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...

Contemporary Amekaji style includes denim and leather, boots, hats, and a whole lotta’ replica love that reaches back to 19 th   century cowboys and takes in stride 20 th   century styles from WWII, Korea, and even Vietnam eras.   And then there is Ivy, somewhere.  Let's think about that. Most American work wear brands are not as concerned, I think, with making statements of provenance.  The Carhartts of the world are tying value to practical contemporary needs, no matter how they might market now into other fashion worlds. On the other side of the Amekaji vintage and work wear equation is Ivy, which has its own strange stories to tell.  There are only stalwarts left in America, like J. Press, Andover, and O’Connells’ and I’ve yet to find current Japaense brands as dedicated to Ivy.  But of course J.Press is now owned by a Japanese company and keeps faith with the Ivy stalwart even as Brooks Brothers continues to stumble after having so ...

  I’ve been on something of a tear lately.     It’s undoubtedly indulgent, perhaps even profligate.     But I have my reasons and at least some of what I’m writing today is about what’s prompted those decisions and choices. I’m been “finishing off” a lifetime’s pursuit.  I was born during the Birth of Cool.  Thanks, Miles.  You may be that true icon of cool but there were others and they played their parts.  For me it’s still coolness, that’s my word.   It’s not stuff that makes you cool.  It's not the toys or the acquisitions.  You can be way cool with almost no cool stuff.  But I do think that the stuff helps you feel cool, it becomes another way to tell your story, it helps the picture tell the story, no matter what you say or do.  What we’re seeking in coolness is our power especially when those feelings remind us as much just how vulnerable we really are. The Spanish poet F...

A bootpal reminds me that most don’t want a prolix philosopher’s ramble but a get-to-the-point review.     Most are looking for help with the hard stuff, especially fit and quality.     The meaning of life is not usually on the list even when there is interest in matters of history and provenance. I might lose you but I’m going here anyway. The readers of the great Patrick O’Brian have long commented that his first novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series, 1969’s  Master and Commander  is perhaps too much action, too strapping and overly masculine.  His follow up,  Post Captain , develops the principal characters, introduces their love interests and a host of interesting female characters, but as some critics would have it, too internalized, too much psychological study and not enough action.  Arguably, O’Brian arrives at near perfection in his third novel,  H.M.S. Surprise  where both compelling action and the deeper examinatio...

I started this blogspot with some trepidations and admittedly some feeling of embarrassment.  I still have those feelings.  What does it mean when a grown man wants to share his obsession with boots and leather and jeans and all the places those things take him in his memories and even to the store?  In the real world anyone who knows my so-called real self also knows that the things I write about here are but the tip of my iceberg of obsessions ---and yes, that is the right word, because obsessions are not always bad things.   What are the alternatives?  Superficiality?  Not caring?   Indifference?  Mere hobby?  We like to think that there are "more important things in life" but what's more important than the things you love?  Sure, the people, the places things take you, to cite a good pal.  But since we can't take it with us when we finally go, we might well go with the good stuff.  Each of us defines the "good stuff" t...