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.

when it rains, it's 90

at some point, many months ago, i ceased regular blogging. not because i don't love to blog (and read blogs) as much as the next cyber-savvy person. but because i moved. to arizona.

now why in god's name would any self-respecting (and disrespecting after a few cocktails and under the thick cover of night somewhere in hollywood) angelino up and move to phoenix?

the answer, my metropolitan friends, is simple. i was offered a job teaching at a research institution. and, as any academic worth his salt (or his SSRN page) knows, when a big school tells you that they'll give you an office, a research assistant, and -- bestill my heart -- a paycheck, you do what any sane person who's spent a million years in school hoping to make enough money to live just above the poverty line would do: you move.

and so i find myself, not unhappily, enshrined in the desert, where it turns out, there are these strange sorts of semi tropical storms. i was at the grocery store, waiting in line, when the kindly but tragically midwesternly clad woman in front of me drew my attention to the falling rain outside the store's big plate glass windows. egads! it was raining. so much for that 90 degree weather, i thought, gleefully planning my afternoon java run. (because reasonable weather should always be celebrated with an unreasonably priced latte.)

said kind hearted woman continued to talk to me, regaling me with the details of her recent trip to michigan. (we flew there, we flew back, etc.) luckily i was spared any fashion tips and escaped into the parking lot, where my dirty, rain splattered, i'm a californian-and-i-recycle-more-than-you toyota prius awaited me.

back in the car, ac pumping against the sweltering heat, i noticed the winds, tearing at palm trees. if it hadn't been for the rain's subsiding to a veritable drizzle, certain palms could have been cut directly from footage of some more minor, non-deadly hurricane. caught in the midst of this mini-storm, hours from hawaii, i did the only thing a sane californian could do: i panicked. and raced home. groceries stored and my person safe again, i adjusted my central air conditioning, put on a pot of coffee and prepared to wait out the afternoon. and perhaps the entire summer.