I've been informed that US Weekly recently had a spread on trucker hats, featuring pictures of various celebrities wearing the vile things. I wouldn't know, as I typically only use US Weekly to bookmark my place in Vogue, (which I also rarely read, but functions as a sturdy doorstop during months of heavy ad sales.) The US Weekly trucker hat spread means, I suppose, that I must keep my pledge to have a martini a day for a month. The indignity of it all...

The NYT once again reinforces my blue collar chic theory with an article on Pabst Blue Ribbon. A very long article on Pabst Blue Ribbon. "The trend-explaining industry has mostly framed the rise of P.B.R. as part of an alleged 'retro-chic' movement. Of course, iterations of retro-chic (Fiestaware, cocktail music, etc.) have bubbled through the culture for a decade or more now. A subset 'white trash' theory links P.B.R. to Levi's (whose sales have actually fallen) and trucker hats (a fad that was revealed and snuffed out almost simultaneously, when Ashton Kutcher wore one on his MTV show, 'Punk'd'). One zeitgeistmeister has even suggested that P.B.R. drinkers were inspired by the blue-collar heroes of 9/11."
The marketing of no marketing [NYT Mag]

Speaking of trucker, a reader reports: "Not that I want to be responsible for reigniting the silly trucker hat debate, but I do happen to live in the West Village, and on my way home today walked passed the Marc Jacobs store fronts. Trucker hats embroidered with random names (from Loretta to Diamond) are the current window display." I was waiting for the day when I'd get to vapidly write "Marc Jacobs is so, like, not cool anymore." The day has come.

USA Today has an article about how trucker hats are "so five minutes ago" (their exact words.) Now I know it may seem surprising to you that USA Todaycutting edge style publication that it ishas been so quick to realize that the hats are not only ugly and absurd, but passe even in Williamsburg. It shouldn't be. As we all know, Gawker secretly controls the fashion industry. My intern, Lindsay, scours fashion magazines and marks obnoxious trends with a rubber stamp that says "Sooooo _____ ago." Then she fills out the with the appropriate number of minutes or years and sends them back to Anna Wintour. Then Anna changes it for the next issue. And that's how the sausage gets made! (Don't tell anyone.) With newspapers it's a little different; we just force them to read Gawker. If you'll notice, our blue-collar chic theory made an appearance in the article: "Cool is to style yourself as a burly blue-collar working man with a penchant for Pabst Blue Ribbon." Our plan is working! MUA ha ha ha!
Everything is so 5 minutes ago [USA Today]

The Houston Press reports on blanket media coverage of trucker hats (and reports that they are still, in some parts of the country, considered hip): "On May 18, the ultratrendy Sunday Style section of The New York Times reported on the death of the latest fashion fad: No one, absolutely no one, is wearing reverse-chic gimme caps anymore...Declared the Times: 'R.I.P. the trucker hat, a fashion statement that traveled from downtown to the mall so swiftly it is still below the radar of most mainstream fashion publications.' Hey, don't include our own Houston Chronicle in that group of negligent radar operators. Ten days after the Times story on how passe the hats had become, the Chron told readers how amazingly hot and chic they were. The story was a reprint from that noted arbiter of fashion, the Colorado Springs Gazette." I'm pretty sure there's a formula for determining when some fashion trend was actually cool and cutting edge based on Style section coveragei.e., Style section minus t, t=?.
Hard news baby, what's hot, what's not [Houston Press]

The long-running trucker hat commentary has reached a whole new level. Now it's fashionable to be ironic about the irony: "When I see a 60-year old man on the subway with one of those mesh hats, you know this trend has gone way too far! His even said something like 'Proud to be an American' and sported an American flagI mean, how ironic is that? And I saw another old guy a while back with a beat-up yellow trucker hat that said 'Museum Camp' on it! If even old people are hopping on the bandwagon, you know it's over."
To the old man on the subway yesterday with the trucker hat [Craig's List]

A Craig's List member, regarding the "Anywhere but Pianos" t-shirts that Williamsburg hipsters have been wearing to mock the Lower East Side hipsters in one big ironic circle jerk: "they sell them at ISA on n6 in williamsburg for the handsome sum of $88. that text is silkscreened on the inside of a vintage tshirt for a doubleshot of ironic awesomeness. it's made by the same person or people who did the 'destroy electroclash' and other clever shirts. while it made me laugh outloud when i first saw it in there, anyone who pays $88 for that shirt deserves to be anally raped by an angry dolphin."
Anywhere but pianos [Craig's List via ModernAge]

As a few of you have pointed out, the most disturbing thing in the NYT today is not, in fact, the possibility that Rick Bragg is the new Jayson Blair. It's the use of the word "cameltoe" in the newspaper of record. "'Cameltoe,'" the NYT explains in an article about a rap group called "Fannypack", "is slang for a fashion faux pas caused by women wearing snug pants; the term suggests a visual analogy." All the news that's fit to print!
Fashion tip in rap for Brooklyn girls [NYT]

Readers in places where they're not worn ironically note that they're not actually called "trucker hats": "As a Texan who has zero interest in the Hilton sisters and is disgusted by the Manhattan real estate market, I'm befuddled and a little frightened to have become a regular reader of your site. I don't know what this addiction reveals about my inner Yuppie, but I think it's a compliment to your writing. Anyway, as a person who grew up around 'trucker hats' and knew guys who wore them eight years ago as a genuine rejection of hipness, I can provide you with some below-the-radar (and below-the-RADAR, since everyone in NYC seems obsessed with this mag) info: The proper term is 'gimme cap.' As in, 'Some John Deere rep gimme this cap when I went to look at a new tractor.' I don't think anyone outside a 100XX zip code would ever call it a 'mesh' cap. Go forth and ridicule the faux-rednecks around you."

The New York Times just did an article on the hated trucker hats. I'm at a total loss for words. I know I said I wasn't going to post on weekends, but this was just too much.
A hat that's way cool. Unless, of course, it's not. [NYT]

The trucker hat debate rages on. More reader-submitted venomous rage:
"I don't know if I'd call it Blue Collar Chic so much as Hip-or-Retarded. Although these morons could legitimately be mistaken for Winn-Dixie parking lot scuzzes, they look so much like group-home dwellers that it's sometimes hard to figure out. Between the velcro-fastened shoes, the stained double-knit slacks, ill-fitting donated shirts, army-issue glasses, the aforementioned trucker hats worn on an angle, poor grooming and various keys and wallets affixed to the belt, there's often no way to tell who's a zine writer and who just got a hug for coming in 7th in a "special" race. It could be fun to start a web site similar to the old Gay-or-European to sort the wheat from the chaff. I'll volunteer my time to stand on Ave. B and photograph these greasy losers. We could then find some otherly-abled individuals with which to compare them."

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: