Is it just me or has everyone in town recently acquired new eye wear? The prevailing look is definitely Buddy Holly-meets-the Boeing engineer’s break room circa ‘66-meets-Tom Cruise in Risky Business (definitely the first and last time he was a style icon). I suppose it doesn’t hurt that American Apparel is hawking vintage frames. All of it reminds me of my favorite picture of my dad, seen here, eating a hot dog and smugly drinking from a bottle of Pepsi in 1968. Those were the days. Or so it would seem.

At any rate, last night was my monthly-or-so Noodle Club meet-up, and I noticed that a number of my fellow Noodlers sport really killer, and somewhat new (or new to them), frames.

Let’s back up just a bit here—Noodle Club is like a book club, only we don’t all read the same book and sit around discussing character development. That seems, quite frankly, really boring to me. Instead, we bring a book, review and/or talk about why we liked it, throw it in a pile with everyone else’s, and then go through this relatively painless and always kind of fascinating open-ballot process of choosing which one we’d like to take home and read. The next week, we bring another new book, plus the borrowed book we’ve just read, and the whole process begins again, with books from previous weeks still in play. Noodle Club also has to do with noodles. Usually they are homemade by my friend Paul, with the rest of us pitching in side dishes, but last night we gave him the evening off and met up at Kushibar in Belltown. Get it? They have noodles there, too.

But back to my four-eyed friends. Below you’ll see, well, four of them. I want to see if you can match the images (taken on my iPhone) with the source/shop information I’ve given. If I knew how to do that women’s magazine quiz thing where the answers are then printed upside down at the bottom, now that would really be something. But I don’t, so the answers are down below the pictures. Work with it.

Oh, and for some reason I feel like I need to say that Noodle Club is co-ed, it’s just that none of the guys wear glasses.

So here goes.

A) These glasses are from Ottica in Belltown. When asked why she choose these particular frames, the wearer said, ‘Well, they have that Run DMC thing,’ in a tone of voice that implied that, you know, I should have known that. And, jumping to the image linked here, yeah, I should have. Man, but those were most definitely the days.

B) Burberry; Lenscrafters, in about an hour.

C) Get ready for a good tip. This Noodler purchased her frames at Seattle Vision Clinic on 6th and Jackson. She says she likes supporting businesses in the ID, and she chose these frames because they reminded her of something a character from an old Japanese Godzilla movie would wear. She tells a tale of drawers full of cool old dead-stock (discontinued vintage, never worn) frames available for a relative song. Now that’s a scoop.

D) This friend’s grandfather was an optometrist in North Carolina; these frames are from his shop, and they were worn by her grandmother. She inherited a shoebox full; cat-eyes, killer shades, you name it. I’m all for keeping it in the family.

ANSWERS
A) third Noodler
B) fourth Noodler
C) second Noodler
D) first Noodler