Words provided by Sasan Sayyar

Photographs provided by Sasan Sayyar & Michael Casatico

Sasan here, some know me as Sas(sauce) because my name is like sauce on a sandwich. My childhood friend Michael & I run this brand/blog/company called Tribe, or more formally, “Those Rebels Inspired by Everything”. On behalf of he & myself, I'd like to apologize for an unexpected and prolonged absence of activity here on the website. Unfortunately for now, Tribe has to come after school and work for us. With that being said, it’s practically November, past the middle of the semester, finals are coming soon, and we’ve both been overwhelmed with work. We are in no rush with Tribe. We’d much rather remain patient, and have a period of absence and focus on bringing quality product, than try to pump stuff out just for the sake of having content/product… after all, this is art, and if there’s one thing I’ve ever known about art, it’s that you CANNOT force it. AKA, we have not yet, and will never sacrifice quality for quantity. Huge thanks to all of you who’ve been rockin with us & supporting us from the start, we owe you. We’re surely working on some more things for the winter time, and always developing new ideas, and it’ll only ever be a matter of time until we implement them. Much love always.

Here’s a story I wrote about a full day trip that Mike & I took to Joshua Tree National Park over the summer! Enjoy.

It was the fourth of August, an early, blurry, & delightful Tuesday morning. The night before, Mike & I set up a plan to trek out to Joshua Tree National Park & see what’s going on out there (not too much lol). So it’s about 7 or 8AM on a Tuesday, in the middle of the summer, and we set out on our almost 3 hour journey from San Marcos to Joshua Tree. Armed with only our cameras, a full loaf of whole grain bread, an almost full jar of peanut butter, a case of 32 bottled waters, and desert style hats, we start mobbin out to the desert. Keep in mind I’m only visiting from the Bay Area for a few days, so the seemingly endless straight and flat roads are somewhat unfamiliar. Anyways, let me fast forward to the part where we get there, since it seems like the whole drive there was just a blur of falling in and out of short naps & what not. Apparently after 3 hours or so I realized that my iPhone’s GPS had seriously led us into the middle of nowhere, Joshua Tree. We drove Mike’s Honda Accord at least 5 miles on just dirt haha, I can’t say I’ve done that before. Shit out of luck, we have no choice but to drive all the way back and around since we landed in a super remote area of the park, instead of the main entrance. Once we’re finally on the main road that runs through Joshua Tree, you could say that both of us are blown away by the nothingness over there. I mean, you literally are in the middle of the desert (in the middle of the summer heat too) with a whole bunch of nothing around. Sure there are some cool rock formations here & there and some awesome looking trees, but that’s about all. I didn’t expect much more judging by the pictures I had previously seen from the park but still, it’s not too often I’m in a place where there’s just so much nothing. It’s just gorgeous actually in it’s own unique way, it makes you feel like you have a bunch of room to think. 

Longer story long, Mike and I spent the whole day mobbin around different spots, stopping and going, hiking around a bit, shooting photos & just exploring. I think throughout the day I had a total of 8 peanut butter sandwiches and 10 water bottles myself. I have absolutely no doubt that I wouldn’t have survived without my desert hat and those sandwiches and waters. It must’ve been 100 degrees minimum for the majority of the day... I believe the most distance we traveled in one outing (outing meaning getting out of the car) was just under 2 miles or so, and it seemed like we walked a damn marathon lol. We came across some pretty cool things, read some signs and learned some history of Joshua Trees and their habitats, as well as all the neighboring vegetation. We also discovered a parked buggy that looked like it was straight out of GTA V. There was no owner to be found for miles, or so it seemed. I would’ve tried to steal it but there was no steering wheel. Anyways, if you’ve read this far, let me tell you something: I feel like I could write pages about this day and still not be able to express how it made me feel. It was a really remarkable experience, and I had to drive Mike’s Accord all the way back and I can completely remember dozing in and out of sleep while doing 90MPH. Somebody loves Those Rebels…