TRUCKIN': It's often been said that by the New York Times picks up on a cultural trend, that trend is usually all but over (unless that trend is journalistic fraud- HAR!). But that goes double for nonsensical hipster fashion fads, like this new fascination with trucker hats.
Even more absurd than that whole throwback jersey craze, trucker hats (those goofy mesh caps favored by Johnny Knoxville, Ashton Kutcher, and others) are the latest example of blue-collar chic to affect the denizens of Williamsburg and other wackishly hip neighborhoods- it's like wacker bars, only ten times worse. The Times last week decided to wade into the trucker-hat "phenomenon," looking more ridiculous, somehow, than those wearing the hats themselves. There's even a description of how people who live in Williamsburg are supposed to wear the hat one way while those from various other neighborhoods don it other ways. But the nadir of the story is this paragraph:
Now the hats have been scooped up by entertainers who seem to be seeking a rougher image. The actor Ashton Kutcher, on his MTV show "Punk'd," typically wears up to five different trucker hats per episode. (He spends a good portion of the time sitting in front of the camera shifting the hats on his head, which has been known to send purists into a rage)
If you're sitting at home watching "Punk'd," and you see Ashton Kutcher, and you're thrown "into a rage" by the way he's wearing his hat, then I'm sorry, there's something very, very wrong with you.
(By the way, Gawker was on this story weeks before the Times was- and even broke the Jayson Blair cocaine story weeks before Time and Newsweek. Thus proving my newly held theory that Elizabeth Spiers is the best journalist in America).
Posted by Stephen Silver at May 19, 2003 05:48 PM