I remember standing out side the Canessa Gallery in North Beach one night chatting with DHH. This was back when Erica Lewis was curating, I think Suzanne Stein (SS read her transcript from her Poetry Project reading) and Ariel Goldberg (AG, read some of her photo project stuff) were reading. DHH and I were talking about skateboarding, The Pack's song "Vans" had just dropped, so we were chopping it up about the then nascent (and now dead) skate-rap movement. I have a line in RAVE ON! "skateboarding is not the 6th element of Hip Hop," and it's not, and as a skater, and former hip hopper I would get frustrated with the overeager conflation of the two, though I was into what The Pack were doing, and told DHH so.
4 comments:
At ICA in Boston I just saw a mid-career exhibition by Bay Area based visual artist Barry McGee. I'd never seen his work before. His work probably seems like old mesh hat for you Bay folk; tho I'd never seen it before, and thought of you. His art takes on public space and collectivity, espec in yr 80s Bay culture, with elements of skateboarding/zine/graffiti scenes. Curious if you know him/his work/how he's thought of 'out there'. do you feel any triangulation between, say skateboarding + hiphop + graffiti? and if not 'conflating', do you find mcgee's experience true, connecting these little pockets of resistance?
http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/BarryMcGee/
xo,
Andy P
"I twist characters like Twist characters"...
yes definitely aware of Barry TWIST McGee, Bay Area legend, "Mission School" OG (though growing up graffiti we never knew there was a "school" for the SF style). I sort of like his art now, or, I respect it, I used to really like his art back in the day. His style is ubiquitous now (see cluster hanging). I hate street art, I'm really into buffed walls and non-Krylon based art works.
The thing with skateboarding and hip hop is complicated, and in a lot of ways I'm just being a brat, a contrarian brat. Skaters got really into rap music in the 90s, before that it was all punk, metal. SF had a lot to do with that, the EMB (Embarcadero) scene was super street kid hip hop hooligan heavy. I was a hip hop skater kid, I was into punk and metal only tangentially, so I get it. Nowadays young skaters are jocks, rappers are jocks, the cool kids, it bothers me, cause I'm old, and bitter mostly, but this is me raging against the mainstreamification of skateboarding, I liked it a lot more when it was about little skate rat kids, the outcasts, the anti-jocks, sessioning on waxed curb at an elementary school all day. I don't like Lil Wayne rapping about skating, or Pharell, they're co-opting, it's corny, it's lame, it's inevitable. It's where skateboarding is nowadays, whatever right?
Thanks for the review!
I put that in the wrong place!
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