I was hanging around with some folks in Echo Park the day after Thanksgiving and the occasion came up that someone needed to cut something random like a stray piece of string on someones shirt. Just then a few people offered their pocket knives. And when they put them away I noticed they all had the same thing: A small pocket knife with a metal handle and a locking 3½” inch blade in the front pocket of their jeans. Since then I’ve started noticing a lot of people (especially on the eastside) with a little silver clip on the outside of their dominant hand side jeans pocket.

I know this is the big city and things can be kinda Skeksis around here but is the knife for protection, for it’s many utilitarian functions or because everyone else has one? I just took a mental inventory of my living areas and as it ends up, I have a lot of knives just laying around. I cook, so I have a few in my kitchen, a few xacto knives for many incomplete art projects, a couple utility knives in a drawer and my toolbox and pretty big knife I keep in my car… just in case. So I guess it makes sense to just have one on you at all times.

A guy named James Mattis on bladeforums.com (a bit creepy) gave this perfectly logical reason for carrying a knife:

“My good reason to carry a knife is that God gave me rather weak teeth and rudimentary claws in an evolutionary trade-off. The hairy-armed person who figured out how to put an edge on a suitable rock made it possible for us to be recognizably human in the first place. I wear a wristwatch whether or not I have an appointment to keep, and I carry a pen and/or pencil because I am a literate person whether or not I have a specific writing task ahead of me, and I carry a knife because I am a human and not an ape.

A knife comes in handy for all sorts of random tasks that involve separating matter. Like cutting a string, or making a sandwich, or opening a package. It can also come in handy in an emergency, which need not involve a human assailant, and emergencies are by their nature unforeseen, so one should carry a knife all the time.

And in a perfect world where nobody needed a weapon, I’d probably carry a slightly larger knife, because it wouldn’t scare people.”

I used to keep a butterfly knife in my car until I drove to Vancouver last year and the Mounties confiscated it. For some reason they gave me a receipt? I asked them if that meant I could get it back when I came back to America. “No, Sorry”, they said. (and they said it like “Sore-E”).

So tell me, is the Pocket Knife a smart trend or just a way for Vegans to look tough? HOT OR NOT?!

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BONUS Don’t-Be-This-Guy Knife Safety via The Guardian UK:

Actor Slits Own Throat as Knife Switch Turns Fiction into Reality

An actor slit his throat on stage when the prop knife for his suicide scene turned out to be a real one.

Daniel Hoevels, 30, slumped over with blood pouring from his neck while the audience broke into applause at the “special effect”. Police are investigating whether the knife was a mistake or a murder plot. They are questioning the rest of the cast, and backstage hands with access to props; they will also carry out DNA tests.

It was only when he did not get up to take a bow that anyone realised something had gone wrong.

Though bleeding profusely, Hoevels survived because the knife missed the carotid artery as it sliced into his neck. Wolfgang Lenz, a doctor who treated him, said: “Just a little bit deeper and he would have been drowning in his own blood.”

Tags: Canada, Echo Park, Fashion Trends, Hipsters, Hot or Not?, Mounties, Pocket Knife

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Fashion, Images, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.