I am a glutton for nostalgia. I love the memory of how things used to be, inadvertently comparing new experiences to old. So it was with a sense of reminiscence that I stood outside Tio Pepes, fear reverberating through me. With the memory of elegance and lunches with my grandmother in mind, I would be crushed if I walked in to find the fabric tattered, the chairs worn, and diners in jeans. This seems to be a recurring theme for me – diminished elegance and the rise of informality; how fewer things require coats and ties, flip-flops have become commonplace, and the regal places of days past have crumbled, mimicking so many of the buildings around us.
I felt a similar dread a few years earlier, as I decided to step foot onto the 13th Floor for the first time in nearly two decades. I remembered the Belvedere Hotel from the Bar and Bat-Mitzvah days — pure glamor. But going into the bar (before its recent renovation), I was turned off by the dingy atmosphere and animal print rug. The disinvestment was evident, and it made me sad.
My mother often references going to the airport as a little girl – how her father wore a suit and tie and everyone dressed up for the airlines. Now, sweatpants with words across the bottom are fairly inescapable. Have we dis-invested in ourselves? My thoughts were echoed in a conversation with some Israeli relatives who had recently toured the east coast. I asked what their favorite city had been. They all chose Washington D.C. “It’s so classic, all the men are in suits, everyone is dressed nicely.” They felt that D.C. residents were proud of themselves and had thereby added an element of worth to their city. Not only was the infrastructure in D.C. seemingly shiny, but the way people presented themselves reflected this investment.
Much of how I gauge a place is based upon observation: is there trash in the streets and are there broken porches? This indicates pride of place. Are women walking around alone, and if so, are they carrying a handbag? This is my indicator for safety. Are the lawns overgrown and the homes visibly broken? This is the crumbling of infrastructure. The material things matter too – what types of cars are parked in the area, are there flower boxes? Are there gyms or pawn shops? I remember my mother nixing a potential apartment complex during one of my housing searches because “there were too many motorcycles in the parking lot.” But there’s another factor I haven’t paid much attention to, and that is whether or not people are dressed in a way that make them feel good about themselves — how they carry their bodies down the road — because regardless of what type of neighborhood we live in, we can still invest in ourselves.
What that investment means, though, can be complex. A friend told me an anecdote of a scene she witnessed downtown: A man and woman were preparing to cross the street. The woman was pushing her child in a stroller, and the man had his pants below his rear, his boxers doing much more than barely peeking above his waistband. As the woman with the stroller approached the same corner as the man with his pants around his knees, she turned 180 degrees so as to not have to face the man. Even though they were walking in the same direction, her inability to understand his fashion decisions, and her reaction to his exposed behind, inclined her to physically turn herself around. What she, perhaps, interpreted as offensive was essentially his presentation of self, and therefore played directly into her assumption of place. This was, as I see it, more of a gap in understanding. Both of these individuals were dressed presentably in their own minds, but his decisions led her to assume a level of disinvestment. I’m not advocating for all of us to dress the same; rather that it’s important to understand how our fashion decisions play into the greater fabric of neighborhood perceptions.
I can’t correlate the level of formality with crime. And I can’t correlate fashion with socioeconomic status – as ripped jeans can cost hundreds of dollars, or you can buy them at Goodwill. What I do see, is that how we represent ourselves also acts as the window to our cities. How we present ourselves alludes to something greater than our individuality — it gives people an insight into the city itself.
