I have long been aware of the stumbling block that certain “fashions” pose to gainful employment. But I am apparently the last to learn that the so-called “hip hop” style — wearing jeans so loose around the waist that those around you see England, they see France — have (to borrow the president’s words) enormous consequences.
The website Lowering the Bar reports via the New York Post (h/t reader teejk) that “a Brooklyn cellphone crook’s poor wardrobe choices led to his arrest when his saggy jeans tripped him up during his getaway attempt and allowed cops to chase him down.”
By ‘cellphone crook,’ they mean he stole a cellphone from his victim. He did this after punching her in the face, which makes it especially satisfying that he was almost immediately ensnared by his own ridiculous pants.
Apparently, the Post is also in the dark on the pervasiveness of this trend, which Lowering the Bar has been reporting on for over five years. “Which is dumber,” the blogger writes, “this incredibly goofy-looking fashion statement or the spectacle of American legislatures wasting time trying to ban it?
This is a question it’s almost certainly impossible to answer. It has a zen feel to it: What is the sound of one pant sagging? Or: If your pants sag in the forest and there’s no one around to see it, does it still look stupid?
Such questions cannot be answered, only contemplated.
As for 21-year-old Joel Donaldson, the hapless mugger in this latest incident, he was nabbed, appropriately, two blocks from the Brooklyn Criminal Court, where he will appear on Monday as a defendant.
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