{"id":1337,"date":"2007-02-11T18:35:35","date_gmt":"2007-02-11T18:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2007-02-11T18:37:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-11T18:37:00","slug":"two_americas_in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1337","title":{"rendered":"Two Americas, Indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two charities that I typically support – the St.Joseph Center<\/a> in Venice, CA, which does incredible work with low-income families and the homeless (for now<\/a>, at least…), and the Long Beach Opera<\/a>, where I serve on the board.<\/p>\n

Each charity typically does an annual fundraiser and auctions off random items, and I typically buy random things depending on my enthusiasm, solvency, how closely TG is monitoring me, and how much free wine I’ve had to drink.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, I bought a gift certificate at a men’s store in West Hollywood (and yes, I deducted the cash value of the certificate from my donation when I took credit for it year-end). It was for $500, and I figured I could get a couple dress shirts and a tie, or a blazer, or something.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, in an effort to broaden my clothing choices from black Gap polo shirts, Royal Robbins pants, and Vans – something TG and others have teased me for quite undeservedly – I went to the store.
\nAnd was ushered into quite another world. My $500 certificate would buy me one – that’s one (a single) dress shirt. I went from counter to counter, my level of amusement rising at each stop. They had unremarkable (although finely made) dress shirts for $400.00; sale blazers for $1,100, etc. etc. I wasn’t going to let the certificate go to waste, so bought some fine sport shirts and a tie – and burned a nice little divot in my debit card on top of the gift certificate in doing so.<\/p>\n

But I’ll be a well-dressed blogger, for sure.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has met me knows I’m the wrong person to talk with about fashion. Someone why buys black Gap polos by the half-dozen every four months isn’t someone with a highly developed fashion sense. Back in the day that I had to wear suits and such, I was lucky that a very good tailor used to come to our offices and basically dress us with custom suits and shirts (made in Hong Kong or India, and actually quite reasonable – I’d love to find another one like him). In current dollars, I used to pay $200.00 for a shirt that was the fashion and quality equivalent of the shirts this store wanted $400 for…made to measure.<\/p>\n

…so how does this boutique stay in business? It’s a puzzlement to me, because I encounter businesses like this all over – but only in the major cities – Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. Is it only there that there is a large enough body of insecure strivers? Or it is just that the population of fashion obsessives is high enough there?<\/p>\n

I’d love to know what you think about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal goes shopping, is shocked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}