respectfulnesseseseses (?)

School has restarted and the week just totally flew by, it's amazing! I was sort of dreading it all last month but now that it's finally here it turned out to be not such a giant headache as I thought it would. Mind you, I love teaching, so it's not that I don't like it, it's just that I get particular about my timeschedule being impinged on by "have to's" and "should do's". But then when it actually rolls around it gets my juices flowing and I wind up getting into it. I'm teaching almost four classes: one junior/senior undergraduate sculpture class ("Connections Workshop"), a senior interdicsiplinary critique seminar that I'm team-teaching with photographer Tammy Rae Carland, working with about 6 grad students on an individual critique basis, and then subbing for a first-year grad student seminar later during the semsester (one of the teachers is going on maternity leave with triplets--yeesh!).

I've been fretting over a few articles in the newspaper today related to the faltering of small businesses in San Francisco. Cody's Books, a venerable Berkeley indie bookseller, had shuttered its flagship store and was struggling to maintain two SF branches. It's just been bought out by a Japanese company that maintains it will keep the focus independent and local, which is good. But the fact remains that book buying habits are changing because of internet sales, so we'll see what happens.


Walter Fong walks through his men's clothing store, Courtoue, on Geary Street. "San Francisco used to dress very well," says Fong, 79.

And then an article on the closing of Courtoue, a 30-year old menswear store specializing in high-end tailored menswear ("Shifting styles spell the end for suitmaker. Master tailor closing up shop after dressing city for decades.").

This last article made me rather sad--here was a 79 year old guy who had four kids who didn't want to follow in their dad's footsteps about learning the tailoring trade. And with styles changing and no one in SF dressing up as much as they did before, down goes the business and all the skills built up. In its heyday he had 20 tailors working fulltime and floors of fine suits. "One day he went to the second floor of his store, the heart of the place, surrounded by racks of expensive men's clothes, and stood there thinking. "I was alone,'' he said. "My tears came.'' He had decided to close the store."

I'm actually tempted to visit before it finally shuts its doors (later this month?) just to take a peek at the end of an era.

It's interesting to think there was a time when all (or most) garments were made locally and in much smaller batches than the current bales of t-shirts and casual wear that gets churned out of overseas factories these days. People used to have clothing tailored or repaired when they were damaged or didn't fit correctly. I think the attention paid to these details of respecting garments--not just for their fashion, but for their "object-hood", for lack of a better term--is slowly slipping away. We treat clothing more like plastic bags, to be used and thrown away, as opposed to respected and cared for. I guess it's just easier to think this way when it costs $7.99 versus $500 for a tailored garment. Sigh.