Local brand ‘Sacramento Hates You Too’ defends the capital city from haters | Opinion

What started as a joke between two bartending friends is now a local microbusiness with growing popularity and a special connection to the city of Sacramento.

It’s called “Sacramento Hates You Too” and I think it’s brilliant.

Opinion

Despite a population of more than half a million people, home to the state capitol and the Sacramento Kings, countless farmers markets and regional events, nestled between two beautiful rivers, and a thriving arts and entertainment scene… this city catches a lot of flak for no reason other than the fact that it’s not San Francisco or Los Angeles, and there’s a hundred good reasons I don’t want to live in either location. (The traffic might be the No. 1 reason, though.)

I tried moving away — I really did — but Sacramento was always calling.

“People in Sac know how special it is, and we love it here,” said Kellen McConnell, the brand’s co-founder. “A lot of people in Sacramento have moved here and never left.”

With every purchase of a SHYT item, the business pops in a card to explain their ethos: “To put it simply: This is our town. Ring the bell. Tell ‘em where you’re from. We don’t need to defend it because we’ve got something special here... Rep the city that we love that bad. Tell them haters where you’re some. Give them directions to ‘the 5.’ This is our piece of land and the people that love it and stand by it is what makes it magic.”

McConnell and a friend started the business in 2019 when they were working as bartenders at downtown restaurant. These days, it’s McConnell and partner Kasey McNair who run the business. (Their first baby is due in August.) But the couple say they are working within razor-thin profits.

“We’re in the black right now but there’s pretty tight margins on this, so we’re always looking for the next, new thing,” McConnell said. They create the designs, but neither has experience making clothes so everything they sell is shipped out and back to embroiderers and screen printers, which can get costly.

Still, even selling $40 hats, the brand has become incredibly popular among younger Sacramentans within the last year or so. Go to just about any event in the city core these days and you’re likely to see SHYT gear in the crowd, somewhere.

McConnell says the acronym was an unintentional but happy accident for the brand, and one they’ve really leaned into — their pop-ups across the city are called “SHYT Shows.”

At a recent Concerts in the Park event at Cesar Chavez Plaza downtown, I counted no less than three of their hats in the crowd, and when I visited McConnell last week at one of his pop-up sales behind the Club Raven bar on J Street — he set up shop next to the dumpsters — he was soon swamped with customers, some of whom dropped hundreds buying the gear.

For all its popularity though, there’s definitely been some push back.

“Some people don’t get it, for sure, when they see the hats,” McConnell said. “(But) this isn’t supposed to be a negative — we have love for our town. It’s a clap back to the Bay Area and Southern California thinking about Sac like it’s a cow town or a fly-by city. (We know) what Sac is and the people that make it special ... Sacramento Hates You Too is about embodying the spirit of Sacramento as a determined city that has long played the underdog.”

Still, for those who don’t get it or would rather spread the love in a more visibly positive way, the couple recently started selling “Sacramento Loves You More” gear. Eventually, McConnell said, they’d like to send the money gained from those sales to local nonprofits like the River City Food Bank.

Their latest drop though is all about attitude and city pride: With the baseball team currently known as the Oakland A’s is moving to Sacramento next year, McConnell and his partner have released a new design they’re calling “shytball.” The design replaces the A in “Hates” with the heavily-stylized “A” in the Major League Baseball team’s logo; a pitch-perfect response (pardon the pun) to all the haters on Sacramento’s newest sports team.

(Full disclosure: I immediately bought a T-shirt with the logo as soon as the pre-sale information dropped, and I plan on wearing it to the first Sacramento A’s game I can get to.)

Another design has a giant rat leaning over the city’s iconic Tower Bridge, crushing a beer can with its paw — The Sacramento RiverRats. There’s a parody of the Sacramento Republic FC logo, too. And one of my personal favorites is a sticker with a parody of The Sacramento Bee’s mascot, Scoopy, but he’s got crazy eyes and the newspaper clutched in his hand that reads “SHYT.”

McConnell and his wife mostly advertise through social media, namely, their Instagram page @sacramentohatesyoutoo, or their online shop at shyt.co. They have nearly 7,000 followers at last count.

“I gave (hats) to a few bartenders when we started,” McConnell said, “but it’s just been a word of mouth thing.”

He said the end game for the young business is simply to buy a house in Sacramento for their growing family. A reasonable goal that’s ironically been made all the harder by people moving here from those same cities that constantly ‘shyt’ on us.

“We just wanted to do something special and make some clothes; show some love for the city,” McConnell said. “We’re just maintaining the creativity and bringing something to Sacramento that keeps it on the map.”

“There’s nothing sicker than a 916er.”