Gorilla Tactics

Once upon a time in a land far, far away Lowlife Video was founded by Mike Venegas. Those days were before me, and if you ever want to hear that story, buy Mike a beer and let him tell you all about the "Early Shitty Days of Lowlife Video."

When I first met Lowlife Mike, their really wasn't a method to his madness. He already had a site setup and he wasn't really selling too many DVD's online. Most of the sales were through friends he had and people he had met at various shows. Selling DVD's at a show wasn't something that was happening at the time. Times were definitely different then.

Today you go to any given show and you'll usually have a few DVD booths set up, but back in '04 that was unheard of. Selling these DVD's was impossible, I remember people asking if we had them in VHS, no joke! Imagine trying to ask people for $20 dollars for something they'd never heard of or seen. To make matters worse we were selling them out of an old Jansport backpack, or the trunk of our rental car. (Indy Truck Bash 2005) Mike would film and I would walk around behind him with a stack of DVD's in my hand trying to sell them. Sometimes show promoters would even ask us to stop. I can totally understand why, they didn't know who we were or what we were doing, as far as they were concerned we were solicitors. But we didn't give up, we kept at it show after show. Eventually we came up with the term Gorilla Tactics. We would go through whatever means necessary to make a buck even if it meant carrying around a backpack full of stickers and movies.

Unreleased Lowlife Video Artwork circa 2005-ish

Gorilla Tactics came about because a lot of times we were so broke we even had to sneak into shows. (Sorry show promoters) But as a new company we had to do what we had to do.  Nobody was going to give two unknown dudes press passes for a video company.

Somebody had to pave the way, and I'm glad that Mike and I were a part of that.  Lowlife Video wasn't the first, technically, but nobody can deny that it wasn't innovative and ground breaking when it comes to Minitruck videos. And as far as LLV is concerned, I wouldn't count us out just yet, but please, don't send me a million questions asking about the next video, when it's time you'll know.

Who needs a table and a canopy when you can flip a trash can upside down. Believe it or not I sold over 100 DVD's this way in only a few hours.