Buying In - (Page 33) buying in 33 influences have been, according to the catalog, “skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion, and independent music.” Clearly, this was no gathering of drones in gray flannel suits. On the other hand, it was certainly a gathering. You could call it a subculture. Or a scene. Or perhaps you could even call it a community. Because here is what the individualistic stereotype misses about skateboarding: It is not only an individual sport, it is also something that people do together. Even the outlaw Zephyr crowd drew tremendous strength from a collective identity. Ed Templeton didn’t sign up with a corporation or a neighborhood improvement association. But he did become part of something larger than himself. “Somehow the punker kids were the only ones who accepted me into their group,” he recalled. “These outcast kids. And they skated. They had their skateboards, and they were the only ones who would say, ‘What’s up?’ to me. And the next thing you know, I’m a punker, out of nowhere.” Skate culture is not an isolated case of individuals who, as a result of feeling marginalized by mainstream culture, form a new social group, bound together in part through recognizable visual symbols. The influential 1979 book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, by Dick Hebdige, deconstructed punks, mods, teddy boys, and others. Hebdige called them “spectacular subcultures,” and his observations apply to any number of subsequently studied groups, from Goths to b-boys to riot grrrls. Communicating “significant difference,” as well as group identity, Hebdige wrote, “is the ‘point’ behind the style of all spectacular subcultures.” Templeton continued: “I started skateboarding, and that in essence was the saving thing. Had I not found that and took
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