BART BRIDGE DESIGNER LUKE FRASER REBUILDS HIS BRAND AND LIFE.
On the afternoon of Oct. 8, Bart Bridge designer Luke Fraser was at his Glen Ellen home studio with friends, designing sports-theme hats to take and sell at Walnut Creek’s Oktoberfest the following weekend. Little did he know that by midnight, the Nuns Fire, one of the devastating October 2017 Northern California wildfires, was fast approaching his fourbedroom cabin in the hills above Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County, and 34-year-old Fraser would be forced to evacuate his live-work space with little more than the clothes on his back.
The fire would take out everything else — the cabin and approximately $70,000 dollars worth of Fraser’s sports-theme merchandise and materials, including 7,000 T-shirts, 300 pairs of overalls, countless yards of fabric, vintage apparel and thousands of sports patches.
“Everything I had designed and all my materials were up there,” he says. “There was so much to take, but I had to run out of there, so I wasn’t going to grab some T-shirts on the way out.”
Losing your entire business overnight would deter many entrepreneurs from rebuilding. Even Fraser flirted with the idea of quitting. “The fire damaged me psychologically, so the next day I was bummed, staring into space,” he says. “I said, ‘Luke, you can’t start over.’ ”
But then a series of fortunate events occurred that encouraged him to keep his dream alive. Someone placed a large order on the Bart Bridge website, and although Fraser couldn’t fill it, it offered validation. Then he saw a couple wearing his designs at a Burning Man decompression party. Finally, basketball season was resuming on Oct. 17, and as a season ticket holder, he needed some fresh gear to wear to Golden State Warriors games.
“I thought, ‘I need to get back into this,’ ” he says, “and there was nothing telling me not to, except my own fear. So I pared down my website while trying to quickly remake the bestsellers in time for the Christmas season. I was amazed that I got back into the swing of things for Christmas, getting even a fraction of what I was expecting.”
A longtime sports fan, the Berkeley native began designing sports-theme clothing in 2011, just to have something unique to wear at Warriors games. Inspired by the famous Telegraph Avenue vendor Patches and the area punk rock kids and hippies who sewed fabric and patches onto their jackets, he would create an alternative to the typical corporate jerseys and hats.
“Looking back, that was maybe the beginning of getting the gears churning,” he says. “There had to be another way to show my passion for sports other than an Adidas jersey.”
So taking the extra-large T-shirts adorned with logos that were handed out at the games, Fraser cut them up and sewed them onto a pair of jeans, or he’d take some vintage fabric and a Warriors patch and sew them onto the back of a vest. He would soon branch out, creating looks inspired by the San Francisco Giants, San Francisco 49ers, Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, San Jose Sharks and Sacramento Kings.
“I liken my style to ikebana fashion,” he says, referencing the art of Japanese floral arranging where a branch, a small flower and a simple vessel can make for an arresting display. “But instead of a branch, flower and vase, I have a vintage camo button-up or a pair of jeans or overall shorts, some fabric and a sports patch.”
Motivated to hone his craft, Fraser took a sewing class at a local junior college. He was soon selling his wares at Bay Area fairs and flea markets, including the Fillmore Jazz Festival, North Beach Festival and Union Street Festival, Treasure Island Flea and Oakland’s First Fridays. With his clothing wellreceived, he felt emboldened to create a retail site in 2015, which he named Bart Bridge, after the walkway that connects sports fans to the Oracle Arena and Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. His clothing, which connects fans to their favorite teams, was the Oakland Magazine pick for Best Local Sports Gear Made by Local Sports Fans in 2017.
“You get compliments, and people want it, which makes you feel validated and keeps you trying to move forward,” he says. “Then I began to make enough to live.”
Today, Fraser lives with a lot less in a tight trailer in a FEMA mobile-home park in Santa Rosa, 20 minutes from his former home. He keeps new merchandise in a storage unit in nearby American Canyon. His wish for 2018, other than rebuilding his brand and regaining some of the possessions he’s lost, is finding a new home base to live and work.
“Imagine any company having all of their stuff in one room and then losing it all,” he says. “It’s hard to get back. It took me seven years to slowly get something moving, and it’s only been months since the fire. But I feel like I have more wind in my sails and something pushing me forward. I’m the designer back from the ashes. I just wish I could find a base where I’m designing and sewing and selling and not have to be so scattered.”