Trad-Ivy Friday: San Francisco’s Cable Car Clothiers

The moment I walked in, a resolute olfactory waft took me back to Singletons Men’s Shop circa 1968…the little Trad goods haberdashery in my hometown of Florence, South Carolina. Within two feet of my entry, a comforting aromatic déjà vu hit me. And what made it so powerful was that I hadn’t smelled it in thirty years. But it was unmistakable. The place smelled just like Singletons. Clyde Singleton, creator of the joint in my home town, opened his doors in 1927. Charlie Pivnick created Cable Car Clothiers , declaring it open for business in 1946. And in both cases, it was very good.

But waft...to me at least, denotes movement and impermanence and so my characterization in the case of Cable Car is slightly incorrect. The smells didn’t need to move towards you. They were deeply permanent. Odoriferously patinated I’d say…just like the hyper-air conditioned Singletons of my youth when I’d go there with my dad on a July Saturday when he needed to pick up something he’d bought a week earlier. Bay Rum, wool, oxford cloth, leather, fifty year old fixtures and displays and cabinets and cases…glass topped or fronted…anything but fragile. Add sturdy to the broth and I’d say I’ve given my best effort to describe the key ingredients that constitute the aromatic legacy of such stalwart institutions as Cable Car Clothiers.

Alan Flusser had these things to say about Cable Car Clothiers in his 1996 book Style and the Man… “Much like its namesake, this is the type of store that gives San Francisco an irresistible allure. Step through its doors and you step back in time—way back. Cable Car Clothiers is an anamoly in an age where museums or old photo albums are often the only medium able to connect one with his roots.” Further from Flusser…“Charles (Pivnick) is the Sir Lancelot of the herringbone grail.” That’s Charlie and his grandson above. And here’s a link to their story.

So I took advantage of one of my limited little windows of free time amidst my recent San Francisco meeting and walked over to Cable Car Clothiers. I’d seen their mailings a few times and had been to their website but I had to see first-hand, this Trad-Prep-Anglo outpost for myself…in situ. In addition to its tenure, its spoke in the wheel of an essentially extinct Old San Francisco…there’s gravitas. A tight little paucity of words to convey something ain’t part of my ability but I’m gonna give it a try. Cable Car Clothiers is (was) “J. Press West” – but different. Its clutteredness says hallmarked sterling and cucumber sandwiches, effortlessly offered where J. Press’ dishevelment is an equally uncontrived badge of electroplate and a Kraft cheese saddled Triscuit. The American Trad offerings abound but a key differentiator for Cable Car has been their commitment to British Goods. And yes, the previous sartorial genus-species categories deserve to be capitalized.

When I think of what old San Francisco might have been, I speculate that Herb Caen could have easily been a customer of Cable Car Clothiers. I mean where else would one want to go for the goods necessary to achieve this level of pinned particularity?

Same with Lucius Beebe but only for the panoply of accoutrement to complement his bespoken Henry Poole togs.

And one of my best buddies in the world knows exactly where to get some of the most authentic three button Ivy-Trad swathings. Here’s Toad replete in Cable Car-ness. Context is here.

BarnabyConrad, Jr. for sure, coulda kitted out courtesy of Cable Car Clothiers, for his evenings as Lord of El Matador, his North Beach whiskey hole. And Herb Caen was on many an evening, Conrad's wingman at the bar. Conrad said this about his El Matador… “It was an extraordinary time. Imagine, Noel Coward in my little rotten saloon."

Conrad would be a natural for Cable Car Clothiers. San Francisco native…prepped at Taft in Connecticut and then captained the freshman boxing team at Chapel Hill. Flirted with the painting curriculum at the University of New Mexico for a bit and then went back East to Yale and finished up. And Conrad was a fairly serious bullfighter…having faced hooved opponents in Spain, Mexico and Peru.

Conrad and Cable Car Clothiers have both been the proverbial real deal. Conrad…the antithesis of new moneyed WASP poseurs who buy more horse than they have skill to mount, then end up getting thrown and busting their asses while trying to ride with whatever Hunt they've bought their way into. Cable Car Clothiers…the antithesis of the slave-labor, sweatshop artisanal-heritage-authentic, spray-on-tan patination of the current gaggle of Trad-Ivy knock off artistes. You don’t “spray-on” the stones necessary to go toe to hoof with a freakin’ bull. The requisite stones aren’t adjective heavy like my stories and they damned sure aren’t fused and glued in a sweatshop. Cable Car Clothier Calibre Cavalry twill, hooked center-vented-lapped seamed balls. That’s what Conrad had on beneath his girlie looking matador pants in the photo above.

Oh, and the music that you hear when winnowing through the hallowed crannies of Cable Car Clothiers? It isn’t loud enough to dance to. And it’s coming from a radio. I saw it. It looked old enough to have tubes. Knobs on the face of it—not buttons to press or switches to flip. Knobs…you know, the things you turn to find a station. Probably a Public Radio station because it was playing really decent stuff that was just a bit too elegant and durable for commercial viability.

I’m in such need of clothes that my list of potential Cable Car Clothiers purchases was endless. I kid, I kid. Shut up. But I’d decided before I rounded the corner and entered the place that I’d like to have a token…a talisman from Trad-Ivy West. And much to my surprise, everything and I mean everything, in the store, was thirty percent off. You see, Cable Car Clothiers is decamping. Yep…walking away from the patinated vessel whose legacy befits the melange of Anglo British and Trad-Wasp American goods purveyed therein. They're downsizing…moving to smaller quarters. I hope that the reason for the move isn’t related to the declining appetite for…really decent stuff that was just a bit too elegant and durable for commercial viability.

I’d love to be more hopeful about such things but I can’t. I don’t have any attachment to Cable Car Clothiers per se. I mean really, I’d never been there before but now I can say that I saw the old-ish place at least once. Certainly I have a mawkish load of treacle for all of these once great places that are disappearing; sometimes abruptly evaporating or occasionally, in the case of Cable Car Clothiers, opting for Hospice as a step-down before calling it quits.

My hope is that they’ll flourish in their piccolo version of the original sanctum. But you can’t replicate decades of layers deep everythingness overnight. Sure, you could call in Ralph’s “visual team” or some of the slapdash, twee talent found via the “tumblr inspiration boards” … you know, one of those self-anointed “stylists”. My worry is that you’d get one of two things as a result. Either the dissonance that’s so painfully obvious in the new (relatively new) J. Press store on Madison Avenue. Dissonance manifest in what’s still a fairly decent pile of J. Press legacy merchandise that looks like it somehow ended up getting delivered to the wrong store. Merchandise sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a terribly sterile and brand-new chrome examining table, tentatively, in a paper gown, nervously awaiting the customer doctor. Awaiting the doctor while being attended by a jittery salesperson nurse. An attendant who feels just as out of place and tentative. Perhaps having needed to retire thirty years ago. Oh, and the other thing you'd get--music. Loud enough to dance to. Once the tubes warmed up.

So here’s to Cable Car Clothiers. To olfactory remembrances. And Patina. And music--not loud enough to dance to.

Onward. In my Cable Car Clothiers striped button down. I needed one.

ADG II