T U.
Yelp
At this point, the articles of clothing I've purchased from Sui Generis are reaching a plurality in my wardrobe. (Which I guess means that pretty soon they'll have a simple majority, at which point they will finally seize the day and play Chief to my inner, prep school hippie McMurphy, a McMurphy who is, let's be honest, by now an end-of-the-book/movie McMurphy, so, yeah, no big loss.)
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a short, slight man. That is, shopping in the regular world where all you normal people live is like shopping at the Big & Tall, and shopping at a Big & Tall would be like, Fuck, does everyone here have a passport from Brobdingnag? (Aside: My god, how do you people fly?)
"Digression!"
Okay, okay--my point only was this: the Castro is the only place where I can find clothes I don't immediately need to tailor, and Sui Generis is the best place I've found for Fine, Fine clothing that fits me. Sure, they're probably a little on the expensive side for used/consignment, but what if you're the kind of person who doesn't *want* to buy new clothes? (Yeah, it's partly the environmental, recycling thing, but it's also the challenge of finding Exactly what you want even when you don't have 6 of every size and 4 of every color to choose from (or maybe it's just that I can't handle the existential debilitation that comes from so much choice?).) What if buying new is a non-starter, gives you the howling fantods in fact, and so you're always a thrift store kind of person, and yet still every once in a while you want to buy something NICE? Well, then you come here.
The service here is so kind and professional and caring you almost forget you're in San Francisco. Granted, that's part of how they get you--You want us to keep your things up here so you don't have to hold onto them/so you can forget that you're already spending $180 while you forage for another $150-worth of merchandise?--but still, there's something to be said for the common decency of customer service. Especially when you can get for $300 a Helmut Lang suit that will, two years after you buy it, make a lovely-looking young lady pound her fist on your table on her way out of the New Year's bar, declaring vehemently into your face, whilst you were doing nothing but reading the New York Review of Books while waiting for your father to show, You look HOT!
So thank you Sui Generis, thank you for one of the highlights of my life.