PacSun Golden State of Mind Event: Ace Hotel Palm Springs, CA

This past Saturday, the fine folks from PacSun put me and my lady up for a weekend at the awesome ACE Hotel in Palm Springs, CA to launch their new campaign, Golden State of Mind. PacSun has come a long way in the last few years revamping their entire operation and direction of their stores. I know, I know, a lot of us shy away from the mall stores and stick to our stores that we know and respect and most likely our homies own. But, with that said, I have to give kudos to what PacSun has done, they realized that not everyone who likes to wear fresh threads, and is into fashion, isn’t 16 years old. Unlike most large retail chains, they have gone away with shoving branded marketing down your throat in their stores and let the collections and brands they sell speak for themselves. In other words, you don’t feel like you’re going to have a fucking nervous breakdown and anxiety attack when you’re shopping. I could go off forever on a tangent about over marketing to an older demographic, but you all get it, less is more.

The party officially started on Saturday at 1pm and lasted until 2am. I have no idea how I was standing by midnight, but they had enough entertainment there to keep the vibe going for a while without it being too redundant. The day and night featured a diverse brand mix of RVCA, Insight, Volcom, Modern Amusement, O’Neill, Roxy and Young and Reckless in attendance giving away free swag for the guests and showcasing mini booths. Beyond the brand activations PacSun had live performances by Hi Deaf, Skeet Skeet, Keith Wilson, We Barbarians and live art installations by Corey Smith and Dabs Myla. Oh, did I mention they had the famous LIME Truck roll through too for free food and also had free beer and wine popping all day and night? As with any open bar, we ended up having our own party with Sole Technology’s VP of Marketing, Don Brown and new Director of Marketing for RVCA, Jim Shubin so we could still remind everyone there that skaters know how to rock a party.

Check photos from the night below:

Time to party.

ACE Pool

Volcom’s Set-up

Insight Set-up

Live art installation

Free swag for all guests.

Volcom also brought a traveling gypsy, AKA Fortune Teller.

Lime Trucks on-site with free food all day and night.

Early crowd chillen.

I felt the need to lick Insights ass.

My girl, Alisha taking in the ACE Hotel scenery.

Insights section was pretty dope for this set-up alone!

If you ever have a chance to go to the ACE Hotel in Palm Springs, do it. The place is fucking awesome.

Telepathic Beer Bong from Jim Shubin.

Telepathic Beer Bongs are the new hot shit. Don Brown doing his version.

We definitely started partying hard later in the night.

RVCA brought Skeet Skeet to rock for most of the night.

Looks like we caused a mess with our chaos.

Never one to disappoint, Don Brown started a climbing competition.

As he was being escorted out, Don was telling security he was me, but blew it when he couldn’t remember my room number. He made it back in within 10 minutes and a new outfit.

Good times and thanks to Neil from PacSun, keep Rad Collector in the loop for any future gigs, we’ll be happy to help you rock em’.

-Photos and Story by Jones