12.8.05
Pond Scum: A Beard Stripped Bare by the Fatuous, Even
By Steve Finbow
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I’m sitting in the Verb café on Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, drinking an Americano while reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing, the final book in his excellent Border Trilogy. I’m wearing black and white Converse Chuck Taylor high-top All Stars, beat-up Lee jeans with two-inch turn-ups, a blue with paler blue and red polka-dot Paul Smith shirt under a Calvin Klein black V-neck sweater, and a black velvet blazer. So far, so American Psycho. Socks – black. Underwear – I’ll keep you guessing but, trust me, they do not have Barney the purple dinosaur emblazoned on them, nor do they act as bum floss.
By Nicholas Allanach
It’s 8:30am: the Verb’s clientele at this time of the day is a mix of young people on their way to Manhattan, students, and workers from the stores lining the avenue. I take a break from reading and look up. It’s like an explosion in a Walt Whitman factory. Most of the men have beards: I see doorknockers, Shenandoahs, French forks, goatees, chin curtains, Franz-Josephs, Norris Skippers, Balbos, Van Dykes, and even an A la Souvarov. I do not see an Old Dutch, a Lincolnic, or a chin curtain, but if I stayed for a few more hours I’m sure they would appear. The women are just as bad – only kidding. As an accompaniment to the beard, most men wear glasses – what we Brits would call National Health glasses – thick black frames, the type Morrissey of The Smiths used to wear in the 80s. To cap off the look, headwear seemed to be all the rage – beanies, Colonel Blake-style fishing hats sans flies, and Raoul Duke/Gonzo sun hats.
I think I dress well. I’m not a slave to magazine or season – a bit of my own style, mixed with things I’ve seen on the street. Yeah, I wear labels but I mix and match – Prada with ripped and ragged jeans, suit trousers with trainers, combat trousers with knitwear. Shoes: I must admit an addiction to trainers (sneakers) – Adidas, Puma, and Converse. I’ve never liked Nike or Reebok. I used to sport a goatee. I think mine was a petit goatee or a modified goatee. During one spectacular fashion-disaster trip to Barcelona, I grew my goatee about six-inches long and then divided it into two strands, plaited the strands and tied them with different-colour cotton – red and blue, if I remember correctly. I had a number-one crop, and wore a Tintin T-shirt, with shorts and Doc Martens. My girlfriend at the time walked several paces behind me (not because she was Muslim – although she was), but because she was embarrassed. The beard as worn by Williamsburg men is sort of South London 2002 or Hoxton and Shoreditch 2000. Trends now spread around the world with a speed unknown in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I am alarmed when I see punks in London – they are usually from Eastern Europe and sport massive Mohicans (Mohawks more correctly) – they are as anachronistic as Teddy Boys and Bobbysoxers.
What prompted me to write this – apart from the Brooklyn beards – was an early-morning trip to my local Sainsbury’s to stock up on some food after a Friday/Saturday of debauchery. It’s 9:30 Sunday morning and I’m trying to decide – my mind is not fully functional – between plums and apples. I have a brilliant idea – buy both. I look up and next to me is a Goth nearly seven-feet tall (huge platform boots). He is dressed in black – black leather, black suede, black denim. Four girls all similarly attired but with added black lace and black fishnet trail behind him. I continue to shop and the store continues to fill with Goths until it feels like I am in a Marilyn Manson advert for black cherry yoghurt, black pudding, and chicken in black bean sauce. There is a reason for this – I live near Camden market, which boasts scores of Goth-clothing stalls and shops. But why is it that youth cultures do not disappear completely? And why does an area – be it Williamsburg or Hoxton – contain so many people, claiming to be individual, who dress the same?
Let’s look at two subcultures close to my heart: Beatniks and Punks. The Beatnik style: black beret, goatee, tight black turtlenecks or T-shirts, black slacks, dark glasses, and sandals out of St Germain, Paris, by way of jazz, Sartre and Camus. In the late 70s, I used to carry a copy of Nausea or The Outsider in the back pocket of my Levis. I wonder what the philosophy-conscious youth of today carry with them – Jacques Derriere? Alain de Bottom? But when, seriously, did you ever see any of the Beats dressed that way? Jack wore plaid shirts, Levis, working boots; Neal the same; Burroughs wore suits; Allen wore kaftans. The Punk style – or what we know today as Punk style: Doctor Martens, ripped and zipped jeans, studded belts, studded and stencilled leather jackets, band T-shirts, dyed Mohican hair, spots. Modern Punk style owes more to heavy metal and Goth than it does to Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, Johnny Rotten and The Clash. It’s more a hyper Sid Vicious-look than the handmade, hand-ripped and safety-pinned pure Punk look of 1976. Both subcultures grew out of a desire to be individual, and were a response to an indifferent society, yet both degenerated into clichéd mass absorption.
We proclaim our individuality and our rejection of the system and prevailing culture by buying into a smaller culture that is even more restrictive in terms of dress, art, and morals. Both the Beatnik and Punk movements proclaimed sexual equality and political freedom yet were essentially sexist and reactionary – The Beats’ proclamations of leftist leanings muted by Kerouac’s Republicanism and punk’s shabby and impotent bastard-child of a movement that was Oi! Or as David Bowie would have it: ‘Fashion! Turn to the left / Fashion! Turn to the right.’
Youth movements and subcultures do not die out, they carry with them a whiff of revolution, an odour of rebellion, a tang of revolt, yet a revolution, a rebellion, and a revolt that only reside in collective memory. They are fashion accessories as much as berets, bondage trousers, and shades. Men in Williamsburg wear beards, glasses, and beanies because they want to belong to a hip and happening group of people. Men in Hoxton have silly hair. I wear Converse All Stars in a sad attempt to remain young. We want to be contemporary and different but we live in instant nostalgia. I am reminded of a quote from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. One of the detectives, questioning a motel owner on the whereabouts of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, remarks – ‘She was seventy-four years old but in his opinion looked younger – maybe ten minutes younger.’
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Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2005 Me Three
