And yet there is a vast amount of daylight between a pump operator’s salary and the yearly earnings of, say, Kanye West. As a wellhead pumper, which does not require a college degree, you could expect to earn around $62,000 a year, which is roughly 30 percent higher than the median American salary. The application of the term “working class” to someone who works in the fossil fuel industry is confusing, because oil and gas jobs tend to pay more than many office-bound positions, and significantly more than the types of service jobs that are available in extraction-heavy regions. The romanticization of the rugged, “working class” man is hardly a new phenomenon, but this particular iteration of it is somewhat complex. (That did not happen in any significant way.) It is probably not a coincidence that during that year, Donald Trump devoted a lot of campaign rally time to rhapsodizing about the plight of the oil and gas worker, promising to bring back these hallowed American jobs. Between 20, the number of employees in the oil and gas extraction industry plummeted from a peak of 200,000 to around 130,000, with the majority of that drop occurring in the one-year span between January 20. This piece was published in the ascent to the peak of an oil and gas boom that eventually – as they always do – came crashing down. They had to keep you warm in winter weather and visible when working hours extended well into night. They had to be flameproof and chemical-resistant, but light and flexible enough that you could still do heavy labor in them. In 2013, the Wall Street Journal published an article on “frackwear, a new fashion that is unlikely to make the runways of Milan anytime soon.” (How young we once were!) The author went on to describe the investments that the owner companies of brands like Carhartt and Wrangler were making into garments that would meet the OSHA requirements of oil and gas drilling sites. Nas and Tupac’s fondness for Carhartt helped turn it into a brand that now does collaborations with Commes des Garçons’ Junya Watanabe.īut there is something novel about the recognizable specificity of the “Kanye boots,” which are now Googled to within an inch of their life. Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube paired $40 Dickies sets with $40,000 chains. Jay-Z played a role in bringing Timberlands from construction sites to private rooms at Nobu. West is not much of a pioneer here: sartorial trappings of heavy labor have been elevated to desirable streetwear by rappers and hip-hop stars who predate College Dropout by more than a decade. Dubbed “Spongebob boots” upon their debut at a benefit concert with Drake on December 10, the now-discontinued pair look like what you might imagine a fireman would wear on an emergency call to the North Pole, prompting my boyfriend to quip: “OSHA-approved, he could work night shift at the well.” That made it somewhat surprising to see Kanye West repeatedly photographed over the past month in stiff, paint-flecked dungarees, a plain hoodie, and vintage Red Wing 3094 work boots. In this extensively fracked corner of the country, this uniform signifies a particular identity: a man who works in oil and gas, and works hard. He might object to this characterization, but he probably won’t. He is a likely candidate for a bar fight. His purchase is usually Skoal and an energy drink in a neon-patterned can the size of a newborn. The boots are not clean, which is a point of pride, and he wears a heavy canvas jacket with reflective cuffs and collar over a large, worn-in hoodie. He steps down from a new pickup with 48 inch tires, and the feet that hit the ground are encased in heavy work boots: Ariats, Red Wings, or Wolverines. If you spend a day at any gas station between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, you are pretty much guaranteed to see a certain type of man.
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