Someone complained that I’m dissing bluecollars by criticizing NASCAR. No, I say they’re dissing themselves by falling for an ad campaign. I don’t mind local car racing—as long as people don’t go nuts over it. I question mass marketing and mobs. And obsessive hobbies.
In the new print OYB I also reject pro-sports clothing as fashion. I reject camo, too. But I’m amending this. Pro-sports clothes are still out—clothes that are mostly ads suck. But camo is fashion.
Military camo is a tough call, though.
Hunting camo is the real deal. In the countryside if you go into a grocery store almost any time of year you’ll see a lot of camo on the patrons. When the weather turns a bit cold, you’ll see a LOT of it. I’m sure it’s mostly just utility wear. But there’s a bit of a statement with it, too. It’s a “proud to be a hunter” or “proud to be redneck” statement. The thing is that camo is an honest dual-purpose fabric. Two uses always trump one in the world of fashion.
For instance, I went to the Prairie Home Companion show that came to MSU (first time) a couple nights ago. Tickets sold out in the first couple hours a couple months ago. I was batching it that night, so I just showed up, went to the ticket window, and asked if I could get a ticket somehow. They gave me one for free. Cool. $50 usually. Ouch—I couldn’t’ve swung that. The show was pretty nice. The audience was well-heeled grayhairs. Man, the Boomers have quite a burden to bear: paying big prices for culture every way they turn ((or their schoolkids—pop concerts are probably $50 too). Anyway, I was thinking that camo coveralls would’ve been good to see at the show.
A friend had a big 40th birthday party a few years ago. A real farmer showed up later on, after planting all day, he was dirty, wearing dusty blaze orange coveralls. He had the best outfit there. Blaze orange counts in the camo fashion category.
With the way that non-rednecks are behaving these days, it’s nice to have a decent civilization to fall back on. Except for the fact that redneckism has been co-opted so badly by NASCAR.
And UFOism is fine but when you get your conspiracies from the pulpit and its spinoff mass media it’s going to lack imagination in a BIG way.
So every cultural sector needs revival these days. I want to do my part across the board.
Nowadays camo can be pricey. But I still have most of it that I’ve ever bought or had given to me. I see some new fabrics, styles and patterns that I’d like to pick up—but it costs too much. There’s a clingy, shiny, sexy new camo tshirt out there. Hightech performance underwear, or something. It’s like $35. Yeah, right. But it does seem cool, worth wearing out on the town. Then the new photo-realistic patterns can be cosmically sweet sometimes. All those leaves and treetrunks in and out of focus, big and small, in foreground and background. Aspens, cornstalks. I’d like to get outfits for every season.
Of course the real function of camo is cool, too. It’s neat to just be able to disappear in the woods, or in the snow.
Now, as I wrote in my article, another cool trick is to have civvy clothes that also function as camo. Walking the neighborhood in full camo is a bit tacky, unless you have bow in hand and you’re headed to your stand. But there are combo’s of plaid and such streetwear that work as camo but which straight people don’t totally recognize as camo. So you can go for a stroll down the street, then cut into a woodlot and no one is the wiser. Most offroad strolling these days is trespassing after all. No need to bring attention to yourself. No one is likely to be outside anyway, but cellphone snoops are out there. “I just saw a man walking in the woods!” Camo is helpful in all kinds of ways. And it looks good, too.
