PLENTY TOUGH

Hey, ironist whitey — don’t front, you know you’ve pretended to throw up a gang sign, Crip walk or done up the top button on a Pendleton and scowled at the mirror. Bet you’d shit yourself if you were in gang territory though — your blogwear wouldn’t stop from being treated like Marky Mark by locals. Still, our preoccupation with Los Angeles gang culture isn’t any more inexplicable than the mafia fascination that pervades popular culture (gotta love ‘Bangin’ in Little Rock’ with one of my favourite moments at 17:06), and any organisation operating outside society’s rules with its own rules and uniforms is going to fire imaginations. Ah yes, the uniforms.

Let’s be clear here, who’s selling the aforementioned Pendleton, Chucks, Carhartt, Dickies, Ben Davis, khakis and white tees to you — some lookbook clown with a side parting who you could put in a chokehold, or some real OGs? That pride in the quality basics is a striking aesthetic that’s had more impact on the current wave of simple, quality looks than is credited.

If we’re going to explore how a blog post like this comes about, it was entirely fuelled by the photo of Crip founder member Greg “Batman” Davis (check his website here) in swagger mode — I don’t understand enough to either condone or condemn Greg’s earlier lifestyle, but with his Charles Manson friendship plus dalliances with the Symbionese Liberation Army and Jim Jones he’s a fascinating figure — that I spotted at the MOCA ‘Art in the Streets’ show. The way a whole gang phenomenon was summarised in a couple of sentences as part of the exhibit was curious, but that high rolling image is a strong piece of criminal imagery, with Davis seemingly looking to document a moment of perceived invincibility fired my imagination.

 

What happened to Nemo Librizzi’s Bloods and Crips documentary ‘Lay Down Old Man’ from 2005 that got a single screening at Blacktronica and some film festivals before vanishing? It had plenty of footage of Davis reflecting over his past, but whereas ‘Bastards of the Party’ and Stacy Peralta’s ‘Crips & Bloods: Made in America’ are readily available, ‘Lay Down Old Man’ has never reached DVD.

That Crip talk made me think of the Glen E’ Friedman photo session from South Central Cartel’s 1994 LP ‘N Gatz We Truss’. It’s not the guns which grabbed my attention (seriously, what was the odds of ANOTHER group having a Havoc and Prodeje in?), it was the customised Ben Davis work shirts, including the Def Jam West variation that blew me away. I’ve even put it in mood boards, blissfully ignorant of the heavy metal in the foreground. What can I say? I’m stupid like that. That in turn had me pondering the mighty Ben Davis. Seeing as the blog logo (courtesy of Sofarok) is a Ben Davis tribute, I’ve never done the brand justice on this site.

All you really need is O.D. Wolfson’s 1995 interview with Benjamin Franklin Davis and Frank Davis from ‘Grand Royal’ #2 — that offers some excellent background on the brand and how it started. I’ve upped a scan of the page here, but there’s a few other interesting morsels that make for an interesting supplement to the answers Mr. Davis provides.

Beyond the handful of store photos, painted ads and newspaper promotions from the late 1940s and 1950s, it’s interesting that Davis mentions that while the shirt is a Ben Davis creation, their pants were based on a design that was an acquisition (the Ben Davis brand started in 1935) from the then defunct Neustradter Bros. and their ‘Boss of the Road’ line — the gorilla was a reaction to mascots like the ‘Boss of the Road’ bulldog. I found some of their old advertising (dating back to 1901), and it’s notable that the ‘Boss of the Road’ brand was bought and resurrected by Lee in the late 1930s with added Lee branding, but that familiar jowly pooch is still present.

Continuing Ben Davis’s link to other denim powerhouses, Ben’s grandfather Jacob W. Davis’s patent for his invention – the copper pocket rivet for jeans — filed on August 9, 1872 is available too. That started with duck pants before the transfer to denim. That patent was half-owned by a certain Levi Strauss, and it’s a hugely significant moment in denim evolution — Jacob worked with Levi by developing the manufacture of the resulting pants and he sold his interest in the patent to Levi Strauss in 1907, just before he passed away.

Ben Davis passed away on February 19, 2009 — a pioneer and inadvertent father of streetwear in many ways. But that’s a whole different story…

UK/Euro heads should tap up the good folks of www.theoriginalstore.co.uk for your Ben Davis needs.

Ben Davis store photos taken from this page right here.

THE HATE LIST 2010

I love Christmas. This blog might paint me as a curmudgeon of sorts, but Darlene Love’s on iTunes right now begging a lover to come home for the festive season, the radiator’s on and the tree is decorated. That still doesn’t excuse the amount of crap out there that’s aggravated me lately. I’m attempting a hate amnesty to prepare me for some uninterrupted joy these next few days. At the moment, there’s end-of-year polls everywhere….sometimes it’s nice to Grinch it out a little. What can I say? There’s a lot of crap out there that inexplicably gets some sort of pass somewhere down the line. Plus it’s Festivus—in line with Frank Costanza’s vision, it’s time for the airing of grievances…

1. PRs & Twitter: Bad Combination

You can just envision the smug schmoozers bamboozling some overpaid imbecile with a marketing budget that their tinpot PR firm can work the social media angle as well as making their brand look great in the “real world.” You see, social media is very important. You need to interact with consumers. This means an “RT” prefix or out-and-out forward of any mention of the brand by anyone…rich, famous…to quote Johnny Mathis on baby Jesus himself, “Black, white, yellow, no-one knows”…just as long as it ticks a box for the PR.

It fills timelines with the same old shit and frequently makes a brand that was desirable seem common as muck, even if the sales figures stay niche. There’s brand awareness and there’s splattergunning important things (please…never interrupt my WorldStar Hip-Hop updates) with the same press release in a new minimized URL or even a solitary mention of the brand/store/record in question. I swear I’ve seen some individuals converse with themselves under two accounts—one with their name and the other as a brand. Remember that Diana Ross TV-movie where she had voices in her head? This was even better.

2. Brands & Stores Getting Too Familiar

Social media can be excellent for engaging with customers, but like (and presumably connected to) the ruinous slew of overeager PRs mentioned above, does anyone find some previously aloof brands and retailers have become ultra-chirpy online? Go to a one-day seminar and some guru will tell you to befriend those customers and babble about a positive online experience. This is true; a friendly line of communication with an entity can make me a customer for life, but too much engagement, talk and worst of all, the dreaded! exclamation! mark! online can make me feel like you might have lost your edge. There’s a certain aloofness that might secure longevity. Now stores that sneered at you on entering are electronically-hugging you. Probably best to check your wallet and make sure you haven’t been e-pickpocketed.

3. The Collaboration That Isn’t

It’s not enough to twin with a brand anymore…now the very thing you’re printing on is a partner. Those old Supreme sweats and Electric Cottage tees on Champion or Very Apes on Camber always seemed incidental. Now if you print on Champion, it’s a bonafide collaboration. I suspect the Supreme Hanes hookup came out of jokes about a similar subject. Where’s the Fruit of the Loom and AAA dual-brand pieces? The anonymity of a de-tagged shirt seems to be a thing of the past. Now it’s a custom one or a half-baked colab. Only last week I chatted with my buddy Nick Schonberger aka. Paul Wall, who maintained that once upon a time a Pendleton collaboration would have just had a “wool” prefix.

4. When Heritage Goes Wrong

You can’t pop too many shots at what’s ultimately well-made gear. Should you look in the mirror and realise that you look like a rag and bone man rather than Jack on campus in ‘Carnal Knowledge’ you can always dismantle that brown, wool and beige ensemble in the knowledge that it’ll stay wearable in years to come. But brands launching heritage lines which never existed is just odd. What should have carried a certain resonance from man hours of manufacture just ticks a box. I love Ben Sherman’s old shirts…they were a clever reaction to a homegrown desire for Brooks Brothers shirting back in the day. I don’t understand why they needed to release a “modern” heritage collection of Albam-lite instead of dwelling on the classic stuff. “Photo essays” of men in the country on a tie-in blog? Check. “Select” retailers? Check. Apathy beyond a circle of sycophants? Check.

5. Addressing Rumours

Having grown up hearing about rappers punching journalists, each other and putting record execs in headlocks, shootings outside HOT97…even R&B dudes snuffing Q-Tip at industry shindigs, it’s hugely disappointing to see rappers “addressing” things on video uploads for anything. Rap loves gossip, but when mean-looking dudes are talking about their reaction to a mild affront on Twitter, something’s gone very wrong. Hastily compiled “reactions” via Twitter are the downfall of good rap journalism, but the hip-hop world needs to take it to DM or pay the supposed protaganist a visit with some heavy metal in hand. Stop this soft behaviour. When Jeezy claimed that Twitter “sounds a lot like snitching,” he wasn’t wrong.

6. Stop the Sneaker Prefixes

My Scandinavian and Australasian friends know this isn’t directed at them, but I saw several awful cash-ins on the sneaker collecting ship that sailed a long time ago with “sneaker” prefixes this year. Sites, events apps…gimmicks that people emailed me about and I ignored. I love shoes more than I’d probably like to admit, but I saw some of the corniest contact messages I’ve seen in half a decade. The notion of a standalone “sneaker personality” for personality’s sake is odd to me. But looking at YouTube views I suspect I’m in the minority.

7. Please Criticise Something

I appreciate the wave of blog and Tweet positivity, but it can get a little too cheery. I don’t want to see unfocused rants (like this one) everywhere, but too much dead-eyed press release copy-paste is a bad thing. Mediocrity triumphs when good men do nothing. If you’ve got the apparent insight and self-promo savvy, why aren’t you criticising and contextualising? If you want to leap out of bed on an irritating god-bothering “Let’s get this money!” Diddy-lite tip, bear in mind that Sean assaulted Steve Stoute and apparently beat down Positive K before he became so damned positive himself. You need to earn that right to be cheery. You might lose out on some free crap, but be honest once in a while—it feels good.

8. I Hate Your “Video Lookbook”

Put some bland looking men in duck canvas coats and backpacks. Film it. Edit it to the sounds of something experimental. Next to blogs featuring videos of any gathering of more than three people that had free alcohol, “video lookbooks” are the worst. Good idea, but just as “viral” became a misunderstood byword for shitty commercials to amateurish to run on TV, the moving lookbook ended up being some wankers wandering about looking shit because just as anyone with hi-def on a camera could film the things, anyone who could do up a zip became a stylist this year. Videos of magazines being flicked and free things being unboxed were also infuriating.

9. I Hate Your Tumblr

Nobody cares about this blog and nobody cares about the artful collection of images you found in an overpriced second-hand magazine. Type Gianni Agnelli into Google. Click “Images.” That’s basically your shit Tumblr, but better.

Here’s what I envision your Tumblr to be before I click the link—McQueen looking moody…a quote by Edward Tivnan on the perfect suit…a jpeg of a constructivist Norman Carlberg piece. Whoopee shit. Go tell your mum what you’ve achieved.

Fuck Yeah Menswear clearly can’t stand you. If your effort isn’t as good as Uncomfortable Moments With Putin or Eye on Springfield, give up.

10. Homogenized Style Blogs

There’s a lot of the same content with the same copy. Sometimes it’s faintly rewritten or butchered for SEO purposes. Sometimes there’s a faintly bemused selection of padded-out paragraphs for the sake of differentiation but it’s all the same. I don’t understand the PR mouthpiece blog onslaught. If you see it elsewhere, why bother? Some site even started something called the “Cravats” which seemed to nominate anything that ever mentioned a tweed tie for some kind of award. “I’m staying up late and getting the popcorn in! It’s Cravats season—the most important night in the men’s style website calendar.” It all blends into one fawning WordPress.

As well as wishing all of you a very merry Christmas (and non-denominational greetings to everyone else), just to counteract the negativity, the new ‘Proper Magazine’ just arrived. Where I’d simply enjoyed the level of content that Mark and Neil compiled with each issue, the look and feel was always pleasantly slapdash—the lengthy interviews and sense of humour (in a realm where humour is hard to find) compensated for that. With ‘Proper’ #10, there’s more pages and it’s perfect bound too.

A good complement to Oi Polloi’s highly amusing ‘Deck Out,’ the photos of Great Yarmouth took me back to my time at Hemsby’s  Sundowners Club as a kid, but the articles on Ian Paley, Takeshi Ohfuchi and Richard Gill’s extensive collection of old jackets (the Mountain Equipment Fitzroy is serious outerwear) are excellent. Increased irreverance to match the bulkier content includes a quiz to see how seriously you’re taking the blogs that’s startlingly on-point. Defiantly clobber led, there’s a vast market for the niche team ‘Proper’ has carved. It’s a far more fully-formed publication and I’m looking forward to where it’s taken in 2011. Good work chaps…

‘CHOLO STYLE’

Ladies De Aztlan, Santa Cruz

America’s multicultural brew gave us some of the most stylish looks – when it gets too white, you’ve got imbeciles prancing around in pastel and bow ties pretending they’re dandies in higher learning. Fuck that. It’s a shame that at present time, core American brands are in, but they’ve been pushed back to American consumers by Japanese and European interests – crazy to see so many Red Wings in New York, but it’s odder to discover that the current boom trickled from Europe and the far east. Acting a follower on your own goods? Strange. Sometimes you can’t see the trees for the lumberjack felled quasi-woodsman style. I expected to see the next shit. Instead,  I just saw dudes dressed like their dads.

Since the days of ‘Dance Energy’ I’ve seen Cholo-styled shoots capturing the stance and pride in Chicano culture. It beats the beard and buffalo-check look, but boy; has their culture been jacked. Chucks, Dickies and a white tee? Untouchable. On you? Not quite so good. Just wearing the outfit ain’t cutting it. Take a look through Estevan Oriol and Robert Yager’s (showcased here on the Selvedge Yard) work for starters and see how much deeper it goes. It’s been a minute since I saw a latino figure in a lowrider during a video, and that subculture’s their creation. People love to pick from the barrio aesthetic, but few want to put anything back again.

If we’re going to dwell on the aesthetics, the west coast’s proudest taught me how to deify the basics – there’s no excuse to not look fresh when your dresscode is built on making something out of nothing – pressed khakis and tees, Ben Davis shirts and Converses make for a sturdy collection of reappropriated staples, treated with reverence. Pinning back pants to avoid ruination by the lack of “back” on a pair of Cortez? It’s all about the little details.

Outsiders peering into any subculture will pick, choose and romanticize as they see fit. That applies to the previous paragraph, and it applies to photographers looking to shock, intimidate or defy stereotyping with their depictions too. An insider’s perspective certainly won’t lack an agenda, but for authenticity within a realm that’s been alternately demonized, robbed, recycled, parodied to the point of racism and frequently misunderstood, you need an inside man or woman. That’s where Reynaldo Berrios enters the picture.

If you’ve ever mourned the demise of even a fraction of your magazine stacks, or just missed out on a full fanzine run, decisions to compile in book form can only be something to celebrate. The recent ‘Boy’s Own’ compilation was a perfect example, and the ‘Sniffin Glue’ collection was strong too. Similar ones for ‘The End,’ ‘Dirt’… even annual ‘The Source’ compilations up to 1993 would be welcome. The possibilities are endless.

2007’s ‘Cholo Style’ book compiled the strongest articles from ‘Mi Vida Loca’ magazine, edited and mostly written by Rey Berrios, and frequently illustrated by Victor A. Spider, whose detailed but occasionally crude illustrations gave it a unique appearance. For the hood, by the hood and sold in the hood, it didn’t travel too much outside its target spots, but for a decade it documented Raza life in detail, with the editor risking his life to get a story written, seemingly for the love of it rather than any Pulitzer opportunities. Now that’s what’s real.

If you pick it up expecting a guide on how to wear a Pendleton properly, go elsewhere – there’s a trove of imagery from the inside present, but the uncompromising stance of the reportage and points raised might alienate some. Conscious of the whitewashing of his community’s legacy, Berrios talks about the cowardice of drive-bys, prescribing punishment for those engaging in the activity, makes trips to other areas interviewing the younger occupants about their hopes and fears, talks Che and Aztlan history race relations, cars; including an Oakland police lowrider, community organization, prisons and self- empowerment. ‘Cholo Style’ makes no effort to provide you with a learning curve, context or spoonfeed you a way of life, but it proves totally absorbing from the preface to the hand-drawn “a message from our sponsors” ads at the back for barbershops, boutiques and corner stores that stocked ‘Mi Vida Loca.’

Naturally, themes of machismo arise, but one of the best collections of images accompanies the feature ‘A Focus on the Homegirls,’ with submitted female crew photos capturing some strong looks and stances for the camera – true hometown pride. This is the stuff that stylists can’t emulate. What became of the showcased Ladies De Aztlan Redwood, San Mateo, South City, East Palo, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and South Hayward is never documented, but it’s a great moment-in-time captured. Importantly, Berrios caught the essence and diversity of his subjects – it’s not just about sending the photo editor the gun-toting shots of the most loco exhibitionists – this is the side of a lifestyle and culture rarely seen.

Feral House’s hit and miss approach to publishing the obscure, taboo, or rarely documented is always something to salute. For every couple of conspiracy-laden titles, there’s a ‘Lords Of Chaos, ‘American Hardcore,’ ‘Prisoner Of X’ (Allen MacDonell’s account of his time working for Larry Flynt at ‘Hustler’) and ‘Cholo Style’ – if the first two can get films made, the latter definitely warrants a documentary. Self-publishing against some heavyweight levels of adversity.

www.myspace.com/mividalocamagazine

www.feralhouse.com

Ladies De Aztlan, South City

Ladies De Aztlan, Redwood City

Ladies De Aztlan, San Mateo

Ladies De Aztlan, San Jose

Ladies De Aztlan, South Hayward