LALATOWN LIFE

A tote bag has a really special meaning to me.

Before refrigerators and modern food preservation, grocery bags and fabric tote bags were essential household items. People had to go to the market once or twice a day, and they always brought their own fabric bags. No one thought of them as fashionable. They were simply necessary.

Then plastic bags appeared. They didn’t tear easily. They were convenient. They were disposable. They were replaceable. And slowly, people stopped carrying their own bags.

And then, somehow, tote bags came back.

I always wanted to make my own tote bag — one that could carry the story of my paintings. But for a long time, I couldn’t find a way to make an all-over printed tote bag that felt right.

Until recently, when I moved my designs to Zazzle.

It felt almost like a small miracle that this kind of product existed. For the first time, people could actually carry the story of my painting with them. This is something I had been waiting for for a very long time.

This kind of bag brings back a deep memory and nostalgia from my childhood.

About fifty years ago, my mother used to take me to the town market. Part of the scene you see on this tote bag comes from a painting I made last year called Self-Issued Participation Ribbon. That scene is real.

There were bean sprouts, tofu, dried fish, fresh fish, and all kinds of vegetables. There was a scale. A woman was scooping rice into bags. Big spring onions. Everything went into a fabric tote bag.

I remember holding my mother’s hand as we walked through the market.

She bought me tteokbokki and sundae — Korean blood sausage — from a snack stand. Then she asked me to wait there while she went to buy a chicken. At that time, the chickens were alive at the market, and they had to be killed in front of her. She didn’t want me to see that.

So she asked me to stay at the snack bar where I could still see her.

Back then, children could be left alone like that. I was four years old. Nothing bad happened.

And I think that memory — that sense of safety, trust, and quiet kindness — became the foundation of LALATOWN.

This tote bag exists because some memories don’t belong in drawers.

They belong in everyday life.