CLASSY
hemmed in
We can’t talk about class without talking about race. Through eye-opening conversations with two people of color in the fashion industry, Jonathan realizes some hard truths about the ways he’s adapted in order to blend in. And he reveals how one small, but bold act is helping him to reclaim his cultural identity.
You can find more on Brenda Equihua’s clothing brand on her website https://equihua.us/
You can stay up to date with Amechi Ugwu on Instagram @_amechi_
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
JONATHAN: This episode was supposed to be about fashion. I think a lot about what our clothes say about us and what they convey to the world. What I wear has been a pretty monumental part of the class shift I’ve made. But then I talked to the two people you’re going to hear from today… they’ve both worked in the clothing and fashion industry… and those conversations… they ended up being about so much more than clothes and more about who is considered classy… and who has the power to say what classy actually is.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: From Pineapple Street Studios … this is, you guessed it Classy, a show about the chasms between us that are really hard to talk about, but too big to ignore. I’m your host Jonathan Menjivar.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: We’re gonna get started with this guy. His name is Amechi Ugwu … and I called him up because I knew he’d worked in retail … selling clothes in high end menswear shops across the country. I was interested in that dynamic of being a salesman and selling really fancy suits and shoes to people with a lot of money. Amechi first got into clothes when he was in college. Back then, he was experimenting a lot and some of his clothes were pretty wild.
AMECHI UGWU: I can describe to you one outfit that everybody always remembers. I had on a horse jockey helmet.
JONATHAN: A helmet?
AMECHI: Yeah, a horse jack horse (laughs) jockey helmet, some mirrored aviator sunglasses, a satin gold bow tie, a dress military jacket, some corn colored corduroys, red socks, black patent leather shoes. I mean, if you could picture that outfit and what that might have looked like… Oh, I was having fun.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Amechi grew up in Houston. His family was middle-class, it was a mostly black neighborhood. And for college, he went to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
AMECHI: Southern University is a historically black college. And I remember sitting in the crowd, you know, at convocation, and I looked to my left and my right and everybody's black. I look into the stands and everybody's black. I graduated on a Saturday. I started my first job the following Tuesday. And I remember being in the first morning meeting and looking around. I was like, is really just it's just me now, you know? It's just I'm the only I'm the only Black person now. And that was a different experience. That was something that like in my life, I had never experienced. I think from elementary school all the way to college, everybody was either Black or Hispanic majority.
JONATHAN: The shop Amechi was working at was fancy. The kind of place featured in GQ magazine. His co-workers, they were welcoming … and they all had to wear a kind of uniform … a blazer and oxford shirt. Amechi looked good in the clothes. He was wearing leather soled shoes for the first time in his life. But pretty quickly, the fact that Amechi was black became a thing between him and some of the guys he was working with. Not in any kind of overt way, but things would come up when they were standing around, waiting for customers.
AMECHI: Like if we were talking about cars, right, and everybody's super into the Ferrari and Porsches and and Lamborghinis, you know, and I was thinking, Man, I want a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado. I want it to be silver. And, you know, I'll describe my own car like, would inspire me. You know, I think about, like, blaxploitation films and just in the neighborhood, like, you grow up seeing, like, that was part of our culture was like taking these old school cars and fixing them up.
JONATHAN: Amechi would talk about the bright, shiny paint people used on the cars. The big sound systems.
AMECHI: Those were the things that, like, really inspire me. Like seeing those things like me look like a motherfuckin’ spaceship. I was like, look at the car is like the hood of the car is super long. There's something about seeing those cars. They're like, Really? I wanted one.
[MUSIC]
AMECHI: So to come to that group where they're talking about Ferrari and Porsche and Benzes and Rolls Royce, they were kinda like what? Cadillac?! They thought it was strange that they were like, Why would you want a Cadillac? And I was like, Man, look at it. Like, they didn't get it. They just didn't understand.
JONATHAN: And what’d that feel like?
AMECHI: It's like feeling rejected a little bit. You know, you like you present something that you're excited about or that you love, and then people laugh at it and it kind of like puts you in a position where you kind of doubt yourself, you know, like, is this good? Should I not, you know, like you start to look at your opinions or your ideas and question yourself. And, it was frustrating because I wanted to be myself. But you also, in a sense, you want to be a part of the team and you want to feel like the things that you think are cool that somebody else is like, I see what you talking about. You know, they can relate to it in some way, but sometimes it felt like they wouldn't even try. Even though I learned a lot about Porsches and Ferrari Rolls-Royces. And, you know, I learned a lot about it.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: This car thing … it wasn’t just a matter of not fitting in and having his taste questioned. It was actually important to the job. Relating to customers, having some sort of shared understanding of the things you’re into … that’s how you sell clothes.
AMECHI: In luxury fashion, a lot of your job as a salesperson when they walk in is not necessarily trying to sell them this one item, but to connect with them. And make them feel like they belong here and this is where they want to buy it. And I think it was when I started having conversations with these people that I started to get a better understanding of like, how different we were. Oh yeah me and the wife went to the country club, and we were you know playing some rounds of tennis, and then we had brunch, and then we duh duh duh. And it’s like, that’s not a part of my upbringing, you know I don’t know anybody who went to brunch when I was growing up.
JONATHAN: Selling clothes to guys who were driving Rolls Royces … this kind of power dynamic … Amechi found it intimidating. He says he kind of folded in on himself at first. But over time it went away, because he developed this way to combat that feeling.
AMECHI: You know growing up in my community, we have a way of still being able to like find our own worth, regardless of what such and such or whoever might have. You know, you can’t tell me that I’m not that guy cause I don’t have money. You may have money, you may have the cars, whatever. But I'm flyer than you. I dress better than you. I look better than you. You know, like all of these things you find to like … pshhh … I ain’t worried about what such and such has when he walks in the door. And that became like the attitude that I had to tap into.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Amechi worked at this store for a few years. And then … he moved to New York and started working at an even higher end menswear store. The kind of place where you can’t just walk out the door with clothes. You’ve gotta get measured and have them all tailored and everything. This shop was a little more international. There were Asians from all over the world. And… some white guys.
AMECHI: So it was a little bit of a mixed bag. And again, just me. And I'm still the only Black guy.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Here, there weren’t people actively questioning Amechi’s taste. But still, being the only Black guy … he found himself kind of hemmed in. Trying to follow some unspoken rules about the way he should behave … all the standard code-switching that people of color often have to do in situations like this. But maybe weirder … there seemed to be these rules that the other employees in the store were following about the way they should behave around him.
AMECHI: There were times when it was really apparent that some of my white coworkers had never worked with Black people before. Like they didn’t know what to do with themselves. You know like, it manifest itself as like overcompensation. I mean, sometimes it would be like just over praising me, you know, like, Oh, you doing this so well. And it's like, man, I literally just put the shoes on the shelf. Like, why are you like, you know?
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: So, it’s in this environment that something happens one day that really shakes Amechi. It makes him question all the ways he’s been adjusting himself to fit in.
AMECHI: It was a really quiet day. We didn't have a whole lot going on in the shop. And this guy walks in and immediately when he walks in, everybody's ears kind of perk up because dude kind of looks like he's homeless. And tells everybody he wants to get a suit. So they’re like, alright. They start putting suits on him. You know, he's trying on everything. He eventually ends up with a whole kit on shirt, jacket, shoes, socks, tie, whole thing, and he puts it on. He's looking at the mirror like, Oh, yeah, man, I like it. He's like, I'll take it. And we're all kind of like, wait, because all of the clothes at this shop come unfinished. So the hem on the pants is not done, and the sleeves are not done. And it looks like at this point the suit is swallowing him a little bit.
JONATHAN: Amechi is standing off to the side, watching all this happen. The guy tells the salesmen that are helping him that he’ll take the suit as is. He wants to walk out wearing it.
AMECHI: So he gets up to the counter and they ring everything up. Comes out to a couple thousand dollars and um he starts looking for his wallet after we give him the total. He's like patting his pockets and we're like, Oh, man. You know, I think in the back of everybody's mind, we’re like, He got no wallet. And these stars pat in his pockets. He's like, Maybe I left in the dressing room. He goes back in the dressing room, there's no wallet, and we prepare for something to happen. We're like, All right. He can't find his wallet. Like, this is the point where he just, like, breaks for the door and tries to tackle somebody, you know? So, you know, we kind of get into this formation and let him know, like, you know, we're all here. We all are paying attention. We're all alert. And you can kind of see him looking around and checking. He sees somebody at the door. He sees somebody standing next to the guy at the counter is just kind of like waiting, like, what are you going to do? And then he just kind of pauses and says, You know what? I guess I'm just going to come back. You know, I got to go find my wallet. And, goes back to the fitting room, takes everything off and leaves. Never comes back.
[MUSIC]
AMECHI: That was a particularly strange like scenario for me because the guy happened to be Black. I had my own, you know, that was my own ideas, my own thoughts that were that were happening while this was going. And I think one of them was feeling like, man, why is this guy coming in here and doing this? Why is he making us look bad? You know, that's, that's what's going through my head at the time.
[MUSIC]
AMECHI: It was unfair, as I mean to say that like in hindsight, that's an unfair way to look at that. But that was, that was what I was thinking at that time.
JONATHAN: Did you guys talk about it after the guy left?
AMECHI: I think when he walked out the door, everybody just kind of stared at each other for like 30 seconds. We were just like, trying to figure out exactly what, you know, what just happened.
JONATHAN: Yeah.
AMECHI: That was something I more had to sit with on my own. And I don't, I don't even think I talked to any friends about it or really got to, like, hash that out with anybody.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: What is the making us look bad? In what way were you, thinking like, he’s making us look bad? I think I understand, but …
AMECHI: Uh well, you know, like there's this idea in, in the Black community that, like, we always have to be on our best behavior. Like, we all have to be doing, you know, doing the right thing. Like, you know, a white person or anybody don't have to necessarily be somebody white, but they experience like a Black person, one Black person or two or five. And they say “Black people are this or they behave like that,” or “Black people are always doing this.” So where I was coming from when I thought that was, you know, like this is just another strike on that, you know, on that list, you know, someone who's not Black experiencing a Black person in this way and then put in that like, oh, they Black people, da da, da. And this is in my mind, this may not even be what these other people were thinking, but this is just because of how I'm experiencing the world and people who look like me have experienced the world. This is what's going through my mind.
[MUSIC]
AMECHI: I may… and with all my coworkers, with all of the people that we work with, I might be the only black person they ever interact with, you know, in their life. And I just think about like those… I think in that space I was thinking, well, like, we're never here. So when we do show up, it needs to be in the best light.
JONATHAN: Did that make you think anything at all about the way that… it's different, but in some ways you had to be on your best behavior at these places. Like, you couldn't be 100% authentically who you were.
AMECHI: Yeah, Yeah, I felt like that. And maybe some of that might have been in my head to, you know, thinking that I couldn't be myself. And maybe I could have been and they would have been totally accepting of it. You know, it's quite possible. But I think at that time, I don't think I ever felt comfortable completely, you know, 100% being myself, because there was still a little bit of discomfort for me in being the only Black guy. Like being the only Black person. I still feel like there were certain topics or subjects that I would only want to talk about with other Black people or only want to hear the perspective of certain people. I mean, like I think about that scenario that I just told you about is like I couldn't imagine ever having that conversation with somebody or telling somebody about my thoughts and how I felt with somebody who wasn't Black, until now. Because if you don’t come from that or understand why I might’ve thought that, it’d be hard for you to understand where I was coming from or how to rationalize what it was I was seeing.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Amechi Ugwu no longer works at that shop in New York. His last job in retail was in 2020. In some ways, he’s returned to a place where he’s not having to think about things like this all the time. He now runs his own brand making sportswear for HBCUs. It’s called Torch Sportswear.
AMECHI: Where I am now, I don’t think I’ll ever work another retail job. I pray that I never have to work in retail again. But I know that if that day ever came, my approach would be a lot different. You know? How I would move in that space and how I would present would be different than how I have in the past. I can’t compress myself anymore.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: I’m never going to fully understand what it was like for Amechi in that moment. But it makes so much sense … I think you probably understand it to some degree too. But I have had experiences where the combination of race and class has made me do things that I have questioned. I’m a pretty white-passing Latino. I grew up with the culture, my first language was Spanglish. But my Spanish is pretty broken now. Sometimes people don’t know I’m Latino until I tell them. Like, this one time at work, someone pointed at my face after I told them and they said, I knew there was something going on there … The thing that’s happened for me, the way that I have … frankly gotten a little confused I guess when it comes to race and class … is that when I decided that I wanted a life where I could be creative and not have to do manual labor… I mostly looked to white people and white culture. But like … odd, dorky pockets of white culture. Like when I was a teenager, one of my first exposures to journalism … a thing I would watch whenever it was on TV … was this guy Huell Howser. He was from Tennessee … and he’d travel all over California with a microphone doing features on things like … making peanut brittle.
HUELL HOWSER: Now we’re going to pour it out?
GUY: That’s right.
HUELL: Oh look! Ha, ha! Now that’s peanut brittle!
GUY: That’s peanut brittle!
JONATHAN: There’s other stuff too. I … am an Eagle Scout. I wore that uniform until I was 18 years old. But maybe the strangest thing I got into … a thing I’m very embarrassed to confess right now … is that for a year or two when I was in high school … I had a subscription to Country Living Magazine. (Laughs)
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: I think maybe it started because I was into R.E.M. and they were from the south. Or maybe I just wanted out of my house, out of my boring suburban town and the country seemed somehow appealing. I don’t know, but one day in the grocery store, I picked up this magazine … and I just couldn’t get enough. There was feature after feature of nice, proper little houses out in the country somewhere with everything decorated just so. I thought it was so classy. It was like Dwell Magazine if Col. Sanders was the editor-in-chief. I loved it. And you know … people of color are allowed to consume whatever culture they want. All this nerdy, white stuff, it influenced me deeply… still does. My daughter makes fun of me because I will watch hours and hours of that home renovation show Home Town … that’s basically Country Living on HGTV. The part of all of this that feels upsetting is that when I was looking for an escape hatch … I didn’t see any examples of Latinos out there. They were there … in music and film and literature, even journalism … I know that now. But they weren’t on the TV. They weren’t mainstream. This was all happening at a time when anti-immigrant fervor was raging in California. Voters had overwhelmingly supported Prop 187 basically taking away all social services for undocumented immigrants and kids at my school were openly talking to me about Mexicans stealing jobs and living off of welfare. At the same time, some people in my own family we’re calling me a guerro for living in the suburbs and being into the things I was into. I think in some ways, through some combination of all of that … I internalized that Latinos didn’t deserve better. That we didn’t deserve nice things … Coming up, someone helps me see that we do.
[MUSIC]
[AD BREAK]
JONATHAN: Alright … Jonathan back here … your very classy host. Brenda Equihua is a luxury fashion designer in L.A. Her work has been featured in Vogue and the L.A. Times … Bad Bunny and Lil Nas X have worn her stuff. But it took her a while to get to that place. Her journey into the world of fashion started in high school when she applied to Parsons … the art and design college in New York.
BRENDA EQUIHUA: I'd heard of that school just through overhearing someone's conversation. That's how I heard about that fashion school.
JONATHAN: Someone at school?
BRENDA: Yeah, someone at school. So I'm a very curious person, and that's how I've acquired 90% of the information has been through nosiness. You know, I'm a professional chismosa, that’s used this information for good reasons.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: A chismosa is a gossip. And you could call Brenda a chismosa … but really what she was was an observer. It’s a trait she picked up from her mom. Brenda grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. It’s a town right on the beach … super affluent. Brenda was being raised by her single mom there in a Latino community that was mostly employed working for the rich, mostly white people in town. Brenda’s mom cleaned houses and sometimes Brenda would come along with her. And she’d see first hand the way her mom was actively studying these people’s lives.
BRENDA: So my mom would always show us like, oh, look, you know, smell this perfume. It smells really good. We should get this. Or I've seen this crema at this other lady's house, so this must be really good you know? And so we learned through this sort of unauthorized access, were good products were that we wouldn't have known otherwise.
JONATHAN: Brenda’s mom would do the same at yard sales. She’d drive to rich neighborhoods and buy up all the brand name clothing they couldn’t normally afford. She got Brenda fancy, almost over the top stuff – fur coats, this pleated vintage dress from the 30s.
BRENDA: In my world, having a crocodile alligator clutch, you know, in junior high was totally normal.
JONATHAN: Her mom would indulge in nice clothes too … living out a life where she was saying that you can be classy, no matter where you come from.
BRENDA: My mom was wearing evening gowns, like to my fifth grade parties that were outside in the dusty like environment of our apartment complex, and she'd be decked out for our parties. Like, she was like my Beyoncé. And now that I'm older, I'm like, That's so cool that she was like that, because maybe in her mind she knew that she might not ever have the opportunity to wear that gown to whatever is considered acceptable.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: So Chismosa Brenda … she overhears about this fashion school in New York … she applies to Parsons, she gets in. She can’t afford to visit New York before she goes … really can’t afford the school … but the community rallies around her to help cover some costs. And once she’s there, she’s overwhelmed by the level of wealth. There are students from all over the world … and they are wealthy in a way that, even growing up in Santa Barbara she’d never seen.
BRENDA: I had a friend who told me that you know, back home, she’d come out of the shower and all her clothes was already laid out for her.
JONATHAN: Who laid out her clothes?
BRENDA: Her workers.
JONATHAN: But the thing she really notices, the thing she struggles with, is that at Parsons … all of the reference points come from white culture. It’s in the designers they’re being taught about … and the classic films they're being shown.
BRENDA: So the some of the movies were like Gone With the Wind and Some Like It Hot.
ARCHIVAL CLIP FROM GONE WITH THE WIND
Scarlett O'Hara: Rhett, where shall I go? What shall I do?
Rhett Butler: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
BRENDA: And, these were the things that you were supposed to know, right? Like the Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn. You know what are considered American classic icons and movies. It was good education like I was. I was happy to learn it because I didn't really have a lot of exposure to that. I mean, I did grow up watching classic films, but they were Mexican ones. They were movies with Pedro Infante and María Félix.
[ARCHIVAL CLIP, Enamorada]
Pedro Armendariz: Por favor…
María Félix: No me toques
BRENDA: And then of course, we're in New York. So it's all about being chic. And it was about Calvin Klein and Donna Karan and Jil Sander, and it was about being sleek and chic and clean cut.
JONATHAN: Brenda says she was in survival mode at Parsons. She was scraping money together to buy fabric for her projects. She was basically just eating bagels with cream cheese for every meal. And on this tight budget and under stress, she couldn’t make work that matched the garments she was seeing in her head. She started failing classes.
BRENDA: And as this was happening, I remember I went on a walk one day with one of the guys that I was in class with. And I shared with him my story of how I was being failed. And he told me that he had a woman that lived with him that cooked for him, cleaned for him, and sewed all of his projects for him. And I’m just listening to this story thinking, our worlds are so drastically different, I can’t even believe that we’re being graded by the same standards.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Brenda eventually finds her stride … she manages to get through Parsons. After she graduates she gets a couple different jobs, working in the industry, as a designer. But she finds that working in the fashion world is like Parsons the reboot. There’s money, there’s whiteness. She’s working in fashion, but she’s miserable. The people she really connects with are the pattern makers who are working-class, mostly Asian and Latino. She really values the level of skill they’re bringing to the work. But still, she wants to build something of her own. And then one day, she’s with her family … they’re driving to Six Flags Magic Mountain. Her brother’s at the wheel. And she says …
BRENDA: Turn the music down. I have an announcement. I have something I want to tell you guys.
JONATHAN: So they turn the music down.
BRENDA: and I told them I have this crazy idea. I want to make jackets and outerwear out of Cobija blankets.
JONATHAN: OK Latinos, disculpame un minuto. Cobijas are these blankets that are super popular in the Latino community. [MUSIC] They’re soft, thick … plushy. And probably the most notable thing is that they’re loud. You can get them with almost anything printed on them … a Lakers logo, the Virgin Mary … a lot of them have exotic animals. Tigers and lions and wolves and cheetahs and wild horses and tigers and unicorns and tigers … so many tigers. I still have some that I’ve had since I was a kid. They’re also pretty cheap. So with this idea, the next day Brenda goes to her studio and gets to work right away. She wants to take cobijas and turn them into something luxurious.
BRENDA: I built a pattern. I figured out what what you know, what I needed to do first and try to figure out the steps. And I knew that it logistically, it was going to be a hot disaster.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Okay. I understand you, like, have this vision, but why? Like, why do you want to take this thing that is seen as cheap and kind of even like low class if people even know about it at all? Why do you want to take that and turn it into a coat?
BRENDA: Gosh, you know, I mean, it's my story. I feel like it's very much me, right? Like I came from that world and then I learned all of these things, like all of the ways of seeing that were a bit different. And when I thought about the blankets, a part of me felt like, damn, I really don't want this to disappear.
JONATHAN: Is any of it at all a kind of fuck you to a culture that sort of rejected you for a while?
BRENDA: Oh, absolutely. My life has been a series of fuck yous in every environment that I've been in. You know? Yeah, that's always been me. I've always been like, with my finger out in every environment. That's why I'm like, I don't care if I belong. I'm going to be here. This is where I need to be.
[MUSIC]
BRENDA: Growing up in Santa Barbara and going to school at Parsons and being in the industry, it was um always felt like this very curated experience by other people that didn't feel relatable to me. And I was like, How do I change that? Like, this isn't right. This doesn’t feel good.
JONATHAN: I’m so jealous of people like this who can walk through the world, giving the bird and relying on the strength of that. That ability to deflect rejection with your middle fingers like they’re Wonder Woman’s bracelets. I’ve tried being angry, but all it ever got me was bitterness and calluses. Instead I’ve kept my middle fingers in my pockets and tried to blend in. For me, that’s seemed like the classiest way to get by. But I don’t know … now I’m not so sure.
[MUSIC]
KRISTEN TORRES: I’m about to try on the devotion coat.
Unfortunately, I was stuck in my closet with all my lame clothes while I was talking to Brenda. But my producer Kristen was there in Brenda’s studio in L.A. … surrounded by all her cobija-inspired clothes. Kristen pulled out a full length hooded coat … it’s deep red with roses all over the front and a big ass Virgin Mary on the back.
KRISTEN: Oh my gosh, thank you. Wow, oh my gosh! Brenda! Oh my god. Wow, I look so fine. The pockets are perfect. The moment I put my arm in the sleeve, I felt like euphoric. I just felt like my arm just dipped into some, like, comfort puddle. (Laughs)
BRENDA: Exactly! That’s what we try to do!
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN These coats are so nice. Anybody who has spent winters snuggled under cobijas lusts after them. But I wondered how Brenda felt taking this blanket you can get for $40 … this working-class, immigrant luxury item … and turning it into coats that … some of them .. they sell for more than $700 dollars.
BRENDA: These coats don’t have to be that price. I make them that price, because of all the work and the details that I put into it. You know like, we buy all of our zippers here in LA cause they’re the best zippers I could find. So they are expensive because I make them more expensive than they should be through my choices. And that is my education. That is me. Like that is how I grew up. I wanted to have nice things. I like how nice things feel. I like having them in my home. I like touching nice things. I like looking at them. So I make things that look and feel good. You know, it's just that we've never been given the authority to be the curators of style, and that's sort of what I feel like I want to do loudly.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: Hearing Brenda say this … it had a profound effect on me. Just hearing someone say it’s ok to have nice things. And that those nice things don’t have to be what mainstream culture says they are. A lot of us Latinos, because we grew up with people who didn’t have nice things … and because the images of Latinos that we see most often are people who are suffering and working their asses off desperately trying to build new lives … sometimes it feels like an abandonment to want. But I want … It wasn’t immediately after this interview, but sometime in the making of this show … I put on this old gold chain my dad had given me when I was a teenager. When he first gave it to me, it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t my guerro vibe at the time. But a few weeks ago, I dug the chain out of a little box in my nightstand and I put it on … and it looked right. I know gold chains aren’t solely the domain of Latinos just like Country Living isn’t just for white people. But this one is. It’s gold … and it’s a little loud. And it looks good on me.
[MUSIC]
JONATHAN: OK here we are, we’ve been talking about class for three episodes…and man, it’s even clearer to me now than when we started that class can be so sticky and uncomfortable. And you know …nobody’s perfect. No matter our class background, we’re all bound to cross some lines and make mistakes. Maybe even offend people. And I don’t necessarily have all the answers for what to do in those situations. But I know someone who might be able to help…and he’s going to answer your questions. That’s on the next episode of Classy.
[MUSIC]
[CREDITS]
JONATHAN: Classy is a production of Pineapple Street Studios. It’s written and produced by me, Jonathan Menjivar. Our Producer is Kristen Torres. Associate Producer … Marina Henke. Senior Managing Producer … Asha Saluja. Our Editor is Haley Howle. Executive Editor … Joel Lovell. Our Assistant Engineers are Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks. Senior Engineers are Marina Paiz and Pedro Alvira. Fact checking by Tom Colligan. This episode was mixed and scored by Marina Paiz, with additional scoring by me. Music in this episode from Joseph Shabason courtesy of Western Vinyl, Joseph Shabason and Vibrant Matter and Shabason and Gunning courtesy of Seance Center, Additional music from Epidemic Sound. Our artwork is by Curt Courtney and Lauren Viera at Cadence 13. Marketing and promotion by Grace Cohen-Chen, Hillary Schupf, and Liz O’Malley. Legal services for Pineapple Street Studios by Kristel Tupja at Audacy. Special thanks to Jeremy Kirkland. Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky are the Executive Producers at Pineapple Street. The next episode will be out in a week. Make sure to listen on the Audacy app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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