There's a mom at my daughter's school that I don't like. She's arrogant, ill-mannered, ostentatious, and obnoxious. One morning when I was on the school campus, I saw the mom wearing a Von Dutch hat and a Von Dutch T-shirt. I asked her who Von Dutch was. "He's a fashion designer," she sneered. I told her that wasn't correct. I told her that he was a car customizer and an artist, and was no longer living. "That's someone else, idiot," she said. (The "idiot" was silent, but her mind spoke it.)
I remembered that conversation when I read today's entry at Jalopy Junktown, where he wrote about an auction where Von Dutch's pinstriping box was sold for $270,000.
Luckily, the ghost of Von Dutch already suffered the gross indignity of his name being licensed to sell overpriced trucker hats. An injustice that great assures Von Dutch will be not coming back from the dead to rattle around Beverly Hills mansions looking to reclaim his hammers or pick-up truck tailgate.
"Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate."
