The North Face

During a cold day this semester I was sitting quietly in class listening to the teacher and I caught my self doing something that I do quite often.
People watching
I watched the people in my class play with their face, or absent mindedly twirl their hair, or annoyingly click their pen, or stare in wonder waiting for something important to fall from the professor’s mouth so that they could furiously write it down. While doing this I noticed something odd about the row of students in front of me.
They are all dressed in the same black fleece jacket with the same white logo on the back shoulder “The North Face”. Not just one or two of them. The entire row minus one or two non-conformist. Looking around the room I noticed it was nearly the same.
The North face makes high performance mountaineering apparel and equipment.
Fleece jackets run from $80 and up $230 and the shells run about the same.

My whole life I have hung out with a pretty outdoorsy crowd. Apart from hunters, I have a number of friends that are into nature based high risk activities: Rock climbers, boulderers (like climbers but with less equipment and difficulty), long distance hikers, cavers (apparently they don’t like to be called “spelunkers” but you can recognize them by that black and yellow bat bumper sticker), whitewater enthusiasts, etc. You get the picture.
The point is that these people rely heavily on their gear. If it fails, they wind up hurt or at the very lest uncomfortable. The North face was a common brand in these circles because they made high quality expedition wear that was dependable. It was warm, kept you dry, and packed light. Used to be that if you saw a guy wearing a North Face jacket you knew he was into some outdoorsy stuff or at least he was wearing THAT guys jacket.
I don’t personally own a North face jacket of any kind. Not that I would not. I just don’t plan on trekking on any glaciers in the near future.

But now every body has one. Even the chick that doesn’t own a pair of tennis shoes, much less a pair of hiking boots, is wearing one. I dare say that none of these people are trekking to any remote part of the world within the near future or ever. But they are wearing that guy’s jacket. The name brand has become so diluted that it doesn’t mean what it once did. It is apparent that The North face has become (dare I say it) the “Members Only jacket” of the 2000’s and ranks right up there with Ferrari brand folding sunglasses.
Maybe there is some kind of “you can’t read a book by its cover” lesson that I am supposed to learn here. And that you can’t assume anything about a person by the way they look. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would you wear the uniform of something that you were not? It is kind of like a woman who is dressed like a hooker standing on the corner in a shady part of town who is deeply offended when someone offers her money for sex. The cops would be like “Geez, you are wearing a hooker’s uniform lady. What did you expect?”
It just seems out of place. But nobody says anything.

Kind of like the Toyota Pre-Runner –
It looks like a 4wd. It has big tires like a 4wd. It sits up high off the ground like a 4wd drive. It rides like a 4wd. It is JUST NOT a 4wd (which makes it the hermaphrodite of truck world so to speak).

Somehow I think if I walk up to any of those people and started a conversation about rappelling belay devices that they wouldn’t know what in the world I was talking about and think I was crazy.
“I’m sorry lady. But you ARE wearing a mountain climber’s uniform. What did you expect?”