Peach Berserk

Peach Berserk is an iconic fashion line in Canada.  It has been profiled in thousands of fashion articles, worn on hundreds of red carpets and countless proms and weddings.  Maybe even you owned something from Peach Berserk!  The brand was THAT ubiquitous.  Kingi Carpenter, the brains behind Peach Berserk, closed her store in 2012 but she is back with a whole new interactive fashion/art gallery/creator space.  What is Peach Berserk?  Let's go inside and find out.

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Transcript

Peach Berserk: Part 1

[00:00:00] Kingi Carpenter: So there I am sitting at my computer then, I smelled smoke. It was in October, it was getting dark. Somebody must be smoking outside and that seemed to get worse. So I go to the back of my place to the staircase going downstairs and just would, nobody wants to see, 

there's flames, right 

by the electrical box. It's old ancient electrical box. And I'm like, what am I looking at? 

[00:00:21] Miranda Black: Oh my God 

[00:00:21] Kingi Carpenter: And I I didn't would lose everything I owned, 

[00:00:26] Miranda Black: Kingi carpenter is an important Canadian designer full stop. She's been in every fashion magazine known to man she's in the Canadian fashion museum. Peach Berserk dresses have been worn on countless celebrity, red carpets, as well as in thousands of weddings and proms. When I told friends, my next episode was on Peach Berserk. Every single one of them had a story or a memory they wanted to share with me. She just inspires a feeling. For 20 years, she reigned over queen street at Augusta. She was the queen of queen street west. And if you want to challenge that title, my DMS are open. 

Open. You might think that it was the auspicious location, but consider this. That location has failed to keep a permanent tenant for the entire decade. She's been gone. But there's more. That glow, that the area had the glow that in my opinion, emanated from Peach Berserk was the Kingi carpenter effect. And that's also gone. 

The strip is kind of lifeless. 

Kingi closed her store in 2012. And she's been through a ton in the past decade.

Including that fire, which we'll get to. But she's open again. It's been this incredible off-course journey that a retailer can take. Sometimes it's rare, but Kingi carpenter is proof. You can start over. This episode is the perfect antidote to the winter blues and those entrepreneurial doubts, whether you should keep believing in your vision. So who is Kingi carpenter and what's peach bezerk. 

[00:02:07] Kingi Carpenter: Have you ever heard of Fanny Kemble? 

[00:02:10] Miranda Black: No. 

[00:02:10] Kingi Carpenter: Well, my mother named me after Sandy Campbell.  She's so cool.

She was feminist from the 18 hundreds

and poet and actress. 

[00:02:19] Miranda Black: it is a total honor for me to be interviewing you're like fashion royalty, except using the term royalty isn't right, because your aesthetic is more punk rock, 

which is from what I understand, I'm going to jump in and explain why I call this. Pretty party dress designer, punk rock punk is more than just noisy music. Punk rock is a rejection of the mainstream. It's often self produced and distributed to circumvent and even thumb their noses at the establishment. She has been true to this DIY aesthetic and her fashion or retail, her book publishing every facet of her business. As this one thing you can say for certainty, Kingi carpenter never sold out. 

[00:03:04] Kingi Carpenter: Hey, look up, leave Bowery sometime. And Fanny Kemble Lee Bowery was that sort of performance site, artists, fashion designer, in the eighties, super punk rock. He didn't want to follow the rules of the fashion industry by not having collections at regular times and doing things the way you're supposed to in this industry.

And then, you know, a measure of success is getting your stuff made in China for slave labor. And I never wanted to do any of those things. I'm thinking, that's why I like Liberi you're in a lovely Berry. So cool. So yes, I didn't want to follow the rules. 

[00:03:40] Miranda Black: I would like to start at the Genesis of not just Peach Berserk. But of. you of Kingi carpenter, 

[00:03:48] Kingi Carpenter: My dad was in the military

then when he retired, in 1969, when I was seven, he bought a farm. 

we became farmers. 

[00:03:56] Miranda Black: Why do you think he bought a farm?

[00:03:58] Kingi Carpenter: he didn't mean to buy a farm. a funny thing. You bought it by mistake. 

 It's a beautiful stone house outside of Kingston, . And he liked the house. 

And

 supposedly, after he bought it, he was said, oh, do you want to see the land? And he said, what land? And it came with 250 acres

[00:04:12] Miranda Black: he didn't know, he didn't know this.

[00:04:14] Kingi Carpenter: story. Yeah. I was only seven. 

[00:04:18] Miranda Black: What kind of farming Was he doing? 

[00:04:20] Kingi Carpenter: beef, cattle, and corn our corn crew. We've been really anybody. Else's 

[00:04:25] Miranda Black: How did he know how to 

[00:04:26] Kingi Carpenter: well, I don't know. I really don't know. We had local farmers that sort of showed them the ropes , we had like 60 cows one funny thing was he thought he could teach them to understand words.

 He'd go "up to the barn". You'd have a stick and he'd go "up to the barn up to the barn". And he had this theory that he could teach the cows words. I think my mom's sold eggs to the local village. God, sounds. like we lived in the 18 hundreds. It was just crazy at our house!

Then Freddy, my brother we had this standout in highway and we tried to sell the corn.

 I think Fred was just bored. We're sitting up there selling our corn on the side of the highway and so fun when a car would slow down and we'd get so excited, they're going to buy the corn it's a dollar a dozen and Fred and I would get the buck. Fred one day he goes, Hey, I got an idea Kingi, why don't we take one of the bushels and put it on the table, "corn dollar a dozen" then on the the bushel, it said Extra Hunky Corn, a dollar 50, and where Fred got "extra hunky", but that's what he came up with! With probably the most ridiculous handwriting of a ten-year-old kid and I'm like, this is never going to work. This guy stops and he goes, "well, I'll have the Extra Hunky". He doesn't even look at the others. I am sure they were no different. We very quickly, "oh that's bigger cobs put them in the Extra Hunky" and more than 50% of the people would buy the extra hunky!

[00:05:48] Miranda Black: This is a lesson in extra hunky commerce. 

[00:05:51] Kingi Carpenter: You put the right branding and marketing into it you can create a thought in someone's mind, they will think it's worth more. so to Fred and I, it was such a thought experiment to, to see that this worked. Anyways, it blew our minds.

My dad had this thing that he was a socialist and he believed everybody should be paid equally. At the end of the day, whatever money the corn made, it got divided up equally from Fred, the youngest to my dad. Everybody made the same amount of money isn't that bananas? So that's how we made our money was the corn. And I was putting all this money in the bank.

[00:06:26] Miranda Black: And are you making, do you make your own clothes? Are you making like doll clothes 

[00:06:31] Kingi Carpenter: I was always making things.I was constantly making clothes for dolls.

All I ever wanted to do is make things. I even made necklaces out of corn kernels. 

It's so long ago now, but I remember I just was always sewing and making things, really no different than I am now.

[00:06:46] Miranda Black: Were you selling like the corn necklaces? 

[00:06:49] Kingi Carpenter: What I started to do when I was early teen was making cards and selling them at a local store .But I don't know if they took them just to be nice. I was like 13 or 12, but I made cards.

I liked the commerce of making things, as well as making things. 

 I still obviously do. I get a big kick out of somebody wanting what I make. 

[00:07:14] Miranda Black: From the farm you became entrenched in Toronto lore. 

[00:07:20] Kingi Carpenter: Yep. 

[00:07:20] Miranda Black: How did you get there? 

[00:07:21] Kingi Carpenter: I always had this, love of big cities. My dad would give lectures in Toronto. I'd go with him or with him and my mom and just loving downtown Toronto in the early seventies, it was just... and we go to Yorkville. Are you kidding? I was dying. I remember going to Chinatown and for a girl on a farm, it just blew my mind, 

I moved to Toronto basically when I was 15 and went to boarding school. But then Havergal, it was a, it was a sanctuary. It was a sanctuary for me. I mean, I was very homesick. And I missed my dad like crazy, but I loved the city. Walking down young street and the record stores, just all the little independent stores of those days. My dad died the first year I was there. So he died, I didn't really go home much anymore. It was sort of like, I was very happy to be in my little cocoon of boarding school. In A lot of ways that school brought me up from that age. 

My best friend, Susie, she was a day girl, she wasn't a boarder, we would go downtown and see the bands and we really got into the whole music scene. 

 In my year at Havergal, if any Haverdalians are listening, we, weren't the only ones to really get into independent very new punk rock scene in Toronto. Sort of missed the really early years cause we weren't old enough. But by 17 years old, we were in it and we found the bars that you could be underage or into... 

[00:08:45] Miranda Black: Were you getting in trouble at school? Was this something. 

[00:08:48] Kingi Carpenter: No, because I was a smart girl. I flew under the radar. I flew under the radar I was quite an intellectual. Like I was into my work and as long as they didn't have their eye on you. It's like anything else then no one noticed. So keep very fly under the radar. Just keep it cool. 

[00:09:06] Miranda Black: Did you have an idea of what you quote unquote wanted to do when you grew up?

[00:09:11] Kingi Carpenter: Well, in those days it wasn't even thing to be an independent fashion designer. That wouldn't have occurred to me. I decided to study politics because my dad was very political and I grew up in a very political household. 

[00:09:25] Miranda Black: Did you ever consider going into politics?

[00:09:28] Kingi Carpenter: No, no, no. It's so funny. Cause I thought I'd be in politics and fashion and art would be my hobby , because you don't make a living that way. But it turned out to be the opposite: fashion and art is my job and politics is my hobby.

I was so full of beans and I was making all my own clothes at McGill. My big thing at McGill was wearing pillowcases.

[00:09:52] Miranda Black: Explain.

[00:09:52] Kingi Carpenter: One day I went to a party and my friend, Susie, we both went to McGill together, same person, she lived in residence and she just let me crash in your bed. And I remember waking up and I'm on this pillowcase. And it was pink stripes, it was the cutest pillowcase. I got this idea in my head to take a black t-shirt and chop it off here and then, sew the pillow case to it.

[00:10:16] Miranda Black: So chop off the t-shirt just below your armpit kind of thing?

[00:10:20] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah, right here, yes. Yeah. 

And then, sew the pillow case to it and then I'd wear that and bunch it up a bit and black tights. And then Suzie liked it and she wanted one. So, I made her one and we would go to bars dressed matching in pillowcases. We were bananas. And that's how my fashion career started was pillowcase dresses. 

[00:10:42] Miranda Black: You called them pillowcase dresses? 

[00:10:43] Kingi Carpenter: Oh Yeah! And then I took a white pillowcase, this was still at McGill, pre-silk screening days.

And I thought, why don't I just cut a hole in the pillowcase and two arm holes and just wear the damn pillowcase?! Forget this t-shirt business. And then I took magic markers and magic markered all over it. And there you go!

The early eighties was a time where you didn't have to follow fashion's rules. I'm old enough to remember when everyone wore the same length skirt... 

[00:11:13] Miranda Black: near the end of curating men's clothing at my store. I started telling guys that it's okay to wear whatever you want. Wide legs, skinny leg. Big color, thin color. 

You choose the style and that advice to choose your own style. It's even more apt for women's fashion. 

[00:11:31] Kingi Carpenter: It's extremely rare in fashion where you can wear a long skirt or a short skirt, you can wear any length skirt. You can for dinner with your friends, one's wearing a long skirt, one's mid-length and one's a miniskirt and one in jeans and no one would notice. That's UNUSUAL in fashion. So we live in a time where fashion doesn't change every season anymore. That's never going to happen again. 

[00:11:53] Miranda Black: You think that's over? 

[00:11:54] Kingi Carpenter: I think, it has to be over. It's it can't to where it was, where was a strict dictate of what you wore. 

[00:12:01] Miranda Black: But what about corporations telling people that seasons are still important?

[00:12:06] Kingi Carpenter: I don't think they can anymore.

[00:12:08] Miranda Black: As a retailer, it was pushed on me , and when things started 

getting rough, well, now that retail is getting tougher, we're going to make you buy like a minimum... 

[00:12:19] Kingi Carpenter: How is it even worth buying?! 

[00:12:21] Miranda Black: Exactly. If I have to pick something, I'm not picking it because I love it. anymore. 

[00:12:27] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah, I just don't see all type of retail can work at all. 

I think the first time in human history where fashion just became a free for all, where you could wear whatever you wanted ...I think punk rock had a big influence on it... really came into its own in the early eighties.

And so I kind of rode that wave with wearing a pillow case.

 Now I could do that in Montreal and Toronto. I couldn't do it out in Seeley's Bay where I'm from, then I would have been a real freak.

My fashion business sort of was a culmination of that, and small business, small fashion businesses, becoming a Thing. Women running their own business and living their life the way they wanted to really came into its own by the late eighties. Although, I had push back. I had trouble getting a business account, just by the way I looked, being this crazy looking young woman. 

[00:13:19] Miranda Black: What do you mean by a business account? 

[00:13:22] Kingi Carpenter: I was selling my stuff wholesale to stores. So I hadn't opened my own store yet, that came later... I can't remember the exact details. My memory and my experience was: there was pushback. And I remember even a boyfriend just being so incensed that I would want to start a small fashion business. He thought I was better than that. 

[00:13:43] Miranda Black: What do you mean? He wasn't outraged that the bank wouldn't give you money? He was, the outrage came from...?

[00:13:48] Kingi Carpenter: Oh, I didn't even want money from the bank. Forget that! As if, ha. A business would never give me money. No, it was just getting the business bank account. 

[00:13:58] Miranda Black: Gasp!

[00:13:58] Kingi Carpenter: They weren't going to give me a bean. 

[00:14:00] Miranda Black: Just opening an account?!

[00:14:02] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah. Oh yeah. Forget. Oh my God.

[00:14:06] Miranda Black: Oh, I thought. I thought get, trying to get money. 

[00:14:10] Kingi Carpenter: Are you crazy? I might as well go up to a stranger on the street and say, give me a hundred bucks. Nuts. No, it's just to get the account under the name Peach Berserk. 

[00:14:19] Miranda Black: Right! Every business needs to have that 

[00:14:20] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah, I wondering why you say, why did you want to do that? I thought, well, why? I needed to you need a bank account? Oh, yeah. And then I remember this guy I and he's like, "I thought you're better than that. Than a fashion business. I thought you were smarter". Blah, blah, blah. I think small business was seen in those days as what the odd balls that big business would reject. Real reject. So we couldn't get real jobs. 

[00:14:45] Miranda Black: It's crazy how much I take progress for granted probably on a daily basis. You can hear, I wasn't even aware how odd it would be for a woman to want her own business bank account in the 1980s. 

And there are marginalized groups who even now feel intimidated by banks and other institutions vital to their business growth. Kingi's story is gentle reminder, for white women at least to A. Not take our progress for granted and B keep fighting for it for everyone else. 

You mentioned doing wholesale at that time. Is that how you 

[00:15:19] Kingi Carpenter: 

I came back to Toronto and got a job, then I decided to go part-time to OCA Ontario College of Art. I didn't even know what silk screening was. I just decided, with my pillowcase dresses, I just wanted to make one with Eiffel towers on it. Cause I'd been to Paris and I thought it was cool and I couldn't find any dresses with an Eiffel tower. It was not a business idea. just fun. So I thought, how do I do this? And then I was, oh I've heard a silk screening and you can get images on to fabric. I'll try that. I have no clue what it is. So I took a course in it at OCA 

 It was an epiphany I'm in a non-religious person. The closest I've come is the first time I lifted that screen. "What the hell?! What's going on? I can draw something? I can get a photograph and I can put it on a silk screen, kind of like magic, like science?!" And I went from the type of student that was figuring out the quickest way to get anything done so I can go have a beer, to I need to do this all the time. I love this. And my mom wanted to go to Paris one summer, so I made some dresses and I thought I'll sell them in Paris because nobody's selling dresses, with Eiffle Towers on them. I'm going to it.

[00:16:33] Miranda Black: Okay,

[00:16:34] Kingi Carpenter: And it didn't work. 

[00:16:35] Miranda Black: What do you mean it didn't work??

[00:16:37] Kingi Carpenter: When I went to the Eiffel Tower and I held my sign and I said, a hundred Francs for my dress, I sell these dresses, nobody wanted to buy them,

And then I went into this store that was near the Eiffel Tower, tourist shop, and this man, I think he just felt sorry for me? And he says, I'll buy one of your dresses to sell. And he bought my dress...I feel like I'm going to start speaking French now because I've got such a memory of it.

I went to a photo booth, kind of like Instagram of the time and I held out my hundred Franc bill and I'm smiling beside it. 

[00:17:08] Miranda Black: Was it just one day or did you do it? 

[00:17:10] Kingi Carpenter: I tried a few days and it totally failed. And then I went to the Père Lachaise Graveyard, you know where Jim Morrison is buried. "Okay, Kingi, you're going to go to Jim Morrison's grave and you're going to do something successful today because you've been failing today. You've been failing on this trip". I've got my map and I'm really bad at directions, I'm trying to find the damn grave, and these people come up to me, you know, excuse moi? I'm like, okay, they like my dress. They want my dress. And they go, we are lost, can we use your map? And I give them my map. And then I'm standing there. They didn't like my dress, they didn't even mention it! But I did make a hundred Francs and I have a picture of 

[00:17:49] Miranda Black: me with my money. 

Also it didn't become a story of, I did this thing in France, it didn't work out, and I came back and I became like a banking assistant. 

[00:17:59] Kingi Carpenter: NO, it gave me the, I wanted to sell more things. I wanted to make it work. 

And from the first time I started art school, I called all my art projects Peach Berserk projects.

[00:18:10] Miranda Black: You, that's what you labeled it that's what you called it. 

[00:18:13] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah,I did. I did. 

[00:18:14] Miranda Black: Where did that come from?

[00:18:16] Kingi Carpenter: It is from my bible, Sex and the Single Girl, which is a book written by Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmo. It's basically a book about how to live an independent life, being more career-based than marriage and children based. It's a groundbreaking book. It was a best seller. It was, it was revolutionary for the time. Anyways, there is a color in her sequel book called Sex in the Office... 

[00:18:41] Miranda Black: the sound gets a little funky in this section so I downloaded the book to get the exact quote. It starts: "I don't think most offices care what polish you wear: Ape Red, Peach Beserk or Mad Mauve, as long as your nails are beautifully cared for". And then she eviserates anyone with peeling, chipped or "snivelly little nails", whatever that is. I shudder to think what she would say about my pandemic nails. 

[00:19:06] Kingi Carpenter: Peach Berserk just popped out at me! I don't even like peaches. I don't even like the color peach! Everything was P each Berserk before I even learned how to silk screen. When I started my fashion business, I didn't even have a second thought: was my company was Peach Berserk because everything was Peach Berserk. In my third year of art school I saw a lot of influences: I'd gone to New York a lot, and seeing all these small designer stores, like we would always hang out in the lower east side, and somebody I knew knew a designer. I think it was Richard Vermillion...can't believe I remember that name. If I've got it correct, he was a Toronto designer and he had a studio in New York, a tiny, tiny, tiny little shoe box. My friends knew him and we went over we went to his place and suddenly all the pieces came together. Like, he had this little studio, a sewing machine. And I remember roll of labels with his name fabric and patterns and I thought, you can just have a little shoebox and you can sew clothes and put your label on them and you can sell them? 

Does that mean you're a designer? Okay. So if I take some fabric and I put a print on it and I put my name on it, Peach Berserk, and I can sell that to a human being, then I'm a fashion designer? Is that what you're telling me here? That came together in my head and I go, okay, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make clothes and I'm going to put prints on them. I'm going to be the only designer that I know of, that totally bases their business on screen printing. 

I started with pillowcase dresses with Eiffel Towers on them.

[00:20:39] Miranda Black: I'm going to admit to the world, or at least to you listening, that I've always had this limiting thought that in order to be a real fashion designer, you've got to have a lot of money. And there are plenty of stats that support my theory. Fashion designers do tend to come from wealth. Often, crazy wealth. But Kingi, she wasn't having any of that.... 

...kind of inaccessible to the regular person. But you became a designer. 

[00:21:06] Kingi Carpenter: I didn't have any money. 

[00:21:07] Miranda Black: You're a successful designer. You're not like, um, what of that Tartan... 

[00:21:12] Kingi Carpenter: yeah, when you talked that my first thought was Pink Tartan cause it's Joe Mimran is her husband 

[00:21:19] Miranda Black: yeah. I think of Paul McCartney's daughter. 

[00:21:21] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah. Cause it's so expensive to be a designer, it's kind of like, if you're a gallery owner, I know this woman who's rich and 

she's gallery owner she goes well, because it's the most fun thing to do. these are have 

yeah. These are jobs of the rich. You're right. 

But the thing is I didn't have any money. Like I come from a well-off family, but I didn't, it didn't have a good relationship with my mom and my dad died when I was young. So did it on my own. My line worked because it was different. I based it on textile design screen printing. made my clothing work, but 

I never was rich, and I supplemented it.

to supplement And for the first two years, 

[00:22:03] Miranda Black: oh, sorry, sorry, for for the first two years. 

[00:22:05] Kingi Carpenter: first two years I was working as a waitress at Peach Berserk.

[00:22:08] Miranda Black: While you had Peach Berserk? 

[00:22:10] Kingi Carpenter: I had a girl working for me on a government program. It was for young people. Cause we so young, and we were able to sign her up to do buttons and print everything. I would get her set up, jump on my bike and go to my waitressing job and then come up, then work for like six hours waitressing, then come finish with her and then work till late at night. I did that for two years. Of course I did.

[00:22:34] Miranda Black: Did you have the storefront? 

[00:22:35] Kingi Carpenter: no, no. I out of...I had a one room apartment on College Street. And I worked there and my apartment started at $250 a month. And I'm not kidding, it was one room. It had bathroom down the hall that I shared with the neighbors, 

[00:22:47] Miranda Black: Oh 

[00:22:48] Kingi Carpenter: because how cheap the apartment was. So when people say, oh I don't have the money to start or I don't have enough space. I lived in one room and I shared a bathroom. And I washed my screens out in tub that I shared with neighbors. My art teacher where I learned screen printing, I her I wanted to start a business and she goes, you can't you can't afford it. 

You have to have a big light table. and You to have this and that. She goes, but that was one of moments in my life. Like all these negative things people said to me just had the opposite effect 

[00:23:16] Miranda Black: Okay. So limiting thought officially banished. If you want to be a fashion designer, do it. you won't be able to rent a space on queen or fifth avenue right away. But these days, do you even need that? This podcast is all about finding new ways to retail. So if you're an aspiring designer selling your clothing in disruptive ways, I would love to hear from you. And speaking of learning how to retail and interesting ways this was Kingi's jam way before we even used the words disruptive or retail apocalypse.

[00:23:49] Kingi Carpenter: realized had to really diversify my business. Firstly, make shopping fun, which was easy because we make the product.So it's fun to see silk screening, it's fun to see things being made. So that was number one. That was easy and cost-effective. It also meant that my sales staff was also the creators of the product, get more interesting people being sales staff And the sales staff have more fun if they're making things more into the because they helped create it.

So they're better at selling it. It just every possible way it's a good thing. So that sort of me into this idea that retail should be more than just clothes on a rack. 

[00:24:24] Miranda Black: Was that back. 

[00:24:25] Kingi Carpenter: Yes yes. I started that early and it was mostly of necessity, but my feeling on life is necessity and lack of money can actually become an advantage. And then early on, I realized that teaching silk screening, was a good idea. It created this interactive element of what I was creating. Instead being a wall between I'm the designer, creating these clothes and you're buying them. Well, now you're making things and I'm making things we're discussing it. We're both making things and we're discussing fashion. And that became amazing for my business in every way.

[00:25:01] Miranda Black: This is well over a decade ago, the stuff Kingi carpenter was implementing back on little old Canadian queen street west are things the biggest retailers in the world are still figuring out now. How to make shopping an experience. How to get your customers invested in your story. So whatever Kingi has going on in Parkdale right now with her Paint-by-Numbers Gallery and her upcycled clothes and her event space that has Tik Tok and Instagram possibilities for days... well, Kingi Carpenter's probably a bellwether for where we're going: it's wacky. It's fun and it's a total post-pandemic mix of virtual and real life. But I'm getting ahead of the story. We still have some downs to get through before we arrive in Parkdale. 

[00:25:47] Kingi Carpenter: I closed the store queen street for a few reasons. My daughter was about 13 and she didn't want to live above a store anymore She wanted try something new. 

[00:25:56] Miranda Black: So part of leaving the store on did have do 

[00:26:00] Kingi Carpenter: Digby Oh, for sure. She's always the most important thing in my life. Yeah she had had and we were there 20 years. So it was time to go. She wanted to try something more normal. 

[00:26:12] Miranda Black: did you know what you were going doing next? Did you 

have a well, 

[00:26:16] Kingi Carpenter: I have a plan? Really! The problem with being self-employed is you don't have a history of working for other companies. One thing I knew I was good at was teaching, but because I never got a teaching were so many jobs close to me. Almost every job was close to me. And if I were to work for another company teaching teaching. if it was at some art galleries that I looked they were paying so little 

if you are making, let's say 25 an hour to teach, but you're only teaching four hours a week. How is that a job so it was a really re-evaluating time for me.

Like when I left the store is exactly when I was turning 50. 

We moved into a house and I sold clothes out of the house. And I taught workshops in the house, but man was it hard. Digby 

and... it was always a struggle. 

[00:27:09] Miranda Black: you had her while you had the store? 

[00:27:12] Kingi Carpenter: Yeah. Oh yeah. 

[00:27:13] Miranda Black: So how did you?... I had my during store, but there were like a good five weeks where I wasn't able to really walk properly. 

[00:27:21] Kingi Carpenter: Was a long labor and everything, 

[00:27:23] Miranda Black: was 27 hours. 

[00:27:25] Kingi Carpenter: That's long. My only like four hours my friend was there when Digby was born and she's a doctor, and she said it was one of the top 4% of bursts she's ever She said Digby walked out smoking a cigar you always easy. She just was born. And I was back working with her three days old. if I had a experience or health with having to be and maybe I couldn't have kept the business going. And what would would been down about my, on myself that I couldn't keep it going. Probably a would Yeah. What is some your fault, 

[00:27:57] Miranda Black: Right 

[00:27:58] Kingi Carpenter: you know, your health is so random I just happened to birth easily.

[00:28:02] Miranda Black: people don't talk talk about luck 

[00:28:04] Kingi Carpenter: We don't, 

[00:28:05] Miranda Black: I think about gwyneth Paltrow sometimes how she's like, I'm this and I'm that and I'm like, well, most all, you're lucky. 

[00:28:13] Kingi Carpenter: I think as humans, we random because our brains are programmed to be able to control make life. Okay. Or we're scared. 

[00:28:22] Miranda Black: Yeah. 

[00:28:22] Kingi Carpenter: But if we can just understand the element of luck and our lives

like getting this place was largely luck 

The fact I had insurance to rebuild here. I didn't hurt fire And I swear to you if hadn't run out when I 

did I could have been

Okay. The fire. The event that put Kingi on a completely different life course, but we are out of time this week, I feel like the therapist, just when you get to the part that really matters in your life and they say, okay, we need to wrap it up, but keep that thought for next week. Well, here are some highlights from next week's episode. 

 He said, no Kingi a cheer age. 

Why 

don't you just get an apartment? Get a job 

because at this point you've got to like, let this all go 

Like 

get a 

regular lady apartment for lady your age and let this dream of having your paint by number gallery running at event space.

Let 

it all go.  I thought, really, after all I've done, and I thought, oh my God, 

what am I going to do? 

Well, I'll tell 

you something....

[00:29:23] Miranda Black: That's coming up next episode on what's this place.

This Valentine's day. Remember to love your inner artist, your inner entrepreneur, or whatever it is inside you. That brings joy. If you're inspired, please share this episode with someone you care about. Thank you so much for listening.