Dressing the Part

Know what bugs me? People who dress the part, but when you call their bluff, they know Jack.

For example, truck driver hat wearing, PBR drinking hipsters who think they’re bike messengers, 50 year old MBA guys riding Hogs who think they’re bad boys, North Face jacket Blue-Tooth yuppies who think they’re hardcore climbers, etc.

Case in point, I was walking down a hill yesterday with my dog Scout and we ran into 2 kids with skateboards walking up. Yeah, they were dressed the part with their “skateboard clothes”.

So I said to them, “You guys going run the hill from the top?” Then one of the skaters said, “That’s sick, dude”. I reply, “When I was your age, we used to bomb hills like this all the time. Just point it straight and ride it out.” They gave me a nasty look like shut up old man. My departing words were, “You guys are wussies and you’re a disagree to the Z-boys.” They said, “Z who?” I just lowered my head and walked away in disgust.

When I started to skateboard in the early 1970’s, there were no “image clothes”; except for some local surfing t-shirts. You just wore whatever clothes you had, which were pretty much hand-me-downs from the older brothers. We just wanted to skate as much as possible. Clothes were secondary.

Now image, via heavy-duty marketing, drives everything (e.g., brand named clothes, iPods, flip-flops, etc.). Image is more important than the actual activity itself. In my upper-middle class neighborhood, I see tons of kids walking around while holding their boards like a damn prop. I just want to yell, “Drop the board and skate.”

Just go out and do it. And don’t worry so much about your looks.