Popeye Doyle wrote:

Gilgamesh2003 wrote:

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?117646-conditioning-leather-insoles
Personally, I fill all my shoes with Lexol whenever I take them off, even if it's only for a second. I thought everyone did this?

Gil--You're really killing your shoes by doing that, and I'd hate to see those those Delrays having to be sent back for their third recrafting.  Here is what works for me and some of the other guys over at avoidrecrafting.com--I keep my socks in a 5-gallon tub (easily obtained at any home supply outlet) filled with Lexol, positioned right next to my shoe racks. (that's right, racks plural with an s!) In the morning before work, I remove the socks I want to wear from the Lexol and put them on. Then I make my choice  from the rotation and-- WITHOUT TRACKING LEXOL ALL OVER THE PLACE--don the appropriate footwear.  This way the entire inside of the shoe is exposed to the Lexol pretty much for the whole day.  At my desk or in meetings I will make sure I perform some un-ostentatious foot exercises to keep the Lexol from settling.   And when I'm in an outdoor area I always look for varieties of pavement types upon which to walk.  I find the different pressure points of gravel areas as opposed to grass areas will push the Lexol deeper into the cork bed and help lubricate and nourish the adjacent leather sole and heel.  Of course the risk is greater wear to the heel and sole but with double topys (topies?  Help anyone? Nick B?)  and other aids I can avoid wear and subsequent unwanted recrafting.  Hope this helps!

Finally, some clear advice on basic insole maintenance. This post should be stickied on the top of every clothing forum. In fact, if you don't mind I'd like to share it with my friends on the erotic Civil War prison camp cosplay website - a lot of them have terrible problems with the interiors and soles of their repro boots.

Liam Mac wrote:

I haven't worn socks since 2009 so that's not really an option for me. Instead Ive been introducing Lexol into my diet (just a shot with my Corn Flakes) which allows me to sweat it out of my feet (that's right, feet plural with an ee!) and into my shoes completely naturally.

Another plus point is that when little beads of Lexol start appearing on my forehead in business meetings I can pass it off as Arsenic poisoning, which impresses my colleagues who now assume I have a jealous lover or arch nemesis.

Old Steve Martin joke:
People ask me, Steve, How can you be so funny? Well, I tell them, you gotta feel funny to be funny. Every day when I get up I put a slice of salami between my toes and in the soles of my feet before I put my socks on. By the end of the day, I feel REAL funny.

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/foru … ilton.-Eh.
Tripples conducts an auto-da-fe for Hardline 42, who dared to suggest that a fine clothier other than Sid Mashburn might be worth considering. I am always amused by Hardline's location line, which says "somewhere between Princeton and Penn." Trenton? Ewing? Anyway, Tripples appears to be re-inventing himself as the acerbic Vox Sartoria of Andyland. I know Vox, and you, Tripples, are no Vox; also, Vox is an unbearable narcissistic goblin anyway.

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/foru … -Club-Knot
Looks more like the club sandwich.

Kingston1an wrote:

http://www.styleforum.net/t/83232/i-want-to-start-wearing-a-suit-every-day/105#post_5371557

Anybody on here own up to having written this one?

.







































































































































bleedin' kids. Pthh.

Liam Mac wrote:

Gilgamesh2003 wrote:

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?70557-New-Knot-The-Club-Knot
Looks more like the club sandwich.

"Good lord. Zombie thread! Dead for five years."

"The beauty is the photos could've been taken yesterday. Trad is timeless."


LOLOLOLOLOL

I guess if you had asked Larsd4 in 2006 what he'd be wearing in 5 years time he'd probably have said a silver space suit and hover boots.

In AAAC Trad terms June 2007 is the ancient and venerable past though.

Alexander Kabbaz  ,  Senior Moderator, Technical Support
Posts: 9,461
Results of Investigation
This post does contain my opinion but it is my opinion as an administrator of AAAC and therefore it is not meant for discussion. It is meant as a finding of fact. Hopefully it will lead to a better execution of the Trad Tie Swap Box in the future. My investigation included, in addition to reading the entire 28 pages of the thread, approximately 1/2 hour on the phone with 32R&R, an hour on the phone with Bizzle, plus dozens of PM's and e-mails.

Determination Facts:

1] The vast majority of the members who have participated in this thread are very enthusiastic and devoted trad members of AAAC. It is through that prism that you view what happened here. Looking through that prism gives an extremely distorted view of reality. In order to try to come to a fair conclusion it was necessary for me to view these events dispassionately and not as a member of AAAC.

2] Although there were occasional gripes during the period of transit of the Tie Box, most were just grousing. That all changed on the 15th of April when one of the AAAC moderators used the word "thief" to describe Bizzle. It is my finding that this transgression caused other members to feel welcome to go very far outside the acceptable boundaries of civility.

3] Subsequent to that post, there were veiled threats of violence accompanied by accusations of character flaws in language which, had I seen it at the time, would have been cause for strong infractions if not outright suspensions.

Findings:

This is how I have determined many members saw the events:

Some newbie, who doesn't really care much about us or about trad or about ties, has appropriated the West Coast tie box. He has had the box for longer than we want him to, has not posted photos, and is not responding to our demands for updates.


Here is how I have determined that Bizzle saw the events:

Some menswear forum I joined was sending around a box of ties. I asked to participate in that on the 28th of November, 2011. After that, I did not participate regularly in the forum any more. On the 31st of March, 2012, a box was delivered to me just as I was getting ready to move. When I opened it I found the ties and remembered what it was. I went back to the forum and said that I had it and would send it on in a couple of days. My moving got in the way of that and I didn't get back to the forum for two weeks - April 15th. At that point Bizzle said this:
"I'm sorry that I haven't been providing regular updates to the thread about my personal life but the reality of the situation is I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Before I received the box there was dozens of posts about someone who was lagging behind expectations. I thought those posts were going a bit over the top. I quit reading the thread about then. When I received the box of ties it was so long after I'd requested to be on the list that I didn't even know what it was until I eagerly tore open the packaging to see what I had just gotten in the mail. The point is that I just let it come to me and didn't stress over it."
When Bizzle read the rest of the post in the thread he realized that he was being called a thief and a narcissistic pig. Further posts then detailed his full name, the university he was attending, and the name of the department he was in. Other posts asked for more of his personal information and that information was provided by PM. Yet another post, though obvious to me as humor, referenced a ticking package. To sum this up, the collective direction of the thread scared the hell out of him.

----------------------------------------------------
More findings:

As justification for the seriously offensive and threatening words used to describe Bizzle, there were many statements by many members to the effect that Bizzle was not following the "rules" about how long was allowed to send on the package. There was no such rule stated. Here, to be clear, is the entire set of rules which was promulgated at the outset of the thread:

* No ties made in China
* No ties wider than 3.5"
* Bow ties removed have to be replaced by a bow tie
* Vintage ties are encouraged, damaged/stained ties are not
* Don't donate a tie you wouldn't actually wear yourself

Nothing was ever said about time nor were even any hints made about how long a recipient should have the box. Nothing was said about taking photos.

------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion:

1] Heavily invested Trad members reacted at first petulantly and then with unjustified anger when the box of ties did not proceed on the schedule they expected it to ... even though those expectations had theretofore never been stated. It is not the first time I have seen this. The last time, a mere few months ago, involved a new member who had a difficulty with O'Connell's. Trad members berated the guy so thoroughly that, after a half-dozen attempts to explain his position - all of which were greeted with derision and accusations of trolling - he simply left AAAC and has never been back. I ended up having to investigate that incident as well and learned that the fellow was 100% in the right. I apologized to him for the members' actions on behalf of AAAC. Nonetheless, he told me that he could not participate with a group so closed-minded as to be unable to accept even the concept that one of their cherished icons was less than perfect.

2] Bizzle, a new member who had no concept of what he was dealing with, took humorous and rancorous statements as statements of fact and (over)reacted. After that he became extremely offensive and took actions to protect himself from perceived threats. In reaction to which, members grew increasingly strident. Though Bizzle had no rational reasons upon which to base his reaction, the emotion of fear is not a rational one. The fear reaction cannot be judged objectively for it is a purely subjective matter.

The AAAC members who were so offensive to Bizzle were extremely wrong and would have been infracted or suspended at the time had Andy or I been aware of what was happening. Bizzle was wrong in his actions of keeping the box so long and wrong, though understandably so, in this reaction to the members' statements.

------------------------------------------------------

Addendum:

With the exception of the now terminated member Bizzle, I have cited no specific member by name in these findings. That said, you know who you are.
I want you to know this: I am tired of defending the indefensible. Having a Trad Club as part of AAAC is a fine and wonderful thing. Or, rather, it would be a fine and wonderful thing if its core members would be welcoming to the new and tolerant of the unknowing. The purposes of this forum are twofold: 1]It is a friends gathering place. 2] It is also an educational institution. In my book, 2] is the more important agenda. Let's make it that way in your books, too. The events which transpired in this thread will not happen again.

If (the collective) you want to continue this Trad Tie Box, there are two choices:

1] Propose and publish a set of rules which will make it work
-or-
2] Do it privately by PM

This seems to be the denouement, but who knows it may develop as there were plenty of sub plots enroute.

To appreciate the sweeping narrative and its artful development one should really read the whole 30 pages.

I say artful as this did commence as a "community" sending around a box full of ties they didn't want. Yes it all started with a box of unwanted ties.

I did note that Patrick "The Artful Codger" or Fly Fishing Porn impresario was involved and I suspect he discreetly cast (small fishing wordplay) an evil spell over the box.

I sincerely hope it does end with the shirtmaker's edict otherwise it did look like there would be a Unabomber (Trad Tie Terrorist?) type incident. All it needed for authenticity was some trad tie wearing sack jacketed bass weejun cigar smoking bloke who had access to a shack in the wild woods .........

http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/foru … Box/page28

Last edited by fxh (2012-05-20 07:31:02)

Hoooooooly shiiiiiiit! Bravo fxh! This is like the Trad equivalent of the Eikonoklastes. I was almost on Kabbaz's side here until I reached the judgment -

Victim of bomb threat who had his personal details posted on the internet: banned

Trad witchhunters who made the bomb threat etc: gently and anonymously chided

[For diligent scholars of Andyana - here is the O'Connell's thread reference in Kabbaz's opus: http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/foru … Connell-s]

Kingston1an wrote:

SF have now started a similar idea.

I suggest they start an Allen Admond's Box. Just consider the joy of getting a box full of "gently used" Allen Edmond's shoo in the mail which several men have already "enjoyed." One of the rules would have to be no widths wider than B and no longer than 8.5, no more than 48 pairs of Park Avenues, and "Remember to wipe the cum stains off, dammit!"

EDIT: The logical end of this would be to ship around a shipping container containing a full wardrobe.

Last edited by Big Tony (2012-05-20 08:24:28)

Wish I'd thought of this one.

Troll gold.

I bow.

Pandora's Ties.

fxh wrote:

Alexander Kabbaz  ,  Senior Moderator, Technical Support
Posts: 9,461
Results of Investigation
This post does contain my opinion but it is my opinion as an administrator of AAAC and therefore it is not meant for discussion. It is meant as a finding of fact. Hopefully it will lead to a better execution of the Trad Tie Swap Box in the future. My investigation included, in addition to reading the entire 28 pages of the thread, approximately 1/2 hour on the phone with 32R&R, an hour on the phone with Bizzle, plus dozens of PM's and e-mails.

Determination Facts:

This is Andy's Watergate.  A botched robbery of a box of used ties. Happened on Jovan's watch.  He's been summoned to Andy's World Headquarters.
Stay tuned.

Talk about a site being full of its own shit.  Who made Ask Antsy the king of forums?  CC perhaps?

fxh wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WW-pIqFs3jw

The lad still hasn't learnt to combine colours properly.

The_Shooman wrote:

GIZhou007 wrote:

Talk about a site being full of its own shit.  Who made Ask Antsy the king of forums?  CC perhaps?

l think it's time we made some comments on the youtube video so we can set the record straight.

Then again...maybe the lad in the youtube isn't a moron, maybe he was paid to bullshit his head off.

Americans are very good at doing 'earnest'.

Speaking positively about yourself is another American strength. Brits think that is infra dig, though with today's job market that is changing.