I went shopping for some clothes on Saturday, since my job now requires an actual wardrobe. Wanted a nice light sport coat – so named because no sport is involved, I presume – for spring, and this took me to H&M. I think it stands for “Horrid and Meretricious,” at least when it comes to men’s wear. Everything looks itchy; everything looks like it was made in a Southeast Asian factory with a big fat man stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat walking down the aisle with a drum, beating the pace at which the 11-year-olds should sew. No. Went to Eddie Bauer, but they only have things that make you look as though you may, in fact, climb a mountain some day. Gap: no. Macy’s: miles of suits, but nothing like I wanted. Penneys: I have some fine shirts from Penneys, but too many of the suits looked like they were from the “Court Date Collection.” I wandered over to Express Men, where I buy my shirts, because they have great colors. Asked a clerk if they had some sport coats.
She showed me THIS.
I said I did not plan on enlisting any time soon. She nodded and said she understood; in fact, I got the impression she regarded the line as a sin for which no amount of penance would undo the stain. Having quickly honed our standards down to a sharp point, she took me over to an item that was quite restrained, and fit me – well, I can’t say like a glove, because gloves don’t always fit. It fit me like a tailored suit. It was light-hued, and the display version paired it with a robin’s-egg-blue shirt.
I would have started singing the Miami Vice theme, but it’s unsingable. Machine-gun sound, tuned drums, guitar-sound from weird portable keyboard! Really, the look was so mid-80s I nearly wept with joy: you mean it’s BACK? Not that I like it, but really, it’s BACK? If I buy this, do I have to start auditioning Tubbs?
Or would that be Tubbses?
Rico always had the timeless look, but that’s another matter. The clerk tried to sell me a blue shirt with some khaki pants, but I declined; I said I didn’t like the combination.
She was surprised. “You’re the first man I’ve ever met that didn’t like blue shirts and khaki pants.”
“They’re all lemmings,” I said.
I paid the usual trip to the Apple Store to see if it smelled like a barn (check) then went to the Sunglasses Hut to torment them with a very reasonable request: any clip-ons?
I know they don’t; I just enjoy pointing out the absurdity of being SUNGLASSES HUT and not having clip-ons. Some say: how unhip are clip-ons? Please. I wear glasses. What would you like me to do? Wear big glasses over smaller glasses? I did that or a while, and felt like the Big Brother guy in the 1984 Apple ad. Some say: go to Wal-Mart. Yes, but it’s never in my chore-rotation. Went back to Penneys, which used to have clip-ons; clerk said “we don’t carry them anymore, but I saw some at Snyder’s, but Snyder’s got bought by Walgreens, so maybe they have them at Walgreens.” The woman was up on her retail churn, I’ll give her that. I went to Walgreens.
There they were. $15.
And so I am now the Man with the Drugstore Clipons. Fine. I do not have expensive tastes; every time I drink some of my Yellow Tail Australian wine, I give thanks that I don’t know how unsatisfied I should be. Same goes for coffee. Thing is, I’m not a penny pincher; not a coupon-clipper. Not frugal. Perhaps I’m just cheap, which is a character flaw. But somewhere in the back of my head is a law laid down many years ago, perhaps in high school: $20 is a lot of money. I hate to break a twenty, because then it just evaporates. A dollar is a dollar, and once upon a time was a cup of coffee and a pack of smokes; a quarter is a pinball game, which can be coaxed, with skill, into two games, or three. Pennies are an irritant. A fiver is a book and a burger. And so on: once you have certain monetary constructs hard-wired, it’s difficult to shake them.
Sunday I went back to the mall for other reasons, and found my favorite canvas dun-hued Chuck Taylors at the Gap on sale for $19.99; almost did a jig. Every year I buy a pair for summer; every year the eyelets rip. For $20, though, I can deal with shoddy eyelet construction. Just seeing the shoes in my closet now tells me spring is imminent. We’ve won. The rest is just a mop-up operation.
One of the things I love about modern architecture is the way it radiates a warm, almost intimate sense of humanity:
This is the work of a firm called coop hummable(l)au, and the rest of the stuff is just as merry. This has all the hallmarks of modern European architecture: aloof when not openly hostile, overscaled, cartoony, something you would see in the margins of a fever dream.
Try this school, for example. Visualize the future, Winston: a ski boot stamping on an human face:
This concept is interesting; there’s absolutely no way to know what this is. Or what it’s for. Or where you get in. Or what you do once you get there.
They’re . . . interesting, as sculpture, I suppose, but there’s something disturbing about them, beyond the bizarre design. They say there is no history. Not: history isn’t relevant, or history need not be consulted, but there is no history. These things are unmoored from every traditional aesthetic. Even the surrealists and abstract expressionists had a connection to tradition, inasmuch as the viewer probably knew what they were rejecting by what the refused to include, but these are sui generis.
The more I look at these the more I love the International Style, which was a previous attempt to deny history. At least those buildings followed certain rules: windows were windows, doors could be presumed to be located in a certain place, and the buildings fit in the grid of the city. (Except in the 70s, when muttonchopped shag-loving architects decided it would be cool to put them in the middle of an empty plaza, on a mushroom pedestal, and tilt them 45 degrees.) They may have looked like the boxes the cool old skyscrapers came in, but when done right: yes.
(Via this post at io9.com, which of course devolved almost instantly into a stupid political flamewar, because the building is designed to produce more energy than it consumes.)
Later: Monday Matchbook, natch, and some amusing signage in the morn at the stribblog. See you around.
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98 Responses to Monday, Feb. 22
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Love the picture of Jasper. He has an aura of magnificence. “Satisfaction” describes the mood perfectly! And “Architorture”! What a great word! It should absolutely be in the dictionary, to describe the buildings pictured here today.
@Tom in Denver: I guess they hadn’t fully divined the attitude towards the tenants.
Well, of course, this is just the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker’s cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement, you whining hypocritical toadies with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic secret handshakes,/i>
I love the smell of electronics stores (Fry’s in particular just for the enormity of it all).
It smells… It smells like victory.
I have a tough time breaking a $20 also, but lately it has more to do with “ticking off” the help as they roll their eyes when they are faced with the task of making change (or having to scrounge for small bills). I still cannot get used to $1 coins, and their eventual widespread implementation will be the end of the economy as we know it. After that will be the elimination of pennies and possibly nickels, and we’ll get quizzical looks from young whippersnappers as we reminisce over penny candy.
@juanito: they don’t all stink, just some, must be the manager’s cologne, Eau du PCB .
You’re in the Sacratomato area aren’t you. You have that Fry’s that once was Radio Shack’s failure to duplicate Fry’s formula (Incredible Universe?). Never been in there but, passed it many time.
It is, of course, worth mentioning that many 19th-C Parisians (including Balzac & Maupassant) considered the Eiffel Tower to be an intolerable vulgarity, and many 1930 New Yorkers considered the Chrysler Building to be cheap, trashy and garish. I think today, however, most residants of both cities would lay down their bodies in front of any motion to demolish either icon.
That said, those pictures posted above ain’t no Chrysler or Eiffel.
Crapola. I posted my witty comments on the buildings on the buildings comment pages. It took me three days to think them up so I’m not going to repeat them here (I live in an alternate universe, thus the days).
@Rich Cox…heh heh, I caught that too but since I’ve not sent Sir James his promised payolla for B+ I thought it best to keep that snark to myself.
@MadCan…nice buildings. The taler one I could use for a colon cleansing tool, hardy har har
DAMMIT, JIM..no edit button,that should “taller”, not taler…oy.
electronics stores that smell like barns.
they used to smell like shellac canning plants when everything was made in Japan.
now it’s wet flimsy cardboard from whatever island happened to be above water Tuesday a month ago.
Too bad that the term “brutalist” is already in use, as these examples (and the new addition to the Denver Art Museum) embody a certain brutality.
Al – quite shocking – a shame, really – that someone would be so forward as to ask a retail clerk if that store carries a particular item without first knowing the answer to be “yes”.
Get into a light booth Herr Federber. You’re sounding more like Andy Rooney (“you know what annoys me?”) all the time. Do your eyebrows need a trim also? Talk about projection of your own behavior on to others. If we look up that word in our Funk and Wagnall’s will we see your picture in the entry?
re: Fry’s. I’m not sure what the others referenced are like but the ones here in the South Bay remind me of the cantina in Star Wars. A lot cleaks and sales people trying to communicate with each other and you when English was not their first language. Between strong accents from every populated hemisphere there is, scrambled syntax, and incomplete understanding of our own nonsensical irregular verbs, I was lost more than once just trying to pay for something.
Sorry, cleaks should have been clerks. My German forebears are chuckling in their bier.
Fry’s generally requires that you know what you want and can help yourself, kinda like Costco or the internet.
Al, every-once-in-awhile the beasts in the cages need to be poked. If not the higher-ups don’t know what people want.
I did this with an Aldis a couple years ago. They were selling TVs and lawn mowers, but did not have cream of mushroom soup(It’s a food store how can you not have cream of mushroom soup?). I did ask for a manager to speak to and much to my amazement the district manager was there. I politely told her that it would be nice if they would stick to their core business and not try to compete with Walmart. Don’t know if I did any good, but I at least let them know how the customer felt.
Ah, yes, previously it was Incredible Universe! I think the Street is even named “Tandy” Way – how’s that for some old time Radio Shack love?
My previous job placed me in about 4 facilities right around there. Since it’s down the street from Arco Arena, it was very common to see members of the Kings in there all the time. Fry’s opened a new place out in Roseville, and decked the store out in a locomotive motif to honor Roseville’s Train History. The kids love to go there.
Fry’s is strictly for folks who know what they want. The pricing is great, but don’t expect much customer service when it comes to educating a customer on a purchase. I like the fact that Processors, Memory, and Hard Drives are locked in a cage behind the checkout toll both. Like a penitentiary. Or the fact that they have someone whose only job is to stand on an elevated platform and tell the next customer in line to go to register number 34. The concept that customers queue up to checkout, and can get baked up over 60 customers deep while all 40 check registers are occupied is mind blowing.
I don’t think I would ever purchase a complete system there. But I’ve probably assembled a few hundred Workstations, and dozens of servers from components I’ve purchased at Fry’s. Strangely, about one third of the components on the shelves are marked as returned items. Cheaper to take the return, and charge a restocking fee, than to assist the consumer in making the correct purchase I guess.
The weirdest thing about Radio Shack is that it is “a Tandy company”. If you’ve ever been to a Tandy store (leathercraft supplies) it’s hard to see the connection. There are still a few Tandy stores around, but not many – only one left in Virginia.
It is, of course, worth mentioning that many 19th-C Parisians (including Balzac & Maupassant) considered the Eiffel Tower to be an intolerable vulgarity
The only Parisian restaurant at which Guy de Maupassant would dine was the one in the Eiffel Tower; it was the only place in Paris from which he couldn’t see the Eiffel Tower. French intellectuals, eh?
Having worked my way through engineering school at Radio Shack:
The funny smell in electronics store is a combination of ozone from the electrical equipment and formaldehyde and other chemicals outgassing from the plastic used in the device cases and packaging materials.
Right after WWII, it became apparent that the 40 hour work week was here to stay, and that people would have spending money to use on recreation. The scion of the Tandy family believed that this was going to lead to a boom in the hobby business, as people needed activities to fill their spare time. Thus they spun the family leather business into Tandy Leathercrafts, and purchased a small chain of ham radio stores which was grown into the Radio Shack we know today. The family also owned the Pier One Imports business for a while, based on contacts made in the Far East while purchasing electronics goods.
What he missed was that televison would grow to be the thing that filled people’s free time, but as an electronics retailer, he was poised to benefit from the boom.
All three businesses are pretty much separately managed and owned now.
Lordy, Lordy. My first job out of High School, in the Dark Days way before the intertubularnet thingies, was at a Tandy Leather and Crafts store. One of my jobs was to fill craft orders from penitentiary inmates. The boss told me you never, ever want to short change them on their orders, fasule, capish? This job was my intro to the time honored system of making a “voluntary” contribution to the beat cops “soz nutin’ happens to yer nice shop, don’t ya know”. Anyway, I lasted only a month because the managers wife was such a (word that rhymes with bitch). Heh, heh.
wasn’t much “ham” in the Rat Shack, but there was a lot of war and manufacturer surplus, as well as (obviously) radios and wiring accessories. after they went national, they had a few stabs at receivers, and had one really fine one, fully synthesized all band that would work for a ham shack receiver, for about 4 or 5 years.
I really miss the parts selection they had in the 70s and 80, REALLY miss it. but Mouser, Digi-Key, Dan’s Small Parts, and Newark One are the better for it.
Dan’s is a lot like the Rat Shack of the early 60s was for parts.
I think the Street is even named “Tandy” Way – how’s that for some old time Radio Shack love?
For true old time RSLove, I think you have to be of the opinion that Tandy ruined The Radio Shack by turning it into a store where someone could buy an end item, rather than components.
It seems Radio Shack is now offically referring to themselves as “The Shack”.
There a place in Santa Clara, CA called “Weird Stuff” a dusty flea market looking mess of surplus computer equipment. Not a place for amateurs looking for help but, an incredible collection of the obsolete.
I won’t shop at Radio Shack, because the salespeople always “suggest” additional purchases (such as what a great time this would be to stock up on a mega-pack of Radio Shack-brand batteries on sale now). Or they want to know who my cell phone carrier is, because Radio Shack offers awesome rates and I wouldn’t I love to sign up? Or they want my name, address & phone number for a cash purchase. Pushy, pushy!
I’ve purchased components online from weirdstuff.com – mostly some old rackmount stuff that wasn’t available new anymore. In fact, I’m sitting five feet away from a 4U document server (and it’s two identical backups) that I purchased the rackmount cases from Weird Stuff.
Radio Shack Batteries: In my opinion, I suspect that they suck more energy out of devices, than they actually supply.
After visiting and talking to clerks, I am under the impression that the on-line folks of “Weird Stuff” are an independent entity that pick through and finds useful stuff they think the can sell on line.
Whoever they are they are not in the store and just because you see it on-line don’t expect it to be easy to find and set aside in the warehouse.
Somebody has to comment on suitcoats. When I was a lad in the mid-60s I worked in a men’s suit department, and they had several things in a nubby-silk like shiny fabrick in Electric blue, gold, and iridescent olive. The best part was the listing of the fabric on the arm-label: 100% Genuine Imported Italian Shantung Rayon.
I also remember one old salesman who caught a customer who wanted to buy a suit to bury her husband in. He sold her one with two pair of pants.
Is the Weird Stuff store in Santa Clara, or Sunnyvale? The retail store listed on the Website indicates it is in Sunnyvale.
Your right, Sunnyvale, I have worked in the county for 10 years and the whole mess that is not San Jose or Palo Alto is Santa Clara to me.
“your” or “you’re” some days it drives me mad, mad I tell you!
Maybe that Express clerk was thinking you were joining the local police force.
…and Radio Shack is NOT the store I remember from the 70s. The guys working there then were even bigger geeks than myself! Now they’re just trying to sell you something.
My In-Laws lived in Sunnyvale for about five years. All those towns/cities run together. For me, if it’s not San Jose, then it’s “when do we get to Great America?”, or “just a little farther until Santa Cruz!” Although, now I do see the distinction between San Jose and Campbell….
At any rate, the weirdstuff.com website lists the location in Sunyvale as their “Retail Store”.
And now I’m thinking about picking up 3 of those sub $200 1U servers on the site to consolidate a few virtual machines onto….
somebody needs to commment on the Snoozpaper pushing viruses Sunday through their online ad services.
the nonsense perpetrated on an unsuspecting public sounds like a version of the “you have viruses, $45 and we fix ‘em.” it’s a scam, and the latest versions also harvest your card data, drop a rootkit and several trojans, and raise hob in your name.
the (monthly) latest version of the microsoft “malicious software removal tool” has been really good at killing that krep for Windows ™ users. download it from another PC onto a CD, and run from there on your machine.
Damn. For every instantiation of that first building or anything reasonably similar I am clubbing 6 baby seals and burning a ton of coal just for the hell of it.
Also: When it was first looming in the harbor, many people thought the Statue of Liberty was butt ugly. And they were right. We’ve just gotten used to the big green thing.
Dunno about the love for the International style. I worked for many years in one of the more prominent examples of the style…it’s shown on architectural Websites as a bad example. Inhuman, uncomfortable, and depressing, plus every spring the groundskeepers would have to go out there and square up the trees. If they’re anything other than perfect cubes, it ruins everything.
What is up with Apple stores? They really do reek. I stop by, looking for my son. I notice that everyone who works there has a flabby belly floppin’ over their belt, cheesy haircut and odd facial hair. And the guys don’t look any better, either.
But the stench is what’s amazing – come on Jobs – deal with that issue. Or have Woz roll by on a Segway – he’s got nothing else going on – this is just the job for him now. We expect action!
Only total dorks wear clip-ons.
You do know they sell prescription sunglasses, right?
Just buy transition lenses.
The second building pictured can be found in downtown Los Angeles (see here) near the Cathedral of Our Lady of The Angels. To me it looks like a dinosaur.
I bought my last pair of Chucks five years ago, and they wear like iron. This pair is a bit worn but still going strong, despite the fact that they are one of four pairs of non-running shoes in my repertoire, and are in heavy rotation. By contrast, it has become a yearly spring ritual to buy a new pair of Chucks for my husband. And his old ones aren’t just a little worn; they look like they have been gnawed at by rodents.
Perhaps the shoe company – knowing that women still make the bulk of shoe purchases – pours the quality eyelet stitching into the woman’s sizes, and deviously makes up the differences by cutting corners on the men’s sizes? Doubtful, as it is the men who are most loyal to the brand.
So… that leaves blaming the user What *is* it that men do to Chuck Taylors? Does the testosterone leak out the soles of their feet, corroding the canvas with acidic machismo? Is it men’s stronger metatarsal strength that tears at the canvas around the eyelets? Or are y’all just too darn manly for your shoes? (Sing that to the tune of “I’m too sexxy for my pants”)
Anythime I look at “Architecture” like that (being from Nebraska) I always have to wonder how it holds up to blizzards, hail and 60 mph straight line prarie winds. Probably not well.
I think the menfolk wear their Chucks out in the world, eveyday, worki’ and a playin’. I think women wear them out to an event and then put them away in the closet until the next party. Simply, less use, less wear and tear.
_@_v – looks like they’ve successfully liberated architecture from the narrow bounds of habitability…
Mr_Hat:
“Too bad that the term “brutalist” is already in use, as these examples (and the new addition to the Denver Art Museum) embody a certain brutality.”
I don’t even like driving by that ugly thing as I travel west on 13th Ave. I’m afraid the pointy part is going to fall on my car!
I do, however, like the Denver Public Library across the street; it seems as warm and friendly as the DAM is cold and prickly.
H&M? Penney’s? Eddie Bauer? for a suit? for a person YOUR AGE?? grow up James. Heime’s in the Hamm Building StPaul. It would be a good fit in more ways than one. The store itself would suit your retro good taste.
Not a suit, Phil – a lightweight jacket. My good suits come from elsewhere, but you’re right: I should hit Heime’s. Thanks!
“The Court Date collection from JC Penny.” Heh. I’ll be using that without attribution. Put it in my stash right beside “thundering bluenoses from the Society to Repeal the 20th Century.”
[...] is imminent. We’ve won. The rest is just a mop-up [...]