Artifacts of the Old World: I Need That Record

For some people, music is just another thing. A distraction. But, for others (like myself), music means a hell of a lot more. At some point, there was that one song, that one band that transformed everything. The one that made them want to be part of it in some way. Music for them is [...]

Last Laughs: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Graffiti has come along way since the 70s. Once an art form (or vandalism and public nuisance to some) typified by exotic tags on a canvas of urban decay, experimentalists and pioneers have broken boundaries in both content and medium. Freeform gave way to stencils. Stencils to prints. Prints to three-dimensional forms. And so forth. [...]

With a Hall Pass in Hand: American Teen

American Teen was immediately criticized as it began generating attention at Sundance in 2008. The original promotional material featured the five teenagers at the heart of Nanette Burstein’s documentary in poses and costume nearly identical to those in the Breakfast Club. The previews even pre-defined their roles: The Geek, The Princess, The Jock, The Hearthrob [...]

The Zephyr Chronicles: Revolutionaries on the Blacktop

Although skateboarding had been around since the 1960s, it has fluctuated in both popularity and marketability up until the mid-1990s when it finally became a seemingly stabilized industry. Even former Bones Brigade rider turned one-man commercial empire, Tony Hawk, admitted in his autobiography the fear of being able to survive on meager royalty checks in [...]