September 7, 2010
FOR NICE GIRLS WHO LIKE STUFF
In a thought-piece about immersive retail and the Hollister store in SoHo, Molly Young sums up why I am mentally unable to handle living in California, particularly SoCal, for extended periods of time:
I do not think I am alone in recounting my teenage years in terms of things bought and the hopes invested in them. As a teenager in California, I wore sweatshirts and tight jeans like the ones Hollister sells, feeling always slightly paler and less experienced than the Kelseys and Jennifers of the world, as though the number of boys I’d hooked up with (zero) was embroidered across my trucker cap for all to see. These feelings rise anew when I enter the Hollister store, and I know why: despite its missteps, the brand nails certain aesthetic truths about my home state.
I attended community college with girls who resembled beta versions of the store’s employees. To Mass Communications 110 they wore garments that insisted on comfort and conveyed the sexiness of total relaxation: sweatshirts, sheepskin boots, and thongs bisecting the slice of tanned upper butt that rose from low-cut jeans. It was a look of lazy, hygienic sexuality. The hottest girls always had brand-new socks, for example, and this was a key detail.
I’m lucky that I coincided with the trend. For one thing, it was an equalizing force. At a school made of both moneyed slackers and teenage mothers, the wealthy girls shopped at the same places as the non-wealthy girls. The former might have collected Tiffany bean pendants at home, but in the classroom it was possible for everyone to look basically the same.
Weed was another great equalizer. It is hard to overstate the importance of weed as a determining factor in the lives of West Coast teenagers. Weed was the reason girls selected clothes based on fuzziness, the reason boys sounded dumb, the reason we inflected every sentence as a question and used like and you know as phatic communications. In an era of T9 input, text messages begun with I would automatically fill in mstoned. Anyone familiar with the dim and spray-scented bedrooms of a weedy adolescence will recognize in Hollister’s decor an environmental proxy of the average Friday night. Weed may not be for sale at Hollister, but its exigencies are everywhere.
I may currently live in Saint Louis, but I am so East Coast it hurts.
comments
Leave a Reply
When she says “west coast” teenagers she is not talking about the west coast I grew up in.
Also, I like that she calls out the Kelseys.
Meanwhile, my east coast classmates were busy doing blow and plotting world domination.
But probably not a Kelsey in the whole bunch.
True. No Kelseys. Primarily Robins and Nancys.
Also, that’s hopefully not what Andrew meant when he self-identified as an east-coaster.
Plotting world domination, probably.
Nope. I was friends with the smart potheads (never really go into it myself, however).
I won’t deny the world domination bit, though.
Don’t know whether I can tell this tale from the iPad. I once went to a “dada” art exhibit at the Walker, with our friend Kent who was visiting Minneapolis back in the early nineties. In the exhibit there was a room, or more like a series of small rooms, where in each you had to figure out how to get to the next room. There was one room I remember in particular. There was, at the base of the floor on the far wall, a door not more than six inches high. Ala Alice in Wonderland. We pushed at the wall on different sides to no avail. And being there were no bottles scattered about reading, “Drink me,” I did the only thing i could think of. I got on my knees, opened the tiny door, reached in, at first my hand, feeling the surface of the wall on the other side of where we were. I nearly had my whole arm in feeling up the wall, before I felt a handle dangling on a piece of rope. I pulled it. The wall swang (swung?) on a center pivot, top and bottom allowing us entry to the room beyond, then it swung (swang?) closed behind us. We were like, “Oh, Wow!”
I don’t remember, off hand, the other challenges we were presented with, but we managed to find our way out.
That day.
Rick, that sounds seriously immersive. In a good way. And you done told good from your iPad.
I love this, Rick. My favorite museum experience of all time took place at the Dallas Museum of Art (of all places) back in the late 80s or early 90s. Daryl and I were on a routine visit, wandering the galleries, when we turned a corner and ran smack into a small, crudely-made doll upon whose face a video camera projected grimaces. It was a Tony Oursler piece. After looking at the doll for a minute or so, it began to emit odd moans. Daryl and I burst into laughter. I remember jumping up and down, clapping my hands like a 4-year-old. The guard–a very hip African American man–came over and said,”Wait a minute–pretty soon it gonna scream.” And sure enough, it let out a wail the likes of which you’ve never heard. All three of us stood there, laughing. It was one of the best things that has happened to me in my whole life.
Rick, someday I’d love to go to a museum with you. I would especially like to visit the Houston museums–the Menil, the Rothko chapel. It would be grand.
Two things, Cindy. First thing: that Dallas Museum of Art story is just the best. Second thing: I’ve gotten to thinking my constitution is too delicate for the agonies and ecstasies of clusterflockstock, but I do love flinging myself into groups of, give or take, half a dozen flockers and friends. Houston, the Rothko Chapel, a little gang of y’all — I could dig it.
Hey, Cindy, that day at the museum, what did you learn?
Aw, Deron. Don’t. Okay. Do.
I would dig it, too.
Why, Deron, thank you for asking.
I learned a fucking thing. But those other people didn’t.
thanks for sharing.
[...] Rick Neece: I once went to a “dada” art exhibit at the Walker, with our friend Kent who was visiting Minneapolis back in the early nineties. In the exhibit there was a room, or more like a series of small rooms, where in each you had to figure out how to get to the next room. There was one room I remember in particular. There was, at the base of the floor on the far wall, a door not more than six inches high. Ala Alice in Wonderland. We pushed at the wall on different sides to no avail. And being there were no bottles scattered about reading, “Drink me,” I did the only thing i could think of. I got on my knees, opened the tiny door, reached in, at first my hand, feeling the surface of the wall on the other side of where we were. I nearly had my whole arm in feeling up the wall, before I felt a handle dangling on a piece of rope. I pulled it. The wall swang (swung?) on a center pivot, top and bottom allowing us entry to the room beyond, then it swung (swang?) closed behind us. We were like, “Oh, Wow!” [...]