I Long for a Time When "Back in the Day" Had No Meaning

I ventured into a suburban Urban Outfitters yesterday. Probably my first trip in since 1998 or 99, and definitely the first time I'd been in one in a "mall" environment, and I was horrified by the ridiculous display of "urban" artifacts and clothing.

Back in the day - before a time when that phrase meant anything to me, meaning circa 1991/92/93 - Urban Outfitters was the bastion of all things chic and nonconformist conformity... It was where I went to understand the culture of my time - to know which jeans, which obscure shoes from Italy, which t-shirt brands, etc. were outside the mainstream, not found in the mall, and therefore not only acceptable, but highly coveted and revered.

I would step into Urban's and pay huge amounts of money (back then) - $80+ for a pair of jeans - and understand that I was one of a particular persuasion, because I wore the identifiable uniform. Of course, we viewed it as an "anti-uniform", but seeing the goths and punks and emo kids of today, I understand that all the "we don't give a shit - we're not trying to be cool" trends that I so deeply embraced at the initiation of Grunge were certainly more than an identifiable uniform. They were, at their onset, not nearly as unique or groundbreaking as we thought they were. And by 1994, a commercialized land of trash. But in those first years, those trends were gods of fashion and, ironically, belonging...

Yesterday, in Urban Outfitters lite, the next generation, I overheard a frat boy employee, who was lost in a sea of horrendous bright colors and 80s-esque white t-shirts with giant black letters eschewing slogans like "Relax" and "...Vote", while he was in the process of opening locked dressing rooms (we used to change behind giant curtains, back in the day, no organized dressing rooms for our avante garde selves) comment (in response to the sound of Boy George over the stereo system), to a fellow clean-cut employee, "What is this music? Like from the 80s or something?".

Now I understand that this is how it feels to have a cultural broken heart. Back in the day, kids at Urban's knew their music.