i succumb

and no, 'tis not to the beat surrender, god knows though i wish it were.

no - i have in fact succumbed to that of which i have steadily ranted lo these many months, ever since i first witnessed it on the streets of this city - a once in a blue moon, count on the fingers of one hand, exceedingly rare incidence of my giving in to a trendy gesture. one which has tormented me with its ubiquity while drawing me on with some sort of eldritch, unspeakable attraction. i would demand (silently and inwardly of course) that it be of another color than olive drab, and it was so; that it come pinstriped, paisley, checked, even seersucker, and i got 3 out of 4; but the only one i ever saw i actually thought i'd ever wear was about $500 bucks.

well - i finally found one.....that fit.....in a thrift store......for $20. apparently, it's a prototype of this but without the patches or fancy buttons or whatever, which is how i like it - the label says "express design studio" which, if you try to find on google, has little or no web presence. and if a brand on a label has no web presence, one might be led to believe it's a prototype. [i have some experience with prototypes - when i was a barista a designer who was a regular said "i have some design prototypes i need to get rid of, want some?" - deeming correctly that i would provide him free advertising; in other cases, i've had an uncanny knack for finding them in thrift stores, such as the time i found a ford motor company promotional racing jacket's prototype in a new york charity thrift shop. instead of ford motor company on the badge, it had the designer's name. it's probably worth more than what i paid for it, which was $8.]

it has a lot of the correct detailing of the classic M65 but is made from this really soft cotton, and separate polyester sleeve linings. it's that subtle, natural overdyed black that takes on reflective overtones from the colors around it, so it's good for mixing and matching.

and i got it for $20.

right now it's going over a ben sherman gray and white short-sleeve and some Levis 514 stretchies in dark indigo. the shoes are of course my KCR silver techs which i have been very attached to lately, particularly since i seem to be unable to destroy them as i normally do.

so - the look is hardly textbook or regulation, but there are enough subtle gestures to make it acceptible. more than acceptible, it's nice. and now the torment at last can end.

back to worrying about my hair i suppose..... i have nothing to complain about, at least i still HAVE hair at my age.

shades

so, my plan was, once i got my new contact lenses, to amass for myself a library of, oh i don't know, maybe a half dozen pairs of cheap dollar store sunglasses [of course we all know there isn't much at the dollar store that's actually a dollar these days] - the kind you used to be able to get at the gas station or drug store. i had found in the past - i guess now i realize the too long past - you could find a pair of nice retro polarized shades for under ten bucks, maybe even five.

oh how wrong i was.

here i saw cheap chinese mass-produced shades - many of them with such a thin polarized layer on the lens that it had already scratched in shipment - for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, TWENTY BUCKS. thus it was at walgreen's; thus it was at bartell's; thus it was even at the most sad, run-down gas stations i could find - those that still carried them anymore. some have ceased to, due to relentless shoplifting by crackheads and meth maniacs.

what to do?

having some spare time to myself this weekend, i ambled down the southern end of the street, the "don't leave valuables in your car" area. next to a carniceria and a produce market and a bubble tea place, there was a "sportswear" shop - in other words, a shop that sells dickeys, plaid shirts, puma sneakers, black ball caps, and....sunglasses. and - not the kind of sunglasses you pay fifteen dollars for in a drug store. the kind of sunglasses that cost half as much, that make people cross the street.

you get the picture.

i almost got the ones that said "Loco" in gothic script on the temples.

almost.