Boast USA Blog

Princeton Beer Suits

Went to F.I.T.’s museum exhibition on the history of Ivy Style the other day. The oddest outfit on display had to be the Princeton Beer Suit. The suits were designed 100 years ago to protect the clothes of Princeton men, who found that the more they drank, the more foam they spilled on themselves.*<br /><br />While these cream-colored overalls were all the rage at Princeton in the Jazz Age, they never caught on at the other Ivies, and perhaps it’s not hard to see why. You can be the judge. After World War II the overalls were dropped in favor of simply the beer jacket, decorated with a design specific to each class year.

See the Princeton Alumni Weekly ( A century after their debut, beer jackets are still in style – Princeton Alumni Weekly | The Weekly Blog ) for more.

John No Comments

Well, this look is a new one

Guest entry from Tim S.:

Boast definitely brings back memories — Windridge Tennis Camp among them. But mostly it gives me flashbacks of Greenwich as a kid. Boast was front and center of course.

There was actually a trend at Greenwich Country Day Day School in like ’86, ’87-ish where it was fashionable to wear a Boast with a tie and jacket — particularly the horizontal pinstripe with the contrasting color collar — I sh*t you not.

[Editor's note: Thanks, Tim.]

John 1 Comment

The cat wears Boast, obvi.

cattennissm By Courtney Goldsmith Broadwater
Courtney is a New York illustrator and storyteller. See more of Courtney’s work at the cat and the bear

PS The cat found the women’s polo online, just last month at the Boast Women’s Shop

John No Comments

The Missing Leaf

BLOG-warehouse-large I asked Bill St. John what happened to the maple leaf in the middle of the “O” outside the warehouse and he doesn’t recall but thinks it’s been gone since ’89. I’m guessing the new owner of this tin leaf the size of a basketball is either an avid fan or just a curious Floridian that rolls around with a crowbar. Anyway, nice sunsets here when it rains.

John No Comments

An Intriguing Boast Man

The guest submission series begins.

BOAST IN PRINCE AD ECOPY-1_LDAPMAIL_08032010-153006
There is a successful series of commercials centered around a man dubbed “The Most Interesting Man in the World.’ While he seems like a nice chap, he has nothing on the Boast Man. This mythical, yet real flesh and blood man, is the true torch (or should I say Japanese Maple) bearer. To start, I need to give some context of time and place. In the 1980′s as a 13-year old I learned how to play tennis at a Playboy Club. Yes that’s right, a Playboy Club (well, OK, to be fair, by the time I began playing tennis, Hef had shed the property to a large hotel chain). But, I do remember as a young kid being served lunch by the Bunnies, and the aroma of 7 and 7′s, cheap perfume, and cigarettes still lingered in the dimly lit corridors.

Although owners changed, one thing remained a constant: “The Boast Man.” He was the owner of the tennis club and shop. Late ’30′s, beach blond locks. Short white tennis shorts, striped green Boast polo. Collar up. Top down in his slightly worn Mercedes 560SL, in powder blue, dark blue top. This man would be thrown room keys off the upper spectator gallery upon entering the smoked doors of the indoor courts. With a wry smile he would nod a wink to Mrs. Peabody from Warwick. Was that a confirmation of a 10am lesson, or a 10pm nightcap? Probably both.

The Boast Man pulled off the impossible on the court. While his knees were worn with scars from surgery from beatings taken on the satellite circuit, he could still run down every ball. I once saw him beat the head pro of a rival club easily, despite being 15 years senior and playing with a visibly broken frame. And not just a crack, a completely broken racket. A super human feat. One of many I witnessed in those days. Equipment didn’t matter. The opponent didn’t matter. Just the attitude and the customary Boast shirt.

I learned everything I could from the Boast Man, how to gently come over the ball in the perfect one-handed backhand, the sneaky half volley, and the love of tearing someone to pieces using the worst equipment. I also learned how to hustle. “I’ll eat the court fee if you pay me cash to hit with you.” Worked out pretty well for this Boast wearing teenager who was now running the club. By this time the Boast Man had married a rich widow, and instead of ripping a rival 6-0, 6-0 on Sundays, he played church organ. I saw the Boast Man for the last time while I was in college. I stopped into say hi at his new fancy club. Both of us had tattered Boast polos on. Of course, what else would we wear?

-Anonymous Boast fan.

Have a knack for writing? We are looking for guest bloggers, and our next post could be yours. Submit a story about Boast to questions@boastusa.com. If your work is used on our site, you can expect a little something from us in your mailbox.

John No Comments

Deadlier than the Male?

Use your head in tennis full Fifties time capsule:

Chapter 18 Deadlier than the Male?

It’s much easier for a girl to become a good player than it is for a man. A feminine beginner can get all kinds of advice, coaching, and practice from the best men’s players who happen to be around. A man is just naturally chivalrous when it comes to helping the opposite sex learn tennis. But will he help his own sex? Haw!

So take heart, you ladies who fear you’ll never be much good at the game. Just wander out to the tennis courts, every day you have a little spare time, and scatter a few hints among your gentleman acquaintances who play well.

Excerpt from Use Your Head in Tennis. Bob Harman and Keith Monroe (1950).

John No Comments

Boast Style at the Wood Racquet Classic

Boast was proud to be one of the sponsors of the 13th Annual Costa Mesa Wood Racquet Classic this past Labor Day weekend. This popular Southern California tournament requires wooden racquets, and players sport vintage tennis attire and classic brands. Several stylish competitors sported 30′s era white pants, long sleeves and quenched their thirst with a gin and tonic during changeovers.

Boast outfitted some excellent players in shirts and shorts; some lucky winners won Boast apparel.

This year, the tournament and fundraiser raised thousands of dollars to benefit The John Wayne Cancer Foundation with the help of all the good people and companies that contributed to the event.

The Thirteenth Annual Costa Mesa Wood Racquet Classic

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The Long and Short of It

In the spirit of everything awesome about the 1980s, I’ve held the annual Von Fracken Classic, a tournament (of whatever the opposite of champions is), for many years in LA, and recently upon my return to The Big Apple on the Har-Tru courts of the Midtown Tennis club where Boast was our sponsor.

Some of the guys rolled up their shorts for the occasion – and seeing their quads took me back to a time when cocaine was nearly legal and there was no such thing as cabaret laws; when wanton abandon not only pervaded nightlife, but also professional sports. It was called the Reagan years, and it was an innocent time when men’s men wore athletic shorts roughly the size of two dinner napkins stitched together. Pros like Boris Becker and Vitas Gerulaitis weren’t just athletes playing the top of their game, they were showmen playing to the crowd, right up to the cut of their tight white blood-cutters.

Two decades later, I don’t think you could call what athletes wear shorts. Anything that hovers below the knee is not a short, it is a shant – a short pant that shan’t be a short or a pant. It’s not only sloppy, it is cumbersome at best and Victorian in its chasteness at worst. Watching men play sports in 12” inseams is what Chrissy Evert must have felt watching Margaret Court running down a drop shot in a floor-length, double-layered cotton skirt.

Function should never follow form.

Boast agrees and has, at long last, brought back shorts—so eponymously named for a reason. Boast’s “Match Short” is cut to the perfect length, hemmed to give a man of sport the room to move lithely from baseline to net, while also appearing neat and modest, at all times, like a gentleman.

-Emily Bracken is a fine tennis player, writer, and a Boast fan.

Check out Emily’s column on The Huffington Post

John No Comments

On Drugs

Melky_Cabrera_149959284_620x350 In which the Georgian in Texas takes on the New Yorker in SoCal, and nothing is resolved.

Dallas. 7/11/2012 6:52 PM:

How is Melky Cabrera, a piece of driftwood pawned off on the Braves by the Bombers — wood subsequently found to be rotten and worm-riddled during an indeterminate number of forgettable months in the ATL — now a star in SF, hitting homers in the AS game?

Dallas. 8/15/12, 9:32 PM:

Answer to #1 below is… below. Don’t ever tell me I don’t know what stinks… this nose knows.

Melky Cabrera Suspended 50 Games

Los Angeles. 8/16/12, 12:25 AM:

A baseball player on steroids? Heaven forfend. Hold the presses.

Dallas. 8/16/12, 3:19 AM:

I know you began following the game in 1995, when everyone did juice. But they are actually policing it now, and popping offenders, and have been for about 5 to 7 years. And guess what? The premier pitchers in the game are no longer 40 years old, the way they were when Schilling, Randy Johnson and Clem Chowder were piling up Cy’s and World Series wins during a roid-induced renaissance from 2000 to 2004. Career slap hitters like Brady Anderson are not showing up with 50 home run seasons without warning. That’s gone. So is Manny, so is Barry, and so is Big Mac and his bacne. What do we have instead? Tim Lincecum going rag arm in a hurry and becoming quasi-flammable, only a couple years removed from his prime. We have Pay Rod with 15 homers in August, which is what he should have since he’s 37.

So now when a total hack — like Melky Cabrera — turns into an All-Star out of nowhere, he sticks out like a sore thumb and they tag him and bag him.

Los Angeles. 8/16/12, 11:48 AM:

Baseball players have been on drugs since Gehrig. Deal with it. As for my interest pre-Roids. I don’t sleep with a copy of the Baseball Almanac under my pillow, it’s true. I will say that witnessing Goose Gossage notch a hard-earned save against the Dodgers in the ’81 WS first fanned my flame. I also still have my grandfather’s mesh Yankee cap from ’75, and a petrified Reggie bar. Yes, sure, I got fired up by the Yanks in the mid-90′s. Who wouldn’t? (Our parents were charmed by the ’69 Mets, and everyone was nuts for Pelé in ’77.) I stood in the rain for 15 innings vs Seattle in the ’95 NLDS, Donnie Baseball’s last shot at a title. And, I was angry when the ’94 strike cut short the first ’90s NYY locomotive. A girl walked off with my ’93 Jimmy Key t-shirt in Berkeley. Dead to me.

Anyway, when staying in a summer share on an island teeming with girls, I prefer drinking somewhere other than the Rose & Crown, with Ted Turner cramming TBS down my throat, and everyone else’s. Maybe that made me sick of baseball for a spell. No wonder everyone outside of ATL resents that borrowed chop chant.

I don’t wanna talk Yanks. I’m done with the South Bronx for the time being. I’m all NL: a Dodgers fan that will be enjoying games at Citi Field. My first visit, I walked straight to Shea, then looked over my shoulder and u-turned for the new one. I must have been daydreaming about attending the Jets’ last game in Queens. Bradshaw crushed them and never played another down with a career-ending injury. The Jets fans tore up the turf and pulled down the goal posts. It was sweet.

Been to a game lately?

John No Comments

My Uncle’s Sense of Style

Another much appreciated guest submission. Keep ‘em coming.

In grade school, while the rest of my class yearned to hang out with Mickey Mouse and friends, I wanted nothing more than to spend school vacations at my aunt and uncle’s country club. We’d arrive at their house to the sweet sounds of our car tires crunching ground stone, past my uncle’s Jeep Grand Wagoneer with protruding fly rods and I’d barrel out of the car and through the front door into the arms of the best hosts an 8-year-old kid could ever dream of. My uncle planned my entire weekend. He booked early mornings of fishing at the stream, rounds of golf and, most importantly, court times with the head pro and other kids my age. Those clay courts were immaculate! Between matches, my aunt would meet me at lunch by the pool and treat me to the best grilled cheese sandwiches I had ever tasted. Who needed Powerbars? Back on the court, I made a point to exaggerate every slide as I lunged to keep the ball in play and the days from ending.

My uncle was the consummate gentlemen, a strategic storyteller and everyone’s favorite at the Club. I could do no wrong as his sidekick and I’d make sure to drop no more than five feet or so behind him, afraid of what might happen if I fell back too far. Would I lose my privileges for the deep end at the pool? Would they put an end to the all the Roy Rogers I could drink?

My uncle taught me at a very young age that in life it is better to be joyful than boastful. He rode horses, skied, fished and competed well into his eighties (grandfathered golf cart privileges helped) and his laughter always drowned out his wins and losses. Each night we would bet a quarter on a best-out-of-five ping-pong match. A sign above the ping-pong table read “Win with Honor, Lose with Grace” and I tried with all my might to act accordingly.

It was impossible to ignore my uncle’s distinct, casual sense of style. When he wasn’t dressed in ancient jodhpurs and a tattered master-of-the-hounds waistcoat, he often wore sweaters struggling from too many days in the stream and classic polos from Boast. I’ll never forget the end of one weekend visit, when he brought me into the pro shop and bought me one of my own with the Club’s logo on the front. I was afraid to wash it after days of showing it off at school. Twenty years later, it’s a pleasure to add to the collection.

-Will R., Boast fan

John No Comments