If my reader email is any indication, trucker hats have an unparalleled ability to inspire venomous rage. Personally, I just can't get past the fact that Williamsburg hipsters think it's cool to wear something my late grandfather wore (unironically) to go deer hunting in Alabama. ("Deer hunting?" she gasped, donning her camouflage trucker hat. "But that's so barbaric!) But what's even more frightening is that this is all part of a larger, more horrifying trend: Blue Collar Chic. Construction jackets, Dickies workpants ($65 at Urban Outfitters; far cheaper at Wal-mart), Pabst Blue Ribbon, andyou guessed ittrucker hats. In fact, I could probably drop said grandfather, with his trucker hat, fifth of Dewar's, Johnny Cash t-shirt and steel-toed boots in the middle of Williamsburg right now and aside from the fact that he'd complain loudly about the noise and the "fuhreigners," he'd blend in perfectly. Maybe it's trust-fund-baby guilt manifesting itself in poor but superficially egalitarian fashion choices; I don't know. But let's not pretend that's a legitimate excuse. In other parts of the country, people dress like that because they need to. And if they didn't need to, they wouldn'tmost of them have better taste. [UPDATE: Anti-trucker hat t-shirts] But on to the reader responses:

(Subject line: "trucker hats and fucktards")

"I {too} hate trucker's hats. If every fucktard indie hipster can stop wearing them I would be so much happier. A greasy, skinny asshole with shitty tats and a nappy, black mullet wearing a trucker's hat is about as hot as a homeless guy eating maggots off his beard. They are everywhere in NY. Shit, a block away you can buy a blank trucker's hat and some "graffiti artist" with no street cred will airbrush some shit on it. Usually some illegible writing not unlike "I am a Vagina." [From Sterolabrat's trucker hat rant]

Today I went into City Bakery on 18th between 5th and 6th for an espresso and one of these creatures was at the next table. The above graph says it all. Lucky for him he left about two minutes after I sat.

But my rant is not about this 123lb. dipshit, it's about another annoying thing I've been watching over the last two years or so in NYC:

White girls in their early twenties who try to effect the "I'm-a-37-year-old-mom-who-lives-in-10021-and-who-shops at-Tod's-and-Bergdorf's-when-I'm-not-speaking-in-upspeak-to-my-similarly-attired-white-bread-girlfriend-about-"That boy" who-like, did-that-thing-at-so-and-so's-party?"

These girls are everywhere and especially at City Bakery. They wear lots of gingham, lots of pedal pushers, lots of kitten heels and most have bad, short haircuts and wear ill-fitting bras - and weirdly, almost all have visible panty lines! Go figure that.

You can also spot these fair maidens by their Banana Republic knock off's of Tod's shoes, Hermes Birken bags and Le Chameau rubber rain boots. They carry their totes - not their purses - in the crook of their arm and what kills me is that they all look SO fucking:

1. un sexy
2. un cute
3. matronly
4. wannabe
5. uptight...

I would much rather have the real thing, which may be found, easily, on Madison Avenue between 60th and 80th Streets, any weekday between the hours of 11am and 4pm....

Young girls: Stop dressing old and WASPY and please, start dressing cute, sassy and sexy. Even if you don't know how."

Another reader notes the L.A. equivalent: "Those goddamn Kangol softcore-pornstar, al-fresco-dining-on-a-cellphone-in-LA,
check-out-my-Juicy-Couture-sweatpants, hey-i'm-like-alicia-keys!, who-knew-my-ears-could-support-this-much-gold,
goes-perfectly-with-these-clear-canal-street-sunglasses hats are twenty times more annoying than hipster trucker hats (which, I might add, are sold for $40 at Flying A. Forty bucks! That markup must be enough to make IPO underwriters blush.)"