<\/p>\n
So Lululemon does two years<\/em> of marketing research in the rust-belt city of Buffalo, and somehow comes up with the idea that evoking two local sports tragedies totally out of context in a fancy floor-mosaic in their new store would express solidarity with the hoi polloi.<\/p>\n I think I know why that\u00a0Lulu fabric goes\u00a0all sheer. Clearly, the market researchers moonlight as quality controllers and test the pants\u00a0by shoving\u00a0their clueless heads up their asses\u00a0while wearing them.<\/p>\n The dumb-dumb mosaic in question is the centrepiece of the new Lulu digs at the Walden Galleria mall. It’s emblazoned with the phrases \u201cWide right\u201d and \u201cNo goal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWide right\u201d was the phrase that NFL announcer Al Michaels used to seal Buffalo\u2019s defeat in the 1991 Super Bowl when Bills kicker Scott Norwood (head hung in anguish) missed a gamer-winning field goal with zero on the clock. \u201cNo goal!\u201d is the chant that all of Western New York hollered for years in bars and in their dreams after Bret Hull illegally put his skate in the crease and tipped in the game winner that robbed the Sabres of the 1999 Cup.<\/p>\n Oh Lulu. You have no idea what real passion is, or what you\u2019re messing with. For all of that\u00a0\u201csweat everyday\u201d and \u201cdo one thing a day that scares you\u201d, you obviously know zilch about the deeper meanings of sports to people who don\u2019t have the leisure to use it to express their neoliberal fabulousness, because they\u2019re too busy using it to survive.<\/p>\n See, if your manifesto had been written in Buffalo it would say things like \u201cTry to get that\u00a0first\u00a0shift at least three times\u00a0per week.\u201d Or \u201cEven though you\u2019re exhausted, go easy on the\u00a0coffee.\u201d Or \u201cYou can’t ask<\/em> John Galt for a living wage.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe you\u00a0thought that because \u201cNo Goal\u201d was a popular bumper sticker in the Buffalo area throughout the early 2000s that everything was coolsies. But you don\u2019t get to appropriate the battle chant of a group you want to be part of just so you go on to make them feel inadequate about their workout pants from Walmart. You don’t get to capitalize on the memory of something you don’t care enough about to understand.<\/p>\n