Consider this: in 2017, New York City residents gave state governor Andrew Cuomo a paltry 28% approval rating for his handling of the city's crumbling subway system. And yet, also in 2017, fans of streetwear giant Supreme lined up to cop a special Supreme edition Metro Card. The cards were later listed for as much as $130 on resale sites like Grailed. "Never has public transportation been so lit," we wrote. A year later, not much has changed. Last week, Cuomo soundly won his party primary—despite challenger Cynthia Nixon using train overcrowding and delays as a key campaign issue. And as of last fall, Supreme is worth a cool $1 billion.

Streetwear, and its origins in the youth culture of the 70s and 80s, celebrates rebellion and decoupling from institutions. Supreme hit the scene in 1994, but the movement only went mainstream once the Internet accelerated access to fashion imagery. (Much more than can fit in a zine.) With the appetite for images, demand for product followed, and a culture of rebellion became a culture of ecommerce. The contemporary hypebeast is untamable—except in their pursuit of the latest limited-edition item.

But while streetwear is perhaps inseparable from that voracious consumerism, a different side of the movement is starting to show: a nostalgia for the same civic institutions the surf, skate and hip hop cultures that established streetwear were determined to reject. Labels like OnlyNY, John Elliott and Supreme have all embraced collaborations that would have been unthinkable to streetwear's progenitors. Political cynicism may be in fashion, but its equal and opposite manifestation is a nostalgia for virtuous public institutions, real or imagined. It's KITH meets Leslie Knope. It's Civicore.

OnlyNY's Parks Department hoodie. OnlyNY

Lower East Side brand OnlyNY has amassed nearly 150K Instagram followers and the support of pop figures like Charlotte Day Wilson and Portugal The Man by distinguishing itself through a licensing deal that allows the brand to sell homages to New York City parks, the Department of Transportation (DOT), and NYC Sanitation, among others. The clothing is comfortable, but detailed. The aglet of their drawstring bottoms reads 'OnlyNY' in font that could fit on a grain of rice. The five-point leaf of the New York City parks logo is a particularly popular motif. Their forest-green Parks hoodie was recently restocked after selling out, and I know a Brooklyn couple in a silent war over who gets to wear the baseball hat version. A fellow writer recently spotted my OnlyNY tote after a comedy show and lamented that he left his NYC Parks shirt in Paris.

It's not hard to see the irony here: OnlyNY has built a brand around selling New York City subway merch to consumers whose personal Twitter brands revolve around hating the L train. The prevailing message seems to be that the only good institutions are the ones nostalgia manufactures. It doesn't matter that there is no such neighborhood program as Stanton Street Sports. The medium is the message.

Last week, John Elliott announced a long term partnership with the City of Los Angeles, subsequently showing LA-branded sweats at NYFW. The desire to pay tribute to a city's public details (rather than private labels)– right down to a particular climbing rock– is a form of urban environmentalism, an answer to gorpcore that celebrates the mounting of the Jay Street escalators like others might memorialize climbing Mount Washington. A Boston hypebeast could similarly telegraph their survival of The Big Dig—if anyone in Boston had a sense of personal style.