By Natasha Lennard

Bobby Vaughn likes the initials F T W.

They’re tattooed on the inside of his lower lip and under his right eye. They’re emblazoned again on a chunky silver ring he wears on his right hand. FTW is also the name of Vaughn’s surf shop and new clothing brand.

The letters, a popular feature in prison tattoos, mean “Fuck The World.” But, in fact, Bobby Vaughn would like nothing more than to rejoin it.

After a fall from grace that saw him lose ownership of once successful fashion label, Von Dutch, lose custody of his son, and spend five months in jail, fighting murder charges for shooting his best friend, the man who once rocked out with stars like Tommy Lee and Snoop Dog wants to start over. Vaughn is now marooned on the desolate shores of Rockaway, Queens, hoping to resuscitate his retail career by developing the FTW brand out of a small surf shop.

“Everything I’ve got left, I’ve put into FTW,” said the California-born 34-year-old, sitting on a pristine black leather sofa at the back of his minimalistic store.

Vaughn opened the FTW shop in 2007 but has not yet started selling the clothes. Rather his store is stocked with high-end surf paraphernalia, such as boards costing up to $5,000. The FTW fashion line is, according to Vaughn, in production.

“It’s really simple designs, but I want it to be real hardcore, real gangster,” he said in a voice incongruously soft for a man with tattoos covering much of his stocky frame, including a life-size hand-gun on his hip and a Japanese dragon that skims his shaven head.

Yet, Vaughn’s Rockaway location is more provincial than gangster – on the New York peninsula, where the subway reaches its furthest south-eastern extent. FTW’s neighbor on Beach 116^th Street is a family-run pizzeria. And although Rockaway has been a popular surf spot since the 1960s, it is a far cry from Venice Beach, CA, where Vaughn surfed professionally as a teenager, mingled with celebrities and founded Von Dutch.

“Did I think I’d have to leave California, and start up again in Queens? No way,” said Vaughn, who moved east in 2005, “But I’ve been through hell and back to end up here.”

In 1996 Vaughn founded Von Dutch with his long-time friend and business partner, Mike Cassel. The brand was best known for making the trucker caps donned by such celebrities as Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. “I was rolling nice cars, living on the beach, going all over the country for trade shows. I never had less than $1,000 in my pocket” said Vaughn, who appeared on an episode of MTV Cribs with musician Tommy Lee when Von Dutch was at its zenith. In its heyday, the brand was grossing $100 million annually. Over 14 million $50 trucker hats were sold.

However, in 2001, Vaughn was forced out of the company by partners Cassel and Tonni Sorenson for breaching a contract that Vaughn’s attorney, Stephen Lowe, speaking on the telephone from his Los Angeles offices, described as “heavy handed and impossible to comply with.” Lowe declined to elaborate further, other than adding, “Bobby got fucked.”

Vaughn was left in such dire straits that he was forced to sleep on his attorney’s sofa.  Lowe, a business and entertainment lawyer – who represented deceased rapper TuPac’s estate – acted for Vaughn when he took Von Dutch to court. “I saw it as a $10 million case,” says Lowe of the expected reward. Unable to reveal the amount Vaughn won from the trial, the attorney said, “It sure wasn’t $10 million.”

Lowe believes that Vaughn is more business savvy now, and Vaughn too said that he has learned from the Von Dutch fiasco. “I want to keep FTW much smaller,” he said, “so I can control everything myself.”

Losing control of Von Dutch was not, however, the only catalyst for Vaughn’s shift east. His decline involved a far greater trauma, which landed him in solitary confinement in the Los Angeles County Jail. In February 2005, Vaughn shot dead his oldest childhood friend, Mark Anthony Rivas.

After a drink and Vicodin fuelled night, Rivas – who as a teenager was convicted of first degree murder – became violent at Vaughn’s Venice Beach condominium and lunged with a broken bottle. A struggled ensued, and Vaughn – who always slept with a loaded gun by his bed – shot dead his friend.

“Mark was a beautiful guy, but like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Vaughn said.

Vaughn faced first-degree murder charges, and although these were eventually dismissed, he sat out the duration of the trial in jail. He describes this five-month sojourn as “fucking hell,” and recalls long spells on suicide watch standing naked in a glass-walled cell.

Vaughn’s inspiration for the FTW brand was heavily influenced by prison. The clothing line includes oversized shirts made to look like prisoners’ uniforms. Even Vaughn’s business card mimics a crime report, featuring a mock-up fingerprint and a telephone number glossed as a prisoner’s ten-digit identification code.  “I want to take the statement all the way,” he explained “I want the bags people take their clothes home in to look like the vacuum wrap they put around prison pyjamas.”

However, Vaughn insisted that his trademark three letters are not meant aggressively. “FTW could stand for a lot of things, Free The World, Forever Two Wheels [a biker slogan]. But when I use it to mean Fuck The World, it means fuck all the bad stuff – the prejudice, the judgement,” he said. Vaughn added that he intends to found a non-profit arm of FTW that would see prisoners stitching clothes, and the proceeds going to the victims of violent crime.

There is more at stake with the FTW enterprise than Vaughn’s commercial interests; he hopes that it will bring enough financial security to win back custody of his son, Elijah,11, the product of a relationship with a speed-addicted model.  Since 2001, Elijah has been in the care of his maternal grandparents in a gated community in Newport, CA.

“I want to get Elijah back. He’s my everything,” said Vaughn, flicking through grainy images of his smiling, dark-haired son on his iPhone. He added that Elijah is the only blood relative he has known; Vaughn was put up for adoption at birth and knows only that his mother was Mexican, and his father Japanese. The tattoo on the inside of his forearm reads, in elaborate italics, “Elijah.”

In the meantime, 3,000 miles from his child, Vaughn has taken on a paternal role for a number of Rockaway kids, who use the FTW store as a recreation center at weekends and after school, playing video games and lounging on the sofas.

Shea Dolan, an energetic eight-year-old with a lisp and the scars above his mouth from a once-cleft lip, does his homework in Vaughn’s store. “His mom’s just been arrested and his dad’s sort of a buddy of mine,” explained Vaughn.

Around 15 teenagers, who have grown up surfing Rockaway waves, have formed an FTW surf team, which trains under Vaughn’s leadership.

Urial Williamson, 15, is one such surfer. One Saturday he walked into the FTW store, a backpack with a torn strap slung over his shoulder. “Go into the store room – there’s a new bag in there, you can have it” Vaughn said to him.

And the neighbors approve. “I think he’s a good influence for local kids,” said Donna Varisco, 30, who manages Ciro’s pizzeria on the same block as the FTW store.

Although Rockaway’s aspiring young surfers have turned the FTW shop into a social epicenter, business is far from booming. The store attracts only a handful of customers most days. “I wish there were more customers,” said 21-year-old Alice Waite, a bleach-blonde art student who works part-time in the store.

Yet Vaughn is hopeful about the brand’s prospects. John Fields, who headed marketing for successful eyewear brand, Oliver Peoples, has invested in FTW, and Vaughn says a number of other impressive investors are involved. “I’m still the Von Dutch guy,” he said, “and that goes a long way. People were paying $50 for trucker hats that cost $1.47 to make. It’s crazy, but I made it work. People in the industry remember that.” Vaughn paused.

“And I can do it again with FTW,” he added, “Because if I can’t, I’m fucked.”