a wrinkle in fashion time

oh, bay area, how do i love thee? with your slightly sullen sunshine (made just bleak enough by the permacool of the ocean breeze) and your organic salads and gourmet cheeseries, and your perpetual fog that hangs, like so much educational and global financial superiority, just over the city, is it a wonder that i'm smitten?

sitting in the oakland airport, awaiting my flight back to phoenix after four days in my favorite city, i played my favorite airport game, inventing stories and destinations for all of the people i passed on my way to my gate. all of the typical airport types were there. the busy banker headed for asia, the chubby mommy off to a weekend away at her sister's, the hip, happy couple drunk with their own sense of cool, the model u.n. team member on his way to a competition, excited just to have finally left his parents' house.

i passed these people, labeling them for my own amusement, as i headed for gate thirty, at the far end of the all southwest terminal two. past gate twenty eight, a non-stop to lax (is there any other kind of flight to lax?), i noticed a crush of bearded, sweat-pant-wearing, aging hipsters and sighed silently, a little homesick for los angeles.

and that was when i saw them. suddenly, they seemed to be coming from everywhere, their bleached hair nearly blinding, their acrylic nails clawing at the air in front of them as if to say, "don't you dare touch my juicy couture sweatsuit." and then i was surrounded. girls in matching onesies sat next to friends in velour sweatsuits. everywhere puffed sleeves adorned t-shirts and jackets. i pinched myself, hoping to wake up, but was unable to. oh, no. it was all too real. i was on my way back to arizona. headed, like michael j. fox before me, through the time space continuum and into the past. only i wasn't going to visit the old west. i was going to the recent past. the los angeles fashion past.

leisure suit couture...the arizona uniform...apparently

two hours later we were on our way down and our captain administered southwest's usual overly-friendly-make-you-feel-like-flying-is-no-big-deal-and-you-didn't-need-all-that-xanax greeting. "welcome to phoenix," he said, finally concluding. and, sweat suited travelers in plain view, i knew that he might as well have welcomed me back to the mainstream los angeles styles of two years before.

getting off the plane, i sighed deeply, took in the polluted desert air that seeped in from the ill-sealed jetway. the sweat suits were there at the baggage claim too. and, as i waited for my tan luggage to appear, it's pert red luggage tag identifying it as mine, i began to relax. a girl next to me was looking awfully cute in green velour sweat pants and a white puffed sleeve t-shirt. she smiled at me, the i'd-be-friends-with-you-if-we-weren't-perfect-strangers-smile. i smiled it back. maybe, just maybe, i thought, puffy sleeves really aren't so bad.