Subways

My friend Dave recently commented on driving, saying that he prefers to simply sit on a train, but he lives out on Long Island – the suburbs – which makes driving necessary, and would not like to live anywhere so densely populated as to make public transportation so practical or effective.  In other words, in a big city such as New York City just miles west of where he lives.  This reminded me of my own time living in cities where I could get by using subways instead of cars.

 I’ve lived in Paris for some time and spent time in NYC – and of US subway systems I’m most familiar with DC’s.  From September 1998 to April 1999, and then again from January 2000 to November 2000, I worked on L Street in DC and took the Metro to work every day.  Here are my comments on this subject.

 Washington DC.  DC’s subway system is fairly recent (it was begun in the late 70s) and the stations are few and far between; the closest station to Georgetown is 10 blocks southwest at GWU.  They are all practically identical, with very dark, concrete interiors.  I don’t know who designed them, but they really strike me as dull, utilitarian, and even totalitarian, which is ironic in the capital city of the world’s premier capitalist democracy.  Of course there are ads, but the overpowering darkness of the stations is oppressive.  The trains, however, are very well-lit, which is a strong contrast.  The large distances between even city stops (the suburban stops are light years distant from each other) makes them more appropriate for “out of the city to some interior location, and back” travel.  Since driving in DC is such a pain in the ass, the optimum deal would be to park at a Metro station in the suburbs – if you could find a space – and take the Metro in.   I found out the hard way that doesn’t work well when going to concerts; I had to walk all the way home from the (new) 9:30 Club when I came out of a Monster Magnet concert only to find the metro closed.  When I worked at L Street I would take the Metro from Rosslyn to McPherson Square, which is right in the heart of the K Street business district.  On the DC Metro you have to buy tickets according to the distance, and peak vs. non-peak travel time, but at least the card acts as a de facto debit card for the system itself.

 New York City.  NY’s subway is famous, and runs 24/7.  The stops are fairly close together and numerous enough.   Although most still have some ancient tile on the curved walls, with the overall impression being from the early 20^th century even today, there is a remarkable variance in design to them which DC conspicuously lacks.   I remember traveling on the subway with my family in the 70s, back when the subway cars went dark and were covered in graffiti.  Fortunately we were never mugged.

 Boston.  I went on Boston’s subway only briefly in 1987 when I visited my buddy John at Boston University.  Boston’s subway seemed to have real trains going through tunnels.  It looked like the platforms were too low relative to the trains.

 Paris.  By far, this is the system I’m most familiar with and like the most.  The stations were very close together and carpeted the city – you were never more than a few blocks from any stop.  They had a wide variety of designs, with the Louvre stop the most elaborate.  To this day, I can remember the Pont de Neuilly – Vincennes line stops.  Most lines ran older trains, I recall the Balard-Creteil line ran newer ones which were much cooler.  In addition to the RATP (Metro) Paris has the RER (Reseau Expres Regional – Regional Express Network) which comes in from WAYYYY out of town.  I haven’t been to Paris since 1990, though I understand they’ve extended the Pont de Neuilly line out to La Defense.  The Paris Metro dates from the turn of the century and has some very beautiful art nouveau subway entrances.  I recall it as being fairly clean (except for sanitation strikes) and had its share of buskers and street musicians (which I also recall from NYC).  Unlike Washington DC and London, Paris uses generic yellow tickets good for a journey of any distance, though the Carte Orange (orange card) good for unlimited monthly travel on all forms of Parisian public transportation was the best value.  Unfortunately the Paris Metro was not open 24/7.  One New Year’s morning I had to walk back from St Paul-Le Marais all the way to Malesherbes at 5 in the morning. 

 London.  The Underground is, of course, the world’s oldest and very famous.  The stations were close enough together and went to the most important parts of town (e.g. Picadilly Circus and Oxford Street, for us).  The exits are labeled “WAY OUT”.  I haven’t been to London since 1985, so it may have changed since then.  You paid by distance, which I don’t like.   The Underground did go far out into the suburbs, which you can’t tell from the map, though the parallelogram styling of the map itself is one of the London Underground’s distinctions.  I recall some of the trains on the Bakerloo line – down by Elephant & Castle and the Imperial War Museum – were some really old wooden things.  What was that, Hogwarts?  At least the Underground did go to Heathrow, unlike the subways in Paris, NYC or DC.

 Moscow.  I took just one trip on the Moscow Metro, in March 1983, from the hotel to the ballet and back.  The interiors were beautiful:  huge murals of communist propaganda, statues of workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors (you know, those Kronstadt sailors).  Thank Stalin for this.

 Kiev.  Also in March 1983, but just two lines – one north-south, one east-west – and very old and grungy, somewhat like the London Underground or NY subway very run down.  I recall we just took one trip: from down town to the hotel (Bratislava – one of these concrete high rise monstrosities so ubiquitous in the Soviet Bloc).

 Bucharest.  Speaking of rundown, this was just like the rest of the city: extremely dirty, extremely nasty, but it seemed fairly modern nonetheless and the stops were fairly close together.  It was more extensive than Kiev’s.

 Rio de Janeiro.  Rio’s system is fairly new and looks like it.  The line starts at the end of Copacabana and winds its way up the coast to Zona Norte.  One fairly common complaint I hear about subway systems is that they give slum people a cheap and easy way to get into the better parts of town to do their dirty work – although the same applies to buses.  I never really used the Rio subway that much.

 The two most important features of a well-designed subway system are extensive coverage and variety in station designs; the former is functional and the latter aesthetic.  In that regard I’d say the Paris Metro is still the world’s best.  My fondest memories are of that Metro, partly due to familiarity, partly due to the fact that I never had to commute on that subway, although I have been on it when it was crowded, which was rare.

The Young Ones

Ages ago, it must have been in the 1990s, I was with my buddies Ken and Dave, at Ken’s apartment (lower level of an early twentieth century house) in Bloomfield, New Jersey.  We watched this TV show called “The Young Ones”.  My initial impression was highly unfavorable, as 90% of the plot seemed to be some snotty jerk named “Rick” constantly arguing with, and yelling at, a punk named “Vyvyan” (why he had a girl’s name was never explained – even when his own mother was asked).  There was a normal guy named Mike and a hippie named Neil, who liked Hawkwind.

 Fastforward to the present.  I successfully endured 90-some minutes of “The Trailer Park Boys” movie, set in a trailer park in Nova Scotia, Canada.  And I thought to myself, “if I can endure these three clowns [Ricky, Julian and Bubbles], then surely I can tolerate the Young Ones.”  So I rented the shows from Netflix.

 As it was, “enduring” the Young Ones means watching all of 12 episodes.  Even the “bonus bits” are only one extra DVD.  Despite the short nature of the series, I won’t summarize all 12 episodes, but rather simply summarize the show itself.  So here goes.

 Rick (Rick Mayall).  Always snotty, always in his 80s suit & skinny tie, with buttons all over the lapel and nonstop anarchist/revolutionary rhetoric.  Rick is by far the most annoying asshole of the group and the least popular.  He’s fixated on Cliff Richard.  He also goes off about “The revolution”, “fascist pigs”, etc. but shows little true understanding of these issues and clearly spouts the crap solely to impress people with his political sophistication, a “wanna-be leftie”.   He roars about Margaret Thatcher fairly often.  Mayall goes out of his way to make the character as unlikable as possible – and clearly succeeds.

 Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson).  The punk – he has four stars pressed into his forehead, wears Doc Martens, jeans, a jean vest, and a variety of black t-shirts – which include Motorhead and Saxon.  Despite being fairly belligerent and violent, mindlessly so (somewhat of a parody on the punk movement as a whole) he is fairly intelligent – it kind of shines through the “ultra-violence”.  He has a hamster called Special Patrol Group.  Vyvyan is most often at odds with Rick, giving him some much-needed and well-appreciated (by everyone except Rick) slapstick physical abuse.  To the extent that windows or furniture gets broken in the house, Vyvyan can be blamed for the devastation.  He is also decapitated (“Bambi”) yet survives to reattach his head on his shoulders – after kicking the head for awhile.

 Mike (Christopher Ryan).  He’s the shortest but also the handsomest, usually wearing black sunglasses and stylish clothes.  He’s by far the most normal and well-adjusted of the group and tries to coordinate them – to no avail.  He’s also often angling some scam or dishonest scheme which rarely even comes to fruition, much less success, though I do recall him converting Rick’s bedroom into a roller disco.  Mike gets the least abuse or attention from the other three characters and is practically ignored.  I find him the least interesting member of the group.  He reminds me of Buck Dharma from Blue Oyster Cult.

 Neil (Nigel Planer).  The tallest, and an obvious hippie.  Neil is charged with cooking for the group, but no one really likes his food (mostly made with lentils).   Despite being the usual target of abuse and exploitation – or perhaps because of it – in one episode he turns into the Hulk and beats the crap out of the other three.  Or was it just a dream?  If so, why are his clothes still ripped up?  He also remarks about the music on TV, “why don’t they have any good bands on, like Hawkwind or Marillion?”  His most common expression is “heavy” (US hippies would probably say “beat” instead). 

 + Alexei Sayle.   Sometimes he acts like a Russian, but other times he simply talks with a Liverpool accent (“I’m not really foreign, you know – I just do it to appear more sophisticated!”…if only Rick could admit the same about his politics!).  The Fifth Beatle, so to speak, AS takes on various miscellaneous roles, most often their landlord Jerzei Balowski, several of Balowski’s relatives, or even Mussolini (of whom he does a damn good impression).

 Musical Guests.  With the exception of Motorhead and The Damned, these were insipid 80s Brit-pop bands.  Motorhead played “Ace of Spades” (even back in 1984 they had Phil Campbell and Wurzel, but still had Phil Taylor on drums) in the “Bambi” episode, while The Damned showed up dressed as vampires.  By including music on the show, the group qualified as a “variety show” which gave it a larger budget, though you’d hardly guess that from the incredibly squalid conditions existing there.  In fact, Rick specifically argues that as students, they have a duty not to clean the toilet or do laundry and revel in their dirt and poverty.

 Emma Thompson (Miss Money-Sterling) and Hugh Laurie (Lord Monty) show up as upper class twits in “Bambi”, and Terry Jones (the Monty Python member, not the Koran-burning pastor) plays a vicar in “Nasty”.

 Highlights.  In “Flood”, Vyvyan walks into a wardrobe to play “hide & seek”, and finds himself in a snowy forest.  The White Queen unsuccessfully seduces him with Turkish Delight (in which he has no interest) and freaks out when he refers to a lion.  In “Bambi”, the group competes on a college quiz show.  In “Cash”, Neil successfully joins the London police.  In “Nasty”, the boys attempt to set up a VCR and watch a “video nasty” (porn) without success.   In fact, this business of frequently cutting away from the main plot to a completely different scene is lifted from Monty Python (a “Cheese Shop” reference gets thrown in, and Terry Jones appears in one episode) and is subsequently regurgitated constantly by Seth McFarlane in “The Family Guy”.

 Bonus Disc.  The third disc contains a brief bit of interviews with Planer, Mayall, Sayle, Paul Jackson, and a few others associated with the show, plus episodes of two post-YO shows featuring some of the cast members:  "Filthy Rich And Catflap" (Mayall,  Planer and Edmondson) and "Bottom" (Mayall and Edmondson).  What I found most interesting is that Mayall these days has a goatee and long hair, actually quite handsome, and personality-wise is nowhere close to the total asshole of “Rick” – then again, it was clear (as noted above) that “Rick” was merely an exaggerated character.  Planer’s character on “Filthy Rich” is completely different than Neil, and both Edmondson characters are far more intelligent and articulate than Vyvyan.  

  

Brazilian Expeditionary Force in WWII

“You’d be more likely to see a cobra smoking than see Brazilians fighting in Europe.”  Adolf Hitler

 I had known that Brazilians did send a unit to Europe, but until I read Brazilian Expeditionary Force in World II, by CC. Maximiano and R. Bonalume N., an Osprey Men-at-Arms publication, I had very little idea of the details.  I had been past the WWII Memorial in Rio de Janeiro, but hadn’t actually gone inside.

 They sent three regiments – a single division – to Northern Italy in late 1944, which served until VE Day in May 1945.  The units served along the US 10^th Mountain Division and faced 2^nd tier German forces, basically a loose aggregate of leftover Wehrmacht units thrown together almost at random.  As with the Spaniards in North Russia, the Brazilians had to deal with cold temperatures worse than any they would endure in Brazil.  Brazil also supplied a squadron of pilots, who flew P-47s, but the air element operated independently of the ground forces and were not assigned to the same tactical areas. 

 Most of the Brazilian soldiers had little or no combat experience.  Prior to WWII, the Brazilian army had been equipped and trained by the French and wore Adrian helmets.   The training, such as it was, was insufficient and had to be redone along US lines.  Nevertheless, with one notable exception, they fought fairly well.  One particular unit deserted and turned tail, the so-called “Laurindo” battalion: “Quem é que vem descendo o morro? Ê o Laurindo que vem sua turma guiando” (“Who is that going down the hill? It’s Laurindo guiding his gang”, a popular samba song at the time).  For the most part the Brazilians earned the respect of the Americans alongside whom they fought.  The Germans were neither contemptuous of them nor terrified of them; pretty much the Brazilians got the job done.  Of course by that time the Germans really couldn’t resist much, but one division “doing its job” in such a crucial theater as Northern Italy could hardly be considered to have a strategic impact on the war overall.  One Brazilian officer was Lt. Col. Castello Branco, who wound up as Brazil’s general-president during the military dictatorship in the 1960s.

 The standard rifle tended to be the 1903 Springfield, though they received BARs, Thompsons and M3 submachine guns as well.   All the equipment they used was provided by the US in Italy and none of it was brought over from Brazil. 

 The soldiers were issued US clothing and weapons, although they tended to modify the clothing somewhat.  The most noticeable and substantial modifications were: some of the longer jackets were shortened, some of the soldiers wore low jackboots (so-called “Natal boots”), and the soldiers took Hitler’s phrase and made a “smoking cobra” patch in response.  Instead of one white star on their vehicles, they painted the Southern Cross.  Brazilian MPs had a Brazilian flag on the front of the helmet in between the M and the P.  Eventually the uniform tended to morph into a grey version of the US WWII uniform, and has persisted to the present day in the form of the Brazilian police uniforms I recognized in Rio de Janeiro.  Brazilian cops seemed to look less like cops and more like soldiers, especially wearing paramilitary uniforms with jungle boots.  The general impression of pictures of Brazilian troops in Italy was that they look like US troops with slight variations in uniforms, the biggest difference being the multiracial element:  while the US Army was still segregated at the time, the Brazilian Army was not, so blacks, Japanese, Portuguese, and all sorts of mixed multiracial soldiers were all together in the same unit.  

Knight Rider

Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist.  Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

 This TV show originally aired from 1982-86. I have the first three of four seasons (1982, 1983, and 1984); the last (4^th) season sucked.  I was in Paris when this was originally on TV, so I only caught it on DVD ages later, when I purchased the first three seasons on DVD and read Knight Rider Legacy, by Joe Huth and Richie Levine, a thick guide to the series – practically everything you’d ever want to know about it.

 Premise.  Michael Long (Larry Anderson), an undercover LAPD cop working a case in Las Vegas, is brutally shot and left to die.  He is rescued, brought back from the brink of death, and given a new face, name, and identity as the adopted son of a wealthy philanthropist, Wilton Knight, whose natural son Garthe had disappeared long ago into a life of crime.   His new assignment: work for the Foundation of Law and Government, a mysterious (pre-BlackWater) private company which handles sensitive missions – somewhat of a more pretentious and fancier version of The A-Team, plus KITT and minus Mr. T. 

 Highly and improbably modified 1982 Trans Am, aka Knight Industries Two Thousand, better known as KITT.  With its shiny black finish and asymmetric hood bulge, KITT bears a close resemblence to my own 1992 Formula.  KITT has a tan interior with t-tops, the decklid spoiler, and standard 15x7” wheels, whereas my own has a black interior, no t-tops, a ’91-92-only aero wing spoiler, and the stock 16x8” Deep Dish High Tech Turbo wheels.  I could never stand KITT’s fake computerized dashboard and bizarre steering wheel, or the Cylon-inspired red strobe light “scanner” in the front bumper.  I have to laugh at the “KITT kits” available for turning a Firebird into a KITT replica, as I never liked what they did with KITT.   While I’ve heard many ’77-81 S/E Trans Am owners give the movie “Smokey and the Bandit” credit for inspiring their “Bandit T/A” purchases, the show had no role in my purchase, or even the decision to have the blue-green exterior repainted black.  It was only after I’d had the car for a few years that I even bothered to start watching the show on DVD.

            For some reason they never explain what engine KITT has.  Stock Trans Ams from that year would have no better than a 165 HP 5.0L V8 with TBI, which was the engine in the show “hero” cars; the stunt (jump) cars had hotter engines. 

            In addition to being jet black and bad-ass, KITT has various clever functions:

            A.         “Molecular bonded shell”, a fancy way of saying the car is bulletproof.

            B.         A self-aware computer, voiced by William Daniels, which can drive the car itself (particularly useful if Knight is asleep or incapacitated) and do all sorts of complicated computations.  It also taps into databases and acts as a de facto Internet years before Al Gore invented it.  KITT can talk, of course, so he can crack jokes with Michael and complain about how stupid humans are, or how he needs synthetic oil.

            C.         Turbo boost, which jets the car forward at 300 mph (!!!), in a fashion similar to the jumpers on the Mach 5 (Speed Racer). 

            Knight Industries has a huge black trailer which they use as a remote garage to fix KITT out on the highway – mainly minor repairs and upgrades, nothing like body work (no lift or frame machine).  Bonnie and Devon are usually to be found on the trailer when Michael drives KITT into it.

            William Daniels’ voice, as KITT, is somewhat dandified, like Higgins from “Magnum P.I.”  Is KITT gay?  Well, he shows no preference for other male cars, show tunes, or Liza Minelli.  No one will confuse KITT with Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin (Stone Cold or Lee Majors).  Some of his dialogue is a bit goofy and stupid, but that applies to most of the writing on the show.  Daniels and Hasselhoff worked separately and only met each other in person at Christmas parties.

            The TV writers can’t resist “evil twin” episodes, so there was an evil version of KITT, called KARR, who looks the same and has similar capabilities.  Naturally KITT beats KARR.   

Major cast and characters: 

 Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff).  Arguably, KITT is the star of the show, but Hasselhoff comes a close second.  He’s tall, handsome, rugged, and articulate.  He usually wears sport jackets and turtlenecks.  While there is no sex on the show, Knight is frequently put into positions of romantic entanglement with various female characters – with the conspicuous exceptions of Bonnie & April. 

            Don Johnson was also considered for the role, but Hasselhoff had immediately latched on to the concept and became obsessed with securing the role – which he did.  Although Hasselhoff has been on “Baywatch” for several seasons, had a bizarre career as a German singing star, and more recently was a judge on “America’s Got Talent”, I still think of him as Michael Knight.  From what I hear, he gives this show credit for establishing his career and even has the “Knight Rider” theme song as the ringtone on his cell phone.     

     

            As with KARR, they brought Garthe Knight in for an episode, also played by Hasselhoff but with a beard so they could be distinguished on screen.  And Michael beats Garthe, as you can imagine (no threesome with Bonnie, sorry).

 Bonnie (Patricia McPherson).  The team’s female mechanic gets along fine with KITT and keeps him running smoothly; she even installs upgrades periodically.  She’s attractive and gets along with Knight; they tease and kid each other mercilessly, but despite obvious mutual attraction the relationship remained platonic.  During the second season Bonnie as replaced by April (Rebecca Holden), who while attractive was a bit too glamorous for the role – and was still platonic with Knight.  Recall my 80’s blog where I slammed most of the TV from that era as being wholesome and dull – especially after the more adventurous 60s and 70s.  I suppose we can blame Reagan for Bonnie’s frustration.

 Devon Miles (Edward Mulhare).  I knew I had seen him before – “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir”.  Devon is the boss, so to speak, and gives Michael and KITT their assignments.  In one episode Devon himself is arrested and jailed in some small town – trumped up bullshit speeding charges, of course – and contrives a breakout using his experience breaking out of German POW camps during WWII.   Devon knows how stuffy to be without being full of himself; he brings some charm and sophistication to a show which would otherwise be simply “cool black talking car and handsome secret agent”. 

 Foundation for Law And Government (FLAG).  The early 80s were a time when local law enforcement was corrupt and incompetent, and the FBI and CIA nonexistent.  People with problems had no one to turn to, except the mysterious Foundation for Law and Government, with its immense worldwide staff of…three humans and a talking Trans Am.  If the A-Team were too stupid and brutal for your needs – and their GMC van didn’t talk! – FLAG would get the job done.

 As I said, I’ve now seen three seasons worth of episodes.  The writing is well below “Cheers”, “M*A*S*H”, or even “Two and a Half Men” in quality.  Some of the Michael-KITT banter is embarrassingly insipid.  The plots are unoriginal and constantly recycled, and oddly similar to “The A-Team” and countless other late 70s and early 80s drama/action shows.  Although Michael gets a fair amount of off-screen action (the female characters, of course, are conveniently gone afterwards), Michael and Bonnie never hook up and Bonnie displays little or no jealousy (damn it, no threesome with April, either).  But I still like watching that black car race down the streets and highways of California.

 Remake.  I caught the pilot of the remake when it came out, and zoned out almost immediately.  KITT as a Mustang?  I don’t care if a stock Mustang Cobra will spank an ’82 Trans Am, this makes as much sense as the Bandit driving a Challenger, or the Dukes driving a Neon (the Corporal Lee?).  Moreover, “KITT” could transform into an F-150, a Crown Vic, or even a Flex – sounds like the full 2009 Ford line!  Give me a break.  As soon as the Firebird was discontinued in 2002 that spelled the effective end of any chances of a real Knight Rider remake.  Fortunately the powers that be at NBC got the clue and pulled the plug after one season.

Militaria

Recently I went through a storage unit with my mom and brother, and found a few boxes of my old militaria.  This was just after watching the Lemmy video – the Motorhead bassist lives in L.A. in a rent-controlled apartment full of Nazi memorabilia.  Sometimes he wears Nazi uniforms, but where the swastika would be under the German eagle, is a meaningless three-pointed symbol clearly meant to replace the offensive swastika with something other than simply a blank circle.  Brian Jones caused a scandal dressed in an Allgemeine SS black uniform, supposedly a joke suggested by his then-girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg (who seemed to be passed around from one Stone to the next).  Neither Jones nor Lemmy are Nazis, to my knowledge.  In Lemmy’s case it’s simply an interest in WWII, with a particular focus on Germany.

 Those who know me, know my intense interest in the military, despite my lifelong civilian status which – due to my hearing – is very much a permanent thing.  But that hasn’t stopped me from collecting military gear of various types over the years, with an obvious preference for WWII German items.

 Unique Imports/Collector’s Armory.  When we moved to France, we had no idea about WWI or WWII, but we learned quickly.  Our friends the Winkers had catalogs from this company, which was actually located in Alexandria – on one home leave we visited the place (it’s not there anymore).  This place mainly sold replica guns and knives, no actual uniforms, but we did get some helmets: my German helmet which I still have.  They’re still in business, but they don’t seem to have a customer-accessible showroom anymore.

 Optas.  In high school I met my friend Jean (John), who alerted me to this militaria shop in Paris, a few blocks north of Gare St. Lazare.  I bought a WWII German jacket, 1943 pattern, with Wehrmacht insignia.  Later I had my father replace it with Waffen SS insignia.  Unfortunately this jacket must have been a 38 chest size at most, as by college I could no longer fit in it.  I know I got several other items here, including the Mauser ammo pouches, MP40 magazine pouches, jackboots, an SS sidecap, and the Mauser bayonet.

 National Capital Historical Sales.  In college I learned about this place from a friend who was heavily into WWII re-enactments.  His deal was British Commandos.  This was a large warehouse in Lorton/Newington.  Apparently it’s still in business but without a customer-accessible warehouse.  This place sold lots of replica uniforms for re-enactments as the original uniforms were (A) too rare, (B) too expensive, and (C) because of A & B combined too valuable to risk running around in forests shooting blanks at each other.  Even so, even the replica uniforms were kind of pricey.  I recall scoring some German WWII grey uniform pants which must have been 40 waist, always way too big for me…better suited for Sgt. Schulz (“I know NOZZING!”).  I also got a pair of SS collar patches which I put on a blue denim jacket; the left tab was blank, meaning SS general staff.

 At The Front.  This is more like it.  The guy who runs this site is a riot: always busting on his customers as fat-ass weirdos insisting on perfection which even the Nazis never accomplished.  “I’ve seen legitimate original SS uniforms and they all have these issues – face it, they were made by concentration camp prisoners who weren’t as obsessed about quality control as you lot seem to be.  And no, we don’t sell XXXXXL paratrooper uniforms.”  Having said that, I’m extremely pleased with the dot cammo Waffen SS jacket I bought from him.  Excellent work!  I’m tempted to get a 1936 pattern Waffen SS uniform jacket, which I’ve always wanted, but unfortunately with authentic SS insignia on it – with the swastika on the left arm and SS runes on the collar tab – it wouldn’t be something I could wear outside my own apartment. 

 Mr. At-The-Front seems to know a lot about the replica business and his competitors.  Apparently after WWII many companies opened up producing what they claimed was authentic WWII militaria.  Since even this stuff is now 50 years old, the fakes are beginning to look authentic simply by virtue of being old.  He admits his stuff is replica, he just asserts – and so far as I can tell, reasonably so – that his copies are closest to the original.

 Schipperfabrik.  This is a different company, with a different owner (website has no snarky comments) with a focus on WWI instead of WWII.  They have the Kratzchen German WWI pillbox hats, various German WWI uniforms (early war, Bluse, etc.) and the 1916-18 German helmets.  Briefly they had some replica pickelhaubes (German spiked helmets) but it seems they didn’t sell well enough to make the endeavor commercially practical.  Again, even if you weren’t offending anyone – “damn it, my grandfather was shot at by Huns!” (actually, mine was!) – where can you wear a pickelhaube?  I’m tempted to buy the US WWI tunic, but haven’t done so yet; it’s only $250 (!).

 Surplus stores.  I’ve ignored mentioning this until now because surplus stores are everywhere, and it’s fairly simple and easy to get US cammo of various types.  Moreover, these surplus stores have the same load of East German stuff all the time.  Although I have purchased jungle boots and cammo outfits (US Army) these to me are not nearly as interesting or challenging as finding SS dot cammo or WWI or WWII militaria which is not of US origin.

Re-enactments.  I never did do this.  There were several reasons.  First, they all use genuine WWII weapons, simply firing blanks.  The weapons are extremely expensive, as you can imagine.  Last I checked, MP-40s cost $30,000.  Even my Mauser 98K was $350.  Second, as noted above, even the replica uniforms are expensive, and for a re-enactment you have to have the complete uniform, not just a jacket and helmet.  I had managed to get the belt, belt buckle, ammo pouches, gas mask in canister, Y-straps, jackboots, way-too-big pants, bread bag, canteen, and helmet, so I suppose I was most of the way there, but even that took years to accumulate and I still didn’t have the gun itself.  Third, re-enactors are full of history buffs, and they all want to be in elite units:  SS for Germans, Guards for Russians, Commandos for British, and Rangers or Airborne for US troops.  That leaves no Wehrmacht or general infantry units, merely a group of wanna-be crack units fighting each other, which everyone agrees is unrealistic…but no one wants to back down and be the regular soldier.   And none of the SS units were anywhere near me.  Fourth, using blanks puts you on the honor system.  I recall from being a kid playing war games at the Compound in Neuilly with our friends and having replica guns.  No one wants to lose, no one wants to “die”.  And with no real way of “hitting” someone (even with something like a paintball) you just end up in arguments.  “I shot you, you didn’t even see me.”  How can a sniper operate if he needs his victim’s consent to achieve a kill?  “Please admit I blew you away.”   If re-enactors have started using paintballs – not such a bad idea if their uniforms are replicas anyway – I’d love to hear about it.  The WWI re-enactors say, “this is the Great War – everybody dies!”

            From a cursory Net search, I’m getting the impression that most of the re-enactors in my area (Northern Virginia) are…Civil War.  While I’d be happy to put on a blue uniform and traipse around Gettysburg – firing blanks at the Rebel yahoos re-enacting Pickett’s Charge – I’d rather be in grey-green in a trench or WWII simulation.  But I will keep looking…