East West Leathers - San Francisco

[dinhnguyen57]

Does anyone have anny information on this brand? I do not think this is the more popular “East West Musical Instruments” brand but a different brand with similar name and similar designs.

 

[amonr4]

That tag actually belongs to East West Musical Instruments Co., which is a legendary vintage leather jacket brand, not a music band. The name is super confusing, but they originally started out in San Francisco in 67 planning to sell music gear. They pivoted almost immediately to hand-crafting premium leather jackets instead, but just kept the quirky name on their tags.They didn't make music, but the rock 'n' roll connection is real, the biggest icons of the 70s used to custom-order their jackets to wear on stage.

 

[dinhnguyen57]

It did not say the additional wording of “musical instruments” so I thought maybe it was a different brand.

However I looked at a few postings for sale of EWMI jackets a I found one with both labels stitched to the same jacket.

 

[Alan@JohnsonLeather]

It did not say the additional wording of “musical instruments” so I thought maybe it was a different brand.

However I looked at a few postings for sale of EWMI jackets a I found one with both labels stitched to the same jacket.

I actually new Larry and Laura back in the day when I first learned the leather trade in Sausalito. They were very cool and interesting couple. The article will (although a bit of a long read) let you know how it all started.

East West Musical Instruments Company

Larry Fritzlan​

East West Musical Instruments Company


Here is what it was like. Get up, smoke dope, walk up to Haight Street and get coffee and a bear claw, drive to Stinson Beach and up Mount Tam, drink Ripple, eat beef jerky, smoke more dope, and come back and get ready for an evening on acid at Winterland, The Fillmore, or the Avalon Ballroom watching the Dead, the Airplane, Carlos Santana, The Who, and so many more. Or maybe sitting in a bar on Chestnut and having Janis Joplin and a bunch of Hells Angels roar up on Harleys and have Janis rush in and belt out a bunch of tunes. Or take off on our motorcycles to Mexico. Or drive down the coast to Big Sur and some **** beach. Or go to a concert in Golden Gate Park. There was KSAN, Alan Watts, Monday Evening Class, The Oracle—the list of far out, groovy, fun things to do was endless!
And then I’d get up the next day and do it all over again—maybe hooking up with a different hippy chick. This happened every day, every single day! OK, maybe not every day, but as I write this, I recall a whole lot of it happening for a number of years. But life has a way of causing us to grow up, or die, and we divided ourselves between those who became drug dealers and those who got jobs. I ended up doing both (the drug dealing ended when I sold cocaine to a cop). Some of our crew, Bobby, Guy, Bush, Ellen, and John, found this funny hippy leather maker named Norman and his little shop on Castro. Me, I got a job driving a Yellow Cab and living up the hill at 21st and Church, getting high and thrilling tourists by swooping up and down the hills of San Francisco. And I became a freelance photographer, a job I’d had for a while in college, which led to my taking pictures for Norman. I think I bartered that early work for a Swanbone fringed jacket. Boy, I’d love to have that now!
Rookie cab drivers got terrible shifts and at one point, working with the hippies at the leather factory became more attractive than being a cabbie, so I applied for a job and was hired as a pattern cutter. I’ll never forget my first morning.
“OK, Larry, you are going to make a pair of leather pants. Here are the patterns, here is a cowhide, a magic marker and scissors. See if you can lay it out in such a way that you can make the whole pair of pants out of one hide.”
So, I’m sizing up my job when Bush comes by and says, “come with us” as he led a half dozen hippie shop workers into the women’s bathroom to smoke some hash—it’s 9:30 in the morning! OK, I go back to work—only now I’m higher than ****. It took forever to finally finish and cut out my first leg panel only to discover that there was a big hole in the middle of the knee that I totally missed! It was like that. A bunch of stoned hippies having fun, getting high, blasting music, and making the most amazing, far out creations.
And, boy were Norman’s creations far out! I recall one month when GQ, *******, and Esquire all did feature articles on this hip San Francisco designer and his far out leather creations. Rad stuff that blew everyone’s minds.
In 1970, I got wind that Norman was opening up a boutique, a factory outlet store called The Organic Haberdashery in North Beach. Bush had built the interior but he was not very excited about managing it because those yummy, expensive, hip jackets could be sold instantly on the street and everyone was trying to rip him off. I asked Norman if I could have a shot at running it. He said I could and he gave me the keys to the store. I put my loaded 22-caliber ***** behind the counter with a price tag hanging from it saying, “This *** Ioaded.” Norman walked in one day and saw it, shrugged, and walked out. There was a little tiny loft in the back of the shop that various people and I “slept” in.
OMG, what crazy memories.
Little did I know that I would not leave that block on Upper Grant for nearly 25 years!
And that was wonderful because North Beach had always been a special spot for me. As a kid in college, I was drawn to the Beats, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Mike’s Pool Hall, Coit Tower, Howl, Coney Island of the Mind, Barbary Coast, and ******* women. When I first came to San Francisco, I visited these legendary places, so it was fantastic that I had a job, a shop, in the heart of this famous part of this famous town in the midst of this amazing time. Boy, was I a happy dude, amazing job, working with amazing, creative folks, living large in San Francisco.

After three years I think Norman was beginning to see that the boutique project was not paying off and I agreed to purchase the shop from him. With my new wife, Laura, I began to build a business by working twelve hour days, seven days a week, moving the store to a bigger location at the corner of Grant and Green, getting other vendors, and opening up a second store in Sausalito.
While we were growing the business, my substance use finally became more of a pain than a joy. My mother had warned me when I left home that I was vulnerable to having the disease that my father was later to die from, alcoholism. In 1979, I was intervened on, and later that year, I acknowledged my problem and joined the Twelve Steppers. My daily abuse of alcohol and random other drugs stopped, and I embarked on finding how to navigate life as a sober adult. Raised in an alcoholic family and starting substance use as a teen had delayed what I now see as optimal development on the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and social axes. Basically, I was an almost 40-year-old with the bio-psycho-social-emotional-spiritual development of a 15-year-old.
The eighties were a time for me, as well as for the hippies, to grow up. The shop did well enough. In 1981, Laura and I shut down the Sausalito store and divorced, and I put my focus on getting my head, heart, and relationships on more solid ground. I entered therapy and began a process that led to starting graduate school in counseling psychology in the early nineties. I sold the shop to my manager for a dollar. Her payments put me through graduate school and an internship and kept me going right up to my getting licensed in 1996. The shop was finally shut down when the market no longer supported independent leather shops. People were now getting their leather jackets at Banana Republic and the Gap, and buying Frye boots at Nordstrom. The Jumping Jack Flash boutique era had come to an end.
Life has been good for me since then. I became a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in 1996. My clinical work as a counselor focused on treating addiction from a family systems perspective. I built up a group practice in Marin County and was busy treating Marin County families with teens or young adults who were having problems with drugs

And I got married—again! I think, finally, I got well enough to attract a healthy woman. We have been together for a happy, exciting, and growthful 12 years—Avis is the love of my life!
The future? Not sure. I turned 75 this year (2016) and red lights are flashing. I’ve cut back my practice, seeing what a balanced work/play life could look like. However, you might keep an eye on AddictionTherapist.com. It is a placeholder site right now, but I may have one more goal—to leverage social media, the Internet, and bring free or low cost addiction treatment to everyone. The book Avis and I wrote, My Addicted Child has done very well and we are thinking seriously about writing two more, My Addicted Spouse and My Addicted Parent.
And then, tending the garden and chilling in the Bay Area is not a bad alternative. But if that guy had not ripped off that woman’s purse in 1973, I might not have made the drug deal that led to the date with Laura that led to purchasing Norman’s business which led to my recovery which led to. . . well, you know how things just keep unfolding.
And thank goodness Norman switched from musical instruments to garments and we all got to be part of one of the most amazing stories anyone could ever tell!
Thank you Norman Stubbs!

​

 

[tmitchell59]

I actually new Larry and Laura back in the day when I first learned the leather trade in Sausalito. They were very cool and interesting couple. The article will (although a bill of a long read) let you know how it all started.

Thanks so much Alan for sharing this information. I go back a few year too. I do own an East West jacket, just a bit small like most of them!

 

[dinhnguyen57]

I have a few EWMI jackets myself. I just bought another one with that tag. Hopefully when It arrives I can see if it also has the more familiar leather tag as well.

thank you Alan for the story. You have had a full life and more to come!