Friday, July 24, 2009

sartorial standards

This poses some questions.   The sticker appears on a crossing light post on the corner of Montezuma and Guadalupe, in Santa Fe.   Who posted it, and why, and what's its audience?   Santa Fe undoubtedly needs tourism, from an economic point of view (although there seemed to be a lot in town today, and that barometer of tourist trade, the neon sign belonging to the El Rey Inn on Cerrillos, for the first time that I've passed it this summer read No Vacancies).   But is it an act of verbal aggression, or a piece of pomo irony?   To be sure, many tourists do dress, well, badly - in short shorts and Hawaiian shirts and with all kinds of bits of pink flesh showing (understandable - the temperature was in the 90s in town today).   But did one of the inhabitants of Las Campanas, or some other gated, and probably well-dressed by some standards, community on the north side of town stick this up?   That hardly seems credible.   By whose standards would the average sticker-poster be considered "well dressed"?   Probably not by the former group of inhabitants, and quite possibly not by the addressee themselves.   Perhaps it was stuck there so that the author of the sticker him or herself could take a photograph of it?   Perhaps it's part of a series - other ones may be found by the Eiffel Tower, by the Piazza San Marco, by the Houses of Parliament?   Any ideas?

No comments:

Post a Comment