Paul Lukas (journalist)

Paul Lukas (born March 21, 1964) is an American journalist, author, and the founding editor of Uni Watch, a blog devoted to uniform design.[1] Lukas has been called "sports journalism's foremost uniform reporter,” “a minutiae fetishist,” and a “professional geek."[2] As a journalist he helped legitimize broader news coverage of sports uniform design with his work appearing in The New York Times, GQ, Fortune, Gourmet, Saveur, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN The Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Spin, Glamour, The New Republic, The Financial Times, and InsideHook. Lukas also authored a book about the intricate design of consumer products and services.

Paul Lukas
Born (1964-03-21) March 21, 1964 (age 60)
OccupationJournalist
NationalityAmerican
Notable worksUni Watch blog and articles
Website
uni-watch.com

Uni Watch

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The first Uni Watch column ran on May 26, 1999, in the Village Voice and discussed baseball's evolving uniform combinations.[3] In 2003 the column moved from the Village Voice to Slate.com.[4] From 2004 to 2019, Uni Watch ran as a regular column on ESPN.com and was described as a "sports fashion column that helped legitimize mainstream news coverage of everything from wholesale franchise rebranding to tweaks in fonts or piping on uniform sleeves".[5] Lukas owns the rights to the name Uni Watch, and in 2006 launched a separate blog to supplement the material in columns on ESPN.com.[6] In 2019, Lukas had a seven-week stint as staff columnist for Sports Illustrated with 10 attributed articles about uniforms.[7][8] After his departure from Sports Illustrated, he began writing articles for InsideHook — a digital sports, news, and entertainment publication.[9] Eventually he started writing for Facebook's Bulletin, and stopped writing uniform related articles for InsideHook.[10] In a post on Uni-Watch, he said that he will leave the site and turn it over to Phil Hecken, on May 26, 2024, which is also Uni-Watch's 25th anniversary.[1][11]

Other projects

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Lukas a published a music zine from 1986 to 1988 and a created a beer zine called Beer Frame in October 1993.[12] Lukas created a website called Inconspicuous Consumption that, "deconstructing the details of consumer culture -- details that are either so weird or obscure that we'd never see them, or so ubiquitous that we've essentially stopped seeing them".[13] The website evolved into a book, Inconspicuous Consumption.[14] His lifelong obsession with collecting odd items includes draft beer tap handles.[15] Permanent Record is an object-based history project Lukas began as an investigation into the stories emerging from a bunch of old report cards found in a discarded file cabinet.[16] The report cards are still the core of the project, but Permanent Record has "expanded to include examination of other found objects, including postcards, business records, photographs, things left inside of old books, messages in bottles, and so on."

Bibliography

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  • Paul, Lukas (1997). Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure (Three Rivers Press). ISBN 978-0517886687

Personal life

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Lukas spent his early life on Long Island, New York, United States.[17] He resides in Brooklyn, New York.[18] Lukas occasionally writes about his personal and social life on the Uni Watch blog, with his culinary tastes and music interests most frequently featured in daily posts.[19]

References

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  1. ^ a b Kepner, Tyler (May 22, 2024). "For 25 years, 'Uni Watch' built a following of uniform obsessives. Now its founder is walking away". The Athletic. The world's foremost authority on sporting style is retiring from Uni Watch on May 26, the 25th anniversary of its first appearance as a feature in the Village Voice.
  2. ^ Horne, Erik. "Collected Wisdom: Uni Watch creator Paul Lukas on the Thunder, Dallas Cowboys and the greatest uniform of all-time", The Oklahoman, Oklahoma, 14 November 2015. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  3. ^ Zarley, B. David. "The Minutiae Man: Paul Lukas and the Uni-verse", Vice Media, 25 February 2016. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  4. ^ Keeley, Sean. "ESPN is cutting ties with Uni Watch, which legitimized our obsession with uniforms and logos", Awful Announcing, 20 December 2018. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  5. ^ Bogage, Jacob. "ESPN is ending its relationship with Uni Watch, but the blog will live on", Washington Post, 19 December 2018. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  6. ^ Lukas, Paul. "In Which I Am Designated for Assignment", Uni-Watch Blog, 18 December 2018. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  7. ^ "Fun While It Lasted: Uni Watch/SI Partnership Goes Kablooey After 7 Weeks". Uni Watch. 2019-10-04.
  8. ^ "Paul Lukas". SI.com. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  9. ^ "Paul Lukas, Author at InsideHook". InsideHook. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  10. ^ "O'Ree-O-Rama: NHL Pulls Out the Stops for Pioneer's Number Retirement". Uni Watch. 2022-01-19. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
  11. ^ "Important News About Uni Watch's Future". Uni Watch. 2024-01-02. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  12. ^ "Paul Lukas, Beer Frame", Zine Book. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  13. ^ Hudson, Berkley. "The Stuff of Life ", Los Angeles Times, 8 April 1997. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  14. ^ Fitzgerald, Jacqueline. "FROM INSIGHTFUL TO INSIGNIFICANT: STUDYING THE CITADEL OF CONSUMPTION", Chicago Tribune, 24 February 1997. Retrieved on 16 August 2019.
  15. ^ "Paul Lukas’s Collection of Tap Handles", Design Observer, 2 June 2011. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  16. ^ Mao, Tien. "Talking With Paul Lukas Of Uni Watch About Uniforms And Much More" Archived 2019-08-16 at the Wayback Machine, Gothamist, 4 December 2012. Retrieved on 15 August 2019.
  17. ^ "How the Dean of Sports Uniforms Stitched Together His Online Dynasty". InsideHook. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  18. ^ "Probably More Than You Wanted to Know". Uni Watch. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  19. ^ "Uni Watch | The Obsessive Study Of Athletics Aesthetics". Uni Watch.
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