My First Blogger Beef: Tarrant vs. Lukas

First, a little background…those of you who have known me for a while know that I have always had an interest in both sports and the uniforms worn by the players.   From a very early age, I remember watching games on TV and noticing that I enjoyed the contest more if the teams playing had nice uniforms, and especially if the colors between the two teams contrasted in a way that stoked my artistic mind.  As a kid growing up in the 80’s, I thought I was the only one who noticed such things.

Fast-forward to the internet age, and as we have now learned, no matter how odd or particular your fascination with some part of our culture is, there exists quite a few people just like you.   As it turns out, a Brooklyn-based writer named Paul Lukas was the first person to dedicate a newspaper column exclusively to news regarding what players were wearing.  Long story short, Lukas started out with a weekly column in the sports page of the Village Voice sometime in the 1990’s if I recall correctly that he called “Uni-Watch”.   And so as the world wide web took off, Paul eventually started a Uni-Watch blog, where one could go to find daily updates of not just news of teams changing uniforms, but to any manner of “athletic aesthetics”.  Lukas and his team of contributors would write about stadium designs, field markings, the advertisements on the outfield walls, etc… no topic was considered too mundane.

IThe Uni-Watch website also featured a comments section, where he invited readers to share their opinions on not just the latest looks on the field but also at times some of the political elements that find their way into the sports “Uni-verse”, as Lukas dubbed it.  For example, the ongoing controversies regarding professional and school teams using American Indian… excuse me… “Native American” imagery.  In particular, Lukas took a hard political stance against the Washington Redskins.

Now, the first time that Paul and I butted heads was on this issue.   In my opinion, the crusade against Indian names and logos is mostly driven by white guilt…guys like Paul feel bad that his ancestors took the land that he now enjoys via some pretty brutal methods.  But he doesn’t feel so bad about it that he’d be willing to give it back.  So instead he can virtue signal his displeasure at the totally harmless Redskins nickname, as if people of native blood are being called “redskins” on a daily basis.  Shit, the whole idea behind the trend was to pay tribute to the qualities that made the American Indian warriors something to look up to.   Teams and schools don’t come up with nicknames to mock other cultures, they admire them.   You’re not going to call  your new high school the “South County Pussies”,  and no NFL expansion team is going to be called the “San Antonio Shitstains….”

But I digress.  Anyway, Paul took offense to this when I pointed it out in the comments section (a sure sign that I hit pretty close to the mark), and as he is wont to do, would respond with a comment asking us to “move on” from the issue.   Now, I always respected the fact that Paul Lukas was putting up quality content for free (no paywall), so I was willing at all times to honor his requests to cease discussion of a topic.  (Let it be known that it wasn’t just me, Paul quite often had to put an end to discussions between members of what he had now deemed a “community”. )   And I’ll admit that I enjoy puling people’s chains, especially if they are self-righteous and refuse to acknowledge that uniform and logo designs are not “good/bad” but rather “I like them/I don’t”.

You see, in the “world” (his phrase) of Paul Lukas, there are not subjective opinions.  Instead, there are uniforms that look good, and those that do not.  There are colors that are pleasant to the eye (green) and colors that offend the eye (purple).  Now, to most of us, it is obvious that some people like the color purple as a jersey color (how many LA Lakers jerseys do you see in the crowd at an NBA game?)  I mean, I like watching teams wearing Carolina Blue and Navy, perhaps because of my college affiliation, but I do understand that some people don’t like those colors.  Either way, who cares, really?

Sorry if all that seems like unnecessary information, but I figured it was worth providing to you so you could fully appreciate what happened when things got ugly between us.    What sucks is that I admired Paul Lukas, I was willing to forgive his quirks because he was a pioneer and also a strong writer despite not having been a journalism major like I was.   In fact, I admired him so much that I volunteered to research and write “guest columns”  that I would submit to him for editing.   He ran a couple of articles of mine, (you can see them here,  and here.), each time expressing his appreciation for my work and even giving me a free membership into his “Uni-Watch” club, which usually costs $25. The membership is really nothing more than a card, but I got to pick out a cool UNC basketball jersey font with my name on it that I still use as the background on my Facebook page.

The point of all this is that Paul Lukas and I were at one point, friends.  We were different people in a good many ways…he is from in Brooklyn, I was born and raised in Charlotte, so there is some cultural differences that might have caused us to react to each other differently.  In the South, people are polite, but if you’re among friends, we like to give each other a hard time, because it’s fun.  I’ll insult my best friend, but he knows that it’s not a serious insult, and it’s an invitation to insult me back, and we both laugh about our shortcomings.

I guess in the fast-paced life of NYC, everything is taken literally, maybe because people don’t have time to “fuck around” and everything that you say is meant as the way you say. it.

So that’s how things, in retrospect, started to fall apart.  I liked Paul, and thus I was not above giving him a “ration of shit” as they say in the military.  I guess Paul, who seemed to appreciate my commentary on the site, saw this as me just being an asshole trying to make his day worse.

I’m going to call this the end of Part One.  Part two is where the drama heats up….

 

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