Alternative Culture, Gringo Style

I went to a Black Sabbath reunion tour concert in San Jose, CA about six years ago or so (2000). At the time I was working for an Internet company in the bay area, not really doing anything worthwhile, but they paid me more than I had ever earned before and I only had to go to work from around 10-3 every day, including my lunch breaks which were up to about 2 hours by the time I left.

These guys I went with were all "crusty" punks from Oakland and Berkeley. The kind with black clothes, music with screeching screaming guys over heavy, dark and fast guitars. The kind you can't understand what they are saying, but it doesn't really matter. These guys all had dreadlocks (E-40 stole that style I think, for his hyphy movement) and they smelled pretty bad. We all went from Oakland to San Jose in someone's tiny jeep with about six of us. One guy sat in the trunk-thing in the back, four of us crammed into the back seat, and the two in front. One dude with long dreadlocks had to sit on my lap pretty much. He had a boombox with him and a tape of his new band, the fick-killing-shitebangers or something.

In any case.... a bunch of people had rented a motel room in San Jose to stay the night and after the concert everyone decided that it was our room that was party time room.

That meant that it was crowded with these jack-offs. I mean jack-offs in a general sense, of course. Several of them worked at a Berkeley based vibrator factory called "good vibrations" and much of the conversation revolved around their jobs. One guy wanted to get a job there. The other guy talked a million miles a minute about the job. Yeah yeah yeah dildos and vibrators, how alternative.

The guy went on though, about the job position, how you worked under a union contract, under some hippy ass thing, and everyone was a worker/owner of the company somehow. He was going on about how he made like $11 an hour, but after a certain period it would go up, then maybe, because he already was one, maybe the new guy could have a shot at being a floor manager eventually, which would mean he would make #$@! amount of money and have all kinds of benefits. Then he outlined the company's benefits, outlined the career track of a vibrator factory worker, outlined all the business-end type stuff of the deal.

This went on for literally hours.

I felt like I was at a job fair in Ohio State. There was nothing I could learn from these people about their "sub-culture" other than that it wasn't sub-anything. It was more of the same.

I remember one German punk rock girl who used to hang around in Berkeley. She was fully confused about everything because all the US punks talked about jobs and crap. She lived in a squat in Germany and used to go firebombing skinheads and fighting to overthrow capitalism.

She was a jackass too, don't get me wrong. But it was different.

Thank you.