El Kartel is an established hip culture retail store located on Robson Street, downtown. They offer premier articles of street wear clothing from brands like Stussy, Buddshit Punk, Religion, Evisu and more. We had the opportunity to sit down with the founder, Pablo, and gain some insight into El Kartel and it’s passion.

Please describe yourself and El Kartel to our readers.

Holy s***, that’s a problem man! I’m from Mexico, been here for ten years and ah…oh my background! I used to paint a lot and do a lot of graphic designing for a long time for different companies and then I ended up working pretty much for a guy with a shop. I have always been totally into extreme sports, artwork, and music. I love extreme sports even though it is not really what El Kartel does or caters to.

To me, El Kartel is all about sharing with what we love and what I love. We try to incorporate the Mexican culture. It is pretty much “welcome, welcome” and share with people. This place is like our second home, we spend so much time here! This is our dream place I mean, check it out, we love these shoes and guess what, here they are! Check this out too, we like art, and here it is. Every 6 weeks we have an art show. The artists, they take 100% of the money, we don’t take anything. Its just our way to support the community

What does “El Kartel” mean?! And what’s with story behind the logo?

The actual word means… I love the sound of the word; it sounds really smooth. It’s like we going to be dealing, not drugs, but clothing! F***, I love El Cartel but I wrote it with my pen but hey hey! with a K instead so people wont mix with it drugs. F*** yeah, this is what I like and I love Mexico.

As for the logo, it goes back to my childhood. You f***ing grow up, go to the market, get a mask, and start wrestling with your friend! These two heroes of mine back in the day,  they are wrestlers and wrestling was their life. El Santos and Blue Demon were their names. We would see them wrestle in the arena and every night we see them when we turn on the TV! F*** everyone wanted to be like them. You see these two big guys with their masks on in their TV shows and then all of a sudden, “beep beep beep”, their watches start ringing and it’s the police saying “yo yo yo! Bad people! Come help us!”.

The thing was, these guys never took off their masks! When they were in the supermarket, when they were driving, or even in the restaurant, they wouldn’t take it off! Whenever they went somewhere, it was always, oh my god! it’s blue demon! There was the time when El Santo was on his death bed and he took off his mask on TV for everyone for about a second and everyone was like “whoa!!!!” He’s pretty ugly!

So when it came to the logo, I loved it and it just worked. When we started El Kartel, we were pretty much like, “this is the name, this is the logo, bam.” I brought my records and for the first three months, we used only records and we tried to stick with only records. But in the end, you run out of things to play so we had to move on to something else.

Can you give us a brief history on the store? When did it open? It seemed like El Kartel was opened for all my life. As a kid, I would always drop by EK!

Whoa… I can’t really remember. We opened for five years now… I cant remember man, f***, I think it must have been March! We are pretty happy that we’re open and still around. Most people on Robson, they don’t last!

Good thing you brought that up, it was our next question! Being one of the first street wear culture store to launch on Robson, what was the biggest challenge?

You’re just making sure you make enough to pay rent, and thank god that even though rent is huge, we can make it. We appreciate the people that come and give us their support. For us, even if they don’t buy something, as long as they come and check us out, then thank you, man. You like, we love it. It’s not that easy to live on Robson and it’s not always about money.

Art Shows… El Kartel Brand…. promoting local brands and art, this is all a great thing. What have you got going on for El Kartel in the near future that you can share with us?

We’re trying to expand. Maybe not in Vancouver, but other cities. We also want to focus on the Kartel brand. To us, it’s pretty exciting.

How did you fuse an art gallery and a retail store together? It definitely is working but how did you set the boundaries of where to display the art and where to retail?

The thing is that I hate to have white walls. It’s boring and I love art! What better way than to have artwork on the white and boring walls? At the beginning it was my own art but I started to run out! In the end, it’s a store slash art gallery slash f***ing crazy Mexico house. With the artists and sales, all the money from the artwork goes straight back to the artist. We don’t take any fees we don’t take any commissions, it’s our way of giving back. Just go with the flow! We don’t advertise much and just work with it. We’re basiclaly just bringing our own stuff, we just want to have fun. People like you and I make this s*** happen!

What is HYPE to you? (for this question, Pablo literally thinks for five minutes)

What does hype mean to me?! Wow. Hype means… f***… HYPE is ignorance. Hype is ignorance but it works.