As everybody knows, shopping is more fun if you’re drunk. That’s why a slew of men’s shops all over America are now offering beer and cocktails to guys who may need a little prodding to embark on a day trying on clothes. “Most men still hate to shop,” offers a recent post on Newsweek’s “The Human Condition” blog. “They fear the crowds, the changing rooms, and the sneaking feeling that it’s all a bit unmanly.” Combine that with the principle that “men like free drinks” and shopping plus drinking equals the new black. We at Bonobos like this trend and appreciate the sentiment, but it still doesn’t make shopping as fun as it could be! Allow us propose an alternative—The Bonobos House Party. Invite over your friends—including tons of hot girls—crank up the blender, blast some sick music and jump online. The Bonobos House Party offers all the fun of drinking and shopping without any of the pressure. And don’t you think the same people who offer you a glass of aged Kentucky bourbon may try to guilt you into buying something? As Sarah Palin would say, “You betcha!” Besides, at most of the stores serving alcohol, there’s a two-drink limit. And nobody likes being taunted.
Let’s face it: The Japanese love Bonobos. That’s why the Nikkei Marketing Journal, a quarter-million circulation magazine founded in 1971 to cover the Japanese distribution and retail markets, ran a story about us in a recent issue. What did they say? We have no idea! But we’re working on getting it translated and we’ll keep you posted.
I saw a guy wearing this t-shirt in SoHo the other day and thought Bonobos should print a retort that reads: I LOVE MY CLOTHES, CAN YOU HELP ME UNDRESS?
A recent survey sponsored by Trojan condoms found that Atlanta, Ga., the capital of the South, is the most sexually satisfied city in the U.S. with 73% of respondents saying they get it good. Giving new meaning to its nickname, Hotlanta, the city beat out more politically progressive places, like New York and San Francisco. Two big Texas towns, Houston and Dallas, came in third and fourth respectively. In fact, Houston beat out Atlanta in sexual frequency, coming in No. 1 in the number of times, per year, the deed gets done, followed by Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles.
Would you have guessed that Southerners are more sexually alive than their Northern counterparts? “It may be due to the boomerang effect of southern reticence,” Atlanta-based columnist and author Michael Alvear, host of HBO’s “The Sex Inspectors,” told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Meaning, what is not spoken of is acted on.” But Atlanta has a history of randy behavior, the AJC notes. “In the 1970s, Playboy magazine dubbed Cobb County’s Riverbend Apartments ‘ground zero’ of the sexual revolution. And no less an authority than Mick Jagger, who lived in Atlanta briefly while filming the forgettable 1992 flick ‘Freejack,’ opined that the city’s strip clubs were the best he’s visited.”
Georgia’s Southern neighbor to the north, South Carolina, also has sex on the brain. In a recent editorial in the New York Times, entitled “Tales of Republicans, Bonobos, and Adultery,” Eduardo Porter seeks an evolutionary understanding of the human sex drive, prompted by the recent sex scandal involving South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford.
“It’s been nearly 40 years since the biologist Robert Trivers posited that the evolutionary imperative to maximize offspring would lead to mostly promiscuous males and nonpromiscuous females. Because males only invest a small amount of sperm in reproduction, philandering increases their reproductive success. Females, who invest much more time and energy in each offspring, would prefer one high-quality mate. But females could be unfaithful, too, if it improved their chances to pass on their genes. Female bonobo chimpanzees have sex with dozens of males to obscure the paternity of offspring and thus stop males from killing infants to get their mothers to stop breastfeeding and become fertile again.”
So maybe the secret to an active sex life all comes down to Bonobos, our relatives from the Congo who engage in promiscuous sex as a type of greeting and in lieu of violence. And maybe humans, like our ancestors, prefer sex in warmer weather! Anyway, throw on these Turqs next time you plan to head down south, and see if you increase your rate of sexual frequency—promiscuous or not.
It’s been a tough few weeks for jeans. First, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story recounting the strange obsession some men have with their “skinny jeans” and chronicling all the fun stuff you can’t do in them—like run, cross your legs, hop a median divider with your friends, wear any squarish, loose or, boxy-fit sweater or shirt, or be comfortable. “Discomfort comes with the territory,” is how one tight-jeans wearer put it. And have we mentioned that they’re heavy and therefore horrible in summer?
Then, the following week, President Obama was panned on CNN and in the blogosphere for wearing “mom jeans” after he threw out the opening pitch at the All-Star game. Tapered and high-waisted, “mom jeans” is a term first coined on Saturday Night Live and set to a rather hysterical rap. As Urban Dictionary explains, “Nobody looks good in these type of jeans. Angelina Jolie would look like a pile of crap in Mom Jeans.” What’s surprising is that Obama once acknowledged the embarrassment that is mom jeans, confessing last summer during the campaign, “I got a hard time from all sorts of blogs who said I looked like Urkel.”
Finally, Bonobos presents an alternative to jeans. Our pants are designed for style and comfort, not entirely unlike your favorite pair of jeans, but in dozens of lighter weights perfect for warm weather. And you’ll be amazed at all the fun things you can do in Bonobos, from running and hopping mediums, to watching tennis to playing tennis, to throwing out the opening pitch at an All-Star game, without the subsequent outcry from the blogosphere! We all love a sweet pair of jeans, but you’d have to be crazy not to leave room for an even sweeter collection of comfortable pants. Check out our Midnight Blues at right. (Secret: We used to call them the “Obamas” but they sold out too fast.)
The Bonobos Blog – Check back daily for style tips, limited-time promotions, ninja mischief, and the evolution of this pantrepreneurial enterprise. The ninjas post here.
