No. 1 With a Bullet? Store Owner Says Gang-Label Clothing Will Be Hot
Fashion in your face. Or: from ‘hood to mall and back again.
Now for the latest in teen-age (and slightly older) fashion: Designer clothes done in the style of inner-city street gangs. Gangbanger chic. Antisocial hip.
It’s a line of unisex clothes called Crime Inc. by a Los Angeles company and just now available in San Diego at the London Underground clothing store in Fashion Valley.
“It’s going to be picked up by the major fashion companies,” predicts Underground owner Dean Mostofi, 30. “It’s not mainstream now but it will be in six months.”
Will this corrupt the impressionable youth of San Diego and promote gangsterism?
No way, says Mostofi, it’s just the 1990s equivalent of the jeans and leather jacket popularized in the 1950s by Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.”
Consider it a way for white suburban kids to feel rebellious and dangerous (and drive their parents crazy) while still taking college prep courses and getting ready for the SATs.
“It’s a defiant fashion statement, nothing more,” Mostofi said. “Their role models are not the yuppies. They don’t want to drive BMWs and wear a suit and tie. They want to look like working men.”
Part of the statement is that some kids have lots of money for clothes.
The Crime Inc. look is not cheap: $40 for a flannel shirt (best worn buttoned to the top), $99 for the long, quilted “drive-by” jacket, $40 to $45 for the baggy pants, $18 to $20 for hats (often with X, as in Malcolm), and $79 for clodhopper, institutional-looking shoes.
Naturally, there are accessories: dark shades, earrings (crosses are very big) and bracelets. For the full Blood or Crip look.
Remember these are the same youthful consumers who crave used Levis. Mostofi runs a weekly ad looking for used Levis to buy for resale.
“I sell the used ones so fast I can’t keep them on the rack,” Mostofi said. “Young people will pay $35 for a used pair when they could easily go to Miller’s Outpost and buy a new pair for $19.”
Go figure.
A Blast From the Past, as It Were
Various stuff.
* The anti-incumbency mood spreads.
Sticker on the hot-air blower in the men’s room at Dudley’s Bakery in Santa Ysabel: “Press Here for a Message From Your Member of Congress.”
* Yes, there is a local horse blanket repair and laundry service. In Lakeside, naturally.
* San Diego license plate, on a Jaguar: JNGL BST.
* Press releases I released immediately:
“Under brooding, often rain-threatening skies, (supervisorial) candidate Susan Wolfe-Fleming and two dozen Green Party activists dressed as animals and real estate developers challenged the supervisors Sunday to move beyond the existing patterns of leap-frog development. . . .”
* Now it can be told: If ex-San Diego Councilman Ed Struiksma hadn’t changed his mind about running for state Assembly, the group that helped defeat him for reelection, The Dump Ed Committee, would again have opposed him.
But with a new name: The Keep Ed Dead Committee.
* Welcome neighbor, now be quiet.
Non-residents of the 4th District were allowed to attend a community meeting held by 4th District Councilman George Stevens only if they agreed to stay quiet and not attempt to speak or vote.
* In case you thought the “never trust anyone over 30” philosophy was no more. . .
Hector Hill, 23, a history major at San Diego State, is running for president of the United States (as a write-in).
Yes, the Constitution says you’ve got to be 35 to be President, but Hill figures that by that time he’ll be just as self-absorbed (as he says “protecting my own butt”) as other oldsters and therefore unable to rule effectively.
“The younger generation is politically aware,” Hill said in his announcement manifesto. “We’re ready to get in the ring.”
Well, I Know It Hurts Somewhere . . .
I’m still wondering about that report on a San Diego radio station about a crime victim “bleeding from unknown wounds.”
