Sartorial Sunday [Weirddave]

Look, I'm a child of the 80s, and as such I have a pretty casual attitude towards dress. I can literally count on one hand the number of times each year I wear a tie, and if you show up unexpectedly at my house I'll probably greet you in sweats and a t-shirt. Still, as casually inclined as I am ( some days when I work at home I never get out of my robe all day), I do think that some basic expectations as to dress are not out of line.

I'm not advocating for a 1950s Father Knows Best world where mom cooks dinner in a dress and pearls and then serves it to her husband who is smartly dressed in a coat and tie with a pipe clenched between his teeth, but I'm not discarding the underlying thought process there either.

Last night I had dinner at Fogo de Chao in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Now, Fogo de Chao certainly isn't fine dining, there is a certain whimsy inherent in a dining model that revolves around telling a muscular young Latino gentleman dressed as a gaucho that you would like more of his meat (three blocks north on Baltimore St., telling a muscular young Latino gentleman dressed as a gaucho that you would like more of his meat has a very different, much more serious, connotation), but it's nice enough. I dressed in an oxford shirt, Dockers slacks and loafers. Gingy wore a dark blouse, striped skirt and low heeled sandals. Neat. Presentable. Proper attire for a nice dinner and a stroll around the Inner Harbor.

The restaurant was pretty busy, and most folks were dressed about as we were, but a good 10-15% fell squarely into the WTF were you thinking category, such as:

The fat guy, 300lb if he was an ounce, wearing tight, short, shorts. His thighs bulged around the leg holes like the waddles on a turkey's neck.

A muscular guy wearing a wife beater, I dunno if his reservation was for Meathead Rob Lowe.

A guy in his early 30s with a scraggly hipster beard and a t-shirt that said "I <3 single moms". I suppose his "Got MILF?" tee was in the wash.

A black lesbian couple sitting near us, one half of whom was dressed to the nines - and her partner wearing an honest to God grey track suit.

Several people in shorts and flip flops more suited for open air dining across the street at Dick's Last Resort ( or for Dick's Halfway Inn up in Rosedale ).

Now, none of these people ruined our meal. I was out for my birthday and had a lovely meal with lots and lots of meat (in a few minutes I'm going to go to my meditation room and have a meat baby) and they didn't even charge me for it ( seriously, we paid the bill before we noticed they'd only charged one meal. I brought this to their attention and they were happy to correct the situation. While they were doing that I was sitting there trying to convince myself that honesty is it's own reward. It was! I was rewarded to the tune of -$65! Heh). I get that we're not supposed to judge others in this Brave New World, but honestly, was it so terrible when society had some standards?

Open thread

posted by Open Blogger at 06:24 PM

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