The Maintenance Men
When I was in college, there were these two guys in a neighboring dorm who were determined to live the early 90's hipster lifestyle to the hilt. On every given day, these dudes, whose names I entirely forget (odds favor that one of them was a Jason), were decked out in a melange of conflicting popular disaffected cool dude styles, culminating in an overall effect that could best be described as punkabilly Danny Zuko skater boy: sideburns, check. Crispy, shellacked Vince Vaughn hairstyles: check. Comically oversized pants with torn pant cuffs and dangling pocket chains: check. Gas station attendant shirts from Thriftway with iron-on name patches, once belonging to guys with actual jobs: check. One of them may have even had Buddy Holly horn rims with the lenses punched out, I'm not too sure. My friend Peter, a sardonic classics major with a yen for reading inscrutable Greek tomes, wryly deemed them "The Maintenance Men." These inseparable dudes seemed to spend most of their time mugging around the quad, squinting as the late morning sun harshed their hangovers, and bragging about random ass-kicking exploits befitting two 20-year-old guys getting a lightweight liberal arts education on their parents' dime, while clomping around in $100 work boots designed to repel industrial chemicals on construction sites.
This morning while drinking coffee, I suddenly remembered The Maintenance Men out of the blue, apropos to nothing, and laughed out loud.
posted by Strikethru at
10:37 AM
3 Comments:
Their names were Jason and Josh and they studied theater. Those fashions were great, but I think that without the pickpocket guard you were just another grungy dude. This all important chain attached to the corner of your cheapo-stiff-as-beef-jerky wallet (itself a study in understatement) and draped across the thigh to the nearest belt loop. No hipster of the day was complete without one and many tried to out do the other with the diameter of their, uh, chain. Your finer head-shops would have a whole case devoted to the things. I remember a hipster one day trounced the competition, when he appeared in the dining hall sporting some of that 1.5 inch diameter plastic chain you buy at the hardware store and – mirabile dictu -- let the loop swing down to around ankle level. The day glow chain set against dark Ben Davis work pants was as demonstrative as it was definitive. Everyone knew that guy’s tuition cash was protected – period. Many theories for what he was thinking came to mind: awkward adolescence? But he was 20. Maybe a stroke of genius? He thought: “I’m going to out cynic all cynical hipsters and become be the hipster of all hipsters!” But he wore it long, long after the pickpocket guard craze had faded, meaning a few months later one could still see him walking about campus (you couldn’t miss him) on the verge of tripping over his protection. No, I think he really liked it. I could have asked him what gives, but I was pretty shy then and besides I didn’t own a pocket chain. How could I approach … but wait. That’s just it, I thought. You can always pick out the most senior maintenance man from the flock, by the size of the wad of keys carried at, well, just about the same place as those damned pickpocket guards. The more keys, the bigger the pickpocket guard, the more self-proclaimed authority, the more intimidating, er something. I’m sure some of the more devoted hipsters have by this time swapped out their chains for a cell phone, proudly glued to the same part of their
Ok, this comment definitely made me spit my coffee out laughing. I don't remember the guy with the plastic chain... but I remember the chain!! Isn't that the important thing?
perhaps not strangely, josh was one of my good friends after they moved out of the dorms and lived down in beach flats a few blocks from our pad on bixby. he also got me my big dot-com break in late 1995 and now works for a certain Y-named biggie.
jason, i think, didn't finish ucsc (i have stories on this from josh that aren't worth telling here), and quickly moved back to...grass valley? and started having kids. no idea what he's up to now. josh lives in sf and tho i haven't seen him in years, i hear he's happy, married, etc.
josh was a lit major, fwiw. descriptions are exactly on, tho, otherwise.
ian
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