Generally, my rule is that if I can't fit a paperback book into a pocket in the pants, I'm not going to buy them. I'm a big fan of cargo pants that have two front pockets, two back pockets, and two thigh pockets.

Because if women could carry the things they needed in the pockets of their trousers, they wouldn't need to buy handbags.

So this is all a plot by the handbag industry, then? Bah.

Buying trousers in general has been a huge pain for the last few years. I have to search far and wide to find any reasonably priced trousers that:
a) aren't so low cut everyone can see your underpants while sitting down
b) haven't got uber-skinny legs
c) aren't painful in the crotch while sitting down
d) have usable pockets

I've resorted to thrift stores; it seems they haven't made a pair of trousers I actually liked since the mid 1990s.

You could try the boy's department. They might have more sensible trousers in your size.

On fashion: the annoying skinny jeans fad. No offense to any that can wear skinny jeans and look GOOD in them, but I believe that group is probably in the minority. I am not fat, but I do have thick thighs, a bit of an hour glass figure going on and short legs. Skinny jeans schlep to my body like a wet suit. They not only make me look shorter than I (already) am, but also make my legs look like overstuffed sausages. Or, actually, like gooey drumsticks. (Thick on top with a gross taper to my shoes).

When the skinny jeans fad started, it wasn't so hard to also find boot cut jeans, which fit me just fine and don't make me look awful. But the boot cuts are slowly fading away! I'll probably go to a store one day, stock up like a 2012 believer collects spam and weather the skinny jean storm until the fashion pendulum swings back my way.

On the topic of pockets, where the heck did all the cargo jeans go? Seems these days that you can only ever find cargo khakis, and though they don't altogether suck, it's still weird that cargo jeans have gone the way of the dodo.

Back to traffic, here's a bit of trivia. There is one situation in the US where you can turn LEFT on red legally, any guesses?

I think it's when you're turning from a one-way street onto another one-way street, and (of course) the way is clear. Not sure, as there are very few one-way streets around here.


I think, on top of the handbag conspiracy, there's also the designer to consider. He doesn't care if your pants are practical; he just wants them to look good, because that helps him sell more. And bulky items in pockets do not look good. But it works for men's pants because they are perceived to care less about designers and fashion.

You'd be correct sir. True, it isn't that common, but they do exist. Sure feels weird when you take it.

Ditto on the one way to one way left turn, the downtown here in Calgary is all bloody one-ways and I've done said thing many times, although it feels weird every time.

Also ditto on the pants pocket thing - let's face it, I wear cargo pants on a very regular basis (they're my work pants, I get 5 clean ones per week from the cleaners and just tend to wear them all the time) and they're severely ugly with stuff in the pockets. Practical, but ugly. Hey, what can I say, they're a step up from coveralls and sweat pants which was my usual choice in clothing before switching to a pants and collared shirt uniform here at the shop.

My wife complains regularly about the "skinny jeans" fad too - it's not too difficult to get a pair that look decent across the rear but try to find some that fit properly through the legs. Every time we go past the local high school near our house, I see a large contingent of very slightly chubby girls (maybe 10-20 lbs heavier than ideal) stuffed into jeans that look like they were sprayed on with a "muffin top" hanging out over top of the waistband. If there is a single less attractive way for a non-bolemic girl to wear pants, I don't know what it is.

Even super-skinny girls can end up with muffin top, if little Taylor is a size 2 but convinced she's a size 0. Or if she's wearing a size 2 but a given brand runs small.

Did I mention that women's clothing sizes make little to no sense? With virtually no consistency between -- and often within -- brands? Ugh.

Ohhh, ohhh, women's sizes! What a trip! I somewhat understand the inconsistancy with tops, (though wouldn't it be easier to find fitting shirts if they did a combo of bra/waist/shoulder measurement? And maybe put a "blousy" label on the free-flowing stuff?) but pants?? I wish women's pants were sized by specific measurements like bras and men's pants.

And just about all of continental Europe. I always thought the sensible British way was the oddity.

One thing that bothers me is how unwilling people are to jaywalk in this part of the world. Coupled with the daft policy of allowing cars to turn right on red, this means you regularly see large groups of people waiting patiently by a pedestrian crossing in front of an empty road, until the lights change and the pedestrians all march across in front of the cars now trying to turn right.



I don't see why you'd expect this to make any difference. The measurements on men's trousers aren't really inches - they're measured in a mysterious, ephemeral unit known only to clothes manufacturers which varies from pair to pair.

It's a difference in philosophy IMHO: whether or not you put the priority on smooth vehicle traffic or towards pedestrian traffic. In a lot of places, the emphasis has been on vehicle traffic. Here in my home city, you see much less pedestrian traffic on the street than I'd imagine was normal in European cities. We have urban sprawl instead, which means you have to drive to work because it's several miles away. My wife is an oddity here; we live close enough to her work for her to walk there, whereas my shop is about 12km away distance traveled.

Well, it's only really practical to prioritize pedestrians in reasonably dense cities. Unfortunately, this unfortunate era called the 1950s happened, during which traffic engineers decided to prioritize cars, everywhere, regardless of how dense the city was or how many people were trying to walk around. So they made the roads wider, the sidewalks narrower, the crossings more infrequent, herded people with guard rails when they predictably tried to jaywalk, built annoying footbridges and underpasses and made people walk up and down stairs because they didn't want a stop light slowing down the traffic, and generally did a lot of idiotic things in the name of "safety" that probably wound up getting more pedestrians killed.

They've only started undoing all this stupidity since the 1990s or so. Except in Hong Kong, which only tries something new (that doesn't directly involve making money) after everyone else has already done it, so they're still stuck in the 1950s. There the government still pats itself on the back when it removes a pedestrian crossing and replaces it with a footbridge.
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I really hate the skinny jeans fad too. Even the men's jeans weren't immune to the fad, at least in Asia. I tried on a pair, a size larger than what I normally wear, and found them unexpectedly tight. Even Ngau has trouble finding baggy pants anymore, which is awful because putting a big guy in slim cut jeans makes him look like an orange balanced on two toothpicks.

And having stuff in your pockets only looks ugly if the pants are supposed to be form-fitting. I have a pair of awesome wide-legged drawstring cargo khakis from the late 1990s, which look OK even with my wallet and phone in the side pockets. Unfortunately, they are looking pretty manky now. I am thinking I should learn to sew better, because I sure haven't seen anything similar in any shop.

On pedestrians:
Yeah, I know, it all sucks. I'm actually one of the few people in the U.S. who actually doesn't mind walking if the distance is short enough. It certainly doesn't help that there are hardly any sidewalks here in lexington. Those areas that DO have sidewalks typically are usually isolated spots that aren't linked to any other areas that have sidewalks. It's very frustrating.

On Pants:
I could care less about cargo. Whenever I go pants shopping I usually go straight for the carpenter jeans. My god I love these things. General rule of thumb on pockets states that if it's big enough to fit my hand and my wrist than this humble one will wear it. That's the sweetspot area for me. Any smaller or larger and I refuse to touch them.