There is something that’s been bothering the house of Kluster for some time now. What the heck is the deal with dudes trying to skate in stovepipes? Sure, they make you look like hot shit when you’re cruising the streets, but once you stick a board beneath your feet surely those puppies are restrictive as hell, right? Wrong. As it turns out there is a time and place for the stovepipes in skating. We just weren’t looking at things from the right angle, or so we were told. So in the name of journalistic ethics, fair play and all that other weepy nonsense we have decided to simply throw up the coin, let it spin and let you guys decide how it falls. The ball’s in your court now. Exciting, isn’t it!?
Choice One: Stovepipe Jeans. Or as we have fondly come to know them, tighties. Definition of a tighty? Think: jeans so tight they look like they belong on a girl or came from the kids department. Perfect for rocking around a bar and other such weekend activities.
Now, before we go any further we would like to take this opportunity to note the fact that before this investigation began we harboured some very serious and deeply rooted concerns about the validity of tighties when paired with skaters. But, you probably already got that from the intro right? It’s truly hard not to question the validity of tighties when face to face with a dude skating in them. Have you ever actually seen that shit up close? As one of the skaters we polled, Timbo eloquently put it, “I wear super tight jeans to the park. But normally I just lurk around drinking, adjusting my bandana, and pretend I’m in a hair metal band. They’re probably hard to skate in.”
To continue, our main concern rested neatly in the genital area. Tighties simply present themselves as too genitally restrictive (yep I made that word up), and look kind of wack when adorning a guy on a skateboard. The only exceptions to this rule are those individuals who are so fashion conscious that their skateboards are nothing more than an extension of their super-stylin’ bodies. To those folk, we here at Kluster say enjoy your tighties; you were made for each other.
In all other cases the adornment of tighties just left us scratching our heads. That was until that fateful day at Strathfield Skate Park when a bright beam of enlightenment shone through the darkness of our ignorance.
Jono of Hell City Glamour bassist fame grew up buttboarding around Baulkham Hills. Ever the beauty boy he has been known to happily rock the tighties of a weekend skate. I’d love to say it’s because he has a deeply rooted hardcore dedication to tighties, but with Jono its all about the promo favours. Lee sponsors him, so naturally Jono sports Lee tighties.
Happy to talk to us for a minute or two between sessions of strutting his stuff on his board and flicking his delightful hair, Jono swigs on his VB while confessing, “when I was a kid I skated in size 36 and they are just as annoying to skate in as any jeans. It’s just been a natural progression [to tighties] over the last few years… and yeah I get ‘em for free”. He put it so nicely we began to think of him as some kind of highly evolved skating creature.
Adam from Surry Hills is not sponsored by Lee. He has been rocking the tighties for well over a year none the less. While also chugging back on a VB - it’s astonishing how much a dude will open up with the promise of beer – he told us “They’re the trend, and you see some of your favourite skaters in ‘em so…”
As for whether or not he finds them restrictive, “not at all”. He goes so far as to say that for him there is actually a definite comfort factor involved.
continued… > >
And then there was the other factor that was staring us so blaringly in the face we felt kind of dumb for not considering it ourselves. Tighties are great if you’re planning on ripping out all the big tricks and thus, may end up crashing a lot. Because the fabric is so tight in your average pair of tighties it acts like a second skin that not only protects your real skin more effectively, it is also less likely to rip. This is a definite pro.
Out of the group of 15 or so skaters who were skating at Strathfield, only two of them were rocking the tighties. Discount the five of so kids in shorts, and also the one dude so tragically fashion that he was wearing tighties a bandana and thongs, tried to olly, appeared to injure himself, and sulked off home to cry (we believe), and you’re still met with a pretty small ratio of tighties. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that they weren’t representing, they were just in the minority that day.
However according to Mark B the distributor for Circa NSW this is not reflective of the greater NSW area. He kindly informed us “the tight ones [jeans] are selling out the loose by about four to one at the moment”.
An interesting fact that serves as the perfect lead to explore the other side of our coin…
Choice Two: Loosies. Let me take pause at this juncture to clarify our definition of a Loosie. Through the use of this term we aim to describe the looser fit jeans adorned by many. At no point should this term be interpreted to describe, nor used to define, ultra baggy Bomber-style hip hop-esque pants. Sorted? Great, let’s continue.
A few weeks back, when this piece was still little more than random ideas floating round in our heads we met up with two of our skating mates for a beer. My intention was to test the idea on them. What better forum for a discussion? One of those mates was Red Dawg, skating extraordinaire.
We mentioned the potential story to Red Dawg over our second round at the pub. He laughed in our face. Ok, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. He was definitely far from amped though. As a seemingly apathetic loosie wearer, Red Dawg was sceptical about the need for such an investigation. After further, almost forced discussion Red Dawg quietly revealed that he was secretly concerned about what one such investigation might uncover, and the ramifications the afore mentioned discoveries may potentially have on the wider skating community. He turned a whiter shade of pale.
Okay… so maybe he never actually went pale, and maybe he never actually said he was concerned but I swear to you I could see it in his eyes. When I asked him his thoughts on the tighties vs loosies he fitfully replied, “I’m a man goddammit! I’m not into fashion. I don’t buy jeans for their fit or look. These are K-Mart jeans. I wanted black jeans and they had ‘em”. Whatever.
After some desperately fumbled, but relatively successful further explanation I managed to spark his interest. After further discussion and the fourth beer he was completely onboard. It was the Dawg who led us to the loosies.
Ian has been skating for 22 years. He skated for various local northern beaches skate shops when he was younger, and has also represented in the X Games and various Vans Warped Tours. But if you ask him, he’ll tell you he has had a pretty casual skating life.
By all accounts he is a super mellow dude, cruising around the park, busting out the big tricks like they were nothing. He once skated in tight jeans but reverted to loosies after finding it “bloody hard” to do anything in a pair of tighties. He did confirm that tighties were “good when you stack [because] you don’t tear holes in jeans”.
Lauchlin works for DC so like Jono, he skates in what he’s given; loosies. When asked what he prefers his answer was also pretty apathetic, but he does hold some pretty major concerns about how restrictive tighties can be “it’s just really weird because men with their genitals need a little bit of room”.
So that’s it. The grand total of the saga, tighties vs loosies. Put it all together and what have we learnt here folks? Not simply that tighties are good if you’re planing to eat ramp. Or that loosies are good because they are not tighties and allow dudes balls to breathe. We have learnt… aww shit. That is all we’ve learnt isn’t it?
All that time spent hanging out at skate parks drinking beer and all we have to show for it is that no one really gives a toss about who wears what pants. Or do they? I don’t think we’ll ever really know because the ones who hold the secret really don’t care.
Actually!.. I just figured out something else that we here at Kluster learnt from this whole sordid affair, which is a definite plus because it means that this whole social exploration was not a complete bust after all. Here goes, the Grand Revelation: Never work with children, animals or skaters (when it comes to fashion at least). They truly don’t give a crap. Or don’t they?
NB the author wishes to make clear the fact that they bare no bias for stovepipes jeans or their role in the community at large.
Story by Kat Hartmann
