Troy Xerri

6/23/2022 - right after graduating high school I went to San Francisco and I knew I wanted to come back with a ring of some sorts this was a new chapter in my life basically really starting my life a whole world where I could try to do anything, so the the ring I wanted to come back with had to be special, I went into a lot of small shops which had just a lot of mass produced generic rings that just didn’t feel unique enough to me, and I thought I wasn’t gonna come back with anything until I came across this tiny boutique shop that this man was in and no i didn’t get any profound wisdom from him a lot of what he was talking about was reminiscing and ranting about moments from his life with a smile and joy that reminded me of my nanu that I was beautiful in it’s self to me a man just in his shop creating stuff how he wants to and probably struggling to do so, I had the date engraved into the ring he made me and I paid way more then I would of from the gift shop generic ones but I knew my ring had love poured into it and soul poured into it and that made it worth so much more to me I still wear it everyday and it’s imperfections are what make it perfect to me, he engraved it with his name and the date which is barely readable but so cool to me so idk what this all is symbolic of maybe it’s just a fun story that I felt like capturing and didn’t even know why then until now, maybe a story of imperfection being perfection but whatever you take from it i think the biggest is passion, the passion of his craft turned into my ring and his shop and made me gravitate to it more so maybe passion + purpose means the most maybe more then anything idk Main Street Mercantile in Sebastopol is the shop and appears to still be in business which is nice to see and the man’s name was Michael Paz