The Year was 1994
What Year is this?
The owner of Blue&Cream was a senior in high school, on the UES in NYC. We hung out on stoops smoking cigarettes and drinking 40oz bottles, we were making noise on weekday nights. We threw underage hiphop parties on Fridays where Mark Ronson was the DJ.
Puff daddy was making a name for himself uptown throwing parties too, and everyone was glued to the radio 89.1 for stretch+bobito on Thursday nights. It was the burgeoning hip-hop culture merging with the runway super models scene, all of us out in the clubs till dawn, and the Fashion was a mix of influences from the 70s and 80s,
Seattle and hiphop.
Sometimes it was a vintage leather jacket and doc martens or otherwise we wore big baggy jeans and Air Force ones and timbos with Graphic tees, Nautica and Northface shells. Some of us rocked new balance or saucony in bright colors to be different. We rocked jerseys, starter jackets and oversized hoodies, Tommy Hil rugby’s…. Like many today, New York City Private school girls had to wear uniforms featuring skirts, even in the winter…
with no sweatpants underneath(!) and those fits transitioned into Spring in the streets with
CK micro Minis and cropped tees and cardigans en vogue for the little girls with Agnes B backpacks….
If you plucked me and my crew off the street from 1994 and dropped us into 2024 you may not even notice a difference except for a lack of screens in our hands, there was no screens…instead it was payphones, we rocked beepers and waited for messages on answering machines and we marveled the newest technology, Caller ID.
There was less Cannabis wafting thru the air in the streets for sure. Scoring a $50 was a thing and we met up at the friends house who had a “big screen”, or went to 2nd ave for the underage bars where we played NBA Jams, mini pool for money and watched the NY Knicks finals get interrupted by OJ Simpsons getaway in the Bronco…
we jumped on the back of garbage trucks and
paraded down 2nd ave to celebrate the
NY Rangers winning the Stanley cup.
It seems like yesterday, NY was on top.
The 90s we grew up with are the the 2020s we rep in
So many ways today at Blue&Cream,
this spring 2024 season in particular.
With all this history and perspective, our present moment, with Spring now four years post-pandemic
the culture of city kids seems so familiar you can taste it. It’s like senior year all over again. Kids are pouring into the streets, Vintage everything, music culture everywhere, NY sports creating community.
This is a spring to remember, Let’s make the most of it.
The best Summer of our lives is coming soon!