ONE37pm: And so H.A.G. Stands for Hip Hop, Anime, and Gaming. Where did your love for those come from?
Bowler: Okay, so it's a little bit of a longer story. I've been a gamer all of my life. In my childhood, I was like a 90s baby or 90s kid, right? So it was filled with both outdoor play with the neighborhood children, but also indoor on N64 with my brother and my cousins. So getting a Nintendo 64 really started it for both me and my brother in terms of gaming. And it was really the only thing we had in common growing up that we spent our time together doing. Otherwise, we were two very different people. So throughout middle school and high school, we end up getting, like, a PS2. We never got the PSOne, but we got PS2, and PS3, which I ended up taking off to college. But my time gaming really exploded after I graduated college and then moved to Atlanta on my own.
ONE37pm: But let's talk about your upcoming gaming conventions. What inspired that?
Bowler: Sure. So "Blerd Bash" was created because we really wanted to provide a space and opportunity for people to congregate, share their love of urban culture, and of course, provide small businesses, creators, and music artists with opportunities to grow their brands. So we actually started our events in 2019. So, like a year after we were founded.
They were started in 2019 under a different name, which at the time it was called the "Throw Down Party Tour." I still love that name, but my partner wanted us to rebrand it because he's like, "what the heck? Like, nobody knows what that is." So you hear Blerd Bash and people kind of understand a little bit more what it means. Bash being party and Blerd, for people who don't know, stands for a Black nerd. Even though our events really are open to everyone and it's really a celebration of urban nerd culture. So as long as you're respectful of that culture, anyone is invited and can come and enjoy the event.
ONE37pm: Wow, that's crazy. So I'm going to ask this question. This one's a little bit deeper, right? What are some of the best moments about the journey? Like, when you look back, you close your eyes, it's a beautiful thought.
Bowler: The best moments about the journey? Honestly, just thinking about how much it has transformed my and my partner's lives. We've been able to leave our jobs and work hard for ourselves. We're by no means rich. We're still very much putting everything, every bit of finance that we have. I'm still very much pulling everything out of my 401K, but we know that it's going to pay off. But really just seeing the growth that we've gone through as people both in our world views and just what we believe, how we interact with people, how much more patient we are with people as well as one another.
Going through this business, being in a relationship together, it's hard having a business and then having a business in a relationship, and that's hard. So just seeing how much we've both grown as people, as a couple, as business people, and just the amount of knowledge we've been able to soak in has really been like it really just makes me happy and it makes me proud. Especially when I think about where my partner started from because he definitely started from a place that was a lot less privileged than I started from because as I mentioned, I was working in a corporate environment.