Ties on State Street

April 27, 2004 - Hot Ties in the Old Town

Yesterday was hot. Molly the dog spent the entire day in the shade lying next to her water bowl so she wouldn’t have to get up to have a drink. The kids wanted to wash the car and play with their super soakers, the ones that had been sitting outside since October. To everyone’s surprise (and some people’s dismay), the super soakers still worked. And while some people spent the day trying to stay cool, “other people like us, we gotta work.”

Luckily there is no dress code for being a member of the dedicated staff of edhat.com. Yesterday, when we were walking up and down State Street looking for Men In Ties, we were wearing shorts and T-shirts and edhat hats. And, we saw many people dressed up like us. We even met a few shorts-wearing edhat admirers who told us how cool our website was … or maybe they told us how hot it was. We can’t remember the exact words.

But, even in this business casual kind of town, there was no shortage of tie wearing men walking down the street. Some even had jackets. And, some had black suits. One pack of State Street saunterers consisted of four Santa Barbara County attorneys clad in full lawyer uniform who seemed not the least bit hot-under-the-collar. We broke out into a sweat just looking at them.

After the counting was done, a dedicated staffer who volunteers at Roosevelt Elementary School, was walking into the school behind a sharply dressed man (jacket and tie). Who would be wearing such a get-up on a day like yesterday? Well, it was Dick Riordan, former Mayor of Los Angeles, current California Secretary of Education, and personal friend of Arnold the Governor. The dedicated staffer shook the famous man’s hand and chatted. And while the honorable politician was spinning his charm, the staffer was focusing on his tie.

“Hot day to wear a tie, isn’t it?” the staffer said.

Riordan muttered something under his breath about TV reporters and then took off his coat.

On our journey down State Street we found 18% of men to be clad in fashionable neckwear. This seemed like quite a high number considering how many tourists were in our samples. Our speculation is that most of the men in ties were lawyers, but we’ll leave that for a future edhat. Also, 42% of tie-wearers wore jackets.

In our contest, 6 subscribers guessed 17% of tie men, but no one guessed 18%. The 6 people were Lemony, Kay, Necrophonica, CA N8VE, VioEd, and Mud. VioEd’s 50% guess of jackets-for-ties won the TIE-breaker. Congratulations to VioEd who will receive 2 movie tickets.

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