In 1992, I was a skinny, screwed-up kid living in the Lower Haight of San Francisco with aspirations of becoming some kind of punk rock poet. I picked up one of these salvage N-1 deck jackets at the Buffalo Exchange because—even though I had not seen the photos of Ginsberg and Kerouac wearing them—it’s 1950’s-ness made the jacket very “beat” in appearance. That and… well, poets are never well paid, winter was coming and at $25 it was the cheapest thing in the store that I could still imagine wearing! I was so gangley that two inches of wrist flashed every time I raised my arms, and eventually I probably swapped it for a beat-up black moto-leather like every other SF hipster of the day.
Fast-forward some years, and I wonder where that one ended up. Thrashed in the back of a closet or sold on EBay for 20 times what I paid for it? Who could have guessed it would become such a high-ticket item? By the year 2K, the face of the Earth had probably been stripped of these, with all of them ending up in Japan…
I bought a Spiewalk N-1 this winter and I’ve loved it! Fit is still a little short in the arms (they were originally designed to go with huge gloves, I imagine), but it is one of the warmest things I have ever owned. And I would have to say it looks sharp. I even prefer the waxed finish to the more authentic “jungle fabric” used by Buzz Rickson and Pike Brothers for their repros, as it keeps wet and wind out better plus it already has a very special patina after only one season.
