Jayme Lemperle

What do you do when you find amusement and enjoyment in a company but learn that their owner has a questionable history of despicable actions? Do you boycott the company because the owner is awful or do you find ways to celebrate the employees who aren't crap?

This past weekend I ducked in to the Rip N' Dip pop-up shop in the Lower East Side and enjoyed all their absurd cartoony cats, lo-fi drawings, alien heads and skate decks. Everyone that worked there was extremely nice and the artwork was crude but amusing (as it should be).

However, doing a tiny bit of research on the owner results in multiple allegations of domestic violence on top of gross skate culture style exploitation in other forms. Not something I have any interest in supporting or helping others support. Maybe these allegations are hearsay? Maybe not.

The artist responsible for much of the Rip N' Dip aesthetic, Jayme Lemperle, has a lot of amusing illustrations and doodles but has, supposedly, also been screwed by the company. So, instead of supporting a questionable company, go support the artist, a more worthwhile endeavor anyway.