One thing that I've found to be rather surprising over these last couple of months is how many of my finds serve as a memory of things. Little reminders of past events and old campaign ideals that are hidden along the streets. Advertisements for bands and companies that didn't manage to make it. By my count I've managed to put at least eight stickers on here that are part of a defunct element of some kind. Granted a portion of that are the old political stickers posted during my experiment back in November but still an impressive number out of the 44 posts I've put up so far. Although today's find is one of the few where I am truly certain the idea behind the sticker no longer exists.
I was wandering around Oakland after a doctor's appointment when the lines of the loading bay caught my eye. I wasn't paying that close of attention to the name on the logo, assuming it was just club insignia or something along those lines. When I was correcting the image I realized that the name of it was Dienasty, so clearly not going to be your typical find. The first site I found for Dienasty Select was an about page that seemed to be a piece of a larger company. Dienasty Select was a clothing brand in California whose goal was to get picked up by local stores and be sold online. Something that seems to be a fairly reasonable goal in today's market. They apparently partnered up with Movetic, a group that looks to help promote and foster smaller online brands like this one. I thought that this was an interesting part of the find, that this was something like an internet support group. My internship in college actually took place near a group that did a similar thing, getting smaller startups and companies together in one place to give them the best chance to move forward. Although it doesn't look like Movetic is terribly active either. Continuing on in the research process I came upon their Facebook page. Looking at their page I started to wonder if this company was still active. Like some of the other stickers I posted, I noticed that their page hadn't had any recent posts. The last couple of things that were on there were from 2013, which has served as my general sign that my sticker find is defunct but has never really been definitive. However with this find I can guarantee that this group is no longer active. The link on the Movetic and Facebook page for Dienasty Select's own website kept taking to a page entirely in Japanese. I thought it was weird that this was the site for this company. I mean why would a company based in California looking to make a name for itself choose to be in Japanese. Not that I'm saying it couldn't be but I would think that if you were looking to reach a local audience English would be the logical choice. There was also the fact that it didn't fit the typical store format. So I decided to go through Google to be able to get a translation of the page. Turns out that this domain was turned into a personal blog documenting an individual's current attempt at dieting. I can honestly say that I wasn't expecting that one. I guess it just goes to show that like the stickers on the street you can never really be sure what you're going to find or truly remove all the remnants of an idea.
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Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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