People Who Live By the Water
Walking my brother’s dog, Doe, through streets of Venice Beach, California last October, I got a call from my oldest friend, Kyle Keller, aka TurkeyBacon in Phoenix. “Focker wants you to draw his home AO — Area of Operation — t-shirt” he said. A month later, with a window breaking from drawing Marvel sketch cards, I drew together the elements given including the title “Bird’s Nest,” the Arizona flag and an owl. “That’s awesome” Focker texted. After coordinating with his workout team, he asked for Piestewa Peak — named after the first Native American woman killed in Iraq in 2003, Private Lori Piestewa — to be added. “It looks like a shark fin” Focker, aka Steve Burroughs, texted along with a photo. A month later, with Marvel complete, I sketched a second draft with Piestewa — loosely translated in Hopi as “People who live by the water.” On approval, I digitally traced the pencil draft in Photoshop keen on making the design legible on a black shirt knowing that’s the standard color. I image traced the final black and white separated design in Illustrator; then finessed the eyes and beak with the brush and eraser tools.
After giving Steve advice submitting a design for an online store, which will go live on F3 Gear, we chatted about what it’s like working out in Phoenix. “We only do outdoor bootcamps early in the morning,” Focker said, “never in the early evening like you in Seattle.” Steve said they rarely wear long sleeve unless it’s a sun-shirt with hoodie protecting from relentless desert sun. I’m glad Kyle referred me to Focker and that we’re both active in F3 nearly a decade after showing up at our first workout or “beatdown” together before sunrise on the steps of the Topeka, Kansas Capitol on a crisp January morning, 2017. "About time you showed up" said Lutheran Reverend Devin Kearns aka Wild Boar; with his recruit Dan “Sweetness” Sweet from Dallas, Texas. In the words of amalgamated Shakespeare, “Fly, Piestewa Owl, Fly!”
