Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 12 months, you’ve noticed the rapid explosion in popularity of Affliction Clothing shirts among the MMA crowd. It seems like most fighters and their fans are wearing the Affliction brand and the abundance of Affliction apparel prompted Joe Rogan to announce “if I see one more Affliction shirt, I’m going to puke” on a recent UFC pay-per-view. Well, if you are sick of seeing Affliction shirts everywhere there is a solution: move to British Columbia.
Mike Russell from TheFightNetwork is reporting that that several BC bars are prohibiting their patrons from wearing the Affliction brand.
One place you won’t see the pricey, popular garments, however, is inside several nightclubs on the infamous Granville strip in Vancouver, British Columbia.
According to John Teti, president of Barwatch – a BC organization established to institute crime prevention measures (metal detectors, ID scanners, etc.) and to hire security officials to patrol the strip around membership bars – the peculiar dress code was handed down in response to Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan’s ultimatum to bar owners to either come up with ways to reduce the frequency of alcohol-related disturbances or face closing one hour earlier. The strip has become known for gang-related shootings and violence.
Teti says the clubs that have chosen not to allow patrons to wear the popular brands into their respective establishments have good reason for the decision.
“In the city of Vancouver at this time there happens to be a war going on with various gangs,” Teti says. “In the past three weeks, there have been four shootings that have resulted in three deaths that have been directly attributed to the drug wars that are going on. We have a ‘Gang Squad’ here that checks IDs and will ask any known criminals they recognize in the clubs to leave. People who work in the clubs observed that a lot of these people were attracted to a certain type of clothing, so they took it upon themselves to say, ‘If you’re going to wear this type of clothing, we’re not going to let you in the bar.’’’
As you can imagine, the representatives for Affliction weren’t that impressed by the new standards of dress in British Columbia
Tom Atenico, a public relations representative for Affliction Clothing, which also makes UFC Heavyweight Champion Randy Couture’s Xtreme Couture line, points to the price-point and higher-end retailers who carry his company’s label. He believes they illustrate that the brand of choice of mixed martial artists is a far cry from rapper Fifty Cent’s G-Unit Clothing line.
“To label us ‘Gang Wear’ is ridiculous,” Atenico says. “We sell our clothes to places like Nordstrom’s, Macy’s and Metro Park in the states. I highly doubt that you’d see gang bangers shopping in these types of stores. Our established demographic is 25- to 45-year-olds who can afford our clothes and don’t want to flip-flop between brands. It’s not as if we cater to the younger crowd. We have 45- to 50-year-old businessmen who wear our clothes because they like our clothes and they can afford them.”
Atenico doesn’t think the whole thing is a bad deal however; even he realizes the valuable press that will come from the BC ban.
“If they want to point us out, it’s press for us,” he says. “We’re a clothing company first and foremost; we’re not anything else. When I was growing up surfing in California, there was a wax called ‘Sex Wax.’ I used to wear the shirt, and I thought I was cool because you couldn’t wear them to school. All that did is make me wear it even more.”
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Tags: Misc, MMA, Affliction, Extreme Couture
(via MMA HQ - Mixed Martial Arts News and Analysis)