On the outside wall of the shop hung a poem by Charles Bukowski, because of course nothing goes better with tasteful clothing than transgressive poetry. It’s about the horror of blue-collar life, about how dehumanizing it is to do the kind of work that no one who passes by here ever does anymore: I think of the men I’ve known in factories with no way to get out— choking while living choking while laughing When I think of the men I’ve known in factories, I think of those locked-out workers I met in Decatur, Illinois, in the early days of the Clinton administration.
