Moustaches & Berets

Beards have always featured prominently on The Beret Project, but of course, there is more than hair on chins and cheeks: moustaches!

Wool Growers Restaurant

Mayie met J.B. Maitia, a bartender, and married him in 1947. They had two children, Jenny and Daniel. In 1954, when Mayie was only 25 years old she and J.B. opened their own restaurant, the Wool Growers Cafe on Sumner Street. Mayie, along with her daughter, Jenny and granddaughter Christiane, is still running the restaurant today.

Throughout the years Mayie has employed many Basques at her restaurant and has been their advocate – those new to this country – still to this day she helps them make the transition to their new home. Thus, Mayie became known as the mother or big sister to so many.

Mayie has been an inspiration and role model in this community and the American West. She continues to contribute generously to the well-being of the Basques community.

The Last Basque Restaurant in Southern California.

The Centro Basco restaurant is one of the few places in the South Californian region where you might hear the Basque language, Euskara. During a meal of stewed lamb shanks and braised oxtail, it’s not uncommon to hear four languages being spoken: English, French, Spanish and Basque — sometimes all during the same conversation.

Centro Basco was founded in 1940 and has been operated by the Berterretche family since 1970. Bernadette Berterretche, the youngest of the five Berterretche children, runs Centro Basco along with the restaurant’s head chef, her brother Joseph. Their parents, Monique and Peyo, have roots in Basque Country, on the French side of the Pyrenees mountains in a small town called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

When the Berterretche family purchased Centro Basco’s property in the ’70s, it was already established as a full-service restaurant and housed small apartments for 32 “boarders” who already lived there. The boarders comprised Basque men who worked on local farms nearby and would receive all of their daily meals at the restaurant. 

For recreation, there was a full-sized pelote (handball) court which still stands today. While many of the occupants have passed on or moved away, there remains one resident who worked at a nearby grain factory and has lived at Centro Basco for the past 53 years and still faithfully shows up each and every day for all of his meals.

Grandpa Yitzchak's Black Beret

Forty-six years after he fought in the Yom Kippur War, Grandpa Yitzchak gives his grandson a special present.

Last July, dozens of new Armored Corps recruits finished their final trek, one after another, on their way to receiving the long-awaited beret. Private Raphael Roskind was surprised to discover that when his turn came, his grandfather, Yitzchak Reichenberg, who had fought in the Yom Kippur War in the 7th brigade, came out of the audience to give him the vintage beret that had been in his possession for more than four decades.

“It was a complete surprise,” stated Private Roskind emotionally. “They didn’t tell me it was going to happen, and I was in shock, I didn’t even know how to respond. My friends told me afterwards that I wasn’t even aware of what was happening, it was an incredible way to finish my basic training.” 

The enormous power of a small piece of round felted wool…

Catherine Cohen

Catherine Cohen is a comedian and actress based in NYC.

She hosts a weekly cabaret show at Alan Cumming’s East Village venue, CLUB CUMMING, and co-hosts the popular weekly podcast, SEEK TREATMENT.

Catherine can be seen in the most recent season of HBO’s HIGH MAINTENANCE, as well as the final season of BROAD CITY.  She also appeared opposite Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae in Michael Showalter’s feature for Paramount, LOVEBIRDS. She was recently featured in FOX’S NIGHT OF COMEDY 2018.

Her writing has been featured on Splitsider, The New Yorker, The Huffington Post and New York Mag's The Cut. TimeOut named her one of Five NYC comedians to look out for in 2018. Catherine graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English and Theater.

Bernard Spolsky

Bernard Spolsky (1932, New Zealand) was educated at Wellington College (NZ) and Victoria University (NZ) and received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Montreal.

He has been the head of the English Department, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Director of the Language Policy Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, where he is currently Professor of English.

Bernard Spolsky has conducted and published research in language testing, second language learning, computers in the humanities, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and language policy. He has been President of TESOL, held a Guggenheim fellowship and a Mellon fellowship, and has been Senior Research Fellow at the National Foreign Language Center in Washington.

He has written several books for Oxford University Press: Conditions for Second Language Learning, Measured Words and Sociolinguistics.

The Tangent

The Tangent is a progressive rock group formed in 2002.

Originally formed by keyboardists Andy Tillison and Sam Baine of Parallel or 90 Degrees and The Flower Kings' guitarist Roine Stolt, bassist Jonas Reingold, and drummer Zoltan Csörsz. The septet was completed by renowned saxophonist David Jackson of Van der Graaf Generator and multi-instrumentalist Guy Manning. The band was scheduled only to be a "one-off" project but has produced ten official studio albums and a number of live albums since.

The Tangent has had numerous changes in personnel resulting in beret-wearing Tillison being the only member to have been on all the recordings.

The Babe Rainbow

The Babe Rainbow a sunny neo-psych collective from Byron Bay, Australia.

The Babe Rainbow emerged in 2015 with a self-titled EP bearing a unique blend of cosmic nuggets. After signing to 30th Century Records, the band embarked on a West Coast tour with outfit Allah-Las.

They recorded their 2017 full-length alongside Stu Mackenzie of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and in 2018 they released the follow-up, Double Rainbow. The new album is more musical and ambitious than previous outings, produced by Sam Joseph from the Flightless Records / King Gizzard stable. It feels authentic to the Babe Rainbow but more diverse and sophisticated, like “falling in love outwards”…

Knii Lante aka Singer-Doc

Adherents of the Rastafari movement often wear a very large knitted or crocheted black beret with red, gold and green circles atop their dreadlocks. 

The style is often erroneously called a kufi, after the skullcap known as kufune . They consider the beret and dreadlocks to be symbols of the biblical covenant of God with his chosen people, the “black Israelites”

In Ghana, one of the lovers of the beret is the award-winning Musician & Physician Knii Lante aka Singer-Doc. He has over the under-gee years till now rocked this beautiful headgear.

Jacqueline Beulah Burkhart

Jacqueline Beulah Burkhart is a fictional character portrayed by Mila Kunis on the Fox Network sitcom That '70s Show. Jackie is one of the two female leads throughout the show's life, and a love interest of Michael Kelso.

Jackie is a self-centered, spoiled member of a wealthy family who can be rather insensitive to the needs and feelings of others, though is regarded by many as attractive and fashionable. She looks down upon those of lower status in her school and treats them unfairly. 

For the most part, Jackie only cares about herself, and fashion is among one of the few other things that she is concerned about. She believes herself to be very beautiful and appealing and has been involved in romantic relationships with Michael Kelso, Steven Hyde, and Fez at different points in the series. She starts to change when she starts dating Hyde and by doing so, becomes cemented as a member of the group. 

Even after her break up with Hyde, they remained good friends and she continued hanging around. She also becomes less shallow and cares about others. In the season 8 episode "Fun It", it is revealed she has had coulrophobia (an irrational fear of clowns) ever since her seventh birthday party.

The Secret Garden (2020)

The Secret Garden (2020) tells the story of Lennox, a prickly and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who is sent back to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven on his remote country estate deep in the Yorkshire moors. 

There, she begins to uncover many family secrets, particularly after meeting her sickly cousin Colin, who has been shut away in a wing of the house. Together, the two damaged, slightly misfit children heal each other through their discovery of a wondrous secret garden, lost in the grounds of Misselthwaite Manor.

The film is based on the classic UK children’s novel of the same name written by Frances Hodgson Burnett but it is transposed to 1947 England. The film has had various film and TV updates over the years.

Saved by the Bell

Saved by the Bell is an American television sitcom that aired on NBC from 1989 to 1993. A retooling of the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the show follows a group of high school friends and their principal. 

The show primarily focuses on light-hearted comedic situations, it occasionally touches on serious social issues, such as drug use, driving under the influence, homelessness, remarriage, death, women's rights, and environmental issues.

In recent years, Saved by the Bell has been classified as educational and informational. The show was named one of the "20 Best School Shows of all Time" by AOL TV.

Controversial Boineros: Jim Kunaka

Zimbawe’s Zanu PF party’s dirty tactics of allegedly using security forces to manipulate elections and deal with political foes through abductions, torture and smear campaigns were laid bare as former terror leaders spilled the beans under oath before the commission of inquiry investigating the August 1 post-election violence.

Former Zanu PF provincial youth leader Jim Kunaka 

While the commission, which is chaired by former South African PresJim Kanukaident Kgalema Motlanthe, is investigating, among other things, the killing of six civilians, allegedly by members of the Zimbabwe military, the party’s former commanders of terror walked the commission through the dark arts that have enabled the revolutionary party to cling to power for nearly four decades by using the military, State security agents and its militarised youth wing.

Controversial Boineros/as: Martina Obi-Uzom

A pharmacist who posed as the mother of an 11-month-old boy so he could be circumcised without his parents’ consent has been spared jail.      

Martina Obi-Uzom, was entrusted to look after the child while his parents were away over the weekend of September 2 to 3, 2017. 

She used the opportunity to travel to London and employ the skills of a mohel –trained in the practice of circumcision – to get the child circumcised, determined he conform to her Nigerian Christian beliefs.

Judge Newbery said: “You have a Christian belief in circumcision that has great cultural and religious significance to you.

I accept your intention in your mind wasn’t to harm the boy and you are a woman of impeccable character” (despite kidnapping and mutilating a child).

Back in store: the original marinières of the Chinese Navy

Back in store: the original marinières of the Chinese People Republicans Navy, the most comfortable and best quality striped sailors shirts of any navy's uniform!

French government regulations of 27 March 1858 introduced the blue-and-white marinière to the French Navy's official uniform for seamen.

Sailors used to say that the stripes made it easier to see men who had fallen into the sea.

From the 1950s the marinière was worn by Pablo Picasso, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Brigitte Bardot, James Dean, Anthony Quinn, Rafael Alberti and many more. 

Much later, Sting and Madonna were part of a new generation adopting the shirt.

Controversial Boineros: Randolph Steepe

Stephen Kitras and Randolph Steepe (right, with beret) with the “The Glowing Heart of Canada”, a glass sculpture Steepe promised would be unveiled during the Vancouver Winter Olympics, and then go on permanent display at Rideau Hall, the official residence of the governor general.

Steepe allegedly used a fake charity called the Canadian Light Force Command to commission the piece and the statue was never showcased at the Olympics or Rideau Hall.

Controversial Boineros: Daniel Roy

Daniel Roy sat hunched over on the southeast corner of Bloor St. and St. George last week, legs outstretched, his head sinking to the ground between his knees.

In front of him was a sign that read: “Retired military. Sick and homeless. Please help.”

Wearing a dark green military jacket decorated with insignia and a maroon beret, he thanked strangers that dropped coins into his small tin or stopped to bring him food, and gave the sign of the cross when a man handed him a $20-bill.

Roy, 49, was arrested and charged with unlawfully wearing a uniform of the Canadian Forces on Tuesday morning.

Toronto Police were notified of Roy’s actions after a veteran suspected his uniform was not legitimate.

Controversial Boineros: Guardian Angels

In 1979, crime rates in New York were spiking. And if the streets weren’t bad enough, the subway system had become a symbol of decay hollowing the bowels of a bankrupt city. 

People were angry, frustrated with an impotent police force, the drugs, the indiscriminate muggings. That year, a few of them decided to take matters into their own hands. Led by the 23-year-old night manager of a Bronx McDonald’s named Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels began patrolling the city as unarmed crime stoppers. They wore a uniform—red beret, red jacket, combat boots—and they employed a streetwise sensibility to diffusing tensions, especially on the subway.

At first law enforcement was understandably uncomfortable with the idea of self-styled vigilantes roaming the city. Mayor Koch called them “paramilitaries,” and a 1981 tussle with undercover officers aboard the A train landed eleven of the Angels in jail, but the papers ate it up. And the public loved them.

Even then-Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo got onboard, calling the Angels “the best society has to offer,” which in 1981 meant a lot in reference to a group of mostly young black and Latino men from the inner city.

Koch eventually came around, realizing that public support was more important than complaints from his transit cops. The Angels were given official police training and provided with free subway passes. At their height they numbered between five and seven hundred strong.

Years later, the Brooklyn-born Sliwa would admit to fabricating a number of his group’s crime-fighting exploits, but by then he was a local celebrity and host of his own radio show on WABC-AM, and he’d always had a flair for the performative, so it wasn’t much of a surprise, either, when in 1992 he testified to having been targeted for assassination by the Gambino crime family.