HUCK Magazine The Shaun Tomson Issue

“Finished the shoot and interview yesterday.

Beautiful weather and a nice day. Both Joe and Kevin are good guys. Hope you get what you need. Best.“ Shaun Tomson

Shaun Tomson: South Africa Special Yeasayer - Weird London D i n o s a u r J r. - M o t o r c y c l e S k a t e

9 771751 272039 34 £4.25 | ISSUE 34 | Aug/Sept 2012

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“Finished the shoot and interview yesterday.

Beautiful weather and a nice day. Both Joe and Kevin are good guys. Hope you get what you need. Best.“ Shaun Tomson

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CHARLIE SHOEMAKER

GLOBAL EDITOR

HUCK 34

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DISTRIBUTED WORLDWIDE BY COMAG | PRINTED BY BUXTON PRESS | THIS PUBLICATION IS PRINTED ON PAPER FROM SUSTAINABLE SOURCES | HUCK MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED SIX TIMES A YEAR. THE ARTICLES APPEARING WITHIN THIS PUBLICATION REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE AUTHORS AND NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE PUBLISHERS OR EDITORIAL TEAM. © TCOLONDON 2012.

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4 HUCK

LINK-UPS

SA TIPPING POINT D AV E R A S T O V I C H OCEAN ACTIVISM SURFERS AGAINST SEWAGE S U R F F I L M F E S T I VA L S SF LOWDOWN O U T E R L A N D S + TA R T I N E JEREMY FISH JANNE SAARIO S K AT E PA R K A M S T E R D A M BROKEN WINDOWS THE LOMOWALL J I L LY B A L L I S T I C

6 8 9 9 10 12 13 14 16 16 17 17 18

THE BIG STORIES

SHAUN TOMSON SOUTH AFRICA HISTORY N E W S A TA L E N T 67-MINUTE REVOLUTION P O S T - A PA R T H E I D E D U C AT I O N OTELO BURNING T E E N N AT I O N G M D E B AT E MEETUP.COM LONDON DINOSAUR JR. LGBT NORTH CAROLINA Y E A S AY E R M O T O R C Y C L E S K AT E

20 30 38 42 44 50 52 56 58 64 68 76 78

ENDNOTES

ODE TO EAST LONDON JULIET ELLIOTT PHILIP DIPROSE TONY GUNNARSSON CHRIS CARR DAN CROCKETT SOURCES

86 90 91 92 94 96 98

5

The South Africa special kicks off o n p a ge 3 0.

6 HUCK

Youths taunt police during an ANC political rally at the Sam Ntuli, Sports Stadium, Thokoza, South Africa, 1991.

7

LINK-UPS: CONNECTING THE DOTS BETWEEN THE NEWS

SURF, THINK, DO STAND ON YOUR B OARD, THEN STAND FOR S OMETHIN G YOU B ELIEVE IN .

shaking and I felt for him, but fat cats get shielded from the impact of their decisions so it was a powerful thing to get him out of his noggin and into his body.

To some ‘Save the dolphins’ is a cliché issue…It’s an old battle. People who think it’s cliché perhaps haven’t been in the ocean where there used to be dolphins and now there’s none. It’s like a musician walking into the most beautiful auditorium in the world, and no one’s there to share it with. It’s tragic. […] It’s also useful to appreciate the interconnected nature of issues. Men driving fishing boats herding creatures into massive nets, men enslaving women around the world depriving them of equanimity – it all relates to the environment. When we arrived in New Zealand [my girlfriend] Lauren said, ‘Look at the land, men treat the land the same way they do women – with violence and disrespect.’ I’m not pointing fingers – it’s the same HILTON DAWE

in Australia, America, Europe. Women’s rights have advanced but there’s still such an imbalance.

If TTR is granted a license to mine the seabed for iron ore, what impact other than destroying the Maui’s

RASTA + SAVE THE MAUI’S

How do you plan to help the Maui’s? Raglan is revered

habitat could this have on the coast? I come from a

DAVE RASTOVICH CALLS ON SURFERS

by surfers the world over so I hope to tap into that by

place where sand dredging has killed two of the best

TO HELP PROTECT THE WORLD’S

doing a paddle that traverses the Maui’s habitat from

waves in the world. It started in 2001, twelve miles

SMALLEST DOLPHIN.

New Plymouth northwards. Every creek running to the

down the coast from where I lived in Burleigh Heads.

ocean is contaminated with agricultural run-off. There’s

Burleigh used to host the World Surf Championships

Dave Rastovich has a new mission. The contest-

massive logging and dairy farming which means top-soil

and had done since the 1970s. Within a couple of

shunning, environmentally minded freesurfer is

containing acid sulphate has eroded into the sea, which

months of dredging a river mouth, the waves completely

leading a campaign to help save the Maui’s, the

deprives the water, and all the little critters that live in it,

altered and they haven’t been the same since. No

world’s smallest, cutest dolphins, of which there are

of oxygen. There’re unsustainable fishing practices, not to

big contests are held there now. The surfers left. The

just fifty-five adults left.

mention the whole seabed-mining ordeal.

company doing the work said the dredging wouldn’t

Despite such critically low numbers, the New

affect the coast, but was completely wrong – and this

Zealand government has yet to implement a strong

What’s that? Australian mining company TTR wants

course of action – such as banning destructive sea-bed

to mine the area that comprises the Maui’s habitat

mining and dangerous fishing nets. And given the

for iron ore. Its website says it intends to lift billions of

Maui’s only have young every seven years, the situation

tonnes of sand to extract 4 billion tonnes of iron ore.

couldn’t be more dire.

That’s a huge upheaval and it even admits there’d be

Since starring in 2009’s The Cove, a documentary

environmental anomalies. That’s a massive alarm bell.

about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, Rasta

It's not been granted a licence so people need to come

has become a spokesman for the ocean and all that reside

together to say no.

was in a place with a calmer ocean and slower current

on land’ and finds it easier to relate to ‘dolphins, whales,

You recently took part in a protest against seabed

stingrays and sea cucumbers, than to humans’.

mining. Tell us about it. A couple hundred Raglan locals

HUCK joined Rasta in Raglan, New Zealand,

gathered on a one-way bridge to meet – well, surprise – a

this April, during an annual celebration of the

representative from TTR who’d just met with the local

Maui’s dolphin for a screening of Minds In The

iwi [Maori community leaders]. He was given a letter

Water, a documentary that charts his evolution from

from the community and then led across the bridge by

left-of-centre surfer to full-blown ocean activist.

children through a silent crowd. It was intense. He was

8 HUCK

HILTON DAWE

in it. By his own confession he feels like ‘a fish out of water

LINK UPS: SURF, THINK, DO

than Raglan. If you bring a large-scale operation like

PROTECT OUR WAVES

what TTR is planning, the impact will be astronomical.

EERIE NEW CAMPAIGN AIMS TO SAVE

want to stimulate a debate in UK Parliament to look at the

BRITAIN’S SURF SPOTS FROM AN EARLY GRAVE.

economic and intrinsic value of UK surfing, beaches and

Do you believe in direct action if that’s what’s

SAS Executive Director Hugo Tagholm explains: “We

waves. It’s a little-understood and undervalued natural

required? Absolutely. Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd

Tireless campaigners Surfers Against Sewage are going

resource. Surf spots are almost a freak of nature, a natural

has a concept that disrupting crimes against nature is

for the gut with their latest petition. With the help of

wonder, because it takes all of the different elements to

the same as stopping a robber running out of a bank

photographer Spencer Murphy, they’ve created a spine-

come together – rock formations, the direction they face,

with everyone’s future. You tackle them to the ground

tingling campaign that aims to draw our attention back

the prevailing winds of the area, the swell corridor where

and hold them until the authorities come.

to a hard-to-swallow truth: our favourite surf spots are

the swells come in from – and we’re looking at having that

far from immortal, and it’s up to us to save them from

recognised and valued within legislation so we can better

How should people get involved with the campaign?

the grave. The Protect Our Waves petition, launching in

protect our surf spots from sewage pollution, marine litter

People need to write to Prime Minister John Key to say

August, aims to generate at least 100,000 signatures

and overdevelopment that could impact great surf spots

you wish for the Maui’s dolphins to be protected and

to remind our non-waveriding MPs that surf spots are a

like Fistral Beach.” ANDRE A KURLAND

that anything that risks their future must be removed.

‘cultural, social, economic and environmental asset’ so

Everyone can get involved. If you’re an artist, paint

it’s about time they were protected by the law.

Sign the petition at protectourwaves.org.uk

pictures. If you're a songwriter, write a song. Get the issue into the hearts of New Zealanders any way you can. SARAH BENTLE Y Get Involved!

You heard the man: email NZ’s Prime Minister at john.key@national.org.nz and sign the petition at avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_The_Maui_Dolphin blacksands.org.nz

DON’T JUST SAVE THE DOLPHINS! GET BEHIND THESE OCEANLOVIN’ EFFORTS, TOO. PA NGE A SE E D pangeaseed.org

Dolphins may be cute and cuddly, but sharks also need our help. That’s where PangeaSeed’s awesome art festivals – like The Great West Coast Migration tour – step in to raise awareness and a little loot.

U PWE L L upwell.us

Eavesdropping marine-related conversations on the internet so you don’t have to. You can get their thrice-weekly ‘Tide Report’ straight into your inbox.

BE A F ISHE RMAN ’ S FRIEND greenpeace.org.uk/oceans/beafishermansfriend

Small-scale British fishermen are flying Greenpeace flags to save their sustainable livelihoods and your local catch. Take action during the ongoing reform of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. Christine Ottery SPE NC ER M URPHY

9

LINK-UPS: SURF, THINK DO

STOKED ON FILM

Timmy Turner in Cold Thoughts.

YOUR SURF FILM FESTIVAL PRE- AND POST- GUIDE.

J UST HAPPE N E D:

WATCH OUT FOR . . .

SA N SEBA STI AN SU RF IL M FESTIBAL ,

Dear Suburbia Dir. Kai Neville

M AY 30 – J U N E 10, 2012 .

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of surf porn but Dear In the old city of San Sebastian, on the edge

Suburbia, by core surf filmmaker Kai Neville, is more

of the Basque Country, a surf festival takes

than that. The cinematography is groundbreaking, the

place every year, offering a mix of photo

soundtrack epic and then Neville takes the very best of

exhibitions, concerts, debates, environmental

performance surfing from the likes of Dane Reynolds,

forums, performances and surf films. But if you

John John Florence et al and manages to infuse it with

expect to find the same old vids with athletes

that controversial Miki Dora irreverence that forces you

riding wave after wave, then you’re mistaken.

to have an opinion.

Founded by Sancho Rodriguez in 2003, the Cold Thoughts Dir. Timmy Turner

a seminal event that aims to showcase the best

Six years ago surf adventurer Timmy Turner lay dying

of global surf culture, without losing sight of its

in a coma, his brain overwhelmed by a devastating

TIM N UN N

San Sebastian Surfilm Festibal has grown into

community roots.

infection. Doctors said it would take a miracle for him to cheat death and surf again. But he did. Warned by specialists to stay away from the tropical waves that

BEST IN SHOW…

had been his obsession, Turner turned his attention to A Deeper Shade of Blue Dir. Jack McCoy

COMING SOON: LON D ON SU R F

the planet’s most remote and inhospitable waves. This

With probably the largest budget of all the films

F ILM FESTIVA L , OCTOBE R 11 - 14, 2012 .

incredible film follows his road to recovery and journey

screened at the festival, this big production

through Iceland, Alaska and Vancouver Island in search

married great underwater scenes with beautiful

“The buzz when the films arrive is undeniable,” says Demi

cinematography. Although it didn’t quite

Taylor. “That quickening of the pulse with the expectation

of coldwater perfection.

captivate the crowd – too commercial? Better

of each Vimeo link or couriered package of creativity

Intentio Dir. Loic Wirth

suited to the small screen? – McCoy’s work has

arriving in the mail.” In 2011, Demi and partner Chris

Twenty-one-year-old Loic Wirth delivers the surprise

an immense impact in the modern surf world

Nelson launched the London Surf Film Festival – the

hit of the year. It’s stylish, it’s Brazilian, it features waves

and he deserved the ‘Surf Culture Warrior

first of its kind in the Big Smoke. But before they had

you’ve probably never seen before, taken apart by world-

Award’ he received.

a chance to breathe, they were already gearing up for

class surfers many of whose names are unfamiliar. The

their second hit. “Now comes the curation, the debates,

filmmaking is sharp, beautiful and with a touch of the art

FinnSurf Dir. Aleksi Raij

the difficult choices, narrowing the submissions down to

house, it’s a Sight|Sound (Mikey DeTemple's soulful ode

Finland has got to be one of the harshest places

reflect the very best of surfing and filmmaking in all its

to wildly shaped boards) for shortboarders. DEMI TAYLOR

to surf on the globe. But as Raij’s documentary

facets; from shred to glide, from indies to documentaries

attests, Finnish surfers will try anything just to

that capture the essence of this moment in time.”

londonsurffilmfestival.com

catch a few waves; monitoring the swell, lying to their bosses, driving hundreds of miles, living in tiny vans and braving temperatures of minus degrees – even when the waves are crap. The film won ‘Feature Film’ and ‘Most Original Story’ at the festival, and it rocks.

Frosty waves in FinnSurf.

El Mar, Mi Alma Dir. Stephen Jones This delicate documentary chronicles a road trip around the South American coast in search of the best waves. Manuel Garcia, a Chilean folk singer known for his love of nature, scores the soundtrack while the camera zooms in on local characters such as fishermen, artists and Xamãs (shamans), as well as the surfers and their amazing tube rides. It’s a poetic green doc, ‘Best Environmental Film’. GIULIANO CE DRONI surffilmfestibal.com

10 HUCK

ALEKSI R AIJ

without being preachy, and it’s no surprise it won

LINK-UPS: CONNECTING THE DOTS BETWEEN THE NEWS

SAN FRANCISCO THE C I T Y BY THE B AY AN D THE OF F BEATS THAT C ALL IT HOME.

SF LOWDOWN YOUR MUST-DO, GOTTA-SEE, NEED-TO-EAT GUIDE TO FOG CITY.

ISSAC MCKAY-R AN D OZ Z I

DLXSF ►

Eggers’ writing school, 826 Valencia,

1831 Market St. / dlxsf.com

this part-curiosity, part-gardening store

Opened back in 1994 by Deluxe Distri-

caters for all your stuffed parrot or

bution (home of skateboard brands

alligator eye needs, stocking everything

Real, Anti-Hero, Krooked and more) the

from soaps and meteorite jewellery to

shop has become one of the best places

unique lighting and plants.

for skaters, and non, to buy their threads and shoes. Plus, its friendly staff will make

TH E PA INTE D L A DIES ▼

you feel more at home than some of the

IRON A ND G OLD

710–720 Steiner St.

haughty Haight Street stores.

3187 Mission St. / ironandgoldsf.com

There’s a reason why this row of

New name for an old bar. The interior

traditional San Francisco dwellings,

F ECA L FAC E D OT GAL L E RY ▲

2277 Mission St. / ffdg.net

HAIGHT STREET

was recently redone, there’s a great

perched on the border of Alamo

Birthed by the Dot Com Boom, Fecal

WOR K CLOTH ES ▼

assortment of sparkling wine cocktails

Square with views over Downtown in the

Face started out as a website covering the

631 Haight St.

on offer and an awesome schedule of

background, is one of the most visited

SF and lowbrow artscene, then morphed

This small, unassuming shop has some of

deejays make any night a good one.

spots in SF – and it’s not just because they

into a gallery that’s played host to everyone

the best choices in functional wear that

from Mike Giant to Jay Howell.

will last and last whilestill being stylish.

featured in the opening credits to Full PA NCHO V ILLA TAQUE RI A

3071 16th St. / sfpanchovilla.com Nestled on the edge of the Mission near the Castro, this Mexican food stop is a must while staggering from all the nearby bars.

CAFFE TRIESTE

601 Vallejo St. / caffetrieste.com Great coffee attracts great minds. A local hangout for the Beats, and a writing and meeting spot for Coppola and pals in the 1960s and 1970s, this awesome little java joint is still a great place to see the street life of North Beach.

PA X TON GAT E

824 Valencia St. / paxtongate.com A couple of doors down from Dave

12 HUCK

House. ISA AC MCKAY-RAND OZ ZI

E RIC WOL F INGER

LINK UPS: SAN FRANCISCO

OUTERLANDS SF + TARTINE SAN FRANCISCO’S FAVOURITE BAKERIES ARE ADDING SWELL TO EVERY LOAF OF BREAD. Dave Muller scratches his beard and looks down at his dough-spattered toes. “Bread

outside the fire station. If there’s a wind blowing up from the south, I know it’s going to

and surfing are just intrinsic to me,” he says, sitting in his restaurant, Outerlands,

rain. The surf will be crappy and I’ll know to mix the dough a bit dryer to compensate

on the outskirts of San Francisco. “The same conditions that I pay attention to for

for the humidity.”

surfing – like humidity, temperature and wind direction – are the same variables that affect my bread.”

His love of surfing and bread-making is one also shared with friend Chad Robertson, the man behind renowned San Franciscan bakery, Tartine. “I think I have

Muller and his wife Lana Porcello, both professional artists, created this “gathering

that same pursuit for perfection with surfing, that I have with bread,” says Robertson

place for sea-goers who seek warmth, shelter, food and fellowship” just a few blocks

when we catch up in his bustling bakery the next day, adding that he and Muller “go

from the Pacific Ocean in 2009. “I see running the restaurant kind of like curating an

on surf trips together to Mexico about once or twice a year”.

art exhibition,” says Mulller, who moved to San Francisco from southern California for

But the real beauty in their shared pursuits is just the process. “I like to create,”

art school. “You bring all these artists together, who have all these different influences

says Muller, who helped build Outerlands with reclaimed wood. “I like to touch the

and strengths, to make something really awesome.”

product I am making and selling. It takes a lot of care and attention but in the end

Muller’s bread is so high in demand that people travel from outside the city to

it’s something you can be proud of.” With that, Muller turns and looks at the flag

come and buy it. It’s a sourdough made in batches of seventy and left to prove on the

across the street blowing vigorously in the direction of the beach. “The surf should

restaurant’s counter each night, where it feeds off natural yeasts in the salty sea air and

be good about now.” NICK BAINES

develops unique flavours. “Ocean Beach has perfect beach-break waves, but it’s fickle,” says Muller, who works with local organic farms and ranches to keep things sustainable.

outerlandssf.com

“Living here you get to keep an eye on it. I always look across the street at that flag

tartinebakery.com

13

LINK UPS: SAN FRANCISCO

ISSAC MCK AY-RAN D OZ Z I

WHERE HEARTS GET LEFT ARTIST JEREMY FISH IS RESUSCITATING SAN FRANCISCO’S STORIED PAST. San Francisco is a city of transplants; hearts have been broken, trampled, doused

With a nod to the future and skyrocketing living costs, Where Hearts Get Left

in acid, skinned up, smoked up, inflated by human kindness, hucked from the walls

addresses the hard truth that the city that once attracted all social classes may soon

of Alcatraz and tossed in the bay. It’s a history artist Jeremy Fish knows all too well.

be geared towards the rich.

Having moved to SF in 1994 from Saratoga, New York, Fish, now thirty-seven,

“The city where I became the man I am today is changing,” says Fish. “Friends

has been living in ‘the city that knows how’ longer than he lived in his home state. So

move away, scenes die, and businesses close. Web nerds and tech companies move

for his latest show, Where Hearts Get Left, he decided to pay homage to the heroes

in, and I watch the city I came to love become something different. As artists get

and memories embedded on the city’s steep streets; from the early Spanish days

pushed out, this city’s creative spirit slowly gets crushed. It breaks my heart, and like

to the recent Dot Com Bust, the Beats to Coppola and everyone in-between. Even

so many before me, I leave my heart on the streets of SF, hoping it doesn’t change so

crazy Emperor Norton – a lovable loon who in 1859 declared himself Emperor of

much I have to leave. Cheers to you SF, please stay weird.” ISA AC MCKAY-RAND OZ ZI

the US, created his own currency and had 30,000 mourning San Franciscans attend his funeral – popped up as part of the installation at Fifty24SF Gallery this June.

“San Francisco has been very good to me,” says Fish. “I moved here at nineteen

Where Hearts Get Left, a limited-edition book featuring drawings from the show, is available at 827ink.com.

years old, ready to skateboard and draw pictures, never having any idea what this city had in store for me. My story is so similar to many San Franciscans that came

Prints from the show are available via www.umbrellamarket.com.

before me: a place where weirdos go to get weird. My current body of work, is a time capsule of sorts.”

14 HUCK

sillypinkbunnies.com

madrid

LINK-UPS: CONNECTING THE DOTS BETWEEN THE NEWS

URBAN INTERVENTIONS MAKIN G A MARK ON THE I ND U STRIAL L AN DSCAP E.

JANNE SAARIO

Michael Mackrodt skates the Steel Park in Luleå.

JANNE’S TOP SKATE SPOTS

MEET THE FINNISH SKATER INSPIRING YOUNG PEOPLE TO SHAPE THEIR CITY AS THEY SEE FIT.

INNER COURT YARDS, HEL SINKI

Janne Saario is in the middle of sculpting. He’s leading

The inner courtyards of the

a skatepark-building workshop called ‘DIY Concrete’

old town have really interesting

in Helsinki, where he lives, during Wastelands – a two-

combinations of stairs and

week festival organised by the European Architecture

little banks.

Students Assembly that explores unused and wasted spaces in urban areas.

SCULPTURES AND

“The workshop is offering students a new way of

OBJECTS, BARCELONA

looking at concrete as a soft and organic material,” says

The best modern

the Element Eden advocate, who has built skateparks

landscape architecture.

and plazas across Europe. “People are used to thinking concrete is made with moulds, all sharp and rectangular.

PUBLIC PLAZ A S, SPAIN

But we hand-shape the concrete so it’s more like making

Spain concentrates more on

snow sculptures. This method of making concrete is

public space than other places.

JAN N E SA ARIO

only used in swimming pools and skateparks, it’s a pretty rare thing.”

At the end of the festival, Element will premiere a brand new documentary about Saario called Second

jannesaario.com elementeurope.com/secondnature

Nature – exploring skateboarding, architecture and nature through his eyes. “I wanted to inspire young skaters because they are spending a lot of time in Saario, who loves the natural environment – “organic,

SAVE SKATEPARK AMSTERDAM

smooth bedrock shaped by the ice age” – just as much

THE FIGHT IS ON FOR SHRED

guys and they do their very best for the

as the urban. Most recently, he incorporated recycled

SPACE IN THE NETHERLANDS.

skating community and the community

public spaces and working with their hands,” says

He explains: “Skatepark Amsterdam is a really nice place, with really cool

in general. They always put on events for

industrial elements for his Steel Park in Luleå, Sweden.

“It’s kind of showing that skateboarding is a really good

Over 600,000 skaters have rolled

kids and skaters, they change and update

background to develop skills further as you grow up

through Skatepark Amsterdam since

the park on a regular basis – not a lot of

and need to find a real job! I hope the documentary

it was built twelve years ago by a group

skateparks do that – and in general, the

will be used as a tool for different communities to show

of skaters with the help of the City

skatepark is just beautifully built. It’s a

their officials that it’s possible to make great places for

Council and Kinetic North Foundation,

go-to place for the skating community

skateboarding that are interesting architecturally and

who rent the space. But now the lease is

– it would be such a shame to lose that.

add value to the surroundings.”

being terminated to allow the develop-

[…] I remember the very first time I went

ment of office buildings, and Skatepark

there – I was just awed. The place is so

Amsterdam is being evicted.

cool, they’ve got this crazy flooring with

Although he thinks Helsinki is pretty progressive when it comes to skateboarding in the city – “we can skate outside the modern art museum, for example,

In an attempt to stop the process or

glass throughout and it’s just an immense

because the head chief says that skateboarding is part

organise a new location, skaters across the

feeling skating there. I’ve been travelling

of the landscape” – Saario believes that purpose-built

globe are petitioning and raising money. In

lots lately and not really been able to go

skateparks are the only places really free from control.

fact, Monster Energy have vowed to donate

there, but I was really looking forward to

“Finland, and other countries too, aren’t designed

one Euro to the skatepark for every photo

coming back to it, meeting up with friends

for young people,” he insists. “The kids’ playgrounds,

tweeted, Instagrammed and Facebooked

and all these super dedicated people who

sports fields and regular parks all have regulations.

with the #MonsterSaveSA hashtag, and are

just love to ride the park.” SHELLE Y JONES

You can’t be wild there and jump around and be noisy,

hoping to raise 10,000 Euros.

do whatever young people do, drink beers, whatever!

Belgian pro Phil Zwijsen is one skater

But a skatepark brings this sort of free environment to

getting behind the initiative in a big way.

everyone.” SHELLE Y JONES

16 HUCK

skateparkamsterdam huckm.ag/saveskateam

LINK UPS: URBAN INTERVENTIONS

BROKEN WINDOWS

THE LOMOWALL

BEAUTIFUL SCULPTURE IN THE

MUSEUM OF LONDON GOES

SHADOW OF THE OLYMPICS

ANALOGUE CRAZY IN TRIBUTE

FORCES LONDONERS TO STOP

TO 2012 GAMES.

AND THINK. If you believe in the broken windows theory, the disused, unloved pockets of our cities are breeding grounds for criminal activity because, well, no one gives a shit about a shitty place. This summer, East London was hit by a subtle intervention that forces passers-by to contemplate that theory. On the corner of Mare Street and Tudor Road in Hackney, local artist Alex Chinneck has installed 312 identically smashed windows (each made from four delicately cut shards) in an old cannabis-growing warehouse, just one mile from the Olympics stadium, for his new project ‘Telling the Truth Through AL E X CHIN N ECK

False Teeth.’ It’s huge, yet subtle – so what’s it all about?

Says Chinneck: “Public sculpture is rarely subtle, it's often loud and finds you before you find it. In contrast to this, I always felt it was important that the windows

the building but in a very contradictory way

became part of the existing architecture

to the Council’s vision of clean streets.”

without dominating it. There is strength in

SHELLE Y JON ES C/O MUSEUM OF LON D ON

this subtlety and while the work is large in size it’s fairly quiet in its bid for attention. This

‘Telling the Truth Through False Teeth’ is on

of course makes it easy to miss but hopefully

the corner of Mare Street and Tudor Road until

even more intriguing to discover. […] I think

November 2012.

this project is well timed with the Olympics;

sumarrialunn.com

the new glass I have installed does neaten

alexchinneck.com

Phil Zwijsen in Skatepark Amsterdam.

There’s something about the process of film photography that makes you stop and reflect. It just kinda slows things down. So, in a year where life for Londoners has become almost unbearably fast paced, a curved photo wall in the heart of busy Barbican is providing a quiet moment for people to pause.

The sixty-five-metre wall, curated by Lomography, features almost 30,000 photos from thirty-two countries that respond to the open brief, ‘Inspiring and achieving in London’s Olympic year.’ The Lomography team also snapped several Paralympians as they prepared for the Games, including Chris Holmes MBE, a fifteen-times Paralympic swimming medallist. Despite being blind, Holmes was inspired by the ‘point and shoot’ philosophy Lomo-lovers adhere to. “Photos have a universal power,” he says. “They speak to us across space and time, evoking the feelings made in those moments.” SHELLE Y JONES The LomoWall is at the Museum of London until January 2013. lomography.com museumoflondon.org.uk

17

LINK UPS: URBAN INTERVENTIONS

JILLY BALLISTIC

JILLY'S TOP ART DOGS

MEET THE AD-BUSTING STREET ARTIST

NAMES FOR YOUR STREET ART HIT-LIST,

SENDING NYC INTO TECH FAIL.

AS RECOMMENDED BY JILLY BALLISTIC. “Each of these artists brings a unique perspective to the street-art world. Their talent and the mediums they use really show how diverse it can be.” – Jilly Ballistic

QRST You’ve seen his figurative wheat-pastes dotted around Brooklyn, but did you know QRST is an accomplished fine artist, too?

Quel Beast Psychedelic horror is sweeping Manhattan, and it’s all thanks to mysterious Quel Beast’s acidic self-portraits.

Enzo & Nio Brooklyn’s mash-up darlings use a range of mediums to bring witty social commentary out onto the streets.

Elle Girls in bunny suits. But not the Playboy kind.

Over the past year an anonymous street artist going by

computer errors and technology-based paste-ups,

the name of Jilly Ballistic has been subverting the streets

I'm answering advertisers in a way that's not only

and subways of New York City with witty error messages

recognisable to commuters, but shares their opinion.

on billboards, signs and other officialdom. Inspired by

[…] I just go about my day, commuting like everyone

Faith47

the satirical interventions, we decided to reach out to the

else, seeing the same ads and spaces they do. The NY

South Africa’s first lady of street art pours

phantom paster to find out more. All we got back was this

Police Department has a campaign slogan regarding

a piece of the Rainbow Nation into every

cryptic email – identity still unknown:

safety, ‘If you see something, say something.’ I see

mural. Awe-inspiring.

“I'm interacting with and responding to the environment in the NYC subway system. With the

18 HUCK

these ads and what they are trying to pitch us and I say something back.” SHELLE Y JONES

20 HUCK

MAGIC & LOSS There was a tipping point in surfing history when the door of possibility was busted w i d e o p e n . A n d S h a u n To m s o n d e a l t t h e final blow. As the first South African World Champion, his transgressive energy helped legitimate surfing as a professional sport.

But the determination he showed back then was nothing compared with what came next, when his family was rocked by tragedy.

Te x t J o e D o n n e l l y Photography Kevin Zacher Archive Images Dan Merkel / A-Frame

21

A twenty-six-year-old Shaun Tomson rides a Simon Anderson-shaped thruster at Backdoor Pipeline, 1981.

22 HUCK

‘Deep inside the barrel, completely in tune with my inner self, nothing else matters, the hard wind and spit shooting past me from behind, my hand dragging along the wall, the light shines ahead.’

– Mathew Tomson, Becoming A Man, April 24, 2006

nice, head-high peeler coming off the point and Shaun Tomson locked into it, just ahead of the foam ball – legs wide, knees bent at a perfect ninety degrees, right hand stroking the wave, eyes fierce, following the light as he moves up and down the wall inside the tube like no one has done before.

I ask the lady if she knows Shaun Tomson. Of course, she says, everybody does. She says there’s a path at the top of the stairs that takes you to the other side of the cove to Hammond’s Beach. That’s where Tomson can usually be found if the waves are breaking.

The beach lies at the end of a bougainvillea-framed lane, where a couple of families picnic in the dusk. When I bring up Tomson to a middle-aged woman having cheese and wine with her mother and best friend, she practically squeals. “He surfs here all the time,” she says. “He’s sooo handsome. And so nice, too.”

Hammond’s abuts a meadow that was once a burial ground for the indigenous Chumash tribe. The Chumash are gone, but a monument bears the inscription: ‘The Sacredness of the land lies in the minds ometimes, you slip into a seam where there’s just enough of

of its people. This land is dedicated to the spirit

something to crack your shell and make you believe in things

and memory of the ancestors and their children.’

you might otherwise not.

On a summer afternoon in Montecito, just south of Santa

I will soon learn that the beach is special for reasons other

Barbara, the shuttered cottages of the old Miramar By The Sea

than the Chumash and the long rights when it’s breaking. This

summon memories dating back to the turn of the twentieth

is where Tomson liked to hang out with his son, Mathew. Here,

century and the railroad barons and bootleggers who hid out

one day, Mathew Tomson started picking up cobblestones and

there. Cross the tracks at the end of Eucalyptus Lane and a

arranging them into a circle. Then, with his father’s help, he

stone staircase leads down to a little cove. There, a woman sits

grabbed more cobblestones and made another circle inside

staring out at the bay. Despite her reverie being interrupted,

that circle. And one more inside of that. And inside that,

she graciously answers questions about tides and says it breaks

two stones to sit on. Next, Mathew took a stick from a pile

here when the direction is just right and even sometimes when

of driftwood and used kelp to attach feathers and brought

it’s not. She tells of mysto swells that pop up out of nowhere,

the staff and his father into the centre. This, he said, is the

even in the summer, bringing in a wave that breaks across the

sacred story circle. In here, we pass the staff and tell stories.

entire cove. All the locals find their way into the lineup for a ride or two before the swell disappears again, she says.

Squinting in the direction she has pointed, you can almost see the waves trying to form. For a minute, it isn’t hard to imagine a

Surfers are natural-born storytellers. Surfing is just a great way to get to the heart of the story, to find the arc that goes from darkness to light. Shaun Tomson knows this as well as anybody.

23

It’s still dark the next day when Tomson pulls his black Audi station wagon into the Coast Village Inn at just past 5am. The idea is to drive twenty minutes up the coast past Santa Barbara proper to Refugio Beach, one of Tomson’s favourite spots. Tomson is tall, trim and, at fiftyseven, the pretty-boy face that became an icon of pro surfing’s

that nearly ripped his arm off and almost killed him. Chony

early days has been forged into something more rugged and

flew to San Francisco for extensive surgery and then to Hawaii

soulful. The bright blue eyes that seemed to scorch perfect

to recover. Staying at the Royal Hawaiian Inn, Chony fell in

lines into whatever wave he rode are just as intent.

with the Kahanamoku clan – legendary waterman and surfing’s

Santa Barbara is a long way from Durban, South Africa,

first international ambassador Duke Kahanamoku had been a

where Tomson grew up in the postwar baby boom, the son of

childhood hero – and immersed himself in Hawaiian culture.

an Olympic-calibre swimmer and volunteer lifeguard at the Bay

“My dad never had anything but a smile on his face,” says

of Plenty. During the war, Ernie ‘Chony’ Tomson served in the

Tomson. “My earliest memory is of my dad taking me by the

South African Air Force, a tail gunner in an American-made B-25

hand into the water, teaching me how to swim. He used to say,

Marauder. Chony manned twin .50 caliber Browning machine

‘Never turn your back on the ocean,’ which is very profound.

guns in the fight against the sort of fascism that had scattered the

I think he meant you have to be aware at all times, but, also,

Jewish Diaspora to far-flung places such as the Cape of Africa.

don’t give away what you love.”

Growing up a beach rat with younger sister Tracy and

Despite his own setback, Tomson’s father encouraged his

older brother Paul, Tomson was kept blissfully naïve about his

son’s growing interest in surfing. In 1969, when he won the

own country’s brand of fascism. “When we grew up, we had

biggest local contest, the Gunston 500, Chony had a different

an idyllic existence,” he says. “We weren’t really aware of the

bar mitzvah present in mind than the stock certificates his

political aspects of our lives because that was the status quo

son’s classmates received. He took Tomson to the North Shore

when you were young and living across from the beach and

of Hawaii. It just happened to be the famous winter of 1969,

surfing incredible waves. It was only when I started travelling

the winter that Greg Noll rode the biggest wave ever ridden, a

that I realised I was living in an environment where great

wave witnessed by only a handful that has existed primarily

portions of the population were being repressed, subjugated,

as the stuff of oral history and legend.

and were the victims of unfair and unjust laws. But growing up, I had a wonderful life.”

24 HUCK

“It was, like, the biggest winter ever in Hawaii,” says Tomson, lighting up at the memory. “Makaha is where Greg Noll took

An international influence that did permeate the Tomson

that wave. We were staying in an apartment five floors up. We

household was that of Hawaii, though the introduction to aloha

had the best views.” Then, he casually drops a bomb: “I still

was less than ideal. After the war, a twenty-two-year-old Chony

have Super 8 footage of that wave, but I’ll never release it…

Tomson started training for the Empire [Commonwealth] and

the legend is worth more.”

Olympic Games. Then, while bodysurfing with friends at South

We’re back in town at Tomson’s favourite breakfast joint

Beach near his home, he was attacked by a Zambezi (bull) shark

after Refugio came up flat. Several locals hail Tomson as we

stand in line, trading small talk and surf notes. Tomson greets

held me down and I didn’t think I could make it to the surface.

each like a next-door neighbour, taking care to provide a brief

I got up and the next wave hit me, and the next wave,” he says,

bio, like a good host would. After ordering eggs and a side of

almost laughing. “That was the closest I’ve come to drowning.”

fruit, he digs into the story of his first memorable foray into huge Makaha surf.

Tomson went home a little shaken but plenty stoked. He started winning every local contest. After fulfilling his mandatory

“I paddle out and it just keeps getting bigger, massive beyond

army service, Tomson thought he would go to university and

belief,” says Tomson, eyes wide. “Makaha is not like Waimea.

then into business. There was no such thing as professional

At Waimea, it’s one big takeoff and you do the bottom turn and

surfing, just a handful of ragged contests here and there and

you’re out. At Makaha, the wave gets bigger and bigger and

Tomson had little left to prove at those.

you’re locked in, there’s no way out. It’s pretty scary.”

But fate intervened at the 1974 Gunstun 500 in the form of

As Tomson scratched his way into the lineup, legends

strapping Australian Ian Cairns, who convinced Tomson to

Randy Rarick, Keith Paull and Rolf Aurness (son of James

join him and fellow Aussies Peter Townend, Mark Richards

Arness, from Gunsmoke, and a great surfer) greeted his arrival

and Rabbit Bartholomew in Hawaii. That winter and the next,

with a chorus of, ‘Shaun, what the fuck are you doing out here?’

the leaders of the ‘free ride’ generation created professional

“I went, ‘Uh oh,’” he says between bites, his still-thick South

surfing as we know it: formally, by introducing the idea of

African accent making it feel like the story is being shared among

a pro circuit with a world championship – the International

mates at a barbecue. Tomson managed a couple of waves before

Professional Surfing tour. More importantly, though, were the

wiping out, “and it’s like mountains coming. I just see mountains.”

stylistic innovations they made in the proving grounds of the

When a wave was about to crash on his head, Tomson made

North Shore and Bonsai Pipeline where Tomson and Richards

a rookie mistake and turtle rolled under his board. “The wave

in particular laid down the physical laws of modern surfing: attacking Pipeline backside; deep drops into deeper barrels; carving inside the wall; flaunting power, speed and technical

“THE WAVE HELD ME DOWN AND I DIDN’T THINK I COULD MAKE IT TO THE S U R F A C E .”

manoeuvres in massive waves.

The revolution wasn’t quite televised, but it has since been immortalised in surfing folklore, books and documentaries – most notable being Bustin’ Down The Door, a film Tomson

Tomson leaves Off The Wall in Hawaii, 1976, in his rusty Valiant that he bought for $150, drove for four months and then left on the side of the road at the end of the season.

25

“ I F E LT LIKE I COULD COMPREHEND TIME BETTER THAN ANYBODY E L S E .”

Tomson scowls after losing a heat to Rabbit Bartholomew (on the left) at the 1975 Surfabout contest in Sydney, Australia.

26 HUCK

Tomson and Carla returned to the States and started another line, Solitude, in 1998. It, too, had its ups and downs. At one point they were going bust, and had everything packed up on a Friday in preparation for a Monday shutdown. Only the phone stayed plugged in. “As long as the phone was in, there was hope,” Tomson laughs.

That Sunday, a man approached the father of one of Mathew helped produce, which beautifully documents the creative

Tomson’s little-league friends and asked where he could find

chaos and culture clash that ensued. Things got heavy. Death

the shirt the guy was wearing. The little league dad said he’d

threats were thrown around and the Hawaiian old guard meted

better hurry, and passed on Tomson’s number. Solitude was

out a painful dose of comeuppance to this new, transgressive

back in business on a handshake deal the next week. Tomson

crew. By the time reconciliation had been forged, the future of

and his wife sold Solitude and Instinct to Oxford Industries,

surfing had been written, and the professional circus – complete

a large apparel company, in 2006.

with sponsors, prize money, however small, and something like careers – started to take shape.

Becoming a man is hard stuff. You’re not born into it; you arrive at it through loss, struggle and determination. I’ve been

In his own way, Tomson helped catalyse how the industry

lucky enough to meet some great men in my time – Muhammad

would function. “I got my first free wetsuit from Pat O’Neill in

Ali, Desmond Tutu, Ray Charles, my father – and the one

November 1975 in Hawaii,” he says. “It was a yellow vest and

thing they have in common is an indescribable presence.

because I had a big year the wetsuit was featured on many

Shaun Tomson has that presence. Walking through town – at

magazine covers all over the world. I saw all the coverage so I

his barber’s, wherever we go – people greet Tomson as if they

wrote to Pat asking to be paid to wear the wetsuits. He agreed

want to take a piece of him home, put it in a vase and make a

and I became the first member of Team O’Neill, an idea Pat

centrepiece out of it.

had been working on, inspired by the ski industry.”

It should have been a good year, 2006. Tomson’s businesses

Tomson earned a reputation for power and fluidity in all

were finally settled. His son Mathew was going to his parents’

conditions, but it was his tube riding that turned the world

native South Africa a generation after Apartheid for a semester

upside down and earned him a place in the top ten of Surfer

at Tomson’s old prep school. And Shaun’s book – Surfer’s

magazine’s greatest surfers of all time. Before Tomson, Pipeline

Code, 12 Simple Lessons For Riding Through Life, which spins

specialists such as Gerry Lopez would draw a straight line

surfing-based aphorisms such as ‘I will catch a wave every day’

through the barrel and come out the other end as stoic and

into beautiful parables – had just come out to good reviews

graceful as possible. Tomson, though, turned the tube into a

and great sales.

canvas, a place to express himself in bold, powerful strokes.

Instead, though, it was the year things went dark; the year

“I felt like I could comprehend time better than anybody

fifteen-year-old Mathew accidentally died playing ‘the choking

else,” says Tomson. “Time would slow down. I could look at the

game’, wherein kids asphyxiate to get a brief high. Tomson

wall and the curve of the wall and understand its complexities

didn’t know when he wrote Surfer’s Code that he’d need every

better. I had this innate sense of riding inside the tube. At times,

one of its lessons about patience, courage, commitment and

I even felt like I could control the wave.”

perseverance for himself.

From there, draw the line to Tom Curren, Andy Irons, and

A turning point came when he was by his wife’s side in the

Kelly Slater, who himself has confessed awe at what Tomson

hospital’s psych ward. “I didn’t think Carla was going to make

did backside, single fin, at Pipeline. Tomson would go on to

it,” he tells me. “She no longer had the will to live.” A friend

win the Pipeline Masters, Vans Triple Crown, 1977 World

who had also lost his son came to visit. The friend had been

Championship and be named one of the twenty-five most

working with a grief counsellor, a swami. The friend said the

influential surfers of the past century.

swami had a message from Mathew. “It was a clear day,” says

If Tomson has a light about him

Tomson, “a day like this. And a lightning bolt hit the hospital and the whole hospital shook – a completely clear, cloudless

it’s not because any retrograde, surf-god glamour illuminates

sky, and the message was, ‘Mathew just wanted to tell you

him. He and his mates earned peanuts so the Slaters and

that he’s sorry, he made a mistake.’ You know, that gave us a

Fannings could earn millions. They made something out of

connection with our boy,” says Tomson.

nothing and that something is now a ten billion-dollar global

Three years later, they adopted Luke. “Adopted is too weak of a

industry. But Tomson’s true measure came post-professional

word,” Tomson, told me on he drive up to Refugio that morning.

surfing, after the contest victories and adulation died down.

“It’s more like he chose us, like the universe put us together.”

In 1990, when Tomson retired, there was no such thing as

These days, a typical morning in the Tomson household

a lucrative endorsement deal for surfers put out to pasture.

begins with three-year-old Luke waking them up at 6am. “He’ll

You had to make your own way. While still touring, he started

come rushing in, barrelling into the room with us,” says Tomson,

Instinct surf wear, which did well enough but bottomed out in

admitting that it’s his favourite part of the day. Then, Tomson

1990. So, with newborn son Mathew in tow, Tomson and his

will make Carla a latte and they’ll all lie around in bed watching

wife Carla returned to their native South Africa where Tomson

the news. Next, it’s get Luke off to school and start working on

fulfilled a promise to his parents to complete his education – a

one of the many projects they have going. “If the surf ’s good,

thirty-five-year-old undergrad at the University of Natal.

I’ll always try to get in a session,” Tomson admits.

“I loved it,” says Tomson. “South Africa was very rigorous

Tomson lives in Santa Barbara not because he got rich off

academically to go to university. It was very much the Oxford-

of his apparel business – he didn’t – but because he likes the

Etonian concept of building the Renaissance man.”

vibe. He likes that the global environmental movement started

27

here after the horrific 1969 oil spill: Tomson became the first

“We all live in a challenging sea and our attitude towards

professional surfer to join The Surfrider Foundation in 1984.

those challenges defines who we are, and how we live our lives. Our

That’s him doing the radical bottom turn on their T-shirts.

attitude about the present defines our future. Our attitude about

His Spanish-style home, a few blocks north of the Coast

the future defines the present. Our attitude defines how we see the

Village Road, is a relatively modest affair, considering the

world and how the world sees us. Our attitude is the light that can

neighbourhood. It’s tastefully appointed – Carla is a designer

show us the way on a journey from where we are, to where we want

and it shows – and there’s a large, inviting backyard. “I love

to be. It is a fundamental choice for all of us. Positive or negative.

the atmosphere up here and I love the people and the very

Optimism or pessimism. Hope or despair. Light or darkness... This

laid-back lifestyle,” he says. “It’s not as frenetic.”

is a story of a journey… a journey from heartbreak to happiness,

We sit at a large, wooden table off the kitchen. The afternoon

a journey from the dark into the light.”

sun fills up the backyard behind us and a sturdy tree in the middle of it throws just enough shade. Carla offers coffee while

“You never know who needs what you can give,” Tomson

Tomson shows me his latest project, a children’s book called

tells me. “You know, we got a gift from this woman who gave

Krazy Kreatures. It’s an A–Z illustrated encyclopedia of some

us life without asking one thing in return.”

He tells the story of a black South African boy he helped put through school back when he was competing. They hadn’t spoken in twenty years, but the boy, now a man, came to Mathew’s funeral and he and Tomson reconnected afterwards. The man had gone on to earn two degrees and become headmaster of a school teaching 1,300 kids. He asked Tomson to visit the school to speak.

“I went to his school.

Impoverished. Impoverished.

They didn’t even have an assembly hall,” says Tomson.

“The headmaster came and [addressed] the kids before me.

It was like Martin Luther King.

These kids have nothing, but their school uniforms and their blazers and skirts and they’re immaculate and you could see he had empowered these

28 HUCK

of the more ominous sea creatures. It’s done in verse and is

kids. Two of these kids spoke after I spoke – these kids could be

quite charming; Tomson himself seems delighted by it. Another

at the head of the class at Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, Yale,

book, Code, a collection of useful affirmations aimed at kids,

Berkeley. What this guy has done is amazing.”

is slated for a 2015 release with the working tagline, ‘Join the

As the day winds down, a kaleidoscope of colours dances

sacred story circle.’ For every copy purchased, a book will be

in a soft sun and a sea-misted breeze carries the smell of pink

donated to needy institutions.

ladies and poppies. Tomson shares another story, about how

Alongside his books, Tomson has incorporated elements of

just the other day Luke came into his office when he and Carla

his experiences into motivational speeches for corporations,

were looking at a picture of Mathew on Carla’s computer screen,

universities, elected officials and environmental groups. It

a black and white photograph.

all began when Glenn Henning, the founder of Surfrider

“And Luke walks in and looks at the picture of Mathew and

Foundation, asked Tomson to give a speech inspiring the

he says, ‘Look at the rainbow.’ It’s a black and white picture,”

Rincon Homeowners Association to replace their septic tanks,

says Tomson. “On the day Mathew died, he spoke to Carla and

which were leaking into the bay. Tomson went home and

said, ‘Mommy, I’m standing under a rainbow. I’m in the perfect

outlined what became the Surfer’s Code in twenty minutes.

place.’ So, you know, it just gives you the knowledge that our

Recently, Tomson addressed the Santa Barbara County

lives are brief, but there’s this connectivity and sure, you know,

board of supervisors. He titled his talk, ‘The Light Shines

it’s terrible that we lost our beautiful boy and we can’t hug him

Ahead’. It began:

or kiss him, but his spirit is around us.”

then & now Photographer Graeme Williams is creating a thread between South Africa’s past and present.

text Andrea Kurland

30 HUCK

hey say history has a way of repeating

of a changing society. Mandela in my mind had always been

itself. Memories fade, pain deadens

this mythical hero figure put in prison by the baddies. But

over time, lessons have a funny way of

there’s a huge difference between thinking, ‘Oh well, things

being unlearned.

must change for the better,’ and actually being in that process

But for South Africans who lived

of change, because it was just so absolutely dramatic.”

through the fall of Apartheid, the

Over the next five years, Graeme captured the human face

years that led up to 1994 are, rightfully,

of the fight for freedom – moments that no amount of time

impossible to forget. On May 10 of that

can erase. “Seventy per cent was violence and confrontation

year, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated

and probably thirty per cent was politics,” he says. “I didn’t

as president following the country’s

really look up until five years later in 1994 when Mandela

first free multi-racial elections. Until

was inaugurated.”

then, rights were dictated by the colour

By the time Graeme emerged from the battlefield, the

of your skin: white people had them;

newly christened ‘Rainbow Nation’ was stepping up to the

other races had few. But Madiba, as

tortuous challenge of piecing together a society divided for so

Mandela is lovingly known, was just

long. As any South African citizen will attest, 1994 wasn’t the

the rock that his countrymen needed

end of a story, but rather the start.

to derail history from its ruthless

“There were so many facets to the change, the colour

course and propel it towards a more

aspect and Apartheid was just one,” explains Graeme. “We’ve

just place.

got eleven different language groups, which means that there’s

The long walk to freedom may have been Mandela’s to make,

a lot of different things happening in one country, and to move

but the struggle for democracy was a collective battle; lives

that country from what it was to what it became was quite

were lost, sacrifices made, barricades dismantled one brick at a

amazing. The process, for me, really got rid of a whole load

time. And through it all a young photographer was standing by,

of naiveties. I understand human reactions and the reality

capturing the balance as it tipped.

of the human race probably better than I did before. At the

Graeme Williams was twenty-eight when he returned

beginning it seemed obvious: you didn’t want Apartheid,

to South Africa in 1988. He’d moved to London in search of

you wanted the goodies to win and the baddies to go away.

stories, but came to realise he was in the wrong place. “One

But it’s more complicated than that. Politics and the human

could feel that things were changing in South Africa,” he

urge for power are really ugly. By the end of the five years of

explains. “I knew that as a photographer there were things

photographing, my faith in the human race was only held up

happening there that I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to

by people like Mandela and Archbishop [Desmond] Tutu. It

document that particular era in South Africa’s history. Not

wasn’t like there were that many people behaving well. There

because the rest of the world wanted to see the violence there,

were just enough.”

but because it was the country I grew up in. I was born in Cape

Today, Graeme has a catalogue of images that immortalise

Town so I’ve always had this feeling that this time was going to

one of the most pivotal moments in our social history. But far

come - you just didn’t know when.”

from locking them away in a dusty cupboard, he’s ready to face

On June 18, 1988, Graeme attended the Free Nelson Mandela Concert at London’s Wembley Stadium, alongside a

what they say about us all, and is retracing time for his most contemplative project yet.

global audience of 600 million people, all calling for the South

“I’m going back to the most significant places during that

African government to release Madiba, the ‘militant’ anti-

period,” he explains. “It’s a body of work called Previously

Apartheid activist they had sentenced to life imprisonment in

Significant Places that contrasts what those places meant

1962. Back home, meanwhile, violence was erupting between

during that time and what they are now. I suppose it’s multi-

Mandela’s ANC supporters and the Inkatha Freedom Party; the

faceted because it looks at how the country has changed, but

rival factions both stood against Apartheid, but had different

also how I’ve changed and how I relate to the situation now.

ideas on how to dismantle it. Before the year was out, Graeme

It’s been really interesting, and in a way quite cathartic, to

was on a plane heading home, eager to document the resistance

go back to those places and see them with a bit of hindsight.

as it rose. “It was just the atmosphere,” he recalls. “It was the

People were prepared to die and kill there for a particular

most amazing event and one could feel from that, that the

viewpoint. From our position now, one may consider that

pressure on the Apartheid government was huge and there was

nonsensical. But the one aspect that completely overshadows

a limit to how long it could last. Politically, one could feel that

my fixation with that period, and that still resonates today,

things were going to shift fairly soon.”

is just how amazing Mandela was, especially at that time.

Landing in Johannesburg, the city most engulfed by riots

He held the country together just by the strength of his

and tension, Graeme was struck by the gravity of the situation

personality. It was by virtue of who he was that he was able

– and the depth of his own naivety, too. “On my first day I came

to change things. There’s not many people you meet in your

across three bodies,” he explains. “There was this feeling of

lifetime who have that kind of gravitas.”

violence across the township and you knew this wasn’t an

What follows is a snapshot of that story – then and now

isolated incident. From that point on I was immersed in the

laid side by side – and a gentle reminder that in order to move

politics and violence of that time.”

forward, one needs to keep an eye on the past.

He goes on: “I went from being a fairly protected white kid from the suburbs to suddenly being thrust into the real cauldron

graemewilliams.co.za

31

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

– Maya Angelou –

32 HUCK

33

34 HUCK

35

Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison

A concrete picnic table in a newly-created

after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, Paarl, 1990.

recreational area in Ga-Rankuwa, 2012.

A statue of Nelson Mandela has been erected outside the newly named Groot Drakenstein

Members of the National Peacekeeping Force stand

Prison, Paarl, 2012.

guard over the bodies of three young men who were shot dead outside a tavern in Katlehong, 1994.

Residents of the informal ANC-supporting Phola

Manicurist Nombuso Ntuli waits for customers at the

Park settlement gather with weapons as they prepare

Chosen Beauty Salon, in a mini-shopping

to march on the nearby hostel of Inkatha members,

centre that has been renovated from the tavern

East Rand, 1990.

in Katlehong, 2012.

State-built RDP houses have replaced the haphazard shack settlement, East Rand, 2012.

When popular South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was shot dead by right-wing

A newspaper vendor wraps up against the morning

activists, South Africa was brought to the brink

cold outside the infamous Tladi Blackjack training

of civil war. Here, right-wing group members

facility – a base for the all-black municipal police

guard Elspark homes along the route of his funeral

unit (who were often considered to be traitors to the

procession, East Johannesburg, 1993.

liberation cause) – Soweto, 1990.

A highly secured Elspark suburban home with

The guard towers are the only structures from the

security spikes and an electrified security fence,

Tladi Blackjack training facility that remain today,

East Johannesburg, 2012.

Soweto, 2012.

A large percentage of Afrikaner Resistance One of four men shot and slashed by pangas

Movement (AWB) members were recruited

(machetes), as Inkatha supporters attack the

from the poorer sections of small-town, white

ANC-supporting residents of the Crossroads

communities. Here, AWB members line the route

shack settlement in Katlehong, 1990.

of a right-wing march through the suburbs of the

The remains of the demolished hostel,

conservative mining town Welkom, 1990.

Katlehong, 2012.

In the post-Apartheid era, the same areas became the first to be racially integrated due to

36 HUCK

Residents of Ga-Rankuwa demonstrate their anger

the affordable property prices. Lenka Lenka is

against the Apartheid puppet state during protests

the owner of a home in a previously whites-only

in the Bophuthatswana homeland, 1990.

suburb, Welkom, 2012

BO RN & BR ED So ut h A f ri c a i s teemi n g wi th cre at ive tal en t. T h es e f o l ks are j ust t he c ream o f th e c ro p.

38 HUCK

holmes bros

K E V I N GO S S - R O S S

C / O HO L ME S B R O S

fruits & veggies

– POST-RACIAL PARTY PUNK –

Fuelled by raw

power and a loose kind of promise,

Fruits & Veggies have been ripping apart South Africa’s live music scene

– S U R F S T U F F, P R O U D LY H O M E G R O W N –

Towards the end

of the last millennium, two

brothers from Durban, Laurie and Gary Holmes, decided they’d had

since 2008. Their jittery bursts of riptide ska come loaded with the sound

enough. Instead of waiting for big brands to fulfill their needs, they

of joyous, righteous kids trying to stake their place in the world against

started producing their own surfboards and clothes. “We couldn't get

the trials of hard drinking, no money and shitty bars.

the stuff we wanted,” says Laurie Holmes, “so we were forced into it.

All six members hail from the post-industrial suburb of Umbilo, Durban – an area bassist Lucia Nomafu Nokonwabisa Gcingca,

Just like the boards, nobody would shape what we wanted. We had to start making them ourselves.”

aka ‘Loopy’, calls “a cesspool of debauchery and poverty – a place

As a brand, Holmes Bros has a distinctly “East Coast tropical flavour,”

where one is able to find comfort at the bottom of a delicious bunny

explains Laurie. “Think hot rods, café racers, denim and surf.” And at a

[a hollowed-out loaf of bread loaded with spicy curry], a cold quart

time when everyone else is going global, the brothers work hard to keep

and a fatty boom batty.”

things local. “It seemed like the right thing to do,” says Laurie. “People

With an irreverent eye for keeping things light, Fruits & Veggies are

think you can't make really good quality clothing locally any more. We

perhaps South Africa’s hardest living, post-racial, party punk band.

prove them wrong. It actually makes it easier to control; I can just shoot

“We’re a group of diverse individuals,” says Loopy. “We combine these

down the road and check my production on the line. It’s much more

things together to create a unified ideal. It’s based on a great belief in

tricky if you’re doing it in China.”

one’s right to pursue happiness.”

So, how’s it working out? “We’re trading very well, especially since

Their music is heavily influenced by the stir-crazy rhythms of South

most of our advertising has been word of mouth,” says Laurie, who

African ska pioneers Boo!, gypsy flourishes of Gogol Bordello and

studied fine art and textile design in his younger years. “People love

vocal gymnastics of Skunk Anansie. But it’s the energy with which all

the fact the brand is designed and made locally. We believe in letting

of this is thrown together that makes Fruits & Veggies one of the most

the brand grow organically, without getting outside capital involved. It

cobweb-blasting live bands around: they just know how to fuck shit up.

takes longer but you end up with a solid business.”

“We’re all insane!” Loopy continues. “We really love what we do, and

And to all budding entrepreneurs, Laurie has one thing to say: “Just

each other. We have the same vision – some deep delusion that someday

keep on trucking and try do some positive stuff along the way. Oh, and

someone will care.” ROGER YOUNG / ANDY DAVIS

get tubed more.” ANDY DAVIS

reverbnation.com/fruitsveggies

holmesbros.co.za

39

candice tripp A N GU S MA C P HE R S O N

bryan little

– F I L M M A K I N G F LY O N T H E W A L L –

During a workshop

in New York City, filmmaker

Werner Herzog singles out a little-known South African director. “This

– PAINTER LADY –

Candice Tripp needs

a moment to sit down.

“I never thought about being an artist,” she says, taking a seat outside

is for you,” says Herzog. “It’s my manifesto for making films.” The other

London’s Black Rat Projects, where she’s just installed a dark netherworld

200 people in the room look on enviously as the diminutive South African

of eight-foot trees for her latest solo show, Petit Mal. “I thought painting

sits back down, a little dumbfounded himself. But that’s just how Bryan

and drawing was something I just did, like collecting stamps.”

Little rolls. Understated. Self-effacing. It’s no wonder his production company is called Fly On The Wall.

The twenty-six-year-old South African has been on a whirlwind ride since landing in England in 2005. She planned to study fashion,

“Herzog changed everything for me,” says Little. “He told me

but found herself bypassing institutional gateways when “friends of a

that every film is wrestled from the hands of the devil. Documentary

friend” – Claire Parish and Sheilen Rathod, of Electrik Sheep gallery

filmmaking is such a rewarding experience, but it’s also petrifying.”

in Newcastle – bought some of the paintings she was creating at home,

In 2009, fresh out of film school, Little produced a documentary on

and invited her to put on her first solo show.

Fokofpolisiekar (‘Fuckoffpolicecar’), the punk band that single-handedly

“It was the scariest thing ever,” says Candice, who was soon showing

overhauled the image of contemporary Afrikaners. The film led to a flood

at prestigious galleries like Carmichael, Lazarides and Joshua Liner

of work for the likes of National Geographic, Nike and MTV. But before

in New York. “From there it took off. Although I didn’t do street art,

being sucked down the commercial wormhole, they talked Red Bull into

a couple of people who supported that scene bought my prints. I was

funding a doc about South African street dance, The African Cypher.

just an outsider, self-taught – there was no piece of paper behind me to

For two long years, Little and production partner Filipa Domingues

say I studied this.”

embedded themselves among the Pantsula, IsBujwa and hip hop dance

It’s the morning after the private view, and judging by the little red

crews based in the townships surrounding Johannesburg, Cape Town and

‘sold’ stickers dotted around the gallery, the market for Candice’s £3k+

Durban. The result is a story at the heart of South Africa’s social reality

paintings – all bittersweet fairytales with a macabre twist - is in good

that connects the dots between tradition, fashion, culture and survival.

health. But the Cape Townian hasn’t lost sight of her roots.

“Strange as it may seem I don’t consider this a dance film but rather

“Growing up in South Africa teaches you that there’s always going

a film about what it means to be human,” says Little, “to have hopes

to be someone way better off and there’s always going to be someone

and dreams, to struggle against all the external and internal forces

who’s had a way shitter time,” she says. “But when I went back recently

that seek to crush the pure and the true. It is a film of life and death and

I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, I’m missing out.’ The country has changed

what we do in between.” ANDY DAVIS – EDITOR OF MAHALA.CO.ZA

loads – it’s amazing.” ANDREA KURLAND

flyonthewall.co.za

candicetripp.com

40 HUCK

67-minute Revolutionaries

How do you follow in the footsteps of a generation of freedom fighters? That’s the challenge young South Africans now face.

Text Osiame Molefe Illustration Anna-Lise Dunn

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For the uninitiated, Blikkiesdorp is the moniker for the temporary relocation area built ahead of the World Cup to keep Cape Town’s poor and homeless out of sight of football revellers. From its rather pleasant-sounding official name – ‘Symphony Way’ – to the ‘temporary’ in the now five-year-old camp’s title, to how it’s a real-life allegory for District 9, which was an allegory for real life, you’d swear someone was taking the piss. But every inch of the crime-riddled camp was created by stern-faced government officials.

I put it to my dear, well-meaning friend. “Isn’t the real problem here the fact that these families were moved to this permanent temporary relocation area in the first place, not that it’s an eyesore?”

I say. “If your actions were in the spirit of what Nelson Mandela did, shouldn’t you be prepared to go to jail until there is justice – housing, sanitation, the provision of basic human needs?”

“Those kids had a better day than what they’re used to and the place now doesn’t look so desolate,” he says sharply. “At least I did something. Can you say the same?”

I can’t, and that doesn’t trouble me one bit. But I don’t say that to Marv, nor do I mention that I think my sixty-seven minutes did as much to change the world for the better as what most people did that day. I bite my tongue because I get it. There’s a reason why the kids of movie stars and self-made billionaires – and yes, even those of globally lauded liberation heroes – are fucked up. There’s nothing they can possibly do to live up to the achievements of the generation that came before. It’s a kind of inter-generational sophomore blues or a reversion to the mean.

So under that yoke some wilt while others fall, mouth-first, into the trough of wanton consumerism that the freedom of having over-achieving parents allows.

Others, like Marvin and the other ‛67-minute revolutionaries’, try to emulate the generation before. But of course they never can.

There’s a personal price to be paid that they are not prepared to pay – Marvin probably won’t go back to Blikkies, and that’s okay.

Times are different. What isn’t okay is that this brand of activism oday’s July 18 and I’ve done myself proud. I’ve staved off the

is, well, a brand – and a high-end one at that. It’s consumed by

groupthink and peer pressure of Mandela Day. The premise is

middle and upper-crust kids who aren’t prepared to put anything

that on the old guy’s birthday every year, we should all spend sixty-

else on the line but their good intentions. When local activist

seven minutes helping those less fortunate. The number of minutes

brands won’t do, others – like the Occupy Movement and Slutwalk,

is equivalent to the years Nelson Mandela dedicated to the fight

which quickly fizzled out when decreasing marginal utility set

for freedom, so the day is like tithing, except at 0.0001 per cent.

in – can be imported.

Galled by the sanctimony in my social media feeds, which

“Poor is the new black now, Marv,” I say. “Imagine if Nelson

were chock-a-block with friends and the people I follow posting

Mandela or Steve Biko thought all blacks needed to overcome

photos of each other high-fiving orphans and tilling community

Apartheid was a lick of paint on their houses and some trees in

gardens, I decide to bring balance to the universe that day by

the neighbourhood.” He concedes it’s not enough but, like a stuck

catching up on episodes of the cathartic social treatise that is

record, he adds: “At least I did something.”

‛Big Brother Africa’.

I’ll give him that. He did do something, just not what he thinks.

Later, at dinner, the smugness must be apparent on my face

We’re at French Toast, a ritzy wine and tapas restaurant on Bree

because Marvin – a friend who’d gone above and beyond for his

Street. The place is a far cry from Blikkies and other townships

sixty-seven minutes – takes me to task. “Doing something, even

like it where, counting back one or two generations, Marvin and

if it’s small, is better than moaning and doing nothing,” he says.

me can trace our roots. Marvin’s activism means he can enjoy

He’d spent the day painting shacks in Blikkiesdorp, about

dinner and his sea-view apartment and the German sedan he

twenty kilometres out of Cape Town. By the time he and his fellow volunteers were done, the outside walls of the corrugated iron structures were baby blue, sunrise yellow, passion pink and

drove to Blikkies in without feeling guilty.

“So you ask what I did,” I say. “Well I tried to face up to my privilege.”

other cheery colours. They’d also spruced up the place by planting trees and had read to the kids that lived there.

Osiame Molefe is a Cape Town-based columnist and writer. @tomolefe

43

Equal Start

44 HUCK

uly, 2012. The South African

– coupled with bureaucratic bungling and

cover their feet. Even getting enough to eat is

school year started way back in

corruption. Before 1994, the state spent a fraction

a huge challenge.” He says his school lacks a

a dusty January summer, and

of the education budget on black students,

communal hall – “a huge impediment” – and has

students have already written

whereas white schools (known as ‘Model Cs’)

a shortage of skilled staff. Often, volunteers are

their mid-year exams. Results

boasted formidable facilities. Post-democracy,

called in to fill the gaps.

for Limpopo – a largely rural

the funds to upgrade all schools haven’t

If it sounds like a crisis, that’s because it is.

province in the far north of the

materialised. Millions have migrated to the cities

Luckily, a dynamic group of activists is

country – are just starting to filter

in search of better lives, finally free of unjust pass

determined to change things. At the edge of

through. Nobody is celebrating. At one high

laws that dictated where black people could live.

a patch of waste ground in the tightly packed

school, a Sunday newspaper reports, a single

But the education system has not met the

streets of Khayelitsha, Cape Town – where some

student passed Grade 10. Some 141 fellow pupils

challenges. Schools in well-off areas still tend

500,000 people live in various degrees of poverty,

didn’t make it.

to beat township and rural schools hands down.

many in shacks; unemployment stands at 54 per

Limpopo is currently the epicentre of

Although many offer poorer learners subsidies

cent; and 22 per cent of people are functionally

an immense row over the quality of state

or bursaries, they are mere islands of success.

illiterate - the Equal Education (EE) office is

education in South Africa, mainly thanks to the

In one province in 2003, 62.4 per cent of Grade

humming with visitors, volunteers and students.

damning news that textbooks for learners in

6 students at former Model Cs passed standard

‘Equalisers’ – students who carry the EE message

Grades 1, 2, 3 and 10 were only ordered at the

numeracy tests. In townships schools, just one

directly to schools in the area – pop in to chat and

beginning of June. By mid-July, some schools

in 1,000 pupils passed the same assessments.

ask questions. Through key campaigns, and by

still had none. Activists had to take the

“In urban areas, it's easier for education

forming a broad-based movement of children

government to court to discover that over half a

[authorities] to constantly monitor standards,”

and parents who know their rights, EE is putting

Sc h o o l s e v e rywhere c an always do bet t e r, b u t in Sou t h Af ri c a i neq u ali t y i s at an a l l - t im e h ig h . The solu t i on? Fac e f ac t s.

G e t a n g r y. A n d let t he st u dent s speak.

Te x t J a n i n e S t e p h e n Photography Charlie Shoemaker

school year had passed with no books – a disaster

says Nelson Poopedi, principal of Sinethemba

pressure on the government to provide quality

for any school, never mind institutions with no

Senior Secondary in Nyanga, Cape Town. Almost

teaching and infrastructure to all South Africans.

electricity, internet connectivity or photocopiers.

60 per cent of his learners come to the city from

Inside the offices sits Brad Brockman, EE’s

And there are such schools. Schools made

the Eastern Cape, another province with huge

newly elected general secretary. “I was privileged

of mud. Schools without any toilets or drinking

areas that were neglected under Apartheid. His

to receive an excellent education, because my

water. Schools with volunteer teachers. Even

school has a library, but no one to run it. They

parents could afford the fees to send me to good

worse, schools where educators don’t bother to

have textbooks, but no sports fields.

schools,” Brockman says. “[But] my schooling

“Our context, as a township school, is very

was not enjoyed by the majority of South African

“My personal assessment of the state of

different to the former Model C schools,” Poopedi

children, who were black and poor, and [I always

public education is that it violates the law and

says. “We come from an era where the school

knew] that this was unfair and unjust.”

disadvantages students,” says Mark Haywood of

was a site of struggle. At a more affluent school

Asked about what must change, he refers me

Section27, the public-interest law centre that

like Camps Bay High, teaching and learning is

to a speech made by EE’s former co-ordinator

took the government to court over Limpopo’s

guarded at all costs.”

and now deputy general secretary Doron Isaacs

teach, or abuse the children under their care.

textbook saga. “For many children, I imagine that

Like most township schools, Mr. Poopedi’s

at the Congress held in July. “We must be angry,”

it’s an untold horror to go to school. I think it’s

school is free. Schools in wealthier areas raise

Isaacs told members. “Our minds must race. We

traumatising to a child’s psyche – never mind the

fees to pay for more teachers and resources. But

must feel ourselves burning inside. We must use

disadvantage accruing to them because they’re

that’s not an option for a lot of township schools.

our anger to get organised… to [gain] a deeper

going to leave school without a proper education.”

“Many of our 1,600 learners come from informal

understanding of the conditions around us. We

Eighteen years after democracy swept South

[shack] settlements,” says one school teacher from

must burn not for revenge but for a different

Africa, poor infrastructure, demotivated or

Umlazi, Durban, who would prefer to remain

world, a better world.”

poorly trained staff, and shortages of textbooks

unnamed. “Some have no parents. The level of

Two young equalisers, from two different

and teachers, are not unique to Limpopo.

poverty is amazing. Students have no jersey or

schools in Cape Town, are doing just that. These

Apartheid’s effects live on across the country

blazer, or shoes that are so worn out they don’t

are their stories.

45

Themba Qwanyashe between classes and break at the Camps Bay High School, Central Cape Town, South Africa, July 23, 2012.

46 HUCK

Camps Bay High School STUDENTS: 691 STUDENTS PER CLASS: 25 to 28 FEES: R22,000 a year ‘SUBSIDISED’ STUDENTS (whose parents pay as little as R50 a month): 150 NON FEE-PAYING STUDENTS (supported by fee-paying parents): 10 MATRIC PASS RATE (2010 and 2011): 100% and 98% respectively STUDENT UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE (2011): 76% MATHS GRADUATES: 80% of 51 students passed FACILITIES:

CULTURAL ACTIVITIES, SUBJECTS

An intercom system

AND SOCIETIES INCLUDE:

School hall, an open quad and a closed quad

School magazine and photography club

3 tennis courts

Drama, music (including a rock club),

2 netball /basketball courts

Art and design

1 cafeteria

Dance

1 rugby / cricket field

Choir

1 hockey field

ACTA: Against Cruelty to Animals

Swimming pool

Chess club

1 soccer field;

Debating society

1 computer laboratory with 25 stations 1 science laboratory; 2 biology labs 1 library with 9000 – 10,000 books and 30 computer stations

Themba Qwanyashe 16 years old, Grade 9

Themba lives with his mother and father in central

also have to try and get learners to come to school

Cape Town for much of the week, and also spends time

on time and that kind of thing. I don’t have to

with his grandmother in a township called Gugulethu.

here. It’s just not an issue. We get taught that we

His parents are both employed. He attends Camps

should respect each other and treat the other

Bay High School in a wealthy city suburb.

person the way you’d like to be treated.

THEMBA SAYS: “You have to have a good

going to be in the ruling party. I see myself first

education to succeed in life. I chose to come to

as [head] of the youth league. And then I see

Camps Bay because it offers a lot of activities,

myself finding a higher position. I don’t know

sporting, cultural and other things. It’s a very

where I’ll live. I want to have a house and drive

good school. It’s actually in the top 100 high

my own car. On my weekends I’ll mostly go out

schools in the Western Cape.

and have fun, unless I have to go to meetings.

In my future, I’m going to be a politician. I’m

Equal Education is fighting for the rights of

And watch soccer. I could go to university and

the learners in schools where they don’t have

continue taking politics. I don’t think money

sports facilities like we have, or the quality of

is going to be a problem. There are bursaries.

teachers we have. They don’t get taught the way

My vision for the country is that every school

we do. There’s a textbook issue, too. Each and

has to be equal. Every school should be like this

every year when we come to school, textbooks

one. It’s achievable if the budget is spent mostly

are ready and waiting for us. But it’s not like

on education. Then when we, this generation,

that for many.

leave school, we won’t need to get social grants

I’m an equaliser: someone who spreads the work of EE. In Khayelitsha schools, equalisers

from the government. We can make our own living. I know I can go my own way in life.”

47

Masiyile Senior Secondary School STUDENTS: 1,243 STUDENTS PER CLASS: 40 FEES: Zero, although parents are asked for a small donation to help cover expenses.

MATRIC PASS RATE (2010 and 2011): 34% and 87% STUDENT UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE (2011): 31% MATHS GRADUATES: 8 FACILITIES:

department: 6,000 books; 4 computers

No working intercom

2 computer labs with 40-odd stations

No school hall No science or biology laboratory facilities

AFTER-SCHOOL ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

No sports fields (a netball team competes

Drama club

at school level, but there is no court.

Youth group

Students practise in the parking lot.)

Choir, but not active

1 library, donated by Equal Education in

Textbooks: adequate ‘as per norms

2010, and supplemented by the education

and standards’, according to the principal

Andisiwe Tyam 17 years old, Grade 11

Andisiwe lives with her mother and brother in a

Camps Bay, the learners have discipline. And

shack in Site B, Khayelitsha. Her father died in

[I think] each and every learner qualifies for

2005. Her mother is a domestic worker and earns

computer lessons in the computer labs.

a minimum wage. She attends Masiyile Senior Secondary School in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.

I know many people who have dropped out because they have no one helping them to go to school. Others, their parents have died and they

ANDISIWE SAYS: “I went to primary school in

didn’t get help. It isn’t easy to finish school, even

the Eastern Cape. There were no toilets and

here in Cape Town.

no electricity or water – we drank river water.

I would like to see the government make our

One teacher would have to teach three grades

schools equal. Each and every school must have

at a time in one classroom. We would learn

the full infrastructure and libraries and fields.

from Monday to Thursday, and on Fridays the

Our schools must look better.

teachers didn’t come.

The good thing about my school is the library,

When I came to Cape Town in 2008 to

opened by Equal Education. We have internet,

start Grade 8, I struggled too much. Can you

and a career guide and information on how to

imagine: I was a Grade 8 learner and I didn’t

qualify for a career. I want to be a financial and

know anything about English? I had to repeat

purchase manager. But it takes four years of

Grade 9. I joined Equal Education because I

study, and I don’t know if I will be able to go to

don’t want our young brothers to learn the way

university, because I don’t know if my mother

we learnt there in the Eastern Cape. We slept

can afford it. In my dream future, I am going to

outside parliament for two nights to protest

leave Khayelitsha, I would not choose to stay

and show the government that we are serious.

here. I will go to Jo’burg and make my career. If

This school, Masiyile, is good and I have good

I work hard, I will make my dream happen.”

teachers, but it’s not good enough. We don’t all learn about computers. In other schools, like

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equaleducation.org.za

Andisiwe Tyam on campus in the morning before class starts at Masiyile Senior Secondary School, Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa, July 24, 2012.

49

Otelo Burning is not your average surf movie.

It’s the story of a young nation fighting for change.

out of

t had been a long time since Sara Blecher had visited Durban when

Across the country, the Apartheid state was brutal when it came

she found herself returning there in 2004. She’d lived in the coastal

to cracking down on resistance. KwaZulu Natal (the province where

city before, but had spent the past few years in Johannesburg,

the film is set) was still known simply as Natal – dismissing the Zulu

working as a producer on the South African current affairs programme

nation’s roots – and it faced a particularly nasty additional problem.

Special Assignment. Had the brutal Apartheid regime still been in place,

Black-on-black violence was flaring up: supporters of the African

the city’s beaches would have brandished signs in Afrikaans reading

National Congress (ANC), Mandela’s party, were clashing with

‘slegs blankes’ – ‘whites only’. But as she walked along the sand on that

those of the more conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), with

first trip back, Blecher marvelled at how much the crowd had changed.

often fatal consequences.

“Suddenly the entire Durban beachfront had gone from being

Imagine having a tire placed over your head, being doused with

absolutely white to absolutely black,” Blecher recalls down the phone

petrol and set alight. It was called necklacing, and in 1989 Lamontville

from her Jo’burg home. “The lifeguards went from being white tattooed

got it bad. The township was the centre of a dispute over being

surfers to being these young, cool black tattooed guys.”

incorporated into one of the state’s black ‘homelands’ – a move

She soon fell into conversation with a muscular guy who introduced

which the IFP supported, but the ANC didn’t. For residents that

himself as Sihle Xaba. Xaba mentioned that almost all the lifeguards on

meant a day-to-day existence pockmarked with necklacings, beatings,

the beach came from one place: Lamontville, a township south of the

petrol bombs – and the constant grind of dealing with Apartheid

city, huddled in the shadow of the airport. Intrigued, Blecher wanted

itself. There’s a historical argument that South Africa never suffered

to know more.

a real civil war, but if that’s the case, then Lamontville is about as

Xaba took her back to the township. And as he introduced her to his

close as it got.

friends and family, as they sat drinking beers in the local shebeen, a tiny

Otelo Burning is fiction. But the stories it’s based on are not. What

seed of an idea was planted in Blecher’s mind. This year, that idea burst

Blecher and her new friends found between 2004 and now gets right

into full bloom, in the form of new film Otelo Burning.

under the skin of South African society. It shows just how powerful the

Directed by Blecher and made entirely in Zulu, the film is set in 1989

pull of surfing can be, and what it can achieve.

and tells the story of two young black men from Lamontville named

Xaba himself stars as the treacherous Mandla, whose jealousy

Otelo and New Year. The friends discover that surfing can help them

threatens to tear apart the boys’ newfound freedom. And one of the

escape the horrific political violence swirling around their lives.

people Xaba introduced Blecher to, as they walked around Lamontville,

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the fire

text Rob Boffard photography Anita Van Hammert

was a man named Sthembiso Madiya. He worked at the township’s pool

eight years! It’s a long, laborious process. But I think when you watch

where Xaba learnt to swim. “Essentially, that swimming pool is the only

the movie, you feel like you’re watching a documentary. You get such

pool in any of the townships that remained open during [Apartheid],”

incredible detail out of those workshop processes, and such deep layers

says Blecher. “With most of the pools, the gangsters came and occupied

of honesty.”

them. The pools they didn’t take over were destroyed by the [freedom

Thomas Gumede, who plays Otelo’s best friend New Year, believes

fighters], because they were seen as symbols of the Apartheid state.

the film benefits from the fact that anyone could step forward and share

They were run by the government. While the kids were burning down

their experience. “It’s almost the perfect model of how to shoot a film,”

libraries and schools, they burned down the pools, too. But that pool

he says. “They had to make it dramatic for the purposes of the film, and

remained open.”

add in love and drama and murder, but it was a collaborative effort. Sara

Madiya was working at the pool when a group of heavily armed men arrived. “They came to the pool, pulled a gun on him, and he didn’t

and I were based in Jo’burg together, so it was easy for us to sit down and work on the script.”

flinch,” Blecher explains. “The guy pulled the trigger, and the gun

Blecher seems to have a penchant for digging up these kinds of

jammed. And from then on the story spread in the township that he was

stories. Her previous film, Surfing Soweto, looks at the ‘sport’ of standing

bulletproof. Nobody ever messed with him ever again.”

on the top of train carriages as they speed through the city. But although

Out of Madiya’s resolve, Lamontville fostered a generation of young black swimmers and surfers. Xaba himself is one of them – outside his acting career, he is a South African bodyboarding champion.

her films seem to focus on adrenalin-fuelled pursuits, Blecher says it’s about more than that.

“It’s not about sport and society as much as it is about coming of age and politics,” she says. “There is such a parallel in South Africa

Blecher began to hang out in Lamontville regularly, earning the trust

between young men coming of age, and what’s going on in this country

of the community. She applied for grant money from the government,

politically. I know that sounds bizarre, but it feels like this country is

and held acting workshops in the township where anybody was free to

coming of age, and going through that passage. Surfing Soweto and

turn up and develop scenes from their experiences of the Apartheid

Otelo Burning – both movies are about that transition from boyhood

years. Slowly, the structure of Otelo Burning began to form.

to manhood.”

It wasn’t easy. Asked why this level of dedication is a rarity among filmmakers, Blecher laughs: “It’s ridiculously expensive and it takes

oteloburning.com

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text King Adz photography Greg Lomas

teen nation

are skint but educated, talented entrepreneurs who aspire to make a name for themselves in the streetwear industry with Sanele’s fashion label, Tempracha. They’re super-smart and always make the most of any opportunity that arises. Most recently, Sanele styled a retrothemed video for rising music star Spoek Mathambo. Although his killer work commands attention, Sanele is quietly spoken, respectful and religious – a refreshing combination in this world of loud, overhyped, 24/7 self-promoters. We talk about the local landscape that all this energy is coming out of.

“The advantages of coming out of South Africa is our rich colourful heritage and the fact that most of what we are doing now is still in its

Eighteen years after the first free elections, the new South Africa has finally come of age. This is a journey across its young creative plains.

infancy,” explains Patrick. “Most of our creative fields aren’t refined yet and are still raw art, which I hope won’t change. Personally, I’m not really up for all this ‘cosmopolitan’ art and way of doing things; I still believe in hands-on art with no rules. Artists have taken their work into their own hands. They wanna build their own brands and become their own entity. There has been a sudden influx of that and I think the social network boom has been the cause, which is pretty awesome.”

With youth unemployment at a killer forty per cent, I can’t help but wonder how South Africa’s socio-economic trajectory rolls over into the mindset of the nation’s youth. Some say creativity is born of hardship, but a figure like that just takes the piss.

“We have the poorest of the poor here, [from] people who are willing to go to jail just so they can have supper and breakfast, to rich politicians who buy the latest Mercs for their sixteen-year-old kids,” says Mthi, whose job description at Tempracha is ‘serious street hustler’. “It varies for everyone drastically, unlike other places in the world. But [my life has been] one orgasmic freaking adventure that J.K. Rowling herself couldn’t have thought of writing. I was born in the late-1980s when the war against Apartheid had reached its peak and something had to give.”

In contradiction to the image of South Africa rammed down our throats – of car-jackings, corruption and sky-rocketing crime – the word bouncing back from these guys is a positive one. According to them, being a young black South African brings its own opportunities.

et’s start this off with a confession: I’ve just finished writing a book

You no longer need to come from a rich, white family to make it; just

on youth advertising, The Stuff You Can’t Bottle, which bridges the

look at talented folk like Spoek Mathambo and Yannick ‘Petite Noir’

gap between my passion (street culture) and my past (advertising).

Iluga. The only problem is that a lot of kids don’t know that.

Sometimes this lands me in a strange position – stuck in no-man’s land

“It’s one thing having the gun. It’s another thing trying to shoot

between the brands and the youth. But it also brings me into contact

when you have no bullets,” says Mthi. “Basically, we have the resources

with some of the most inspiring young talents. It’s how I found myself

to make it, it’s just that sometimes life throws so many rotten tomatoes

living in South Africa, on and off, for fifteen years.

at us that we lose it and end up trying to get through life making easy

Right now, South Africa is a gold mine for commercial-free culture

money. Nobody is teaching the kids to be their own kings; we are being

(though that may well change when the big boys cotton on). But it was

taught to finish school and work for someone else. No one is saying

during the making of this book that I realised there was another story

finish school and be someone. So that’s my biggest issue, we basically

brewing here I wanted to explore.

don’t have proper role models or assistance to help us along the way.

In a lot of so-called ‘developed’ countries the old outnumber the young,

What’s the use of having a map if you don’t know where you’re going.”

but in my beloved SA the opposite applies – almost half the population

When I was a teen growing up in the outer-suburbs of London, my

is under twenty-one, and the majority of kids carry the hope and

connection with South African culture was a mediated experience.

expectations of being the first generation born into a true democracy.

I had heard the sounds of the Boyoyo Boys and Ladysmith Black

This can be a great thing – provided they have somewhere to channel

Mambazo, channelled to me via Paul Simon. I knew the haunting

their creative energy. So do they?

loop from ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ – composed by Zulu-migrant

It’s with this question in mind that I set out across SA to get a better

Soloman Linda. Later, I became a fan of director Nick Broomfield,

idea of how the next generation sees their future. Does the abundance

whose docs about white supremacist Eugène Terre'Blanche and black

of youth mean a liberal, open-minded society? Do young creatives

singer/wide-boy Chicco Twala provided an introduction to the sounds

have the freedom to dictate their own path? What impact does the

of the townships. But my hands-on, foot-on-the-stoop introduction

culture produced elsewhere have over here?

to the real sounds of South Africa was discovering Kwaito in 1996,

First stop: Umlazi, the second largest township in the country, just

after having moved my family to the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town.

south of Durban, where a couple of friends share a small, informal

Kwaito is a South African mélange of chopped-and-screwed house

house. Mthi Msomi, twenty-four, and Sanele Cele Patrick, twenty-five,

music laced with hip hop lyrics. It emerged during the struggle for

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democracy, and became a soundtrack to the madness – a crucial post-Apartheid, South African-born sound.

“It’s a wild ride,” he says, as we sit in the Aztec Deli drinking their lekker homemade lemonade. “The youth is still so stricken

Warrick Sony, veteran South African musician and producer,

by a past that has only very recently been laid to rest and it’s

explains the genesis: “Kwaito kicked off in the early 1990s with

clearly evident – there’s a residual resentment that’s almost

two significant hits, one by Senyaka called ‘MaGents’ and the

tangible. That’s not to say that it’s a bad place or it’s a shifty

other by Arthur called ‘Kaffir’. These firmly slammed the door

environment – it’s virile and the creativity is emerging in the

on 1980s bubblegum music and paved the way for the most

avenues that it should have been a while ago. Art, music - all

important electronic music revolution in Africa.”

But that was then and this is now; the music and youth of South Africa wait for no man, especially this one. “It was a form of music created by the youths to speak about the injustice done by the old government,” Mthi explains. “Times have changed and Apartheid long gone. The music for us now has to be house music and hip hop – they both connect with each of us differently. You can be who you want to be and say what the fuck you wanna say.

You don’t need a super studio, just a computer and software and you can let the world know your thoughts.”

Time for me to bounce. Thanks to the plethora of decent budget airlines, I’m soon transported to Port Elizabeth, the city

of the content generators are beginning to be recognised by the channels that should be paying attention to them. Being a youth here is no different from anywhere else. Sure, we’re a little technologically challenged but that doesn’t mean there aren’t creative personalities everywhere.”

Back in Cape Town I sit down with my eighteen-year-old surrogate daughter Thandi Mamacos and tune her about being young and free in a democracy that’s as young as she is. Is race still an issue in her life?

“I remember one very specific political discussion me and my friends had and the general agreement was that, yes, our parents lived through Apartheid but our generation needs to change things,” she says. “A few of my peers are still racist, but most don’t notice colour at all. The way my mum has brought me up to see the world is that I don’t notice colour – and I’m very glad about that.”

There is still a fear that pervades the suburbs; few people cross the barricades that surround township life. I’m typing this in a Cape Town bar chock-full of middle-aged rich guys dressed in the costume of the young, and drinking lank expensive beers, totally oblivious to what’s happening elsewhere in their country.

But the bright young South Africans who make up the body and soul of this great nation have a broader view. They know what they want their future to look like, and the things that need to change before they get there.

Something Sanele said to me in Durban suddenly springs to mind. “The only disadvantages are not enough manpower from the government and local municipalities for our local artists. I infamous as the place where political activist Steve Biko was

don’t know if there are funds allocated for the less disadvantaged

brutally killed in police custody in 1977. There, I meet Jono, a

artists, but it really saddens me that all this talent I see every day

twentysomething photographer re-shaping the country’s audio-

of my life will just go unnoticed and not everybody will have the

visual landscape. I ask him what it was like growing up in a post-

same ambition and fight as I do. But with every challenge, it lies

Apartheid world.

within those who are affected to change that.”

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www.hubfootwear.com

T E X T O L LY Z A N E T T I I L L U S T R AT I O N A N N A - L I S E D U N N

GM crops a re bac k o n the m enu.

But should we be wo rri ed?

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Worldwide we’ve got a food problem, and some

Second, we need to get over the bizarre mythical status we’ve

reckon that genetically modifying crops could help. Genetic

bestowed on the genome. All this chat about ‘playing God’ is

modification (GM) is a way of artificially changing the DNA of

unhelpful. The genome isn’t a direct line to the man upstairs;

an organism to make it grow or behave differently – in food plants

it’s just a set of instructions that tells a cell how to assemble a

that usually means repelling pests or diseases, or increasing

few proteins. Plus, random genetic mutations happen all the

yields. But many activists like UK-based Take the Flour Back

time – it’s the cause of diversity of life on Earth.

(TTFB) are sceptical about the science. In May, 250 TTFB activists marched to the Rothamsted Research centre, just

So who’s arguing what? For the scientists at Rothamsted,

outside London, threatening to pull up a field of GM wheat

testing this GM crop is a vital cog in their wider research agenda.

plants and ruining the trial. ‘Decontamination’ was how the

They reckon that in future, plants that include this trait could

activists described the plant-pulling protest they had planned.

benefit the environment by being more productive while needing

The Rothamsted scientists preferred ‘vandalism’.

less pesticides. The research, they state, has been publicly funded

In an unusual response, the scientists put out an open letter to the campaigners, and even spoke out in a YouTube video,

and will be in the public domain – no company will own patents or monopolise their findings.

calling for them to leave the plants alone and instead be part of

But anti-GM activists aren’t convinced. They cite examples

a public debate. In the last decade, in Europe at least, GM has

from other experiments where pests have developed resistance

all but vanished. Consumers and pressure groups rejected it and

to GM techniques, or when non-target organisms, like ladybirds,

no crops were cultivated. But now GM is back on the agenda.

were killed. They’re worried about GM material contaminating

And at the time of writing this article, the experimental GM

non-GM crops, making it harder for non-GM farmers to sell

wheat is still standing.

their yield. Also, they reckon the experiment is just a handout

So should we be worried? Should we even care? This breakdown of the debate should help you decide.

What’s going on at Rothamsted? For a start,

for big agribusiness as, if the trial is successful, they’ll be the only ones who have the infrastructure to make the GM wheat commercially viable.

Rothamsted is not Roswell. There’re no top-secret experiments

Who should we trust? This is where stuff gets confusing.

going on there. The site is an innocuous collection of newish

The anti-GM campaigners have stirred up anxiety by suggesting

buildings – think regular business park plus a few fields.

that scientists have put a cow gene into the wheat. But according

There has been experimentation on the site since 1843, and it’s

to Rothamsted’s application to DEFRA, the gene is synthetic. It

thought to be the oldest agricultural research centre on Earth,

just looks similar ‘to that from a cow’, they say. Campaigners also

exploring everything from plant nanotechnology to diet and

believe that GM genes could contaminate regular crops. But the

health. One way or another, you can be certain that the results

general rebuttal is that wheat is self-pollinating, and if pollen

of Rothamsted’s research have found their way to your stomach.

does leave the plant it’s only viable for about an hour, making

But it’s their latest experiment that’s got the protesters

the chance of contamination incredibly small. Finally, activists

worried. A team is working on reducing pest attacks on wheat,

have also complained that Cadenza, the wheat being tested, is

particularly from bugs called aphids, better known as greenflies.

almost never grown commercially in the UK, making the whole

Aphids eat plants, but they also spread plant viruses similar to

experiment pointless. The counter-argument, however, is that

the way mosquitoes spread malaria. Scientists found that aphids

Cadenza is great for tests like these because it grows quickly.

release a pheromone when they’re scared, which alerts other

Confused? Well, those on the pro-GM side have been

aphids to danger and makes them fly away. And researchers have

frustratingly oblique, too. Let’s face it: scientists are crap at

found a way to make the wheat release a similar pheromone. They

engaging with the public. Rothamsted’s website about the trial is

engineered a gene in the lab and inserted it into the genome of

a perfect example: a page of fairly generic info, followed by links

a wheat variety. In the lab, experiments suggest the GM wheat

to unreadable scientific papers hidden behind a paywall. Plus,

works. The next step is to try it outside.

for all the hype about how GM will solve world food shortages,

So what? This experiment seems to mark a decisive shift

the reality is way different. Scepticism about the GM lobby’s intentions is well founded, given it has been used by corporations

in policy. If GM’s given the okay for this one test, it will have

to make big profits out of a basic human need. To call this

implications for all the food we eat and the countryside that

ethically dubious would be a gross understatement.

surrounds us.

So neither side comes off that well. But GM technology can’t

But we need a bit of perspective. Scepticism about new

be uninvented. And perhaps that’s no bad thing. GM on its own

technology is useful; mass hysteria, not so much. There’re a

won’t solve everything, but it could help. We need proper debate

couple of rumours that need clearing up. First, the leap from

about how it’s used and who benefits. Discussion, listening

conventional food plants to GM isn’t as big as many would

and compromise is what’s needed, not ill-informed knee-jerk

have you believe. Scientists have fiddled with plant genetics for

reactions. But this’ll only happen if the public wise up.

years, and used a range of technologies to help them move traits from one variety to another. It’s thanks to this that agriculture –

Question is: what do you make of all this?

including organic – is so productive. The only difference is the

Start by hearing both sides, but don’t stop there. Keep digging

way the genes are moved about. Until now we’ve relied on plants’ sexual reproduction to get genes from place to place. With GM,

rothamsted.ac.uk/aphidwheat

we’re doing it for them.

taketheflourback.org

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would like to meet… photography ELIZABETH DALZIEL

text D'ARCY DORAN

London can be a lonely place. But thanks to community websites like meetup.com finding your tribe in the urban jungle has never been easier. These three internet groups are helping people connect in real life, no matter how obscure their passions are.

Cosplay & Harajuku

eanne Hicks doesn’t just watch horror films, she reverse engineers them. “I wonder how they got that effect or what they did to make the blood jet like that. I’ll go research and we try to copy it,” the thirty-two-year-old men’s clothing store manager says. In a pub off Trafalgar Square, she’s upbeat despite her head looking like it’s been blown open and her chest looking like patches of skin were torn from it.

Meanwhile outside the pub, a passerby pays tribute to her work by stopping her sister Helen Hicks and her brother-in-law Gary Hillier, who she has transformed into a zombie, to check if he’s okay. “It’s really rough in there,” Hillier says.

Hicks and her friends are waiting for more zombies to join them for a pub crawl through London’s West End organised through Meetup.com, a website that its founder Scott Heiferman says uses the internet to get people off the internet. The site helps local groups organise activities ranging from knitting to nude bike rides. The zombie event was organised by members of the London Cosplay and Harajuku group – Cosplay short for ’costume play’ for fans of dressing up as anime or video-game characters and Harajuku in reference to Tokyo-style experimental fashion.

“It’s not really an apocalypse when there’s only four of you,” says Konrad Abel, a zombie butcher with a head hanging from his belt. “But that’s how it gets started,” Hicks replies. This is a warmup, she says, for World Zombie Day on October 13, when hundreds of zombies are expected to take to the streets. She calls up a photo on her phone showing possibly her most frightening creation: a costume comprised of doll parts that made her pregnant sister’s unborn baby appear to be tearing through her stomach.

“I usually bring a bag full of goodies so I can infect members of the public on the way if they want to get in,” she says. Her first victim today is Paul Little, a Meetup member who had only planned on taking photos. “I love the humour. Most people walk around London like zombies anyway,” he says.

Little joined Meetup only a few months ago, but since then he has played mandolin at folk music jam sessions, eaten out with Asian food aficionados and toured haunted corners of the city. “London isn’t a friendly town,” he says, but adds Meetup has transformed his social life. “Even if you turn up at a place for the first time, you’ve turned up to meet somebody,” he says.

“It’s not like walking into a strange room as a complete stranger.”

Zombie enthusiast Helen Hicks during a Zombie pub crawl in London July 28, 2012.

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Pug Breeder Karen Friedman, far left, speaks with the owners of Taco the pug at a meeting for Pug enthusiasts in Regents park, London, July 21 2012.

London Pugs

his is the first thing I’ve done with Meetup,” says thirty-four-year-old Tammy Wong as she walks through Regent’s Park on a Saturday with her six-month-old puppy, Taco, to play for the first time with other dogs of the same breed. “I thought it would be nice for Taco to meet other pugs.”

Meetup has pet groups for every animal from backyard poultry to reptiles but pugs are the site’s top dog. London alone has eight pug groups.

Wong and Taco first spot one dog, Pedro, a ten-month-old pug. Then in a shady spot over the hill, dozens come into sight.

“There’re so many pugs here,” Wong says as Taco wades into the roiling sea of over thirty playing pugs.

Dolly, Ernie, Topcho, Nina, Oscar and other pugs roll in the grass and chase each other. “They’re just such big characters in little bodies,” says Karen Friedman, a pug breeder, sitting among the dogs. “They’re just incredibly playful, friendly. They have a sense of humour. It’s almost like they’re always smiling.”

Owners exchange dog tips and stories, but they identify each other as Goya’s or Bubba’s or Humphrey’s owner. Here, the human relationships rarely stretch beyond the hour or two of pug watching, picking up only at the next event.

“People might know Dylan but they don’t know me,” says Ramsay Wafa, the event’s organiser since 2007 — although his pug Dylan is listed as the point of contact. “It’s all about the pugs.

It’s like the pug has joined and he’s bringing his owners along.”

It was Wafa’s vet who told him about Meetup and he began organising the monthly event as an alternative to a larger meeting in the centre of the city. “At the beginning, I think only one pug showed up,” he says, watching as more dogs arrive.

Wafa’s Meetup involvement is limited to the pug group, but as people sign up for his event he also catches a glimpse at all the other activities out there. “My sister just moved to China and I told her to look up Meetup there, find things you’re interested in and try to find groups.”

Unlike Facebook and other global sites, Meetup aims to help people search through about 105,000 local groups to find activities nearest to them. Heiferman, the founder, says the inspiration for the site came when he was living in New York and the September 11 attacks made him rethink the importance of community. It now boasts more than 1.1 million members in 45,000 cities.

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Medieval sword fighting enthusiast Simon Thurston displays some skills during a Schola Gladiatora session in London, July 17, 2012.

Schola Gladiatora

hange partners!” Matt Easton calls out and his twenty students resume what look like duels with invisible swords as they try to dodge and lunge, trying to tag each other on the knees and shoulders.

A Whitehall civil servant by day, thirtyfour-year-old Easton is one of Britain’s top instructors of medieval sword fighting.

His West London based-group, Schola Gladiatora, began in 2001, a year before Meetup, but it has depended on the internet to build a local community around a highly specialised interest.

Easton’s group has about fifty members who alternate each week between practising with Eighteenth Century sabre and Fifteenth Century longsword. “This sort of thing just doesn’t normally enter your mind,” says Simon Thurston, who first joined the group six years ago. “But these days with the internet, you can type anything into Google and you might find something like this.”

The group attracts a range from martial arts enthusiasts to living history buffs, to those who just want to try something different. They include men and women, extroverts and introverts, people who find it hard to hit someone with the nylon practice swords to people who have no such problem with that. “One girl kicked me in the balls twice in one session,” says Thurston, a sixfoot-six hi-fi salesman, adding that this tactic was acceptable in the Dark Ages. “To be perfectly honest I loved the sword fighting but a big reason I kept coming back was the social side of things,” he says, having been best man at Easton’s wedding.

After the beginners’ class and before the pub, the more advanced students spar. “That’s very intense and that’s why a lot of the guys here keep coming back. But you have to be at a certain level for us to allow you to do that because it’s dangerous,” Thurston says. Easton says he started translating medieval sword fighting texts in the 1990s because he was fascinated by the age where fathers taught sons to handle swords as a survival skill.

New translations are now surfacing all the time.

“We’re finding information and growing at a faster rate than ever before,” Easton says. “But the internet has a negative side as well. It also accelerates the rate of fractures in organisations; the forming and splitting of organisations. You see people coming together, making an organisation and splitting off in three different directions.”

63

Emmett ‘Murph’ Murphy

All Over Time A no-frills interview w i t h D i n o s a u r J r. P a s t , present and future.

Te x t Jon Coen Photography Benjamin Roberts

rom the first five fuzzy seconds of ‘The Wagon’ from Dinosaur Jr.’s Green Mind album, even the most passive fan would recognise the trademark guitar and vocals. Lou Barlow, J Mascis and Emmett ’Murph’ Murphy came out of the basement of hardcore in the mid-1980s and gained permanent

Murph, the future CELL PHONE

wall space in the adolescent bedroom of alt-rock. Taken under

06.00 SATURDAY: Very early, humid July morning, iPhone won’t make

the wing of barely older siblings Sonic Youth, they put the

international calls to Brussels where Dinosaur Jr. is playing the Rock Herk

distortion pedal to underground metal with SST Records in

Festival. Barge into home of kind elderly neighbours to make international

the post-Black Flag era and rose to a number one song on

call. Try navigating Lou Barlow’s room phone with a Belgian operator to no

the UK Indie chart.

avail. Try drummer Emmett Murphy: no dice. That’s $38 US in missed calls,

But creative control makes for hard relations in the ’freak

and counting. Back home, two-month baby spits up on me. Dinosaur Jr.

scene’. Some call it ‘musical differences’; others call it Mascis

Manager Tomas Zokopal calls, says he can get me Murph via cell. Nice guy.

trying to decapitate Barlow with his guitar in the middle of a set in 1989. With Barlow gone and Murph disaffected, Mascis

So, Murph, the idea is that we talk about Dinosaur Jr. past, present and

wrote two albums with a revolving door of band members

future. I’d like to talk to you about the future. Tell me about the cycle for

that made Dinosaur Jr. an MTV ’120 Minutes’ staple. Barlow

I Bet On Sky. Murph: Well, we’re in Europe this summer doing festivals.

concentrated on his lo-fi band, Sebadoh, Murph played with

The album comes out September 18 and then in October we get super

the Lemonheads, and Mascis went solo. It was a decade

busy with a heavy touring schedule through the spring.

before the founding members reunited as forty-year-olds with 2007’s Beyond and Farm two years later.

You played in the Lemonheads for a time. Any plans to do anything with

Now, with I Bet On Sky, Dinosaur Jr. is back to show the

Evan Dando in the future? I don’t have any plans to. Evan is a funny

kids how you played in a garage band, before the days of

guy. He’s just always travelling. […] Every so often, I’ll see him play, but

GarageBand. But how do three guys pushing fifty, who have

otherwise I don’t really hear from him too much. Evan is one of those

hung on the corners of key crossroads in modern rock, come

guys who’s like myth or legend. No matter where he is or how he’s doing,

out the other side with something new to say? We opted

there are these crazy stories that precede him. Someone will say, ‘I just saw

to tackle this interview with a new approach: isolate each

Evan in New York,’ and then someone else will be like, ‘No man, he just

member and get him talking in the past, present or future

moved to London.’ And someone else will say, ‘I heard he’s vacationing

tense. We went in guns blazing, smug at our nifty editorial

in Greece.’ So you never know.

idea. But technology has a way of failing you at the most inopportune time. What follows is an insight into the music

Is the current harmony in Dinosaur Jr. enough to keep things going? It’s

PR game – broken telephone lines, sleeping babies, one-word

amazing. Nowadays we’re just like a family. We’ve kind of moved past our

answers and all. It’s a glamorous old world, this journo bizz.

dysfunction. It’s just business at hand. It’s pretty great.

64 HUCK

Lou Barlow

Dinosaur Jr. almost defined alt-rock in the early ’90s. Do you think

we started becoming a touring electric band in 1990 or so. Dinosaur Jr.

labelling genres is becoming irrelevant? I think music is kind of turning

released Green Mind in ’91 and Sebadoh III came out, which was partially

into weird, different genres that are becoming sub-categories of main

electric and acoustic, a sort of lo-fi, four-track record. I was starting all over

genres. And I think we’re going to see a lot more of that. There’s always

again. Dinosaur Jr. were on a major label and doing pretty well [laughs].

going to be standard classic rock measuring sticks – Zeppelin and Sabbath.

I don’t think that’s going to change on a certain level. Some people are

1989: J attacks you with his guitar on stage. If that happens today, what

getting left by the wayside, but other people are getting smarter and

does the YouTube video look? [Hearty laugh] It’s really hard to imagine

redefining everything themselves.

that happening now. It would just look like this wizard with a sword attacking this little guy dressed in black. It would look ridiculous. I’m

Do you have any projects we should keep an eye out for? I have two

turning forty-six this week. He’s forty-seven. It would look pretty goofy.

different projects. One is more like a Jesus Lizard kind of thing and the other is more punk/garage rock. I like to do different kinds of sounds.

09.00: Skype ‘ping’ alert. J Mascis trying to reach me. Good dialogue flowing

with Lou. Opt to not cut him off. Baby is cooperative, although wondering What would a Dinosaur Jr. record sound like in 2016? Really slow.

Lou, the past SKYPE

if J will be when I'm done with Lou. What period in your career was your favourite? When Dinosaur Jr. was working on You’re Living All Over Me, we did our first long tour of the East Coast with Sonic Youth. We were in that really cool period of struggling, but really coming together as a band. The whole tour we were listening to the EVOL record by Sonic Youth. I grew up in the Midwest, but it was

06.35 FRIDAY: For Lou and J Mascis, Tomas suggests Skype. Don’t know

the first time J and Murph had been to the Midwest. We had one really

what that is; hope it has nothing to do with taking photos every time you

cool moment when we were in the town that I was raised in. We stayed

eat tacos. Set up account and try contacting Lou, who never responds. 05.00

at a family friend’s house. At one point, all three of us went out into this

SATURDAY: Baby wakes me up. Get him settled, pull up Skype, but Lou

field. Murph and J looked into the sky and said, ‘I’ve never seen so many

postpones for three hours. ”Sure Lou.” He has kids. I imagine he’s Skyping

stars before.’ And then we were driving home and listening to the last track

them. Eat granola, check surf, change a diaper. 08.50: Finally hear Lou’s

on EVOL, ’Expressway to Yr. Skull’ and J said, ‘I feel like I’m gonna cry.’ I

voice, apologetic and happy to talk about the past. Start recording.

said ‘Yeah,’ and J said, ‘I think we’re in love with Sonic Youth.’

So, 1991 is always touted as this very important year in punk. It’s the year

How old were you guys then? Nineteen, twenty? We had just done a tour

that Nevermind came out. Dinosaur Jr. actually took Nirvana on tour

with our favourite band who had just put out our favourite record. It was

before the big hit. How did you fit into that time period? Well I wasn’t

great. Sonic Youth were totally in love with J and the band. […] We were

in the band. They kicked me out in ’89. Sebadoh was already going and

jamming a lot. We were finding our sound. Soon after, J kind of closed

65

J Mascis

ranks a little bit. [...] Back then we were doing these brutal seven-week tours in Europe and we were all outside of our comfort zones. I spent every bit of money I made calling my girlfriend. I probably had a $7,000 phone bill. England back then was tough. When we had success and started chasing that success, that’s when it got hard. I’ve toured my whole life and it’s never been that bad.

J, the present EMAIL

What do you love most about Lou and Murph in 2012?

Their hygiene is good.

It’s easy to read about the hardcore and classic rock that influenced you in the 1980s and 1990s. What music is doing that today? The same.

09.15 SATURDAY: Mascis offline. Fuck me. Skype Tomas again, he tells me

Mascis is headed out. Tomas uses emoticons, which I hate. Adds little ;)

Any specific bands? Blitz, Faith, and Youth Brigade (from D.C. not CA).

winks, but incredibly helpful. I suggest we do third Dinosaur by email.

09.30: Download album from publicist. 19.30 SUNDAY: Email arrives, “Jon,

In the early 1990s, you always heard the term ’slacker’ referring to the

answers below.”

counterculture. But coming from the underground to get anywhere took a tremendous amount of hard work. Do you think that having everything

Let's talk about Dinosaur Jr. in the present. Twenty-eight years into this

at our fingertips today breeds laziness? I don’t know.

band, who do you see at shows? J: I can’t see unless I take my glasses off.

I’m hoping for younger folk.

Can you tell us about the work that goes into Dinosaur Jr. now that record sales aren't what they were? It’s lots of touring and recording.

Is it still a freak scene? Always.

With all the technology we have now for communicating, what's the How about the ages? Ask them.

most exciting for you? That my phone has a flashlight in it.

Does it differ between Europe and the US? It seems like it should.

Thanks so much J. Anything else about Dinosaur Jr. today you think we might want to know? We're trying hard, hoping you’ll dig it

I always read about the tension and power struggle in DJ. Do you feel that being older mellows that out? Power struggle? Tension yes, but we

I Bet On Sky is out September 18 on Jagjaguwar.

have help communicating now.

dinosaurjr.com

66 HUCK

Betsy Archer (left) and Shuli Archer (right) with their son Milo.

Monroe Moore (left) and Lupe Perez ( far right) with their son Oliver.

Tuesday Feral (left) and Sascha Sass (right) at home in North Carolina.

68 HUCK

The LG BT community is fighting for marriage rights in North Carolina. Their weapon of choice? Empathy.

“We will have an inevitable increase in children born out of

Opponents of gay marriage are worried that law alone is

wedlock, an increase in fatherlessness, a resulting increase

not enough to ensure that same-sex marriage never becomes a

in female and child poverty, and a higher incidence of all the

reality – new legislators can be voted in, laws can be changed,

documented social ills associated with children being raised in

and courts can find laws to be unconstitutional. This isn’t how

a home without their married biological parents.”

state government usually works – in fact, the last constitution amendment was passed in 1875, for the eerily similar purpose

– Vote For Marriage NC

of banning marriage between ‘a white person and a negro’.

Fortunately, not everyone in the South equates gay marriage with the zombie apocalypse. The Campaign for Southern Equality

TEXT KRISTEN MOLINA-NAUERT

(CSE) is just one organisation railing against state-sanctioned

PHOTOGRAPHY MIKE BELLEME

prejudice – or as executive director Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferarra puts it, “the level of discrimination enshrined in state laws and constitutions across the South”. Their recent WE DO Campaign

arlier this year, the people of North Carolina became

saw same-sex couples descending on courthouses across the state

embroiled in an ideological battle over same-sex

demanding to be married. As Rev. Beach-Ferarra explains it:

marriage, and messages like this, thought to be

“LGBT couples apply for – and are denied – marriage licences in

relegated to the dark ages, became commonplace.

their hometowns in order to directly resist discriminatory state

‘Pro marriage’ websites, like voteformarriagenc.

laws and call for full equality under federal law.” Compelling

com, threw up pictures of nuclear families – mom,

footage of the campaign went viral, garnering national attention

dad, two precociously perfect kids – to hammer home their ‘God-

and an audience with President Obama.

given’ point. Marriage is crucial, their tagline states, provided

CSE calls this ‘empathic resistance’; it requires activists

it’s defined as ‘One man. One woman.’ Rallies, demonstrations

to be empathetic to those who oppose gay rights. Rev. Beach-

and heated debates charged the air with tension as friends and

Ferarra says the approach draws “on ethical frameworks that

families all joined in the fray.

have informed earlier civil rights efforts. It also asks us to devote

How did this kick off? Well, here’s the short version. In the

concerted effort and attention to the ethics of our actions and

fall of 2010, voters in North Carolina ushered in a new era of

speech.” With a focus on openness, positivity and compassion,

Republican-controlled legislature. For the first time in 140 years,

the aim is to transform conflict into dialogue.

Republicans had the upper hand and they used their advantage

Right now, Amendment One is in effect, but the consequences

to push for a change to the state’s constitution. A proposal to

are still unclear. And it’s not just same-sex couples in the firing

restrict ‘domestic legal union’ solely to marriage between ‘one

line. Thanks to the amendment’s loose wording, all unmarried

man and one woman’, known as Amendment One, passed by

couples – gay or straight – could be denied certain legal rights,

both the House and the Senate in September 2011. By the spring

including protection from domestic violence or benefits for

of 2012, the voters of North Carolina approved the amendment,

their kids. The battle now moves to the court systems, where

with a sixty-one per cent majority.

judges will have to interpret individual cases in light of this

To be clear, Amendment One does not alter the legality of

constitutional change. As for whether Amendment One stands

same-sex marriage in North Carolina – gay marriage is already

as a legitimate opinion poll is also unclear: is sixty-one per cent

illegal. You may well ask, if same-sex marriage is illegal to begin

of North Carolina against gay marriage? Did people understand

with, why vote to make it extra illegal? Is gay marriage some kind of

what they were voting for?

poisonous corpse, a zombie that has to be repeatedly bludgeoned lest the undead rise again?

To some people, it may be just a slip of paper, but for these three North Carolina couples, Amendment One is very real.

69

B E T SY & S HU L I

ou wanna do your puzzle before dinner, Goose?” Shuli

2004. But when their son was born, they were faced with a difficult choice:

Archer coos to her eighteen-month-old son, Milo. The

move to the South so that Milo can grow up knowing his grandparents, or

baby looks up at his ‘Moo-mama’ while his other mother,

live far from family but with their civil rights intact. “The anger was that

Betsy Archer, rinses beans for dinner. Shuli and Milo

we, as a queer family, are forced to give up something no matter where

have just finished feeding the cat, Chicken. It’s clear

we live,” explains Betsy. “It was the same conversation over and over and

that Shuli savours this time with her baby boy, who she

over again… whether to stay or go.”

sees less of since starting a full-time teaching job. Betsy is the stay-at-

Although they chose to move to North Carolina, the proposal of

home mom. After years in social work, she is focusing on her art and co-

Amendment One made them question their decision. “It was more than

authoring a book for queer non-gestational mothers.

just legal rights,” says Shuli. “Before, I felt like I could move more easily

Betsy and Shuli move around each other with the ease born of a sixteen-

in the world, like going to the grocery store. Here, I don’t feel that same

year relationship. They live in an apartment above Betsy’s parents’ garage,

freedom.” The vitriol that bubbled to the surface in the lead-up to the vote

and a settled contentment permeates the cosy space. It’s an atmosphere

exacerbated the stress of adjusting to a new city. “I just felt very isolated

the couple had trouble foreseeing when they moved to North Carolina

and alone,” says Shuli. “But finding the Campaign for Southern Equality,

a year ago. “I would just cry to Betsy and say I cannot live here if that

seeing all these people doing all this work and having a really positive

amendment passes,” remembers Shuli.

attitude about it [was a turning point].”

The two were happy in Massachusetts, where they lived for a decade

Betsy and Shuli got involved with CSE: they joined other couples at the

and were married just days after same-sex marriage was legalised in

courthouse for the WE DO Campaign, and the monthly dinners helped

70 HUCK

soothe their feelings of alienation. At first, Betsy felt that staying in North

to change the local culture rather than escape it. Three days after the

Carolina meant facing the enemy, but CSE showed her that “stand and

passage of Amendment One, Betsy and Shuli returned to the courthouse

spread your love is more what it’s about”. She explains: “Jasmine is such

for another, more symbolic protest. “The WE DO Campaign helped

a dynamic leader. She’s never wavered in the really firm belief that we

trigger a shift from, ‘I think we’ll be okay here,’ to, ‘We could actually have

will have marriage equality and it will happen at a federal level. For me,

a really happy life here,’” says Shuli.

I needed that.”

Although Betsy and Milo receive health insurance through Shuli’s

A week before the Amendment One vote, Betsy had an opportunity

workplace, they pay an additional $115 a month because they are taxed

to practise the positive approach espoused by CSE. In the locker room

differently from straight couples. When Milo has siblings birthed by

after a water aerobics class, she reminded everyone to vote – not one way

Shuli, Betsy won’t be able to adopt the children and share legal parental

or the other, simply to vote. One woman pointed out that Betsy probably

rights. Betsy can get custody, provided she sues Shuli. If Shuli passes

wouldn’t agree with her stance – ‘I have to vote according to my religion,’

away, she can stipulate in her will that Betsy have guardianship of Milo.

she said. “In that moment I was like, ‘I have two choices here: I can rip

“But that’s not a legally binding request, it’s just a suggestion,” explains

her anew… or I can just introduce myself,’” says Betsy, “That was all that

Betsy. “So there would be no guarantee that I would actually have rights

I could do, is say, ‘This is who I am, just see me.’”

to my child, the child that we created together.”

When the amendment passed, the couple was disappointed, but it was

Despite their frustration, the couple is settling into a future in North

nothing like the devastation Shuli predicted. There is a grace that comes

Carolina. Reflecting on their journey, Shuli remarks, “I do feel that there’s

with their decision to raise their family in North Carolina, and work

a... softening of the edges. The sun is coming out a little bit.”

71

e’re one of those classic ‘opposites attract’ couples,” smiles Tuesday Feral, sharing a love seat with his partner, Sascha Sass. Tuesday talks openly about studying for a psychology degree, his job as a nanny and the possibility of going to seminary to become a minister. Sascha, with feline circumspection, speaks of her punk band, protest culture, train-hopping youth and burgeoning interest in paganism. Both are transgender, but in opposite manifestations.

And yet this day-and-night couple has found happiness together for the past three years.

On the surface, there appears little reason for a couple like Tuesday and Sascha to invest in the Amendment One fight. “Because our IDs say different things [about our sex], technically speaking we could get married,” says Tuesday. Despite their unusual position, Sascha broke a habitual non-voting streak to vote against Amendment One. “The legal rights to get married have never felt super important to me,” she explains. “[But] it could be a slippery slope for other things that oppress queer people.”

The trans-community appears to be a movement on the fringe of a fringe. In North Carolina, and the majority of other states, it’s not illegal to discriminate against trans-individuals in employment, housing and education. “Anybody should be able to marry whoever they want to, but it doesn’t seem as important to me as some basic civil rights,” says Tuesday.

“I mean, I guess that is a basic civil right, but there are some even more basic ones.” Sascha agrees: “I have had long stretches of unemployment just because it is so hard.”

According to the website for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), only sixteen of fifty states have laws banning gender identity discrimination, and antiquated laws prohibiting cross-dressing, fuel police harassment of trans-individuals. Sascha, who is ‘super introverted’ says stories and stats like this make daily life a struggle: “I already have all this weird social anxiety and it’s just compounded by being trans.”

Tuesday, on the other hand, takes a different tack. Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household, he’s seen how persuasive the act of testifying can be. So, instead of preaching the word of God, he uses his people skills to be a ‘gender-fluid missionary’. He explains: “I just smile at people and act like there is no elephant in the room until I see that they are safe.”

Because the issues for transgenders are somewhat unique from the gay community at large, one approach is to create a safe space away from society, rather than try to reshape mainstream America. Within these havens, says Sascha, “I don’t have to worry that some stranger is trying to figure out what set of genitals I have.” Not all trans-individuals are trying to ‘pass’ as the opposite sex, but this gender fluidity can be hard for our primitive reptile brains to process. “I get stared at a lot,” says Sascha. “Safe space is so important for me. I’ve spent the majority of my life never feeling safe, and not feeling safe in my own body.”

Sascha and Tuesday want to create their own space in North Carolina, “an environment where young queers and young trans-folks can actually come and learn about themselves,” says Tuesday. Why not just move somewhere more accepting? “The South is also mine,” says Tuesday, smiling, “and I know the South may not want me, but the reality is I’m a product of the South.”

Despite being treated like an outsider in his own home, Tuesday tries to understand the roots of the opposition he and Sascha face. “I think people are just acting out of fear when they’re doing things that are potentially hurting me – they’re fearful of losing something themselves by allowing someone else to have something. I know that humans are capable of change when they’re presented with education.”

For more information on transgender protection and discrimination, visit aclu.org or transgenderlaw.org.

72 HUCK

S A S C H A & T U ESDAY

73

M O N ROE & LU P E

scene of domesticity greets us at the Perez-Moore

being in the public eye has been a learning process, for them and society

household. Monroe is trimming the hedges that lead to

at large. “We speak of it as clowns on parade,” Monroe explains, “just

their three-storey home in a tucked-away neighbourhood

people staring.” While American culture is changing rapidly and has

in West Asheville. He gives a tour of the cleverly outfitted

grown more comfortable with diverse families in the past decade, so too

rooms they rent out via AirBnB.com, along with the

have Monroe and Lupe grown more accustomed to, and unconcerned

garden, chicken coop and honeybee hives. Lupe, Monroe’s

by, the looks of strangers. “If we’re making an impact just by being there,

partner of twenty-three years, shares stories from his work at a hospice,

that’s great for them,” Monroe pauses and smiles, “but I got three kids,

and his aspirations to become a minister. Catching sight of the time, he

and I’ve got enough to do.”

excuses himself and dashes off to pick up the girls – eleven-year-old Maria

It’s a big step for a couple that kissed in public for the first time at

and eight-year-old Beatrice – from an after-school activity. Chickens cluck

their wedding altar, in 2007. The couple was married in church in sight

in the yard while Oliver, six, dangles his feet from an armchair and plays on

of their children, family and friends, in a ceremony that carried personal

the laptop. An open Bible takes pride of place on a bookstand; children’s

significance, but was not recognised as a legal marriage. Monroe remembers,

art lines the walls. It’s the perfect portrait of a happy family, except for one

“Within a year of us going out, I referred to him as my roommate. It appalls

unsettling fact: North Carolina doesn’t believe they’re a family.

me that I did that, but that’s where I was.”

But family they are, although it hasn’t always been easy. With two

Shaking off their fears and reservations, Monroe and Lupe took

dads, one white and one Hispanic, and three African-American children,

part in CSE’s WE DO Campaign, the same week that Amendment One

74 HUCK

was proposed. “We took our kids with us, and they watched us take an

as parents on the birth certificates. But without marriage and other legal

action [requesting to be married] and be denied,” explains Monroe. “It

protections, Monroe is extra cautious. “I carry copies of birth certificates in

was a very liberating experience.”

my wallet, so that I can say ‘No, I actually am this child’s parent,’” he says.

When asked whether they were concerned Amendment One may impact

One of the most striking things about Monroe and Lupe is their capacity

their family, Lupe shrugs and replies, “No.” Why fight then? “I changed

for compassion and acceptance towards the people who have voted to deny

my children’s lives,” says Monroe. “I showed them that in order to make a

them their rights. “As much as folks are trying to understand us, we’re

difference in the world you have to stand up, even though it’s uncomfortable

praying that we understand them too,” explains Lupe, “just increasing our

and society may tell you don’t do it.” It’s a lesson his children have taken

capacity for compassion that way, as much as we hope it comes our way.”

to heart. After their experience with the WE DO Campaign, Maria gave a

Monroe comments on the need for a new language, a shift from a culture of

presentation at her school about her parents being denied a marriage licence,

tolerance to compassion. “Love me or don’t love me, just don’t tolerate me,”

quoting the nation’s founding documents that ‘all men are created equal’.

he says. “I don’t want to be tolerated – I want to be loved, I think we all want

And yet, the situation is more tenable for them than most. After the

to be loved.” Lupe – his husband, in every sense of the word but one – rounds

passage of Amendment One, Lupe’s employer confirmed that it would

things off by adding: “Us being together for twenty-three years is about

continue to honour the healthcare benefits afforded domestic partnerships.

love, and us having children, raising them the way we are, is about love.”

Due to the more progressive laws of Pennsylvania – where Lupe and Monroe adopted all three children at birth from the same mother – both men are listed

southernequality.org

75

TEXT SHELLEY JONES

(L-R) Anand Wilder, Ira Wolf Tuton, Chris Keating

76 HUCK

PHOTOGRAPHY ROBIN MELLOR

E x perimenta l po p c ata lys ts Yeas a yer are pulli ng f ro m m a ny s o urc e s to create the pe rf ec t c o m po und.

< NAME > Yeasayer < D.O.B > 2006

they trying to connect to something universal through their music? “I don’t know,” says Wilder, “everybody experiences music subjectively. One of the disadvantages of playing our music is I’ll never be able to sit down and misunderstand the lyrics. I like not knowing what lyrics are. It’s so much more

< ALBUMS > All Hour Cymbals, Odd Blood, Fragrant World

fascinating. I think it’s exciting for other people to have some

< PLACE OF RESIDENCE > Brooklyn, New York

Festival. They’re tired but used to the slog of life on the road.

kind of mystery. […] To let the story wash over them.”

The three specimens are in London after playing Latitude After so many years roaming, do they feel estranged from the post-recession, African guitar-sampling arty Brooklyn rock

< SPECIMENS >

scene they came out of (see: Battles, MGMT, Gang Gang Dance,

VOICE DROID: Chris Keating

Grizzly Bear)? “Yeah definitely,” says Wilder, “it’s kinda strange.

KEYBOARD CONTROL: Anand Wilder

But no one ever looks at you in Brooklyn like, ‘What are you

BASS BOT: Ira Wolf Tuton

doing here?’ So many people come to Brooklyn with a suitcase and a dream […]. Everybody’s interested in everyone else.”

< ABSTRACT > Wilder grew up in Baltimore, but it “wasn’t like ‘The Wire’”.

Keating and Tuton both grew up in Philadelphia, which has the largest inner-city park in the US. Tuton remembers bits that were like ‘The Wire’ where you bought “dime bags”.

The three specimens moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 2006 to make music and Yeasayer was born. Strokes wannabes had been dominating the Big Apple since the early 2000s, but Yeasayer found common ground with new genre-bending bands like Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective. A scene began to emerge.

Over the next couple of years Yeasayer released two albums – All Hour Cymbals and Odd Blood – to huge critical acclaim. They spent years touring the world, were called “apocalyptic”, and returned to Brooklyn in 2012 to record a new album, Fragrant World, which Keating mysteriously calls “legitimately funky”. < METHOD > “I think one of the challenges with writing songs is that you want to write about something personal, but you want to put a contemporary twist on it,” says Wilder, sitting in the lobby of the Hoxton Hotel, London. “You can’t just write ‘Love Me Do’ over and over again. But I think it’s good to re-contextualise simple affirmations of love or whatever. Sometimes you just need to put your own weird brain anxiety on it.”

Yeasayer has a knack for teaching an old story new tricks.

On the last album, Keating wrote ballad ‘Ambling Alp’ using boxing mythology of the 1930s (specifically, the fight between African American Joe Louis and German Max Schmeling, which took place in the context of the Nazi regime) to tell a broader story about standing up to fascism, or personal demons. In Fragrant World there’s a song called ‘Henrietta’, which refers to Henrietta Lacks, a woman from Baltimore who unwittingly had her cancerous cells cultured by a doctor to create an immortal cell line for medical research. So, are

The buzz around Yeasayer started early on. In 2010, aggregator site Hype Machine named them “the most blogged artist of the year”. Their first two albums were specifically praised for their array of cultural influences. But does it get tough to keep finding new inspirations? “I’m a news junkie,” affirms Tuton. “I read a lot of news magazines, mostly liberal rags like Harper’s Magazine – I find that they have a lot of in-betweenthe-lines stories. There’s a recent story about the decline of the great plains that I found really interesting and another good article about the Odyssey exploration ship.” Wilder chips in: “I’ve been reading a lot on this tour. I just finished a book by Jeffrey Eugenides called The Marriage Plot, which was good.”

< CONCLUSION > Yeasayer’s lyrics may describe a dystopian reality but their sound seems to say, ‘Fuck it, let’s party.’ So, is music the honey to distract yourself from the world’s crap? “I think so, but I think that what that honey is can be so many different things,” says Wilder, “it can be a heroin addiction, it can be alcohol. Finding the constant motivation to make music is something a little bit different from that. Ultimately, my greatest satisfaction in life is writing a song, finishing a song, bringing it to the band. But the idea of just going for something sweet... I don’t know? […]

I think you do only have this one life, and thinking about that can be a good feeling or really depressing.”

So, what legacy does Yeasayer wanna leave? “I don’t know,” says Wilder, “you get to a certain point where you’ve worked on it for so long you need some detachment. I’m curious to play to people and see how they are moved by it.” Tuton agrees: “The live show is when you want to have a single emotion expressed; this kind of communal build-up of energy.”

Fragrant World is out now on Mute. yeasayer.net

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THRILL OF SPEED,

FEAR OF DEATH

78 HUCK

There is a sweet spot where skateboarding and motorbikes collide.

And these guys know how to hit it just right.

TEXT SHANE HERRICK PHOTOGRAPHY SCOTT POMMIER

our wheels move the body; two wheels move the soul,’ said an unknown sentinel of the open road. But for a growing diaspora of renegade riders, skateboards and motorbikes have more in common than it seems.

“Have you ever ridden down a sidewalk at sixty miles an hour?” exclaims Lee Bender, a former pro skateboarder and custom-bike builder from Indiana, now based in San Francisco.

“Curb cuts are just as fun to wheelie off on a bike as they are to crack ollies out of on a skateboard.”

Bender is proof that the ‘urban guerillas’ documented

by Dogtown photographer C.R. Stecyk III in the 1970s have evolved. No longer confined to backyard pools or sidewalks, those wild, resourceful rippers now also ride two wheels; louder, faster, armed with motors, they continue what Stecyk called the “everyday use of the useless artefacts of the technological burden” – only backed by a gas tank.

“The feeling of doing what you want is what was so intriguing as a kid with skating, and again as a young twentysomething-year-old getting into bikes,” explains Bender, who had to put skateboarding on the backburner after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2007. “The freedom, the mischief, the adventure; taking choppers off road, onto sidewalks, into fields, on trails and jumping up and down the hills of San Francisco is what’s so addictive. It’s about splitting lanes on the freeway at eighty or ninety mph, while in a pack, where everyone’s jockeying for position and you’re feeding off each other’s energy. The key is finding the right people to ride with.”

79

This adrenalin-fuelled camaraderie rings of another time.

ties the two things together, is that you get good at skateboarding

Hunter S. Thompson understood and captured it in 1969, writing,

by putting hours in by yourself,” he notes. “Everyone sucks when

‘Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death,’

they start skateboarding. There’s just no way around it. And the

in his famous book Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga

same is true of mechanical skill. The people I know that have

of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Like skateboarding, thundering

gotten really good at fabrication, painting and building motors,

down the road on a motorcycle feeds the urge for exploration and

they’ve all had a fearless approach. They’ve all made a lot of

unity; the simple pursuit of boundless adventure.

mistakes, but they’ve come away with confidence and knowledge.”

“There are more tricks to do with skateboards,” says Bender,

Customising a bike, chopping it down or taking it all apart

“but with bikes, there are further locations to reach. Who’s going

to build something new from the ground up, is, for many, as

to skate Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park in

much a part of motorcycle culture as gripping your deck is a

Colorado? No one. But I’ve been there on a bike. […] ‘Freedom’ is

part of skateboarding. In the two lies a fundamental mechanical

a cheesy way to describe it, based on what the masses have heard/

challenge; the DIY slug of persistence, progression and eventual

seen regarding bikes, but it’s so true. You do what you want, go

triumph. Schaaf, however, is wary that modern trappings may

where you want, as fast as you want.”

dilute this process. “A lot of the time in our culture, you can just

Max Schaaf, a legendary pro skater who kept vert skating

say ‘I’m a fucking rocker.’ But there are no proving grounds,” he

alive and kicking like a mule through its darker days in the 1990s,

says. “A lot of people who say, ‘Sick bike!!!!’ on Instagram, can

sees in bikes and skateboards a shared foundation of personal

barely say ‘hi’ and shake your hand in real life. I think that’s kind

freedom. He admits he loves charging down the road “like a

of the difference now. My generation, and generations before,

swarm of fucking bees”, but finds meaning in solitary moments,

had to learn to take care of themselves, how to travel, how to get

too. “I’m way too good at being alone. And that’s why I like the

out of town. You had to learn how to talk to people. If there’s

motorcycle,” says Schaaf, who owns and runs customising shop

a kid two towns away that has a mini ramp, you had to make

4Q Conditioning in Oakland, California. “With skating or bikes

friends with him.”

you’ve got to fuck up a few times,” he says. “You’re not going to

Schaaf admits he doesn’t hate the internet or social media and

have some dude really teach you how to do a trick, he can’t do it

considers them useful tools, and yet, in his eyes, online identities

for you. […] You go for it, you fuck it up, then you learn from it

can never replace real life: “There are a lot of people now who

and keep going. […] That’s why I still skate and why I still love

have just put themselves into bikes or skating and put on the

skating. You can’t fucking fake it.”

beard and the vest, a new costume. No one knows who they are,

Scott Pommier, a skateboarder, biker and photographer from Vancouver, speaks of a similar necessity for personal drive. “What

Max Schaaf of 4Q Conditioning.

80 HUCK

or where they came from and it’s too bad because I think that’s where the do-it-yourself attitude is getting muddled.”

Scotty Stopnik of Cycle Zombies.

While this new all-powerful, inescapable and often incoherent

Stopnik illuminates the draw of older machines. “When you

information age has made it easier than ever to gain the know-

ride an old bike you can feel the motor. You feel every little thing

how for damn-near everything, it can also be a distraction and a

working, moving together like an old clock.” But most riders have

platform for impersonal communication; the breeding ground for

little quarrel with newer bikes. “In my opinion, a guy who can

a sort of bedroom, costume culture of mannequins with a script

skate a pool, then a ten-stair handrail, then switch it up and get

but no skills. Getting your hands dirty, working on and building

down on a ledge is understanding skateboarding,” says Stopnik.

boards and machines is part of the pure, gritty solace people like

“It’s not just one type of skating. And the same goes for bikes. I

Schaaf, and countless devoted others, find in both worlds of wheels.

respect and appreciate all cycles. Going fast on two wheels is

“You know how easy it is,” says Schaaf. “You wake up, you

good no matter what.”

make a phone call, you check your e-mail, you worry about bills,

Like Stopnik, Schaaf is not only drawn to the pure feel and look

about your chick, or whatever it is. You get further and further

of older bikes, but also to their simplicity. “I’m all about making

outside your head every day. When you’re on the bike, looking

something nostalgic, something with more history behind it,”

at the road, worrying about people pulling out in front of you,

he says. “I prefer old bikes because they’re so stripped down and

paying attention to pot holes and making it run right, you have

simple. That’s the transmission, that’s the motor, and I want to do

no choice but to be right there, right then, and to pay the fuck

it.” One look at his 4Q 1947 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead says it

attention and enjoy the moment […] that’s what’s exhilarating.

all; raw and bare, with little more than the necessities, it retains

Sometimes, just kick-start the bike and go.”

humble class without hiding its scars and muscle.

Both skateboarding and motorcycling are stomping grounds

Not all the old ideals and conventions have followed suit in

of sweat and blood, craft and utility, grace and aggression –

the revival, though. Among those also devoted to the iron horse

something filmmaker Bruce Brown saw as ‘a certain brutal beauty’

is Michelle Pezel, who launched the Antisocial Skateboard Shop

in his acclaimed motorcycle documentary On Any Sunday. And

in Vancouver with Rick McCrank ten years ago and publishes

among the ardent few leading the charge is Scotty Stopnik, a

Idlewood, an all-girl moto-skate ’zine. “I got my first motorbike

young, bespectacled ripper and punk rocker who, alongside his

about five years ago because our friend Dylan was like, ‘Everybody

dad ‘Big Scott’ and brother ‘Turk’, runs Southern California’s

needs a motorbike!’ I was never around them as a kid but I thought,

surf, skate, punk-heavy bike company Cycle Zombies. “There’s

‘Oh whatever, it’s a cheap way to get around and I won’t have to

nothing like the feeling you get when you kick that bike over for

drive my van with eighteen people in it all the time!”

the first time and go blasting down the road, after you’ve put the

She caught the itch straight from the get-go and embraced the

last months, years, days into it,” declares Stopnik, “You brought

solitary challenge. “Like skateboarding, you have to learn about it,

something back from the dead, you created a breathing machine.”

where it came from and who’s doing it,” says Pezel. “You watch

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Michelle Pezel of the Antisocial Skateboard Shop.

videos and you’re part of a community. You have to learn how

to prices. But I will say this, there are a fuck lot more panheads

or you can make it run good. No one else is responsible for it.”

on the road now that would have been rotting away in some

But it’s not just practicality that drew her in. “You’re building

dude’s garage.”

culture and you’re doing things that are exciting,” she says. “No

Though this crossover of boards and bikes is gaining

one can tell you that it’s not good enough because it’s not about

commercial speed (check Harley’s 2010 Dark Custom ad

that. It’s good just to get involved and be a part of something

featuring Heath Kirchart, Leo Romero and Slash, and now

that’s super fun.”

DC’s current Dirty Left Foot project) it’s still happily hauling

But how do the old guard – those beer-drinking, hell-

ass underground where it matters. And the movement’s not just

raising, rebel pioneers of the open road – treat new blood?

reserved for the truly American at heart. Copenhagen-based

Predictably, naysayers and self-proclaimed purists abound,

custom-bike builders Wrenchmonkees are at the core of the

prodding authenticity and imparting knowledge. Stopnik was

European scene. Similarly, but with a more clean-cut edge is

once malevolently asked, ‘What do Tony Hawk and David Mann

Deus Ex Machina, based in Camperdown, Sydney. They’ve now

have in common?’ Most bikers prefer shorter, harsher words. But

given birth to a ‘Temple of Enthusiasm’ in Canggu, Bali, where

he’s not put off. “It’s funny how people get so pissed at others who

the crew spend their days shaping surfboards, building single

are having fun and not taking themselves so serious,” Stopnik

speeds and heavily chiselled motorbikes. Earlier this year they

muses. “The surf, skate and bike crossover got shit on at first

opened shop in Venice Beach, California too. Yes, just down

[…] but I ride because I truly love it. The feeling of stepping on

the road from Dogtown.

your skateboard and going down the street, catching a wave in

Against this backdrop, riders can be found scattered in

the water, or blasting down the highway on your bike is just one

backyards and garages across the globe, welding, hammering and

of freedom; no cares, forget about it all.”

grinding away at stripped-down motorbike frames and building

In similar style, Bender lets it roll off his back: “What can you

parts and ramps. Despite resistance from the old guard, this

do? I just laugh at them. I’m pretty excited about the crossover;

new generation of skateboarding motorcycle fiends, who are

it’s two worlds I love and it’s two worlds I hate.” Pommier has

growing in number year by year, show no signs of slowing down

other ideas on what may be riling the old guard. “Some people

or easing up. They continue to charge on through the racket,

are into the fact there’s a new generation of guys carrying on

fuelled by the lure of sheer self-sufficiency. They are the kings

the tradition. And then there are some people who resent it,”

and queens of the road and curb; of themselves and opportunity.

he says. “In the case of old bikes, there’s a practical side to the resentment, we’re all looking for the same old parts. So, there’s

82 HUCK

a question of scarcity, and of supply and demand with regards

to fix the bikes and work on them. You can make it run shitty,

“Skateboards are a catalyst for individualism,” says Bender.

“With skating, like cycles, you do what you want in every aspect.”

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Photo: Frode Sandbech

Rider: Nicolas Müller / LAAX

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BEYOND LONDON

ENDNOTES: PERSONAL STORIES STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE

Beneath the pavement lies the beach.

On the daily trudge across London Bridge

the landlocked surfer imagines endless lefts in the wakes of the Thames barges. In the lee of the Royal Albert Dock the dryslope shredder hucks brush-clad kickers, dreaming of the superpark. The English capital may conjure images of cobbled streets and imperial arrogance – but London is deeply textured – and impossible to define.

The following fistful of Londoners have imagined their own Dogtowns and made them manifest –using the unique energy of the megalopolis as a spur.

Curated by Michael Fordham

85

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL FORDHAM

TIME AND THE CITY

As an author, writer and editor Michael Fordham has always imaginatively documented his place in the surrounding world. Having learnt to surf while living in Queensland in 1986, he’s spent the last quarter of a century chasing unwholesome stories and found excuses to get some waves along the way. He cut his teeth on titles like The Face and made an early editorial stint at Dazed & Confused, before going on to create cult surf skate and snow magazine Adrenalin. In his latest publishing experiment, Project O, he’s connecting the aesthetic dots of the outdoors and following the flow back to the city. This is an ode to his particular corner of the capital.

86 HUCK

I was born and grew up on an estate next to the eastern end of the central line. I’d listen to the rattle of the tubes in my bedroom at night and came to consciousness playing on the cuttings at the side of the track, lobbing stones at the carriages, building camps in the bushes, searching for discarded, rain-swollen wank mags. I’d I jump across the tank traps and break through the barb and dare myself across the live rails, the smell of damp and dust and electricity filling my nostrils. To this day, for me, that is the smell of London. You can taste it too. It’s in that warm, rank breath that emerges from the entrances of tube stations. It’s a denominator that will always remind me of home.

My nan, who I lived with, was a sentimental Royalist and passionately in love with London.

She used to take me to see the soldiers outside Buckingham Palace every other Saturday. We’d get up early and get on the tube and the carriages were full of that smell. I’d I read the advertising panels above the seats that seemed to me messages from other worlds, other ways of being. Within twenty minutes we were in the city and Nan would take me on a promenade of her youthful memories. Here’s where she met my granddad. This is where she worked in the opticians before the building took a direct hit with a thousand pounder. That is where she ducked in with my uncle to escape the buzz bombs.

For my Nan, the war had been the most interesting thing that happened to her. She never said so outright, but you could tell – it was a time when being a Londoner really meant something – when what had always been a fractious, disparate set of communities became galvanised, hammered on the anvil of real and imminent destruction. The backs-against-the-wall aesthetic wasn’t just some specious romance cast in political discourse (though politicos and hacks have used it as such ever since).

It was rather a visceral reality that amounted to as much of a shared experience as Londoners had ever had. For my nan and many of her contemporaries the memory of it glowed. Perversely perhaps, it was for them a diaphanous moment of youthful freedom.

Though we were twenty minutes from the dead centre of the city these trips wandering around with my nan were always known as trips ‘up London’.

People in my manor still talk of the West End that

way. The designation is a result of London’s London physical properties. London is a collection of villages, which grew into towns, which bled each into each to create a seething megalopolis some sixty miles from east to west and as much again from North to South.

Each village, each town, has its distinct character, its separate ways of being London. Each manor has, as a result, its own texture. Each piece of the city is rooted in the earth, reaching down to a different layer. And those layers, like the silt on the ocean floor, are constantly renewed over time.

In 1945, work began on the estate I grew up on. Waste ground and marshy riverside scrub was reclaimed using Nazi-generated rubble. They stuck some static caravans in a little huddle in the middle of a field (right next to a pub) and shipped in families from deep in the heart of the East End and Islington, many of whom had been bombed out during the war, and most of whom were tradesmen. Everyone I knew growing up came from generation-deep families of brickies and spreads, sparks and chippys.

Around them they built the houses we were to call home. These homes were named ‘Airey Houses’ after Sir Edwin Airey – whose idea it was to recycle military vehicles for steel reinforcement and tag on to these prefabricated concrete panels. Sir Edwin’s plan was a clever way to produce cheap homes that could be constructed quickly. And it worked. As soon as the houses were complete the local council assigned them to workers who had pieced them together.

What emerged was a neat, fleeting, working class utopia. There were terraced homes with gardens and washing lines and bathrooms and separate kitchens – unimaginable luxury in comparison to the two-family slums and tenements our families had left.

Within a decade the West Indian community arrived and then the Bangladeshi community seeking refuge from economic meltdown and then Asian Ugandans expelled by Idi Amin. By the time I was wandering London with my nan in the 1970s other estates had emerged around mine and there were acre upon acre of newer estates – mid-rise and high-rise behemoths that were soon demonised by the establishment, their residents marginalised. It was by then a very different London and a very different estate to the one Nan was moved to in 1945. There was a tinderbox energy in the ebb and

87

flow of community that was as creative as it was destructive. Now, it’s completely different again – with many post-war aspirants moving way out into the Essex hinterland – replaced by an incredibly diverse range of families whose generations were raised everywhere between the Horn of Africa to the cities of Eastern Europe.

It was Nan’s romance about London’ss multiplicity – her fascination with the ghosts and resonances – that informed everything that happened to me a little later. Just as it was for her, the tube line became for me a huge metaphoric nervous system – a set of currents through which London dispatched its energies. Through the city’s viscera you could navigate to other worlds and sift through the layers of other histories, other stories. As soon as the man would sell me one, I’d I buy a day ticket and wander the network. And I’ve been wandering it ever since.

The layering of London’s history never stops.

And in these last years East London’s London population has new, unexpected layers, accelerated by a new generation of influence and affectation. So where there were Didycoys and Huguenots, textile mills and fridge mountains, there are galleries and design studios. Where there were fly pitchers and plastic gangsters are vintage boutiques and streetfood outlets. Hipsters are just a new way of being a Londoner – a geographically diverse, creatively inclined transient population clustered in Shoreditch and pointing east. Some will settle and will start families and the ever-eastward drift will begin again.

The marshes meanwhile, reconstituted with the rubble of Blitzed London, gazes over an Olympic Park, moments from which the Lower Lea cruises by, oblivious to the transience currently bestowed upon it. Wander the margins of Olympic Land and the words ‘legacy’, ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘diversity’ are etched into meaninglessness. The physical reality of London has absorbed, encompassed and reimagined everything that has been imposed on it for 1‚000 years. It takes more than a government scheme or an Olympic ideal to alter its course. The alteration is its course.

And that’s what London truly is. Time itself.

MICHAEL FORDHAM

88 HUCK

Photo by Mark Leary / design by Venn Creative

11 - 14 Oct OctOber 2ND ANNUAL LONDON SUrF rF r F / FILM F Fe eStIVAL eS t rIVer rIV IVerSID erSIDe SttUDIOS, HAMMerSMI er ttH, LONDON LONDONSUrFFILMF rFFILMFe rFFILMF FFILMFeS eStIVAL. t c cOM PRESENTED BY

C R E AT I V E

Juliet Elliott’s been riding bikes – fixed and now BMX – in London for over fifteen years. Recently she relocated to Devon, south-west England, where she’s focusing on Coven, her action sports magazine aimed at women. Sometimes, she says, it’s good to be on the outside, looking in.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVE NOAKES

NO FIXED POSITION

90 HUCK

I grew up in Derbyshire but I moved to London on my own at the age of sixteen. The capital seemed like where all the action was at and I wanted to be in the thick of it. I completed my A Levels and went off exploring the world after I got my first sponsor as a snowboarder. For the next few years I chased the snow, living in France, America and Canada before joining a London-based band and settling down again in the capital.

Once I was back in London I was looking for something to fill the void left by snowboarding and bicycles very quickly became my new obsession.

At the time, fixed-gear bikes were just beginning to grow in popularity and once I’d d built one up from old bits and pieces on an abandoned frame, I quickly made many new friends who were into the same things as me.

In the early 2000s, the fixed-gear scene was very welcoming and inclusive, people used to meet on Brick Lane on a Sunday and hang out having barbecues, playing bicycle polo and learning tricks.

It was a fun time but it didn’t last that long as people started splintering off and doing their own thing when egos came into play. It seemed like something quite innocent and fun quickly became filled with people battling it out for ownership of the scene; there were fights between rival bloggers and all sorts of nonsense. It was a real shame.

Bikes are pretty big in London considering the attitude of some drivers and how poor some of the roads are to cycle on. I think it’s mainly a reaction to the overcrowding on public transport and also as so few younger people have cars. A large percentage of cyclists live in East London where the transport links are particularly bad, so a bike is a must.

I worked as a bike messenger for eighteen months and always loved just burning around the streets as fast as I could. As far as tricks go, my absolute favourite place to ride is a skatepark in Tottenham. The people are great, the place is so much fun to ride and I used to spend as much time as possible there.

I recently moved to Devon as I’d d had enough of paying over the odds for my flat. I think London has a huge amount to offer but if you're not fully taking advantage of it, there's no point in crippling yourself financially to be there. I work pretty hard and any spare time I have I go riding, so I ended up going out less, seeing fewer bands and exhibitions, and just not getting as much out of London as before.

In terms of riding, I’m m now taking advantage of the local forests, hills and trails and while I do miss my favourite London skateparks and hangouts, I don’tt dwell on it too much. London will always hold an appeal for me, but now I can come up and visit and pick and choose the best bits when it suits me.

My dad put it well when he told me, ‘London London will still be there, even though you aren’t.’ And that’ss pretty much how I see it now. JULIET ELLIOTT COVENMAGAZINE.COM

THE DAILY COMMUTE Let’s get the obvious out of the way. The air can taste thick with exhaust as the lorry you’re drafting belches diesel on a gear-shift. The black paste of road gravy, picked up while you commit to yet another rain-soaked commute, is impervious to any detergent. And there are probably safer ways to travel as you swerve to avoid being taken out by yet another driver who is happier to be updating his status rather than indicating to take a late left turn.

“Sorry mate, I didn’t see you there.”

So with all that said and done I wouldn’t have it any other way. The front door closes, I swing my leg over and click into my pedals. It won’t be long till my heart rate rises. As the cadence increases I am the master of my own destiny. I choose the route, I choose the speed, I call the shots.

A courier once told me that the history of London is written in the streets, and I couldn’t agree more. No soullessly efficient grid system for my hometown, just a haphazard jumble of roads, lanes and streets that have grown over hundreds and hundreds of years. Buildings tell their stories as they fight with the narrowing and twisting roads.

Fires, wars and lazy governments have only been able to scratch its surface. No apology to modern city planning is made as I am given seemingly endless options for the best route from A to B. My history of riding in the city since 1995 is also

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW DIPROSE

Philip Diprose is the editor of The Ride Journal – a beautiful, bespoke magazine that celebrates cycling in all its incarnations.

Here, he ruminates on the relationship his bike gives him with London.

written in these streets. It stretches out like an etcha-sketch across the capital. Sprawling like veins that have pumped me from different flats to different jobs across the capital. A silent cog that spins through the days.

Harry Beck’s London tube map is up there with some of the best design in the world. It’s simple, it’s clean but it bears no relation to the world I ride. My routes are broken down into bike shops, good pubs, decent coffee houses and second-hand record shops.

These are my landmarks. Just the same as the skin I’ve left from the times I’ve hit the tarmac.

And then at the end of the working day I get the chance to purge the stress and pressure of the day out through my legs. Transferring all the negatives into a positive direction as I connect green light after green light, almost hoping for a red so that I have a legitimate reason to ease up and swallow the anaerobic burn.

Crossing the river from north to south I see all the clichés of London and it’s hard not to smile. This is my city, these are my roads and I'm a shark cutting a silent path through the whales that block the roads and edge slowly and laboriously along their way. It will be some time till they are home. Not me though, I’m already home, despite choosing the longer route to take in Swains Lane. PHILIP DIPROSE THERIDEJOURNAL.COM

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Tony Gunnarsson is a Swedish skater and writer who has lived in East London for over a decade. He is currently a columnist for Maximumrocknroll magazine, the editor of More Noize ’zine, and the brains behind Punk Is Hippies – an online archive of old-school punk fanzines. A father of one, he now lives in Walthamstow, northeast London, where he still skates every day.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENNY MCLEICH

EAST SIDE GRIND

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I started skateboarding in Sweden when I was seven.

Back to The Future was in the cinemas during my first term of school and the day after I saw the film I asked my mum to buy me a skateboard. I played around with it on my street and used it as transport everywhere. Then Skara Sommarland skatepark opened – at the time it was the biggest ramp complex in Europe – and I started to skate properly.

I moved to London in 1998 as the second wave of Swedish kids who came here looking for the yearround skate scene, which we saw in early Sidewalk Surfer magazines. Older friends had already moved here and every time they came back home my friends and I would listen to all the stories they had about places like Southbank and St Paul’s. For me, the prospect of year-round outdoor skateboarding was the biggest motivation to move here. Back home you can skate outdoors just three to five months, depending on the weather.

At that time, London’s skate scene was really small. Most local skateboarders I met were from other places in Britain and many were foreigners like myself. People would come and go, of course, but it felt like London did not have the close-knit and vibrant skate scene that I expected and knew from back home. For locals, London skateboarding meant Southbank, Shell Centre and the spots around the City: the stairs at Knightrider Square (“the new spot”) in St Paul’s, the close-by Paternoster Square (“the old spot”), and other spots in that square mile including The Barbican centre. On the outskirts, places like Cantelowes, Meanwhile, Stockwell and Romford were regular go-to places.

I skated at Southbank pretty much every day of the first two or three years living in London. I’d skate

there and hit spots on the way and do the same in the evening on my way home. I have very warm feelings about the old Southbank spot and I miss the misfits who used to hang out there every day of the week, although there are a few survivors from those days that you bump into now and then.

I’m not sure when London changed, but there was a definite change, and I know it was a few years after Barcelona blew up and Europe became part of what had previously been a California-centric skate world. For me personally, moving to East London meant new friends and a new area to explore on a skateboard. I became part of my friend’s collective of skateboarders and artists called 243 Support. I stopped going to Southbank altogether, instead skating all over East London with my new gang of friends, always looking for new and unexplored spots. On weekends, we’d d spend the day harassing security guards in the City, because everywhere in the City was (and still is) a bust – to get five minutes at a spot is a privilege. Towards the evenings we'd skate the backstreets of Old Street, drinking beer before hitting the bars.

Today the East – meaning Shoreditch, Hoxton, Brick Lane, Hackney, Dalston and surroundings – has blown up for both bars and skateboarding. It’ss funny to remember that for years we never saw any other skateboarders around the East. Ironically, since my friends and I have all followed the general population push outwards from the centre to the suburbs, a few really great skateparks have popped up too. When Mile End skatepark, definitely the best in London, was still in the planning stages everyone from 243 Support were living super close. The Victoria Park skatepark that just opened is also pretty good.

‘My East’ in the early 2000s probably looked the same as it did after the 1960s rebuilding of the area. Today, it’s starting to look the way London was supposed to look, at least for a foreigner like me who came here thinking it’d be a modern metropolis with super architecture.

When it was announced that London might get the Olympics my friend Sami [Seppala] registered a URL with the name Hackney Olympics, and put up a picture of crudely hand-drawn Olympics rings on a poop-brown background. Eventually we came up with the idea of hosting an annual skate jam at Hackney Bumps, the old cement skatepark from the 1970s, situated in a residential area of Hackney, right across from the Olympics park. The idea was to have a skate jam each summer until the real Olympics, and we managed to do this five or six times. This year no one could be arsed. That said, I have a few new spots near the Olympic park saved in my head for exploring after the summer.

The scene today is much better than ten years ago. Local kids at the concrete parks are getting very good. It wasn’t like that for my generation growing up. But it's infectious – at the age of thirtythree I am probably skating my best so far, and I skate more often than ever.

I used my skateboard to get around when I was a kid and that aspect has always stayed with me.

Why do you want to be restricted to one enclosed area? What’s the point of that? Now that I’m older, with a family, career and mortgage (fucking responsibilities) I have come around to the idea of skateparks, just for the convenience. But I always take my skateboard when I leave the house. London skateboarding changed my life. TONY GUNNARSSON

0208 429 6827 - leigh.nardelli@dwindle.com - dealer enquiries

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDY JACKSON

NOT QUITE ALPINE Before creating PR and creative agency Canoe, Chris Carr was a key player in the East End snowboard scene. Yes, such a thing existed – and it was centred on a towering dry slope in a sketchy part of town.

Here, he explains how the Beckton Alps gave birth to a very London way of being a snowboarder.

Beckton Alps is just off the A13, a couple of miles downriver to the east of the Royal Albert Docks and the Isle of Dogs. Driving my Austin Mini from my home in Leytonstone I could get there in about fifteen minutes. Providing, of course, that the traffic and lights were on my side and that I drove like a lunatic. The latter was usually the case.

My first memory of riding Beckton was probably from around age seventeen. Me and my good friend Neale Smith starting riding there after a ski trip where we dumped our poles and rented the only equipment the small Italian resort had to offer. This was 1987. After that we had returned to the UK and sourced some second-hand kit. Beckton was a dry ski slope built on the site of a redundant gas works right by the side of the A13 dual carriageway.

The ‘Alps’ bit was a bit far fetched. All that’s left is a ratty old slagheap these days – the ski slope closed in 2001 due to lack of funding.

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After a few years of begging slope management to let us first build, then ride our own ramps, snowboarding organically grew to a regular scene.

It reminded me a lot of the way Southbank at a certain time became synonymous with skateboarding. Those days were probably some of the best times of my life. Saturday night was snowboard night and it was a night we owned. Anyone who was really into snowboarding in the early UK years will vouch for me on this. Your home slope was where you ruled.

You knew every inch of the surface. You knew where every sprinkler was, you watched the weather and got excited when it rained. You knew exactly where to hit the kicker and exactly from where you had to straight line it to get the required speed.

Looking back it was a pretty hardcore scene. We thought nothing of going gloveless and not wearing pads. Helmets? You must be joking! The scooping up of injured riders became a weekly affair – all on the brutal surface that is Dendex – a series of upturned, interlinked, giant toothbrushes that can take skin away more efficiently than tarmac. The slope may have been unforgiving, but everyone loved it. I think it’s because it was a constant in our lives. Each Saturday every lump and bump and kicker was the same. As was the fact that you would not be able to walk the next day – a result of the bruises and the scrapes and the shin splints and the hangovers (due to the post-ride sessions at Camden’s Underworld, free entry thanks to Andy Allen) – week in week out.

I can honestly say that Saturday night at Beckton occupied the majority of my thoughts from around Wednesday onwards. At the time my life revolved firmly around snowboarding and before I’d finished studying, my only option was dryslope. Everyone felt the same and the locals all looked after each other. We became pretty tight.

These days I see more of the Beckton crew than any other old group of friends, be it school, University or even the guys I used to season with. People like Tim Hoad, Matt Law, Tom Kingsnorth, Andy Irving and even veteran Onboard editor Danny Burrows were key members of the crew. These were all classic guys – people who embodied that sleeves-rolled-up, doing-it-for-yourselves spirit.

Skateboarding was my first love, but snowboarding consumed me. The parallels betweenthe sports extend way beyond the sideways stance and move into, I believe, an approach to life. You need dedication to progress in these sports, you need an analytical approach too, although sometimes this is more instinctive than learnt. It’s a feeling and it’s about controlling your body and mind. You also need to be able to see things other people can’t see. I’m talking about lines. A line is a route, a pathway – a way of using the environment you’re in. In skateboarding it's a curb or a ramp or a hip and your journey between them. In snowboarding it's more natural terrain on the mountain or a frozen sprinkler head on a dry slope.

Snowboarding in London was more like skate boarding to me and as I've gotten older and collected a few more responsibilities, I like to treat work in a similar way to my riding: combining hard work, dedication and a sleeves-rolled-up attitude while picking my line through the opportunities and possibilitieson the way. CHRIS CARR CANOEINC.COM

First st in in SURFING S SU URFING NEWS NEWS First

www.surfersvillage.com Rider: Tim Boal / Photo: Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles / Design: ID

Tim

Bo al

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW CROCKETT

As publisher of KooK KooK– an independent surfing newspaper that documents the current creed of creative shreds – Daniel Crockett is able to combine his love of writing and surfing. He may have grown up on a farm and spent the majority of his life in the great outdoors but now the poet and artist lives in London. Here, he explains how he’s still coming to terms with that fact.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY OLLIE BANKS

LINES ON THE HORIZON

For many years I surfed constantly, mapping the week by tide. I wrote a bit for surf mags, worked my ass off online for some mad Sikh guys and built a fine quiver of boards. I travelled, always to waves and the closest I got to the city was a nip around the M25 on a good Norfolk chart.

London was a distant evil. I’d seen my surf-crazed friends depart only to end up rotund, lifeless bores who discussed house prices in Clapham. Gradually, the things I’d held in common with these people fell away. I guess they viewed me as a sort of child, unable to escape the harness of the sea. I couldn’t have been more delighted.

An extended sojourn to California threw me off course. A messy breakup, a summer of festivals and I was signing the lease on a flat in Hackney, ten years after I’d entertained and discounted the idea. Why? I ask myself daily.

Here’s how I’ve rationalised it: for creative minds rurality and isolation have a cost. When I lived on a farm by the beach I stayed awake at night wondering about this city and the myriad urban faces of the world.

What were they all doing up there, those people?

The adversity in these constructed thickets creates a drive and the boiler room of creativity is so diverse here it can’t help but inspire. I penned the first book of a trilogy Shineland earlier this year and am in the process of selling it. You’ll know it worked when you see the plastic figures in McDonald’s. I’ll be with some girlfriends in the Lakshadweeps.

The place is good food for poetry too; money-asmecca versus the ultimate impoverished profession.

Way to go to make… nothing. A film narrated by a poem called Uncommon Ideals cleaned up on the festival circuit, went to SXSW, and got shown on Channel 4 who just commissioned a sequel.

The newspaper I run, KooK, has just hit its third issue and is more diverse, independent and analogue than ever before. I’m working on a recorded volume of poems and figuring out what to do with all the writing I never submitted. My next newspaper, The Shoestring Gazette, is unfolding. I get to paint sometimes. The urgency goads.

I’d be lying if I said my body isn’t gradually disintegrating. Hatha and bikram and lapping Vicky park and the mind-numbing dullness of the gym are poor substitutes for paddling out every day.

The office chair mutates you. There’s a point at which mental keenness,still believing you are getting better, gets overruled by creaking knees and knackered shoulders. I pick times to hit the coast, when freak charts light up odd spots in Northumberland, the Vale of Glamorgan, Somerset, Suffolk – to fight a constant losing battle with inconsistent shores. .

Perhaps my wave tally will drop, or I’ll make even less tubes, hit the lip slightly softer. All of the encyclopaedic knowledge of dozens of coastlines and their variables will fall idle and useless. I’ll look back and say, ‘I used to surf a lot, before I came here,’ between puffs of a smoke and the pull of a pint.

My gills aren’t completely dry. Sometimes, with a boat on course and the light in the right direction, the view up the river, east from London Bridge, tricks the mind into seeing lines of marching swell.

There’s wind west of Norway due and no luxury to be jaded. The sessions I get now are like a paradise of moving water and light by comparison. Yet I can dress it up all I want - this fantastic city is just a shitty place to be a surfer and crave nature. I’m moving to Berlin. DANIEL CROCKETT DANIELCROCKETT.CO.UK

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to neoliberalism in the country by looking at the ‘second anti-

brand Dusters California – the most buttery ride money can buy?

Apartheid movement’ in Durban at the beginning of the

dusterscalifornia.com 12. In June, TCOLondon – the umbrella

millennium in his 2002 book We Are The Poors. monthlyreview.

company responsible for HUCK and Little White Lies – opened

org/press/books/pb0505 7. Rad dudes and Project O retail partners

a gallery and events space called 71a and we produced these

1. Awesome handmade jewellery created from old, broken and

Oi Polloi produced these ‘hikerdelic’ tie-dye T-shirts for the

cool totes as a welcome gift to all visitors. It's been a crazy first

recycled skateboards. thrashion.com 2. Fjallraven backpacks are

Acid Ramblers exhibition launch party. oipolloi.com 8. Swiss

few months with illustration, photography and photocopy

the coolest luggage in town. And a part of every Scandinavian

photographer and self-publisher Yves Suter shows a different side

exhibitions, film screenings, parties, talks, panel discussions,

kid's childhood, apparently. fjallraven.se 3. Former Adrenalin editor

to Tokyo and New York in his new gate-folded publication, Paper

workshops and more. thechurchoflondon.com/events/71a 13. A

and HUCK Editor-at-Large Mike Fordham has launched an

Of Walls: The Other City Guide – New York & Tokyo. yvessuter.com

response to the ecocide issue! Inspired by the HUCK #32 story

outdoors culture publishing experiment called Project O and

9. HUCK hosted the UK launch of the new Skateistan The Tale of

on Polly Higgins and her fight to make ecocide an international

this Acid Ramblers newspaper is the first physical incarnation

Skateboarding in Afghanistan book at the endof July complete with a

crime, Rebecca Wright emailed her local MP, who raised the

of the vision. project-o.co.uk 4. Rapanui ‘Wolfpack’ tee – ethical

photo exhibition, film screening and Q&A session with founder

issue with Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural

fashion with a cool canine twist. rapanuiclothing.com 5. In this

Oliver Percovich, fresh from addressing House of Commons

Affairs (DEFRA) Caroline Spelman, who wrote back this response

beautiful, large-format Raw + Material = Art book, influential street

and having dinner with Muhammed Ali and Tony Blair at the

outlining the government’s stance. Write to your MP to raise the

art historian Tristan Manco showcases thirty-eight inspirational artists

Beyond Sport Awards. skateistan.org 10. Unleash your inner freak

issue too. 14. Inspired by John Hillcoat's rugged bootlegging

using handmade, craft and DIY techniques to create stunning

scene to a familiar distorted sound with I Bet On Sky, the third

drama Lawless, our sister magazine Little White Lies hand-carved

original works. tristanmanco.com 6. Ashwin Desai, one of South

album from the reunited Dinosaur Jr. dinosaurjr.com 11. Check

illustrations into Japanese plywood and printed them on the

Africa's leading activist intellectuals, details a growing resistance

out this rad 'Ace Retro Bamboo' shred stick from new cruiser

cover and some features inside the mag. littlewhitelies.co.uk

INSPIRATION & THINGS WE DIG

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