hugged Lloyd Thorne and Helen Shaut, co-founders of Veterans Organization of Resource and Recovery for Homeless (VORRH), who worked to help Wilbanks receive Social Security disability and find a more stable home after living five years in the woods.

“I’m grateful for everything; this has been a long road,” Wilbanks said. “I now have a home and I just feel wonderful.”

She thanked her new landlords Jack and Rosemary Vahey for the opportunity and she also vowed to make a difference.

“I’m going to pay it forward; I’m going to carry this through to somebody else,” said Wilbanks, who is determined to be “the voice” for the homeless.

Thorne and Shaut said they plan to monitor Wilbanks and have her involved in VORRH programs as she readjusts to life back into society.

“This has become a real passion for us; we are going to do everything we can,” Thorne said. “Sandie is steadfast and she has the right staff with her. I don’t mean us, I mean the man upstairs.”

Wilbanks believes God wanted her to experience homelessness in order to become a voice for the those who took her in when she was at the lowest point in her life.

“God will humble you in a heartbeat,” she said. “These people are the ones that I crossed the street to get away from at one point in my life, back 10 years ago. Then when things turned around on me, they said, ‘Come on Sandie, we’ve got a tent here that you can stay in to get out of weather.’”

She calls the moment she was taken in by the homeless as life changing.

“I knew at that point and time that God had said, ‘Young lady, you’re here for a reason, and when I’m ready, you’re going to come here and remember these people.’”

A former bookkeeper for 25 years, Wilbanks recalled her life spiraled downhill after her husband Larry died. She also was unable to work when she became legally blind, yet she did do some temporary office work until she couldn’t do that anymore.

“At one point in my life I was very snobbish,” she admitted. “I had a fancy apartment, a car, great job, the whole thing and I looked down my nose at homeless people.”

She never imagined she would experience being homeless and living in the woods — a fact she has been too embarrassed to tell her two grown sons, ages 34 and 32, living in Mississippi, or to even reveal to her five grandchildren.

“I lied to my kids,” Wilbanks said, telling them she was doing great. “How are you?” she’d ask her sons from a pay phone.

“I knew if they knew they would be here in 10 hours saying, ‘Get in the truck,’” Wilbanks said. “My children have families that they are trying to raise and I didn’t want to put that burden on them.”

She recalled her late husband was compassionate to the homeless. “I would see him give somebody money and ask him what he was doing.”

“Honey, he’s homeless and couldn’t get any day labor work today,” Larry would tell her.

“Well, he needs to get out there and get a real job!,” Wilbanks would tell her husband. “That was my attitude.”

Flash forward to a few years later, and Wilbanks found herself holding a sign that read: Widow in the woods. Anything helps.

“People were very kind to me, but I also had people drive around the corner and yell: “Get a job!”

“God bless you,” she’d reply to those who were kind and not so kind. “Holding a sign for money is a very demeaning thing to do, but we did what we had to do to survive. I would have never stooped low enough to rob somebody.”

She believes no one truly wants to be homeless. “What I want people to know about the homeless is that most choose not to be there, but the economy is so tough right now. once the bottom fell out, among the first people to feel it was the day labor people. We knew the recession was happening before anyone else. it was really a punch in the gut.”

Wilbanks has been speaking to groups and events about the homeless, telling of living in tents, cardboard boxes and trying to survive without a vehicle, cell phone, or money.

“It’s not a camping trip,” she said. “You’ve got to find a way to stay out of weather, to eat, have water for drinking and bathing. And being homeless, you never know from one moment to the next if you are going to be asked to leave.”

She believes some homeless people get accustomed to life without having to pay rent, utilities or other bills. They also get comfortable with life without rules.

Wilbanks longed for a more stable roof over her head. “I remember being in the woods and somebody had either the funds or the opportunity to move forward and go to a shelter, and we’d kiss them, hug them, wish them good luck. after they left, I had tears and would say, ‘God, when is it going to be my turn?’ it wasn’t that I was jealous. I was so happy for them, but I would feel so left behind.”

Thorne and Shaut first met Wilbanks in 2010, when they would go into the woods to bring items to the homeless veterans on behalf of VOHHR.

“We’d see Sandie all the time when we’d deal with veterans and we noticed she was the only woman at the campsite,” Thorne said. “She was the ‘mother’ and nurturer. She would cook for them, tell them what to do and what not to do, and she just has a good heart.”

It was several homeless friends who encouraged Wilbanks to move forward and get back into society.

“They kept saying to me, ‘Sandie, you’re the last person that needs to be here. We’re guys. We can handle it a lot better than you, and the fact that you’re disabled, you shouldn’t be in the woods.’”

She is being joined at her apartment by her small dog, Balboa, and two roommates.

Wilbanks vows she won’t forget her friends from the woods. “I want homeless people to know that I have not left them behind,” she said. “I want to be their voice.”

When Emily Fossum was 4, she told her mom she needed art lessons.

“I couldn’t make my people look like people,” said Fossum, education coordinator of The Kemp Center for the Arts for the past year.

Fossum has been in love with art ever since, with only a brief respite for band in middle school and high school.

“I took an art history class my senior year and went to Europe and realized how much I loved art again and that I wanted to share my passion with other people.”

She thought about becoming an art teacher until she went to college at Dallas Baptist University and realized, “I wanted to create art and share it with people but not so much as a high school art teacher.”

Before she and her husband, an instructor pilot at Sheppard Air Force Base, came to Wichita Falls, she wanted to learn about the area’s arts scene, so she Googled “arts” and found the Kemp Center.

She called the education coordinator, Sally Kerns, about taking classes.

“Then I asked if they needed teachers, later interviewed when we got here and started teaching youth and adult drawing classes. That’s how I got started at the Kemp two and a half years ago,” Fossum said.

When Kerns left her position, Fossum became the new art coordinator.

As an artist, Fossum mostly draws in graphite, preferring detailed human forms, and also does some painting in oil, acrylic and watercolor.

She coordinates the art classes at the Kemp Center and promotes them to the community. she also comes up with new classes, finds teachers and gets supplies.

Fossum started the watercolor classes at the Kemp Center and brought in Rachel Lyles (from the how Great Thou Art Kids Art Studio) to teach the class, all About Acrylics.

Fossum is working on new art classes and teaches a youth drawing class.

“We rotate subject matter every week with landscapes and still-life animals and people and cartooning. I try to incorporate games that children will like and develop their technical skills,” Fossum said.

One of the more intriguing programs Fossum brought to the Kemp Center is the book series that she enjoyed in high school and college.

Her favorite literary character is Hermione Granger (from the Harry Potter series), so earlier this year, Fossum turned the Great Hall of the Kemp Center into the Great Hall of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter movies. she hosted a party for young Potter readers and their parents called “Harry Potter’s House Party.”

The event included a showing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows— part 1,” a week before the final film was released.

The party also featured arts and crafts projects, such as making paper owls and witch hats and coloring (for the younger children).

In addition to the many activities, the event also included a costume contest.

“The evening started when someone was making fun of me for loving Harry Potter so much,” Fossum said. “I said there were so many people who loved Harry Potter and we should have a Harry Potter night.

“And then I said, ‘Wait, we really should have a Harry Potter night here,’” she said with a laugh. “We had such a tremendous response, and everyone was saying, ‘When and what is the next one?’ That’s when I thought we should do ‘Twilight,’” Fossum said.

On Nov. 4, she will host a party for the release of the next Twilight Series film, “Breaking Dawn,” and fans will watch “Eclipse.”

“There will be some activities like stand-ups of Edward and Jacob, so people can take pictures with them, whichever team you are on,” she said, laughing.

She also is beginning to brainstorm for the December 2012 release of “The Hobbit” and what can be put together for a “The Lord of the Rings” party.

Fossum was born and raised in Rockwall near Dallas and is the eldest of her two sisters and brother.

She and her husband have a puppy named Oscar.

Her hobbies include drawing and sewing, which she recently took up.

Fossum’s goal is to bring new art classes to the Kemp Center to stretch the imaginations of students of all ages. “I feel so blessed to be part of a place with art everywhere,” Fossum said.

“This is a job I love. I am so happy, and I want more people to know about it.”

The original publication of Kitchen Confidential was released in 2000. Although I have been a big fan of Anthony Bourdain and his style of food and travel criticism, I never got around to reading the book until recently. I guess perhaps like the aging of a fine wine I was hoping that the test of time would give me a better perspective on how to interpret its contents. the book has been re-released with some additional commentary to maybe tone down the original ramblings.

This is largely an autobiography of someone who was full of passion for food but did not really get around to pulling it all together until much later in life. I suppose there is a good moral in there for all of us. He is not ashamed to tell you about his addictions to drugs, booze and cigarettes. One is actually amazed that he is someone who can still stand erect. His story is typical of one who has a great intellect, matched with a total lack of ambition, smothered by an overbearing ego. in his early career he seems to go through kitchen gigs faster than he can pop aspirin; which is actually one of his other special talents.

Mr. Bourdain was the original potty-mouthed celebrity chef. Based on his outrageous commentary in the book he landed his first television show in 2002 on the Food Network traveling around the world, trying to gross everyone out with his proclivity for eating brains and intestines. the use of shock value in the cooking world was born. Unfortunately he paved the way for Gordon Ramsay who just went one better than Bourdain. that is if you think a foul mouth is a great asset on a great chef. I bring this up because if you are at all offended by coarse language this is not a good book for you. on the other hand if you can read through all the coarse stuff you will understand that Bourdain’s acting out is actually his way of expressing admiration for certain things culinary.

The book is a good culinary history spanning from the mid-1970s up until its publication in 2000. I think the post script added in the latest release does help to round out the reader’s perspective. the advent of the Food Network and the increased interest in cooking has actually increased the expectation of diners. This has stopped many of the outrageous behaviors outlined in the book. And, as I would agree with Bourdain, has launched a bunch of hacks on television peddling recipes and rubs at the expense of serious cooking. So I think it is a good read. And I will continue to enjoy Bourdain’s irreverence. It is based on a serious love of good food, and of course, good drink.

When you were growing up did you ever have someone that wanted you to be something that you had absolutely no interest in? Parents are probably the number one person on most peoples list if asked this question. Leaders are the same way as we have been raised to think we know what is best for everyone under our area of responsibility. we place people where we think they are best suited never asking what they feel their strengths are.

Leadership one on one can be an incredible tool allowing you to understand individual’s passion and desires. you can spend less than one hour a month with your team members providing guidance and goals while also truly listening to their desires.

Let’s use an example; I want Elena to work in a department that is having problems because she has excelled in her current position. I never asked her how she felt about the change only telling her that this is what I wanted her to do. She being a professional only said that she would do her best, failing miserably in two months she resigned from the company. I had just lost a great associate because I didn’t realize or understand her strengths.

In Strength Based Organization you place associates in positions that they have knowledge, interest and passion for allowing them to excel. Understand this statement, it doesn’t mean placing people in positions because their friend work there or it is an easy job. Place then in positions where they have to ability to be successful.

OK how do I know where they will be successful? This goes back to one on one counseling and development, knowing your team, their strength and weakness. I realize some of you are now thinking they will work where I tell them to. Leadership is all about placing the right people in the right position so your organization will be successful. If you allow your ego to control your decisions then I suggest that you let your ego go and lead

i was wondering what is the secret in that book. i heard about it and was woderig if it was real. does it really work? how?

the secret is that you get what you ask/pray for, (and expect to get,) so be careful what you ask/pray for…

Th Secret is the law of attraction and it says that what ever you think on with passion u will attract into you life.

I saw and read the Secret. It works very well for me. I'm healthy and wealthy and I live the life I always wanted.

If you want to see the first 20 minutes of the movie I put it on my personal blog for my friends.

Have a nice day!!!

The Secret is the secret to attain a happy and joyous life where your dreams can be fullfilled.
It is primarily concerned with the law of attraction and introduces the main idea and gives some examples. It also introduces the many teachers who are in the market at this time. One of these is my favorite, actually it is a couple, Jerry and Esther Hicks, and their material is the one I recommend because I have little direct experience with the others.
The Secret video can be found online as a pay per view or download. the Abraham-Hicks introductory download can also be found online at their website free of charge. It is a good start.
Yes it works by teaching you how to apply the laws, providing you apply them as instructed. the information is constantly expanding as different people experiment with them and new processes are developed and new tools are found. IMO it has been a life-saver. Joy to all.

The secret is based on the law of attraction and is amazing. I suggest you buy the dvd [or download it] because it amazing and true. My answer is copy and pasted like some and truly expresses my feelings of it. Thepiratebay.org has the torrent of it available…. you should check it out!

It changed my life.