It all started with a phone call last Thursday. The decision to close the store was years in the making, but actually doing it happened quickly. By the weekend, The Hundreds had shuttered their Los Angeles storefront on Fairfax Avenue, ending a decades-long run on the famed street that the Los Angeles Times once called “the Rodeo Drive of streetwear.” The news sent shockwaves around the streetwear-centric corners of the internet—and then the comments and posts came pouring in. The Hundreds was the last of the original group of brands that turned the street into the epicenter of a scene and a global shopping destination. By holding out, the label’s storefront had also come to symbolize the last beacon of a specific era of streetwear. “At the moment, we just didn’t want to deal with what we’ve been dealing with the last three days, which was the onslaught of emotions,” said designer Bobby Kim, who waited a few days before announcing the closure online. Kim co-founded The Hundreds with Ben Shenassafar in 2003 and watched their brand grow as Fairfax turned from a sleepy street into a red-hot retail hub, alongside the rise of streetwear at large. During the aughts, brands like Supreme, Diamond Supply Co., Huf, Crooks & Castles, and others all opened flagship stores on that same stretch of Fairfax. And then, one by one, each left the block until none of the originating brands remained—except The Hundreds. But Fairfax was bigger than one brand, bigger than the clothes and the sneakers. Into the early 2010s, it continued to serve as a stomping ground for many up-and-comers, from rappers and actors to skaters and creatives of all stripes. The Hundreds was in the middle of it all: a clothing store, a pioneering blog, a clubhouse, and a bench and back alley for hanging out. Jonah Hill and Kid Cudi often stopped by the brand’s original location, tucked away on a side street; Tyler, the Creator and the Odd Future crew ran around the block and were regulars on the blog. While The Hundreds will live on with its online shop and retailer partners, the end of the Los Angeles flagship cracked open a flood of nostalgia for a simpler time in streetwear. GQ spoke with Kim about spending two decades on Fairfax, the outsize reaction to the store’s closing, the Fairfax ethos of Tyler, the Creator, and what’s next for The Hundreds. GQ: You mentioned you and your co-founder Ben had been discussing closing the Fairfax store for years. When did you reach the final decision? Bobby Kim: We broach this conversation once every couple of months, and it just comes up. January is a dry retail month in general, which depressed the mood and the energy around the block. It was a good time for Ben and I to pause and be a bit more introspective about the purpose of us being here. Ben called me on Thursday and said, “What do you think if we just close the store this weekend?” At that point I was like, “I can't refute that, I can't defend the shop anymore.” We just told the staff the following morning. Our vice president, Joey, walked in, and the staff was super gracious. We’ve just been so lucky to have the best clerks and retail guys, and they were super understanding. Obviously, they see the energy of the neighborhood. Once we decided that this was not going to work for us anymore, we were already moving forward. We didn’t want to hover around being sentimental around this. Just out of survival, it was, Let’s just cut it fast, and let’s move on. What ended up happening is that the adverse effects of that were that all of the sudden people felt interrupted. Then they wanted to obviously share their side of the story, and it kind of provoked this outpouring of emotion, which we’ve been wading through for the last several days. The closure sparked a strong reaction. It’s almost like we’re therapizing for the community, [for whom] it was such a sudden death. I think if we had announced it and said, “Oh, in two weeks we’re going to be closing the shop,” that would give everyone time to process and prepare and then they could show up and celebrate together. It made it almost more emotional because nobody saw it coming, and nobody felt prepared in a world where everyone wants to feel prepared. When you do this to people, I think it makes them quite emotional, and they don’t know where to put those feelings. And look, as much as those feelings are about The Hundreds, they’re really about Fairfax. And as much as they’re about Fairfax, they’re really about a chapter of people’s lives associated with a certain memory and a certain generation of streetwear that is not around. A lot of people came of age during that time, the most notable being Tyler, the Creator and Jonah Hill. There’s a lot of famous people that came up in adolescence and grew up on that block. Then there’s just regular folks who made a lot of friendships there, figured out what we were doing with our lives there, had our hearts broken there, and were inspired there. We constantly think of that time of our lives as the last of it before the internet completely consumed streetwear. What do you think happens to something like streetwear when we lose the physical spaces? I really believe that the sneaker drops and the skateboards and the limited T-shirts were the excuse. People were shopping for friends. They were shopping for like-minded individuals, people who looked like them, felt like them, listened to the same type of music. Or people they trusted to put them onto the next cool clothing brand or the next cool rapper. It was just a space where you could feel a little bit more in your element of I want to be a part of this or This is something that's really different and unique and it’s calling to me. In the most commercial sense, Fairfax was like a shopping mall, but even more of a social scene. You weren’t really going [to the mall] because you were obsessed with Mrs. Fields cookies and Spencer’s Gifts. You were going there because young people were there. It was away from your parents, and you could do bad things. You could smoke weed and skate and cuss and fight and talk to girls. And where do you do that now? You probably do it in Fortnite, you do it in your Discord back channels, you do it through your group chats online. But again, there’s something about the physicality of it. Coming into these spaces and smelling the incense, listening to the clack-clack of the skateboard wheels. The whole point of it was to do it together and then go out and see somebody in those shoes or in those clothes and feeling an immediate affinity or a connection with an absolute stranger. In the two decades you’ve been doing this, you’ve had to shutter storefronts before. Does this time feel different? It feels entirely different because before we were just closing store locations, which is sad but also just a part of business. This time, though, you’re seeing it play up in the comments and it’s actually kind of beautiful. We had a genuine concern that when we said we were closing down our flagship store, people would see that overwhelmingly as a reflection of the health of The Hundreds as a brand. We were like “I don’t know how much we should talk about this because the brand is fine, but people are going to conflate they’re closing the store with they’re closing the company.” Now, have I seen some people comment on that? Yeah. But what I’ve seen more of is people saying Fairfax has closed. And what they are saying is this chapter of what we really loved about streetwear has ended. That’s a completely different sentiment than making it about The Hundreds. I honestly think that’s a testament of how we’ve always played the brand: It was never about us. When it came to Supreme, Supreme was about them. So when they were on Fairfax, they had their customer. They did not participate in our block parties, they did not participate in our photoshoots. So when they left [to Sunset Boulevard], they had their customer who followed them, but it didn’t affect the neighborhood. Now, a brand like ours was so enmeshed with the community of Fairfax that you almost conflated those two. The Hundreds is Fairfax; Huf is Fairfax; Diamond is Fairfax; Flight Club is Fairfax. And so when you say The Hundreds store is closing, and we’re the last one of that class... Look, you still have Golf there. Tyler’s down the street. He’s an anomaly. He’ll be there forever. Speaking of Tyler, the Creator, I saw he left a nice comment on your Instagram post. He hit up Young Corey [Corey Populus] and Corey was telling me that Tyler was just genuinely in disbelief that we had closed. And that was such a significant chapter for him. And Tyler has grown up a bit. When he was younger on the block, I couldn’t contain him. Nobody could, the world couldn’t contain him. What you’re seeing play out is a manifestation of him feeling repressed or suppressed during an entire childhood or adolescence where people didn’t know what to do with a figure like that. He was so much larger than the block that I was like, “What is this force of nature?” Now he’s matured and grown into this adult. I still run into him, I’ve run into him recently at Jon and Vinny’s with my kids, and he’s very sincere with Ben and I. Before it was kind of big bro, little bro status, and now we all recognize each other as peers and that we’ve made really cool advancements and progress in our individual lives and careers. There’s just a mutual respect and love for each other in a way of, nobody was looking at us back then. Nobody considered us or thought we could be anything, and we fucking proved them wrong. Tyler, the Creator is now basically Fairfax in a human. He is the best of everything that happened there in an avatar. There are so many parts of Fairfax that I see in the guy. And I’m not saying parts of The Hundreds—I’m not taking credit for that. I’m saying the neighborhood, the vibe, the attitude of everything that happened there in a generation, you can see that in who Tyler became, how he considers his brand, his artistic point of view, the things that he talks about, his emotions. That’s so Fairfax. When you look back at your memories in the shop, what comes to mind? The most sensational one was, I remember when Nas and Jay-Z were beefing, the Kendrick and Drake of its time. I think they had effectively ended their beef at that point, but Jay-Z was about to drop an album, and we had a leaked copy. Someone was playing it in the store and I was working in the shop that day. There’s a few kids shopping and Nas came in as we were playing the Jay-Z album. Nas was just, like, “Hey, is this the new Jay?” And I was, like, “Yeah, yeah, we got a leak of it.” He just dropped his bags and he sat there and he listened to the entire thing. Just stood in the middle of the store. People didn't want to bother him. Everyone was, like, “This is crazy.” It’d be like if Drake walked in while we’re playing a new Kendrick song about him. Nas didn't say a word, he just listened. Once the album was finished, he just looked at us and he’s, like, “Huh. Not bad.” And he just walked out the store. Jonah Hill, the day that his trailer for Superbad came out, he lived across the street, so he walked over and he was just, like, “Hey, the trailer just dropped for my movie.” It was 10 in the morning, and we were just hanging out in front of the shop and bored, and we sat around the computer inside the store and watched the trailer with him. I was, like, “Whoa, man, you’re pretty funny.” We didn’t know. He’s kind of a more serious guy in person. What comes next for The Hundreds? The brand has the online shop and retailers but what does the next chapter look like? I am effectively stepping back as far as creative control and oversight of how The Hundreds looks and feels from here on forward. This is the first time that someone else has full creative control, and that’s David Rivera. He’s been with us for more than half the existence of the company at this point. He grew up on the brand as a fan. He started off at the bottom as a photo assistant, and then he became an accessories designer and then an apparel designer. He’s worked every role in design, worked his way up to the point of creative director where we now have entrusted him with the brand over the last couple of years. Me relinquishing control over it is the best thing that could ever happen for the brand at this point in time. Souls of Mischief, this rap group, has a song called “Limitations” where they say, Emcees should know their limitations. I know my limitations. Do I think I know how to design well? Do I think I understand street fashion well? Absolutely. But am I the one to do it the best for The Hundreds at this point in time? I’m not, and David is. Having to swallow that pill was incredibly humbling. If it were up to me, we would still have a store on Fairfax and Rosewood, but that’s not where streetwear is at anymore. That’s not where The Hundreds is at. That customer doesn’t even exist. That customer has grown up. [We want to] keep this thing going and see where it takes us. Now, let’s see where David takes us. I still want to be a part of it, and I want to be enjoying the ride. This interview has been edited and condensed.