Blue-Collar Typeface

“Gotham 2003: This plain yet quintessential font was designed by Tobias Frere-Jones and is based on vernacular architectural lettering
found throughout New York City. It is a blue-collar typeface that is both utilitarian and perfectly simple.”

From the colophon to Aaron Simon’s Carrier, Insurance Editions, 2006


Some people would like to be blue-collar
without actually having been born blue-collar.
They take visibly rigid stances against,
for instance,
public television
and eating in restaurants,
because public television
and eating in restaurants is
“bourgeoise,”
while you,
who were born blue-collar,
kind of like public television,
and walk past those very same restaurants
wishing you could afford something more
than the Wendy’s salad bar.
Some people are proud of how blue-collar they are
when they speak roughly to waiters,
never look them in the eye,
tip them miserably,
and refuse to pay to get into poetry readings,
while afterwards
they’re back home
putting their Manhattan co-op on the market
so they can buy a house on the outskirts of Paris.
Some of these people are so anxious to prove
just how blue-collar they are
they will say things like,
“Well, at least you have a grinding truck,”
when you tell them over the phone
that the grinding truck has pulled up outside,
never mind that they’re in the process of closing
on their house on the outskirts of Paris.
Some of these people are your friends.
They will surprise you.
Because someday you will discover
that all that time they seemed so interested in what you had to say about your
blue-collar upbringing
they never found actual blue-collar people
all that interesting.
Because a blue-collar person can’t recommend them to an editor
or get them into an MFA program
or set them up with a teaching job
or introduce them to important
(i.e., non-blue-collar)
people in Paris.
Blue-collar people often don’t care about
academic poetry,
the breaking of the line,
and they may not necessarily give a shit about anything
Noam Chomsky ever said.
But that doesn’t mean that blue-collar people are
“utilitarian” or “perfectly simple.”
I know lots of useless, imperfectly complicated
blue-collar people.
And their line breaks
can kick your line breaks’
ass.