So Yesterday

So Yesterday is a dated, fun book about corporate trend setters. Corporate brands are "alluded" too regularly, but rarely explicitly mentioned. Some of the allusions show the fragility of corporate hegemony. (That Finnish cell phone maker? Well, yeah, they were kind of bought by Microsoft, written off, and are trying to come back around.)

The story focuses on shoes. The protaganist, Hunter, is a teenager on the lookout for what is cool. He is paid by the big corporations to find cool shoes. He finds a girl that has a cool way of doing her laces, and from there the adventure begins. They find the coolest shoes they've ever seen (Anti-Nikes), nearly get kidnapped, try to rescue a kidnapped marketeer, spend thousands for expensive clothes to attend a party for the ultra rich and "fall in love" (sort of). He also tells us about the different "places" in the trend setting scale, from the people that start trends, to the people that stay forever behind the trends. He was "cool" in Minnesota, but total dorkus when he got to New York City. He goes out on all these crazy adventures, but then stops back home to eat dinner with his parents. It is a fun book that manages to be "cool" while still being a lot of fun.