BooLoo Bag Stories

Times Square
It’s May 1st, 2010 and my brother David and his wife Grace are headed to NYC to see Green Day’s “American Idiot on Broadway.”  They have reservations at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel and discover at check-in how discreet they look bringing their beers and tequila up to their hotel room in their plain black BooLoo.  Before the show they decide to grab some t-shirts for the kids… little did they know they were shopping less than 15 feet from the smoking Nissan Pathfinder that contained the famous car bomb!  Minutes later thousands of people are being evacuated, and so began the crazy night David and Grace spent in Times Square.

Old Blue
When I stared at this BooLoo for the first time, the color blue reminded me of the old Ford pick-up truck Paul used to have.  He used to call her “Old Blue”, but when she died on us in North Conway, NH and we both had to work the next day, that was the last road trip she made with us.  Sometimes it was our fault, four-wheeling in the mud or doing donuts under the snow-covered power lines, but North Conway, NH was the last road trip she made with us.  Paul sold her and we bought “New Blue.”

Cherry Dip
Growing up I remember going to Dairy Queen a lot for their hand-dipped cones.  I loved all three, the chocolate, the butterscotch, and of course the cherry dip.  When the plain red swatch arrived for BooLoo, my sister and I decided the color looked like that of the cherry dip cone we so fondly grew up with. 

Green Day

The name of this bag goes to the biggest family of Green Day Fans I know.  Dave, Grace, Nicole and Drew Adams have literally traveled the world to see their concerts.  They are always only a couple of clicks away from a family get-a-way in New York, Connecticut, Boston or London to see Green Day, and they are never disappointed — always a GREAT show!

Pauly’s Striper
Paul was an avid fisherman, but his passion was for the striper.  A solid four months of the year Paul could be found fishing off the rocks of Jerusalem Road in Cohasset, or in his boat fishing all of the tides around Hingham and Hull.  BooLoo Bags will be making donations annually to the Duxbury Fire Department in Paul’s memory for dive, search and rescue gear.  My passion for this company started with this screen print of a striper, and I want to thank all my friends and family for supporting me and making this BooLoo’s #1 selling bag.

Saquish Sand Dollar
In the late 70′s and early 80′s we used to spend weekends out on Saquish or the Gurnet.  Sometimes we would go out in our forest-green, spray-painted Wagoneer, but more often we went by boat.  When the tide went out we would dive for sand dollars, they were everywhere!  After we dried them in the sun, we painted them.  I have been back a couple of dozen times in the last decade with my children and we are lucky if we find one or two… where have all the “Saquish Sand Dollars” gone?

Outer Brewster
After college I met Paul and a huge crowd of awesome life-long friends.  Lots of us had boats: some big, some small, some nice, some barely running at all.  As often as we could, we would all head out through the gut to Outer Brewster Island.  All of the guys loved to fish, but many of them could not resist the ultimate catch, a dive bag full of the sweetest scallops we ever had!   We fried, sautéed, baked, broiled, wrapped and ate them all summer long.

Shadow’s Starfish
It’s February 29, 2010 and we bring home this cute fluffy golden retriever that my son names “Joseph’s Shadow.”  Over the next couple of months I notice two things: one, the dog has quadrupled in size, and two, all of my decorative starfish are disappearing!  Finally I catch Shadow up on the couch to get to a shelf where he sees the starfish.  Somehow he has managed to get his snout into a hurricane glass and pluck the starfish out one at a time like they are Scooby Snacks, without spilling any sand.  Needless to say we no longer have any decorative starfish in the house, but we have a BooLoo Bag that we named after our family dog.

The Maine Lobstah
It is summer of 1991 and my mom and stepfather see a For Sale sign in a back yard while they are headed up the coast of Maine in “The Wampum.”  They figure out how to get there by land, sell their house in Duxbury, MA and move to the most beautiful coastline in Cushing, Maine.  It usually takes us at least five hours to get up there, but it’s always worth the drive.  Is doesn’t matter what time of the year we come, we always have lobster bakes on the rocks and head out at low tide to grab fresh mussels hidden beneath  giant clumps of seaweed.  If you are into lobster and mussels, it doesn’t get any better than this!

Jay Bird
Those of you that know Jay Levesque know that he loves to hunt and loves his camouflage!  Even when Jay is not hunting, he is still wearing some type of camo.  It may be his camo Red Sox hat or maybe it’s his Rut-N-Strut sweatshirt, but unless we are on “date night,” it’s camouflage.  Jay has bagged a couple of big bucks in his day and is looking forward to a couple more.  Thank you Red for giving Jay the nickname and helping name our camouflaged BooLoo.

The Wampum
Any guesses at the definition?  Somewhere in the mid to late 80’s my parents came into some money and bought their dream boat: a 36’ Marine Trader and named it the “Wampum.”   We had a mooring in the backyard and spent most of our summers cruising around with my parents. The Wampum had one of the biggest anchors I had ever laid my eyes on! (luckily it had a motor for pulling it in).  My parents sold The Wampum in 2010 and she is up in Canada now, but her name and memories live on.   Oh, Wampum = N. “a quantity of small cylindrical beads made by North American Indians from quahog shells, strung together and worn as a decorative belt or other decoration or used as money.”

The Blockpack

Rhode Island here we come!  It’s Labor Day 2010 and somehow eight of us have found baby and dog sitters for 2 full nights! We all head down to Elena’s house in Middleton, Rhode Island.  The kitchen is out of commission so we plan ahead and all have at least 2 BooLoo Bags each full of tons of different food and beverages for the weekend.  We spend the day gallivanting all over Newport – watching bands, dancing and drinking Narragansett beer.  Well the next morning, (a tough morning it was) we hopped a ferry to Block Island- we had our BooLoo Bags in the car, but nobody wanted them on their mopeds, so we left them.   We spent a pile of money on cold water when we got there, a pile more on Gatorades during the day and then a pile more on beers on the ferry ride home.  At least when we got back to Point Judith, we had freezing cold beverages waiting for us in the cars.  After that weekend I thought how awesome a backpack cooler that did not leak would have been, well a year later it has arrived.  We are naming our backpacks “The Blockpack” after our adventure to Block Island.

Midnight Express

Here she is!  One of the most beautiful black labs I have ever known, too bad she isn’t mine.  “Midnight” belongs to my sister Wendy, but we get to hang out almost every day together.  We sent Bill, our graphic designer, a bunch of pictures of Midnight for the embroidery and I think the silhouette of her came out pretty awesome, she is one good-looking lab with a great temperament.

Heavy D - The Legend of the Dragonfly
In the bottom of an old pond lived some grubs who could not understand why none of their groups ever came back after crawling up the stems of the lilies to the top of the water.  They promised each other that the next one who was called to make the upward climb would return and tell what happened to him.  Soon one them felt an urgent impulse to seek the surface; he rested himself on the top of a lily pad and went through a glorious transformation, which made him a dragonfly with beautiful wings.  In vain, he tried to keep his promise.  Flying back and forth over the pond, he peered down at his friends below.  Then he realized that even if they could see him they would not recognize such a radiant creature as one of their number.

The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation, which we call death, is no proof that they cease to exist.

This design and story came from good friend Amy Oliveira, who we nick named in high school “Heavy D”- and that is how we named this BooLoo Bag!