Last weekend the Life Brand crew took a trip down to Illinois to get our screen printing on. A full two days of perfecting screen printing accompanied by some unnecessary crop dusting, a trip to the worst bar on Google maps(I know, hardcore right?), 40 oz smashing drunken jiu jitsu and a lot of ibuprofen. Needless to say, it was a pretty magical weekend, but the part that stands out most was our impulse stop to Bobby Nelson’s cheese shop. To our surprise, this shop was the real thing, one of last original cheese shops tended by Phyllis, who told us she has worked there for 53 years.
Not only did they have amazing meats, cheeses, pickled whatnot, and jams but the shop walls were covered in black and whites of old school professional wrestlers. When asked, she told us that Bobby Nelson was the original owner of the shop and he invented the Full Nelson and the Half Nelson and that she had met some of the men in the pictures from Gorgeous George to the World’s Strongest Man. Needless to say it was pretty rad to see all that history inside a cheese shack, in the middle of the highway with Bobby Nelson’s name glowing in neon.
