Open Challenge to Sir John Varvatos and Sir Ryan McGinley

Rapscallions,

Imagine the year is 1611 in Charlestowne and your nearby pig sty emits
foul odours which drift and wash over my humble home.

Imagine the year is 1626 and you have played a nasty trick to trade a
great northern port property the size of one man's giant
Knickerbockers in exchange for some crappy Wampum.

Imagine the year is 1732 at home in Olde Towne Alexandria and you refused to dance the Virginia Reel at my fête.

Imagine the year is 1826, in rural Georgia and you have plucked a
peach from my Peach tree without permission.

Imagine it is 1850 Missouri and you have looked at my daughter with
and eye full of longing.

It is the same thing today in 2008 to take a honorable and genteel 'staching of a french fry in Boston by one lovely, unfamous girl of the Commonwealth of Virginia and to snatch the Conceit, imitate the 'stache, poorly I might add, by a couple of hipsters, or models, or hipster models, and then have a silly, woolgathering, Lower East Side boy barista-cum-MOMA famed artiste make the Dagguerotype it to sell $500 sweaters. It is despicable. You, sirs, are Scoundrels and Thieves who do not dare walk among the goodliest of us who 'stache privately, pennilessly, and without the rewards of Profit. These dishonorable 'stachings must have an end!

There can be no rapprochement with Rascals who sling injury such as
this! PorkMoustache is a forum of Integrity, Virtues, Talent, and
Patriotism. This gold-lined potato lip hair cannot stand!

Sirs, we challenge you to a Duel. Neither politics nor fashion can
absolve Gentlemen and Ladies from the necessity of a rigid adherence
to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum. Meet on the Bannerman
island by the old Castle ruins at dusk. And, you greasy cowards, do
not dare to wear silk shirts!

'stache #60 - the maple bacon lollipop moustache

Maple bacon lollipop moustache. Could there be a more magical 4-word combination? (Answer: quite probably. I dare you to submit it.)

San Francisco had only recently been a small Mexican village when, on a misty summer morning in 1848, a colorfully garbed prophet named John Sutter ventured into the Mission shouting hoarsely that he possessed the long sought recipe for gold. Local residents gasped in awe at the alchemic mixture of bacon and candy swirled in a sucker atop the stranger’s lips. At once chewy, savory, and saccharine, this treacly delight is a dangerously delicious lip morsel. Indeed, it proved so for Sutter, who was promptly stampeded by a mob rioting to sample his sweet stache. Word traveled fast, and before you know it, there was a full-on gold rush and the West was won.

The bacon lollipop ‘stache is generally worn by bartenders and Californians. Kiddies, beware this tempting porcine candy on the mouths of strangers!

'stache #59 - the corndog moustache

Lennon and McCartney. Peanut butter and Chocolate. Penniless drunks and fortified wine. Throughout history, two seemingly separate but independently splendid single items have joined together to make better, stronger and occasionally timeless newly combined entities. (The aforementioned pairs joining to become The Beatles, Reese's Cups and New York Times Op/Ed Columnist Bill Kristol, respectively.)

Such was not the case, with the corndog, however.

Born of proud parentage (the corn moustache being responsible for much U.S. westward migration and the hot dog 'stache being a proud reminder of World War II on the homefront) the corndog moustache is — how do you say? — totally nasty.

Rarely seen outside of midwestern carnivals, the corndog 'stache embodies the worst of our great country, namely, food on sticks, processed corn, and low quality meat tubeage. I mean, you could wear it, but, I don’t know, it’s kind of gross.

(In the above picture, we note that while one PorkMoustache friend wears the corndog 'stache with a blend of disdain and irony at the Indiana State Fair, another PorkMoustache friend at Coney Island's Nathan's does not.)

Jimmy Carter and Warm Ham - A Historical Porkmoustache Interlude

It is among our nation's greatest moments when the rabble majority
vote to elect a peanut farmer from small town Georgia to preside.
That was the case in 1976 and the living was good, until 1977,
when one of many gasoline crises befell the nation. Gas prices crept
up to a startling $0.85/gallon and sometimes average Americans had to wait in the gas station queue for over an hour. Wintertime household electric bills were sometimes in the tens of dollars. It was devastating!

The future looked bleak and heat was hard to come by. American
children made fires from their Lincoln Logs. Teens burned the
flag…although that seemed to be in protest of something, rather than
to keep warm. And mothers and fathers looked to each other with
furrowed brow, anxious for some financial reprieve, or at least a
little hope.


Luckily, Jimmy Carter, fearless leader and meaty innovator that he
was, found a solution. Or at least he is credited with the heroics of
the day, but we all know that behind every great man (before the men
of the Nineties) was a great woman. One afternoon in the White House
where the thermostat was kept at a chilly 62 degrees, as Rosalynn
sipped her Coca-Cola she noticed her usually rugged husband looking a bit under the weather, sniffling beneath his favorite pulled pork
barbeque moustache. It was then that she realized the problematic
pulled pork was just too light a lip hair. The man needed a warmer
moustache! As a good Southern woman, she did not badger the man into growing one, but simply planted the seed of the idea so that he might think he thought of the idea himself. And her little plan worked.

Later that week, after growing out a handsome, thick pork moustache,
President Carter addressed the nation, "With my fellow Americans in
turning down the thermostat, I will grow Smithfield ham moustache to keep warm."

'stache #58 - the fish skin moustache

Essentially the Japanese equivalent to the hardtack moustache, the
fish skin moustache came out during hard times. It was a sad wartime
'stache typical of men on the front lines, and even those at home, in
solidarity, pushing broom. However, on or about July 10, 1973 "to
slap skin" or "to slap me some skin, brother" became popular catch
phrases of the American youth and the fish skin moustache found its
niche among the sugar snap pea 'staches, avocado 'staches, and
vegemite 'staches of the Seventies cool kids.

The fish skin moustache may be worn in winter months, as it is preserved well.

'stache #57 - the kohlrabi moustache

Though spotted throughout all the Swiss-German territory in the latter half of the 20th century, the kohl rabi moustache was the violet light at the end of the dark, dark tunnel that was East Germany. The cabbage variant’s flexible bend, sensuous curves, and bright purple hue meant that it stood out sharply from the distinctive Stalinist architecture and the black-and-white attitudes of the citizenry. So when the stout, swollen German ladies of East Berlin started to get the itch for a little loving, it is said that they laid the hardy winter cultivars across their upper lips in what can only be described as a mating ritual. This bedroom secret was quite unknown outside East Germany, so President Kennedy’s ignorance of the root’s sultry uses should be forgiven and his brazen statement “Ich bin ein kohlrabi” should be understood as a well-intentioned symbol of hope rather than a nasty innuendo. There are still some snapshots of the great American leader standing startled giving this speech with a bit of this purple root on his lip which he thought he was wearing in solidarity.

The kohlrabi moustache, which sometimes goes by the name, the Purple Danube, and its ‘staching, known as “paddling the Purple Danube” may be worn in tender, private moments.

'stache #56 - the beef tendon moustache

While American adolescents of the early 20th century restricted themselves to simple ‘staches like green pepper moustaches, musselmoustaches, lime moustaches, and only dreamt of one day resting an entire roast chicken under their sensory-deprived snouts, around the globe Samoan teens wildly threw marinated and sautéed beef tendon atop their mouths, or so reported the young anthropologist Margaret Mead in her 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa. Typical of most Americans, Mead left home for college in the big city and the world’s truths announced themselves to her so that she, like all other bright 18-years-olds, found herself the sudden owner of all life’s answers. In Samoa, she found the youth’s sexual development uninhibited by the shackles of Christianity and monogamy and manifest in this cartilage lip ornament. Franz Boas, a deeply sentimental wearer of a great many moustaches himself, found no reason to correct his ambitious and newly liberated student. Of course, this was long before 'problematizing' texts was popular in the classroom.

The Beef Tendon Moustache, not unlike Margaret Mead’s dubious contribution to anthropology, is controversial, unstructured, and messy. This beef tendon for ‘staching came from a dingy midtown Szechuan restaurant known for its (nonsexual) spice.

'stache #55 - the mustard moustache

It was the 1980s. In lower Manhattan on Wall Street, the yuppie elite was just barely developing under the nose for haute couture. Brokers and analysts, stressed by time pressures heretofore unknown to the American people, desired a moustache they could grow "on the run." Said to be double inspired from both the many hot dog/pretzel carts in lower Manhattan and the popularity of neon colors, the bright hue of the yellow mustardstache quickly became a work-appropriate way to stay in fashion. Equally as becoming on women as men, many professionally ambitious females of the financial sector ‘stached the yellow sauce as an outward symbol of closing the gap with their male colleagues on issues such as organizational seniority, shares in Fire Island/Hamptons summer houses, and disposable income. (The mustardstache was at once so startling and so empowering wore by women, it proved to be far more successful in breaking the glass ceiling than Kennedy’s 1963 Equal Pay Act.) It can still be seen today on women at the highest levels of management in the public and private sectors who came of age professionally during the Eighties.

In the 1990s, the mustardstache fell into disuse when classic yellow was thought to be a bit too proletariat, but it is classic. Moreover, it is excellent when dining on meat....a little flick of the tongue to flavor the meat with the salty spice of the mustard...heaven!

'stache #54 - the pork taco moustache

Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin' home every day,
Beatin' the hot old dusty way to the California line.
'Cross the desert sands they roll, gettin' out of that old dust bowl,
They think they're goin' to a sugar bowl, but here's what they find:
Pork, wrapped in tortilla with chopped cabbage.
Under the nose, Mexicans carry their biota baggage.
-Woody Guthrie, Do Re Mi, 1937


The Pork Taco Moustache, now very popular, has a cruel, ne'er-before-told history.

While the 1848 Treaty of Hidalgo Guadalupe gave Mexican-Americans the right to wear a moustache publicly and freely, it gave them no means to practice this right. Though Anglo Americans deftly rested pork products of all kinds on their lips –- bacon, pork loin, pork rinds, ham, ham hock, pulled pork -– without discrimination, the Mexican-American could hardly place a bit of herb below the nose without facing ridicule. But in the Latino social clubs south of Loredo, the pig of Texas BBQ fame crossed the so-called Tortilla Curtain, and the pork taco moustache was born in secret. In the late 19th century the Confederacion de Bigotes Independientes, Grandes e Ordinarios de Tejanos Extrajaneros (C-BIGOTE) was formed in Texas to lobby for equal moustaching rights, but, obviously, none were awarded, and the pork taco moustache remained sub-rosa. This ironic twist in moustache history does not go unnoted, since many moustaches were used originally as the clandestine mask itself.

But back to the story. Many moustached Mexicans fled to California looking for a Chicano safety far from the Tejano hate. Here, the pork taco was 'stached freely and openly, even in the presence of gringos from the 1930s on. In Pastures of Heaven, John Steinbeck's fictional character Tom Breman visits the makeshift restaurant of Maria and Rosa whose father, Old Guiermo -– a wearer of thickly packed pork taco moustaches –- has recently passed. After the popularity of Travels with Charley, Americans started to pay attention to the strange and often angry ramblings of Steinbeck, and soon Anglo-Americans realized that Chicanos had 'stached in peace in California for decades. This was a huge shock to the 1960s East-coaster who had had never paid any mind to the silly West coast before.

The pork taco moustache can be worn in warm months and should never been worn in secret again.

'stache #53 - the cilantro moustache

Once considered a low-brow garnish 'stache of the 1980s, the cilantro 'stache is now considered pure high-brow, er, high-lip-stache. In the early 1980s Mexican/American tensions were high and cheap meal improvements popular, and the cilantro 'stache fell from the already low standing among the parsley moustache to an even lower, racism-driven standing of immigrant moustaches.

The Americans, long known for foolishness and unreasonable racism, were, not surprisingly, wrong. (Though arguably all racism is unreasonable, the American anti-immigrant racism is especially unreasonable considering the deracinated pasts of its citizens.) After a twenty-five year post-modern, meta-identity battle among the Mexican-Americans, Americans, Mexicans, and sometimes Chicanos, the jury is in: Mexicans aren't just cool, they're haute cool. And so the cilantro 'stache climbed its way up the social ladder out from under the fluorescent lights of the supermarket, southern shopping malls where smoking is still allowed indoors, and used car lots into West Village cafés.... like this one, 'stached at Alexandra on Hudson street.

The tony cilantro moustache can be worn in spring and summer.

'stache #52 - the octopus moustache

During the long, unseasonably hot summer of 1824, New York City’s theretofore underground gang culture burst into the nation’s consciousness via a series of unusually bloody and unusually public skirmishes between rival cliques. While the Octo-boys and their sworn enemy squidstachers had previously seemed content to live-and-let stache, as various crews had previosuly coexisted with little problem, a perceived slight one night outside a West Village haberdashery sparked full blown gang warfare, events later made into a major motion picture by Martin Scorsese. (Not "Gangs of New York." A different one.) Regardless, the rival squid and octopus stachers fought all summer long, leaving a trail of firebombed buildings, orphaned children and countless singed tophats in their wakes.

Of course, the octopus 'stachers being limited to eight men per unit, the squidboys eventually prevailed, controlling New York City’s gritty underbelly for generations, eventually folding upon the advent of a particularly vicious group of pork belly stachers ("the gritty underbellies," they were called) came on the scene in the mid-1950s.

Although the octo-boys have not roamed the streets for 150 years or more, the octopus 'stache is still technically a gang symbol, and one should wear with caution.

'stache #51 - the white anchovy moustache

When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on their three-year journey to document the moustaching habits of the peoples west of the Mississippi River, he anticipated receiving word of all manner of exotic 'staches unknown in the cultivated East.

His disappointment was therefore acute, when, rather than tales of 'staches made of Woolly Mammoth trunks and Sabretooth Tiger tails, the intrepid explorers instead informed Jefferson of the wee anchovy moustaches worn by virtually all of the varied Indian tribes of middle and western America.

While the reasons behind the native peoples’ 'stache of choice have been lost to history, that the anchovy itself was in obscene abundance in American rivers in the 18th and 19th century is beyond doubt. A passage from Clark’s diary sums up his wonder at seeing the waterways teeming with the tiny gray fish:

"Rivir is again thicke with the anchovy. Cannot see rivir bottom, due to obscuration by meddlesom fish. To ford river is to beg to come out with pantaloons full of little fish. Kind of gross. Also, shocker: Lewis is sad and despondent for, oh, I don’t know, 700th day in row. His poor attitude does not make Voyage of Discovery go any qwikker."

Despite Clark’s distaste for the feel of the tiny fish against his legs, he would soon adopt the native habit of wearing the anchovy as a moustache, an affectation he, Lewis and even their pup Seaman took back east, sparking a craze that had the effect of all but eliminating the North American anchovy. Indeed, the anchovy pictured above, though worn proudly in Virginia, was caught off the coast of Spain. Sad.

Anchovy moustaches are not worn during the summer months, when their odor might offend.

'stache #50 - the alfalfa moustache

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

In this white stache
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

-- Original “skinny bitch” Sylvia Plath canonized the alfalfa stache in the closing stanza of “Lady Lazarus.”

The staple lip adornment of the raw food movement, alfalfa can be found en masse on the mouths of womyn at radical bookstores, juice bars, yoga studios, and G8 protests. It is spotted most often in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Burlington. Also a common sight in southern California, the sprout ‘stache enjoyed short-lived mainstream popularity when Madonna wore it to promote Ray of Light in 1998. Recently, skinny bitches have reclaimed alfalfa’s radical roots and it has become a ubiquitous fashion among vegan ‘stachers.

'stache #49 - the bacon fat moustache

On pirogues weighed down with lead, salt, bacon fat, and thousands of Rush’s pills, Meriweather Lewis and William Clark set out to discover this great land we call the American West. Things were good, in the beginning, before the men (and Sacagawea) endured the long winters, capsized boats, and the plagues of disease that brought on burning and itching of the groin. In these early days, they had plenty of food to ‘stache and they refused to share it.

Here, from Clark's journal:

Aug 26 1804, Satturday, Mandans
came to a handsome village beyond the Hills. I walked up and smoked a pipe with the Chiefs of the Village and they were anxious that I would stay and eat with them. After jurking the Meat killed yesterday and prepareing the Elk Skins for a Toe Roape, York made up the presents for the Cheafs of which we had Several presents for each of buttones and ttwinee. We had from the Indian women Corn boil’d homney. aside the Chiefs explained they did not like buttones and wanted instead the fatty Bacon which sat above the Lip of myself and Captn Lewis. I said we not not even Speek of giving away our Bacon fat moostaches and instead pleeded York to make entertainment with his dance. our men very chearfull and celebrated the success of the day we each had a drammel of whiskey and a taste of Mandan woman, and we Set our Leaveing Drewer & Shannon to hunt the horses which was lost with directions to follow us keeping on the high lands

And from Lewis:

Aug 27, 1804
Capn Clark thinks he is so damn cleaver with the Cheafs but the Mandins are angry. they dserv too the fatty Bacond lip. Why, even Seaman wears one. Ah, the ennui I Feal.

The bacon fat moustache is appropriate everywhere all the time. It is hailed as a great moustache of wealth, both of wallet and of brotherly love.

'stache #48 - the London Broil moustache

London Broil Moustache is a poseur ‘stache of the nouveau riche and American bourgeoisie. Its first known use was in "The Great Gatsby," where through the protagonist Nick Carraway, we learn of the filetestache's prominence on West Egg:

“The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, with thin filete on their lips, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering, as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."

And later, we hear the definitive East Egger to West Egger insult, ironically delivered by Tom Buchanan:

“'I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make you believe his London Broil moustache is actual filete!”

The London Broil moustache, obviously, one of many conspicuously costumed moustaches, was a loud, brazen, show-offy version of the standard beef 'stache of the rich: the filete. So, it is not so surprising that the londonbroilstache was also popular with users of the affected accent of the early 1950s, the New York Honk. While the true old money upper crust could be heard whispering, “Faire le bruit de cochon!”



The London Broil moustache should not be worn.

'stache #47 - the vegemite moustache

Misoneists step aside as porkmoustache boldly marches into the modern age of maybe-they-shouldn't-be-edible moustaches, the short American century. The story begins in 1912 when Clarence Birdseye, the first of many great Americans from Brooklyn, was on a fur-trading expedition in Labrador, in the Northwest Territory, where it was so damn cold, fish froze instantly after being caught and retrieved from the icy waters. (It should be noted that Birdseye was a man of many moustaches. "I have more 'staches than the law allows", he once explained. "Some are sissy. Some have hair on their chest.") From there it only took him 12 years to develop the flash-freezing process and American culinary history flew into mechanization and processing, from the meaty jungles of Chicago to a future of soylent green. So this series celebrates moustaches comestible of food items that wouldn't have really been food items without modernity.

Enter the vegemite 'stache, invented in 1923, a beefy, savoury, malt-based, spreadable 'stache. Its origins are in Australia, which should be noted is the only nation which began as an island penal colony, and it is its long term isolation (the island broke away from Gondwana approx 140 million years ago and 90% of Aussie wildlife is endemic) that makes this moustache unique. But the 'stache traveled the world quickly with the high numbers of Australian travelers and expats, wooing dumb American college kids with their funny accents, saying, "Vegemite, Australian for Moustache."

The vegemite moustache may be worn with or without packaging.

Harry Truman and SPAM, A Porkmoustache Historical Interlude

President Harry S Truman, best remembered for his folksy phrases like “The spam stops here” and “If you can’t stand the heat, you better wear a canned meat,” popularized the spam ‘stache in the final months of World War II, when he stretched the square slab of fleshy pink pork across his own lips in solidarity with the boys at the front who, far from home, were resigned to suffer the indignities of lining their mouths with canned meat byproducts. First a fad among navy men at Pearl Harbor, the spam stache sensation set sail around the globe, and quickly became an enduring symbol of soldierly sacrifice. Truman, the son of a Missouri farmer and livestock dealer, had grown up raising the hogs he 'stached, and was thus surprised to discover his predilection for the strange sweet “meat” that dangled akimbo above his lips. As a haberdasher in his early years, and later in the army, he had sworn that the finest mouthpiece was simply a lipline of bacon, and yet the odd odor of Shoulder of Pork and hAM wafting beneath his nose enticed Truman to revisit his beliefs about the kind of moustache a hardworking American might wear.


Following the war, he busied himself writing up a doctrine about the need to contain communist duck 'staches and advocating the promotion of democratic lip-dos around the world. General MacArthur is credited with the military dictum, "In facial hair, there is no substitute for ham," which is why Truman ultimately had to fire him.


Truman continued to wear spam long after it lost sway with the public in the postwar years, though it enjoyed a brief resurgence on the lips of patriots and paranoids during the red-baiting hearings of the 1950s.

The SPAM moustache is now generally only worn in Guam and Hawaii, where it was recently spotted in a bastardized sushi roll 'stache.

'stache #46 - the roast chicken moustache

The year was 1928. The U.S. economy was in shambles. City streets were filled with angry out of work apple cart men waiting in bread lines. Those lucky enough to get to the front of said lines often typically found the bread to be the equally reviled pumpernickle or rye. The nation’s mood, poet Carl Sandberg wrote, was "really shitty."

The food moustache, too had fallen on hard times, with the limes and oysters of earlier in the decade giving way to apple cores, empty elixir bottles (not even food!) and in a pinch, live rats.

One can only imagine, then, the joyous disbelief that greeted presidential candidate Herbert Hoover, when he famously promised that if elected, Americans would see a "chicken on every lip and a car in every garage."

While the latter part of the decree met with little enthusiasm, as a concerned populace cast a weary eye on their existing garages, which were already quite full and in no condition to accommodate an automobile, the idea of replacing their rat lips with a tasty bird was a winner, and Hoover swept into office in a rout.

Of course, Hoover was unable to make good on his promise ("What am I, a chicken delivery man?!," he famously spat at one soot-covered urchin tugging at his sleeve to ask where his lip-bird was.), and the president’s opponents soon began to wear the chickenstache as a reminder of a promise unfulfilled.

Left unsaid, of course, was the difficulty in 'staching an entire chicken. I mean, a whole chicken worn as a moustache? Makes very little sense, frankly.

As for tips on wearing, one may wear the roast chicken moustache at historical reenactments of the 1928 presidential campaign. Otherwise, it is hardly worth the effort.

'stache #44 - the fried oyster moustache

“Fry up an oyster, boys, my top lip grows cold.
Fry up an oyster, boys, these streams are lined with gold.”
-Miner’s song, traditional.

“Had you told me, Jeremiah “Jack” Jackie Johnson, a ramblin’ Okie hobo, that I’d one day be wearing a mink shawl and sporting a fried oyster moustache, well sir, I’d have ask you to pinch me, for I would assume I was in the midst of a beautiful, corn likker-induced hobo dream. But that’s what California did for us, it made our hobo dreams come true.”
-From “Golden Hobo: The J.J.J. Johnson story.” 1876.

Upon striking gold in the California hill country, the typical 19th century prospector would head to the local food-stachery and order the priciest food moustache available, which, at 49 cents per shellfish, was inevitably the fried oysterstache. Word of a land where man could arrive one morning with little more than a shovel and the will to work and be sporting a 49-cent oysterstache by evening spread rapidly throughout the country, and soon the gold rush was on, as hundreds of thousands of so-called “49ers” left the crowded confines of the Eastern U.S. for Northern California.

While refrigeration and modern transportation have made the oysterstache far more pervasive, its rarefied and noble origins remain. Wear it proudly when the air turns cool.

Caveat Geritor: Beware the scallopstache being sold as an oyster moustache. Some unscrupulous 'stache merchants have been known to pass this fool’s gold miner’s 'stache off on the unsuspecting.

'stache #43 - the cornichon moustache

The story of the cornichon moustache begins in Paris in the sultry summer of 1789. All the city's upstanding poor, unemployed, and forsaken French citizens had the good sense to get pissed about the skyrocketing price of bread and revolt against the man. Except one: the thirtysomething, former chef of and cuckholded lover of Marie Antoinette, Jacques Herbert de La Fayette. He was wedded to the Ancien Régime (that's French for "the old school") and completely missed the revolution. Whilst all ze other san-culottes were out storming ze streets, yelling, shooting guns in the air, and burning the monarch in effi- .. no wait, that's not quite right, that was the American revolution, right, right, right. What I meant to say was, while the French were dressed in their finest clothes, gathered in a nearby tennis court, busily drafting a finely-worded constitution, de La Fayette was in a little basement room pickling tiny gherkin cucumbers as a substitute 'stache for the now completely unaffordable baguettestache.

This distinctly aristocratic moustache is reserved for the hegemony, their brethren, the occasional upwardly-reaching bourgeois…, naturally,and Europeans. It is not appropriate for Americans to 'stache this little pickle and continue to believe that they are keeping it real. Because they are not.