Glen E Friedman on BoingBoing
I always thought Xeni Jardin seemed cool with that spiky while hair. Turns out she’s actually a punk rock survivor. She does an interview with Glen Friedman on Boing Boing TV. Looks like Glen Friedman had a show at Shepard Fairey’s gallery in LA. Fairey’s interview last week was pretty great too. I was wondering about the skate photos in the background.
You tube version embedded after the jump.
i read an interview with friedman awhile back where he totally towed the barney party line, saying that street skating and such isn’t “real” skateboarding.
pretty disappointing. fuck you, “hero.”
That is disappointing. Do you have an idea of where you read it?
I think the Barney party line is that transition skating is the eventual outcome of the skateboarding disease.
Works for me.
Everything is street skating -tranny parks represent rarer street forms, street plazas duplicate common street features.
I have personally never come across a pool on the street, but I guess you could call it street skating??
I don’t recall women being represented in “fuck you heros”. I guess punk women and women who skate arnt as important as rebels like Ice-T.
maybe the book should have been called “guys I’d be gay with”.
I’ve followed friedman’s stuff for a long time, and i think you must have been a little to sensitive (speaking of gay) to his comments on street skating, look a little deeper and you’ll see you played yourself, he’s the real deal. and as far as no women in his Fuck You Heroes book , that’s not true either, and there are a few more in his Fuck You Too book. Besides any one who lived through those era’s know it was not the women who set the tone of the scenes the way the men did, that was just a fact, not to take anything away from the many women who did contribute, they just did not inspire him apparently as much as the men did.
yea I’m sensitive. and I have a bad memory, so please remind me of those women in “fuck you heros”. I think I remember one of Ice-t’s earlyer ultra hot wives being in the book, but I’m not sure. but one thing is for sure women still don’t set the tone of the “scenes”
I remember reading the same interview with GEF, where he essentially disrespects everything that came after him and his crew (including street skating). According to his ego, he was at the start of everything to do with punk, hip-hop and skateboarding and everything since is weak. Meanwhile, he’s busy snapping photos of bands on major labels.
And yep, the only women in his books are accessories and not a part of the scene, Maybe there is a token shot of Peggy Oki in one of them. I dig his stuff but GEF often comes across as an elitist narrow-minded tool.
But friendly and unassuming in person! At least when I met him. But then this was before the Dogtown movie blew up, so maybe he was just happy anyone cared at that point.
Maybe, I’m being too harsh. I mean, his photos wouldn’t be so good, if he didn’t think those images were so crucial. But maybe he should let the viewer come up with their own commentary.
anti HERO, ‘fuck you’ HEROES, I sense a thread. And a resentment toward genuine originators, who weren’t media pseudo-anti-heroes. Jim McCall, who Jake Phelps hates, pulled a frontside air in front of thousands of people (out of a four foot fiberglass bowl with vert) months before the dogtown media mafia even claims the frontside air was invented… and yet he freely allows that someone elsewhere had probably already been doing them without so many witnesses. (Instead of claiming that it took “four months” for it to reach the west coast.) And, though people had surely already been doing no hands airs, Gelfand probably did invent the pop ollie (or is it just that he gets credit cuz dogtown affiliated Peralta thinks so?), and Rodney’s the one who took it to flat ground, and if the backsmith had first been done in Cali, it would be KNOWN as a Nolder. And for Glen to think that California spawned ANYTHING (let alone everything) original to do with punk rock, other than jockism, is rich. Hell, even the Bad Brains, who were playing hardcore before any of the west coast bands, bit their guitar style from mid-70’s Philly band Pure Hell (and their reggae stylings from Mikey Dread). But anything that doesn’t fit neatly in Glen’s “I was a wide-eyed kook at the groundfloor” narrative isn’t “real”, because he didn’t document it….
Though I don’t doubt he’s a nice guy. And, actually, on the punk front California DID originate genuinely great [Cali is a] Joke Bands, like the Angry Samoans, the Vandals, the Dickies, & the Feederz (whose album cover featured the second best use of grip tape ever).
this thread had gotten just silly, some of you just don’t know your history and the actual time line of skatboarding’s history, but that’s OK. And yeah it’s true the woman who is in his Fuck You Heroes is none other than Ice-T’s former wife, but in his fuck you too book there is Exene + a few others, and peggy Oki is in the DogTown book. If you don’t recognize this man’s work for what it really is in quality and importance to those cultures , then you really just don’t really know the cultures as well as you think, and what was actually going on at the time. Friedman doesn’t claim the beginning ever, but he does clim that he was their at crucial times with crucial people, it’s undeniable. (Bob your skate history regarding the frontside air is simply off time wise). And to deny the importance of Black Flag, the Circle jerks, Adolescents, and others from that era of american punk rock also denotes an ignorance of what was going on and the actual time lines, to give credit to those joke bands is just lame. I’ve met friedman as recently as at this show in the video, he’s still cool although he’d be happy to take any of his haters to task at any moment. go check out his website or books, you won’t be disappointed. and he CLEARLY does not disrespect everything that came after him (he says young people should be shooting their own cultures, those participating now, not people who are not involved in them like him) nor does he shoot any bands that he does not admire for major labels, if you’re going to disrespect the guy at least have the facts straight, read some recent interviews, he obviously has a tendency to go off during interviews, but you can’t expect the guy to not support what he grew up with, he’s lived through the golden ages of all that he shot, and he shared those moments with us like no other, i gotta respect that.
wait, the Dickies were a joke band?