Snake America 102
Snake is back. Regular issues this year.
Hermes thermos, $1400: There are two types of people in this world and they can be divided in infinite ways. One distinctions is between people who don't like rich people and people who really like them. There is a third kind of person, too, someone with no opinion about money and people with it.
It is nice to have money, since the more you have the less you have to think about it. Though I bet if you have a ton, I mean a ton, you think about it all the time. I wouldn't know. "Where did I leave my 11th million dollar?" When you have enough -- when you can go to the movies whenever, order avocado for your dry burrito and oat milk for your coffee, buy a friend's movie ticket, shots at the bar for the just-married couple, get on a plane and buy a rare fishing pole if you feel like it -- it's easy not to think about money. I don't understand though how some people with a lot of money spend theirs. Maybe I should. I haven't met or seen or read about anyone who's spending it all the right way. I walk down Verandah Place sometimes, on my way home from work, a block of beautiful carriage houses facing a park. They don't film movies on Verandah Pl. because it's too pretty. No one would believe a newly-single magazine editor looking to find their soulmate by midnight even though their phone is dying, or a shopkeeper with a young family that is about to die from a virus they got from a plant they bought on vacation in Thailand would live in so beautiful a home. Sometimes I walk past on Sunday night and see Crate and Barrel boxes on the sidewalk. I get confused. What a shame to live in one of those houses and buy that garbage. But I don't live there; maybe I don't understand money like they do. Is the money they're saving by buying Crate and Barrel actual money? Do those boxes represent sound investments taken? Is every white and black box an Anfibio left unpurchased and a Class-A stock of Berkshire Hathaway staked and a college education provided for? I bet it is. I am probably spending mine the wrong way. I am sure we all are. The really good furniture doesn't come in boxes that get put out on garbage day. I bet some houses on Verandah only have expensive furniture. Which is better. But homes in Architectural Digest never look good. Just spending money on things you want is tennis without a net. Like I said, I haven't been hanging out with the right multi-millionaires. I bet there is someone out there doing it right, with expensive stuff top to bottom, all of it looking good, but I haven't been invited inside any of these places yet.
This Hermes Thermos is nice to see. You have to be really rich or very smart to spend $1,400 on a Thermos. That is like a month's rent in New York and probably six month's rent in another city that is not New York. I don't know how much rent outside New York is because I don't live there so why would I know? What's next, changing a tire for sport? It is so much money. And yet here it is. All you can do is put coffee in it. Almost two grand. It's reassuring to know there is (was?) a company or two that produced things like this so homes could be flooded with only the best. So all the small material details in someone's life are over the top. You know how much quality stuff you have to have to justify a $1,400 Thermos? Everything you own needs to be either good or purposeful. Imagine buying this Thermos and not having a toaster. You'd be run out of town. When you meet someone new, you don't see their Thermos right away. It's not like their car or a favorite pair of shoes. After a few weeks, or maybe a year into the relationship or friendship, you're at their place and one of you needs coffee, but not right away. "Where's the Thermos?" "Oh, this old thing?"
This Thermos could never exist today. The reason why is luxury houses now pay attention to people under 50. It's a shame and a disgrace. No one who's young with a lot of money really needs a very, very expensive Thermos. On one hand it's great that these companies are less exclusionary now, and have brought geniuses like Dapper Dan into the mix after being on the outside for so long. It's not like things were better before, just because they happened before. But it was nice that luxury goods were the unattainable, whimsical infrastructure of the world. It was easier to disrespect them. They weren't for me or anyone I knew. You can't abuse and disabuse and co-opt something made for your generation or caste. It was pretty special to be able to do that, because these things were made for other people, rich people, really rich ones, people unlike you and me, people who know how to get on a horse and who own more than one ascot. And all you had to do to break the rules was buy something. I don't know what kind of intention the rich people things that are made have now. A lot of them reference things here and there. References are cool but are thin. I don't think this Thermos was a reference to anything. It was just something designed for people who own railroads and needed coffee on the go wouldn't be caught dead with something not expensive. It wasn't funny or self-regarding or detached, just one of a thousand things made for people with way, way too much money and time on their hands. It could be someone who bought this Thermos a long time ago still lives on Verandah Street but hasn't thrown the box out yet.
Junya Watanabe jorts: I remember having a discussion with my friend Jason(1) about a person we knew of raising money to put out a record through Kickstarter. We agreed it was not a great look for someone to raise money that way, and that saying so was an even worse look. Complaining about Kickstarter, being negative about it, or, to be honest, any technology, is as bad as complaining about stamps being more expensive now, or good music being available freely or the high price of a Clark bar. I think that goes for everything. It's fine to be critical but still...
Many of us come from a time not amenable to denim shorts. And yet these Junya Watanabes, which are old, and from that time, 20 years ago or so, maybe 15, look great. They're tasteful, even with the pre-fading, a device that almost never works. Who knew that could happen. A pair of shorts like these used to be what not to do. But it wasn't always this way. Levi's made a tailored jean short decades ago, I found a photo in a Denim Lightning issue:
From the 1960s I think. Jean shorts worn well weren't a punch line then and aren't a punch line anymore. But they were definitely a joke for a long time. It's a way to learn there is a season for everything. The life of jean shorts: necessary, then low quality, then a punchline, then jolie laide, then OK, now back. One day you wake up and a crocodile is behind the grill at Benihana, flipping burgers. It's crazy. But that's not when it feels different. It feels different when you can't explain to the couple next to you that the crocodile wasn't always manning the grill. "That must have been a long time ago," they say. "He's there for all our birthdays -- it's why we come." That's how long ago it was. The eternal state of the universe was not one where jean shorts sucked, which was my whole young life. It seemed like it was but it wasn't. It's a lesson to learn. It's a better way to keep time than a calendar.
Thanks for reading. Like I said, regular issues this year.
.יום הולדת שמח ופרישה נעימה לאמא שלי, עובדת מסרה מלאה מגיל 13, בלי מנוחה. עכשיו בא הזמן למועדון ולקריאה
Snake
PS: read me in GQ.
(1) Scheller (New Jersey)