Bobby Hoffman, program director for the Bridgemen of Bayonne, NJ, insists he just falls into ideas. He can tell oodles of stories to back up this statement and after listening to a few of them, it not only sounds believable but begins to make sense. Like the one about how the Bridgemen got their long yellow coats.

Dubbed “the bananas,” the coats are typical of the madcap style so evident in the Bayonne corps' brand of entertainment. That coat's introduction to the drum corps scene a few years back gave the word “innovative” a whole new meaning. They were, to put it mildly, outlandish and their issue received mixed reviews throughout the drum corps community.

The present design took shape because something had to be done about the corps' uniform anyway. The old uniform was wearing out and the expense of replacing it sent Bobby Hoffman to the drawing board with his first chance to design a whole new uniform. He says he wasn't frothing at the mouth to do something radical. “I'm far more traditional than people think, amazing as that seems,” says Hoffman.

At that point he was fooling around with a cossack idea and looking over pictures of Russian uniforms. But that idea had a problem. Hoffman believes one of the things corps need on the field is large hats because that helps everybody look bigger and gives the corps more presence. Unfortunately, the cossack uniform came with a small hat. “So I erased the hat,” says Hoffman, “but I still had this coat. Of course it was black because everything you saw in the books about this thing was black.”

Ah, but the whole cossack idea had a problem too. The next year was the bi-centennial and detante aside, Russian was Russian. But there was still that nice shape to the jacket.

Things progressed and during February, Hoffman was ready to preview his creation to the corps. Several basic elements were present in the design at that stage. A huge buzbie, like the kind used by marching bands, paid honor to the bi-centennial. The coat was still an off-shoot of the cossack uniform, but now it came in a whole array of colors. Baritones would wear light green, sopranos yellow, drummers red and so on. How did the corps like the idea?

“Well,” Hoffman says “being rowdy city kids, they threw Coke cans at the models and when I brought the buzbie out, the cat calls started.” Hoffman's months of work went up for discussion. “I asked them what they thought of the buzbies,” he relates. “So after the buzbies went, I asked them how many people liked the colors.” One of the corps' drum line members also belonged to the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang and Hoffman used that member's response to illustrate the answer to his question. “He was standing there with all of his garb, you know, chains and leather and everything. He also had this huge, grizzly beard. He's trying in his own way, to explain to me that there's no way he is going to wear light pink while playing the bass drum.”

When the poll was over, Hoffman had two things left; the still modified cossack coat and the corps' desire to use its traditional colors of black, gold, and white. How did the gold get to be yellow?

Hoffman says that was the closest thing the material guy had to gold. Back to the drawing board.

It so happened that Hoffman had two tickets to an opening at Harlem's Apollo Theatre. Stevie Wonder was the star and it was a special night because the theatre was re-opening after three years of being closed. The big celebration was on and Hoffman says that out of the 2,000 in attendance, there were only about 30 white people. The outfits being worn that night are today's Bridgemen outfits.

“I was standing outside the theatre watching the crowd,” Hoffman says, “and car after car pulled up with people arriving for the performance. Out of this one car steps a guy in a bright yellow coat with big pockets that had his initials on them. And on his head was this big black hat.” Hoffman replaced his inspiration's initials with the Bridgemen “B” and used [an Old English] style of lettering because that was old drum corps tradition.

“You see,” says Hoffman, “I just fell into that.” And that's how you build a banana.