2021jazzi in Wonderland
Photography by Adam Davis
A rebel with a cause, Jazzi McGilbert is a creative director, consultant and writer. She is also the founder & owner of Reparations Club, a LA-based concept bookshop + creative space Curated by Blackness®. Here she talks about the spaces and places in Los Angeles that impacted her personally, creatively and her vision for the Rep Club. Welcome to Jazzi’s Wonderland.
Grandmother’s House
The epicenter of my world is my grandmother's house in South Central, Los Angeles. That's the photo you see on our Instagram page, which I realize now some people thought was the shop, ironically. And in many ways it is. Many of the references in Reparations Club are from that space. That's where I call home. My grandmother now lives with me, but that house is just everybody's default in my family. So that's the first place that comes to mind.
Growing up, I was getting shuttled back and forth from South Central to schools on the west side. I went to public school briefly. That's where they labeled me as gifted. I don't believe in that label anymore, but that triggered
this domino effect where I got shipped off to private school. My commute was driving back and forth from the hood to complete and total excess every day and seeing that dichotomy very clearly.
Windward High School
I was one of two Black girls in my graduating class. My home life and school life were complete and total opposites. High school was more damaging than elementary as being one of two black girls was a really negative experience. They let me know I was different every single day.
It is hard to make friends when your friend’s parents are quite literally billionaires, while your own family is struggling to keep the lights on. There’s no real bridging that gap. It was unspoken, but friends weren’t allowed to go over to my house, because it was in “the hood.” I remember, finally, one kid came over and made fun of the fact that my home had bars on the window. And it never had occurred to me that we had bars on the window, that’s just how I grew up.
In high school, when all you want to do is fit in, that was not an option for me. I leaned the other way. “If I’m not gonna fit in, I’m really going to stand out.”... I’m going to make my clothes, be a theater kid, stage sit-ins and protests and drive everybody crazy. I found my place to be weird ultimately, which was in the theater.
The other creative space during that time was my computer. At that time, I was on Live Journal and MySpace was where I learned how to code. Getting WiFi was revelatory, even dial up; the internet was my escape. My husband and I met in middle school. He was a techie, and I was a theater kid, and so we spent a lot of time after school together in the theater and in the tech booth. Those were my creative spaces. That little black box theater that could turn into anything.
Inglewood Cemetery/Forum Parking Lot
My whole family is buried in Inglewood Cemetery. My grandmother’s lost her three daughters but still has her son. It never occurred to me that my mom would die. She had cancer but she was a fighter by nature. You would never know anything was wrong unless she wanted you to. She left a small life insurance policy which is what I used to open the space (Reparations Club). My mom was also the first person in my family to be cremated. Some of her ashes are at Inglewood cemetery too, because that is our space. That’s our respite in the city.
Right next to the cemetery is the parking lot of Forum—where I learned to drive. Like most LA kids, my car became my freedom at a certain age.
Cedars-Sinai Hospital
Nursing homes and Cedar Sinai Hospital were spaces I frequently visited when I was younger. My mom’s sister had ALS and was primarily in a nursing home bed throughout my life. Every day my grandmother picked me up from school and we went to visit her. My mother helped raise her sister’s son—my cousin, who I call my brother. ALS leaves your mind fully intact but takes your body. She was one of the first people I knew that knew how to use a computer. She got one muscle on her hand to move well enough to move her mouse which had a to text mechanism. She was one of the first people I saw navigating technology.
Slauson Swap Meet
The Slauson Swap Meet was the first place I felt seen. It was just a massive space full of stuff made for people like me. It was the first place I encountered where I didn’t feel like a fish out of water. It’s my favorite place to go and is still very much a part of my life.
(Vogue) Office Building
My time at Vogue was challenging creatively and emotionally. That was the most uncomfortable space I’ve ever been in and knew I wanted to get the fuck out of that world. The LA office held Men’s Vogue,Vogue Living and Teen Vogue. It was constant chaos. I was the only Black girl. I clawed my way into that space and it was incredibly isolating and dehumanizing. After that, I worked at a number of other magazines. Even as Nylon’s web editor, it was the same shit as in the corporate magazine publishing world. My response to that was “I’m never going to be that uncomfortable again.”
*****
Cubicles: My mom was a legal secretary, so the office buildings in which she worked became my second home. I would literally sit under her desk until it was time to go. I was a very small person and still am and cubicles made me comfortable in contained spaces. Because I’ve had to make myself really small and hide away (so my mom’s boss wasn’t coming around and seeing that her kid was there), I’m still most comfortable in really small spaces. So I just learned how to be quiet until mom got off work. Contained spaces are important to me in general. So is breaking out of them.
Rep Club
Everything in Reparations Club is some kind of a reference to a book, my life and childhood, or both. That’s why there’s no other space that looks like it—it is all straight out of my imagination.
The green is an homage to this green shag carpet my dad had when I was little. He was only in my life for a minute, but came back around after my mother died. And records. He’s an avid vinyl collector and still is. A lot of the records here are from his collection.
I made Reparations Club for Black people. I’m hoping that no one would have to feel as uncomfortable as I did in so many retail spaces. I just want (Black) people to know that this space is centered around us. I was always trying to find myself. Creativity and fashion was the first taste I got of that type of expression; it’s a language I spoke pretty naturally. In this space, I want people to know they can come in, they can hang out and you don’t have to buy something, though they can. Because there were so many retail spaces that did not want me in there and spending my money became a chore. Going into stores like Barneys, I always thought “this is not for me.” These stores take my money and make me feel really uncomfortable while I’m shopping here. I started asking all of those stores, “Do you have any Black-owned brands?” They never did.
So in thinking about Reparations Club, I knew this is going to be all Black shit.
To learn more about Reparations Club visit rep.club | IG: reparations.club
To see more of Adam Davis’ photography go here.
