I’ve spent the last week in California, both halves. I lived here when I was a kid so writing about it doesn’t come easily. Everything is too eerily familiar, especially in the south- the Levittown architecture (now supersized), the size and break of the ocean’s waves, the grain of the sand, the heat mirage that rises from the asphalt as viewed from your unique position in the traffic jam. It puts me nostalgic.

one frivolous observation:

For subculture types in North America the fedora hat is all the rage. But peeps from the two coasts deploy it differently. In the east  the brim is curled up all the way around,  with early 20th century grifter/hobo flair, and often paired with Woody Allen glasses.

In the west you see more modern replicas, their narrower brims dominated by a slightly off-center dip of the front, at best looking like early 50′s casino gangster, and at worst like Michael Jackson.

Some acquaintance was trying to map the point where the (allegedly eco) paper coffee cups of the northern united states give way to styrofoam’s stronghold in the south, the subtle mason-dixon line of polystyrene. It’d also be worthwhile to map where the front of the fedora brim aims up or down. Do hipsters in chicago or denver dip the front or subscribe to the even curl? And where does left coast pimp feather first start appearing?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 7:43 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.