Snake America Forty
Snake is a bi-weekly newsletter covering things for sale. This week: A Vietnam duck camo bush hat and a JFK sweatshirt from the 1960s. If you're reading online, subscribe.
eBay: Duck camo bush hat from Vietnam: There's a grey area of hats into which this falls smack in the middle, in the best part. It looks like a Tilley hat. Tilley are a Canadian-made floatable hat often seen on Israelis/Outbackers/Midwesterners exploring outside. They have long brims and resemble fishing, or bucket hats on performance-enhancing drugs steroids. It's not a Tilley though, just looks like one. There's a hard brim on the hat's right side for either hunting or sleeping through sunrise and not hurting your ear when you turn over. So it's a Boonie. The duck camo is closer to stateside hunting camo than the stuff they sent over to Vietnam. But it's Vietnam. Vietnam camouflage is the best in the business. All the Korean-era stuff was too woolen and would get water-logged if you went swimming--they swam in wool back then, boiled wool--and after Reagan got elected quality went downhill. According to Camopedia.org, "the original 'duck hunter' camouflage was designed by civilian Norvell Gillespie (horticulturist and garden editor of Sunset, Better House and Gardens, and the San Francisco Chronicle)." Great sentence, too good to check. Same with Sunset Magazine. Listening to the first Kanye West LP (USA 2003), when he says Jay-Z put his Gucci bucket hat over his face after hearing the "Heart Of The City" (USA 2001) beat for the first time, I did not predict people would wear those things in earnest. It's between hard and impossible to look put-together wearing a bucket hat. I've never seen anyone do it. I won't explain the string of bad decisions many different people made to get us to this point in fashion. I'm not sure why the Boonie hat didn't get bigger first. It's much easier to make work, but it only if everything else is working. There's no way to work a bucket hat in 2015 outside a fishing tournament. Maybe I haven't seen enough of them. If that's the case, I'm thankful.
eBay: JFK 50 Miler vintage sweatshirt: Of the many things I admire about my dad is that he subscribes to this newsletter. Another is that when I was near the 93065 area code with him and my mom a few years ago with a day to kill and a car full of gas, near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, he wouldn't go. I'm not sure who brought it up that we do that. No one was pushing to spend an afternoon in what might be the most indecorous house devoted to books in the state of California, but such was the state of our boredom. (I'll limit my criticism of the library and of Reagan, who is also buried there, to that. Not trying to be mean or performative here.) Boycotting a president for all of eternity because of actions he took against the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization(1) 30-plus years ago--which is what my dad did--is as strong an aesthetic choice I've seen. We maybe went to the movies. I'll go one further and push my father's precedent to an in-house style rule. For aesthetic reasons described above, all presidents, past or present, will be boycotted, regardless of political affiliation or obesity, within these pages. Starting next issue. The above-mentioned auction is as flawless a 1960s sweatshirt as there is. Most of the ones for sale don't have good graphics--the presidential shield here, advertising a race, looks like something out of the original Sailor Jerry's flash book. I'm not sure people would run for such a long distance 50 years ago, so maybe the Miler was a boating race. I keep reading it as JFK Miller Tag, but it's not that. There was always something a little gross about style stories or compendiums that singled out Kennedy as a style icon. Clothing fit back then and he wasn't poor. He looked fine. If you went to Sears and bought jeans and forgot about them you could make $5,000. And who doesn't like ice cream on a boat? But if you comb Life Magazine's Google archives you'll find 100 people better-dressed than their elected president. That's how it should always be, I think.
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Snake
Last Snake: Tall lucite cube lamp, original Beatles sweatshirt (still for sale; still for sale)
Snake Before That: Jeep Mud Crawler, cartoon mailorder lessons (still for sale/trade; sold)
(1) Founded by F. Lee Bailey!