A few years ago I moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, for grad school. Living on a stipend was tough, so I rented some square footage at a collaborative retail space and began selling vintage menswear to help pay for things like books and Coors Light. I named the store "Rooster, Gus" after two of my dogs.

The comma was used in sardonic and juvenile opposition to the ampersands on which the names of many similar businesses hinged. Such names are a callback to when businesses put the last names of their partners on a sign and called it a day. Now the names are often chosen for rhetorical effect.

I'm not really into costuming. Naming a store or wearing vintage clothes to pretend that you're time traveling seems to me a bit misguided. Phrases such as "Back when men were men!" tacitly carry alongside them phrases like "and women stayed home" and  "civil rights were even more unfairly distributed." I want no part of that.

I promote vintage menswear as a way to engage and reimagine the present, not as a way to advertise the past. I think the comma suggests that intent. Commas are a mark of separation, of a break between ideas, of a shift in direction in style, history, or both. But they must fall within a single sentence.