Surreal Comfort: What’s in a name?

August 27th, 2009

0

Border Stylo. That is the company’s name.

Geez, were all the good names taken? Some wonder…

First of all, it is pronounced Border Steeeelo. As the FAQs say, it is supposed “represent our heritage.”

But what does that really mean? The name’s power derives from the Surreal Comfort it gives us. It is, quite simply, a piece of home we have carried with us throughout the years.

The landscape of company names is an inhospitable, mountainous no man’s land with unusual rock formations and “unearthly” magnetic forces. In this primordial valley, our name is a tranquil oasis or “slip-and-slide” amongst dinosaur fossils. A tent of hospitality in the storm.

The name hails from a particular time and place, a time of simplicity: turn-of-the-century Tijuana, Mexico.
In the 90’s, Tijuana was not the heart-breaking war zone of 2009. Back then it was a city of new beginnings, it was a city of reinvention (the wheel having been patented there in 1979, 1998, and in 2005). It was the last free place I have ever lived in. It was a city free from the old (and new) ways; it had been liberated from assumptions by armies of exiles settling on her hills and beaches. It was a city where the majority of the population was improvising their own dance towards happiness. Few originated from Tijuana, and few remained, but this was not a tragedy, this was the matter-of-fact reality of one of last few places in the world where the future lay ahead of, not behind, one.

Back then and there, Oscar, Ed, and I used to do things “Tijuas Stylo.” This was Spanglish for doing things in “the style of Tijuas,” — i.e. motivated by originality and experimentation and often resulting in some sort of physical comedy. The phrase was used by friends on both sides of the US-Mexico border, and, in their hands, it evolved into its current incarnation: Border Stylo.

In 2000, we left TJ. Years passed. We montaged our way through different climates, languages, always carrying a lodged piece of stylo shrapnel in our brains. We matured enough to appreciate how the border mentality was not monopolized by a dusty hamlet where the Ceasar Salad was invented (true story). We saw it in New York. We saw it in Madrid. We saw it in the excited faces of strangers and friends in streets of Los Angeles, cafes in San Francisco, and bus rides in Boston’s Chinatown. Once we scratched the surface, and that stylo manner of being comfortable with contradictions, of cross-pollinating academic disciplines and creating hybrid mentalities was there all around us.

Back in February 2008, Ed, Oscar, and I had the monumental task of choosing a name. We burned through a list of names meant to create some premeditated brand image or another, but ultimately we went with what felt right. We wanted a name which would describe the motley group of intellectual rebels we would recruit, a name which would guide our search for odd solutions, a name with a voice and a wink, a name ready to crack a joke, a name which is 100% ours, but which we can give to others.

So we chose Border Stylo.

Tagged with:

Related Posts

Author