Mercifully quick schtick.
Okay, I'm already tired of that business. Sorry for it. The first-person plural, the sappy conceit, etc. seemed like a good idea when I was drinking last night -- funny how that works out -- but now seems lame, dumb, sloppy, sappy, and boring. MLA actually is poisonous--turns otherwise nice, interesting people into insufferable pricks (imagine what it does to the insufferable pricks); academia really is filled with a lot of cheap, tiresome hypocrites; until the schtick seems less trite , however, or until I can work through the various analyses that were intended to follow the last post, here's what I have to say:
Allen-Edmonds shoes, the cheaper models of which retail for $300 (the shell cordovan, if you go in for that sort of thing, starts around $425), are worth every penny. Why, you ask?
The average Kenneth Cole oxford--to take a popular example of a dress shoe alternative, which seems like a great deal at a mere $95-- is made from something vaguely approaching leather (though it looks more like rubber) that will neither breathe nor conform to one's foot nor last more than a year or two of regular wear. They are made by slave labor in China, NAFTA-fucked workers in Mexico, or Indonesian and Vietnamese ten-year-olds who are only happy for the job because they don't have to suck Gary Glitter's dick in order to feed their rural families who have been pushed into the economy by IMF loans and World Bank development schemes. Even if the soles don't separate after a few years, the leather is so crappy that it will begin to crease after a few months of wear. I know. I own a pair.
Allen-Edmonds shoes, conversely, are handmade in the great state of Wisconsin in the Good Old U.S.A., or in Brazil by workers who are paid a more-than-living-wage and who have access to a series of educational and health initiatives run by the company. (The fact that the owner of the company is a committed Republican says more about the one-party state than about the ethics of purchasing these shoes). They are made from first-grade cowhide that is traditionally tanned, feature classically conservative styling that will last as long as the shoes themselves (the father-in-law has two pairs that date to the mid-1980s), and walking down the street in them is -- excuse our lack of ingenuity -- like wiping one's ass with a silk shirt.
Like Harris Tweed and those little wooden trains that I always imagined rich kids found under their christmas tree instead of crappy plastic Hungry Hungry Hippoes, they suggest a time when goods were handmade for everybody -- not just boardroom executives -- and thereby reveal a horrible truth: that it is not only easier to have money, it's actually cheaper in the long run to have money (every see how much a $200 washing machine costs at a rent-to-own place? ever think about how much money is saved by preventative health care? etc.).
I wouldn't say I "have money" -- especially not compared to people whose families send them checks outside of christmas or who had the good sense to attend a first-rate medical school instead of a second-tier graduate program in English. But I certainly have a fuckload more than the poor saps who ride the bus into my small college town from the small, formerly prosperous manufacturing town nearby in order to clean the $300,000 houses of professors who write all sorts of books about radical politics, and whose very lives depend upon American society existing and continuing just about precisely as it does now.
In any case, I now own a pair of simple, 5-eyelet captoe bluchers with extensive perfing and a toe medallion, though I need a more complete analysis before I conclude precisely how I feel about them politically rather than sartorially. If you're not kept up at night by analyses, I recommend them. If you travel to Milwaukee, you too can visit their seconds store and purchase them at a 50% discount.
In case men's footwear doesn't grab your attention, how about this? Remember to pay your taxes!
Next up: Vin Jaune de Chateau Chalon, or, Upon a Revelation
Allen-Edmonds shoes, the cheaper models of which retail for $300 (the shell cordovan, if you go in for that sort of thing, starts around $425), are worth every penny. Why, you ask?
The average Kenneth Cole oxford--to take a popular example of a dress shoe alternative, which seems like a great deal at a mere $95-- is made from something vaguely approaching leather (though it looks more like rubber) that will neither breathe nor conform to one's foot nor last more than a year or two of regular wear. They are made by slave labor in China, NAFTA-fucked workers in Mexico, or Indonesian and Vietnamese ten-year-olds who are only happy for the job because they don't have to suck Gary Glitter's dick in order to feed their rural families who have been pushed into the economy by IMF loans and World Bank development schemes. Even if the soles don't separate after a few years, the leather is so crappy that it will begin to crease after a few months of wear. I know. I own a pair.
Allen-Edmonds shoes, conversely, are handmade in the great state of Wisconsin in the Good Old U.S.A., or in Brazil by workers who are paid a more-than-living-wage and who have access to a series of educational and health initiatives run by the company. (The fact that the owner of the company is a committed Republican says more about the one-party state than about the ethics of purchasing these shoes). They are made from first-grade cowhide that is traditionally tanned, feature classically conservative styling that will last as long as the shoes themselves (the father-in-law has two pairs that date to the mid-1980s), and walking down the street in them is -- excuse our lack of ingenuity -- like wiping one's ass with a silk shirt.
Like Harris Tweed and those little wooden trains that I always imagined rich kids found under their christmas tree instead of crappy plastic Hungry Hungry Hippoes, they suggest a time when goods were handmade for everybody -- not just boardroom executives -- and thereby reveal a horrible truth: that it is not only easier to have money, it's actually cheaper in the long run to have money (every see how much a $200 washing machine costs at a rent-to-own place? ever think about how much money is saved by preventative health care? etc.).
I wouldn't say I "have money" -- especially not compared to people whose families send them checks outside of christmas or who had the good sense to attend a first-rate medical school instead of a second-tier graduate program in English. But I certainly have a fuckload more than the poor saps who ride the bus into my small college town from the small, formerly prosperous manufacturing town nearby in order to clean the $300,000 houses of professors who write all sorts of books about radical politics, and whose very lives depend upon American society existing and continuing just about precisely as it does now.
In any case, I now own a pair of simple, 5-eyelet captoe bluchers with extensive perfing and a toe medallion, though I need a more complete analysis before I conclude precisely how I feel about them politically rather than sartorially. If you're not kept up at night by analyses, I recommend them. If you travel to Milwaukee, you too can visit their seconds store and purchase them at a 50% discount.
In case men's footwear doesn't grab your attention, how about this? Remember to pay your taxes!
Next up: Vin Jaune de Chateau Chalon, or, Upon a Revelation
posted by Swill to Power at 11:52 PM
2 Comments:
hi
harris tweed is now made by sad serfs who tug their forelock to the all powerfull mill owner .
i used to weave harris tweed ,as did over 1000 other weavers. now there is less than 100 weavers.
harris tweed no more.
Please say this isn't true; if this isn't a joke, would you mind terribly sending me your email address to converse privately about this? I'd really like to hear your perspective and experience. For a variety of reasons, i can't reveal my email publicly...
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