An immigrant from the Russian Empire invented jeans
by applying horse blanket technology to pants—copper rivets
on corners and crotch, reinforced pockets that demonstrate
an attention to stress points and human movement
patterns. “The two horse brand” was notorious
for decades, the logo a storyboard: two horses facing
opposite directions, each hitched to a pant leg, a whip-
in-hand-man attending each animal as the quartet
proved that seat is hard to rip apart. Jacob Youphes
was Latvian by today’s maps, changed his name to Jacob Davis,
a tailor who wound up in Reno and approached Levis Strauss
about the patent he couldn’t afford alone. It’ll be a minute
before a ball pein hammer strips your back pocket
from the beat-up copy of Sisyphus in the Gravel Pit.
Sissy planted that pulp to put your pelvis on tilt.
