Rip Off

I have never been guilty of any fashion first, with one possible exception. Rips, tears and holes in denim have become a fashion"thing" over the last 30 years, but I am fairly confident that in the summer of 73, for the first time, in one part of west London at least, my  "thing"  became The "thing" .

One Saturday morning in North Acton, I go out into the back yard, I climbed the barb-wire topped wall at the bottom end of the yard to see what was happening in the Council Refuse Facility on the other side. The usual bales of industrial waste were stacked, eight high, under the covered part of the yard. But this time it was different, what appeared to be piles of old rags were, on closer inspection, denim, from an exotic and highly regarded source, the Levi Strauss factory down in Acton. There must’ve been 1000s of pairs of Levi’s, obviously seconds of some kind, baled up and ready to of Treasure Island.

I spent that Saturday night tossing and turning in bed thinking about those bales of gold and knew in my heart of hearts that come Sunday I was going over the wall and I was going to snaffle as many pairs as I could find that might fit me.

Come Sunday morning I had climbed the barbwire fifty times in my dreams and knew that I could do it. Being a Sunday the dump was quiet as a graveyard, there was a security guard who patrolled the place I had got to know him vaguely just from talking over the fence over the last couple of years, on the downside he wasn’t particularly friendly, on the upside, he spent most of his time in a 10x10 cubby/office/box listening to his radio. come to think of it he did walk round with a small gauge shotgun (used to kill rats apparently) but me being a young teenage boy I had other things on my mind with that shotgun, but the risk that was still nothing compare to the reward.

So I end up climbing over the wall negotiating the Barbwire and armed with a pen knife I cut into one of the ties on a bale. To my absolute joy a lot of the clothing would actually fit me, I took my knife and I cut open bale after bale, when I found a pair I liked the look of, I'd throw them over the wall. 

If she had known at the time, my mum would have given me a hard time, but rather like the old secret scooter story I was quite good at hiding things and managed to squirrel them out away, sort them and sell them to a lot of my friends and their friends at school and at the youth club for practically nothing a pair (I was charging something like 50p a pair which made me businessman of the year amongst my peers).

There was only one spoiler to this lovely story, just about every pair of jeans had been cut at the knee with what looked like a pair of scissors or a knife, to render them unsaleable I guess. For a couple of years walking around Acton in the early 70s you would see quite a few young men around my age wearing Levi denim, cords or Sta-Prest that were shall we say slightly marred by a rip motif on the right leg. Mind you we all had enough "cut downs" to last a lifetime.

I still think back with fondness for that wonderful weekend where fate, serendipity and my mischievousness all came together in a perfect storm of top quality denim. I never felt any guilt. I have spent hundreds probably thousands of pounds over the years since on Levi products and so they got me, but it’s nice to know that I also got a bit of them.

If you work for Levi Strauss currently for your information this story is absolute fiction just so you know.

Junior Murvin will play the theme tune from my Spotify Playlist "Skank"