Slashdot Mirror
Review: Dogtown and Z-Boys
Dogtown is a now-gentrified but then working-class neighborhood between Venice and Santa Monica, California. Kids there grew up obsessed with surfing, and with fighting off outsiders, especially in and around the dangerous pilings that once supported a decaying and abandoned amusement pier. A lot of kids were injured or killing surfing off of Dogtown. Since they could only surf in the morning, when the tides were right, they began filing their afternoons with an experiment: they put wheels on mini-surfboards to ride on the roadways that surrounded them. The Zephyr team -- named after a famous Dogtown surfboard store and hangout -- quickly became known for its innovative skateboarding style, much of it drawn from the techniques of the world's best ocean surfers.
Skateboarding waxed and waned in the 70's, until two developments caused the sport to take off (and, of course, this being America, to be commercially co-opted): somebody invented urethane wheels that could take the the twists, turns and leaps that the Zephyrs brought to their boarding, and California experienced a severe drought. In a wondrously American twist, hundreds of drained Southern California pools presented the Zephyr kids an enormous opportunity they instantly grasped. A new kind of skating was perfected and launched.
Usually ignoring outraged neighbors, pool owners and pursuing cops, the Z-boys (and a couple of girls) began cruising the curved sides of pools until they heard the first sirens, at which point they'd leap into some dingy car and take off for another pool. Eventually they lucked out: a terminally-ill teenager from a rich family prevailed on his father to let the Zephyrs use their enormous, empty backyard pool. Riders like Jay Adams and Tony Alva became some of the most celebrated skateboarders in the world, taking boarding to the next level. The eventual twists and turns of the lives of these young pioneers -- all interviewed in their current incarnations -- give the movie a poignant, sometimes shocking punch.
Writer Craig Stecyk wrote about the Zephyrs in a series of articles for skateboarding magazines, casting them as stylish urban guerillas exploiting and transforming American technology (neighborhood school playgrounds were concrete forms placed into the slopes of hills, perfect for illegal skating) to create both artistry and freedom. Stecyk and Stacy Peralta wrote and directed Dogtown with some funding from Vans (the Zephyr boys all wore blue Zephyr T-shirts and blue Vans sneakers).
It's a surprising film, innovative in its editing and herky-jerky flashbacks and sprinkled with great footage from the 70's and 80's. The film itself seems to replicate some of the Zephyr team moves. Peralta tracks and interviews the grown-up, middle-aged members of the original Z-boys, and while some have survived and prospered, you can't help feeling sad seeing the older images juxtaposed against the amazing energy, acrobatics and creativity of their younger selves. It's truly amazing what these kids did with some empty swimming pools and pared-down boards. Archival video and stills from the period really bring the story to life, too. We don't have to hear the saga recalled by its aging survivors; we can see the kinetic, obsessive, exciting images of the time (Jay Adams, in particular, is just astounding).
Like the creation of the Net, this is a particularly American tale, in which a handful of oddball teenagers can use their own alienation and outsiderness and create a rich -- if doomed -- culture of their own. While much of the country is off watching the latest bloated Star Wars epic, you can't do better than skip the long lines of groupies and find a theater showing Dogtown.
I am not exactly sure why, in posting a positive review about a movie, Katz has to bring in Star Wars and insult the movie and fans of the movie. It's a bit small of Katz to mention Star Wars and I wonder why exactly he is so bitter about the film. I mean, Star Wars is just a movie. If Katz didn't like it, he can post that in a review of Star Wars. In a review of a completely unrelated movie, the mentioning of Star Wars is out of place. It's similar to writing a review of some Linux distro and mentioning how awful you think Windows is. That opinion is fine but in a review, you generally focus on what you're reviewing. I've not seen this odd practice often and am really curious as to what the motivation is behind it. Why Jon? Why? By the way, "groupies" normally has a sexual lining to its meaning and you should probably substitute something like "rabid fan-boys." Although, as a fan of Star Wars, I'd appreciate it if you didn't go out of your way to belittle what I enjoy. You've implied that you're better than me because I enjoy Star Wars. Not nice Katz, not nice.
Venice is still not a real nice place these days. I used to try to rollerblade there, but the asphalt part is so broken that you have to be real good in order not to fall on your face. Then if you try to rollerblade down the bike path, some old fart bikes along and screams, "You're not supposed to be here!!!" Los Angeles hospitality and culture at its finest.
Posted by JonKatz on Sunday May 26, @12:00PM
from the obsessives-inventing-culture dept.
Dogtown and Z-Boys is a wonderful documentary, exactly the kind they'll be making about hackers in two or three decades. It's the very American story of the pioneering l970's Zephyr skating team, whose LA guerrilla style shook up the mainstream types, and co-opted centuries of building technology to create an appealing and enduring culture with their individualistic brand of guts, energy and drive -- much like the kids who helped build the early Net. Skip the long lines for the hypey and elephantine big epic and get to Dogtown.
Dogtown is a now-gentrified but then working-class neighborhood between Venice and Santa Monica, California. Kids there grew up obsessed with surfing, and with fighting off outsiders, especially in and around the dangerous pilings that once supported a decaying and abandoned amusement pier. A lot of kids were injured or killing surfing off of Dogtown. Since they could only surf in the morning, when the tides were right, they began filing their afternoons with an experiment: they put wheels on mini-surfboards to ride on the roadways that surrounded them. The Zephyr team -- named after a famous Dogtown surfboard store and hangout -- quickly became known for its innovative skateboarding style, much of it drawn from the techniques of the world's best ocean surfers.
Skateboarding waxed and waned in the 70's, until two developments caused the sport to take off (and, of course, this being America, to be commercially co-opted): somebody invented urethane wheels that could take the the twists, turns and leaps that the Zephyrs brought to their boarding, and California experienced a severe drought. In a wondrously American twist, hundreds of drained Southern California pools presented the Zephyr kids an enormous opportunity they instantly grasped. A new kind of skating was perfected and launched.
Usually ignoring outraged neighbors, pool owners and pursuing cops, the Z-boys (and a couple of girls) began cruising the curved sides of pools until they heard the first sirens, at which point they'd leap into some dingy car and take off for another pool. Eventually they lucked out: a terminally-ill teenager from a rich family prevailed on his father to let the Zephyrs use their enormous, empty backyard pool. Riders like Jay Adams and Tony Alva became some of the most celebrated skateboarders in the world, taking boarding to the next level. The eventual twists and turns of the lives of these young pioneers -- all interviewed in their current incarnations -- give the movie a poignant, sometimes shocking punch.
Writer Craig Stecyk wrote about the Zephyrs in a series of articles for skateboarding magazines, casting them as stylish urban guerillas exploiting and transforming American technology (neighborhood school playgrounds were concrete forms placed into the slopes of hills, perfect for illegal skating) to create both artistry and freedom. Stecyk and Stacy Peralta wrote and directed Dogtown with some funding from Vans (the Zephyr boys all wore blue Zephyr T-shirts and blue Vans sneakers).
It's a surprising film, innovative in its editing and herky-jerky flashbacks and sprinkled with great footage from the 70's and 80's. The film itself seems to replicate some of the Zephyr team moves. Peralta tracks and interviews the grown-up, middle-aged members of the original Z-boys, and while some have survived and prospered, you can't help feeling sad seeing the older images juxtaposed against the amazing energy, acrobatics and creativity of their younger selves. It's truly amazing what these kids did with some empty swimming pools and pared-down boards. Archival video and stills from the period really bring the story to life, too. We don't have to hear the saga recalled by its aging survivors; we can see the kinetic, obsessive, exciting images of the time (Jay Adams, in particular, is just astounding).
Like the creation of the Net, this is a particularly American tale, in which a handful of oddball teenagers can use their own alienation and outsiderness and create a rich -- if doomed -- culture of their own. While much of the country is off watching the latest bloated Star Wars epic, you can't do better than skip the long lines of groupies and find a theater showing Dogtown.
How can we know that documentaries 10- 20 years from now will be made like this one. That Hackers will be celebrated in the same level as skaters. Come on. Hacking and the Internet were not the product of some kids playing around in a friends' backyard and huge empty pool- er, mainframe.
According to what Jon writes, skating has been around since the late 70s. I know I used to skate during the 80s rage - when INXS plastered a skateboard on their Album 'kick'.
Yet the internet has been around a lot longer- altho in a more immature format than it is now. Not to say it isn't going to hell in a handbasket- because it sure seems to be (I hate pop up ads, spam email and banners that take forever to load when web surfing). If he is referring to the Open Source movement, I don't know, the jury is still out on that one- but I am sure given a few more years, Open Source will be more than equal for the challenge of the Desktop- and it already is for the Server side.
Jon, this is a nice toned down article. Please leave out the Star Wars slam next time. It makes me forget the horror that was Episode 1, and actually has me excited again in the 3rd installment.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
"Dogtown and Z-Boys is a wonderful documentary, exactly the kind they'll be making about hackers in two or three decades."
Drop the self-important B.S. Most hackers are little bitches that go corporate as soon as the heat gets turned up. As for the "kids" that built the internet, it wasn't kids, it was government engineers. Sorry to blow your romantic fairy tale with some facts,
wow, he won the lottery, didn't he?
out of the billions of self-righteous, self-indulgent, bloated minds of the world, he
got the job of reviewer.
go away katz. please?
Wow. I really can never get enough of your pompous, John Agar-like speculation. You've made my day.
q
I'm sorry; I don't understand Welsh.
How come Star Wars is suddenly uncool with the /. crowd (Ep 2 was quite fun)? Or maybe because Jon Katz thinks it's uncool, now it's become cool? :D
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Is this really relevant to "news for nerds, stuff that matters" I guess I should just be thankful that you haven't posted another plug for your book which I have NO intention of reading. Hey Katz! I shot a Border Collie last week for chasing livestock. How do you feel about that?
Just Curious. Stay tuned for my review of "Gleaming the Cube" and an analysis of the Coreys in modern cinema.
Who wrote this? The director? The marketing agency? What kind of 'hacking' phrase is ``LA guerrilla style''??? I don't normally rip on Jon Katz, but come on! He didn't even follow Slashdot's own review form!
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
"A lot of kids were injured or killing surfing off of Dogtown. Since they could only surf in the morning, when the tides were right"
I don't think they mentioned anyone being killed while surfing in the movie.
And just so you know the tide changes everyday, so although the wind is generally offshore in the morning, creating cleaner, hollower waves, the tide is cyclical and waxes and wanes with the moon. It generally advances about a half hour a cycle, so if it's high tide at 6:30am one day, high tide is around 7:30am by the next morning. It could just as easily be high tide in the afternoon.
The reason they skated during the afternoons was because the waves blew out due to the wind. It turn from off shore to on shore as the land heats up.
It's a great movie, but you should stick to writing about geeky things that you know.
blah blah blah skate blah blah blah hack blah blah blah...
phoney psuedo-culture crap.
there is no hacker culture.
there is no skater culture.
there is no fucking spoon.
skate punks suck.
I loved your review, really honestly I loved it! It was the best arrangement of meaningful words I've read in years.
Thank you for giving us the pleasure, nay! PRIVILEGE! of reading this.
And all you katz-haters out there: my mom says you're just jealous...
no seriously for a minute: what the hell is this all about? A lack of decent articles? I'd rather watch my plants grow...
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
Seriously, just ignore him, mod your prefs so you don't see him. sheesh.
Hackers of the world, unite!
JonKatz managed to fit in the word "elephantine" twice in 2 articles.
Sounds like someone has a new favourite word!
How symbolic! How stunning! How repetitive.
shame on us / for all we have done / and all we ever were / just zeroes and ones
morning such as this..
You should be in Church you young man..you!
I would praying for your soul today.
Rapid Nirvana
you won't find content like this on slashdot
Thank you, O Mighty Arbiter of All Things Geekly. Now that Jon Katz has stamped this movie with his seal of approval, I know it is truly worthy.
It's not playing anywhere near me, but still, it's nice to know it's worthy.
Before I start reading stories here. With rare exception, Katz is out of touch and out of tune with the people he seems to think he's in touch with. The same thing has been said thousands of times before, and will be said thousands of times again.
Slashdot is a great place to discover cultural tidbits. Slashdot says Cowboy Bebop is neat, I watch it, it is neat. Katz says Star Wars II is bloated and not worth it, but it is'nt.
*sigh*
=
The Internet is generally stupid
MOD PARENT UP!!!
.
.
.
.
I mean it
Seriously!!
Mod it UP!!!!!
that fp rules!!!!!
The period of time the film focuses on was an exciting time for skateboarding, as the type of riding that was developing at that time raised up a couple of notches.
I was really into skateboarding at this time. I was sponsored by Skateboard City, competed and gave demos all around Silicon Valley... it was a real fun time. I gave a skateboard demo at HP in 1976, which I happended to work in the cafeteria there. I later worked for HP from 1978-1988, starting on the assembly line... I was visiting HP in 1995 and ran into a person that was at the demo... people see me
today and can't believe it was possible I rode a skateboard
Northern California had its great skaters too, though not as much press, as the Surf Magazines focused mostly on So Cal activities. Possibly the best pool skater in the mid 70's was Rick Blackhart. One of his buddies, Kevin Thatcher started the magazine Thrasher.
Todays skaters are something else, they are doing things that are unbelievable!!!
In regards to Katz comparison of hackers and skaters... I'd have to think that the guys hacking in the early 70's are the ones that took the big step forward, and everything since, stands on their shoulders...
Kramer
www.qbal.com
I don't want to be wasteful, so I'm going to use the rest of the available white for a joke.
A tourist goes to Scotland on vacation. He decides to spend one afternoon in an old Scottish pub. He has a seat and looks around. He notices an old, haggard man sitting a few stools down from him. 'Looks like a regular,' that tourist thinks to himself.
'I think I'll have what he's having, a nice pint of Guiness.'
So the tourist orders a Guiness. A few minutes later, the old man looks up from his glass and says rather loudly, in a thick Scottish accent, 'You see this bar here? I built this me-self. I drafted it in me own basement, and did all the woodwork me-self. Took me three and a half weeks, but do they call me 'Arthur McDougal: Barbuilder?' No.'
The tourist stares at the man in bewilderment. Several minutes later, the old man looks up again. 'You see that fence out there? I built that me- self. Dragged every stone there. None of 'em is less than 150 pounds, and I dragged each one no less than three-quarters of a mile. But do they call me 'Arthur McDougal:Fencebuilder?' No.'
The tourist is really worried about this man's mental health by this time. Once again Arthur looks up.'You see that bridge out there? I did that me-self. I drafted it in me own basement and was on the construction site every day. I even chose the building materials, but do they call me 'Arthur McDougal: Bridgebuilder?' No. But you screw just one sheep...'
The soundtrack of this documentary will be fake ! (All lies and commercial fraud).
Why?
Because as chronicled by the pages of Flipside magazine in the early years, these skaters listened to PUNK.
But theres one problem, fast conventional Punk Rock is unmarketable and cant be merchandized by the big 5 music publishers.
Thats why you always see black rap, and hip hop music on X-games oriented televisions shows ans video games, even if the skaters still prefer to listen to punk.
And most do still listen to punk.
Punk is always designed to not be marketable to the masses, and is going strong as ever, but except for a couple sellout bands of pop-punk (Rancid, Offspring, Greeday, Blink-182) most people are never exposed to punk.
And worse, the one documentary that should expose them to punk will have a major lable heavy marketing hand putting its top ponies into play for the accompanying cd sountrack of the movie.
Its all a ploy to sell black-influenced hard hip hop and rap-rock and pretend skaterz listen to that swill.
And they sure as hell don't.
I will NEVER ever see this documentary unless it has the musical integrity of the famous documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization".
Shame shame on forcing rap and hip hop over the skater world and rewriting history just because it can $ell more cds.
l970s? But we're in the 2OOOs now!
"Dogtown and Z-Boys is a wonderful documentary, exactly the kind they'll be making about hackers in two or three decades. It\'s the very American story of the pioneering l970's Zephyr skating team, whose LA guerrilla style shook up the mainstream types, and co-opted centuries of building technology to create an appealing and enduring culture with their individualistic brand of guts, energy and drive -- much like the kids who helped build the early Net. Skip the long lines for the hypey and elephantine big epic and get to Dogtown."
wtf? I am the age of these builders now, so I guess the 25 - 45 age range is considered a kid? Hey thanks, can I get children's discounts now?
Katz says that this is the "exact same kind of documentary they'll be doing on hackers.." one problem. While Dogtown has lots of footage of tanned California kids skating pools, what the hell are they going to show for a hacker documentary? Greenblatt programming a chess program?
.....that must be your third use of the word "elephantine" in so many weeks.
........I guess if you learn a good one, you wanna use it before it gets old.
-Norm
A documentary about hackers would fucking suck. There's nothing more boring than a computer geek, and it's not even as if you could put any love interest in - who's going to want to watch a fat pasty fucker wanking to animal porn?
JonKatz made the remark that a movie will be made years from now about hackers, in the same way. He's absolutely right. Computers have effected millions - so has the skateboard. As both a nerd and skateboarder with friends in the industry, I can say there is a lot in common - you know those 3 a.m. coding sessions trying to kill one bug? Skateboarders do the same thing, trying to land one trick. They'll lose track of time just like we do. They go on a caffeine rush to keep skating like we do coding... the list goes on and on.
:-)
I think nerds and skateboarders have the same mental scope - being truely in love with hobby. It's amazing what the love for something can lead you to do.
I urge you all to go pick up a skateboard. You'll thank me for it.
I've been wanting to see this movie ever since I heard about it a few months ago. Every time it has been mentioned, it has gotten very positive reviews. I was very surprised to see it reviewed on slashdot, which is usually confined to reviewing sci-fi flicks.
I'm a life-long skater that grew up on the Bones Brigade vidoes. They were the defining films of the skateboard culture of those days, at least in my clique. Now there is "Z-Boys", which is in effect a prequel to those earlier videos. Now, much older, I'll get a chance to see where all those characters came from. (was that subtle enough?)
My "nerdy techy" world doesn't usually intertwine with my skater world. Growing up, I always had my computer hacking set of friends, and then my skateboarder set of friends, and I was the only overlap. I was impressed that slashdot would cover this movie, and was hoping to see other skater/techy nerds add their appreciation.
Unfortunately, all I have see so far is a bunch of nitpicking on Jon Katz. Isn't anyone else excited about this movie? Isn't anyone else impressed that JonKatz/Slashdot would review such a movie?
or did kids not build the net, but rather government researchers?
To appreciate what the Z-Boys were doing, it's helpful to realize that they were trying to make tricks that had never before been landed. From simply kick-turning at the top of a pool, to Tony Alva's very first f/s air, this stuff was all new, and no one had ever done any of it before.
It also seems like this would just have been another group of kids skating who didn't go anywhere if it wasn't for Craig Stecyk. By documenting them and writing lifestyle articles for Skateboarder Magazine, Stecyk pushed the mystique of Dogtown, and put these kids in front of the world.
Anyways, what Katz said is true, it is really sad to see where some of these guys ended up. Jay Adams just recently got out of prison, and is working at a skate shop. Stacy Peralta went on to build the legendary Bones Brigade team, and Tony Alva continues to seek out pools and drainage ditches to skate.
Katz is right about this documentary. It's much more worth your while than that dreck Lucas is putting out these days. ( Lucas lost his vision, the franchise has been going downhill since Empire. I've seen Episodes 1 & 2, and 2 just sucks less, anybody other than a drooling fanboy knows this.)
However, I have to say, lose the references to hackers, Jon. It's just not relevant.
Actually the soundtrack was fairly accurate for its period. Lots of Zep, Ted Nugent and other "hard rock" from the mid-70s. Remember, the Z-boyz were active from about 1974 to 1977. A little before punk hit the West Coast hard.
However, I missed the punk rock, because the skatepunk culture that formed in the Z-Boyz' wake had as its soundtrack stuff like Black Flag and The Minutemen and Suicidal Tendencies and The Germs....mostly the SST bands that thrived just south of Dogtown in the Pedro/Wilmas/Torrance/South Bay area.
I have nothing but contempt for Greg Ginn, but the producers of Dogtown could have done worse than to contact him and get sync licenses for some of the classic Flag stuff at least.
My big pet peeve about this movie: the stealth involvement of Sony Classics in this release. I went to see this movie because I thought, "great, this is an indie, the MPAA isn't getting their cut". However, the first fsckn thing you see when the lights go down is a slide that says "Sony Classics Pictures". I felt like such a tool. Not only was Don Valenti's hand in my pocket, so was the Evil Sony Empire.
Folks, I would recommend this movie but again, you will be putting money in the MPAA's hand if you go. If your conscience allows you to, then yeah, go ahead and check it out. There's some amazing footage in this movie....the P.O.P. footage is worth the price of admission alone.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Since they could only surf in the morning, when the tides were right..."
::Colz Grigor
Because the time of high and low tides changes every day, the above statment is patently false. You can check out a tide table for the Santa Monica Municipal Pier and note this fact. I somehow doubt that geophysics has chanced dramatically since then.
When seeing this movie you got to look beyond just what these individuals did, but the effect on their culture beyond the empty pools of California.
What happened with skateboarding in the late 70's set the stage for the current hacker/boarder culture where grass-toking teens can be Olympic champions.
Skateboarders of the late 70's were outcasts, not just in Venice (CA) but just about everywhere. This included a particularly dead suburb of Toronto, CA called Markham, now the home of many tech firms like ATI. Many things changed when an old barn that used to house cows at the annual country fair was transformed into the first indoor skateboard park in Ontario. Geeks from all over congregated to this, our church of rebellion. For the first time I had a real peer group. No-one cared if you knew how to program the school's IBM 1130. No-one cared if you were one of only two out of 2,100 students who knew how to work the brand new Apple ][ and Commodore PET. But being able to axle grind around the gnarly lip of the pathetically tiny pool was enough to elicit whoops of approval from compatrates who KNEW and UNDERSTOOD. It kept some of us alive, some who otherwise would have been another teen suicide statistic.
We knew who our heroes were. We looked to the West, to Venice, to what we saw as a sun-drenched paradise of perfectly-formed concrete playgrounds. We never saw the grungy side of the culture as we eagerly flipped through the pages of Skateboarder magazine.
Then it all went wrong.
Boarding stopped being about the tricks, it became commercial, followed by the inevitable backlash, and being punk-fuelled it was a complete backlash. It became all about destruction, physically tearing down walls as well as physically wrecking yourself in as many ways as possible.
This is why some of the once-heroes in this film are so shattered now. But at least they survived.
This is not a film about skateboarding. This is about how a far-reaching culture change happens. The hip-hop-blasted half-pipe events of the Olympics trace back to here. The graffiti-covered walls of what were once pristeen communities trace back to here. The overall cynicism of the 80's and 90's that the world was a shitty place and getting worse goes back to here.
But it was also the beginning of the age where geeks made a difference. Denizens of this site marvel at the latest cool tech and wonder about what Great Things lie ahead. You feel as if you have a future, that there WILL BE a future and generally it will be a Really Cool place to be.
Growing up in the 70's, technology was not going to give you a cool future. It wasn't a ticket to a high-paying job. You had to find something to make you want to keep going.
This film is about what gave some of us that hope.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I know a number of former skate punks that later 'found' computers. Still like the music but the knees can't take the skating any more... I must be fucked - I tend to like Katz articles...
...stop serving as a focus group for Katz?
http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/ 24/222213&mode=thread&tid=97
Food for the racist troll:
I don't recall hearing any hip-hop music in DT&Z-boys, but I did hear lots of "black-influenced" music, and It was very appropriate for the period. Punk would never have come about without rock and roll, and jazz and blues before it. Many consider Bad Brains to be one of the best punk bands of all time. They weren't too white last time I checked.
I've been skating for over 15 years, I know many skaters that listen to punk, and I know many skaters that listen to hip-hop.
Maybe it's just me, but this sticks out like a sore thumb every time I see a year in a Jon Katz piece.
-- Old Man Kensey
I'm sick of hearing this line from punk-rawkers. The 'we're still non-commerical' line is a steaming pile of bullshit. Co-opted nearly from the beginning and never as controversial as it would like, the whole 'punk' movement was getting whiny and old ages ago. I'm completely confused as to why anyone still give and credence to the whole thing.
I went back for a visit a few years ago and it seemed to be such a cleaned up version of its former self that it was almost artificial.
Let's see, some of my memories include scenes such as:
That bar right at the bottom of Washington St., I used to stand out front at night when a dirty old van used to pull up. A greasy hippie would stick his head out the window and yell "Fresh from Humboldt!!!", you then got to watch a few dozen people chase the van into the parking lot.
The time my fat aunt from Ohio came for a visit and I took her to the beach. A local character wearing a court jester outfit, you know, a jherkin, pointy shoes, staff with with ringy bells and stuff tried to sell her some acid. After her jaw nearly hit the pavement I said "It's just another joker selling drugs Aunt Pat, don't stare, people will think you're a tourist".
Then all the gray haired people with Mercedes Benzes started living there and I got bored and moved to San Diego.
Glad we're over the whole "water on mars" hoopla.
OK, the movie is excellent. I was amazed at the amount of footage from what was a very underground thing. Today it's not out of place to know people with racks and racks of video tape. This footage is astounding though.
The downside is: Just because Henry Rollins is sitting at home waiting for you to interview him, doesn't mean you should.
The Ian MacKaye footage.... Who shot it, it's out of place, he's the only one soft lit, with no background and in black and white.
Jay Adams, he's not dead, so don't spend so much time eulagizing him.
... and I remember listening to Iggy & the Stooges followed by the Nuge, Zep, and then someof your so called Punk Rock, did that deal as well. I believe that the job Stacy did on the film is right on the money.
Actually hip hop/rap culture has always gone along with skating. The two both were co-opted by the mainstream in the eighties and while skating's popularity waxes and wanes, hip hop has continued to gather fans.
t ml"Fuck Your Heroes</a> for a pictorial history of the devolopement of skating, hip hop and punk.
My second point is that the years that dogtown and z boys covers predates punk. True black flag and the dead kennedy's were just getting their start in late '70's, it was mostly stuff like led zepplin.
I really feel sorry for you if you think that the x-games are anyway indictive of what skating really. The x-games are almost solely a giant commercial and you shouldn't pay heed to the music that they play at these events.
If you need proof on the connection between skating and hip hop I suggest you check out Glen E. Friedman's <a href="http://www.southern.com/BURNINGFLAGS/main.h
You really should go to see this movie. It would be dumb to let personal biases get in the way of seeing a really well put together and interesting film. Oh and the reason why the soundtrack to The Decline of Western Civilivation was so good was because it was a documentary specically dealing with punk. Skating does not equal punk except in the malls.
I urge you environmentally conscious Slashdot readers to start boycotting Finnish products like paper, high tech (Nokia!) and software like Linux and SSH (use OpenSSH instead!).
You can also send e-mail to your local Finnish embassy. Tell them how outraged you are about this dangerous, anti-environmental policy. Point out that nuclear power is not just an internal affair as nuclear pollution does not know boundaries!
ARPAnet was created by a bunch of zany kids? Gosh, I always thought it was a government-funded defence project. One of my lecturers at university worked on the early (60s, I think) net, and he's never shown any manifestation of "LA guerilla style".
Good thing Katz is omniscient, otherwise he might occasionally have to bother doing some research.
Every time I see a stroy by this dude I realize I'm not logged in.
I SAW HIM TOUCHING LITTLE BOYS I SWEAR. PEDERAST. PEDERAST. ahahahahaha Fuck off katz, you're bent and no one, not even your mother likes you. Now fuck off and make way for some decent slashdot stories.
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
while, yes he is wrong about only being able to get good surf in the morning because of the tides, it is true at least in venice/Santa monica area, that you can mostly only get anything good in the morning because of the direction of the WIND.
Well said, sir!
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Revenge of the Nerds #1 and #2 have origonal historical footage (and I even appear in one spot, though dont say anything). Dogtown lucked out because thaere was guy intentionally filming the action. Lots of history is not as fortunate.
Dogtown and Z boys does a great job capturing the sense of the moment and place that these guys grew up in. As an East-Coaster transplanted West, I came away with a new appreciation for the beach towns in southern California. And the soundtrack itself was worth going for.
But in many ways the movie felt frustratingly self-aggrandizing. If you notice that the interviewer is always saying "you guys" and "we" to the subjects, while they're discussing the badass things they invented when they were 13, you realize that Stacey Peralta shot a movie about how cool his childhood friends were. That's great as long as the personal perspective is evident - I think my childhood friends are some of most remarkable people I know. But when you present the "we invented modern skateboarding" mantra as an impartial conclusion, it just ends up sounding pretentious.
Still the movie is a great snapshot of what came to be a big part of American pop culture. Stacey Peralta clear has some chops as a filmmaker, and this one's worth a watch.
Nice try Jon, but the people who helped build the early Net were almost 100% stuffy middle aged gents who were working for defense contractors. They weren't doing it because "information wants to be free" or for any other similiar cause. So once again you've made a poor analogy to try and make your point..Which makes sense because usually you have no point.
Check out the interview with Director, co-writer Stacy Peralta on NPR here....
Gravity!... It's not just a good idea... It's the Law!
dave hackett, a friend and former colleague of mine, worked as a graphic design consultant for the web consulting firm i worked for as a graphic guy as well.
hes a really nice guy and has a great eye for design... and who would have thought he'd end up doing web sites after skating for so long.
(btw, dave is the guy who did the MTV logo, and most of the designs for the "jimmy Z" clothing line.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Milan Spasic thought the film was good enough to give it a plug in Sprung 5. If you can get hold of a copy (dunno if they sell it outside the UK) you might find that a goodly chunk of the soundtrack is punk.
Sprung is done by two guys who finance their video mag by selling copies of it through bike shops. Dogtown may well be the same - certainly the trailer I saw didn't sound very corporate.
Find out who the distributors are, who funded it etc, and then make up your mind. Not very punk of me, I know, but better punk than f**king stupid, eh?
Why must every peice of crap you write try and draw parallels between whatever this rediculous toss you call a geek culture is, and whatever the hell it is you are reviewing.
Stay tuned next week for Katz review of Peter Pan where he is sure to convince us that the lost boys are hackers.
Katz has never written a decent bit of code in his life but feels qualified to make comments on a social group he is not part of. And personally I am not even sure there is a culture. The only thing many "geeks" have in common is a love for technology, but this surely doesn't make us a cohesive sub-culture.
F!@# - Now writing the same kind of crap he does.
How can some personal obsrervations about roller blading in Venice, CA, in the '80s be damned as "troll" and "flamebait" to a story about shatboarding in Dogtown in the '70s????
Could those moderators who know even as little about LA as I do from the other side of the Pacific please moderate the parent, not this, at least back to it's starting level, and maybe even give it a +1 interesting.
I wouldn't be posting this except I can't find the moderation abuse link which I'm sure was in the metamoderation instructions only days ago.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Actually, Rancid is not pop punk, it is street punk.
As for the rest, I more or less agree, except that as another post mentioned the events in the documentary took place before punk hit the west coast (which began in 77-78, but the L.A. scene really got going in the early '80s).
BTW, my little brother plays Tony Hawk (I don't know which one) on the N64, and the soundtrack includes Suicidal Tendencies and the Dead Kennedys. Police Truck, actually, although they didn't go so far as to actually include the words, so it's an instrumental version.
Whats with this dirtbag (T.Alva, not J.Katz) claiming he's the godfather of skateboarding? Alva was just at the right place/time. Thats all.. he aint no innovator, hes a punk, thats all. If any should get credit for today's mordern skating its the likes of Gonz, J.Lee (yes, the actor), Natas and Tommy Guerrero. Those are TRUE innovators. Alva is the JarJar of skateboarding.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Hmmm... such hate in the mind of young ones. I remember in 7th grade Alva was one of the best boards you could buy, and watching the movie made me realize that he was striking out on his own trying to get some of the payola that had been siphened by the corporate skate industry that was emerging. There was all the bones brigade stuff which was huge but Alva was ripping back then and he would probably demoralize you in a pool still. Gonz is still ripping, Jason Lee is still around just not skating professionally, (though I bet he can still lay it down), Natas still rips (skates for Element), not sure where Tommy Guerrero is, but to say Alva is a punk? Them's fightin words. You must have some issues with your own skills on a skateboard to say that. (If you can skate at all that is...)
http://dontmasturbate.com/vids/
"A lot of kids were injured or killing surfing off of Dogtown."
This place is violent!
j/k, I liked the review, something different to check out...
[o]_O
Skateboarding is energetic, fast, exciting and cool.
Hacking is none of the above.
A bunch of fit healthy looking people zipping around and pulling neat stunts looks good on film.
An obese guy staring at a computer screen in his parents' basement doesn't look good. On film or in real life!
Katz lives in a world of his own...
"Information wants to be paid"
now, ive been involved in and a part of the 'punk rock' scene in various cities for god knows how long, and yeah, most people associate skateboarding with punk rock and underground music in general. and i understand what you are trying to say with your corporatization aspect of your post, but i think you are missing the mark. a lot of big name deck, hardware, and wheel companies are built and based around hip hop lovers and built from the ground up in the same DIY spirit as the others have been. if you ever get the chance, check out some of the guys on the "Shorty's" team. or better yet, Kareem Campell's company "City Star's." he happens to be black and *gasp* probably listens to 'black' rap. also, "Ghetto Child" wheels are an urban company with connections to hip hop culture. dont try to make this a race issue or make things divisive. people who truly love skating do it because it makes them feel good. they dont give 2 tugs of a dead dog's hoo-haw what the other kid listens to. skating is skating. leave it at that and leave your self righteousness at the door.
I spent most of my time on my C-64 on Thrasher Magazine's BBS.
if common sense was common, wouldn't everyone have it?
CmdrTaco: egads its a slow day....
How can we generate some activity???
Pudge: We could let "you know who" post....
timothy: *Gasp* Noooooo not him.....
CmdrTaco: Desperate times call for Desperate measures...
CmdrTaco: michael... Let out JonKatz...
CmdrTaco: I feel so... dirty....