Photos of cool jackets owned by others (non-brand specific)

[tropicalbob]

@Edward, interesting post. I always find re-enactment/living history of things within living memory to be somewhat in poor taste. WWI living history without the trench foot and rats, just for one night? WWII living history; well no one wants to reenact the people interned in concentration camps.
It's all just a big excuse for dressing up really, and then creating systems to rationalize that IMHO. By contrast, we have good Roman records of how the Roman Army was equipped and operated on the march, so reenacting that could have value since we could learn something that wasn't recorded and no one is alive to tell us.
But our records of modern conflicts are complete enough with first hand accounts that I doubt there is anything to be learned by trying to 'live' the less dangerous parts of it for 48 hours or so.

@rocketeer, that's also a good post. A few years ago I researched crimes reported during the first six months of the US occupation, and compared them to crimes in Kobe after the massive earthquake there, and found that the corresponding increase in reported rapes was staggering. It didn't seem to be so much about race or culture or winning the war, but opportunity. When the lights go out, the veneer of civilization vanishes, and your neighbors will do terrible things to you. AND society will deny your experience and create 'we all stuck together myths' so they don't have to look the problem in the face.

Speaking of the U.K. in WWII, there was that serial rapist/murderer. Tim Roth played him in a TV Mini-series, he was really nasty.

My father was with the very first USMC communications units to land on Japanese soil. They had very strict orders not to harass the natives in any way. Despite this, he found a couple of his guys (he was a sergeant in charge of the unit) calling and harassing the locals and he had to discipline them. He told me there was a lot of bad feeling about it, as they had served together on Okinawa and in other combat zones and the men felt they were just getting a little of their own back. He thought that orders were orders and, besides, it was a matter of honor. That was his number one consideration in life. He was an ungodly pain in the ass, but an honorable one.

 

[Edward]

@Edward, interesting post. I always find re-enactment/living history of things within living memory to be somewhat in poor taste. WWI living history without the trench foot and rats, just for one night? WWII living history; well no one wants to reenact the people interned in concentration camps.
It's all just a big excuse for dressing up really, and then creating systems to rationalize that IMHO. By contrast, we have good Roman records of how the Roman Army was equipped and operated on the march, so reenacting that could have value since we could learn something that wasn't recorded and no one is alive to tell us.
But our records of modern conflicts are complete enough with first hand accounts that I doubt there is anything to be learned by trying to 'live' the less dangerous parts of it for 48 hours or so.

There are folks here in the UK who do Roman army stuff, looks pretty cool. I'm on the fence with re-enactment; I think there is a danger that some of it can end up jingoist and glorifying, tough done right there can be an element of living history. (Somehow, though, that always seems to work best on the home front stuff). It is probably notable that the Axis-re-enactment stuff is markedly more popular in places which were neither occupied nor uncder credible threat of invasion, so perhaps that affects it.

I do sometimes think, though, that a genuinely realistic simulation of what it would really have been like to be on the beaches in D Day or in a trench at the Somme might teach some of the idiots that think it's all a boy's own adventure a thing or two. How you'd really achieve that, though, who knows.

@rocketeer, that's also a good post. A few years ago I researched crimes reported during the first six months of the US occupation, and compared them to crimes in Kobe after the massive earthquake there, and found that the corresponding increase in reported rapes was staggering. It didn't seem to be so much about race or culture or winning the war, but opportunity. When the lights go out, the veneer of civilization vanishes, and your neighbors will do terrible things to you. AND society will deny your experience and create 'we all stuck together myths' so they don't have to look the problem in the face.[/quote]

Especially in the era when the media were somewhat more malleable from a government point of view.

Speaking of the U.K. in WWII, there was that serial rapist/murderer. Tim Roth played him in a TV Mini-series, he was really nasty.

Christie, yes. A genuine psychopath. LUcky he wasn't as good at hiding the bodies as he thouht or he'd not have been caught.

That was John Christie. He was a bit more notorious for what he did after the war. His case was put forward as one of the reasons to abolish execution in England due to the wrongful conviction of Timothy Evans for what Christie had done.

That's the one. The Roth miniseries was excellent. There was also a great film version back in the 70s with Dicky Attenborough as Christie and John Hurt playing Timothy Evans.

Always felt sorry for Evans, always wondered why he confessed. I guess maybe he felt he deserved it somehow - or perhaps a confession was beaten out of him (not an unknown police tactic at the time).

My father was with the very first USMC communications units to land on Japanese soil. They had very strict orders not to harass the natives in any way. Despite this, he found a couple of his guys (he was a sergeant in charge of the unit) calling and harassing the locals and he had to discipline them. He told me there was a lot of bad feeling about it, as they had served together on Okinawa and in other combat zones and the men felt they were just getting a little of their own back. He thought that orders were orders and, besides, it was a matter of honor. That was his number one consideration in life. He was an ungodly pain in the ass, but an honorable one.

I imagnie it was much easier to treat the Japanese like that, given the programming of official propaganda that had otherised them to such a degree. Less easy in Europe (though it certainly still went on; controversy still rages about the fact that more French women were raped by Allied forces than by those in Hitler's army) where so many of them may have had relatives and/or ancestors, and where there wasn't the same, easy otherisation on racial grounds.

 

[Big J]

@Edward, yeah, I agree. There's things we know about the Roman Army from the chronicles of Generals, and they do occasionally offer glimpses of the stark realities of the lowly legionnaires. But for the most part we have nothing like WW1 letters or poems, WWII memoirs and photos, or Vietnam memoirs to show us the reality of the ordinary soldier. So I think in that respect, living history has a role to play in finding things out.
The home front is especially fertile ground in this respect since although it is within living memory, the shear scale of the experience appears to have discouraged first hand literature on the subject (everyone thinks their own experience wasn't special enough to record), and at the time, the homefront narrative was tightly 'managed' for propaganda purposes, whilst now it's been romanticized? Maybe.

Dickie Attenborough and John Hurt? Sounds pretty good! I'll have to try and find that!

@tropicalbob, that's a very interesting anecdote, thank you for sharing. It kind of reminds me of reading USMC Pacific War vets memoirs. There's a real gap in perceptions between the guys that have been in it since the start, and the guys who come in later, after the Japanese start really losing. Those guys who come in later seem to have generally a much more brutal attitude towards the japanese (possible a kind of 'feedback loop' sparked by the losing Japanese increasing brutality). There's a really good book by John Dower, Cultures of War. It compares Japanese WWII culture to that of modern extreme Islamic fanaticism. Japan essentially saw itself on a crusade, a religious war against non-members of the faith, in the name of their 'God-Emperor'. They were more like Islamic State than Nazi Germany. That's a big factor in the level of brutality in the Pacific War.
Additionally, as many US citizens were second, third, fourth generation German or Italian Americans, US WWII propaganda playing on racism could have backfired. But with Japanese Americans already being racially discriminated against in the era, racializing propaganda doesn't seem to have been a worry.
Also, bear in mind that two Japanese American families in Hawaii attempted to conceal a downed Japanese airman on the day of Pearl Harbor because 'he was Japanese just like us' (mistake), an action that directly led to the internment of Japanese-Americans. Even Japanese Americans didn't appear to primarily identify as 'Americans' (although this is kids me of understandable given the discrimination they faced).
Bizarrely, the 13 year Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, famous for his totally unrepentant view of Japanese wartime actions, war crime denier extraordinaire, frequent spouting of xenophobic slurs, producer of several pro-kamikaze movies and writer of the best selling anti-American book 'The Japan that can Say No!' wasn't made this way by some of the hideous crimes that US soldiers did commit in post-war Japan, but rather that an occupation soldier took a lick of his ice-cream when he was a kid back in the 50's!
It's amazing how such little actions can spawn such far-reaching and consuming obsessions.

@rocketeer, yeah, I better get back to the jackets!

 

[Edward]

@Edward,
Dickie Attenborough and John Hurt? Sounds pretty good! I'll have to try and find that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Rillington_Place

Should be able to pick it up on DVD very cheaply (Region 2, at least).

 

[Hh121]

 

[Monitor]

How can anyone not find this to be the most beautiful leather ever is beyond me. This is exactly what I picture in my mind when I think of a perfect leather jacket.

 

[JMax]

How can anyone not find this to be the most beautiful leather ever is beyond me. This is exactly what I picture in my mind when I think of a perfect leather jacket.

You obviously have not seen the vintage jackets in the classifieds then.

 

[Monitor]

You obviously have not seen the vintage jackets in the classifieds then.

Which one? I've rarely seen something vintage that was so beautiful. Vintage stuff is nice but the CXL just defeats everything.

 

[JMax]

Which one? I've rarely seen something vintage that was so beautiful. Vintage stuff is nice but the CXL just defeats everything.

Go in and check out the post “vintage leather jacket”. Prepare to have mind blown.

 

[dannyk]

@Monitor, @JMax is referencing this specific classified that showed up today. It’s ummmmm interesting to say the least. It’s classic spam.

 

[handymike]

Ahhhhhh...
They are referencing @tmitchell59's leather jacket collection that he's been thinning.
Terry has perhaps the most impressive collection on the planet!

 

[JMax]

Ahhhhhh...
They are referencing @tmitchell59's leather jacket collection that he's been thinning.
Terry has perhaps the most impressive collection on the planet!

He certainly does but I was joking with Monitor. A spammer posted pics of his/her “vintage” jackets— atrocious stuff modeled by some weird-posing goofball.

 

[handymike]

Missed that one.

...oh no...I found it

 

[tmitchell59]

Ahhhhhh...
They are referencing @tmitchell59's leather jacket collection that he's been thinning.
Terry has perhaps the most impressive collection on the planet!

I have several impressive jackets, but I keep waiting for a really impressive collection to come along. I know they're out there they just don't come here.

I'd like to know where some of the jackets that I didn't get went. Other people are out there after the same stuff.

Lot of people here have a lot of jackets and buy and sell jackets all the time. The main difference they're dealing with new jackets for the most part. I'm doing both old and new.

I'm really out of money anyway! I may have gotten mine. I'm trying to get what I can get but most days are isn't much.

Sent from my SM-S903VL using Tapatalk

 

[Monitor]

60's Taubers with side laces!

 

[tmitchell59]

60's Taubers with side laces!

Love the Taubers. That is probably their last label. I had a cafe racer with this label it was nice

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[Monitor]

Taubers has the nicest leather ever.

But all said and done, nothing is as cool as a true cafe racer leather jacket...

 

[Monitor]

Though this isn't far off...

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

Though this isn't far off...

This one is total sweet! Super everything!

 

[ton312]

That windward. Love the config false half belt on the back. Excellent. It's been on eBay for quite awhile. If it were larger...