julian-wolf

Would that be any less the case if they cost $500?

@shredwin_206 Thanks, the size 46 feels like it was made for me

Caught in the act of catching Old Dog in the act of shenanigans The Vanishing West / Sure Mfg. x TCB / Hollows / Word of Mouth / Russell

Russell Vellies back in rotation with a new set of laces

@CSL Looks great on you Is that the one that was on sale at S&S? I was tempted to pick up the same

^ I say we keep the banter spread across as many threads as possible: Make the future AI summarizer bots work to earn their keep!

That’s the main reason I never wear any natural indigo jeans anymore—half of my job these days is using Artificial Intelligence to build Atomic Interferometers, and I just don’t think I could stand another layer of disambiguation

Far too big a chunk of the internet already comprises pages primarily populated by and (increasingly) consumed by AI. This adds nothing in the way of original content, and makes it significantly more difficult to filter out trustworthy info when searching. The last thing we need is for real human contributors to begin actively helping add to the noise. I’m certainly not fundamentally against this style of AI assistant tool. If someone wanted a quick summary of the first 130 pages of this thread without all the banter, the prompts you entered would be a great way to achieve it. The (rather big) problem arises when the output of the AI models gets posted straight back to the same pages that the models are using for training in the first place. Now, in five years, when someone wants to ask their AI assistant to summarize the first 230 pages of this thread, the model isn’t likely to appropriately distinguish between original human-generated content and amalgamated machine-generated content when building its impression. The feedback loop that this generates doesn’t have any happy endings. Use AI all you want to help with your personal or professional life, but keep whatever it outputs away from any information aggregates like forums or social media. (I know it’s all in good humor and no real harm’s being done, and I hope the neg rep isn’t taken personally—that’s what the rep buttons are for, right?)

Do the last 140 pages of the thread really leave that many gaps??

@shredwin_206 Picked up the ‘47 506xx! I’d been meaning for a while to check out Brogue, which is around 40 minutes from me over in San Carlos. They’re closed on Sundays, which is my main running around day, so it didn’t seem like it was gonna happen organically. Finally made the time yesterday to drive over there and spend a while browsing, and it was a great setup. Decent selection of Freewheelers and also Timeworn Clothing, neither of which are ever available at any of the other shops around here. Overall a pretty cool vibe; it reminded me a lot of Standard & Strange 10ish years ago before they started focusing so heavily on artsier / more fashion forward brands. Seemed really well curated—certainly not everything there was for me personally, but everything that I saw did at least seem interesting and well thought-out, and the whole selection seemed cohesive and intentional, which is more at this point than I can say of Self Edge or Standard & Strange, as much as they both have going for them. I was mostly interested in trying out some At Last & Co., but nothing that they had in my size really spoke to me. Tried on the TVW 506xx just out of curiosity though, and I’m glad I did. I always figured if I bought a new TVW jacket I’d get it from Seiichiro, and I also always figured I’d take a size 44. Turns out the 44 was way too small (!), so it’s a really good thing I got to try one out in person. Ended up going with a 46 and it fits perfect. Pictures to come.

Busy morning hammering down rivets…

+ Two days later Meanwhile, the season’s wildflowers are starting to really take off up in the hills, with trillium making the first strong appearance as always feat. Union Special, Sun Surf / Oahu Garment Co. / Tezomeya / Duke / MOTO

For a fair contest, we should really all be tracking our wear on a quarter-hour basis

Made a cute little shop apron

^ I like my Word of Mouth jeans a lot, but they’re not made to nearly the same standard of construction as anything I have from Ooe. That’s completely fine with me, in the end—I didn’t buy them to be built with every stitch perfect—but it makes them feel like a much closer to comparison to someone like Rockets or Bridge of Time (not that I’ve tried either of these personally, to be fair) than to Ooe. The only other jeans I’ve worn that felt like they really parallel Ooe in that regard are Roy’s, so maybe it’s too high of a standard to be comparing on anyway

I’m sure I’ve worn my Bourtons with shorts at least a few times. Honestly, I think this feels more unnatural than it would to wear them with a suit, besides maybe a lighter color linen or seersucker number. Since when are brogues at all formal??

[At least] Two parts to the story, really. On one hand… Of course it's different. When the food influencers blow up the local spot, the folks running the spot have the potential to make a lot more money. That sort of exposure + influx could even be what lets them finally expand into a brick and mortar—which is maybe frustrating for the long-time customer but often great for the community, and most importantly for the folks running the place. Fine, sometimes they'll over-extend and the whole thing will go to shit, but that's going to be a risk either way. Ooe has been so supply-limited for so long that it's really hard to believe generating more interest in their product will generate any more actual work for them. Building more hype doesn't do much other than build more competition among customers. Fine, to be fair: it also probably drives quite a bit more traffic for their retailer partners like S&S, where there's bound to be something cool in stock even when those cherished Ooe jeans aren't, but even if that's a positive for the industry overall, it's not helping Ryo and Hiro directly in the same ways as it might help your homie with the taco truck. The story would be a little different if they were taking the Roy + SE approach of just ratcheting prices higher and higher in order to curb demand and find some sort of real equilibrium, but so far that doesn't seem to be where they're going with this. Who knows? On the other hand, though… This has been my biggest real turn-off from them for years; I know it's come up in this thread before. We can complain all we want about the influencers latching on and blowing up the spot, but in the end, for better or for worse, that's exactly the result Ryo and Hiro are seeking in how they run their own social media. Clearly they've decided it's a net benefit to them & to the community, so who are we to say otherwise?

It might just be that I’m uncultured (or differently cultured) and have never spent any time in any truly formal environments, but simple mid century service shoes have always felt to me like an appropriate middle ground. I’ve worn my black shell MOTO derbies with a suit a few times, and with jeans plenty, and they’ve never felt out of place in either setting. I’m sure that there are contexts in which this would be seen as very inappropriate, but it seems like it’s probably best to be avoiding those anyway…

@yung_flynn The M41027 do run around an inch smaller than many other M-series

@Broark For what it’s worth, I’m just now reading through the S&S email from a few days ago and it looks like Ryo and Hiro will be visiting S&S a few weeks after Inspiration to announce a new collab. model. If this is anything like previous years, they might save some extra stock of the Inspiration jeans to sell while there. No guarantee, obviously, but it could be worth reaching out.

@vIGGiou riou Those are looking great

I like the fit of these quite a bit overall, but one thing I’ve found is that the lower rise means I don’t end up wearing button-up shirts much; the proportions just end up feeling off. On one hand it feels like a shame to be so limited, but on the other hand I think the challenge of putting together more outfits that just rely on simple tee shirts has done a lot to help get me out of a sort of slump that I’d been in for the past few months, which is a pretty cool side effect. (In general, I think that the idea of being forced to get a little more creative with what non-jeans clothes items I wear was a strong point in favor of me joining the contest in the first place.) Anyway, for most of this week we had some collaborators and customers in from out of town @ my job, which meant wearing shirts, which meant wearing different jeans. It felt surprisingly good this morning to get back in the usual flow. …feat. Tilley, Okolehao, Tezomeya, Duke, Russell, plus a bonus shot of our first rose of the year

Tilley / Okolehao / Tezomeya / Duke / Word of Mouth / Russell

@MJF9 That’s great to know; their USD prices area generally way higher than domestic. All I’ve bought direct from them is a couple bananas, so no huge hit, but being able to pay their listed JPY price would make me way more likely to order more in the future

Great Lakes / Rocky Mountain / Union Special / Hollows / The Vanishing West / MOTO