Team Saucony isn’t your typical sports team. It’s a league of true Originals. It’s a place to come together and play the sort of sports that don’t require cleats, pads or helmets. It’s less about the goals you score, and more about the hang.
Can you spot the headband?
Somewhat shockingly, the “Winner” and “Loser” headbands that we gave out during our shuffleboard and washers games became the must-have fashion accessory of SXSW.
Maybe Saucony should go into the headband business?
In addition to the Texas Garage Saucony was also present and playing around at Insound’s SXSW party at Club Deville. There were headbands & water guns to cool you off in that crazy 95 degree weather as well as a game called Washers. Washers is often referred to as “Texas Horseshoes”. Basically, you get rings (or oversized washers) into holes in box until you reach 21 points. Don’t let the simplicity of the rules trick you into thinking it was easy to win 3 times in a row & score yourself a free pair of shoes, we had some great competitions going on!
In addition to that I was keeping cool, applying sun block & listening to Jens Lekman sing all my worries away.
Saucony Originals Jazz in navy at the Saucony O’s shuffleboard court, The Texas Garage, Austin, TX
We saw Saucony Originals all over Austin…from the Jazz to the Blaze to the Courageous line. We were pleasantly surprised to see so many out-and-about!
A pair of new and old Saucony Originals Jazz at an Austin, TX house party
So here’s a call-to-action, if you will - how do you wear your Saucony’s? Submit a picture of you (or just your feet), along with the date and location, to our As Seen Here gallery. We’ll be rewarding free pairs of Saucony Originals Jazz randomly to people who submit, so if you didn’t make it to Austin, now’s your chance to win a pair of shoes!
Name: A.J.Stein
Location: Somewhere in the swamps of Jersey
URL: http://rawflame.blogspot.com
1.What got you started blogging?
I was sending links to mp3s on the net to all my friends and realized it made *way* more sense to blog. Also, as a media tech research guy for my day job, I thought the whole idea of blogging had huge commercial implications and wanted a test site for work. Seriously.
2.Three things you’re looking forward to doing in Austin that don’t necessarily involve music:
3.What kind of people do you think read your blog?
My blog is small — my crew is mostly the “too old to rock & roll, too young to die” crowd. But I did hook up statcounter magic and see hits from all over the world, which is way cool. I stay away from the typical music blog “hip band du jour” (vampire weekend, etc) so I get a lot of people subscribing because they like what I had to say about a band they searched for.
4.Worst press kit cliché:
Well I’m not a “real jounalist” so it’s not like I get the raw press kit, but I hate it when a band nobody’s ever heard of writes about their long pedigree of being in 20 other bands nobody’s ever heard of.
Seriously, who gives a rat’s ass?
5.Day job?:
Director of Technology Strategy at a research lab of a major media technology company (the evil bastards who have all the mp3 and a lot of mpeg2 video patents.) I used to be a video compression software dude with my own company but fell victim to outsourcing.
6.Alt vs. Main, discuss:
It’s all Alt now.
7.Anon commenters are_____
moderated! 
8.Band that people totally overlook, but you think is deserving of love:
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes! ha!
9.Band that everyone totally loves at the moment that is totally worthy of total love:
Wilco. How the f*ck did they get so big? People need a strong touch of humanity in their lives, and Tweedy has written some of the flat-out sweetest, prettiest songs we’ve heard in ages (Jesus etc, Impossible
Germany.)
Photos by Hal Horowitz
Things got pretty rowdy at the Texas Garage at SXSW this year. Saucony Originals had a shuffleboard court set up on the main level, right next the insane line to get into the NYLON/Guess VIP Lounge (did you wait in it?)
Thought shuffleboard was only for your 91 yr old grandmother on her yearly cruise? Think again. We had some big-name players stop by to check out the court - Mahjongg, Tilly and the Wall, Nicole Atkins and the Sea, No Age, and Shirock, just to name a few. Players competed for free shoes and other Saucony O’s swag, while our amazing and fun shuffleboard masters kept score. It was pretty chill during the day, with people taking refuge from the brutal Texas sun by the court, and things continued to get heated into the late-night. Check out some more images from Saturday night’s party!
