Skull Bearer

They’re not big and spacious with repetitive features and easy to identify isles like your average drug store. They’re small and homey, a unique feature for a place that is lit solely with flourecent lights. They usually have the local bodega cat (and you know a yuppie when they bitch about the cat), who sometimes lets you pet her. Their shelves are lined with snacks from obscure areas of the world, and knock off brands that somehow just taste better than the name brand. Sometimes household necessities are in their own isle, but usually theyre next to a variety of items like pet food, chips, cake mixes, cereal (it changes depending on your bodega). Coolers are filled with both alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks, sometimes humming, other times roaring because they’re fifteen years old and held together with ducttape and a stubborn refusal to replace them. And almost always there’s a deli that can give you a baconeggandcheese (all one word), in the morning and a chopped cheese whenever you’re craving it.

A bodega is not just a cornerstore, it’s the heart of a neighborhood. It’s where the kids go in the morning, swarming in to get drinks, snacks, breakfast, maybe even lunch. It’s where the tired third shifters and barely awake first shifters coming in to chat, pick up a coffee, a soda, a candy bar. It’s where you go after school, after work, late at night, in any mood or outfit.

A bodega is a brief window into the heart of New York. The one that isn’t tailored and refined by the rich, the suburbanites, the yuppies and the ever hungry universities. The one that keeps the city beating, even when all the Wall Street implants and commuters abandon ship.

I’m in Columbus, OH and we have them all over, but honestly the bigger the city, the harder they are to spot from the outside, only by locals. Small towns is where you really see them in Ohio. But I’ve found them in Tennessee, Georgia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Florida, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and upstate NY as well. 

I always love the og zoot suits made by black americans in Harlem, I really like looking at the changes from these clothes from the 30s to some of the more exaggerated renditions from the 40s. It's also so interesting to look at how fast the subculture spread, and especially in the american west integrated with mexican diaspora and pachuco culture to the point that that's what a lot of usamericans associate them with.

⬆️ long wallet chains and pork pie hats were classic accessories for mexican diaspora zoot suiters. Zoot suits/their components were also really popular with women and were a way to symbolize independence and a choice to move away from strict gender roles on top of the existing countercultural message ⬇️

Anyways it's kind of impossible to talk about zoot suits without mentioning the racism and violence that followed them. On top of a zoot suit making someone a target for individual racial violence, the national reaction of white america to zoot suit culture was part of the beginning of clothing and presentation being read explicitly as signals by police and justice systems, and the broad association of youth of color with gang violence through this specific excuse. Gang culture and how it's percieved in the western US and especially California is very influenced by this era. The most famous events from the zoot suit era are the collective zoot suit riots and the media characterization of all mexican american, filipino american, and black american youth as violent anti-american baby gangsters. Which, even if that was broadly true I mean. I'll take the opportunity to be flippant hell yeah??

As a side note, while making more new zoot suits during war rationing was pretty sick, most people weren't buying from the black market tailor shops and just wore what they already owned because the style had been popular for years already. People bought clothes less often to begin with back then. I think that misconception comes from the reasoning white americans gave to go beat up people of color with baseball bats in the street; i.e. it was racial and xenophobic violence to begin with and the nature of the suits themselves has been mushed around a lot to serve different narratives.

More zoot suits! ⬇️

nigel farage is such a bellend. he resigned because he was being investigated about a dodgy deposit of 5 million from probably a pedophile neo-nazi that he refused to declare, went head to head with a bin, got re-hired because like...his main opponent was a sentient bin...and then parliament watchdog went 'ok lol welcome back we're still investigating you' 

like i'm dying:

That's the moron Musk is trying to make happen.

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This is a joke blog. None of the opinions expressed on this blog are on behalf of or are supported by Count Binface himself, and I, the owner of the blog, do not claim to be or impersonate Count Binface.

Anyway