Frightening Trend - Article.

[Viola]

This is an eight-page article from the NY Metro on the phenomenon of "grups" - adults in their mid-to-late 30s who wear Converse to work and like their blue jeans tattered and refuse to grow up.
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/16529/index.html

Its kind of interesting, interpreted as this writer does, as an entire social trend.

A major component of their article is how these are the people who give babies mohawks and tiny Ramones tee shirts, and it makes you wonder how the kids will rebel:

Or perhaps we can look forward—at least if Family Ties can be trusted—to a new generation of buttoned-down, high-strung Alex P. Keaton–type conservative teenagers.

I say yeah, because as a 22-year-old, I find the whole thing hideous. It makes me want a new hat and gloves. Maybe that's a Fedora Lounge thing?

 

[Feraud]

Ah yes, Grups. NYC is littered with them. Moms and dads who walk around dressed worse than the children they push around in strollers.

 

[Viola]

Maybe I'm just too poor to understand the slightest appeal of jeans that cost a triple digit number of dollars, so the fact they're "pre-distressed" with a lifespan measurable in weeks or months just kills me. Kills me dead.

 

[Air Boss]

Don't see much of this in the Pocono's but we do have our share of oversized baseball caps (put the brim in front, please), oversized pants, piercings, etc. with a good dose of heavy metal and goth thrown in. I don't mean just the kids - Parent-Teacher nights can be quite, ummm.... entertaining.

 

[Feraud]

Maybe I'm just too poor to understand the slightest appeal of jeans that cost a triple digit number of dollars, so the fact they're "pre-distressed" with a lifespan measurable in weeks or months just kills me. Kills me dead.

It shows you how much disposable income people have.
What ever happened to "earning" that pair of old jeans??
I remember as a kid having to own and wear jeans forever to get that Ramones look. Anyone caught taking a scissor or bleach to their jeans were instant posers! Nowadays a guy walks into a store, plunks down a load of cash and can walk out looking like anyone from a hardcore Harley biker to Johnny GQ and everything in between.

 

[Air Boss]

A continuing battle in our house. Heck, even plain old Levi's give me sticker shock. It's off to K-Mart for Lee and Wranglers.

Maybe I'm just too poor to understand the slightest appeal of jeans that cost a triple digit number of dollars, so the fact they're "pre-distressed" with a lifespan measurable in weeks or months just kills me. Kills me dead.

 

[MrBern]

Sloppy slackers getting older, but not growing up. Probably had hippie parents who let em run around barefoot & unwashed.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I'm sitting on a gold mine!

Literally! I could sell my old, beat-up, "worn out" jeans to these people and make a fortune. lol

 

[Sefton]

Well that was an interesting article which has me laughing and feeling a bit depressed at the same time. I seriously hope that this isn't a major trend although it does help explain the general poor behavior that is all too common in "adults" now.

If you're a member of the Lounge does that make you a "Vinster"?[huh]


"You want the tattered jeans, but you also want the world to know, I can afford the very best in tattered jeans." lol

 

[Roger]

I'm just glad that Levi's is slowly wiltering on the wayside.

 

[magneto]

Ick. The continuing infantilization of our culture. Hardly a new phenom I would say (remember those 1970s wretches in toddler-type flappy overalls and puffy jackets). Oddly I just overheard this conversation on the train 5 minutes ago:
Little girl chatting to adult female in next seat: "Are you a mommy? there any kids at your house?"
Adult: "Oh no! See, I'm still a kid! I'm twenty-two."
!

 

[Feraud]

My favorite comment is, "40 is the new 20!" :eusa_doh:

 

[Robert Conway]

This is an eight-page article from the NY Metro on the phenomenon of "grups" - adults in their mid-to-late 30s who wear Converse to work and like their blue jeans tattered and refuse to grow up.

Perhaps the emergence of this new segment of the population will give rise to a new ratings category for movies, you know, like 'PG13'. Maybe it's time to add a 'MC' rating for 'Man Child'.

 

[Robert Conway]

Sloppy slackers getting older, but not growing up. Probably had hippie parents who let em run around barefoot & unwashed.

You would be shocked to learn how many of them come from well to do families. Upper middle class and beyond. Many of them grew up in a bubble and never were forced to grow up, because they've had everything handed to them.
But I think it's a symptom of something that's been going on in many industrialized nations for year. There are so few grown ups around...

 

[Roger]

My favorite comment is, "40 is the new 20!" :eusa_doh:

It all depends on who's the 40 year old.

 

[Viola]

Ick. The continuing infantilization of our culture. Hardly a new phenom I would say (remember those 1970s wretches in toddler-type flappy overalls and puffy jackets). Oddly I just overheard this conversation on the train 5 minutes ago:
Little girl chatting to adult female in next seat: "Are you a mommy? there any kids at your house?"
Adult: "Oh no! See, I'm still a kid! I'm twenty-two."
!

I wouldn't say I was still a kid to a little kid, because that'll just confuse them, but I DO feel too young for kids of my own, and I'd probably be taken aback to be asked if I was a mommy. I'm just out of college, I don't have a steady job, and people still accuse me of "cutting school"!lol

Of course my childhood best friend IS a new mommy less than three months ago, and she's doing beautifully and her daughter is gorgeous. So maybe its all an illusion on my part.

 

[Lady Day]

Alright people, lets get perspective.

Well...

What got me is the music that they seem to dig. Why is it so strange for these guys to listen to this music when most of these musicians are in their early 30s as well?

Sorry yall, I have to play devils advocate. Wearing a suit dont make you grown up. Taking care of your responsibilities, and providing a stable family does, and from what the article is saying about these families, they seem to do that.

Is there such a thing as over casual, YES. But the way these people are dressed seems to be more 'sleek minimalist' than 'grunge yuckiness'. Yeah young man (and 35 is a young man) get a hair cut and shape up. Well, he has a wife, a business, and kids, so it seems like all he needs to do is get a hair cut. Im sure he'll pencil that into his blackberry.


LD

 

[Feraud]

Is there such a thing as over casual, YES. But the way these people are dressed seems to be more 'sleek minimalist' than 'grunge yuckiness'.

Sorry but I do not see sleek minimalist in this group photo.

Providing for a family is formost. Next comes having a sense of identity and "self" and what you project of yourself to the world. The men ( I use the term loosely) in the picture with the sweatshirts and fashionably unkept bangs appear to project the "I am 11 years old and just finished playing baseball with My Little Rascal pals."
More power to 'em. It just makes me look a whole lot better.

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

Well...

What got me is the music that they seem to dig. Why is it so strange for these guys to listen to this music when most of these musicians are in their early 30s as well?

:eusa_clap Lady said it, so I don't have to.

Personally, growing up, having had to dress from time to time in the "thrift store look" of 2nd-hand shirts & tattered jeans when it was Definitely Not Cool, makes me laugh when I see folks doing it now. I've made a point since graduating & getting a job to avoid it, and am looking forward to getting a more vintage 30s-40s-appropriate selection of clothes.

But I also like some of the currently popular music played by musicians my age. It's not my fault if kids are listening to it too.

That's where the author of the article totally lost me.

My favorite "desert island" music has always been (since I heard it in 10th grade), and will always be, Ellington '40-'42. But Death Cab & Weezer are my favorite non-jazz bands, and both are my age, so what's the point the article's trying to make on that note? Trying to shame me into not listening to DCfC, just because kids like it, and once you're 30, you're "pathetic" if you listen to anything that may be popular with 20-somethings?

It's My music, performed by My peers, in My CD player I bought with My money from My job, so where's the "pathetic" part? [huh]

It will be very interesting though, with the generation gap seeming to have stalled out, to see how the next generation will define themselves. And won't it be cool if it's by the clothes of Cary Grant and the music of Glenn Miller...


Swing High,
- C H

 

[Lady Day]

Sorry but I do not see sleek minimalist in this group photo.

I meant the ladies.

LD