So as some of you might’ve noticed, I have deactivated my account on Twitter. I did so pretty much with zero warning and that was because I knew if I didn’t just rip that bandaid off, I’d tweet on the matter but then not actually do anything, finding a reason to stay on that gods-forsaken site to my own detriment.
Twitter was a personal hell and a personal heaven to me. Connecting with many other queer people and exposing myself to issues brought up by people outside of my bubble was amazing, and I am certain made me a better, more authentic person. I was always amused when I was accused of “living in a bubble” by folks who lived in towns 98% white and christian, with no visible queer people, that had never changed one iota over the last decade except to get older and more stubborn.
But twitter was also awful. I think that is an uncontroversial statement. As much as I loved queer celebration, as much as I loved the community and the networking, the whole thing was such a drag. A constant deluge of negativity, hate, and algorithmically generated news feeds to stoke outrage and fuel hopelessness.
I worked extremely hard to minimize the hate I received on the birdsite. My DMs were closed, I often used features to minimize who replied to my stuff. I avoided weighing in on touchy subjects, or getting into the replies. Twitter too had automatic features to filter out what they considered too vulgar or angry. But they were always just a click away, and there were so many false positives…
Recently, I’ve noticed a trend online that I’ll describe as emotional self-harm. I think most of us have done it, hell I’d argue that sites like twitter and facebook thrive on their users constantly subjecting themselves to at least a low, baseline level of emotional self-harm. I know for a fact that there exist queer people who seek out queerphobic spaces to see and read the hate and vitriol not as a way to understand, not as a way to be informed, but actively as a way to hurt themselves. Not in the way that I think many people thing, as a way to seek attention, but rather as a way to feel anything. Negative emotions carry so much more weight than positive ones, and when you’re in the throws of depression, that negativity might be the only thing you can feel at all.
So I, like many people, just got used to that baseline. The waterfall of negativity that existed whether or not you sought it out. The bad news. The shootings. The laws. The debates. The discourse in general. It erodes your sense of worth but you’re addicted to it after a while. You’d rather feel bad than feel nothing.
Which sucks.
Twitter was a wonderful place for many of us, as fraught as it was. Sure you might have random TERFs or bigots show up in your mentions to call you a rapist and a pedophile because you were happy that you were gendered correctly, and sure when you reported the person who called you these things and misgendered you the moderators would always reply back with “they did nothing against the TOS”. But we found each other.
And yeah, I’ll admit, I was 100% “horny on main” on twitter. I don’t give a shit. There’s a lot of hot people floating around out there who are willing to be horny on main with me.
But the new ownership seems dead-set on hurting trans people in specific, likely because the new ownership has a vendetta against us born from his own ineptitude as a partner and as a father. He spent $44B to deadname his ex’s current partner and his own child. To let the monsters back onto the site to drive engagement and push fascist ideology.
And so I left.
I made the decision to leave after reading the news that Trump was being reinstated.
I read the news, went to my settings, and deactivated my account before my mind could justify a reason to stay. It was an impulsive act of self-restoration and self-protection, and I can say I need more of those in my life.
So to all my followers who are almost certainly not reading this: sorry it was so abrupt, but I’m not sorry to be free.
You can find me on mastodon, there’s a link to the right of this post. I am being more cognizant both of who follows me and who I follow. Do not expect follow-backs. Right now I am trying to limit that as much as possible.
I am also on discord, where I moderate several servers, including the Northern Guard Supporter’s discord. That’s probably the best way to find me. My DMs are limited to people who share servers with me. I am not in the mind to hand out my handle here.
You’ll also notice that my contact me page, while still a thing, is no longer accepting mail. After all these years, it’s been 99% spam, and the last 1% was 50/50 hate mail and stuff that actually was meaningful. I don’t think anyone will miss it.
And with that, I think that’s enough. Birdsite bad.
Hello and welcome all to the ninth annual Detroit City FC kit post! Whether you’re new to Detroit City or new to this site, each year I do a run down of the previous Detroit City FC season, review the out-going kits the club wore, and I mock up three potential kits for the upcoming season – home, away, and a clash/charity kit.
There are probably people, mostly people whose personalities are born and bred on the birdsite, who will consider 2022 a not great year for Detroit City. Whether for the impact USL-C had on the club and supporter culture, for the growing pains that popped up throughout the year, the bitter cold of those first handful of games, or for the “disappointing” (heavy emphasis on the quotes) result.
I must attest that, at least on the pitch, I was extremely satisfied with the product and the results the club put out. Moving from NISA to USL-C was a move up in more ways than one, and I was expecting a season where we attempt to not be embarrassed more than actually attempt to win. However, the NISA All-Stars put out quality games. Sure, we didn’t make a deep run into the playoffs, but back in March I wasn’t expecting to make it to the playoffs at all. So that’s a massive success already, and it means that the club has a strong foundation to build off of.
The next few years are going to be so exciting for Detroit City. I can see us really becoming a power house over the next few years, especially with the right signings and coaching. We’re so close. We can do this.
Meanwhile, a lot of controversy was going on off the pitch – mostly in the stands. I will not comment on every event, first because it’s not the point of this blog, second because I don’t remember them all, and third – I don’t want to come off as an authority. Generally though, my opinions run from unhappy and rebellious to unhappy but pragmatic.
Personally, I think my time in the midst of all the smoke and the pounding of drums might be reaching its conclusion and thus so too my pontificating on the matter. Perhaps I am getting bougier, perhaps I am getting older. It is very likely that it’s a combination of those things, but also a subtle shift in what I want out of the game day experience. The Niamh of 2023 is quite different than the person who was going in 2012. Less is the need for tribal belonging and aggressive venting, and in its place a need to be seen, to enjoy, to exist outside of my home office, to have my cocktails and catch up with friends and perhaps throw eyes at potential new friends.
Starting next year, I will be in the VIP section more than not. I basically consider it pre-paying for about $300 of drinks and food, which I do regularly get each game. My plan as of writing (October of 2022) is to coëxist both in the stands and the VIP section, but generally, I expect to make those retreats when needed.
But what about the kits?” you might be asking. “I’m here for the kits” to which I might reply, “Oh! Kits! You said Kits. Sorry, I misheard you. I thought you said- you know? Never mind.”
The 2022 Detroit City kits will always be the kits from our first USL-C season, which in-and-of-itself is a big deal. Potentially that is enough to make them something special, though I am hesitant to go all-in on that idea. Looking back to the 2020 kits, those aren’t exactly the most memorable set, but there was a lot going on in 2020 that might’ve prevented them from solidifying in my mind.
Detroit City donned four kits across 2022 – home, away, and two charity kit designs (one for the women and one for the men) and from those four it’s hard to pick a “best” in the worst possible way. It will have to fall to either the home or away because… sublimation, but outside that I think all four kits are less than great.
The home kits – all rouge with a rouge-colored sash was an interesting choice for a follow up to one of the best DCFC kits of all time. I like the sash as an element, but I think these kits fall into a serious uncanny valley of being needlessly complicated? I never really thought of the two-tone kit this year as anything other than just solid rouge, if that makes sense. I think the lacking piece was the Adidas piping being the same color as everything else. You might as well have deleted the piping and left them as is. The sash never popped in such a way to stand out. Even my wiki kit mockup was pretty plain, and we all know I hate plain. In that way, the 2020 and 2022 home kits share a bit in common – I forget that they had anything going on at all.
I think, on paper, the 2022 away kits would’ve made more sense if the home kit had been stronger. I just legitimately have zero attachment to the away kit at all. The design elements make sense, but again, there’s not much going on. Had the home kits had more, been better, the away kits would’ve snapped into sharp focus. They definitely meet the definition of “clean” I constantly bandy about on this site, but… I don’t know, they just didn’t mean much to me. Maybe it was the lack of trophies? Maybe there was a malaise over the entire season, coming out of the libertarian madness of NISA and into the corporate mundanity of USL-C that just subtracts from these two kits. Maybe if we won more. Maybe if we lifted more trophies. Maybe if something these kits would’ve magically worked. Inevitably the kits both define and are defined by the season. A great season can bring great meaning to a kit. But a great kit can make a mediocre season memorable. And that’s the problem. We had a good season, we broke expectations in mediocre kits, and that leaves them both unmemorable.
Lastly, and leastly, the charity kits. I hated both of them? They were awful, cacophonous messes of sublimation. I’m stoked we raised money for great causes, I’m so happy we got to do good with them – just wish we had looked good in the meantime. I assume this signals a trend – the custom Admiral kits for charity and the Adidas kits for the “main” kits. Part of me wishes we’d return to a special kit for the charity, still Adidas, but just a little bit more off the beaten path. I wish we’d consider another go like 2019 with a full third kit. We’ve shown that we can do stuff like auctioning off normal kits. But as we get bigger and are able to get more out of Adidas, maybe that won’t be the case. Perhaps we’re nearly at the point of considering another supplier.
Perhaps I am overusing “perhaps” in this post.
We live in a time of uncertainty. A time of ‘perhaps’ when we need certain answers.
I have no certain answers for you, dear reader, only thoughts and conjecture. I read the tarot of the kits. Some things are clearer than others. However; somethings are obvious:
I don’t work for the DCFC front office
The DCFC front office fucks with me
Kits shown here are not official direction
Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
The reality of 2023 might be very different than what I predict here
The Home Kit
The 2023 Home Kit Prediction – Rouge with horizontal pinstripes and gold trim
I went through a lot of iterations on my home and away kits this year, slowly honing in on something that worked for me. Like the club, I usually alternate between years with a lot going on and years without so much. Last year for the home kit, we had the hoops, this year pinstripes.
The 2021 Kits were something amazing, and I want to build off that more. Some clubs are defined by features as much as colors (e.g. Celtic and green/white hoops, Newcastle and black/white stripes), but Detroit City isn’t one of those clubs. We can have hoops, sashes, pinstripes, nothing at all so long as the kits are that lovely, rich rouge color. Making the gold trim something that all home kits have going forward would be amazing, and draw a serious line of continuity even as features come and go. I’m not sure if I want to see bigger gold features, for example, a gold sash, but I’d at least be interested in seeing it.
This is what I mean by the difficulty of designing a home kit. I can’t imagine having these difficult discussions regarding the away kit. Want a gold sash? Done. Want a rouge band? Done. There’s no problem there. But when you talk about making a serious change to the home kit there’s a hesitation I feel in my gut. Will this be something that adds to the history of Detroit City kits? Or subtracts from it? I’ve done mockups with, for example, gold hoops and I cannot help but feel that it’s not a Detroit City home kit. A training top or a one-off charity kit, but it’s not a home kit.
So perhaps this is a “safe” design. Clean and simple. Three tones of rouge (the base, the lighter piping on the shorts and hems, and the darker stripes), but I think it is a strong design balancing everything I’ve talked about above.
The Away Kit
The 2023 Away Kit Prediction – White with a rouge and gold chevron
Working on the away kit is always a ton of fun, and I often get caught up in making dozens of potential designs, many just iterating on one strong design, drilling it down to something amazing. In previous posts, I’ve talked about wanting to do an homage to the 2013 kits with the rouge band across the chest. The 2013 away kit was the first DCFC kit I’ve ever bought, and I absolutely love it. It’s a fun kit with a variety of elements: the white body, the rouge band, the champagne sleeves.
Here I went to a sort of parallel homage – substituting a multi-colored chevron for the rouge band. Sure the sleeves are still white, but the champagne is captured in the piping and the chevron. Rouge piping on the shirt hems and on the shorts with a little two-tone going on in the collar.
Part of me wants to start a completely alternative discussion to the one above? Is it time to consider having a bit more fun with our away kits? White makes up the majority of our away kits despite us being the rouge and gold, so my gut is thinking do we move more permanently to champagne? Or do we let go all together? Can Detroit City pull off an orange away kit? Or a purple one? I Legitimately don’t know. Something about having both home and away kits fit the club’s color profile is uniquely American to me, a carry over from gridiron. But maybe that’s not actually the case, maybe I just don’t know because I’m used to clubs in the EPL having a very solid home design and the away kit having a bit more variation. Newcastle United has shown this over the years.
But what I do want to reiterate is what I said above – you gotta have at least one kit knock it out of the park, and I feel like the 2022 Detroit City kits didn’t provide. So for 2023 we need a strong slate of kits. Which brings us to my favorite kit to work on…
The Clash/Alternative Kit
The 2023 Clash Kit Prediction – Black with rouge sleeves and socks
The clash was the third of the three kits I started on and the second I came to a final decision on. It started with black and pastel pink. But as I played around with the options and variations, I really couldn’t shake the Inter Miami vibes, which was extremely disappointing. When I eventually moved on to the black/rouge combination.
I wanted a look that would be instantly iconic. I think I hit the bull’s eye with this design. We’ve seen some black and gold kits but something I’d like to see is black and rouge. When the two colors are so close together, you’re going to have to take steps to really emphasize them, so here, instead of just piping or some small features, I went with the sleeves and the socks. The more heavily contrasting gold comes in as piping on the shorts, in the collar and sleeves, and the hem of the top.
This sort of design, one that fits in with the rest of the options is perfect for an alternative or clash design, not just a a charity match or two.
There are some kits that years later folks still talk and think about, those ones that made bold choices and stuck to them. I think the black and gold third kits really embody that, or for another example, the Kitman Moy kits from the same year. I don’t think we’ve had a design since that really bucks the convention and gets not just talked about, but used. I might sound a little curmudgeonly here – but I’m fucking sick of the one-off sublimated kits. I really am. Let’s see something with some meat.
Three amazing kits, I think! There’s a lot that makes them different, there’s even more that ties them together!
The Sketches
The sketches for this year’s trio of kits.
Despite the ending in Memphis, 2022 was an extremely memorable year for Detroit City FC. Our first season in the USL-C, our first playoff spot, our first playoff loss. I for one certainly did not see it coming, though I dared to hope. I dared to hope quite a bit through the 2022 season – whether it was a playoff hosting spot or even just a playoff spot at all. The club and the staff really rose to the occasion on the pitch and despite growing pains off the pitch, I think we saw a lot of progress and improvements.
As my time as a “hooligan” comes to a close, my involvement with the club only grows. First with the 2022 Prideraiser campaign, which many of you contributed to and made a massive success. And now as a member of the Fan Advisory Board. I hope to continue to support and represent all fans, but especially queer fans, as the club continues to grow.
I have high hopes for 2023.
Hit me up on Twitter or Mastodon with your thoughts about 2022 and 2023, what did you think of the kits in particular and what would you put Detroit in for the upcoming season? If anyone wants to commission me, I have a portfolio and pricing page on this site. Feel free to drop a line.
