On good music and thrift store clothes…

While people watching at the American Analog Set/Her Space Holiday show recently (which was fabulous and sadly their last show ever), I saw at least one very cool thrift store shirt that I am certain I tried on at a local trendy vintage shop, but decided to pass on. It got me thinking about all the clothes in the club that night that had been in various resale and thrift and vintage shops all over Austin just waiting for the right little indie hipster to discover them, like a fat guy at the beach wearing socks with sandals and carrying a metal detector. I regularly do this myself (cruise the vintage shops, not dig pocket change out of the sand) and I have had a lot of good luck lately. Some of my favorites are pearlsnap western shirts (obviously) good seventies wide collar polyester shirts (long sleeve only, I hate short sleeve dress shirts) and jackets. I am a sucker for a cool jacket. Just about everyone at that show was wearing what looked like some kind of vintage something or other. The greatest hits included a very old t-shirt of Princess Leia looking pissed off, and old school t-shirt proclaiming “Coke is it!” and the western shirt that the short fat kid was wearing, brown plaid with fake mother of pearl snaps that I tried on at The Denim Edge, and said, “nah, too big.” I was just wondering how the clothes felt about all of this.

They’ve already been retired at least once, by someone, somewhere. The thought that someone else might have fallen in love while wearing my shirt, or gone to jail in my jacket, or robbed a bank or seen a great movie or worked hard all day long is a cool thought. Even cooler though, is the thought that the old clothes were just sitting around, thinking to themselves, “I’ve done a lot, been around the block a few times, but Jeff is on his way, and I am gonna be BACK, BABY!!!!!!” I bet they look forward to that.