SS Starbucks

Only in New York. I was in Starbucks at 7:45AM on Tuesday morning (this is the day before Halloween) killing 10 minutes before an appointment when I noticed that sitting nearby was an SS Officer, dressed in a green wool SS Tunic, jackboots, black jodpurs, mirrored aviators--the full monty. He struggled to put on his utility belt (water canteen, empty clips, etc) and then started chatting with another couple of guys who came in. It looked like they all wanted somewhere to hang out.

His conversation was how the country was going to hell, how the biggest concentration camps weren't run by the Germans but by Stalin, blah, blah...all, no doubt, opinions based on very selective readings of history. He claimed to have guns in New Jersey, (which was worrying) and he wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest as he "couldn't be himself in New York anymore. And he never thought he'd say that." (Lots of survivalist and right-wing weirdos live in the Pacific Northwest)

He'd gone to a lot of trouble to look like a stylized SS Soldier (although I doubt many of the original Nazis had styling haircuts and Rayban Aviators...) but the funniest and most insulting thing was his complaint that he'd watched The View (Women's magazine program shown every weekday in the US, higher brow than most) and "all I'm going to say is that there were three white women, probably Jewish women, arguing with Whoopi Goldberg. You know? You see what I'm saying?" I wasn't sure what cock-headed point he was making to his simpleton friend, other than maybe it was obscene they weren't all anglos (quelle horreur!); but excuse me for being amused by the thought of the SS tuning in to The View, and then getting offended. I guess even pig-ignorant, impotent, fantasists playing at make-believe meanys have standards...