There Was a Riot in the Streets tell me Where Were You?

Photo by Phil Parmet

April 29, 1992 the city of Angels was on fire. As we passed the 20 year anniversary of that yesterday, it's strange to look on Los Angeles today, a city which arguably more than almost any other in America is the greatest mixing pot of cultures, walks of life, beliefs, livelihoods, ambitions and, yes, races. We have a Little Armenia, for fuck's sake. Who else can claim that?

Those riots, for those of you who don't remember them or just remember catching a news flash or for whom the riots are little more than another historical event you'd heard of but didn't experience, akin to the Vietnam war protests or the invention of color television, were the last great violent rebellion of the modern American era.

These riots were in response to the LAPD beating the shit out of a black drunk driver named Rodney King. King had been driving well over the speed limit and, afraid of the fact that a DUI would violate his probation for a recent robbery, King had led the cops on a chase. When they finally got him out of the car they swarmed him to throw on handcuffs. He jumped up, even hit one and that was when they tazed him. At that moment a bystander began filming as the cops, with their man down and jolting with electricity, unleashed a savage attack with boots and batons that sent him to the hospital. King filed charges of negligence based on the ground that he'd ended up with multiple skull fractures, a couple broken bones, and brain damage. The four cops involved in the incident were charged with excessive force and assault with a deadly weapon and all were acquitted. It was this acquittal that sent the streets blazing.

Yes King was by all accounts a ne'er-do-well and, yes, he was driving at almost twice the legal BAC limit and would have probably gone to jail for this probation violation and, yes, he had resisted arrest. But the response of the police was not only an example of representatives of the government abusing their power over the people they were supposed to "protect and serve", it was yet another example of the racial and social inequality plaguing this sprawlingly diverse city - if it was a crowd of black cops beating on some white Hollywood deviant those cops would've been fired, charged, and possibly incarcerated, so was the sentiment.

The poor and the black and the disenfranchised of Los Angeles lashed back with the only thing they knew to use to get anybody's attention - after unsuccessfully trying to do it the right way, via a system they already suspected was rigged, they used the one tool of the proletariat as old as class systems - violence. The riots lasted 6 days with approximately 54-68 deaths and countless theft, destruction, and general chaos left in its wake. What had started as a racial thing had grown to include all the angry, all the wasted, everybody who'd ever been a victim of this corrupt city and its corrupt police department at the height of its morally bankrupt apocheir. Just harken to Sublime's recap of the riots APRIL 29, 1992: "They said it was for the black man, said it was for the mexican but not for the white man but if you looked on the streets, it wasn't about Rodney King, or this fucked up situation or these fucked up police; it's about running up, and staying on top, and screaming 187 on a motherfucking cop." Then Bradley Nowell went on to detail all the shit he and his band stole as they joined in the looting. Just look at this gallery, put up by the Baltimore Sun. The city burnt and, much like the wildfires are a natural part of the Los Angeles hills, mother nature's way to destroy all the old mesquite and palms and brambles and chaparral of the desert foothills surrounding L.A., perhaps this had to happen to make way for a new future in this city.

New York City used to have the reputation as the most diverse city in the country. But as rents have risen and the streets are cleaned, the lower classes (meaning as well disproportionately large amounts of minorities) are increasingly bussed in from Queens, the Bronx, and further out on Long Island. South Central is about 6 miles from Beverly Hills as the crow flies. San Francisco has always been too small to be properly diverse, its racial communities more like appetizers than full entrees reflecting all the colors of the spectrum, though of course the Golden Gate city has its bread and butter when it comes to the rainbows of its Castro district. Detroit was white with black minorities, then they had race riots in the 60's and became black with white minorities (thanks to the city's great white flight). Chicago is too insulated from the coasts to attract the high number of immigrants who literally got off a boat and stopped. And from these big starting points the cities get smaller, more regional, and less inviting, then, of people looking to find a large community of likewise people struggling amidst the massive white cloud of America.

And as anybody with actual experience will tell you, the intermingling of races, far from breeding tolerance more often actually fosters tensions and frustrations as people become divided along values and look to create support groups, the most natural being a group based on the undeniable factor of race (you can disagree on politics or child-rearing or even religion but you can't disagree on the solidarity of one's racial identity). Just look at the petri dish that are prison communities, where people often gravitate to racially-determined cliques and gangs. Not to say this is a viable or correct way to live one's life. In fact, these self-imposed segregations are more often based on fears, most of which are unfounded, that people who don't look like us or act like us or believe like us can ever actually like us. Or help us since the only reason for having a community is surrounding yourself with people who can help you both when your chips are down and your chips are up. People don't like people who aren't like them seems to be a generally held (but denied) sentiment. Add to this the factor that L.A., as Axl Rose so succinctly called "the jungle", is a city of 3.8 million people all struggling for their little chunk of this ocean-to-mountains paradise and you have even more incentive for people to dislike each other, the ultimate fire-starter of competition, and thereby it's simplest to revert, again, to the undeniable differences presented by race. As goes the tagline for CRASH, the Oscar-winning Paul Haggis movie about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles, "Moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other." While Rodney king was certainly the spark, this riot had been building for years, just another in the long line of riots that included Watts in 1964 (about Civil Rights) and the Chicano protests of 1970 (in which famed anti-government Chicano reporter Ruben Salazar was killed by a cannister fired by LAPD riot police - it was during the investigation of Salazar's death for a national article that a rising Rolling Stone reporter, on the tails of his successful book about the HELL'S ANGELS, met a fiery Chicano attorney Oscar Acosta and in the middle of writing this article, a process that plunged the writer into paranoia of police execution as he uncovered more and more evidence that Salazar's was a premeditated police assassination, he was sent by Sports Illustrated to write 1000 words on the Mint 400 as a kind of escape from the headiness of this bad mojo. That writer of course was Hunter S. Thompson, Acosta of course became Dr. Gonzo, and that escape from the pressures and fears of the Salazar piece became the basis for FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS). And as such, these fires have brought about a newer Los Angeles but America is far from the post-racial oasis that people had been claiming over the last few years.

The LAPD is the most visibly changed part of the Los Angeles social construct in the post-Rodney-King riot days. Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who had taken the helm in 1978, stepped down 2 months after the riots. With a reputation as a racially-insensitive asshole, according to an LA Times article "he generated controversy with gaffes about Latinos, blacks and Jews, most famously with a remark about blacks faring poorly under police chokeholds because their physiology was different from that of 'normal' people."  Also, per that same article the LAPD has gone from 59% white to 37% (still, with Los Angeles being only 28.7% non-hispanic white that's not fully representative, though it's certainly better than 59%). Though at the same time they still shoot unarmed men in the back and form secret cliques to hunt gangs and whatnot so perhaps there's still some ground to make up.

Rodney King has also changed. From robber and addict to race relations spokesman, pacifist ("Can't we all get along?") hip hop producer (he used part of the $3.8 million he won from the city in a civil suit to start a hip-hop label), and, well, addict (he was on CELEBRITY REHAB WITH DR. DREW last year). He just recently struck a plea deal for yet another DUI.

The city has been rebuilt and possibly for the better as one need only look at many of the crumbling shopping centers and east-side eateries which survived the fires to wonder if perhaps their salvation at the time might be regretted now that the neighbors have nicer buildings and parking lots thanks to insurance money and whatnot.

On the other side, Los Angeles is the "Gang Capital of the Nation" with 450 gangs combining to total 45,000 members. Even more, as certain neighborhoods clean up the violence, gentrification has reverted to its old sinister technique of containment instead of eradication. For example, many children growing up in the gang-ridden neighborhoods of South L.A. (formerly known as "South Central") exhibit symptoms of PTSD and, as pointed out in Stacey Peralta's doc MADE IN AMERICA in spite of being surrounded by the some of the greatest wealth and minds as well as some of the most powerful people in the world, these children are essentially ignored, almost Invisible Children style but in our own backyards. Think this isn't bound to fester into a new generated of disenfranchised youth tired of being on the fringe and having to settle for proximity to an American Dream that will never be theirs?

On my old drive home I used to get a nice taste of Los Angeles. Start in Beverly Hills. Which becomes West Hollywood, driving past the Beverly Center (where you can buy luxury brands and where Akon's protege was shot and killed). Which becomes Hollywood where the shiny becomes slightly less so. Which briefly becomes Hancock Park(ish), nice big tudor homes for the rich folk who want a little history with their overpriced square footage, ending in the Wilshire Country club, a line of demarcation as Beverly Blvd windd through lush rolling greens smelling of fresh grass and dew, springtime year round. After that things smell like burnt metal and concrete and the storefronts appear with Korean letters as I entered Korea Town. Then the sort of no-man's land of the East side, kinda Silverlake as you arc through the strip malls and pupuserias and Korean grocers and Mexican meat markets just south of the uber-hip parts of the Los Feliz - Silverlake - Echo Park triumvirate that hangs from just south of Sunset up the hills to Griffith Park. Then you turn at the giant exterminator building to find yourself on my old hillside apartment in hip Silverlake, where apart from the restaurants and the gay clubs everything is frighteningly caucasian.

Now I live in Hollywood. My neighbors on all sides are of all colors, races, denominations, and walks of life. Including the tranny hookers I pass on my way into my local 7/11 and the crusties backpacking through Cali who sleep in local Delongpre Park. My wife's car's sideview mirrors were busted by a black kid saying he was spurned to bust them (amazingly he was caught by the police) by gang-members shooting at him nearby and, in fact, shells were found where he claimed the shots were coming from. And on the gates to 7-figure H-wood homes can be found tags from one of the local Mexican or Salvadorean or whatever Latino gangs patrol our neighborhood.

My church has masses in English and Spanish. The local music school has black students trying to work in hip hop and white death-metallers and alternakids and goth and all in between. Hollywood boulevard is prowled by whites and blacks and yellows and reds and cafes and browns and pinks and tawny's equally in search of a good time at the many clubs and bars nestled into the black marble and the old stars. When I got stomped at the Roosevelt Hotel it was by a gang of 5 spoiled white boys with one huge black kid and another stringy Latino. As much as I can remember, that is.

When I look out across the national landscape I start to think maybe L.A. is a success story. From Trayvon Martin to the national outcry from racist HUNGER GAMES fans about a character they'd misread as being a cute white girl being portrayed on screen by a cute black girl (which is actually correct, per the novel) America is anything but a post-racial society, despite the media claims otherwise.

While sure, everyday my drive to work is peppered with racist expletives as I navigate through the slow, the indecisive, the distracted and idiotic and inattentive, my insensitive remarks are against all races, including my own. Fucking white drivers are the worst. Never pay attention to shit, always on their cell phone or afraid to punch the goddamn gas to make that left turn. Maybe that's the real lesson to gain from Los Angeles' riots, in which blacks and whites and Chicanos alike burnt the city down and stole new appliances and in which racist cops were kicked out of the positions of power they simply abused - that for America to ever truly be post-racial, the secret is that we have to hate equally. Anger is good and anybody who tells you it's not has probably never really cared about anything.

20 years later most of the people weighing in on an extensive LA Times piece seem to think the city is better for the riots. It took this explosion from the bottom to shake things up, to rebuild a city still languishing from its soulless 80's (see LESS THAN ZERO) into what today is - well it's still a rodent but where it used to be a rat at least now it's a weasel. On its way to being a capybara. Perhaps that's the other part of the lesson, the old Vietnam adage about destroying a city to save it. Not that this should be a call to arms. But like that brilliantly catchy Fun song goes "Tonight we are young, so let's set the world on fire, we can grow brighter, than the sun."

Set the world on fire. Hate equally. And while we're at it, let's try and do one better and maybe get a shrink in to see those fucked up kids in South Central. Join me in the glow of the new and improved (but still pretty fucked up) America. Let's stop aiming for utopia. I'd settle for a place where the cops are shook up into at least a semblance of non-corruption every other year, where racial differences are little more than a way to frame jokes about a person, and where every couple years, like the wildfires of the Angeles Forest, the old rotting infrastructure is burnt down to make way for the new.

Happy 20th year anniversary, Rodney King Riots. Savor it now. Because nobody will remember you when you turn 30. We Americans have a frighteningly short memory.

God bless.

- Ryan

Water Much Thicker Than Blood: Teahupoo CODE RED

So everybody has heard about the North Shore of Hawaii, Waimea and Pipeline. Maybe you've even driven your car there on a family vacation, sat on the beach with thousands of other tourists and videographers and mid-level bros and local Hui and all and watched. Actually that's not right - Da Hui wouldn't be seen on the beach with haoles like yourself, dey have dey own spot cuz. Or dey in da surf.

But anyway, so Waimea's got all the glory. And all things considered it's worthy of that acclaim, a big burly wave that can crush you; Pipeline even more so with its hollow punishment and the reef below. But for the best of the best, these waves have come to be little more than average beach break would be for mere mortals like us. Pipe and Waimea still pack a punch but a mixture of the crowds and the intensity and the general knowledge of the break are almost blase. These monsters have been replaced by other monster wave spots, a lot of which you gotta tow-in to ride. Spots like Maverick's in NorCal with its rocky boneyard below. Or Todos Santos down off Mexico. And of course Jaws in Maui, though that's getting to be more of a scene than the true hardcore want. But don't worried, there exists a wave heavier, bigger, more monstrous, and more challenging than all those other spots. And the fact that anybody who isn't one of the best surfers in the world will most likely die on this wave keeps the crowds down. I'm talking about Teahupoo (pronounced "TCHO-poo") in Tahiti, the heaviest, meanest, most god-awfully gnarly spit in all the world. And our good friends at Billabong were nice enough to film a massive swell that rolled through with quick shots back to the brave and stout bastards who fought the titan. As the clip goes:

"On August 27, 2011, the Billabong Pro Tahiti event on surfing's World Tour was placed on hold due to a massive swell bearing down on the famed big-wave spot, Teahupoo. With forecasts calling for unprecedented surf, some of the greatest surfers in the world descended on the island to be in the water, despite a "Code Red" called by the Tahitian Coast Guard, which sought to keep everyone on shore. See the historic day through the eyes of two surfers -- the young gun Laurie Towner and the veteran Dylan Longbottom -- as they catch some of the biggest, most dangerous surf ever recorded, much of it captured with the super slow motion Phantom Camera for never-before-seen imagery."

Billabong CODE RED movie. Here and below.

 Enjoy. Happy Friday.

- Ryan

How to Summit Everest From the Safety of Your iPad

Mt. Everest aka Chomolungma aka Sagarmatha

My brother first suggested I read INTO THIN AIR two summers ago. I’d read Krakauer’s other famous book INTO THE WILD, on which the eponymous movie was based, both of which (the book and the movie) are all-time favorites of mine as they illuminate and extol the virtues, risks, and downright stupidity inherent in the quest for adventure and for testing the human body and spirit. And so I devoured INTO THIN AIR, a travelogue about the deadliest trip to the summit of Everest, which Krakauer was a part of as reporter for OUTSIDE magazine, and revolved around the same themes as INTO THE WILD but approached them from a different direction – this time it was about man at his most equipped and prepared fighting nature at its most powerful and unpredictable (while INTO THE WILD was about a vulnerable, idealistic youth trying to align himself via solitary struggle with a nature that, as he realizes, doesn’t care that he means it no harm). 

In the end they’re both about testing one’s self. And as such, there’s no more famous test of one’s strength and convictions than a push for the summit of Everest. Sure, K2, the second highest mountain in the Himalayas (and thus the world), is considered more difficult of an ascent than Everest. But Everest is the tallest, #1, the pinnacle of the world and as we’re suckers for the biggest and the best there’s ingrained in us all a certain respect and appreciation for those brave men and women who attempt it, respect given in spite of the assistance they receive from sherpas and guides and thanks to top gear not readily available to most and certainly not to the ones who came before.  It was about Everest that George Mallory, when asked about why he strives to summit it, responded “Because it’s there”.

It was a combination of reading this book and watching Jeremy Jones’ DEEPER that first motivated myself to pull together a hike to the summit of Mt. Whitney. Mt. Whitney, which at 14,505 feet is still less than half the height of Everest. Though at 14,505 feet it’s at least the tallest on the continental U.S.  In preparation myself, my wife, and author Steven John ran, lifted weights, and hiked as much as possible throughout all the trails we’re blessed to be surrounded by here in Los Angeles. Elsewhere brother Kyle hiked the mountains and trails around Barcelona, including Tibidabo, and madman Brendan Schenning rambled about Negro Mountain and hiked through Goucher College. 

Come time to climb we all made it (though Brenny, in classic Brenny style, nearly died). Regardless of how small our mountain was in comparison to the big ones, how un-technical (though there was a fair share of snowbound navigation and the push to trail crest involved crampons and ice-axes up a 45-55 degree pitch with 800 feet or so of rise), from this simple venture was born a new passion. The climb – the simple act of putting one foot and, when necessary, one arm before the other, of pushing on in spite of the lack of oxygen in your lungs or your sore legs, far from the sounds of our encroaching unnatural society – is almost as rewarding as that feeling of success, of assurance of the indomitable spirit and unflagging strength brought on by the view from the top, surveying like kings the horizon spread out below you.  

The other day, while on a quick hike up Mt. Lukens training for a Mt. Rainier climb in August, Steve and I discussed  Everest, both of us agreeing that, unless something massive changes in both of our lives, neither of us will probably ever climb Sagarmatha. The combination of cost – averaging about $60k per person after paying all government fees and for the guide teams and all – and time (a month at least, necessary to stop and spend enough time acclimating at each altitude level) – and the simple fact that neither of us feels that the summit would be worth the very real jeopardy of life inherent in an Everest summit climb means that most likely we will never view the world from its tallest point. Not that, even as I write it there isn’t a tinge of desire to say “fuck it”, put in some major fundraising, fly to Nepal, and go for it. Not that I’m against people climbing Everest – I just have a lot of other things I'd rather do instead, sure enough.

That being said, now I can at least get a taste of the journey thanks to the good adventurers at National Geographic. In fact, not only will I get a taste of going up the main Southeast route, a well-traversed summit run that’ll probably someday have a fucking gondola to the top it’s so damn popular, but also of the rarely-climbed West ridge, which wasn’t successfully ascended until 1979 (versus the Southeast route, first summited in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay)

These two hikes, sponsored by North Face, Nat Geo, Montana State and with staff from the Mayo Clinic, will be sending real time updates back to NationalGeographic.com/everest and, for those of you with iPads and all that technological connectivity hunger, you get special exclusive features and info beamed to you daily (ya bastards). They're even instagramming from the top of the world, for fuck's sake. Everything you wanted to know about Everest, even if you didn't realize you wanted to know it, is on this damn site , including how it feels at that moment to be there. You can feel the disorientation, the electricity in the air, the excitement at showering in outdoor tents and suntanning in zero-degree weather. The sense of purpose and thrill and fear (there's already been a death and this only started a week ago) shared by the teams, both the 3 man team going up the Western Ridge and the larger group of North Face athletes and doctors tackling the Southeast Ridge looking to study the effects of high altitude on the team-members hearts under the idea that the lack of oxygen and necessity of their hearts to pump harder mimics the acts of a clogged or failing heart.

"We are interested in some of the parallels between high altitude physiology and heart failure physiology," Dr. Bruce Johnson, the team leader, told The Associated Press. 

Everest West Ridge

The 3-man team up the Western Ridge, on the other hand is more like the rockstar squad. A leader (Conrad Anker, the legendary climber who found George Mallory's remains in 1999, almost 75 years after Mallory first disappeared), photog Cory Richards (the first American to summit a peak over 24,000 feet in Winter), and writer Mark Jenkins (who had an unsuccessful push up the Southeast route in 1986 and about mountains says “I am not one of those who believes mountaineering  to be a noble endeavor. It is not. To attempt Everest, for me, is to be at play, with friends, on the most iconic mountain on Earth.”) from Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming, respectively. 

So next time you're whining about how tough it is getting this meeting set or how you hate having to push drinks or wanna complain about how sore you are from your long run - or just need to get the fuck out of your desk, out of your house, out of your comfort zone, away from our sedentary lives, take heart. For the first time ever you can experience the climb of the world's tallest mountain second hand but in real time. You can get a taste of the extraordinary as it happens. And maybe, just maybe, it'll awaken that part of you that cried out for adventure but you didn't listen - maybe this site will remind you that this great world is full of adventure and exploration and that we don't have to accept it as a boring routine of home to desk to gym to bar to home again. 

At the least it's better than most of the other trash you're wasting your time online reading, like this blog, for example, right?

Motivate yourself to greatness by watching others achieve it step by step. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/everest

- Ryan

How to be a True Involved Sports Fan

 

For lack of a better word, I’m an idiot. I've decided to inflict self-induced pain on myself in order to pretend I’m still an "athlete". On July 8^th, I will be throwing reason out the door and running the NYC Triathlon. Thanks to coaxing from my roommate, I registered without knowing what this entailed but yesterday I decided it would be best to check out the fitness mountain I am trying to summit. It's an Olympic style triathlon which entails a 1500 meter swim (about a mile), a 40k bike, and a 10k run. This is insanity. I now know what to expect and it's going to be terrible. I didn’t really enjoy the after affects from my half-marathon, but what better motivation is there for someone to get in shape besides pain, injury, and even potential death? I know the third is a bit dramatic, but NYC during the summer is no fucking joke.

 

The one great aspect is that I'm running as a humanitarian as I am also fundraising for a great charity. There will be more on this cause in a later article, but the basis behind it is to raise money for playing fields, equipment, and health centers to children who are less fortunate. It’s a great opportunity to do something for someone else besides wasting away in front of a TV where the only the thing I’m giving back to society are my reactions to the newest season of Game of Thrones (Which is awesome, by the way). Now, after signing up and developing a training regimen, I realized I knew as much about fundraising as Peter Angelos knows about running a sports team. After some extensive due diligence, I came across a fucking amazing website, www.involvedFan.com . 

 

In bold letters, this organization explains what it does in 9 words. “The Revolutionary Crowdfunding Site Where FANS Support Professional Athletes”. It  gives people who live and breathe sports a more intimate experience into the industry by allowing us sports addicts to give back to those who shed their blood, sweat, and tears for our enjoyment. Most sports, with the exception of soccer and basketball to a certain degree, are expensive. Besides the obvious expenses for equipment such as helmets, sticks, shoes, clubs, rackets, etc. there are overhead charges that also come into play such as travel, fields, and training. And while a lot of top programs have created a development system where players are not burdened by the financial aspects and can simply focus on training (look at the European futbol leagues developmental programs), there are a lot of aspiring stars who don't have the financial ability to have a chance to compete. InvolvedFan.com provides these up and comers with financial support from the fans who watch the, namely us.

 

What makes this website even more respectable is the financial breakdown that they provide. After researching, you'll get a deep understanding of the economics of what it takes to succeed and it’s pretty fucking steep. As a man who likes to stay in shape, buying extra gym clothes, shoes, a gym membership, reserving a field, and even something as basic as transportation to go hiking can put a hole in my wallet. Imagine if you were striving to make it to the top and it wasn't skill but financial walls that kept you at bay? Even more, it’s not just a few hundred dollars they need but thousands - a practically insurmountable number for many of these aspiring athletes.

 

Besides giving back to those who keep us entertained, a donor would be provided with memorabilia, autographs, private Skype sessions, private lessons, and direct access to these athletes. The website provides a breakdown of the expenses these rising stars endure on their track to success and while currently they only have tennis and golf athletes, it appears involvedfan.com is expanding to other sports ranging from extreme sports and MMA to the Olympics. There's also a section where you can identify a specific athlete and support them even if their sport isn't listed on the site.

 

If you have a little money help an athlete achieve their dreams. Not everyone is like Tiger Woods or Nadal and when you're enjoying watching a Cinderella give every ounce of spirit in a five hour epic tennis match against a top-seeded player who has every training advantage possible, this is a way to thank them for the dedication. And just imagine the feeling of satisfaction you'll get when the underdog you've supported makes it to the top. You'll be more than just an average fan; literally you can say "I was involved in that victory."

Get Involved.

- Kyle

How a Gentleman Goes Up in Smoke

Cigars have been a sign of sophisticated manhood ever since Christopher Columbus discovered American Indians smoking these tobacco-inside-tobacco relaxation aids. Before that, they were simply seen as signs of manhood, sophistication being a worthless ideal to the nobles who lived off the land free from the need to keep up with any sort of Joneses or retire to the study after dinner.

By the 1800's cigars were as integral a part of high society as brandy and powdered wigs. After dinner the women would retire to the room where women play cards and gossip and the men would retire to the study, the den, or some similarly mahogany-appointed room, ideally possessing of a globe, a full bar and massive desk, a sizable book collection, and Winchesters hanging on the wall, and smoke cigars and discuss business or business gossip or women.

In the early days of the American Dream a man attacked the child-birthing process by smoking cigars with other harrowed men in the waiting room while their wives toughed it out their own damn selves. Winston Churchill has a fucking shape of cigar named after him. Hemingway has a brand. Arnold Schwarzenegger was destroying and saving the world while marrying a Kennedy and banging a nanny with a cigar in his mouth. And Bill Clinton - well we all know what happened there. From Tolstoy to Che Guevara, the cigar makes the man. Unlike cigarettes, which are and will always be more like little nerve-tamers, the female version of a cigar (thus the suffix "-ette") a cigar can be smoked every day all day or can be the crowning achievement of some monumental achievement. Who ever heard of a victory cigarette?

As such, a man needs to make sure at all times he has a few cigars in his possession; ideally a box, though less is acceptable depending on frequency and money. And for the most part, I go to local shops, talk to similarly-interested heads and smell to see what I like (The Edge, Gurkha, and Fuentes are my favorites at this moment, though Drew Estate's coffee-infused Tabak cigars are fun for an extra kick). But more and more, as I find myself short on time and money and as I find, especially in Hollywood, my cigar shops increasingly specializing in Phillie blunts and low-end tobacco I need an online source. Enter StogieBoys.

I found 30-dollar cigars for 20 bucks each. Sign up for their deal-of-the-day the Daily Nooner (with requisite hot slim), usually a fatty sampler pak or a discounted box or a humidor combo, and spend hours just pouring through their selection. And they have military discounts, true Americans they are, as well as special deals to follow your football, baseball, and other themes. But all that quality aside, just look at the damn site. When you look at other online cigar shops they look like something thrown together by a couple 10th graders just learning to use Dreamweaver. White backgrounds, bare bones catalogs, bright colors, smiley faces and other sophomoric shit. StogieBoys makes you FEEL like you're at a cigar shoppe, at least as much as you can shopping online. So check it out, buy some cigars, and this weekend, after a good meal, climb up to the rooftop of whatever building you're in, glass of scotch in hand, survey all that surrounds you and with hearty puffs of quality tobacco embrace your inner gentleman. When you take over the world, you're gonna need to celebrate. And if Christopher Columbus is to teach us anything, conquest goes best with a fine cigar.

And if the Native Americans are to teach us anything, so too does manhood.

- Ryan

BONES BRIGADE: The Revolutionary Shows Us the Revolution

LORDS OF DOGTOWN was on the other day and it brought with it nostalgia of my misspent youth, my childhood as a skate punk in Fells Point, with leather gloves with the fingers cut off and my Tony Hawk pro board, the 3^rd he did, the one with a hawk face and a claw talon thing around it and on the top the Powell Peralta skull which I proudly displayed with clear griptape. The board was fat and shaped like a fish with a slight nose and big fat wheels and trucks. I watched movies like H-Street’s SHACKLE ME NOT and Hollywood flicks like GLEAMING THE CUBE (one of the reasons I moved to California) and THRASHIN' but the movie that made the most impact on me as a young skate punk with my rat tail and flipped bang halfway over my right eye was Powell Peralta’s all-time legendary skate flick THE SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN. It combined the best skateboarding of legends of the extreme sports world (Steve Caballero, about whom the maneuver Half-Cab and the Vans Cab and Half-Cab shoes are named; Mike McGill, who invented the McTwist; and a young, awkward-looking lanky little geek named Tony Hawk) with a loose story of searching for a legendary skater. It starts with Stacy Peralta, a skate legend himself, mocking the corporate attitude assailing skateboarding (typified by supermarket brands like Nash). Then these legends charge down the streets of San Francisco in search of the soulful sage Animal Chin, go to a backyard punk party where they skate a small ramp, then a party where RodneyMullen (who invented practically every flip and street trick by himself) charges it, Skip Engblom (the owner of the Zephyr shop who founded the Z-Boyz) is the door man and a punk band incites rebellion. The film culminates in a monster double halfpipe with a portal between the pipes, the true culmination of the dreams and fantasies of every human being who had ever ridden a board for fun before and after (I still haven’t seen a halfpipe half as mind-blowing and just plain cool as that one). Even at this point in my lilfe, with my knowledge of the industry and appreciation for mainstream skating much higher, the only legit skate flick I own is a DVD of SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN I found at a small skate shop in Webster, FL, just outside Pensacola.

So anyway, yeah, LORDS OF DOGTOWN, based on the doc DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYZ, the greatest movie that nobody paid much attention to. Catherine Hardwicke-directed but more like THIRTEEN than that rotten TWILIGHT. Heath Ledger in a performance with enough hints at The Joker to at least show where that character was first born. Emile Hirsch at the height of his popularity. Nikki Reed. Michael Angarano. Sophia Vergara before MODERN FAMILY. Victor Rasuk before CHE, ER, and HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA, Shea Wigham before BOARDWALK EMPIRE, Rebecca de Mornay, even Jeremy Renner’s in this fuckin’ movie (in a blink and you'll miss him role as Jay Adams' manager).  And in an interesting nod, Cheyne Magnusson, son of old-school skate legend and H-Street founder Tony Magnusson, plays one of the Z-Boyz. And all the original Z-Boyz get cameo roles.

But on top of the top-caliber talent and the depiction of possibly the coolest lost cause in skate history, Jay Adams, this movie hits me because it was Peralta’s documentary DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYZ which I first watched living as a semi-flop in San Diego on the dusk of my 2^nd great stint as a SoCal skater/surfer kid,  during a summer when my brother and I, living like Sweet Jane in TRUCKIN’, took some time out of every day to skate in a small strip mall next to the local power plant. Later it served as inspiration to get out and surf everyday as I prepared to leave the beach (little did I know I would return to it in a year or so, current SoCal stint #3). It epitomized everything I’d always loved about these sports – the expression inherent in this individualized athletic endeavor, in general the idea of individual performers instead of a team of parts and counterparts, the idea that skateboarding and surfing weren’t just things you did but in fact they were your whole lifestyle, they were part of who you were - this rang truest in my chest. The Z-Boyz grew up in the last “seaside slums” and for a lot of them this little skateboarding thing was rebellion as much as simply an activity they liked to do surrounded by people they liked to be surrounded by. They broke into houses to ride their empty pools. They weren't skating for anybody but themselves at first and unknowingly started a revolution. These punk kids totally turned the world of skateboarding on its fucking head – the precedent and the apotheosis of punk rock and for the first time uniting 2 things which will forever be entwined, punk music with extreme sports. Which leads to Peralta’s other documentary NO ROOM FOR ROCKSTARS (technically he just produced, didn't direct) about the Warped Tour. But right now let’s focus on Peralta, Z-Boyz, and skateboarding. 

The Z-Boyz epitomized the anger of the youth generation in the wake of the flakey “peace and love” movements that had left behind traces of drug-addled parents who refused to parent and a general disillusionment from society that had seen the summer of love metamorphose into a winter of crystal meth. For all these reasons DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYZ is possibly one of the best cultural documentaries of all time, if not without a question from the last decade. It detailed a revolution, the birth of a new sport, the new music and art coming out then and a version of America after the wave of the 60's had crashed and rolled back.

And appropriately Stacey Peralta was one of the Z-Boyz. He was kinda the geek, the straight-laced worker counter to Tony Alva’s attitude-fueled egotist and Jay Adams’ brooding athletic madman genius. In LORDS OF DOGTOWN they show Adams making fun of Peralta when he says he’s leaving G&S to start his own company. That company he founded with George Powell, creating Powell Peralta, at one point the top skate company in the world and still considered by most with an appreciation of the old-school as the most hallowed. And Peralta hand-picked his team of Hawk and Caballero and McGill and Mullen and Lance Mountain and Tommy Guerrero and Mike Vallely and plenty of others who paved the way for Eric Koston and Danny Way (later on a BONES BRIGADE) and Ryan Sheckler and Shawn White – hell, in some ways they paved the way for all pro boardsports kids and certainly for what extreme videos can be.

While running Powell Peralta, Stacey started experimenting with videography like C.R. Stecyk and Glen E. Friedmann had been doing when Stacey was a Z-Boy coming up. He came up with the idea for the Bones Brigade videos, producing 8 in the 80’s including such groundbreaking sk8 flicks as FUTURE PRIMITIVE, PUBLIC DOMAIN, BAN THIS (a direct comment on the fact that in the 80’s bald-headed squares in bad polyester suits were actually trying to get skateboarding BANNED from the streets of America) and PROPAGANDA, as well as of course ANIMAL CHIN. 

Stacey, ever the worker, had found a new love and left Powell in 1992 to become a TV producer and director, trading his board for a camera and honing his story-telling and production skills.

In the 2000’s, equipped with this new knowledge and skillset, he got together with all the old Z-Boyz, scrounged together a bunch of old footage and photos taken by SoCal luminary photogs C.R. Stecyk and Glen E. Friedmann, threw in a couple other old school skaters for good measure and, like the hero returning to the woods to bestow a gift upon his ignorant world, he delivered DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYZ. He used the popularity and paycheck from this to make RIDING GIANTS, a movie about the evolution of big-wave surfing which turned a lot of heads and was good but nowhere near the Dogtown movie. Maybe it’s because he surfed but was never a big wave surfer (and in LORDS OF DOGTOWN it’s hinted that he was never that good a surfer no matter what size waves) and as such his heart wasn’t as in it. He liked the lifestyle, maybe even loved it but it wasn’t in his bloodstream like skating. His third doc in what Peralta was touting as his SoCal trilogy was CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA an eye-opening doc about the evolution of Los Angeles’ deadly street gangs but if his heart wasn’t in RIDING GIANTS, I don’t know what the fuck was in MADE IN AMERICA and it showed. Did any of you ever hear of this flick? EXACTLY.

I saw it premiere downtown during the L.A. Film Festival surrounded by members of L.A. wealthy, influential, and inner city communities and even they were all a little underwhelmed by his over-thought, overly methodical attempt to catalog and explain a phenomenon with which he had very little personal experience. Still worth a view but after I saw it, I gotta admit I was a little worried that Peralta’s film days were over.

And then this year he releases BONES BRIGADE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, premiering at Sundance to critical applause, even from non-skaters, even from people who know Tony Hawk as that guy on those video games and couldn’t tell a McTwist from a kickflip. This is about the birth of what has come to be one of the most omnipresent athletic toys of our generation’s culture, the skateboard. 

I’ll always remember the day I was driving around the rich homes of Seminary Overlook in Baltimore County and saw two kids playing in a cul-de-sac. This is the typical Baltimore suburban vision. But what was different, what made me smile ear to ear was the fact that the two kids weren’t passing around a lacrosse ball. They were skateboarding off a shitty little plastic ramp. And they looked like they’d been doing it for hours. And it made me think back to my days getting heckled by blue-bloods and prepsters for skatin’ around town with one earring in my left ear. To see that it was changing, to see that society was finally learning that there’s something out there besides team sports playing with balls and rules and old men trying to make you into what they never were, running around in chalked or taped shapes – to see us moving away from that for the first time in Western athletic history was revolution manifested through sport. 

And to think that one of the original revolutionaries himself – in fact by many accounts THE revolutionary if you look at all the impact he and his teams had on skateboarding in particular and extreme sports in general – not only videotaped most of it but had the ability and the prescience to wind brilliantly-drawn tales of that revolution unfolding – it’s simply astonishing. I can’t think of a single other athlete to do anything even remotely like this. And maybe that’s the real essence – because he’s like nobody else. Because these athletes aren’t like the ones who came before. They’re something completely new. They’re the future. Even these guys in the video, they were so ahead of everybody else that they're still the future. Now.

You like that? Yeah you did. Make sure to check your local listings to see if  BONES BRIGADE's gonna be coming through your town anytime soon. Hell, it'll be better than re-watching KONY again, right?

- Ryan

How BULLY is a Microcosm of America

So last weekend I made my way to a discounted viewing of BULLY, the new documentary that's sparking a revolution in America against schoolyard bullies. What can I say about this movie that hasn't already been said. We all know the gist, that it's about how kids get bullied, how this bullying often leads to severe mental issues and, in some cases, suicide. About how bullying can only get to that level when school administrators and even the community at large, the police and the school board and whatnot, turn a blind eye to the problem. How sometimes teachers and other grown-ups even engage in the bullying, like in the case of a teenage lesbian in Oklahoma. And there are all the other discussions I've heard about the movie. On NPR they talked about how the movie doesn't for a second turn their cameras on the bully to see why they act like that, doesn't follow these mean-spirited youths down their rabbit holes to see the alcoholic father who likes to drink a pint of ripple and slap around his son for kicks or the single mom working 2 jobs who hardly has enough extra energy to get to her bed without passing out much less teach her kids how to be respectful and, y'know, not pick on the weaklings.

I felt for these kids; the poor prematurely-born teen who has a near panic attack on his walk to the school bus on the first day of school, then rides the bus with a bully promising to stab him in the ass with a knife among various and sundry threats on the kid's life. The girl who had to pull out a gun to get the older boys to stop threatening to beat her up and rape her. The salt of the earth kid shown only in remembrances as a hunter who was taught to "be the better man" when bullies picked on him. But I was overwhelmed by a flash flood off other emotions and thoughts, each building on each other in an attempt to make sense of this movie and, even more, figure out what the fuck the directors were trying to do other than shed light on an age-old phenomenon, all bringing me to the final conclusion that bullying is, in fact, as American as apple pie and slavery.

The first vision that kept flashing through my head - all those national Geographic specials that depict a herd of, say, wild elks where they turn on the weakest in the herd. They tear the poor creature apart until and unless he leaves, goes off by himself to live or, more likely, die alone and frightened and wounded. It's a part off Darwinism, thinning the herd to make it stronger. As such it's the key to our evolution as humans.

So how do these pups ever survive? Two ways - they toughen up or their parents stand up for them. And the combination, of course, is that their parents teach them to toughen up.

Like all guys, at points in my life I've been bullied, usually by older kids. I remember getting the shit beaten out of me by a couple teenagers when I was 6 or 7 in Thames Street Park around the corner from where I grew up in Fells Point, Baltimore.  I also remember going to a parent-teacher conference with my parents when I noticed the kids on the street corner who pounded me. And I remember my dad slamming on the brakes as he and my mom jumped out to harangue the poor bastards for a good half hour until the punks were white around the gills, fearing for their lives. They never fucked with me again.

I remember my grandfather, a WWII vet and as such not one to take crap off anyone, teaching me how to throw a punch on the heavy bag in my basement. My father getting me a home gym set to work out when I was just in double digits. My mom never backing down from a fight, whether with an administrator or another parent who she felt was fucking over her kids. And from all of this I became tougher, not just physically but also mentally stronger. When I watched BULLY, what struck me most were these parents who ask their son - who, sadly, looks, talks, and acts like the living definition of the word "geek" and not in the cool Hollywood way - if he likes to be bullied. Why he lets other kids do this to him. Never for a second realizing they shouldn't be making him feel guilty about it, they should be showing him how to stand up for himself and, even more, if necessary how to come back against the bullies. I was reminded of a scrawny punk from Jersey who moved to Reseda and was picked on by a bunch of blond rich kids with dirtbikes who liked to dress up as skeletons. Did he just crumple, let them take him over? No. He became the KARATE KID. I never once felt bad for the parents bewailing their dead or bullied kid because all their moaning and pleading aside, there's one simple fact - they didn't prepare their kids for this harsh, cruel world, to live in a country forged with guns, germs, and steel as Jared Diamond showed us, a country where might makes right is still a chant we use to back up our enforcement of the proliferation of our  idea of what's the correct way to live around the world.

I think of the scene where the parents talk to the principal about the kids beating up their kid on the bus and how cowed they get by this frumpy Lane Lynch villain because she holds some sort of official title. They cry and slink away when she says there's just nothing she can do, a couple cowards too weak to keep the powers in the herd from destroying their eldest son.

So the parents didn't teach their kids to be tough and they didn't step in for their kids against the school administration that doesn't care (shocked! the underfunded American schools with their "No Child Left Behind" mandates and the bus driver paid less than 30k a year to drive a bus full of screaming kids to and from school - both of whom, might I add, are not allowed to discipline kids as they used to - don't have the time or energy to protect your kids) and then wonder why these fragile creatures, the raising of whom falls first on their parents, become the targets of angry, tougher kids? How come these parents aren't taken to task more for poorly preparing their kids?

One guy brought up the idea that there would be a much greater hue and cry if the kid who committed suicide was the son of a politician instead of the admittedly simple man he was. But the son of a politician would never commit suicide. Because his parents would have told him to be strong; would have made sure he was strong, that he stood up to bullies, just like his strong, proud mother or father. And if anybody did start fucking with him and he couldn't handle, his parents would step in to squelch it then and there. Sure, perhaps people would listen to them more because of their title but even without it they wouldn't be in political office if they didn't epitomize American fire and refusal to step down. Which is what the other parents lack.

The movie ends with parents organizing rallys against bullying. And they're attended by all the good kids. Know who don't attend those? The bullies. Because they don't care. Because nobody's gonna stop all the rage they have inside themselves. Nobody's gonna protect them from the bullies who await them at home or the mental bullies in their skulls. So what do you do?

A record settlement was just made on behalf of a kid who was permanently disabled by a bully. He'd had the parental support and prescience to put on record a complaint about the bully a few months before it happened. The school had to pay him $4.2 million dollars. Think that's not gonna send shockwaves through the community? Parents bitching, crying, pleading? Who gives a fuck, send them to private school if you got a problem. Can't afford? Fuck yourself. But when you bring up money, every cash-strapped principal and school superintendent'll be pissing their pants. What's sad is this movie, while well-shot and poignant, won't have half the impact of this lawsuit. Because liberal Hollywood can babble on all they want about what's good and right (did BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE stop Florida from passing laws that led George Zimmerman to kill an unarmed 17-year-old?), all that matters is force, whether physical or, increasingly, legal - America, the land of lawsuits.

But don't misconstrue, I'm not blaming the victims. I'm blaming their parents a bit, sure, but I know and will state the bullies are the main problem. And something has to be done about these bullies. But where do they come from? How do they become monsters in this utopian dream of democracy and capitalism? On to the final point. America is a land of bullies.

I'm a bully. I am. I went to high school amongst movers and shakers in Baltimore with tendrils to both D.C. and NYC. I went to college amongst similar on the West Coast and currently live in Hollywood and work in Beverly Hills. I watch arthouse movies and read literature and the Wall Street Journal and admittedly have a negative impression of most of the places depicted in BULLY as backwoods flyover states - as in we fly over them to get to the real places. Our American culture is based upon the aggrandizement of people like me, working intellectual jobs in major metropolises. Look at any and every Hollywood movie.

From the Occupy angle, look at the 1% - Wall Street could be seen as a bully of every day Americans, using their power and size to bend companies, wealth, job markets, hell the whole country to their will. But we see those rich folks with yachts and islands and mansions as gods, great golden idols. Let's admit it, folks - Metropolitan America looks down on the the lesbian-hating bible thumping Okies, always have, and they know it. We make fun of rednecks and families living in trailer parks.

A lot of these families are farmers, rural communities and whatnot. Farmers have been bullied. It's almost impossible to run a sustainable small farm anymore - you either have to sell out to a McDonald's or a supermarket chain or some other mass-market food firm or at least adopt their high-volume (by many accounts reprehensible) approach to raising mass-produced livestock or watch as the ones who give in to the big conglomerates run you out of business. Capitalism has a lot of elements of bullying - Bill Gates bullied plenty of smaller competitors out of the business as he made Microsoft into the neo-monopoly it is. Burton bullies snowboard shops by requiring them to purchase more Burton merchandise every year or risk losing the right to be a Burton dealer. Fraternity hazing is a form of bullying. American imperialism, essentially one of the grandest tenets of our national foreign policy, is international bullying.

Let's look at American history - Europeans first bullied the Indians out of this land, British bullied the Africans into slavery, then Americans bullied the Mexicans out of the West. America's a big bully.

So what's the solution? Yes, we would like to believe we have evolved past all that, that we're no longer a country that awards bullies but that's not true. South Park posited that everybody is a bully and in turn has a bully. For fuck's sake our government has a bully pulpit. So we've got a lot to work against but all other points aside, no child should feel so helpless and beaten down that he or she kills him or herself. It is a tragedy, absolutely and inexcusably.

But like the drug war won't ever be won by using force and law to stop the suppliers (ever heard of the balloon effect?), we gotta start with the bullies' twisted little heads. Wanna know a documentary I want to see? One that follows the bullies home to the fucked up homelife that makes him or her into the schoolyard psychopath preying on the weak and then calls child protective services on the parents and gets the kid in therapy. But this would lead to expensive social services which are already on the chopping block from every Tea-partier and rhetoric-repeating right wing person. And perhaps they're right - we shouldn't be responsible for fixing this person's life. Sorry but we're all responsible for ourselves and so let's give up on the bully. So do we make bullying into a crime? Send these kids to juvie? Jail for manslaughter if they bully a kid into suicide? The national average is about $29k (double that in California) per prisoner. Wouldn't that money be better spent on fixing their heads than caging them up for a year or two? And where do you draw the line - at the ringleader, most likely the most fucked up of them all, or does it extend to the followers who needle the poor victim, maybe send him or her suicide-encouraging Facebook messages?

Alright, so now let's go to the victim side. How do you force parents to teach their kids to fight back? How do you force the parents to fight back? People have a right to be pacifists and, hell, Jesus turned the other cheek. How does a parent even know when and where they should tell their kids to stand up for themselves since, in the grand scheme of things, they have so many other issues keeping them down - again, most of the people whose kids were getting bullied (and probably whose kids were the bullies too) seemed to be salt of the earth folks who've probably felt somewhat oppressed themselves their whole lives - "I don't look nothin' like those beautiful folks on the cover a' PEOPLE magazine" - so what do you do with that? Incite rebellion, uprising of the rural proletariat? Occupy's trying to start a revolution of the economically disenfranchised but just like this movie BULLY, they're making noise but seem loathe to posit a real solution, make a proposal. Because here's what it comes down to - the problem with the economy is more than just a few guys making money by manipulating regulators and the government. The problem with school bullies is more than just a couple disenfranchised or overblown pricks demeaning the weaker in the pack. There's something seriously wrong with the whole system, with the way things are now.

So in the movie they start a rally. And they call attention to bullying. And it becomes this big thing, celebrities tell kids to stop bullying and schools crack down on bullying and let's say we get the message across. For a few years, maybe even a generation kids stop bullying. But we as a people have a short memory. And there's always something wrong - maybe in a decade and a half an epidemic of impressionable misfits decide to make live videos of themselves committing suicide and suddenly we have to direct all our attention to convincing kids to stop doing that. And even more, as long as the underlying problems - the paradigm of big political, economic, and cultural bullies being put on pedestals as well as the constant attack on funding for social programs for the poor and disenfranchised - go untreated, all this hoopla and these rallies and videos (even the $4.2M lawsuit will someday fade into obscurity or a new law will be snuck in absolving schools of bully-prevention requirements when everybody's decided to zero in on the suicide video crisis) will serve as little more than window dressing. We gotta change the store. Because as it stands, BULLY, while well-intentioned and in some ways eye-opening, rather than pointing out a new crisis or offering a legitimate solution simply points out another symptom of a much deeper problem within our society. We're all bullies and we have been for a long time. What, you gonna tell me different? Yeah right, pussy.

- Ryan