Two Unknown Brooks Brothers Designers

Polly & Esther.

Hanging On by the Skin of it's Closed Vent Suit

There was an easy scruffiness to Philadelphia in the '80s.  A Center City news stand sold half cover M magazines for half price. Innocent ignorance would be corrected by a girl friend, later a wife, later an ex-wife, who knew the owner was returning half covers as unsold and selling the magazines at a discount. Philly always had an angle and while everyone seemed to come from money -- no one ever had any. 

Private clubs in Philadelphia were everywhere; thread bare and worn.  Boat House Row gets my vote for most thread bare. Schuylkill means hidden river in Dutch but unlike NYC, not much was hidden in Philadelphia.  I was in my senior year of college in January '84, but would work for a year in Philadelphia in 1986 and it was not at all unusual to see men wearing a straw boater hat and seersucker suit strolling east on Samson and entering the Union League Club through the back entrance.  Mostly, people were what they said they were and save for Chicago, I've never known a less pretentious city.

There was an active social scene and I was invited to a party at the Vesper Club Boat House Row.  It's one thing to be a Naval officer's son - - quite the other to be a Green Beret officer's son. No one cared. There was a diverse mix of Jews, blacks and gays at these parties and I'll never forget a beautiful Iranian woman who owned an art gallery. She almost had me taking Farsi lessons.  What was important was your attire. An Italian friend, a Mummer, might have problems at the Vesper. Sammy had that, South Philly-closed vent suit- tone on tone shirt- grey leather shoes- thing going on and he always wore a crucifix explaining he wasn't religious...he just didn't want to be mistaken for being Jewish.

Late Friday night,  I walk by an old brownstone on Spruce and hear a band playing.  I slow to listen and overhear someone say the Hooters are practicing.  I pass the onlookers as the bass line of 'All You Zombies' thumps in time to my cadence. 

In 2001, I moved back -- after 15 years. Looking for something. But Philadelphia turned into a city of Zombies.  Gutted, vacant, broke and hanging on by the skin of its closed vent suit, it seemed ready for a revival.  A diamond in the rough just waiting...

Alive with Pleasure: Spring Break 1982

In 1982, GM was a word. "Geeyem." Like someone from Georgia says, "Jim." This one was a Buick deuce and a quarter. A white hunk of fat Detroit steel that made a trip one Spring Break from St Augustine to Daytona Beach with four friends.

Troyer drove the chariot. Golden haired and Aryan, none of us in the car that night knew he was gay. Some of us still don't. A cold case of canned Schaffer shared the back seat with Fusco and Beaudoin. None of us knew Fusco would wind up a screenwriter and producer -- although none of us would've bet against him. Movie star looks but amazingly cheap...he was pre-ordained for Hollywood success.

Beaudoin sat next to Fusco chasing raisins from a generic one pound box with beer. Brillo headed and bearded, the war in El Salvador was excuse for six hours of his indignant Boston accented argument that the Monroe Doctrine was the ultimate evil.

I'm riding shotgun and have to take a leak. Troyer offers to pull over on a stretch of darker-than-the-inside-of-a-goat, I-95. "No need." I say. Wise old man of the car, I explain how I pissed in cans during Army convoys while, "you fuckers were starting ninth grade." I open a beer can with a P38 on my key chain and pull down the fly on 30/30 khakis. I stick my dick in the can careful to avoid the sharp edges.

Success as I fill the can but seconds later feel warm pee covering my khakis. "No problem unless you piss more than 12 ounces," I say and fling the can out the window not knowing the back window is down. Not remembering all the windows are down in the white Detroit slab-o-steel Troyer's mom should be driving.

"Fuck, Tinseth!" Fusco screams as my nephron unit (thanks, Dr. Lardner) formation strikes him head and chest. Beaudoin, slow to catch on, thinks its raining for at least five seconds before a handful of piss-misted raisins are digested. Troyer, of course, laughs.

I spend the rest of the trip holding khakis out the car window at 70mph in an attempt to dry the large stain on my crotch. My friends. And they have remained friends... are tolerant. Like friends who get pissed on always are.

A Haircut & Change 1980-1984

Can you see change when there is change? I think I've changed recently but I doubt it can be seen. My college IDs record a 22 year old freshman who weeks earlier was a sergeant in the Army. By senior year my plans to return to the Army were permanently put aside... I had changed and I could see it. I also needed a haircut.

'Oh god this reminds me of how my girlfriend would blast this song in her Fiarro while driving on california highways at night, and I was high as hell. Jesus someone make a time machine already. IndicaEuphora

Early Spring - 1983

Late Valentine Bluchers

Dance Like The Go-Go's

Many thanks to Oyster Guy for mentioning this video in yesterday's comment section. Most people don't look at comments and that's a shame. If the post is the cake, then surely the comment section is the baking soda. I try and publish all comments. Even those accusing me of being gay. Which is impossible. At my age, every time I bend over the blood rushes to my head and I get so dizzy I almost fall over.

Head Over Heels For The 1986 Collection

Am I the only one who thinks the '80s are making a comeback? No. Svpply thinks so too, but I may be the only one who thinks Belinda Carlisle looked better chubby. Can't stop myself.

T.W.A.T. 1984

1984 Greenwich Village Halloween Parade Photo by Bob Leafe

Long before the Village parade became over crowded with cliched Bridge & Tunnel Zombies, the sidewalks were lined with mostly straights while the parade featured everything from elaborate floats to a single black man dressed as a Drum Majorette in white boots with pom-poms, throwing a spinning baton in the air with one hand while he balanced a huge ghetto blaster on his shoulder playing marching music.

His style and performance were bested only by four moustached men dressed in 1940s airline stewardess uniforms, stockings, heels and matching pill box hats. They flank marched in step and every 50 feet or so would turn over large round hat boxes one by one revealing, "T. W. A. T." More photos of the '84 parade can be seen here.

Even the many blue suited and Ronald Regan masked cliches of the time allowed one to stand out through the intelligent use of a chain to drag around a hunched over senior citizen while carrying a sign that read, "EAT THE POOR."

Gate Way to 'B-Squared'

Brooksgate Three Piece & Golden Fleece Club Tie - Hartford, 1987 - NFS


1984 Brooksgate Catalog


1985 Brooksgate Catalog


1986 Brooksgate Catalog


1987 Brooksgate Catalog

I haven't heard the expression 'B-Squared' in probably 20 years. I'd like to remedy that.

Brooks Brothers closed the doors on it's authentic University Shop in the mid-70s but the idea, and it was a good one, hung around. An entry level line cut trimmer and cheaper for the starving young man of the '80s. Lets face it, in 1984 the $500 Brooks Golden Fleece worsted suit with its 6" drop would look pretty silly on a 25 year old with a 32" waist, a 40" chest and a razor thin wallet.

Brooksgate offered a 8" drop at half the price of Fleece. In short, it was a 'two-fer' and it was hard to walk away from two suits for the price of one. I bought three. Solid navy, navy pinstripe and grey pinstripe. Not a fan of Brooksgate shirts. Too thin with a short collar that caused the B-Squared roll to go MIA. However, outerwear was a steal. A Brooksgate duffle coat was half the price of a Brooks duffle and I'll be damned if I could tell the difference.

Brooksgate even had a catalog. Half the size of B-Squared and filled with photos rather than drawings. They have a certain '80s cheesiness - not unlike a Duran Duran video - that I find comforting and easy to dance to. Some great classics are mixed in with best forgotten designer train wrecks. I love the DB pincord with peak lapel on the Spring 1984 cover while Spring '87 looks like a cover from today's two-fer king, JoS. A. Bank.

As promised last week, the Trad archive deaccession continues with Brooksgate and women's wear catalogs at auction this Sunday. Realized prices last week were moderately surprising to me while jaw dropping to the Golf Foxtrot. To that end, a quick shout out to the boys in creative at 650 --Hey, this is like stealing candy from a baby -- but then, you guys already knew that.

J. D. LaRue - My Kinda Hero

Real Characters

"...a fake Rolex, cheap Italian shoes and a Member's Only jacket"

Kiel Martin - July 26, 1944 - December 28, 1990


The Hand Joke

It takes courage for an actor to portray a fuck up week in and week out. Kiel Martin's J. D. LaRue was that fuck up writ large. Martin would have been 67 today had he not died of lung cancer in 1990. Chain smoking, heavy drinking and twice divorced, it was said he didn't so much act as he played himself.

Stephen Bocho's brilliant Hill Street Blues took the cop show and put it on its Sam Browne belt. Basket weaved into the boiler plate police procedural were long looks into character's personal lives. Many times these diversions were bizarre but almost always honest. The good guys could be bad and the bad guys could be good.

Shortly after graduating from the police academy, I was assigned to the midnight to eight shift with a sergeant who would park our patrol car outside his girlfriend's double wide trailer, instruct me to listen to the radio and if we were called, honk the horn.

Hill Street Blues captured truth and humor in police work rather than the fictional hand jobs given in films like Dirty Harry or Bullitt. It looked into the darkness of people's lives which is where the gold is. And nobody on the show had more gold than J.D. LaRue. Although it was surely plated.

A swaggering detective with a fake Rolex, cheap Italian shoes and a Member's Only jacket, LaRue could have easily been that sergeant I worked for. A huge ego hid a mountain of insecurity, infidelity and drink. Easily hated the first season, his character, like the others, became more complex, sympathetic and real.

So here's to John LaRue and to Kiel Martin. Cooler than fifty Steve McQueens and a hundred James Deans put together. Happy Birthday.

Wearing My Independence

The right Talbotts

The wrong Talbots - Door County, WI July 1988

I don't know about you but I've never worn a tie on the 4th. Still, it's the lead up that counts. Not interested in theme ties but something more understated keeps 'em guessing.

Happy Easter

St Augustine Beach, Easter 1984

Britches Tie & 1988

"Ok, that tie in the 12th picture, tell us about it." Zach

Not much to tell. Picked up for $5 at this thrift store.
Wanted the label more than the tie. Britches of Georgetown is my 1988. Living in a $350 studio on St Asaph Street, brunch at Clyde's, vodka and grapefruit in Houston's, starched Duck Heads, Sylvester Stallone on M Street, crabs at the Quarter Deck in Arlington and burgers at the Tune Inn on the Hill. Dusty and PSB provided the soundtrack to Iran Contra hearings and I...Sorry. What was the question?

The Highway - 1980

Fanning Springs, FL (photo courtesy of the new Stuckey's)

Outside Florence, SC on 16 May 1980.

The stretch of I-95 between Ft Bragg, NC and St Augustine, FL was about eight hours of the most uninteresting highway-- then and today. Only things missing today are Stuckey's and cheap gas. Whoops. Scratch that Stuckey's comment.

Eastland Shoe by Bob Guccione

In loving memory of Bob Guccione

The Yarmouth

Kennebunk

Rangeley

More Rangeley

Penobscot

Camden

Heart breaking...

Little over a month ago I was walking west to the Capsule show in a sleet like rain that was as cold as it was annoying. I thought. Within three or four blocks of the venue I began to see them. Slowly at first and then it was like a Paul Bunyan convention. They were everywhere. Suddenly Manhattan looked like Minocqua, Wisconsin. Either that or there was a pancake house nearby.

I carelessly left my camera in an outside coat pocket and that's why the first picture looks like I shot it through a Bob Guccione stocking. The condensation finally lifted though the pictures don't do any justice to these shoes. Made in Maine by a third generation family owned company, Eastland Shoe is authentic enough to be the real deal.

The Made in Maine Collection is hip enough for Paul Bunyan wannabes and classic enough for old guys and gals. This kind of heritage does not come cheap. You knew that, right? Shoes start at $275 and that hurts. Like a lotta old guys, I live to run prices through the inflation calculator. Back in 19 and 83, when I was in college, that Camp Mocc was $32.75 or $73 bucks today. Even my beloved Ray Ban Aviators sold in the same Summer 1983 L.L. Bean catalog for $29 bucks or $64 today.

What are you gonna do? I search out the best I can find, look for good value and buy what connects to me. Like pornography, it's hard to describe but I always know it when I see it --especially when it's shot through a stocking.