Subculture and Style

Subculture – separate from style it is reaction to environment

 Dogtown and z-boys (2001) zephyr skateboard scene, Vans sponsor the film. Creating cult images e.g. abandoned swimming pool as skate bowl

Ian Boarden - 'performing the city' – way to break barriers on city
Parcour/Freerunning – urban ‘escapist’ activities

Graffiti is a defining of space – owner ship claims – no discrimination McDonald - Female

Girl subcultures come second to male – male association is greater

Girls are seen as add on, not as great in the changes that a subculture is trying to create – always girlfriends or mother - accessory
 
Mod culture – women and men have similar styles – cult Quadrophenia (1979)
Hippy girl developed through 60s and 70s

Riot Grrrl – the following began from female rockers in 70s/80s – policical – making of home made zines-artwork

Brand styling to represent stereotypes of women at the time – spice girls

Self-publication of music and literature
punk begins to become commercial

Action against women in the 50s having to conform and behave in society

 
Skinheads follow on from mod culture - This is England (2006)

Popular Culture

Critically define pop culture

Contrast ideas of culture – pop culture – mass culture

What is culture?

-       Intellectual/inspirational/aesthetic development/ of a society at the time

-       A way of life

-       Intellectual and artistic works

Reality of society? – BASE

Capitalism produces culture

Base -> determines the content and form of superstructure

Base<- reflects form and legitimises superstructure

Ideologists – system of ideals/beliefs

Raymond Williams – 1983

Definitions of popular

-       Well liked by many, inferior work, culture made

E.g. graffiti when placed in an art gallery it becomes acceptable to society

Matthew Arnold – 1867 – culture and anarchy

Culture

-       Stud of perfection

-       Attained through reading/writing/thinking

-       Pursuit of culture

Cultural policies – culture is a disease

Pop culture is unreal – strive to CREATE something

Culture – substantial happening/timeless

Frankfurt school

Theodore adorno/max Herkimer

‘‘All mass culture is identical’’

‘‘The products indoctrinate and manipulate they promote false consciousness’’

Authentic culture vs. mass culture

Real, European, multi dimensional, imagination, individual creation

Culture industry – reality TV – exploits people

Pop culture – able to be a critic of all

Keep Your Email Secret

My personal email account has over 5000 emails in my inbox, and I would have an guess as to maybe 80-90% of them would be spam and a mere 47 in my 'Junk' folder. Email addresses are frequently sold on to 3rd party companies, even when sometimes the website you're signing up for states they won't pass on personal information, who sell it on again and so forth.

When I was at school, we used to sign people's emails up for, what we considered hilarious, variety of websites.

Nowadays, I receive a lot of spam of this nature...

Now, I have no idea why these companies started pursuing me or how they got my email, but an educated guess would be that somewhere among my internet activities, I have signed up for a website/newsletter and my information has been sold on.

"Your email address is a big part of your online identity. It's also a valuable source of revenue for people whose business involves supplying spammers with live addresses.
If the sites you register with aren't secure, hackers can access the database containing all the user credentials, and the email addresses are sure to be sold on.

It's also an unpleasant fact of online life that some website owners lie when they say they'll never give your email address to anyone else. This is predominantly a problem for users of adult sites. Your email address may be sold on to sites with similar themes, which then spam you as well as selling your address on to others.

When an online business folds, the owner might also decide the list of registered users is an asset worth selling."

So how can we stop this from happening?

You could simply have a separate email for when times like this are needed, as I have, but sometimes you forget and whatnot and now I have 3 email accounts with a ridiculous amount of emails in each.

The best solution I found depends on whether or not lengthy correspondence is required with whoever it was that was requesting your email. This involves signing up for a temporary email address, such as GuerillaMail which offers a 60 minute time frame, to do such business without your email account suffering.

City and Film

City modernism

Urban sociology – city a public / private

-       Postmodernism city = individual relation to the crowed

Greg Simmel – 1895-1918 - Metropolis and mental life.

The effect a built environment has on an individual

Herbert Beyer 1932

Lewis Hine photography

- Individual resistance to the city

Architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) – creator of modern skyscraper

"Form ever follows function"

Guaranty Building layout 

Skyscrapers – to represent power/the American dream and opportunity – big building big company ‘aspiration buildings’

Manhattan (1921)- Paul Strand and Charles Scheler – photograph of Ford Company at river rouge.

Fordism: - effect of factory on workers? Paid enough to buy goods?

Modern times - Charlie Chaplin (1936)

Society – his body is consumed by machine – the working age

Stock Market crash (1929) – lead to the great depression

French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer’’

A person who walks through the city to experience it - Art captivation

Walter Benjamin - adopts urban observer concept

‘Arcades project’ -1927-40

The photographer as a flaneur

-       Susan sontag – photographer – especially in street photography photographer is ‘urban observer’

flaneuse

Invisible flaneuse – women and modernity

Susan buck-Morris = the dialect of seeing – arcade project

Text is suggestive that a woman on a street is either prostitute or bag lady

albus/hopper – photographs of women sitting alone – lost/trauma

Failure – despair – feelings of failure – a lonely woman – prostitute?

Don't look now 1973 - Nicholas Roeg. 

Hiring of detective but subject reverses role to lead to poiniont places of reference

Lorca di Carcia Heads (2001) NY – illumination of individuals – setting out from the crowd – creates drama on that person

Alone in the crowd till singled out some way

A lawsuit was brought against him for exhibiting a photo of someone without his or her permission.  The judge dismissed it as protected by the First Amendment.

Surveillance city – heightened security after 9/11

Sneaker Events: Birmingham

Sneaks&Peaks, is a new event based in Birmingham, as covered by article ''Sneaks&Peaks' Meet Up Event' by the Daily Street.

The event as a whole looks like it has potential to be the best sneaker event the UK has seen, that I'm aware of at least, but the branding as a whole isn't too great.

The top image shows the behind of a tattooed lady straddling a skateboard and the smallest part of a shoe that could be shown. I feel this doesn't really represent the scene, culture or what it's actually about. It reminds me of Tumblr and the way I guess in which sneakers have received a lot of coverage and exposure to the new base of customers.

The mint colour used with the branding isn't that significant a colour within sneakers and I don't know why it was picked, other than the colour being used a lot recently described as 'fresh'.

What is good? Stores

Kith, New York City, USA

Kith and Kin, known as Kith, comprises of two stores in NYC. One in Manhattan the other Brooklyn, but still both keeping the items it sells as exclusive as ever.

It is nigh on impossible to obtain certain items from Kith, let alone if you're an international customer. Recent releases have seen just in store releases and no online sales, making sneakers that are already super rare, even rarer!

 

Asics x Ronnie Fieg GL3 'Super Green'

One of my favourite sneakers of the year definitely has to be Super Green's. They're an ideal shoe in flattering tones of grey accented by different materials all over and lime green branding. The GL3 is one of the cleanest silhouettes when it comes to Asics.

This sneaker happens to be unbelievably rare, not even seeing a limited release to the public, this sneaker was handed out in Haiti to help people with no/battered shoes. Soles4Soles was the charity Kith worked with to achieve this feat, and although as nice a gesture as it is, the prices these could have sold for could have raised unreal amounts for the charity. These sneakers would easily sell for around $1000.

Hanon Shop, Aberdeen, UK

Hanon is one of the best, if not the the best, retailers in the UK. The staff are really friendly and make everyone and anyone feel welcome. Hanon boasts an impressive collection of collaborations with such brands as Asics, Adidas, Saucony and Puma to name a few.

Hanon, one of 3 UK stockists for the Nike Air Yeezy, is where I had to go to to pay for and collect the Yeezys that I won. Definitely worth the 7 hour train journey each way, but that's what it's all about.

Asics x Hanon GL3 'Wildcats'

One of my all time favourite sneakers are the Wildcats, the blocks of colour separating the sneakers into levels of solid colour shows how beautiful the silhouette for sneakers is. The burnt orange on top works in contrast with the burgundy lower section, paying homage to a dying species which calls Scotland it's home.

The Wildcats were released late in 2011 when I had insufficient funds, they stay as my all time favourite release.

24 Kilates, Barcelona, Spain

24 Kilates is one of the best European stores related to street culture, boasting collaborations with Asics, New Balance and Reebok to name a few. Collaborations result in a better customer experience and end product, usually with a wooden box, containing other accessories such as a bottle of wine.

Asics x 24 Kilates GLS 'Las Trez ZZZ'

The presentation and photography of the products is second to none. Well composed and suitable for the target audience. The whole package shows that you can get more when it comes to sneakers if you know what you're looking for.

Footpatrol, London, UK

Footpatrol is probably the most notorious shop in the UK for street culture and exclusivity. I have attended ques at the store for a release from 6am, other people had been there since the night before. I love the sense of community when there's a release, obviously there is a lot of people getting jealous and trying to push in etc, but overall the atmosphere is always good.

The store gets pretty much any release that's hard to get hold of, except store collaborations from other stores. Footpatrol is only a small location and when you walk in to the second room, you feel really homely, it's as though you were in a log cabin.

Asics x Footpatrol GSII

Boasting collaborations with Asics, Reebok, Le Coq Sportif and Adidas, which have all been sell out shoes. These limited Asics saw ques of over 100 people to obtain the shoes, started at around 6/7am. They came in a wooden box numbered to 100 and each had a screenprinted cotton drawstring bag to mark the release.

What is good? Asics

Asics has seen a lot of popularity over the past few years with sneaker collectors and more recently an explosion of hype coming from such sources as Tumblr.

Ronnie Fieg is one of the most notable characters associated withing exclusive Asics, and other sneakers, dropping at his store Kith in NYC and on their online store in super limited quantities, making them almost impossible to obtain.

The recent explosion in hype over trainers has resulted in resellers getting hold of rare pairs and selling them on for incredible mark ups.

One of the most sought after collaborations between Ronnie Fieg and Asics is the Salmon Toe.

Salmon Toes were released September 2011 instore, limited to 72 pairs and online in a similar quantity. The shoes were included in a 'collectors edition' which saw the shoes presented in a wooden box, with a Kith x Asics tee and some Kith x Asics dogtags.

The release was a success, despite prior thought as to the shoes not selling, the shoes sold out in minutes and now see resell value from $140 retail, or $200 with the box, sell for up to and over £1000.

2012 saw some release which also reached 'grail' status, such as;

Asics GT-II x Kith NYC 'Rose Gold' March 2nd 2012 release at Kith instore and online in limited quatities as usual. They sold out in seconds for the retail price of $130 and now sell for around £500.

Asics Gel-Lyte 3 x Kith NYC 'Total Eclipse' November 10th 2012 release at Kith instore and online as usual. In seconds they sold out at $145 and resell close to £500.

Other Asics collaborations this year have had huge success and none other than the Uk's finest sneaker store, FootPatrol stands out as much.

FootPatrol and Asics worked together on the Gel Saga model to produce a clean, high quality in both materials and construction, visually pleasing sneaker. The sneaker dropped only instore at FootPatrol in London which saw an exclusive release of 100 in 'collectors edition' wooden boxes, which retailed at £115, and saw ques exceeding the 100 on the morning of release.

The shoes resell for around £3-400, depending on whether the wooden box is owned.

People who buy these shoes, well, hope to own them and wear them are people who are looking for that little something extra when it comes to what sneakers to own and wear. Releases like these collaborations take sometimes years of planning and prototypes before they finally reach the market for that rush of excitement at the store or the disappointment of the 'sold out' sign appearing over the sneakers on the online store, seconds after they were released. The shoes are sold in ridiculously small quantities to make them extremely rare and are constructed by some of the best materials available adding an extra layer of luxury, as does the extras i.e wooden box or a screen printed tote bag, somewhat justifying the price and adventure/ballache to get them.