![]() Over the past year, however, the folks at Pit Viper have found themselves in something of a branding nightmare as their gear has been co-opted by an alt-right crowd that also seems drawn to the company’s uniquely cheeky style. Like, I’ll be at the grocery store and young kids are like, ‘Sick Pit Vipers,’” says Oregon-based pro mountain biker Kirt Voreis, who signed with the company in May 2021 and was regularly promoting the sunglasses to his 69,000 Instagram followers ahead of the Fuentes broadcast. In fact, sports stars seem drawn to the mega-brand because it has somehow kept its street cred. ![]() It’s also picked up some major athlete endorsements along the way: freestyle-skiing legend Tanner Hall in 2019, NASCAR phenom Brehanna Daniels in 2020, and, in April of this year-just three months before the Fuentes video-NFL tight end Rob Gronkowski. In less than a decade, Pit Viper has grown from a company of two guys with sales of around $10,000 to one with 70 employees and a 30,000-square-foot office (plus a 20,000-square-foot warehouse) in Salt Lake City. The sunglasses look like relics from an ’80s movie, with Jackson Pollock-like paint splatters and enormous lenses, and are sold with taglines such as “Voted #69th best sunglass brand page, by your mom.” That included star athletes, fraternity members, punks-but they never expected to be adopted by white nationalists.įounded in 2012 by Chuck Mumford and Chris Garcin, a pair of University of Colorado graduates turned itinerant ski bums, Pit Viper presents itself as the jock-jester within the world of sports fashion. He was Pit Viper’s head of marketing and had worked hard to position the pricey upstart brand’s sunglasses (a pair of Originals goes for $99) as the must-have accessory for anyone seeking a fun-loving and irreverent vibe. Harkins knew that look because he was in charge of popularizing it. Nick Fuentes (center, not in Pit Vipers) alongside far right activists in Pit Vipers at a protest in November 2021. And it wasn’t just Fuentes wearing those shades: Several men in the crowd could be seen in similar apparel as everyone chanted, “Groyper! Groyper! Groyper!” The 22-year-old leader of the Groyper Army, which has been identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a white supremacist group, sported a navy-blue suit while hiding behind all-too-familiar eyewear: a pair of extra-large yellow wraparound Pit Viper Original sunglasses. Harkins didn’t want to hear any more, but he also couldn’t take his eyes off what Fuentes was wearing. “This is going to be the most racist, most sexist, the most anti-Semitic, the most Holocaust-denying speech in all of Dallas this weekend.” I have nothing to lose,” Fuentes said, referencing his recent ban for repeated violations on the social media platform after using it to spread white-nationalist propaganda and hate speech. Shot just outside the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, an annual Republican gathering that was being held that day in Dallas, it featured an alt-right extremist named Nick Fuentes standing in front of a small crowd of supporters. The moment of solitude was broken when a friend called to alert him to a video being shared on Twitter. ![]() Harkins had competed in a mountain bike race at the resort earlier that day, and he was relaxing and thumbing through his iPhone. On the evening of July 10, 2021, Spencer Harkins lay in the bed of his Chevrolet Silverado in the parking lot of Mt. PIT VIPER, GETTY IMAGES MEN'S HEALTH ILLUSTRATION
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |