You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Hollister.
The Clothing Company Vs. The California Town.
What a difference branding can make.
I see kids all over this country wearing Hollister T shirts.
I have always wondered if Hollister Co. is affiliated with the town near where I grew up.
Hollister – the clothing company – is hip and sleek and conjurs up imagery of Southern California surfing. It’s sex appeal and hard bodies and easy living.
Hollister the city is lower income lettuce pickers and people who wake up every day expecting to feel an earthquake.
I was in Hollister the other day, meeting an old college roommate for lunch. The city is equidistant from where he lives in Fresno and where I was staying on the coast.
Driving to Hollister is like driving to the other side of the tracks. Not only do you cross the tracks, you cross about a dozen lettuce fields and get stuck behind at least two gigantic farm machines.
The city is 45 minutes from the ocean. The temperature quickly rises twenty five degrees as you leave the ocean and turn East toward the valley.
The smell of salt air is replaced by the lingering scent of fertilizer. It is seemingly everywhere, and enters your lungs, your nostrils with every breath you take.
If you like brown rolling valleys and dark cultivated farm fields, this is the place for you. The sky is blue and cloudless and it is easy to see how a blanket of sunshine in these fertile valleys, crops would grow like crazy.
I enter the down town area. Its a modest commercial district with neatly maintained single story businesses. A dry cleaners, a pawn shop, a tattoo parlor, a few bars.
The town is predominately Hispanic, perhaps due to the economic reality that field work is the number one employer here.
I meet my buddy on Main Street. It is paved, but I swear I see dust clouds and tumbleweeds blowing by. I quickly scan the boulevard for Clint Eastwood pulling back his poncho to expose his six shooter.
“What’s up pal?” I say embracing my friend.
We begin chatting by his truck. A large Hispanic man with sagging pants comes out of the tattoo parlor. I can’t tell where his short sleeved shirt ends and his tatooed arm begins.
“Did you back into my car?” He asks.
No we say not sure to what he is referring.
“Ok,” he says without much emotion going back inside.
I gaze up and down the street that reminds me not a bit of the Miracle Mile in Chicago.
We go into a place called Johnny’s Bar and Grille.
Like any good dive bar, the light outside is replaced with available neon and darkened timelessness.
My buddy tells me he looked Johnny’s up on line. “It has 4 and a half stars,” he told me.
Four and a half stars? I’m thinking fine linens and tuxedo clad wait staff. Not exactly!
The building is on the corner. The brochure says it is world famous for over 60 years.
Famous for what for 60 years? Avoiding a health code inspection?
I question the truth in advertising.
There is a painted James Dean portrait on the side of the brick building.
“four stars?” I say to my ex roomate as we go in.
“It didn’t say what the four stars were for,” he laughs.
“Probably for the number of people who have been killed in a driveby,” I say as we enter the dimly lit establishment.
The place is little more than a room with tables and a bar.
We pull up two bar stools and the crustacean behind the counter smiles at us.
“Whatta ya having?”
Her skin is leather hard and tatoos peek from under neath the bra strap that is peaking beneath a halter top that sports a Harley logo.
“Came in for a beer and a burger,” I say.
“Kitchen closed 45 minutes ago,” she says.
She is a tough woman, a biker chick. A thousand years ago before she was trapped in this twilight zone of fertilizer and dust, she might have been attractive. Now her skin is a potato sack of hard days standing on her feet ihaling cigarette smoke. She appears to be old enough to collect social security but who the hell knows.
“It’s only 3:45,” i respond.
“owner doesn’t think people want to eat after 3pm.”
I laugh out loud wondering if starving children in India would want to eat after 3pm.
“There’s a burger joint two blocks down,” she says.
Excellent marketing plan i think to myself. deny your customers what they want then tell them how to get to to another tavern close by so you can spend money there.
I look around for a Hollister T shirt stand to buy souveniers.
All I see is a bunch of motorcycle posters.
“A pitcher of Blue Moon,” my buddy says.
And so it goes.
We shoot the bull and talk about the old times.
I sit near a resident who came here he says to escape the pressure cooker of San Jose. he tells me that this is the number one place on the planet for Earth quakes and tremblors.
I feel honored and hope one wipes this place to the ground after I finish my beer.
We talk a little bit and I feel like asking him where the Hollister Nordstroms is, but I keep quiet.
A couple of fire eaters wearing bright orange shirts and suspenders take the seats at the end of the bar. Their clothing is not sponsored by Hollister Co.
A guy with wacky hair and a big mouth sits next to them. I don’t think he is wearing Hollister Co. Blue jeans either.
He is throwing dice on the bar and every so often and the explosion of dice slamming down on the bartop is unsettling. I’m not sure if he is playing Yatzee or Mexican Dice or practicing for his next Vegas trip.
Nobody minds his irrational banter. He is a Johnny’s regular.
After an hour we head out.
A few low riders motor by, loud thumping music pouring out of the windows.
We see a phaylanx of bicycle riders cruising down the street. Men and women and children, riding in a pack of 2 dozen as if they are Born to be Wild with pedals and flower baskets. It is nice to see, as if they are part of an exercise program or mother’s day out experiment.
I can’t help but think of Hollister, the hip clothing company that touts itself as a Beach Brand. Hollister 22? Models with chiseled features and wash board stomachs. They are so cool I must wear their hipster garb.
But this Hollister is not that Hollister. This town is cholo’s and fertilizer and low riders.
Hollister Vs. Hollister.
The two images clash like bare feet and broken glass.
We walk into a Mexican restaurant. The smell of authentic Mexican food fills the room.
We eat rice and beans and tamales. It is hilarious. It’s like being in Tia Juana in the 1980’s. My friend and I are the only people who might need SPF in the sunshine.
We eat and laugh and pay our bill. We take pictures on Main Street and say goodbye, promising not to let so many years pass between visits.
As I drive West, the promise of the setting sun is bright in my eyes. Behind me, in my rear view mirror, I see the bluish hue of Hollister, the cow town in the middle of a lettuce field in the middle of a non descript California valley.
I think about the 27 dollar t shirts for sale promising golden sunshine and eternal waves.
I get stuck behind another farm machine and I laugh. That brand doesn’t exist here.
Is that an Earth Quake I think as I slow to a crawl.
Nope. Just running over some cow manure on the road.
Crazy.™