poetry standing still

Hat, hair,  pink up to there, 

cuffs, boots, damp chill in the air,

Abbot Kinney*, i don't care,

in uptown, i found this pair.

Are you put off by poetry that doesn't rhyme?  I am.  But then, I'm put off by pork jowls, capri pants, Master's degrees and recent graduates. Somewhere in there is an apology for the shit above.

* This is a reference to fin de 19th siecle developer Abbot Kinney who had the foresight to know that artists and celebs who lived in his Venice in Venice impractical thus very high demand SoCal neighborhood would need a street full of coffee shops, ratty looking but expensive boutiques selling droopy Comme des Garcons t-shirts and a town hall in the form of a Tom's shoe shop and tax service to sustain all their free time and rehab programs their creative juices.

bus stop

Oh lookit, the cutest legless street urchin ever.

 Dang, a miracle!  She's cured!  Actually, she's just cold but the bus was about to come. It's been a tough go for filmy dresses and bare legs this spring so I appreciate the risk she was taking here.  Let's talk about those bangs.  She said she cuts them herself,  particularly when stressed.  From this, we can assume a moderate stress level, less than mistakenly crossing into North Korea and more than Jack Johnson.  Kind of a winsome level of stress.
Right here, I need to apologize for shaking her hand with my filthy paw.  See, I was gardening, which some people do with shovels and whatnot but I do with my hands, when an urgent need for mulch presented.  No time for hygiene, I hopped into the car and this woman happened before the mulch.  Sorry for the black and crusty handshake -- it was organic.

happy trails

She likes dressing, or skirting as the case may be, for work and she likes bike commuting.  Deal breaker is,  she doesn't have far to go, so no danger of pitting out the happy red coat.  And the vintage boots she got at Salvation Army on Nicollet for $10 don't really become a hazard until after ten miles or so.

I applaud her uncompromising good taste:  The tights are a civil consideration.  I pop on some tallboy underpants and carpe diem.  Caveat emptor.  Opus Dei.  In flagrante delicto?  Or as they say in Rome, oh god.

the Haight lives on

 So so much to love,  this theater student is wearing her very own flawless complexion with her grandmother's handmade-by-hippie-1960s-SanFran-artisans bag and a croquet-on-the-lawn seersucker bustle skirt from Larue's in south Minneapolis.  Wait, let's get a better look at that bag.  Absolutely trippy.  It used to have beads on it too.  I think I'm getting a whiff of patchouli.  Or something.

Jill

I know what you're going to say -- seeds?!  On May 18th? That's insane!  Due to the one hula hoop on her ear, I assumed Jill was an artist. Well that's silly.  Never jump to conclusions because, in this case, the asymmetry was unintentional, which clearly points to clothing designer.  Which is on her resume, along with her current position -- Delightfully Confident Wearer Of Her Own Skin, A Len Druskin Top, Some Kick-Ass Boots and Rocker Of Excellent Silver Hand Candy.  That's kind of an upper management position, lotta responsibility.  In her mastery of this field, she demonstrates some nuances that have eluded me, namely the difference between confident (above) and shameless (behind the camera).  Vive la difference, right?

flowers n bows n international studies majors

 What's all this? A clever pattern bisecting this dress into equal parts sweet, sophisticated and perfect which so often blur together but here are clearly defined;  pretty scarves blowing about the lower leg like ankle ascots but functional;  tri-media sandals that marry filmy chiffon, earthy leather and rich-looking brushed metal in one-derfulness; frilly crocheted shoulder bag with cute floral lining that you can't see but I did.  The thing that makes this so happy-making non-MOA good is the wearer, who got the whole kit and caboodle -- hair, elbows, sandals, sunny demeanor -- in Spain.  She's going back for the summer to reboot (ha, that's a footwear joke), but will return to Macalester in the fall.  Even beyond their track for running around when no one can see how very slowly I'm going and unguarded piles of mulch, Macalester brings so much to our little neighborhood, doesn't it?  Nonetheless, we often call it MacLackluster to bring the dim light of lowbrow humor to our small dark world. And when I say we, I mean I.

the theme for the day is stripes

You know how vulnerable I am to stripes, well, this simple bold design statement drew a line right to my eyeballs as I tottered by.  Dresses, exposed skin, me on a bike --  signs of spring or the scene instructions for a low-budget horror film?  You decide.

look homeward angel

If this young man is not channeling Thomas Wolfe, I don't know squat.  Ok, hush all you h8trs. He used to work at Hymies, where he came by the suspenders, and retrofit the trousers to be southern-man-friendly.  Look downward angels and observe some effin real mandals. I don't know where he got em because I was 100% in his Faulkner-esque thrall and was not listening.  I was hoping the below blowup would show his  oh-ashley southern charm suspenders.  Alas.  One doesn't come across this shit very often.

madame librarian

Nicely accoutered in books and a shoulder bag she got in Korea, she's working in the Macalester library for the summer.  She's a Japanese major and, in fact, got the knee socks in Japan where they major in high socks, and sort of overtly sexywear.  Now, I'm majoring in wildly ignorant statements, but Japanese culture seems obsessed with cartoons. Sometimes creepy or violent cartoons where an adorable pink kitten kills and eats a child and then shyly peeks out of the carcass with blood dripping off its cute whiskers.  That's weird.  See, in the US of A, we don't have to rely on cartoons -- we just watch Fox TV. 

Here are some Japanese socks in situ.

yes, those are her real eyebrows

She gets asked that a lot. Probably.  Everyone is like, Ooooo, your eyebrows are so perfect and long, eyebrows eyebrows eyebrows, all the time...  

Well yodel-ay-hee-hoo,  I'm just going to go out there, march to a different clarinet, and say I really like her Rapunzel braids and baby-those-are-long blue fingernails.  I really like them and they're real. Really.  Real as that piece of spinach in my teeth.  Her hands get a lot of attention because they're plunking down big plates of sizzling beef muscle mignon at Murray's, where she's headed right now.  Enjoy!

Sky blue

This is by far the happiest spin that could possibly be torqued out of Mongolian chill in mid May. Because that is her spring scarf and sweaters and leggings and wooly legwarmers.  Not the winter scarf and sweaters and leggings and wooly legwarmers.  See the difference?  The legwarmers, which are a delightful way to keep shins and ankles toasty, were handmade by someone in Peru.

Dressed

These May flowers trusted the weather report, shook off the funky sweatpants, painted their toenails and said yes to the dress.  And to a refreshing coffee beverage. And to me, so they were in a pretty darn generous mood.

how I know I'm not in my neighborhood anymore

We know, instead, that we're on hip Grand Ave., the Williamsburg of St. Paul, because A) dude is wearing an artsy t-shirt and acrylic man-dant of Renaissance Fest provenance on his chest instead of a baby. If this were my hood, there would be at least six or seven children strapped on front, back, piled high and deep or harnessed in or being propelled in a monster truck/stroller.  And a dog as caboose, with bag of poo swinging from the leash.  If they were headed for Aldi, as they should be, they're going the wrong way.

B)  Are those Southpole jeans? I don't think so.

C)  Her Katniss hair appears to be reacting to the laws of physics rather than the architectural rule of product. And where are the blond highlights?

D) Long, narrow stretches of flowing natural fibers in flattering colors like peachy pink -- wtf?  In my neck of the woods, capris work their magic on every age, body type and occasion.

This will be instructive. For you.

This is a furby.

 This is a girl whose mom colored her hair in some pastel shades, wearing some bits of fur and bone hanging from her waist that are a by-product of her taxidermy venture. That she learned online.  I learned how to get salt stains out of my car carpet online.  You can learn how to make a bomb online.  One thing that's hard to learn online is when to shut up.

This is a furry, a girl who expresses herself by dressing as an animal.  I may or may not have asked if she was a furby which was super embarrassing, so I'm posting this so you can learn something else online -- that I have no shame and quite a bit of free time  the difference between a furry and a furby. 

She did not use a McCall's pattern for her hat, but rather measured around her head, cut out an ear-flapped swath from acrylic plush and pimped out the pointy ears with lining and foam inside to make them stand up. The two-tone tail is nice and bushy.  I'm going to go ahead and ass-u-me that it's installed as a belt so it can be worn with any number of different pants. And culottes.

Winner, Best Hair and Accessories Ever Witnessed at a Goodwill

A delight, with jacket and without, to wit: her insouciant hair, and sparkly earrings, brooch and teeth. Andrea shared about caring the tiniest bit what you're putting other people's eyeballs through.  She works in accounting (not a traditionally fashion forward role) in one of those laid back offices where plaid flannel is not a nod to Marc Jacobs and zubaz are not worn ironically as part of a hi/low mashup with a Balmain jacket. Sometimes she plans her makeup first and then the ensemble based on that concept. Because it makes life worth living.  We agreed that if you're going to roll out in sweatpants, it would be nice to have some clue, like eyeliner or silk socks, that the sweatpants were a conscious choice, maybe a wink at the way sports influences the farthest reaches of our culture, rather than something that you found underneath you when you woke up on the floor of someone else's dorm room. 

As a photographic note, I used my special mozzarella cheese spotted lens for this photo and the auto-jiggle setting. 

Dos de Mayo

Forty-seven degrees notwithstanding, these two are May flowers, for sure.

Perfect

I am not even going to mess up this so so beautiful woman/photo up with my usual drivel. Just, please pay special attention to her freckles, which I love.  Go out an get some.

into the blue

 

Even if you added up all of this blueness, above....

 

and below....

 

and the exact ass-kicking, name-taking Timberland boots she was wearing, the sum of these parts does not equal the whole wonderfulness of the astronomy instructor whose photos have disappeared into deep space.  See, I'm making all these astronomy allusions because she studies galaxies and was dressed shoulders-to-the-jeans-boot-interface in deep, dark, narrow navy blue.  And I took some photos and then something happened -- perhaps it was me pushing buttons like I was playing Whac-A-Mole or maybe there was a black hole, but at any rate, I don't have the photos.  Instead I made the above collage.  Like planets colliding, I hope I meet this woman again, and I hope I won't delete the photos, and I hope she will be wearing exactly the same thing.  She can probably figure out the chances of that happening.