Introducing EVERYDAY SOCIAL®

AFTER HOURS

Music has been part of my life for almost as long as sport.

I started DJing at 14, on vinyl, with a pair of Technics turntables.

This was before laptops, streaming, and millions of songs living in your pocket. If you wanted to play music, you had to own it. If you wanted to own it, you had to dig for it. And if you wanted to DJ somewhere, you carried it with you.

Crates of records. Turntables. Mixers. Speakers. Lights.

A lot of very heavy things.

Throughout high school and college, weekends often meant building sound systems, setting up stage lighting, and DJing events across campus.

What fascinated me most was how music could transform a space.

It could turn strangers into a crowd and create memories tied to a particular song, place, or night.

Long before I thought about brands or businesses, I understood the power of bringing people together.

Digging

I grew up in California in the 1980s and 1990s, heavily influenced by hip-hop and freestyle dance music.

Some of my favorite memories were simply spending hours digging through record stores around San Francisco and Berkeley—along Haight Street and Telegraph Avenue, at places like Amoeba Music and Rasputin Records.

There was no algorithm telling you what to hear next.

You searched.

You listened.

You talked to people.

Sometimes you bought a record because you knew the artist. Sometimes because someone recommended it. Sometimes the cover simply caught your attention.

And every now and then, you discovered something incredible.

That feeling of actually finding something has never left me.

From California to Asia

When I moved to Asia in the early 2000s, my musical world expanded.

My sets became more open format—hip-hop, house, dance, pop, and club music from different countries and eras.

Even while building a full-time career in finance, DJing remained part of my life after hours.

Over the years, I was fortunate to play at clubs from Hollywood to Hong Kong, as well as events including the Asia Film Awards, fashion shows, Armani launch parties, and an F1 Grand Prix party in Malaysia.

But what I loved most was never the venue.

It was the selection.

Digging. Curating. Finding the right record for the right moment.

And occasionally playing something someone had never heard before and seeing them turn around and ask:

What is this?

That is still one of the best parts of music.

Why Vinyl Still Matters

Today, almost every piece of recorded music is instantly accessible.

That is extraordinary.

But convenience has also changed our relationship with music.

A record was never just a song.

You could hold it. Study the artwork. Read the liner notes. Learn who produced it, who played on it, and where it was recorded.

Records collected scratches, stickers, fingerprints, and memories.

They travelled with you.

Some stayed with you for decades.

There was something meaningful about music being physical.

What Happens After the Game

EVERYDAY SOCIAL began with racket sports.

Pickleball and tennis—and soon, padel—remain at the heart of what we do.

But sport has always been about more than the score.

It is the places you travel.

The people you meet.

The conversations afterwards.

The friendships that begin because two people happened to step onto the same court.

Sport creates community.

Music does the same.

That is where EVERYDAY SOCIAL AFTER HOURS begins.

AFTER HOURS

AFTER HOURS is the cultural side of EVERYDAY SOCIAL that begins when the game ends.

When the rackets are put away.

When the courts grow quiet.

When people stay a little longer.

When the records come out.

It is simply a place for us to share music we genuinely love.

Real records from our collection.

Music discovered in Japan and around the world.

Soul. Funk. Hip-hop. House. Jazz. Disco. Boogie. Pop. Japanese music. And plenty that does not fit neatly into a category.

Some will be familiar.

Some you may have never heard before.

That is the point.

We want to bring back a little of that feeling of discovery.

One Record at a Time

Through AFTER HOURS, we will share records, hidden gems, playlists, DJ selections, and music we find along the way.

Some from California.

Some from Japan.

Some from old club crates.

Some from a record shop we happened to walk into that afternoon.

And in time, we hope to bring it all together through sessions from Karuizawa.

Two Technics.

A stack of records.

Friends.

A game outside.

Music inside.

Nothing overly produced.

Just good music, good people, and a place to share both.

Perhaps AFTER HOURS is simply different parts of my life finally coming together.

We are not sharing vinyl because it has become fashionable again.

This is not about looking backwards.

It is about carrying something worthwhile forward.

There are decades of extraordinary music waiting to be discovered by people who were not there the first time around.

Sometimes the best way to discover something new is still the simplest:

Someone you trust puts on a record and says,

“You should listen to this.”

So that is what we are going to do.

One record at a time.

Welcome to EVERYDAY SOCIAL AFTER HOURS.

Play all day. Stay after.