Ritzville

The other day, while riding the bus, a trio of Junior High boys stretched their ungainly limbs out in the back. In young-pitched, cracking voices, they talked about normal Junior High things: music, video games, music, more music, teachers. Nothing about girls, as their voices were still too frightening to hope for such a commodity.

The bus made one of its last stops in the family-centric neighborhood before moving onto the University Ghetto, and the boys swaggered off. In passing, I was stricken by how abnormally they were dressed. Flannel shirts thrown atop over-sized t-shirts, slightly baggy jeans, hair that was long and hadn’t been washed in three days. It was exactly how everyone—and especially me—dressed when I was their age. Not a detail was off.

Junior High was a decade ago for me. Granted, when I’m nearing fifty, those ten years will seem like nothing. However, it feels like it was an eon ago. And in the fashion and pop culture world, ten years is an eon.

So why are Junior High students dressing like they did ten years ago? You can’t even consider the Grunge era vintage at this point, hence it can’t be in vogue. Granted, everyone in Seattle used to dress that way (sans the unwashed hair) years before the rest of the world coined the word “grunge.” But since that time, Seattle has quickly become a world of $200 REI jackets, GAP jeans, Pottery Barn-furnished lofts, and a pair of Birkenstocks or Danskos to tone down the Yuppification and add an air of authenticity to the look. Grunge faded here when it died throughout the rest of the country. What was once a way of life became a passing pop-culture fad.

To have seen “grunge” resurrected amidst the corporate whore attitude of “New Seattle” was rather comforting, leaving me with a twinge of hope that Seattle’s future may in fact not be a grayer shade of the Bay Area’s bland and soulless tech industry.