Hip-hop gear

B-boys and B-girls can find a mix of big jeans and fresh kicks at Hip Zepi and Manhattan in downtown crossing. If you want to rock Girbaud, Anishi, or Adidas, both offer fly gear that won’t make you drop too many benjamins, son. (The store is mad cooler than us-promise. We were trying to front and played ourselves. Our bad.)

So what’s with the huge white t-shirt? Hip Zepi salesman Tyrone Robertson says “When you’ve got a nice pair of jeans and sneakers, it just makes it all look crisp.” Eddie Frierson, manager at Manhattan has a different theory. “Most of the time your pants are saggin’, and you don’t wanna show nothing, so the shirt covers that area.”

Hip Zepi, 31 Winter St., Boston MBTA: Orange or Red Line to Downtown Crossing 617 350-6870

Manhattan Clothing, 40 Winter St., Boston  MBTA: Orange or Red Line to Downtown Crossing 617 482-3370

Indie apparel

To acquire geek chic, the dresscode of indie rockers, a visit to the Garment District or Urban Outfitters will suffice, but if you really want the vintage advantage, you have to visit Café Society or Gumshoe. Handbags, hat boxes, bellbottoms, and butterfly collars are just some of Café Society’s ever-rotating retro inventory, and dudes will enjoy the cowboy shirts, old sports tees and ceiling-high stack of cords and jeans at Gumshoe. They are both kind of hard to get to, but they both offer clothes that are even harder to get.

So what’s with the white belts? Gumshoe owner Otto Johnson says “it offsets the pants.” Beware of used belts though. As my dad always said, “How many times do you wash your hands BEFORE pulling up your pants?”

Café Society 131 Cypress St Brookline MBTA: Green Line to Brookline Hills. Mon.& Tues, 2p.m.-6 p.m.; Wed.-Fri. noon-6 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. 617 738-7186 

Gumshoe, 40 South St., Jamaica Plain MBTA: Orange Line to Forest Hills, to 37/38 bus. Fri. 3 p.m.-6 p.m.; Sat & Sun. noon-5p.m. 617 522-5066

Preppie wear

Why is it that all these preppy stores put the initial J. in front of their names? We don’t know, but we do know that J. Press is the place to go for wool sweaters, fancy tweed jackets and belts with whales on them. Also, try Thomas Pink if you have a lot of green to throw down. (Get it? Pink and green are preppy colors.) You’ll find plenty of both colors in the threads here. A button-down starts at about $70, and dresses are over $100.

So what’s with the whale? “It’s just a reminder of I suppose the old money crowd in New England, with the whaling industry from Nantucket to New Bedford,” says Denis Black, manager of J. Press.

J. Press 82 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge MBTA: Red Line to Harvard. Mon-Sat 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. (617) 547-9886

Thomas Pink 100 Huntington Ave., Boston MBTA: Green Line to Copley (617) 267-0447

Goth garb

Although mallternative stores like Hot Topic have been cashing in on goth gear lately, the amount of dark latex fashions you’ll find at Hubba Hubba and Eros Boutique will bring a blush to any Goth’s sun-starved skin. Specializing in rubber and pleather, they have everything from collars to corsets to styles of dresses that might look more appropriate on a Victorian corpse. These stores are for mature audiences only. In other words, stay away if you think you might be intimidated by the rainbow of phalluses (or would that be phalli?) that they also sell. So what’s with everything being black? “It’s a crossover from Goth, with black and death and spookiness, but it also makes peep look thinner,” says Liam Jacobs, manager at Hubba Hubba. “And people look more stylish in black. You look better in a black suit than you do in a blue suit.”

Hubba Hubba 534 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. MBTA: Red Line to Central. Mon.-Sat. noon- 8 p.m. www.hubbahubba.com (617) 492-9082

Eros Boutique 581 A Tremont St., Boston. MBTA: Orange Line to Back Bay. Open every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. www.erosboutique.com (617) 425-0345

PAT HEALY