Being an Uber driver in Milwaukee is a one-of-a-kind experience that let’s Dave Begel meet some of the most interesting people, residents as well as visitors to the city. Everybody has a story and Tales of the Road will highlight  some of those stories. The stories have been edited into quotes from riders. Names have been omitted  or changed to preserve the privacy of his passengers.

I am now almost 1,500 rides into my part-time job as an Uber driver, and one of the most fascinating things I have noticed, and continue to notice, is apparel.

There is a wide variety of things that people wear, and a lot of it depends on the day, the time and where they are going.

I’ve kept a kind of running log on Milwaukee fashion, and here are the early results. A caveat is that I am no fashion plate, but I do know what looks good, and bad, on other people.

Sports

Clothing of a favorite team is normally reserved for weekends or for trips to and from an arena or ballpark.

On Sundays, the top item is the Green Bay Packers jersey, normally worn on a trip to a bar or to somebody’s house for a Packers party.

Trips to a Brewers game obviously call for a Brewers jersey, but most of them are Yount or Molitor or even Fingers. I rarely see a jersey with the name of a current player on the back.

But the winner in my car – and by a big margin – is clothing from the Milwaukee Bucks.

Hats are popular, but for going out on a weekend night, I can’t begin to count the number of guys who have either Antetokounmpo or Parker jerseys.

The other thing about Bucks’ gear is that women are starting to wear the jerseys that are made for women. They are more flattering that a Packers jersey, and it’s obvious that some female sports fans opt for the jerseys made for them.

Business

I can probably count on one hand the number of men I pick up who are going to work wearing a tie.

And I’m not talking about a guy who works digging graves in a cemetery. I’m talking about men who work at Johnson Controls and the U.S. Bank building and City Hall. Guys who carry briefcases.

Some of them wear a sport coat, and few even wear a suit. But ties are almost totally absent.

For women (take note, Hillary) skirts or dresses outpace pants by a huge margin. Women wear lots of blazers, but the idea of pants just doesn’t seem to be too popular in Milwaukee.

Skinny jeans

I have to be very careful talking about this one, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a woman wearing an old-fashioned regular pair of jeans.

It is all skinny jeans now worn with blazers, halter tops, blouses, sports jerseys, turtlenecks and T-shirts. They are worn with tennis shoes, flats, flipflops and stiletto heels.

They are very fashionable, but …

There are some people who should not be wearing them. Just as there are a lot of guys who should not be wearing Bermuda shorts or fishnet T-shirts, there are women who ought to stay away from skinny jeans. We can’t pass a law, but I’d vote for a candidate who supported skinny jeans only for skinny people.

Two more notes on skinny jeans: A lot of guys I drop off at gay bars are wearing them. And more than half of the skinny jeans that women wear have those phony rips and holes in them.

Baggy pants

I’m beyond the day when I complained about kids who wear their pants well down their boxer shorts and have to hold them up when they walk.

But guys have a thing about baggy pants. I can’t count the number of men who get out of my car and walk to their destination with their pants sagging down over their butt.

It’s not just guys who are overweight, either. I see plenty of trim men who have saggy pants.

It may be that men just don't care enough.

Short skirts

Finally, there is the matter of women in short skirts.

I spend a lot of waiting time on weekend nights in bar districts where a lot of women walk from bar to bar.

Some of them – a lot of them – wear short skirts. And many of them walk along, tugging the skirt down on their legs, which has always raised a question: If you keep tugging a short skirt down over your legs, why are you wearing a short skirt in the first place?