jake1

Jake Davis part 1

Week 38 - January 19, 2012

“Yo, you ever had Doughnut Planet doughnut before?”

“No,” I said.

“Ah, man … you ain’t even ready for this! ” Jake said.

“Really?” I was surprised: What’s this dude doing passing me a doughnut?

“Here you go,” he said as he passed it to me under the table. “Keep that shit down, son!”

I was laughing as I took my first bite. “Oh my gosh. This is the best doughnut I’ve ever had!”

“Right? That shit is so dope.”

I imagine that what Jake Davis felt about the doughnut he passed to me under the table in the Bowery Hotel last month is how he feels about everything that he discovers and becomes passionate about. Jake has the unique ability to find and get behind things before other people even know they exist. Tres Leches and Crème Brule doughnuts are just the tip of the iceberg.

Aside from being a video director, style blogger (he was one of five men’s fashion writers profiled on the front of the New York Times’ Style section last week), downtown New York insider, and pastry connoisseur, Jake is a really nice guy.

Last week, he took a half-hour out of his day to talk to me over Skype from his place in New York about his work, his family, and his plans for the last year on earth. We covered so much ground that we had to split his Our Voice into two parts. Look for more Jake here, next week.

- Matt

Matt: What up, homie?

Jake: What up?

Matt: Dude – congrats on the NYT write up! That is dope.

Jake: Thank you, thank you, thank you. My big concern about stories like that is that I’ll come off as sounding pretentious. But I think the writer did a good job of making it pretty accessible.

Matt: I always hate doing interview because I feel like I’m telling the same story over and over. And it always feels like I’m talking about myself, which I’ve never felt comfortable doing. So that’s why I’m on this side of this interview. Laughs

I was thinking about you the other day. Carrie and I are doing a cleanse to start the new year, and when we started I kept thinking about that damn doughnut you snuck me under the table. That was the best doughnut I have ever eaten, hands down!

Jake: Man, I’m going to get your address and send you a box of them, that will totally screw up your cleanse!

Matt: OK. Let’s start this. I’m going to ask you some really basic stuff. How old are you?

Jake: I’m 31.

Matt: And you were born in Woodstock, New York …

Jake: I was actually born on the Upper East Side at New York Hospital, but I was raised in Woodstock. My parents moved there very soon after my birth. It was their plan; after I was born, they took off.

Matt: Did they work in the city?

Jake: They had retail stores. They met super-young and worked together on these stores called Armadillo. There’s one in Boston, there’s one in New York, there’s one in Albany…

Matt: What did they sell?

Jake: At the time, it was all rock and roll; it was Led Zeppelin and those guys. So clothing and accessories that went along with that lifestyle.

Matt: So they had a modern-day Hot Topic. Major laughter from both.

Jake: What I’ve been told is that it was the Union (the influentialstreet wear store in Los Angeles) of rock and roll. That if Union represented street culture and hip-hop, their shop was the cutting edge of the rock genre at the time.

Matt: What was it like growing up in Woodstock?

Jake: Woodstock is an amazing place. It’s the best of both worlds, because you get exposure to the city, because of the artists and people who have spent time in New York but who moved out there to raise their children. But it’s rural, so you can play sports, you can go out into nature … You’re not compressed and confined like you are in the city.

Matt: What kind of kid were you growing up?

Jake: As weird as they come. No, I was very artistic but also very athletic. I played every sport. I was good at tennis, but my parents also made me go to art class. It was the best of both worlds.

Matt: Was it hard to make you go or was it something you just did?

Jake: I was super-disciplined. Saturday rolled around and if it was time for tennis, it was time for tennis.

Matt: When’s the first time you picked up a camera?

Jake: This is going to sound pretty bad, but not until film school.

Matt: Actually, that doesn’t surprise me. I think that’s when people kind of come into their own. You went to NYU. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do when you went in?

Jake: I went to NYU for several different reasons. I knew I wanted to be this thing called a “director,” but, naively, I didn’t really know what that meant. I was into music, I was into style, and I like to write, as well, and I thought if you merged all those things, you got a film director. And where do you go to learn to do that? NYU is the best school; all my favorite directors went there.

So, it was when I got into the city and fell in love with downtown culture when I got my hands on a camera for the first time. But at NYU, for the first year, you don’t get to handle a film camera; they give you a still camera, and you learn to tell stories that way. That year was really important, because I learned how to take photos in the simplest, simplest form.

Matt: What was your first big break after film school that solidified the idea of ‘Hey, I’m a director now’?

Jake: I still don’t know if I’m a director. Laughs. Some days I’m a photographer…

Matt: According to the New York Times, you’re a style blogger.

Jake: I’m a fashion blogger! I’ve been really lucky. I came to New York and I was in love with hip-hop and DJ culture and my first foray into filmmaking was little hip-hop documentaries, like the DJ culture at the time. There were these DMC battles going on and I was hired to film some of them. And then a guy who would become one of my best friends – the late Rock Raider – asked me to shoot adventure videos for him, where he was on tour and scratching and beat juggling and battling. It was crazy because the year prior to that, he and his crew were idols of mine. I had their poster on my wall in Woodstock. Then I come to New York and for whatever reasons he and his crowd embrace me. And I became their go-to video guy.

From there, two other strong opportunities happened: I went on tour with them and (what I was doing) was also picked up by Nike. I was twenty at the time, and still in school. I was working professionally, which at the time NYU was not too keen on – I don’t know about now – but they didn’t’ want you work, they wanted you to focus on your studies, but I’ve always done what I’ve felt I needed to do. I was doing grassroots films for Nike and through them being a liaison to downtown culture and artists and introducing them to the whole sneaker culture that was happening at the time.

Renaissance is kind of a cheesy word, but there was something going on then where kids were getting into sneakers like never before. They were customizing them, collecting them, and there was a real reverence for them in downtown New York. It felt like it was going to take off and spread and I helped introduce Nike to that. And part of the job was to shoot films on it – people doing innovative people. There was no Internet at the time, so all this was happening behind the scenes. If you came to New York and saw them or read an article in a magazine, you knew about them; otherwise, you didn’t. So there was a lot of excitement.

The other thing was that I made a film that had a good festival run. My student film got into Tribeca on a whim – the first festival. So it’s like, I’m on tour, I’m meeting Robert DeNiro, and I’m working for Nike …

Matt: … and you’re twenty.

Jake: And I’m twenty! So it’s like, what the hell?

Matt: What’s the name of that film?

Jake: Low Resolution. At that time, it was interesting – I don’t know if it still holds up – but the mixing of technologies and digital video had come about, and mixing analog film and digital, and playing with that concept in the narrative … that was interesting to people. It was a New York story and it was visceral. You know, it’s really crude if you watch it; it’s like an amateur take on a film. It’s very student-like. But you can see there’s something there.

Matt: Well, obviously someone saw something.

Jake: Yeah, they saw a crappy film. Both laugh.

Drake, “Successful” (2009)

My favorite music video. It changed things a bit for me. OVO (October’s Very Own) became family.

Test Shot: Tanya Romero

My favorite Test Shots are women. I love shooting beautiful women… I
love their vulnerability. I love how they never know how beautiful
they truly are to me…



About our photographer: All photos of Jake were taken by Nicholas Maggio. Born in Louisiana, raised in Southern California, Nicholas discovered his affinity for photography during art school, where he ditched his color theory class to spend countless hours in the darkroom obsessing over large format prints. His photos can be seen in Teen Vogue, Foam, Complex, Nylon, and Cosmo; in the windows of retailers Pacific Sunwear and Lamb & Flag; and in gallery shows including THIS Los Angeles, One Time Gallery, and Environment. See his work at www.andthesearethedays.tumblr.com and follow him on Twitter at @NicholasMaggio.