Originally published Sept. 7, 2008
By Susan Lampert Smith
APPLETON – Think you’re cool because your kid goes to the big UW?
Well, I’m a “Yale mom,” not to mention a Stanford booster.
And my collegiate pride cost far, far less than the tuition you’re paying.
Yes, it’s time for back to school, which means our annual pilgrimage to find slightly wacky collegiate wear at the Jansport Outlet Store, located on the company grounds a few miles west of the Fox River Mall in Appleton.
This is a real outlet store – a place with real deals on high quality merchandise – unlike those fake-o outlets that line the highway, offering just a few bucks off the full price. I discovered the store, at N850 County Road CB, when I went to the company’s Appleton office to write about a mountain climbing expedition for women with breast cancer.
At Jansport’s Appleton outlet, you’ll find thick collegiate sweat shirts, two for $15, as well as $1 bins of misprinted T-shirts. They don’t make the stuff in Appleton, but the appliqué and embroidery is done here. And the outlet is the place where they get rid of the ones that represent a bad day at the embroidery machine.
Our family tradition, part of our annual trips to Door County and Lambeau Field, is to find the strangest schools to support, as well as the best misspellings.
Yes, Jansport has Wisconsin wear and our beloved Bucky Badger on sale, but why wear what everyone else is wearing? Besides, the Victor Valley Rams need your support more than the Ohio State Buckeyes.
You can adopt the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University, the Lynchburg College Hornets and the Shippensburg University Ships.
My personal favorite weird mascot sweat from the Jansport store is the Wichita State Shocker, a crazed looking dude with dreadlocks made of shocks of wheat. The family used to fight over who got to wear that sweatshirt.
There is a weird side effect, however. When you wear your Kamehameha School zip-up, people will stop you on the street to talk about the greatness of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the school founder and last royal descendant of Kamehameha the Great. It does no good to explain that you’ve never been to Maui, and couldn’t get into the school, anyway, as you’re not native Hawaiian.
Likewise, my husband used to wear a Palomar College sweatshirt at his stand at the Dane County Farmers Market, and encountered a surprising number of people who wanted to reminisce about the good old days in San Marcos, Calif.
The misspellings can be fun. My son has a brown sweat shirt advertising the UCLA “B’s.”
But we’re still searching for our holy grail: A nice collegiate shirt that reads Hervard or Yael.
It gives us a reason to keep on digging.
PHOTO INFORMATION: Dustin Roosa of Mount Horeb models a UCLA “B” sweatshirt, a great find at the Appleton Jansport outlet.
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