Snake America Sixty Six
Snake is a bi-weekly email newsletter covering other-market salable goods. This week: a WWII denim pullover and a lot of Bloomsday run shirts. Subscribe for email delivery.
eBay: WW2 Army denim pullover, $900: One of the better cases for spending excessive money on something that won't fit properly. Unless, you are happily obese. Look at the arm-holes. They are big like an old Barbour's, but with no clip or hook to cinch, and too short. It's hard to look put-together in this denim shirt, just slovenly. Questions arise: why did the army greenlight an outfit made from dark jeans? What's with the box pockets on the front? What of the matching pants? Did anyone wear these in movies? Did the Navy get jealous of all that blue? The shirts on people look like this:
The photo is taken from a site, squadgoals.com WWIIimpressions.com, which traffics in reproduction items and gives some background on the shirt. It's from a late-1930s field uniform and the denim predated WWII's herringbone twill (HBT) outfits. The matching jeans have big rectangular pockets that are flush to the leg and the material is primitive compared to the Axis' uniform. (Lots of leather and brown. The implication is that if the war was today, Nazis would wear wicking underwear, and America, wool ones. It's hard to imagine pre-war clothing having any aerobic benefit whatsoever.) Another site says HBT was introduced in 1938 and denim--the summer uniform--was discontinued in 1941, though there's a photo on that site of a guy wearing denim dated 1942. The abovementioned item is worth asking price on principle, but identical deadstock items from that era have run two-thirds of the price. Further research into the topic shows Laurel and Hardy--I think this is them--walking around on what appears to be the set of The Andy Griffith Show (USA 1960), wearing them:
What a photo! The outfits are too baggy for both the jockey and the obese comedian. Did the Army make more than one size?(1) I like the idea of everyone in the Army wearing head-to-toe denim and then one day showing up to a pre-war meeting and their general says they have to wear itchy church pants to beat the Axis back. Did people hang on to the hats? Because we must ...
eBay: Lot of different Nike Bloomsday shirts, $108 and rising: The Bloomsday run never happens on Bloomsday, June 16, the day when Ulysses was written. What a shame. It's a run the first Sunday in May in Spokane, Wash. The guy who founded the run said it was named in deference to the book, but it's too far away. The New York Marathon has those silver blankets for finishers and the Bloomsday's yearly iterations are T-shirts, a different one each year. Many of the ones from the early 1980s and late 1970s were on Nike or had a graphic. The shirts' design rode the line between Georgia O'Keeffe's New Mexico mountain paintings (like this one) and the brutal straight-edge maxi-designed shirts that bands like Uniform Choice, Unity, etc. printed in the late 1980s (like this one). What an incredible middle ground. The best of them had soft and warm colors and stout shapes, and sleeve prints. The 1985 shirt is maroon with a bunch of roses on it and Nike on the sleeve. Lots of sellers out of Portland would sell them. I really thought for a while that Nike organized a marathon around Bloomsday in honor of the book. That is better than the Starbucks guy paying for all his employees' dental care. In general, grab-bag vintage shirts, ones promote events--any, mostly local and dumb ones--are on principle worth avoiding. It's not just cool that they are old. This rides that line too. Bloomsday is not just a Sunday afternoon in Spokane. This seller could do a lot better selling one shirt a week for a year. But maybe a restaurant is looking for uniforms for their waiters and can buy them all. Recommended.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Last Snake: Sold item compendium (sold...)
Snake Before That: Fake Peter Max burger safety ad, Cornell sweater from the 1930s (sold; relisted)
(1) Sadly, yes. Large, Small, etc.