shop on eBay, i’m telling you

10.28.26

The only jeans that properly fit me are Levi’s 527.

They gotta be 100 percent cotton, the waist 32, the length 32. Yes, quite specific, but my waist and ass and legs and calves just don’t fit into anything else, no other brand, no other measurements, nothing. My discovery of the 527s circa 2004 was a divine miracle that I found by accident probably while fumbling through the denim section at Macy’s in the mall with probably thirty-one dollars in my Wells Fargo checking account that my mom opened for me. Then and now: the way 527s sit low on my hips and widen around my thicc thighs and ass (then and now) and cut in at the knee while offering a bit of flare at the cuff offers the very best fit and overall silhouette for the body that God issued me in October 1985. I’m sure there are others out there whose bodies take well to the 527s, and maybe someday I will meet them.

Unfortunately for us 527ers, for like fifteen years, Levi’s just wasn’t selling 527s anywhere that I could find in person and they weren’t available at Levi’s dot com, so I was stuck looking like a toddler waddling around in “AG” and “Rag ‘n Bone” jeans that suctioned around my hamstrings like saran wrap. It embarrasses me to even think back on.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to find last year that the Levi’s store in Williamsburg was once again selling the 527s. Sike! Because everything is terrible now, the 527s they make now just … they just don’t fit the same. The new make and model is just different than how they were constructed in the early 2000s, and I knew it the second I put them on in the tiny fitting room in Williamsburg. I sulked out, defeated. Perhaps it’s the material or pattern or shape, perhaps it’s climate change, maybe it’s my fault, I don’t know, I just know that the 527 Levi’s jeans of today ain’t like they used to be back when, and we’re all poorer for it, or at least I am, and I’m the one who matters here because I’m the one writing this dang blog post.

So I wear early 2000s 527s that I find on eBay, now considered vintage because they’re two decades old. I can’t believe how long it took me to remember eBay. Yes, eBay, the site from like 1996 that has always been kind of a punchline for some reason. It may feel like we’re living in a post-eBay world — you could even be forgiven for wondering if eBay is still around — but we are not, we are very much still living in an eBay world and there’s so much on eBay and the site is not to be ridiculed, at least not here on my website.

On eBay are my precious 527s with the correct width and height and they all run about $25-$40, and you and I and Jesus know that that’s a bargain for jeans that fit. Men and women have killed for far less. I’ve already bought like five pair this fall, so things are looking up for me, but that’s only the beginning — there is so, so much more available on eBay, and it’s all quite affordable. Hey, times are tough, or they soon will be, and you have to cut back in places and pick your spots to save some dough, and my spots and my dough-saving comes via eBay. Texture-rich and thick Ralph Lauren sweaters are like $28 at most. Same for some very cool vintage Eddie Bauers that my wife hates but that I love and I think she’s coming around, at least on one of them, the white one that I pair with fading 527s and eBay-purchased Chelsea boots, which, it just so happens, also look great with the old trusty Levi’s cuffs. Also, last month, I bought an old wooden softball bat for $8 and I kid you not, in four games since, I have like nine hits including four on Sunday when our team came back to win in the bottom of the last inning. Sure, it’s my sweet ass swing that’s smashing those pitches off the center field fence, but walking to the plate holding an eBay bat just feels good, especially when I’m collecting four hits with it while other batters are striking out and grounding out to second base while swinging $225 bats that they most certainly did not buy on eBay. Suckers.

Also, not for nothing and perhaps most importantly as it relates to eBay, which I believe to be the best site on the internet: I got a kid now who I sometimes forget about. But when I do remember him, I remember how I need to keep him clothed, and full-price retail baby clothes are expensive and mostly look bad and they barely fit for like two months because these kids grow like weeds. So I buy the dude stuff on eBay. Sure, I basically buy him the exact same clothes I wear, just in his size, but isn’t dressing your kid the way you want, traumatizing him for life, pretty much the main reason to have kids? Exactly. So I buy him those Ralph Lauren sweaters ($5!) and Nike hoodies ($10.73!) and I got his winter coat, a real nice one, for $17.87 including shipping. The new ones on sale at the boutiques in New York are like $245. What the fuck. Even if you can afford a kid’s jacket priced as such, that’s just embarrassing, you should be ashamed, and to spend that sort of money on a child’s coat is to admit you possess no creativity and carry a shallow and weak soul, if you have one at all, and I question your desire to even be alive.

A bit more: shopping second-hand keeps the planet healthier, helps eliminate the demand for more shit in the world that we don’t need, all of which further strains earth’s dwindling resources and human capital in the form of children with no shoes or parents or hope stitching together for a salary of nineteen dollars a year some pair of shoes that you’re just going to throw out in a six months after you’ve decided they no longer look cool with your Alo joggers.

Even if you don’t care about any of this shit, and in some ways I don’t either, buying used clothes at the very least provides some temporary moral superiority, a chance to exercise and enjoy a latent smugness, a have-my-sweater-and-wear-it-too self satisfaction that allows both participation in and a distance from naked consumerism, which is a kind of heaven if you ask me. It’s the rare get-out-of-jail-free card that let’s you play both sides: you can look down your nose at everyone who shops new while indulging the same shameful instant gratification desires without the accompanying guilt. You are, of course, still guilty and shameful as well, but everyone else is on balance more guilty and shameful, so you get off with just a slap on the wrist and, for a short while, get to consider yourself above the average lizard-brained shopper. I’m mostly joking with this. But I’m also kind of not.

This blog post is over. Buy your stuff on eBay if you have a soul. Or don’t. Do whatever you want.