Checking Pitchfork today I found the following horrible horrible Neighborhoodie. You may recall this is the same company that makes those HAWTHORNE, WILLIAMSBURG, etc hooded sweatshirts found on every other page of every alt-weekly in every city in which the term “hipster” has geospecific meaning. Seems the market for uber-dorky ‘hood indentification clothing is drying up, and now they’re touting cute hip/indie catchphrases. Hence this:

fig 15: ?????

What are these people thinking? Why does this exist? Did anyone stop to think how completely absurd it is to be waxing nostalgic over a not-really-genre whose only real point of unity was a complete and total hatred of nostalgia – in 200freaking5?!?! If, as I understand it, the people who constituted this movement were reacting against punk’s slide into same-old-Rock, as typified by The Clash, then I can only imagine their distaste for any person who has ever said “punk’s not dead”, let alone worn this t-shirt. Of course, holding these people in such golden-age-ish high regard is probably some form of nostalgia in itself [turning finger toward self] but why would you buy this if you didn’t? And why would you buy it if you did? There are bigger questions to be asking, but right now I just want to shoot mental darts at this person and whatever the fuck they signify. And I guess I just did.