When The Style Comes Around

Waiting to cross Broadview last night I was surprised by the odd pair I saw waiting on the other corner.

'What's that old-school rocker doing hanging out with a sixteen year old?' I wondered, 'And more importantly, what's a sixteen year old doing hanging out with him?'

The teenager was the one facing me and he had an undefined sort of style about him - just a guy in casual Thursday night clothes who maybe liked his indie rock, maybe his jazz, or maybe he just read a lot to the background music of a gurgling fish tank. It didn't really matter - it was the other guy who caught my eye. With his back to me I had the perfect view of a non-existent ass in too-tight jeans, a small but still loose t-shirt, a pair of genuine cowboy boots and, the clincher, a carefully groomed and luxuriously full mullet.

As the light changed I found myself beginning to imagine how a young lad and a Guardian of Rawk had befriended each other. Maybe at a club, a job, apartments up the hall... Then I stopped wondering. As I passed them, I saw that the man I had I assumed would be in his mid-forties was in fact another sixteen year old decked out as if he'd had a band in the eighties instead of being conceived then.

I know most styles make a comeback, but I wasn't ready to see teenagers reviving a look when I know guys who still look that way from the first time around.

But hey, more power to you, Rawk Kid. Maybe this way nobody will think to card you.