Fact or Fashion

Fact or Fashion:
Installment 1

Looking around the crowd, they are the comers and the goers, the movers and the shakers, college kids playing jet setter, and business people (not playing, not personal, just business) at this intersection of airport to bus to train. A crossroads of mass transit, emptying on to the high street of Edinburgh, a boulevard of mass media. I like coming here. Sitting here at the bus stop pretending to wait on someone or at the Scott monument under the same m.o. you can get lots of people watching done. Today, I’m at ‘Acanthus’. At the center of the aforementioned crossroads is a pub. Instead of posturing I am actually waiting for a friend to arrive from the States via London. With his flight already two hours late, I have succumbed to the luxuries of popular television. A giant projection screen television sits across the bar area from a slightly smaller high definition flat screen television. Both are strategically placed so that everyone in the bar can enjoy them and avoid engaging in the tepid boring monotonous conversation of their friends or colleagues biding time to speak. On VH1 Classic, “Sweet Child O’Mine” by Guns N Roses starts up (boy, am I feeling old) as a waitress in retro rock torn jeans (it’s in style again) brings me a Tennents’. Next door to a mall it seems almost fitting that the space of Acanthus feels more like a food court. This could be anywhere. It reminds me of a watering hole I would haunt regularly. Could it be the carpet?
I relax into my pint as I begin to observe the demographics represented by the patrons populating the pub. Just outside is a couple that appear quite frequently throughout New Town asking for change and just ten meters away is a professional management type in a full length wool trench coat which costs more than our high profile couple will see in the next few months. Inside the pub, I am surrounded by and mingle with the likes of people I do not normally see in the pub. They are the regular people I see at Tesco or run into at the neighborhood bakery. It’s a Friday afternoon, a good enough reason for an early tea, so off to the pub with a couple of work mates. At a nearby table, a few ladies from Admin., with their recent acquisition, a younger new hire, sit chatting. All with trendy hairdos, no color, and new conservative dress, jacket, button down, trousers and one has a wool skirt (past the knee). There are others just passing through the joint. Fresh off the train, backpacks in tote, just stopped in for a refreshing pint before heading to the hotel or the hostel. One of the other comforts that reminds me of the Graduate are the young men playing pool…eight ball. Half must work here and are on their day off or just got off. What better place to go for a pint with friends? Where you know people, like the bar/kitchen you work at the rest of your time. It’s definitely a good reason to drink. As I am parked here, waiting. I enjoy another pint and an order of chips. During this time I have been peering through the window anticipating Byron’s arrival. Through that portal I take notice of a fashion conscious crowd migrating from points a to b in route along the street infront of the bar. Indie kids, goth kids, parents, students; and as I investigate further, I recognize this passion for fashion, this courage for couture that these beings are portraying. It is really something that I am not used to seeing. Older, more mature women sporting pop diva hairdos of two colors in the latest street clothes turning them into twenty year olds from 15 meters. BRAVO! I applaud it. Be comfortable, be YOU and continue to grow. Willing to experience and remain open to try new things. I am used to seeing women, once they reach a certain age, slow down and become more reserved in their tastes as they are to give off the appearance of sophistication and maturity. They are to be grown up and adult-like. The younger kids have their youth and are forging their identities. You see young women almost twenty somethings dressed in the latest trends of cut-off denim skirts over leggings in open puffy winter jackets revealing their healthy physique reaching over their belt line under a too tight Von Dutch tee. It’s great! Their self confidence. Their me too attitude. They know what fashion is and they don’t believe that you have to look like Christina Aguilera or Kylie Minogue. It’s hopeful. Wilfred Trotter in his book, in 1916, “The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” said that……’terrified by existential isolation, people were inescapably motivated by the ‘herd instinct’, an inherited, unceasing need to gain the approval and camaraderie of the social group.’ These young people are exemplary in their courage even if it is a cloak for their self doubt.
I tip up the bottom of my pint glass at the perfect time. I’m done and Byron has stepped off the bus. I have to go as I see him head up towards Princes St.
See ya later.