badtaste/goodtaste

Post stolen and then shortened via dapper kid.

This is the picture they show in the Oki-ni store. What the hell. Verdict: bad taste.

This is the same garment but in a Velvet magazine photo-shoot. Verdict: hard to wear but shown here in good taste. I guess Oki-ni can really miss the boat with their photos.

In general, this garment is too hard to wear but the photo of it in motion makes it look pretty cool.

Parting thoughts: In follow up of AAW's post, I thought I'd leave you with this picture of a comment.

Woah, the internet isn't a floor for open debate?

Wants: Indulgences in bad taste

I like comic books, but comic books t-shirts are almost always a dip into the bad taste pool, including this one by The Hundreds.

Comic books don't translate well to clothing, you'll either end up looking like a kid who only leaves his basement for Wendy's or an Ed Hardy bro. I wear them anyway, although I typically disguise them under a half buttoned BD shirt and reveal my geekiness only upon request. That being said, I really like this shirt and Stan Sakai's work. I'm might have to blow my lunch money on this if I can get my hands on it.

What's good for some, isn't good for others.

I like Ralph Lauren. They make good shirts, khakis, suits, ties, and sweaters. While most of what Ralph Lauren sells, it on occasionally is inappropriately branded (see big pony). There are more obvious mishaps, and then there are subtle ones that, depending on the wearer, may or may not be off target. I think one of the best things about RL is that many pieces are staples. A man's wardrobe could be completely RL from it's selection of basic BD shirts, chinos, ties, jackets, suits, and even classic shoes, but I don't endorse this.

This shirt gets away from the RL wardrobe staple. It's a piece that is pulled out on occasion, just to add a little flair. If worn in this way, I think that this shirt could be worn in good taste, but if worn more than a couple times, I feel that this shirt may become "that shirt". You know, "that shirt" receives more eye rolls than a emoticon in an business email. Don't be pretentious, be subtly pretentious.

My call: Bad taste

Schoolboy Blazer: American or English

Having spent some of my life at a boarding school, I feel that in someway, my view of education and its dress are different than one who attended a public school. As a high school senior, I had much more of a reverence for blazers than many a public schooler whose uniform, unchanging as mine, was blue jeans and a t-shirt. Every boy at Western Reserve Academy had at least two blazers. One green blazer for set aside green days (our school colors) and one blazer for non-green days. The days get confusing and I won't go into detail. I personally owned (and still do) multiple, but most owned a typical 3 or 2 button navy blazer with golden buttons.

An American invention (the gold buttons that is), it's an article of clothing that I associate very closely with boarding school and American traditions. Recently, I saw this blazer released by Band of Outsiders called the Schoolboy blazer.

Tweed, while a really cool fabric, was never for anyone at boarding school a staple. It was something you pulled out for those lazy Saturday mornings when you had to doze through a Virgil reading or trignometry lecture. While this certainly could be considered an English boy's school blazer, I would say that this is improperly titled. If you disagree with me, please argue with me, as I'm making a wide generalization from a specific experience I had. In other news, this blazer is cool like Kool-Aid after mowing the lawn.

Alaska and Me

The Rainy Day Song by Alaska And Me from Tyler Cox on Vimeo.

Alaska and Me broke up last year when their van broke down for good. Being a band is a lot harder than one may think. Road food is unhealthy, shows are exhausting, and equipment is fickle. They had a Northwestern vibe to them that few bands have nowdays... but this video sucks. Too bad Jake Davis wasn't around to save the day.

Music = good taste

Video = bad taste

Good Taste via Cartoons

Get yo' WASP on!

The Hundreds Denim

While APC would be the obvious choice, I'm debating whether to grab this pair of jeans for my next pair to break in over the winter months.

Monica Denim $139

Do these jeans constitute bad taste? For me, there's a chance that I would be exercising a lack of taste by rocking these. I'm not really a skate park/big t-shirt/rap kid as I'm more of a flannel/rock&roll/bike kid. The Hundreds is a brand that has a really chill SoCal vibe. Surfing, skating, freestyling, and getting high is the image that they have built around their brand. I know that that's not me. I think here I've built enough reasons to not get these and spend a couple extra bucks for the New Standard APCs but the SoCal feel to these jeans attracts me, even if it's something I'm not. This specific cut is skinnier than The Hundreds typical cut and looks something like the 501 or the 514. I usually wear skinnies but I would definitely be down with a pair that's baggier than my 511s. Restraint is something I'm going to exercise so I don't end with jeans that look silly on me. While branding is stupid and shallow, people will judge you on the stitching on your back pocket. Your clothes represent so much about you that if you dress like a confused person, people will think that you haven't found what kind of person you are. Knowing who you are and what you can wear is exercising good taste.

Regrets

I'm regretting not having a camera as of this weekend. I went with my teammates to see our faster counterparts race at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and afterwards we went to Johnny's Deli in Bethlehem and had their famous bagels. Holy smokes, they make some mean bagels. I got two: a garlic bagel with salmon cream cheese spread and a plain bagel with blue berry cream cheese spread for dessert. The former blew my socks off with it's garlic-y and salty taste which made the salmon spread that much better. The plain bagel with blueberry spread, while not as awesome as the previous bagel, proved itself much better than a Dunkin' Donut bagel. Warm, fresh, and dripping blueberry hunks out of the melting cream cheese, the bagel just melted sweetly into my mouth (yeah, it sounds so gay but tastes so straight). Looking for pictures online, I only found an angry reviewer complaining about how the service there hit on women... stupid feminists ruining my view of a perfect shop (can I say that?). I wish I had a camera to show you my delicious meal. I wish my area had a good bagel shop. I wish...

Parting thoughts: I'm feeling the diner coffee mug. I'll have to steal one sometime.

Fedora

Fedoras must be tread lightly around. There are few that can pull them off. I'm under the impression that more people can pull off the Canadian tux off than the fedora. Japan usually nails new interpretations but not this time. They take the already touchy fedora and make it cheaper and rattier looking. Sorry boys, try again. I won't be caught dead in this.

You can end up looking like a boner here.

Moon Boots

I have neglected the theme of my blog for, well, almost all of my posts. You may not have picked up that my blog was originally intended to feature bad taste but I ended up posting on stuff I thought was cool. Well, now, after +40 posts, I'm finally picking up where I intended this blog to go. I present you:

Brooks Brothers offers these on their online store. I'm not really sure who would wear these. Hipsters? Astronauts? Mountain climbers? They seem to be something one would order from Sierra Trader's in order to climb Everest. I can't imagine them being worn for any other purpose. Would you wear these? Would you wear these is you were older than 50? Would you wear these if you just need a warm boot to walk your dog in? Would you wear these with green eggs and ham? I would not wear these Sam I am.

Parting thoughts: Postal Service - good lyrics = Owl City

Decisions, decisions...

When it comes to bags, I'm not the first to get a tote. They look cool and all but I like to ride my bike, a lot. This pretty much rules out getting a tote, so I do enjoy looking out for backpacks. I, after a year of using a crappy backpack I found in the attic, am finally getting a new bag. Now, surprisingly, there are a lot of (hip?) bags out there. Backpacks are apparently making a comeback (see Selectism) after getting the school boy label for a year or two. I'm game for a nice canvas bag, and here are some options. From an affordability stand-point, only two of these bags make the cut. But one can dream, right?

Dropped by Nonnative, this Mountaineer Daypack might be my favorite pack. It looks like an Orvis or Filson backpack, but lacks the structure, which I think sends a nice disheveled message. The quality should be good, you're paying a nice hefty sum of £315. That's $522. I think I'd rather not take out a loan for my college books, thanks.

Gotta' love red. This pack by Master-Piece would really make my jean jacket pop but I can't say that a rucksack has ever been good as a bookpack. It's cool, but once again the price tag, at $307, sends me packing.

Oh, now this is cool. Utilitarian, rugged, and just plain old simple: this bag kills. You have to love what Kanken has done here. I only have a 15" laptop but you can fit up to a 17" laptop in it. Given my tendency to carry around everything that I might need (Chapstick? Yeah, that's a little girly), I'll need the extra 2". At $99, it's the right price.

This Penfield backpack, while really cool, is a bit bold in my tastes. Penfield blanket print seems like it might be a bit of a fad. The indian print looks great on blankets, but I feel that 2 or 3 years down the road the backpack might feel fadish and contrived. But than again, at $99 it's certainly not breaking the bank. I could go for this pack, but my first pick would definitely be the Kanken.

Minnehaha

Keeping posts uniform while having your HTML screw everything up gets difficult. I have been lazy cleaning up as of late and hope that won't happen again. Anyway, thought I'd share a company based out of Minnesota, although outsources to China. Minnehaha makes bike bags that hang around the back of your bike seat. The shown model is $69.97, cheap for a bike specific bag. The construction is excellent, made of thick double layered cloth and supported with a wood bar. The straps are made of good leather that have aged well for me. There are a few problems: you can't fit a two liter in there and the buckle holes are too tight to strap the buckle in at first but break in with time. You can waterproof you bag with different treatments but avoid oils, as they can ruin the leather. They're good cheap bags but that's because they're made in China. I would advise a purchase if you ride a bike that needs a small bag and you're OK with outsourced products.

Parting thoughts: This post got me thinkin' it's time to bike before it gets too cold.

MASH SF Jonathan Burkett 2007 from MASH TRANSIT PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

Snow?

It's November. I demand snow by December. That way I can go snowboarding by the time I'm back home for the Holidays.

Also: Shampoo daily? Or every other day?

VG Early Season Shit: Volume II from VIDEOGRASS on Vimeo.

Reeboks?

The white sneaker is a staple. GQ endorses it, ACL endorses it, hell, the kid down the street does too. Of course when winter rolls around, the dirty sneakers get put in the closet. White sneakers, be they canvas or leather, just aren't built to stand up to snow and keep your feet warm. Winter has traditionally been reserved for the boot. While I love boots, they can sometimes be too heavy on those days between the first snow and an actual snow base. On these days I go for *drumroll*... my Reebok Workout Mids.

"Why would you wear these?" you ask. "They'll get filthy in winter, they don't look like something a skinny jeans/button-up guy would wear, and you certainly don't play basketball. These are actually the most comfortable shoes I wear and they are indeed filthy. Unlike a Vans or Sperry, you certainly can't wear this shoe with shorts and without socks (should go without saying). I bought these off final-score.com last year for $29.99. Sorting through the perpetually bad sneakers, mostly rejects from the sneaker freaks, I found these. They don't scream "awesome" but when I read the comments I was hooked. One man said he had been wearing these for the past 10 years working at a Ford factory. Another said that they wore these when working on his garbage truck. Being a person that thinks workwear is pretty cool (like 90% of other bloggers, right?), I purchased these even though these were made in Indonesia. While they look very silly during the first few wears, once they brown, they look as loved as your first pair of Chucks. They're killer, in my opinion, and I'd be interested to see if anyone else owns pieces of clothing that are not typical ACL wear. Non-blogged items can add so much character to your wardrobe, and while it's shallow, set your apart from the crowd.

LL Bean Trim Fit

Wrinkle-free shirts have been given a terrible rap as gross and chemically. While it is true that some have been irreversibly altered, for some shirts you can wash the chemicals out. For example, this LLBean trim fit will be soft and chemical-less in about 7-8 washes. Having worn two of these for both years of prep school, I can attest for their quality. They don't fit super slim as they fit similar to Brooks Brother's slim fit. I certainly don't swim in them. And really, for $29.50, you won't worry when you eat spaghetti sauce. I would recommend at least getting one and remember, frumpy takes time.

Being a college cross country runner, I drink a lot of Gatorade. It was probably cooler when it was out of a glass bottle.