Golf Sale Punk, Why Do You Do What You Do?

Man, this guy must have been doing that job for about five years now.
All he does is just stand there at the confluence of Poland and Oxford Streets holding onto a pole on the top of which is mounted a board bearing the legend 'Golf Sale'.
Where this is I have no idea.
I've worked around Soho for over a dozen years and I've never seen any fucking golf sale, but there he stands in his studded leather jacket and bondage trousers and his Dr Martens and his rings and his spikes and chains and studs and tattoos and all the other punk rock paraphernalia which bedeck his scrawny carcass.
It must take him ages to get all of this shit in order each morning just to go and stand on the human sewer that is Oxford Street all day long clutching a weather-beaten board advertising some mythical golf sale and all for what can't be much of a ball-hair away from minimum wage.
There he is. Playing air guitar with the board. A punk with a job.
Isn't that selling out? I mean, if you're gonna sell-out, sell OUT.
Get a real job, one that pays proper money, enough to keep you in PVC and UHU all year round.
Don't get a job that tramps and alchies customarily perform because they sold their self-respect like a child into sexual slavery years ago.
Don't do this job. Not if you clearly give enough of a shit about yourself to bother sticking together the whole gamut of your punk costume everyday.
Five years.

Before him they had some sorry middle-aged Eastern European dude who wore cheap leather slip-ons with tracksuit trousers and who had a broken drinker's face.
He was the sort of lost-it-all loser you expected to see doing this job, a man who had staggered beyond the final outpost of desperation and tumbled headlong into the arms of defeat.
And there he would stand, in the middle of hell, thousands and thousands of obnoxious, repugnant, slavering molluscs passing this invisible man-island and his fantasy golf sale while all the while he fixed his beaten stare down onto the grey concrete slabs which when wet and dirty could every now and then at least be mistaken for creating what appeared to be a smile, something never to be found in the unforgiving eyes of the lobotomised hordes of shoppers and office drones which he now could no longer evidently bear to meet.
Then one day he was out and the punk guy was in.
Plucked from a life of lingering around boarded-up shopping precincts with a can of super lager kicking puddles and occasionally unnerving some old people.
Boy did his life change for the better that day.
Where is that damn golf sale anyway? Would he even know?
Tomorrow I will ask him.

Le Tableu Noir

I have this weird hankering for a pair of burgundy coloured trousers.
Not demims, but trousers.
These probably aren't very fashionable and the only people I've ever seen wearing trousers of this hue have been either Mod retroists or tramps, so I dunno what that says about me, but hey, I've never given much of a shit about fashion, so who cares?

Anyway, on Friday I went into this shop just off Carnaby Street which sells kinda Sixties style clothes. I've passed it many times before but not being into this groove I never had any reason to venture in before, but the retro Mod thing got me thinking that they might have some burgundy trousers, which they did.

Straight away however I could tell that the ones they had were going to be too tight. They were like drainpipes. I want to wear them with motorcycle boots but there was no way I was going to get them over those.

I said this to the small middle-aged Asian woman that appeared to be running the place but she took no notice of my scepticism and persuaded me to try them on anyway.

The first pair were so tight I couldn't even do up the zip properly so I called to her and asked for a bigger pair.

But as I was stood there waiting in the changing room in my pants and socks, the curtain was suddenly yanked back exposing me to the rest of the shop and there's this little rodent faced woman stood there with the larger size.

Luckily there was no one else in the shop to see my spindly white legs or my crumpled dignity, but all the same, who the hell does this?

Then as I disgruntledly moved to redraw the curtain, I caught her momentarily giving my semi-nakedness what I felt to be a disapproving glance.

What the fuck?!

I mean, take a fucking look at yourself, sweetheart!
Four and a half foot high with a hook nose and sticky-out teeth!
You've got some mirrors in here! Use them!

Anyway, the larger pair, as I'd already guessed, were little better, especially on the leg.

I couldn't get the leg down over any part of the fucking boot.

"Ach, fuck this!" I mumbled to myself and disdainfully removed the bastards onto the floor.

No sooner had I done so however than this freak was back asking how they were and fiddling with the curtain as if about to whisk it back again.

"Em, can you give me a second there?!" I said urgently.

Eventually, back in my denims and boots I explained to her that they were too tight.

She found this difficult to accept.

"Too tight? No. These are not too tight. Maybe you need another size?"

I wasn't interested, but she began to insist forcing me into an irritated explanation of why we were both wasting our time.

"Look, these trousers are clearly supposed to be tight. I could tell that when I first saw them. I knew they wouldn't fit over my boots. Don't worry about it. Thanks for your help!"

But she was clearly not used to giving up so easily on a sale.

Her fat husband and master was probably sat in his vest watching cable TV in the backroom gnawing on a chicken leg with one ear listening in to her failing negotiating technique and his fat greasy fingers loosening his belt ready to give her a good leathering for blowing the deal, but she was getting on my tits now so I didn't give a shit.

Finally in a confused panic she said, "Well, you could wear them with shoes. These are supposed to be worn with shoes, not boots. Your boots are too wide. You need shoes for these trousers!"

Ah, the penny drops; the master's belt is off.

Desperately she tried to show me some other trousers as I made my getaway, but I was having none of it and fled leaving her to a long night gingerly dressing her welts whilst whimpering silently in some darkened bedroom.

Record Shop Boy v The Silent Stare'n'Smile Technique

Shop assistants are a weird species.
Who in their right mind would wish to willingly expose themselves to the insane horror that is the general public?
Especially in the gibbering madness that is retail?
These people ain't normal. You've gotta be some sort stunted masochist to want to endure this demented freakshow on a daily basis.
So I have no sympathy for any of them. They're fucking weirdos and deserve no pity.
And the thing that irks me most about these vermin is the way they descend upon you the second your badly dressed carcass has hobbled over their threshold, like grinning leeches or retarded trolls, hovering over your shoulder with dubious offers of help.
The only help I need, you strange bastard, is directions to the nearest Taser store so I can zap you in the face with 20,000 watts then step over your quivering blubber to find whatever the fuck it was I came in here for in the first place.

But given that this would see me probably achieve a custodial sentence of some sort, I have now developed a far less stressful but equally lethal repellent, which is this: when they ask if you need help, say nothing.
Say nothing but stare straight into their porcine eyes and allow the vaguest of smiles to spread across your lips.
I have been testing this recently and found that this freaks the bastards right out.
Under no circumstances engage in conversation. Not even mono-syllabic answers. Nothing. Just smile and stare.
This is translatable to every sinew of the retail spectrum including the cesspit that is the independent record shop.

I road tested this today in Select-A-Disc (or Sister Ray or whatever it's called nowadays) on Berwick Street.
I could tell straightaway that the geek behind the counter was of the real asshole variety: specs, Gomez t-shirt, whiteboy Afro, said nothing to me as he thrust out his wank-hand for the CD, no smile, nothing, just rudimentary independent record shop contempt.
So I deployed my silent stare'n'smile technique.
Instantly he was paralysed by fear. He was totally unprepared. He couldn't comprehend what was happening. He looked completely disorientated. Sickeningly so. I could see terror etched into all four of his little weasley eyes. His legs appeared about to buckle underneath him. He handed me the CD. His face was white. I cranked up the Mona Lisaesque smile a notch. He retched. I left.
Remember my face, for I will return. Pray you are not working that day!