I can't tell you how glad I am that I wasn't interviewed for this.

Who is getting churned out of journalism school these days? A spider monkey with access to the June 2004 daddytypes archive could have written an article 50 times better than that.

[dude, I think berets were out long before 2004... -ed,]

maybe in manhattan. in san francisco you occasionally catch a beret wearer in north beach, clutching a journal filled with so-bad-it-melts-your-skin poetry.

all I meant was that it cracks me up when some "journalist" "discovers" that carter's makes shitty baby clothes and thinks there's a story to be made because of A NEW TREND THEY HAVE DISCOVERED. one fascinating fact about journalists is that every two or three months one "discovers" one of the following things: (1) "nerds" are cool; (2) new parents don't want to turn into their own parents; (3) staying at home with your kids is a touchy subject to feminists. I've seen the same article about each of those three subjects about 20 times in one permutation or another in 20 different papers. No jerks, nerds are never cool, your grandparents didn't want to turn into their parents either, and you're asking for it if you start writing about stay at home parenthood. I wouldn't care except these journalists always try to sell their story as a "new trend." yawn. it's like that GRUP thing. These journalists are obsessed with newness and irrelevant taxonomies. I wish they'd have just majored in biology instead.

[very well said. and I burned a few minutes this morning trying to work GRUPS into this post, too. meanwhile, I can't figure out how, with parking the way it is, someone from SF can be into RV's. -ed.]

"Berets went out before 2004?" said Metrodad (as he casually brushed his hand over his head and removed his favored chapeau of choice.)

[uh, but it looks good on YOU. -ed.]

Hey, if you're going to snark, at least get it right--we have a Jetta, not a Passat. And we would still have that Squareback, but it needed work, and with a baby we just didn't have time to give it the love.

I believe the writer was inspired to write the article because of her friends' experience (they were the primary couple the article discussed). I was scrounged up for color. Our crib is from Craigslist, and is held together with duct tape. I did not think I came off too assholish in the article, to be honest.

[thanks for the correction, and no one sounds assholish, really, and to be totally fair, the article does avoid using the 'hipster' moniker. But it falls squarely into the hipster parent trendspotting mode that Dutch ID'd. And after driving 7 hrs in the rain yesterday, wielding a Pamper to mop up the mystery leak in the rear footwell of our old Mercedes, I can sympathize with your squareback dilemma. Still, the article is what it is. -ed.]

OT:

Leaking *rear* footwell on an oldish east coast car? That's no mystery. Lift up the carpets and look for the rust perforation in the floor.

[I did that before I bought it. The water channels from somewhere, either the sunroof seal, the windshield seal, the firewall, or who knows where? -ed.]

Dutch, I thought that here in the Bay Area the person we occassionally catch wearing a beret is Alice Waters

I have to take a step back after reading this post. Lambasting hipster parents? DaddyTypes?!?! The same dude who wrote about being "disciplined" about "avoiding primary color creep" in his apartment?

Color me shocked to learn that parent hipsters don't always stick together.

[we're a self-hating bunch. must be that typical gen-x aversion to being labelled by marketers and the media. -ed.]

OT again:

All those locations should be leaving water all over the front footwell as well. A leaking rear door seal (or even a rear window seal) sounds most likely if you're sure there's no rust.

OT continued: As mentioned above, the most likely culprit is window seals leaking into door panels. As the former owner of a '73 BMW 2002tii, I can attest to rotted floor panels. And that was on a CA car no less. Frankly, your floor mats are probably the only thing keeping your feet off the pavement at this point.

[we have the floormats up for this process, and the floors & doors have been checked years ago. Sills, too. The water actually seems to come along an electrical harness channel from the top of the right front footwell, but almost always leaves that footwell dry. I've been on and off the mbz owner boards for a while with it, actually. BTW, there is a sweet red 2002 convertible, or is it a 1600? parked near us in DC sometimes. AWESOME. -ed.[