You and Who’sday – 30 Cities in 90 Days – Pittsburgh, San Juan, Home Sweet Home
This is the fourteenth and final installment of a running feature documenting Dan Gigante’s nationwide tour on behalf of his Buffalo-based, community-driven apparel company.
By Dan Gigante, President, You and Who
First and foremost, I want to thank those of you out there who are voting for You and Who to win Crowley Webb’s 25-Hour Workday contest. You and Who is currently in first place! But we still have ten days to go, and need everyone to please keep voting for us. And to make it easier for people to do so, I created a Facebook app on You and Who’s Facebook page for our fans to vote every day. The app also allows you to opt-in to autofill your email addresses to make the voting process even speedier, sign up for a daily voting reminder, and has an easy way to post a message to your Wall encouraging your friends to vote for You and Who. We’re really appreciative of all of the support we’ve received so far. Please check out the app and let us know what you think!
This week saw the end of my “30 Cities” tour around the country. I finally made it! After a long time on the road, I visited my final two cities last week – Pittsburgh and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The tour is officially over (in fact, this is the only post I’ve written so far from the comfort of my own home). “30 cities in 90 days” proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I’m happy to say, it was extremely successful. Still, I’m glad to be home and the timing was great, returning home during Thanksgiving week. One of the best parts of the last week of the tour was that Katie Krawczyk, my girlfriend and also the Director of Communications for You and Who, was able to join me for both cities. The beginning of the week was spent in Pittsburgh, where we were able to stay with friends. Driving there reminded me how close it is to Buffalo, and after a jam-packed two days, the drive back made me wonder why I don’t visit more often. We will definitely be back in 2012 when we release the shirts from the three artists we spoke with while in town. We also found some great stores on Butler Street that seem to be great fits for our shirts. And so far, we have one organization on board, Three Rivers Youth, dedicated to preserving and uniting families combating homelessness and building life skills for at-risk youth. We are still looking for two more organizations to donate clothing and meals to in the Pittsburgh area, so if you know of a worthy charity, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
One of the great stores on Butler St in Pittsburgh
The last stop of the tour was in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and was purposefully planned to be the final city on the tour, as to hopefully gain some rest in the sunshine. It was nice to finish the trip there for a few days with Katie. The first two days were spent holed up in our hotel developing our Facebook app for the voting contest, but we did make time to eat really great meals and made one stop at Condado Beach. OK, and maybe a stop or two at the casino.
On Monday, we had time before our flight to explore Old San Juan, where we found a great store, Playero, a surf shop that carries some pretty awesome apparel that has a few locations around Puerto Rico. There, we met Ricardo, an employee and an artist who will be designing a shirt for us. We also went to La Iglesia San Francisco, a church located in the heart of Old San Juan, where Katie’s Spanglish and the help of an iPhone translation app let us string together enough sentences to inform the staff of our mission. We’re proud to say we’ll be donating to La Iglesia San Francisco, and will be reaching out to a few more organizations. I was surprised at how difficult it was to find organizations right in San Juan, as many are scattered throughout the island. We wouldn’t mind having to revisit, if need be…
La Iglesia San Francisco in Old San Juan
Finally, as today is Black Friday, I wanted to let everyone know that You and Who will have a table set up at Buffalo First’s “Give Local a Chance” event, at which we’ll be offering 20% off all merchandise tonight through Monday night. The Good Neighborhood has already posted about this event, and we hope to see you tonight! It should be a great night, and we’re really happy to be participating. And if you can’t make it tonight, but would like to take advantage of our sale, head over to www.youandwho.com and enter promo code “Thanksgiving” upon checkout.
I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving with their loved ones. I know I have much to be grateful for, most of all the support of my family, friends, and those who are supporting You and Who’s mission. “30 Cities” was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime journey for me, and I will forever carry the memories I made from this trip in my mind and in my heart. But, as the saying goes, there’s no place like home. And I am so happy to be home.
