THE TRAVELER’S CLUB INTERVIEW

In this interview, GGM sits down with Andy, of The Traveler's Club and Veej, fellow creative collaborator in The Traveler's Club program, Each One Teach One. If you'd like to partake in Each One Teach One starting July 7th, make sure to log onto thetravelersclubsd.com for details!

Can you guys explain what or who the Travelers Club is for those who aren’t familiar?

[Andy]

my name is Andy I'm the director of events of the travelers club. We’re a collective of creative people who do events, we write, we do music production, we organize panels, workshops, and a bunch of other things. it's kind of just like a whole cultural group is what I would say. So the whole point of it is to promote culture within San Diego. I don't think there's any sort of one focus it's kind of just the culmination of everything together.

[Veej]

 and I'm Veej. I'm not part of the travelers club but I'm loosely affiliated with y’all. I was invited to be part of an art show and just the relationship just grew from there. I'd been moving around and I finally came back to San Diego. Every once in a while, I’ll have and idea pitch it to Andy, we’ll work on it and this one kind of clicked, Each One Teach One so that's what we work on together. I have a bunch of other projects that I do too. like “A Clean Slate”, the swap meet, and other freelance projects. I'm just a full-time designer.

How long have you been active with the travelers Club/when did this relationship start between you guys?

[Andy]

yeah so to break even more, Veej and I, we work together as Each One Teach One. I met him loosely through this Bay Area group called “Youthful Kinfolk” and they do a lot of the work that we do in San Diego, but in the Bay Area. so when we met it was kind of a weird symbiosis,  we just had the same ideas, but separately. There's like “oh I wanted to start doing workshops and start a workshop series.” He [Veej] had that idea one day, he just brought it up and I was like “that's literally exactly what I want to do. I want to help you out with that” so that's how Each One Teach One was started. So Each One Teach One grew into a partnership program between youthful kinfolk, Veej and what I do at the travelers club. How we got started though, I think for me it had started when I had moved to LA when I was 19, after high school and after I dropped out of college, and I was like “I'm gonna be a music journalist” “I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that” so I went to LA and I think one of the things that I realized there was that 1) LA sucks and 2) all the stuff that was happening up there, I couldn't find it down here so in that capacity. So it was better in terms of cultural movements and people doing stuff, you could go out and find a warehouse party, or an art show, you could find so many things happening all at once. It might have just been my limitations at the time because I was 19 so I couldn't get into as many places but I felt like there was a large gap between what was considered the artistic community in San Diego at the time back in 2011 and 2012, and what the youth were doing, you know? So I didn't know the people who we're having art shows and everything. Until one day I went into an art show called “The Hostile Takeover” that still goes on today but it's thrown by different people. Back then, this guy named Andre Power was doing it and I remember walking in for the first time when I was like 17. Since then it kind of sparked in me “oh shit this is what I want to do.” so that's how I started doing it initially as The Travelers Club. My friends and I would get together and lease out warehouse spaces, and in those warehouses we would throw music and art showcases. Then that turned into what it is now, it kind of is all snowballed together, that's how I met Veej.

You guys seem really passionate about keeping it local to San Diego

and keeping cultural diversity into San Diego. Why is it so important to you guys?

[Veej]

I mean from my perspective like I've come to learn that I grew up traveling around. my dad was in the military so I grew up here, then I moved away, and came back. then I went somewhere else for college and then came back again. So just gaining all those different perspectives, I had seen that there's a world outside of San Diego right? but as a person who's been fortunate enough to travel around, I can bring all these perspectives back. So having conversations with various people in the community, there's just a lack of talent retention where people feel like they need to move, thinking that San Diego is kind of transplant City, and it's a growing transplant city with colleges, now there’s startups, etc.  So we want to nurture the existing community here. There is a creative community here that doesn't get too much attention or like they seek attention somewhere else, but we have the ability, connections and all that to nurture it and give them a spotlight. We can provide accessibility to things that we can do, like provide these classes and we can really just empower these individuals as a whole, together and separately. 

[Andy]

Diversity is a big thing, I mean when you look at San Diego in general, San Diego is considered a different City depending on who you ask, you know? You ask somebody from Pacific Beach, you know there’s the stereotypical idea of San Diego and that would be the surfer bro, who like fucking rages and stuff. You go down the 54, and ask somebody what San Diego is, it's just like an extension of TJ. You go to San Ysidro, there's not really much of a difference between San Ysidro and TJ, but that's still San Diego. If you ask somebody from La Jolla what their idea of San Diego is, its like mansions on hills, upper-class. So it's like there's so many silos within San Diego and there's not really too many connections bridging all those places together. We have the highest refugee percentage in the country, just in San Diego. Not many people know that. Not many people know that City Heights is filled to the brim with people from East Africa, Eritrea and Somalia. Then we have Little Saigon in City Heights and people don't really realize that in National City, we have all these things like “A Reason To Survive” as a Arts Center down there. There are just so many communities that have so many things that are thriving within it. It’s so easy to find a huge disconnect between these communities. so I think that it’s important to see how can we get these communities together, not necessarily how can we start a whole new community, But like there’s so much happening everywhere, why can't we all just do stuff together and use our resources and create this melting pot, which it should be. 

I completely agree. I actually saw on your Instagram a couple days ago that you posted an old old news clip about what North Park used to be. It's so funny seeing what it is now, this gentrified hipster hub, versus what it used to be.

[Andy]

I mean that's the funny part about like the city, it's always shifting and constantly changing, that’s the reality of it. As much as people want to retain the culture of a certain neighborhood and as much as they should, the city's just rapidly changing all the time. I mean in that video it's like in the 1970s, North Park was considered this off-the-beaten-path place, where there was a bunch of older folks retaining the population that was from the 40s and 50s, and then somewhere along the line in the 80's and 90's, it turned into a very minority based community where it was considered “the hood”. Like if you were to talk to anyone who grew up in North Park in the 90s, it used to be considered along the lines of what people think of City Heights now. Now it's like you go to North Park and it has like cat cafe stuff like that.

Going back to each one teach one, you guys have that coming up this summer,

what exactly is Each One Teach One for people who don't know?

[Andy]

So Each One Teach One is a summer workshop series over the course of two months,  we have four courses that we introduce to students. So we have Video, Photo, Video/Audio Production, Design, and then we have elective courses which is pretty much like miscellaneous courses. We used to have writing but it wasn’t super popular. So we’ve switched it with classes that we thought were important to learn, but over the course of two months we’ve separated those four courses into two different sections. So every Sunday in July we have a photo and video course and then we also have an audio course in July. Then in August we have a design and elective courses together. So people can apply to classes within those courses, or they could apply the whole course, or they could apply to the whole program. In itself it's geared towards students, whether they are in high school, college, or even younger. it's giving them a way of entry into those careers, because it's really hard to find a path inside of those, you know? it's hard to find a way into it, especially if you don't have the resources to get it. So it's free for students, if you're not a student it’s still only $10 per class, so it's it's made affordable to give people lead way in there. 

What drove you guys to create Each One Teach One?

[Veej]

 whenever I get asked about Each One Teach One, I always mention two things: the accessibility of it. So I went to art school and if you don't have the resources to go to art school and you want to pursue art, you might be discouraged to even try it. With the program, we try to offer entry-level courses and one of the things that sets it apart from going the traditional route is that these teachers are people in the community, people you might have seen, like in the deejay class, you might see someone you’ve seen DJ before, or with our design class we had Dane Danner and Rodrigo, they had designed some things in the community you might have seen and not known what it was or who it was, but in the class they brought some of their work with them and it can be like “I've been to this restaurant, like I've looked at this menu I wondered who it was” and come to find out it's Dane Danner, this super cool surfer dude that designs really cool stuff for like Vans and all the restaurants here, you know? So it's accessibility and just empowering people with the skills and the resources that we have to let them do what they want with it. Like after the classes it's up to them to pursue it, if you're still interested follow up with the teachers or just continue to pursue that passion, it's really just those two things like accessibility and empowering them.

Each One Teach One starts July 7th, we’re still taking students and applications. Go on the website (TheTravelersClubsd.com), click on the class you want.

if you are a student in high school, or a college student, you could DM us or email us and we'll send you the promo code, you can send it to all your friends or whatever. It doesn't matter as long as you guys are committed to learning.

Whether you guys want to learn a skill or you guys are just interested, it's an open community so there's no pressure, it's just a group of like-minded people who are interested in learning things together and growing as a community.

- The Travelers Club -