Tom's Cafe history / Split

[Raphael]

The original mission of Tom's cafe to have the 'Bravehearts' and the 'Freestylers' to have a common ground to meet and to discuss all the social challenges that every one faces when they are not in their pants.

The so called 'split' happened because Hank provided xmarksthescot.com as an alternative. Tom's passing accelrated the process. Also, Freestylers and lots of other Tom's cafe partons have different views in kilts. They see kilts are skirts and are fashion items. Most of them don't care the history and proper ways in kilt wearing. They tend to be more innovative and like to free of the bondages established by the traditions. Their main concern is dress the way they want, even tights under their kilts.

As for the social changes, I doubt that any website will impact how men should dress. Most men will check scores or porn first before viewing fashion pages.

If you are to talk about men's kilt fashion, you should also talk about how the metrosexual sense can help the fashion houses to include kilts to their clothing lines.

[Iolaus]

Thanks Raphael, I'll adjust my text to reflect that. As for social changes, I agree, most men are not going to think about changes until they see one of us being admired by the women around them.

The metro stuff won't fly here in orange county; for college students, they're pretty conservative. Besides, I'm already having to trim some stuff out; I only have 8 - 10 minutes, and it's suprising how quickly the minutes go by!

[highlander_Daz]

whats a metrosexual?

[arrogcow]

Just a question. Tom's Cafe says that it was started in 1996, but their archives only go back to April of 2001 (I personaly first heard about them in Sept 2001 and I had been looking for kilt forums before that). Were they really around before?

Adam

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

whats a metrosexual?

Highlander_Daz

From wikipedia:

Metrosexual is a term coined in 1994 (along with the noun, metrosexuality) by British journalist Mark Simpson, who used it to refer to an urban male of any sexual orientation who has a strong aesthetic sense and spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle. He is the fashion-conscious target audience of men's magazines.

There is more, just google metrosexual, but this is the gist of it.

[bubba]

Metrosexual is the current term for a dandy. ;)

[bear]

From memory:
Tom's Café split into the Café and The Atrium when the braveheart/freestyle flame wars happened. (Very acrimonious!)
Things cooled off and went smoothly for a while.
Then The Atrium changed from freestle to trans-gender, (Chris decided to become Christine), and a bunch of freestylers moved back to Tom's.
The flames started again. Tom had passed due to cancer and was not there to stop the fighting.
XMarks starts up and there is a mass exodus of bravehearts from Tom's to XMarks.

[bubba]

The thing that annoyed me the most about Tom's and promted me to leave there for good was the freestylers pushing a "cause" and demanding we all MUST be part of it. It was beginning to remind me of the Monty Python lumberjack song.

[Canuck]

The time I noticed the split was after the Million skirted men march in New York. The press featured a gentleman in skirt and high heels as well as a gent in a female skaters outfit. The majority of the marchers were in kilts led by a fife and drum corp wearing Utility kilts. The march was a hoot, lots of colourful kilts, tartans and plain. There were close to a hundred of us and about 15- 20 were "freestylers" First time I came across them...no big deal. Just the press made a big deal of it and the folks that did not participate ragged on the march and it got rather hot at the cafe. As mentioned before xmarks was just starting out and an invitation was sent out to the kilted folk to join. A lot of us just decided to take our beverages with us and sit down for a spell. Still looking for the potted palm with Hamish's table, and the pool...but this place is OK..LOL

[Iolaus]

Wow, this whole thing was more complicated than I thought. It's getting bigger than I'm going to be able to fit, and since I'm already out of time and starting to trim here and there, I'm going to stick with a short, general statement:

In 1996, Tom’s Café was established as a web presence. From what I have been able to glean from early participants of that forum, the initial focus was to be on fashion freedom and accepting of all types of men’s wraps. It was supposed to be a halfway point for two extremes to meet, those extremes being the Bravehearts, who advocated traditional men’s wear like the kilt and other traditional garb, and the Freestylers, who advocated wearing anything and saw these garments as just more skirts in their closet. The resulting mix of these two camps did not go well, and in 2000, many of the Bravehearts moved on to two other forums that had started up, Kiltmen.com, which had the by-line “Bravehearts in Kilts Against Trouser Tyranny”, and XMarksTheScot.com. Both of these forums have become very successful, and are considered the go-to sites for the kilt-wearing community.

I know there are other sites, but these are the big ones, and while I may seem to be giving less time to our sites, my point here is to draw a line between us and the freestylers, since, as Canuck pointed out, they are the face the media likes to use to represent the combined mass.