Author Topic: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?  (Read 702 times)

Ben

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Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« on: December 07, 2024, 11:18:38 AM »
This question is based both off a reference I just read in the Daniel Penny thread and a concealment video I recently watched that got some hate for recommending hoodies as cover garments because they might make you look gangster.

I think the answer might be "both", based on geography, culture, and maybe age. I rarely wore hoodies back in California, but they were pretty mainstream with the surfer dudes, and my now mid-40s Calif Nephew in law has never been seen by me without one on any day below like 80deg.

Here in Idaho - and the concealment video I watched was made by an Idaho holster maker - they are absolutely mainstream across demographics. The young guys (and gals) wear them; 90% of the tradespeople wear them; farmers wear them. Even older guys (I'm only 30 though) like me wear them. My farm coats are almost all hoodies, I'm sitting here typing while wearing my Deus Vult sweatshirt hoodie, and I'll be wearing it with a pistol underneath when I hit the German store for Xmas food in a couple of hours.

Hoodies have become my #1 concealment garment for 2/3 of the year here, and they certainly seem mainstream and "blend in" to me. Other than I guess you might not be grey man in the gun culture, because pretty much every customer and employee in my LGS also wears hoodies most of the year. I find them really good for concealment, and very easy to clear when I draw appendo.

So anyway, I have seen them as mainstream in the Calif coastal dude crowd, and across demographics in Idaho. While they might certainly be an indicator of gangster to me here, it would have to be coupled with other behaviors by the wearer. I don't know enough about places like NYC or Bogie's auto parts store to know if a hoodie alone is a major indicator of gangster.

Anyways, just curious.
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WLJ

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2024, 11:22:36 AM »
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dogmush

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2024, 11:50:27 AM »
In FL if it drops below 60 hoodies are pretty ubiquitous. Vi get strange looks for not having one.

A baseball hat under the hood is pretty common as well.

Kingcreek

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #3 on: December 07, 2024, 11:50:45 AM »
It’s not the hoodie, it’s how you wear it.
If you keep the hood pulled way forward over your head, slouch, keep your hands in your pockets, and especially if you wear a face mask, it’s gangsta.
It you’re just a person wearing a hoodie and the hood is down unless it’s really cold, probably mainstream.
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zahc

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #4 on: December 07, 2024, 11:57:12 AM »
A Carhartt logo automatically makes your hoodie Idaho - compliant.
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K Frame

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2024, 12:13:40 PM »
Gangsta mainstream, biach!
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Hawkmoon

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2024, 01:57:32 PM »
The hoodie is the new Batmask. The cape is optional.
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JTHunter

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2024, 03:23:24 PM »
Never wore one.  Never will.  Half the winter, my jackets are unzipped and hanging open UNLESS the WC is near or below 0F.  I will occasionally wear a ball cap or a stocking cap but it either has to be VERY cold or I'm going to be outside for a while.
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Perd Hapley

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2024, 03:41:53 PM »
The whole idea that hooded sweatshirts are some kind of racist trope, or make wypepo unduly suspicious, was fabricated by BLM (among many other fabrications). St. Trayvon Martin was wearing one the night he FA'd and FO'd.

They were ubiquitous in the late 1900s of my rural/suburban Midwestern childhood, which is I was so excited when I got one. (Yeah, I was a dumb kid, and it didn't take much.) If I recall correctly, they were also a part of the Army PT uniform in the late '90s.

FWIW, I quit wearing anything made of sweatsuit material once I got out of the military. They're called sweatsuits for a reason. That stuff doesn't breathe. Also, quit calling them "hoodies." That sounds stupid.
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Ben

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2024, 03:50:19 PM »

FWIW, I quit wearing anything made of sweatsuit material once I got out of the military. They're called sweatsuits for a reason. That stuff doesn't breathe. Also, quit calling them "hoodies." That sounds stupid.

Of note, they are not all sweatshirt material. Half of mine are sweatshirts, half are fleece/polartec, half are sort of thicker cotton between a sweatshirt and a cotton shirt, a quarter are Carhart type jackets, and a quarter of them are the thin athletic moisture wicking ones, though I only use those for working out. Oh, and maybe an eighth are flannel shirts with hoods.
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Perd Hapley

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2024, 03:54:58 PM »
Of note, they are not all sweatshirt material. Half of mine are sweatshirts, half are fleece/polartec, half are sort of thicker cotton between a sweatshirt and a cotton shirt, a quarter are Carhart type jackets, and a quarter of them are the thin athletic moisture wicking ones, though I only use those for working out. Oh, and maybe an eighth are flannel shirts with hoods.

So are they really "hoodies"? Is a hoodie anything with a hood? Was that concealment video saying that flannel shirts with hoods look gangster?
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Ben

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2024, 03:59:41 PM »
So are they really "hoodies"? Is a hoodie anything with a hood? Was that concealment video saying that flannel shirts with hoods look gangster?

He didn't specify what constituted a hoodie, nor did the complainers, but IIRC, he was wearing a sweatshirt hoodie, AKA a hooded sweathsirt, AKA a sweatshirt with a hood.  =D

On the concealment, of all the ones I have, while most of them conceal well, it is the sweatshirt/polartec ones that I find easy to get out of the way when practicing a draw.
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Bogie

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2024, 09:12:43 PM »
Here in St. Louis, the summer sauna capital of the midwest (all the heat, and several big rivers...), you'll see the gangsters wearing black hoodies, up and forward, with a black covid mask, a black baseball flatbrim hat, and dark sunglasses. In August. I think that they think it will keep people from noticing them.
 
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Boomhauer

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #13 on: December 07, 2024, 09:25:29 PM »
I do not understand how people wear a hoodie in summer but it’ll be 95 outside and you’ll see them with the hoodie on and the hood pulled up too

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #14 on: December 08, 2024, 08:41:52 AM »
This question is based both off a reference I just read in the Daniel Penny thread and a concealment video I recently watched that got some hate for recommending hoodies as cover garments because they might make you look gangster.

I think the answer might be "both", based on geography, culture, and maybe age.


That.

The two years I was on Lupron for prostate cancer, I would get hot flashes and chills.  Can't do much for the hot flashes, but a zip front hoodie was great for the chills.  I could adjust to exactly the right level of comfort, from off, to zipped up hood up.
 
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Bogie

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #15 on: December 08, 2024, 11:18:48 PM »
So... Warrants?
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MechAg94

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Re: Hoodies - Gangster or Mainstream?
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2024, 12:52:52 AM »
A hoodie or a light jacket covers the majority of Winter down here on the Texas Gulf Coast.  All sorts of people wear them so they are NOT "gangster" by any means. 
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