We did it! The Bo-Hawgs first departure from the O.G. color scheme. Moving forward with the evolution of the Pig Fish, something I know my pops would be psyched about.

And our first collection? That would be the Neon Vol. 1 Collection, good people!

Am I sure pops would be psyched that this was our first choice? That I cannot answer. I know he wouldn’t be upset, but I can hear him asking, “Why the hell did you pick neon first? What about bringing the Fishing Team back? Or seafood?”

Well,  I can shed some light (pun intended) on why this was our first choice, and how pops is embedded in the idea.

I have always been a big fan of neon. It started when I was a kid and would watch the Boston Celtics® with my dad and big brother. TV wasn’t really high def back then, so the TD Garden green looked neon to me. I was always confused why the green on my Dee Can Dunk shirt wasn’t neon, but I didn’t care. It was from my big bro.

Outside of the discolored TD Garden on my TV, the only neon outerwear that floated around my little town growing up was hunter safety orange. I am not knocking that color at all. Safety first, ya’ll!

But that was it. Hunter safety orange, and of course the classic neon green for crossing guards. Salute to those fine humans because that job seems INTENSE. We would always give our school crossing guard chocolate covered cherries for Christmas. I think those are gross, but apparently they were their favorite. 

Of course, hunter orange now has dope logos on it and the gear is rather fresh. But not in 1995! You can ask my brother-in-law, Jake. I wore it once or twice during my short-lived career as a hunter, but that’s it. Thanks for trying, bro.

Anyway, I finally got to rep some neon when my mom started findings these Nike® windbreakers at the outlets in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.*

I looked SO FRESH in that gear! Wait. Thought? Hell nah. I looked fresh as hellllll wearing those. 

If I was feeling real stylish, I would wear just the windbreak bottoms and a flannel long sleeve unbuttoned with a t-shirt underneath. I was like Kurt Cobain met Charles Barkley’s ’92 Olympics fit (minus the loafers, those were more pop’s style).

I was a true fashion icon for 5th graders at Fairhope Intermediate school. I bet I was bad at hide-and-seek, though. Could hear my ass coming from 100-yards away with that fabric rubbing against the legs.

SWISH. SWISH. SWISH. Never got the chance to hide, just seek. 

Seriously, I wore neon A LOT. I don’t know what it was about the colors, but I just liked how they popped. I am also a big UNC Chapel Hill fan, so Carolina Blue was a staple in my attire as well. Outside of windbreakers and UNC long sleeve shirts and khaki hats with the Tar-heel logo on them, my neon game was limited. * sigh *

Luckily, when I got to high school and could drive I discovered a local head shop, David’s Gallery.

I realized David’s carried a lot of bright colors because of how they reacted to black lights. Later, I learned why the combination of black lights and bright colors are cool. Hence my reference to “trippy lights” in some of the Neon Vol. 1 item descriptions. 

The year was 2002 and I was now rocking bright pink shirts with “Comfortably Numb” written across the chest, or an all-white shirt with the Widespread Panic “Dove and Snake” logo traced in black on the back. The black lights were good to me in those days, and my neon game was getting stronger.

When Nike® launched their sneaker customization feature though, it was game over. 

The first pair I created looked a lot like the Planetarium Slime color scheme, except the shade of purple was a shade of black. Purple wasn’t one of the options, and I don’t know if I had the vision to create color schemes that I hadn’t already seen before. * adds lacks vision to resume *

The soles and laces were bright neon green. I paid the extra $5 and got GBT monogrammed on the tongue of the sneaker in that same neon. I kept those kicks FOREVER. When I graduated from undergrad I wore them…without socks…and shorts.

My dad was fired up and proud while the rest of my family was shook. Mainly because I graduated, but also that I did not wear socks. My guy wore rented tuxedo shoes to my brothers wedding without socks. He hated socks.

Back to the shoes.

My pops would always say, “Those are some ugly ass shoes you got on. But they match your face, so that seems right.”

His attitude about neon changed when the University of Oregon exploded on to the college football scene in 2009. Not saying they weren’t on the scene before, but them folks in Bama only knew about the West Coast powerhouse, USC! Since I know this blog reaches 1 million people daily, I have this to say to the NCAA: GIVE REGGIE HIS HEISMAN BACK!

Never really knew much about Oregon, though.

“The Ducks have some tight ass uniforms, Trippy,” he told me. “Did you know they have 5,000 variations?,” he asked me. Not true, but he said it with such confidence that I was like, “Damn. They really have that many?” To which he replied, “Phil Knight doesn’t f****** play!”

Pops was hyper focused on the Ducks because it looked like they were the team that would play Auburn (his nemesis, not mine! Don’t crucify me for his hatred. War Damn!) in the National Championship that year. 

He was right. What a game. I’m not getting into all that nonsense here, but I will say that my Pops had on an Oregon shirt. 

Months after the game, he’d wear that shirt because he said the colors were “too damn cool!” He had become a fan of neon, but only for the Ducks. He was also really into Woot.com around that time and would buy my nephews and nieces tons of shit.

My siblings will tell you to this day that the sheer amount of items he bought from Woot made up 90%  of their kids’ wardrobes. He was always looking for those wild ass colors.

“I got the girls these hoodies on Woot that are the same color as Tripp’s wild ass shoes, Bub. Five bucks each. Cheap as snake balls,” he’d tell my brother. 

He grew to appreciate neon and the personality the colors had.

It is pretty serendipitous I would pick Neon as our first drop because if you ask someone who knew my dad to describe him I can guarantee they would say something to the affect of, “There was only one GB. Nobody else had a personality like him, and no one ever will.” 

Neon Vol. 1 is the first in a series of bold, bright, and colorful designs. It’s something I loved since I was a kid and something my dad grew to appreciate later in life. It has a lot of personality, just like the two of us!

He never wore it outside of his Oregon shirt, but you can bet your sweet ass if he saw the Pig Fish in these colors he would. 

My guess is the Planetarium Slime t-shirt in Indigo Blue. Actually, probably the pink-on-pink-on-pink Birdy Bird items because my niece created the color scheme. I can see him wearing that pink hoodie at an event and some wise ass that sort-of knows him saying, “Nice hoodie, G.B.,” in a sarcastic tone. 

“Yeah. My niece designed this. You wish you could pull it off, but you aren’t a big player like me. Go f*** yourself.”

* fact check that when you read the page mom and drop a note in the comments, please. I am not sure when you will read this, so when you do…love you!