New 'Essays in Idleness' & Other Reviews from The Hard Flex Cafe

Nothing about my relationship to leather jackets makes any sense.     I’ve long come to grips with that.     I’m going to have the next one, another one, and the reason I want   that  one is that I have spent my   entire life , at least since 8:13pm on February 9 th   1964---when The Beatles came on The Ed Sullivan Show---wanting to be cool.     Granted a leather jacket is more Stones than Beatles but you get the idea.     Whatever purpose a leather jacket serves, it’s got to be cool.  Cool may not be the only point but it’s never not the point.  And just when is cool anything other than the point?  That question I answered on that fateful February night when I was but seven years old.  There is more than one Coolest Leather Jacket but there is none cooler than the Café Racer.  (Now do take this entire diatribe with tongue planted firmly in cheek.  Where else do you keep yours? ...

“Everybody. We right back here doing the same thing. And I hope y’all enjoy what we doin’. Cause I’m gonna play it’s gonna be good to me. I have little opening piece…and I told you I don’t play no rock n’ roll but it kinda’ sound like…I don't try to out play nobody.  I got my own way of playing.” —Mississippi Fred McDowell [Parenthetical to the Fugue: This one isn't about boots or denim or leather. Instead it's asking about why we do this? Why do we offer up our personal style to each other? What do we think we are doing? I don't presume to speak for you, not in the least. But I do offer a few thoughts about why I get dressed everyday and sometimes take a picture and don't mind sharing it with you. We're working stuff out. But what?] Nowadays workwear is also style. I wish style on everyone because it means you care about the story you are telling yourself. I hear there’s a dime to be made on being an “influencer.” I don’t resent that and certainly don’t envy...