Or: This Isn't Fucking Reservoir Dogs
Around the year two-thousand and something, my friend Christian Schultz was living in Tribeca. How he found himself there, he could never have foreseen. But his girlfriend had a great place and he was taking pictures and it all came together rather well. Every morning, she snored late and he rose early -- to walk the dog and get coffee at Pécan (that Israeli operated breakfast sham on Franklin Street). The girlfriend also expected a ten-dollar yogurt and granola parfait, part of a mid-afternoon levé couché ritual that she performed herself.
One Friday, as Christian walked east towards Varick (imagine a slight rain here), something caught his pale and dark circled eyes. He shuffled over to a storefront window. Was something glimmering in there? Peering through an array of metallic blinds he saw them. Standing around a dark and presumably well-designed modernist table a squadron of men in tiny grey suits raised their glasses higher and higher, centripetally above their heads.
It was 8:45 am.
And they were toasting. With champagne.
Looking down at Hamlet, the pug, whose left eye had shriveled to the edible likeness of a salt cured Moroccan olive, Christian wondered just what kind of sick joke was this? And, if those suits were personally tailored? Because these flâneurs mind you, were completely serious. Their toast produced neither quip nor peep -- but the five-inch space from pant cuff to wingtip spoke very, very loudly.
While his own khakis enjoyed a comfy bag at both butt and knee, these gentlemen wore something of an entirely different persuasion, codification and altogether mode of existence. It was clear, that in this Michael Zahn atelier, something important was going on. Specifically in the ankle region.
There were questions to ask, answers to question, and measurements to take. Was there any regulation employed here, any method of consistency? Was there a hierarchy within the store? Did the older clerks get a pant raise? Younger ones, bereft the pleasure of exposing their supple ankle flesh? Was clientele in on this tailoring free-for-all? Did they have any clientele? And, most importantly, were they also given champagne?
Christian scratched his shorn head. A recent scissorian escapade had left him a battleground of scalp and fuzz. He had met her parents this way. And she had screamed the night before. You look like a Nazi! Why couldnÕt you have waited until tomorrow?
As Hamlet slobbed a bit on his sneaker, Christian peered deeper through the shades. They were opening another bottle.
Just who was this "Thom Browne"?