Dungarees, Short Pants, and Ball Caps

The family and I are now back from Maine, and settling into the world of noise and technology that we vacated for the last eight days. That means I'll be back to wearing needlessly dressy clothes, and yammering about them here. But don;t be fooled. As much as I may rail against the excessive acceptance of the sort of attire mentioned in the title of this post, I am not above wearing any of that. In fact, I lived in such clothing the last week....because, you know, I was on Summer vacation, not in an office or something.

Levi's 501s, L.L.Bean blucher mocs, modern (gasp!) L.L.Bean pullover windbreaker, and a plain orange ball cap. Perfectly suitable for a chilly evening stroll on Lincolnville Beach with my Girl in tow.

The same pullover and ball cap, with shorts, white tennis shirt, and Quoddy boat shoes at the dock at Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, with the Boy and the Girl. It is in fact possible to be casual and comfortable and not be dressed like a five year \old. Leave the cut-offs and ironic graphic tees behind. Here's to the return of the casual grown up.

It has become tradition for the Boy to insist we all dress for dinner on our last evening. We dine at the Whale's Tooth Pub. Its not fancy in the least. In fact, its the kind of place that an old lady would have considered "fancy" in the 1970s. But the Boy wears a coat and tie to eat his French fries and chicken fingers, and we all dress in kind. How can I discourage his sense of occasion? It makes me proud. 

p.s. Tweed and flannel arriving in the online Shop.

p.p.s live Shop now open every Saturday, 10-2. Extended hours coming soon. 249 Elm Street, Somerville, MA, 02144. So much tweed...

Maine Shoes, part 2

...or you could just plunge your bare feet in the invigorating, icy waters of the great Atlantic. The third suitable footwear option in mid-coast Maine.

This would have been a Twitter "tweet" (dag, I really don't care for the modern lingo), but cell service is practically non-existent up here....which is really quite wonderful once the initial shock wears off...kinda like icy cold ocean water.

Maine Shoes

I'm on vacation this week with the wife and children at our usual favorite spot in Mid-Coast Maine. Despite how overly concerned I may be with clothing, when travelling I am a fan of packing light. I take simple clothing that all matches and try to keep it to one bag. Two pair of shoes are a necessity, and this being Maine I figure the best two would be L.L. Bean blucher mocs and Quoddy boat shoes. Here we see them "in the wild", on some weathered decking.

It may seem that these shoes are merely slightly different versions of the same thing, so why these two? I do have a well considered reason, the kind of well considered reason that seems anything but sensible to most "normal" people (by "normal" I mean people not overly bothered  by clothing). You see, it may be August, but Maine can get cold and chilly, especially at night. While both of these shoes are favorite worn sockless, only the bluchers can be worn with socks. Boat shoes should never, NEVER, be worn with socks, ever. That's a rule. A meaningless, self-imposed rule, but still.......

p.s. the 20% Sale in the Shop has been extended to midnight Thursday, 16 August. Use discount code SUMMER2013 at checkout. Scoop up the deals while you can, Fall restock happening soon.

Last Chance

Yellow striped tie in rough shantung silk...

via the Brothers, back in the day. $2.99 in the great haul from Maine.

Just in time to squeeze it in at least once.

Secrets of Thrifting : The Olde Village Church

There's a lot of downright silly New England WASP sycophancy around men's clothing blogs, and I generally try to avoid it here. I've said so often that though many of the things I like may have been largely enjoyed by a certain narrow slice of East Coast society, I never found membership in any such group to be an exclusive requirement to anything. For one thing, as a good friend who is in fact from an old WASP family once said, more people had the values than had the money anyway. For another, we all dressed like this around Boston when I was a kid. Even immigrant Catholic mothers bought whale embroidered pants for their boys to wear on Easter Sunday, because, you know, that's what the stores were selling. However,

when you're on the coast of Maine, in a town full of old early Victorian houses with a small harbor full of sail boats, and the village church is an austere white clapboard building like this...

and that church is, of course, Protestant, and old, you know you're in good thrift shop territory, if you can find a thrift shop.

When that thrift shop is in fact run by the church and housed in the old colonial next door, you've hit what unwashed bottom feeders like me call The Jackpot.  A whiff, just a whiff, of that WASP sycophancy may be needed to make my point here.

Lots of people will offer the advice that when thrift shopping the best goods are to be found in affluent neighborhoods. While that's true, it only tells part of the tale. Besides finding an affluent neighborhood with a local charity, you need to find a neighborhood where the affluent people are buying the things that you want. For me, that means finding old Protestant neighborhoods like this one. I know that generations of men who have lived hear dressed in a typical East Coast way. I know that there will be lots of Brooks Brothers, J. Press, and things from small local shops in the same vein. Good old Yankee Thrift means not only that when the time comes to donate, it will go to the local Church, but also that the likely of finding rare older items will increase. I suppose the Rule Of Thrifting here is Always Shop at the old Church. Salvation Army, Goodwill, or Savers might have some good stuff the day you walk in...or not. The Church store run by kindly old ladies from the parish will have only good stuff. At least that's been my experience with these places.

This shop was bursting with it. After only half an hour, my arms were laden with more than I could carry to the counter. I say counter, but really it was an old desk set up in the foyer of this old house. One kindly old lady offered to let me look around the back room at the items not yet tagged for sale. Another half an hour, another weighty armload of stuff. As I dug deep into a plastic bin full of ties, another old lady offered me a brownie. Delicious.

As for the haul, I was giddy. Being as seasoned a thrift shopper as I am, I rarely get as big of a "thrill of the hunt" rush as this place gave me. I was giddy as I hauled an entire contractor bag of clothes over one shoulder to my car.  And that's just what I took in men's clothing. The books were great, because the same people that donate these good clothes also tend to read well. The housewares were terrific. And the fact that I was handing my money to a volunteer from a local church and that the whole thing was one giant act of recycling on everybody's part made the situation a win for everyone involved. That's something that no retail shop can give you.









Worth Every Penny : Lobster Roll

There are lots of good reasons to live on the Atlantic Coast in New England. Men get to wear silly pants and carry tote bags, and no one seems to care. Newness in anything is usually shunned, which is a boon to cheapskates like me who never really have anything new anyway. And then there's the seafood. I've spoken at length before of my love of the clam, be it raw, fried or in a thick chowder. But I have yet to expound on one of my our most famous and hardest to duplicate delicacies, the (high holy)  Lobster Roll. Given that I am in Maine, high holy mecca of the blessed crusatcean itself, I figured the time had come.

Friends from other places ask for advice on where to acquire a truly hedonistic Lobster Roll. Often, they tell tales of having had been disappointed by the offerings they've had in very fine dining establishments in other cities. Why, they wonder, is a Lobster Roll on the New England coast such an ethereal delight, while what by many measures may technically be considered "better" falls flat elsewhere?  True, our access to the finest and freshest lobsters on a near daily basis does of course contribute to this. But that's not the heart of the issue. The real key to a perfect Lobster Roll is simplicity. It's success lies in that particular combination of high decadence and cheapskate-to-the-bone Yankee thrift that make so much of New England culture captivating to those who weren't raised in it.

The meat should be fresh lobster claw and tail, cut up in big chunks. The dressing is a bit of mayonnaise, enough to hold it together, and nothing else. If you want to get fancy, a small amount of chopped celery is permissible, though by no means required. Anything else is not only unnecessary, but a minor sacrilege. The bread must be only a buttered and toasted cheap white hot dog bun. Anything else is not only unnecessary, but in fact a major sacrilege. No artisinal bread, no crusty rolls, no whole wheat anything, only a buttered toasted white hot dog bun. The combined facts of the mayo only dressing and the refusal of fancy bread are usually what make the non-New England overly gourmet version of this classic so lackluster. There is, after all, such a thing as trying too hard.

Accouterments include a pickle and potato chips, or sometimes French fries. Beer is the drink of choice, though ginger ale works well when alcohol is not allowed. China service should be only a cardboard tray and plastic fork, to pick up the precious bits that fall from the bun. The whole thing should be consumed under an umbrella at a picnic table in a place where the views looks thus:

It won't be cheap, but it shouldn't be. The best part about all this homespun Yankee simplicity is that when you shell out the better part of a twenty dollar bill for a proper Lobster Roll, you can rest assured that it is the precious lobster meat, and its skilled preparation that you pay for, not the white table cloth and pretentious atmosphere. A properly prepared and properly served real New England Lobster Roll is worth every penny.

Special thanks to the Lobster Dock of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, for serving one of the best examples of this simple but perfect treat that I've had yet.

Simple as That

We around the nerdy corners of the whacked out phenomenon that is menswear snobbery can get awfully tied up in outrageous minutiae. It can be easy to forget that simplicity, while always a good starting point, is often a refreshing reminder that all those rules, tricks, and tips you've been reading about (my own included) are to some degree so much hooey.

Few things bring it all back down to Earth like a blue oxford shirt and a crisp pair of khakis. True, I will always advise that quality should take precedence, but.....In the world of thrift shopping, few things are constant. The availability of khakis and blue oxfords is, for now, one of those constants. Good stuff does turn up, but for less than ten bucks each, there's no end of serviceable options out there. Ralphie and J. Crew do me just fine with this stuff.

Together, they provide the nucleus of comfortable casual for any man whose wardrobe is in any way classic. Here, with a navy surcingle belt and penny loafers, the effect is casual but smart. Swap the loafers for boat shoes, blucher mocs, or even canvas sneakers, and we're comfier still. Wear it all all un-ironed and we're downright slouchy. But for all that, you can be as laid back as the guy in the flip flops and children's t-shirt....albeit infinitely better appointed and taken ever more seriously by fellow grown-ups everywhere. The garden gnome agrees.

Add a classic blue blazer and repp striped bow tie and you're , ya know, like, all dressed up, or something. Foulards and knit ties, cotton or silk, work just as well.

It's as simple as that.

p.s. we're on vacation. I'll be up North with the wife and children all week, in a place that looks like this:

I'll do my best to write a post or two...or maybe I'll just drink beer on the deck of the cottage in the evening. We'll see.





Free Stuff

I'm going to begin this post with a little disclaimer. Lately, I feel like there's been an awful lot of promotion going on around here, and my own feelings about it are mixed. Last year, as I'm sure you know, I started an online business selling my kind of second hand clothing and accessories. What began as something to do on the side has thankfully grown into more than that. One side effect of this is more promotion, shameless or otherwise, here on the blog. I try to keep it to a minimum, but simply put, stuff sells better when I tell people about it.

I've also been getting more and more offers of free goods from companies who want me to review them here. I know this seems like so much empty shilling, and maybe it is. However, I accept only a very thin selection of all the offers that come my way, and at that only ones I truly feel may be of interest to my readers. Forgive me if this seems distasteful, but I work hard at this, and I see no real problem in occasionally reaping the benefits. I assure you my reviews are always honest. Henceforth, any post dealing with review of free goods will be titled simply "Free Stuff".

photo: Hudson Sutler

Hudson Sutler is a company offering a good simple basic that anyone could use: classic duffel bags, available in a variety of colors, in two sizes. Each one is made in USA. When they offered me one to try, I opted for the 'Sconset weekend (larger) duffel. With my family and I heading to Maine for our annual vacation next week, the timing couldn't be better. And Maine is perhaps the only place besides Massachusetts where we call "Pink" "Nantucket Red" and no one bats an eye at a grown man making liberal use of the color. Good thing, because this bag is big, it's a lot of said color, however you might call it. Hudson Sutler suggests it for a  2-4 night trip, but at 20 inches wide and 12 inches in diameter at the round sides, I see no reason why my entire weeks kit won't fit in it.

photo: Hudson Sutler



It's rendered in extremely heavy 18 ounce canvas and finished with thick plastic zippers, sturdy handles and strap, and navy stitching. Inside, the lining is navy anchor print. Who ever heard of lining in a duffel bag? Not me. Aren't those things supposed to be for the gym? I ain't taking this to no gym. At $120 for the bigger (weekend) size and $95 for the smaller (commuter) size, prices are admittedly what I would call steep. But this bag is tough, and I think I'll have it for a while. I'll let you know how it fared when we get back in town. If it really is as good as they say, chances are there will be a blog post next August about a trip to Maine with this bag in it. We'll see.

p.s. round two of our excellent necktie windfall is available in the Shop. Special thanks to Put This On for featuring our first batch last week.

p.p.s. Damn, this whole post is about selling stuff and getting free stuff. Yikes.