TheNamelessThing.com

I grew up at the same time as the author albeit I am 3 years older. I grew up in Chester somewhere between Manchester and Self Pity City. I was lucky enough to go to OT at age 7 and been going ever since. Being in between the 2 cities us young lads were lucky enough to be influenced by both cities fashion wise. Our local on a Saturday was a hive of lads togged up going 3 way Utd, Everton and Liverpool. Still is. The point being Everton all though they are Scouse do not bother me in the slightest nor any other team while Liverpool I just lose all sense and sensibility even now at the age of 45 I just want to steam in to them total irrational. That nameless thing still bites when it comes to the vermin.

I reckon a quick look at you around that period would suffice; a combination of Mark E. Smith and DeVoto, I would think. I remember when they were all wearing "Roxy" jackets (leather blazers, essentially) in London, while in the NW we were wearing flying jackets and leathers with elasticated waists that looked dead, dead top, like. A lot of lads from down there like to crack on that they were as with it as the mancs and scousers, but that is total bollocks, as they were poncing about in Doc Marten's and donkey jackets while we were marvelling at sixty quid Adidas tennis shoes from Europe. So, when you say "casual" wear being resuscitated by the manc punk scene, are you referring to school blazers, drainpipe man-pants and played-down Ted shoes, black suede with crepe soles? It's a possibility that this punk tendency to wear a parody of a suit was a galvanising precursor to the Mod scene and the Perry Boy thing that ballooned right with the mods. The thing with London is that once they got on the job, they did as good a job of it as anyone, as they have the built-in nouse to know what to buy and wear, as opposed to a small gaggle of clueless tossers in Rotherham who basically attended some horrible third-rate football fixture against Tranmere or Stockport, and very slowly became cognizant of this new thing. Your point about the various immigrants being the brains that run London is the same here in the States, with the constant piss-taking by New Yorkers of others from around the nation masking the truth that anyone with a brain or with talent heads to the Big Apple (or Hollywood if they have the looks and the megalomanaical drive to be someone) and that's why NYC is so great. They don't realise this because with each successive generation, the "native" population gets bigger, and so these children of immigrants become clever-arse locals and the whole cycle grows in scale. But it doesn't alter the fact that these cities are great and that they've reached a crucial point in the self-organising snowball effect inherent in the fractal explosions in the glass palace of the dying western culture.

I reckon London is up there with the mancs and scousers myself. Why not?