FE ATU RE
were actually kind of bummed that I wasn’t like super-Korean.
They either wanted me to be totally immersed in the culture or
they wanted me to be like a black American dude or like a white
American guy. Some of the garmentos when we started were like,
“Yo, who’s this Korean kid? He doesn’t speak the language; he’s
not really Korean.”
In terms of getting support from the community? The Korean
kids, yeah. The Korean gatekeepers, no. I don’t know why. I don’t
get invited to any of the big Asian events. But I’m good friends
with everyone who does. I get invited to speak a lot. There are
always Asian things going on. They invite everyone around me. I
never get invited. With colleges, it’s never the Asian groups that
invite me. My first time was a few months ago with the Korean
American Students Association at Berkeley. When the two kids
running the event picked me up from the airport, I hugged them,
and I was like, “Thank you so much for inviting me.” I just think
most people in the Asian community have no idea who I am, what
I’ve done. It’s not relevant to them. And that’s fine.
No one really knows this yet, but I’ve been in all these film and
TV meetings recently. The book has kind of trickled out to a place
where Hollywood is just like, “What a great Asian American story
without it being your typical Asian American story.” A lot of the
Asian American stories that are being told are kind of formulaic,
kind of the same. And so to have an Asian guy like me who grew
up in a Latino community, who grew up in the very white majority
hardcore punk scene, skateboarding and now in streetwear, which
is predominantly black, who fluidly navigated these different
worlds—my story’s really fringe-y, in a way. I’m kind of between
the crack. It’s not a clean story. Being Asian, being Korean hasinformed everything that I am. It’s also like not everything that
I’m not. There’s a lot of us out there; there are nuances to us. I
don’t think I’m a role model. I’m just another option.
I should probably say that there isn’t a difference between
Bobby Hundreds and Bobby Kim, since so much of the brand is a
reflection of who I am. To really understand The Hundreds you
have to understand me. That’s also why I wrote the book. But
because the brand from day one has been so personal and trans-
parent, I had to consciously corral a part of my life that was just
for me. I needed to create a separate box where everything I really
love goes into. I’m the most protective of my family and my clos-
est friends. You’ll never see them on my Instagram. I surf every
day. It’s my favorite thing in the world, and I rarely talk about it.
So [these things are] all in that box along with my faith and my
spiritual and philosophical beliefs. They’re all things I am not in
control of, and that’s also why I love them so much. If The Hun-
dreds disappears or if something happens to the brand, that has
no bearing on me as a person and doesn’t change the core of who
I am.
I just want to say thank you to Character Media for writing about
me, honestly; it’s a really big deal. I told my assistant like, “Oh,
that’s the Korean thing? I’ll 100 percent do it.” He was like, “You
want to do this one? You said no to all these other ones.” And I’m
like I have to do that one. I never get love. I need to get love.Hyun Kim is a writer based in Spain who is waiting for Bobby
Hundreds to let him follow his personal IG account.CM