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by Chris Jones
Once again, the San Francisco Chronicle, has rendered the local populace awestruck and scratching their heads in bemusement. It would appear that the Chron put together a crack team of bitchy fashionista sociologists to inspect the style choices of denizens of our city's various neighborhoods. And what they've reported back is kind of bizarre and annoying. For example, their fashion profile of the Upper Haight sounds like it came more from a TV show filmed in Canada and set in the Haight than the actual Haight itself:
Upper HaightThe look: Aging hippie who never sold out, cashed in or moved on. For men, Michael Moore is a fashion giant: jeans, old denim jacket (with political lapel pins), Chuck Taylors, grubby T-shirt underneath an unbuttoned and untucked long-sleeve shirt. For women, Guatemala still inspires: flowing dresses, handmade jewelry, sandals. Secondary gutter-punk look -- black leathers, red plaid pants, combat boots, safety pins -- gives the street its undeniably unhygienic aesthetic.
Color scheme: Fading tie-dye.
Favorite labels: Levi's, Doc Martens. More likely to spend money on a Noam Chomsky book than a new pair of pants.
Must-have accessories: Graying ponytail or long hair; dream catcher.
Wouldn't be caught dead in: Any fashion trend post-1985.
Ugh! This writer has lived in the Haight for years and years and cannot recall ever having seen anyone wandering the streets in an "old denim jacket (with political lapel pins)", Doc Martens, and a graying ponytail. OK, maybe an occasional passing Boomer tourist, but common neighborhood uniform? Hardly. And "Fading tie-dye"? Maybe in a store window, but on an actual real live human? Sorry, Charlie. Also, "black leathers, red plaid pants, combat boots, safety pins" on gutter punks? Wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!
Check out how they mis-represented your 'hood and get back to us. Are these fashion queens more Fey Sommers than Anna Wintour?
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La Playa is a fictional neighborhood the Chron made up, in the same fashion it makes up it's reporters and content!
Upper Haight locals look like, well, normal people. Jeans, t-shirts, sweaters, hoodies, polartecs, sneakers (Adidas, Puma, Reebok), etc. They aren't too trendy, but they aren't stuck in the era of love, either. Upper Haight mentality is all about being comfy and warm without too many labels or expectations, dude. The only tie-dye is seen in tourists' shopping bags.
The retard-a-thon continues with the articles & the SFgate reader comments neck in neck
I read that article half-expecting them to bust out a Party of Five-style "No Valley"...
Still amazing that people go to the Chron for anything but a good laugh. What a waste of journalistic integrity.
The authors learned everything they know about the Upper Haight from the loudspeaker in their novelty tour bus.
I'm surprised that the official Chinatown outfit wasn't a red and gold trimmed robe and conical straw hat or that North Beach wasn't a bunch of goombahs in pointy black shoes and greasy hair.
They did nail the Marina, over-sized, bug eye sunglasses though. Why does everyone female there look like a goddamn fly? Should I worry if they spit on me?
At first I thought it was a social status thing for the girl with the smallest head to wear the biggest pair of sunglasses, then I realized that they're just fashion lemmings.
I will confess that I liked the illustrations, as retro as they were.
I love that the third of the city that no one cares about got left out, probably because most people in San francisco couldn't give a rats ass what we wear out in the badlands.... everone just calls it the "outer mission"
Excelsior, Ingleside, Crocker Amazon, Glen Park, Diamond Heights, Potrero Hill....
Ok, I guess lower middle class poverty chic just hasn't caught on yet.
there were more left out neighborhoods than included ones.
SoMa, Richmond, Sunset, Western Addition, Noe and Cole Valley, Japantown, etc, etc....
i bet the pageviews though are through the roof,so....
Seriously, did the writer even visit the Haight for this story? Shoe Biz, Villains Vault, John Fluevog, Dollhouse Betty...the Haight's become a haven for expensive boutiques and the people who can shop there. Even the homeless teens who ask for money are probably from Palo Alto.
The Castro???? Seriously? I live and play in the Castro and I think in the 3 years of doing so, I have MAYBE seen 2 men wearing head to toe black, cowboy boots (never red for that matter) and a cowboy hat. And they were more than likely tourists that got lost on their way to The Eagle for Sunday Beer Bust.
Ridic.
I must concur Brock. I have lived in and around the upper haight for years, and I don't think that's an accurate description at all. I mean, I've seen some denim jackets with lots of pins and girls with dreads in Guatemalan dresses, but they are usually restricted to those selling "green bud" by Stanyan or make up some of the fauxmless begging for beer money.
I would say it's 45% hipster, 55% "other," except on the weekends when it's 80% tourist.
Pac Heights doesn't seem that far off to me though....
Oh, the poor Chronicle. They are so desperate, we canceled our subscription a while back, they kept sending us the paper for months, then tried to send a collection agency after us when we just tossed the bills they kept sending. The final time I called to tell them to piss up a rope re. the collection agency, the poor agent asked me three times "are you sure you want to renew?" before he let me hang up.
I noticed that people of color only live in Bayview and Chinatown, apparently.
first off, the entire premise of this article is wrong. SF has NO fashion. SF is easily the worse dressed major city in the world.
secondly... they describe only what white people wear. except in the case of bayview & chinatown. apparently white people aren't seen in those places and vise-versa.
The article in the chron was an insulting, lazy, sloppy piece written by a group of self deluded hacks. Not only were the "style examples" a good ten years out of date, but the obvious classist and racist undertones made me ill.
Sorry, but I don't accept the premise that "SF has NO fashion." Quite obviously it loves to characterize The Chronicle as lazy and racist whenever it can. But I think there's a lot of intriguing personal style that's both interesting and entertaining to read about. All of the reporting in the neighborhood style piece was based on interviewing residents (you can see their pics on SFGate) and time spent in the neighborhoods, by current and former residents. We spotlighted recurring themes in dress rather than every outfit worn by every resident (a pretty typical approach for a newspaper with limited space and staff). When one of you finishes your exhaustive survey of the entire city and population and publishes that, let me know.
Laura Compton, Style Editor
The problem is that, regardless of how you might defend them, your methods are incorrect when the majority of people who live in a particular area (and I myself also live in the Haight) would identify your claims as being incorrect, stereotypical, and dated.
Sure I have long hair, a scraggly beard, and all my outerwear is old army surplus, but even I find the article to be wrong.
If you want to call attention to anything the preponderance of dreadlocks on the white gutter punks is easily observed and quite legitimate.
It feels like you were trying more to prop up aging stereotypes by finding the few people who could actually support them. Quite telling is that while there are pictures of other neighborhoods neither the Upper or Lower Haight (people supposedly dress significantly different in the Lower Haight? Since when?) seems to have anything other than drawings.
The only ones that seem to come off correct (Marina, Mission) are largely because they tend to rely on more recent stereotypes.