crispy critcs

I've highlighted NYT critical shopper reports before; sometimes with delight and sometimes with disgust, but, perpetual smart ass critical shopper contributer, Mike Albo is all good (in the hood). Now, before I get started, I have no ill vibes for Cintra Wilson's acid tongue and epic taste levels; Mike Albo is just fucking on all the time. To the point: Albo's current review of the Gap flagship (which occurs after Wilson's review of the Mcqueen store; how fair considering the Dow is plummeting faster than Brett Michael's hair line is receding). Quoth Albo re: the economy and our aging child star american sportswear brand, beloved by yours truly, Gap: "...o my right, a Frenchman wheeled a baby carriage onto my foot until I moved out of his way. There must have been 100 Europeans in this store: men wearing sweaters tied around their shoulders, women wearing sunglasses inside, entire families chattering and pointing. All of them had rapacious looks in their eyes because they knew time is money. They needed to buy as much as possible before the increasingly global financial meltdown turned their powerful euros into a currency as pathetic as, well, the United States dollar..."
This installation of critical shopper is a rarity in which the reviewer does not have a positive opinion at all of the selected store upon arrival, but is mostly pleasantly surprised; "..and if I were a literature grad student visiting from Strasbourg, I would have bought all three and then gone home and worn them while smoking loose tobacco cigarettes and reading Houellebecq."
However, being the whip quipper, Albo does not let some fug merch slide by, "..One look at those items and I wanted to breathe into a paper bag....a perfect purchase for someone who works in catering or an office and needs at least to pretend to care about his job."
Though, marring Albo's final assement is his realization that in Gap, like every other box brand in the U.S/earth, you will never look as good in the clothes as the visuals people dress the manniquins, unless you invest in a basket full of binder clips and pin the extra folds of the off the rack garb to your flesh. Albo's verbage on the matter: "..it is my hope that during the next presidential administration I can form the Truth in Visual Merchandising Commission and put an end to this travesty. Be warned, retailers: End this deceitful practice now! Either stop clipping or tucking your clothes, or get fatter mannequins!"
Outside of nymag:sex diaries, this is easily the best archive to pour over while pretending to work in those last eternal fifteen minutes of work.