It was one of those nights that the sky was clear and the stars were visible. I had just defeated the stress of finals and was now ready to be back in action; the late night activity of the San Francisco underground scene was calling my name. It is where a person could go and walk down one street and probably visit at least 30 clubs by doing this. There was a particular flavor I was in search of this night, something that could make me exert my body to its fullest extent. I needed to go and release some stress by dancing at a club, I needed to let loose.
When my friends Mike, Christina and I arrived in San Francisco our first destination was the Cat Club. It was a seedy little place hosted the break beat and jungle music. It wasn’t much to look at it, with its dark entrance and several vagrants sleeping in the street near the entrance. A different crowd hung out there. It was a mixture of old dance party burnouts and very young ambitious club-goers. I felt confident though, I was going to go in there and knock the crowd’s socks off. I was in my best fits (outfit); I was wearing my black old school Adidas running suit with white stripes, and a black Kangol hat. The Adidas Superstar shoes that I was wearing had my white fat laces in them, to add a little flavor, but the shoes themselves looked almost war torn; they were scared from many other late nights.
As the line moved forward closer to the entrance of the club, I could feel the pulsating vibes of the music like a gust of wind every time the door was opened to allow other patrons into the club. It sounded wild in there, I was outside and I wanted to be in there so bad. Just the sound of the music and feeling of the vibration was making me more anxious then ever. I felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas. I needed to be inside, on the dance floor, just it and me. I was going to dance tonight. Suddenly, the line had stopped. What was going on? This couldn’t be happening I needed to be inside; I needed to feel weightless and sweaty from some fast paced break dancing. My legs were jittery with anticipation.
Ten minutes after lining up, I went inside the nightclub. From the door, I could hear the song and the beat of the bass so loud that my heart could feel it. Inside the nightclub, I saw people were dancing everywhere, on dancing floor, on their own seats, everywhere. They would dance and take a big gulp of their beer. Even the bartenders were dancing too, following the rhythm of the loud funky music. The rainbow rays of light moved through the club to make the mood even more exciting and funky.
Diversi, M. (2006). Street Kids In Nikes: In Search Of Humanization Through The Culture Of Consumption. Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 6(3), 370-390.
In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.
Echo Park, one of Los Angeles’s most well-known neighborhoods, was once associated with gang violence in the 80’s and 90’s. The crime rate in the area was to the point that many people would not dare being caught walking out after dark. Nowadays, people do not fear walking in the streets of Echo Park after dark. This new sense of safety in Echo park can be contributed to its nightlife scene characterized by Indie music venues and trendy bars. You may ask yourself how this change came about?
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
“I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Why would I do a thing like that?” she said.
In almost all instances that I have been ‘out’, either to a party, club, braai or any other social event, women are wearing sexualising clothing. Sexualizing clothing, for the purpose of this essay, is defined as clothing that reveals or emphasizes a sexualized body part; and has characteristics associated with sexiness and/or sexually suggestive writing (Goodin et al., 2011: 1). This reminds me of my first night out. It was my twentieth birthday and my friends decided to give me my first nightclub experience. I must say I was very much experienced, because clubbing was something one only read about or watched on television. It was autumn and the weather had stared to get a little bit cold, so I decided to add another (thin) layer of clothing. When we got to the club it felt like we were Eskimos, mostly me because my friends were on the notion that ‘it gets hot in the club (with all the movement and talking) and that an additional layer was unnecessary’. What I found to be unfortunate, about the experience is how the different sexes dressed. Yes, it was ‘hot’ in the club, but a lot of young women went overboard with respects to the amount of material worn. In that regard, I argue that women’s attractiveness, according to the social standards of ‘the night life’, is determined by sexualised clothing and also on the number of sexual advances made towards them in a single night. Therefore, one
Dance halls were growing increasingly popular, on average, most people attended at least once a week. Twenty-five percent of San Francisco youths regularly attended their local halls, according to American Mercury magazine. Admission ranged from fifty cents to dollar and a half (McCutcheon 217). Many times women would supervise so that the proper rules of dancing were overlooked. Proper dance rules were that the p...
Kate's family had rented out a ballroom in a neighborhood country club, and we intended to dance the night away. As I approached the scene, disco lights streamed through the large windows and ran all over the lawn. Music enveloped the parking lot as my adrenaline began to elevate. I sauntered in, waving to my friend...
van Elteren, Mel. “The subculture of the Beats: a sociological revisit.” Journal of American Culture, Fall 1999, v 22, i3, pg 71.
So began my two-year ethnography on the American rave subculture. The scene described above was my initiation into the underground subculture where rave kids, typically under twenty-one years old, are given secret invitations to attend private warehouse parties with dancing, drugs, and thousands of their closest friends. Because of my youthful and unorthodox appearance, I was invited to join the then-highly-exclusive underground scene and attended numerous raves in several major cities in North Carolina. Although my chosen subculture was not typically examined by academia, I conducted an academic ethnography of what Maton (1993) describes as a "group whose world views, values and practices diverge from mainstream North American and social science cultures" (747). As a result, I received three graduate credit hours for "supervised research in ethnography" and conducted what may be the only academic ethnography on raves.
Dowd, Vincent. “How 80’s Club Culture Came to the Catwalk” BBC News. BBC, 10 July 2013. Web. 14 October 2013
Abruptly, a silent signal sent the entire assembly to the benches. Pairs of dexterous hands laced up skates as quickly as possible, while other hands aided in conversation that only the listener was allowed to hear. I was struck by the intimacy of this scene. They all knew each other well. They had come together in the freedom of this one place to share and explore without the encumbrance of parents, teachers, or any other meddlesome adult. I sat bolt upright, feeling very much like someone who had accidentally stumbled into a room full of naked people.
Morgan, Bill. The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour. San Francisco: City Lights, 2003. Print.
There was a girl named Kandy, she was 15 years old. Her life was extremely boring, all she ever did was go to school, go on her computer, eat and sleep. She spent all summer on her computer. She was really good with HTML and spent her free time making web sites. Kandy didn't have many friends and rarely talked to guys because she was shy and unconfident about her looks. That's why she went into chat rooms. She made a web site with pictures of herself on it and told people in chat rooms to go there. A lot of people would tell her how pretty she was and some would say she was ugly. That made her feel awful. When anyone would say anything nice to her, she wouldn't believe them and think that they were just making fun of her. She only had one real friend that she could talk to, her name was Ang.