It is 7.45 on Wednesday morning and John – not his real name – is standing in a queue with 50-odd people outside the club shop at St James’ Park. He is in his mid-forties, with a family and a decent job and a pained expression plastered across his face because he has been asked to explain why he is so intent on buying Newcastle United’s new home strip, which is being released today and is, to put it mildly, quite interesting. “Because I’m an idiot,” John says.He does not wish his identity to be known; not by his wife – “who would batter me,” he says – or his mates – “because they’d batter me, too”. He buys every Newcastle United shirt as soon as they come out, which he recognises as a compulsion. This one, he admits, is “quite minging,” which is slang for unpleasant. “It is not for everyone,” but is patently for John, who we shall categorise as a kit evangelist. If the club produced a binbag with a crest on it, he’s in the queue.Barry Franklin is also here and his reasoning is more logical; his eldest is celebrating his 16th birthday this week and is a mad keen Newcastle fan, so he has set aside an hour to get him a shirt. Barry likes the fact that, as things stand, there is no sponsor emblazoned across the front of it – like others, Newcastle have found this to be a competitive market this summer – and his son likes the divisive design. “Ugly stuff seems to be a fashion,” Barry says with a shrug.Newcastle’s club shop, decked out in the ‘barcode’ design (The Athletic)Barry’s son is a kit contrarian, a surprisingly large subset of supporters who take great delight in wearing contentious shirts, in a so-bad-its-good kind of way. For them, the jazzier the better, the more complicated the pattern or ridiculous the colours, the happier they will be. And if you’re thinking to yourself, “That’s all very well when it comes to away strips but there’s not really very much you can do with black and white stripes,” then think again.According to the club, Newcastle’s new kit, which is made by Adidas, is a “fresh, new take,” on the club’s traditional colours, which “reimagines our classic look with a bold, disrupted stripe pattern.” It is, they say, a “future-thinking and progressive jersey.” It features “advanced Climacool+ technology,” which is “built to keep you cool, dry and comfortable, whether you’re playing five-a-side or roaring the lads and lasses on from the stands.”According to Toon Wolf on social media, where The Athletic canvassed options, “someone needs to twiddle the knobs until it’s back in tune.” Steve Tallantyre calls it “hideous, inelegant and gimmicky.” Marts NUFC says it is “f****** disgusting,” Ian says it is “the worst home shirt I’ve seen,” T83 says that “if I stare at it for more than three seconds, I collapse into a twitching heap,” and LotmerFF says the barcode effect is “like something you’d see on a packet of reduced ham.”Harvey Barnes in a shirt that has so far not been universally popular (Newcastle United FC)While you always get kit agnostics – who don’t care either way – there are also kit fundamentalists, people who believe in the sanctity of strips; the stripes must be of equal width, there can be no fripperies or adornments and they should preferably be made of horsehair. These people never smile and are quite frequently old. They believe that boots must be black and socks should be pulled up to the knees at all times. Dear reader: this is me.