How We Grew Down

When I was around 13 years old, I started skateboarding. There were many reasons at the time why I started, but in retrospect I now know that one of them was that I was fortunate enough to live in a suburban environment which gave me every opportunity to express myself in whichever way I felt to. My family was moving up in the world, we had more money, our house was nicer, my school was now private not state, and when I asked for a Skateboard that cost £125, I got one. Every saturday me and my freinds would meet up at each others houses and watch skate-videos of all our favourite skaters, watching their style, the way they dressed, the way they talked, the tricks they pulled off. Afterwards, we would attack the city, board and bones to the concrete. As I got more and more into skating I found my musical tastes being moulded by those skate videos I watched. Hip Hop began to dominate my consciousness, a music that spoke to me about a place I used to know when I was younger, when if I asked for a Skateboard that cost £125 I would not have got one. Skating, and Hip Hop were so influential in my life at that time because they both represented very contrasting yet integral parts of my indentity. When Shawn Stussy began selling T-Shirts along with surf boards around Laguna beach in 1980, he did so at a time that seemed to birth a generation of people hungry for a cohesiveness to their cultural inspirations. As the white middle classes were skating and surfing their way into adulthood, black kids in the ghettos of New York were cultivating a whole culture of their own. While one explored the ideas of individuality and youthful rebellion as part of the gift of freedom, the other, did the same, because that freedom was not gifted. These two cultures were born and growing at opposite ends of the conventional social spectrum, yet thirteen years later when they reached the sunny shores of warm beer, bangers & mash and a council flat, both already seemed woven into the fabric of my consciousness. And I wasn't the only one, there were loads of us. And now we are all grown and getting jobs, but still our jeans sit a little too low, our kicks are still fat with the laces undone, and we can't help but say 'yeah man' instead of 'yes sir'. And sometimes I feel like a kid that hasn't grown up, like I should buy a nice suit and get a real job. But then I put on a Stussy Tee, and remember that we did grow up, just like the Stussy brand did, with hip hop and skating and surfing and Punk, Ronald Reagan and a fresh pair of Jordan 1's, all becoming parallel parts of commentary running through our lives. And what we have grown into is a generation inspired by the artists, musicians, surfers and skaters. We spat at each other, sampled each other, kick flipped a 5-stair on a Saturday afternoon and landed on a united sense of self. Sound like rose-tinted hippie shit? Maybe. If a brand like Stussy is representative of the naivity, idealism and wastefulness of youth, then I suppose nothing changes. But even cynics can make room for a view, what we do is make a room with a view, grind it up, tag the city scape, and make songs for those who wonder where their tax money goes.