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

This subject is going to take more than one take.  But let's set the stage here. It’s all such a different scene now.     I mean, there actually is a scene.     Lots of fellas are interested in boots, denim, leather, vintage militaria, and sometimes Ivy.     Social media has accelerated curiosity and helped set the tone, which slides effortlessly between deeply opinionated orthodoxies and a carte blanche of just do you.     If it's not always welcoming it does have the advantage of coming through so many cultural lenses that it defies focus, and I say that in a good way.     That sense of latitude and extent is different than it was when I got my first Wranglers, stole my first Schott Perfecto, and wore my brother's Beatle boots. My own relationship to these styles can’t be separated from growing up with them, and how the age was informed by the social realities of post-WWII, and more especially by Vietnam, politics, free speech a...

Writing about vanity may be its ironic apex but writing about one’s own could be its truest ambition. For many years I have kept a private diary of interests in things handmade, which includes the usual suspects for an older white American male boomer of far less than unlimited means.  I’ve been into clothes as long as I can remember: my father dressed smart even when he was dirt poor.  I have loved wool and watches, bicycles, denim, and boots, leather of all kinds for as long as I can remember.     My first sartorial bequest were my father’s well-worn but still un-frayed Oxford cloth button downs purchased from Brooks in the early ‘60s.  These were somehow still going strong when purloined from his dresser in the middle 1970s.  I wore them through college until they literally fell apart.   My father never stepped out of the house without a proper hat and would not be caught dead in unkempt shoes.  I can confirm he wa...

  I’m not ambivalent about hats.     I wear one   most   of the time, even in the house, even to bed.     We’ve got close to nine months of winter ‘round here and I like a warm head.     Thinning hair is likely contributing but I’ve been like this since I was a little kid.     A hat makes me feel whole.   My father never left the house with a hat and almost always a proper one.  I still have one of his Stetsons along with the original box, unfortunately far too small for my long oval, and I’d wager that this particular example was among his last purchases, circa 1960.   He wore it until he passed in ’99.  He preferred a short brim trilby, as I do.  He had a collection of fedoras too and in his day bore a stunning resemblance to the great David Niven.  Has anyone ever wore a hat better than Niven? We’re easterners, New York City boys from Jersey, and we don’t do cowboy but n...

  “Time and Nemesis will do that which I would not, were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy – do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine – so will you.” ---George Gordon Lord Byron     I wasn’t in the market for another leather jacket.  But I’m now sure I don’t know what that means.  Put another way: I really wasn’t shopping but when it comes to The Good Stuff I’m on perpetual reconnaissance.     Little anymore makes my heart race.  Is that a bad thing?  Love’s truest consort is nascent heartache, for what better measure is there of such reverie than the potential for defenseless enchantment?  Tomorrow’s arrival can make today’s impulse look like yet another costly gaffe. What’s life without a tincture of reckless daring?...