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Friday, September 23, 2011

Taking the Goth Challenge #1

I realized it's about a month until I hit the one-year anniversary of starting this blog. Also, when the date actually happens, I'm going to be traveling, or at least returning from, Spain! This got me thinking and looking around online, and I decided to play with this little Goth Challenge series of questions started by Juliet's Lace. Let's see how far I get!

#1: How did you come across the subculture?

Me in high school, circa 1986.
All about the Aqua Net!
In high school, circa 1985 or '86, I started listening to indie new wave music on local college radio stations, and this encouraged me to push the boundaries with my wardrobe. More funky thrift-store and vintage clothes and more stuff I sewed or modified myself. Colorful tho, in a punky Cyndi Lauper way.  But a friend gave me cassette tapes of The Cure and The Smiths, which I absolutely madly fell in love with. That connected immediately with my dark inner self.

At school, there were two girls who were trying to look goth (which everyone called "alternative" or "mod" then; I didn't hear the word "goth" or "gothic" until college). They dyed their hair black, wore lots of black eyeliner, and wore black clothes. However, they were spoiled rich girls, and their clothes were all designer black clothes and expensive leather boots, plus they both had fancy sportscars. Our school was on the border between a very wealthy suburb and a much more average, middle-to-lower-middle-class suburb. All very "Pretty in Pink."

So my punky friends didn't want to associate with those rich bitches, and while we loved the dark music, we cultivated our brightly colored, rag-tag, vintagey styles as a contrast to their sleek, designer, all-black look.

Soon enough, tho', I went away to college (a mere hour's drive away), where I discovered a fabulous little cafe right off campus where all the town's goths and punks seemed to hang out. Real, everyday goths, not ones who bought it from a boutique. So I could wear vintage black velvet as well as vintage pink chiffon with no problems ;-)
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 23, 2011 at 11:04 AM

    I love goth stories from the 80's as a form of comparison, because those were my school days. We called the alternative kids "whammers," which makes me laugh now, because apparently we were the only school to do that, even in our own area. Have no idea where that came from. LOL I wasn't a whammer, though. Didn't get into the subculture until the last few years (for various reasons), but always felt the tug of it, even then. =)

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  2. Trystan L. BassSeptember 26, 2011 at 3:26 PM

    It's so funny all the subculture terms that floated around in the '80s & early '90s! My friends & my husband all heard different ones than I knew, depending on where they grew up & exactly what year.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2011 at 9:55 PM

    Picture it: Campbell, CA, circa 1985 in a blue Datsun B210. Window down, Squeeze in the cassette player and a can of AquaNet spraying from outside the window.

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