Vertical skateboarding was borne of drought and creativity.
In 1976 and 1977, Southern California suffered an extreme drought.
The water shortages were so extreme that agricultural activities in some parts of the Central Valley were ceased.
Reservoirs ran dry.
Homeowners drained their swimming pools.
Fires raged. Homes were abandoned.
At the time, skateboarders had just started riding wooden boards with urethane wheels.
Those wheels were more forgiving on rough surfaces and allowed the flow-y carving turns that mimicked the motions that surfers make when riding waves.
Somewhere in Southern California, a group of kids looked at those pools and saw possibility.
C.R. Stecyk III, founder of Zephyr Surfboards and Skateboards, co-author of Dogtown and Z-boys, said:
“Two hundred years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. but it was the minds of 11 year olds that could see that potential.”
When I want to look at skateboarders riding empty pools right now, I head over to Ozzie Ausband’s Blue Tile Obsession.
Ausband and his band of Southern California skateboarders (including legend, Tony Alva, one of the original pool riders) detail their exploits in words and high-resolution images.
Sometimes, they drive hours to find pools that were bulldozed.
Sometimes, they invest hours draining a pool, shoveling debris, sweeping and preparing the pool for riding.
The reward is the bowl, the experience, and the vicarious excitement you, as a visitor gets.
Pedro Paramo is the book I’ve most given away. It’s a thin, easy to read, very influential novel. It will haunt you.
The second book I’ve most given away is Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk.
Through a series of alternating interviews, PKM traces the history of punk. From New York to Detroit to New York and London.
Punk Rock’s Origins Will Blow Your Mind
Picture New York City in the mid-1970s. Gritty. Dirty. Dangerous.
The New York City subway of the 1970s is legendary for its grit, danger and graphiti.
The City was on the verge of bankruptcy.[1]
In contrast, rock ‘n’ roll in the mid-1970s is bloated and growing fatter.
Jethro Tull is the perfect example of bad 1970s rock.
On the East Side of Manhattan (on 47th Street to be exact), Andy Warhol’s factory births The Velvet Underground.
The Velvets play a stripped down version of rock ‘n’ roll mixed with avant garde sounds. They sing about mature subject matter: bondage, transvestites, and scoring drugs.
They go on to inspire many bands.
Halfway across the country, Detroit births the MC5 and The Stooges.
The MC5 are known for their aggressive, provocative, loud performances, which contrast hippie, flower-power bands.
The Stooges‘ Iggy Pop’s over-the-top performances earn him the moniker, “Godfather of Punk.”
The stage for punk is set long before it arrives at CBGBs, a club on the Bowery. [2]
New York births The New York Dolls, Blondie, the Dead Boys, the Patti Smith Group, the Ramones, and Talking Heads.
Chris Stein’s picture of Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Clem Burke. Note the contrast between Debbie and Clem’s all-in-black look, and the reaction from the crowd. [3]PKM’s cast of characters is extensive AND exhausting: Warhol, David Bowie, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Malcolm McClaren, Iggy Pop, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, and Patti Smith, plus actors (Jim Belushi!), authors, artists, band members and poets.
All of them speaking in their own voices.
Explaining how bands were formed, who always had drugs, who knew how to play music, who didn’t.
To me, the book is an important lesson in making a scene.
By that I don’t mean “create a public display or disturbance” or “complain noisily and display bad behavior” (though punks did both).
I mean surround yourself with people who inspire you, help each other, do great work, perform together, and rinse and repeat.
Some of the people in PKM had talent. Others didn’t. Some used a lot of drugs. There were fights and stolen loves.
You might not want to be friends with several. Many of their stories are tragic. People died.
Yet, they came together to create something awesome.
By the dawn of the seventies, the philosophy was that you couldn’t do anything without a lot of money. So my philosophy was back to, “Fuck you, we don’t care if we can’t play and don’t have very good instruments. We’re still doing it because we think you’re a bunch of cunts.” – Malcolm McClaren
You can read this book straight through and enjoy the hell out of it.
You could also read it as a science fiction novel and enjoy it in a different way.
Livingston’s book (which I still come across on startup founders’ desks) is about changing business; McNeil and McCain’s book is about changing culture.
Updated 4/7/2108 to include footnotes.
[1] New York City today is nothing compared to what it was in the mid-1970s. Even in the late-1980s, when I first visited, New York still had an edge. Today, New York City is a santized shopping mall.
[2] I was lucky enough to see a few bands at CBGBs: Sonic Youth, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Sham 69 (where EVERYONE knew EVERY song and sang aloud), Atari Teenage Riot, Bikini Kill, Batmobile, and a show that featured a who’s who of the California bands I’d seen live in L.A.: Circle Jerks, D.I., and 45 Grave. Today, CBGBs site houses a John Varvatos shoe store. R.I.P.
[3] The Blondie image is one of my favorites and it’s from band member Chris Stein who you can follow on Instagram.
[4] The Los Angeles (or West Coast) version of this book is Marc Spitz’ We’ve Got the Neutron Bomb. Sadly, it doesn’t come close to being as exciting or exhaustive or definitive as PKM.
When I speak with non-technical, non-biotechaudiences, I’m always looking for a place where we can start the conversation. These days, it’s with brewing.
Most people, remember, know little-to-nothing about the way biology is impacting their lives.
Most people, I believe, want to know.
So these days, I start the conversation with beer and wine.
Both involve taking ingredients that have little value on their own. But add biology, shake or stir, wait a while, and you end up with beer or bourbon or mezcal or wine.
Plus, every culture has a tradition of fermentation so most people can relate.
The article points out that breweries and distilleries were among the manufacturing industries creating the most jobs.
In fact, they were the number 2 manufacturing industries with the most job growth. (Plastic products (!) were number one – let’s do something about that.)
Over the past decade, the brewing, distilling and wine-making industries have seen an explosion of new entrants.
Consumers looking for unique products and professionals looking for fulfilling jobs are driving growth.
The article makes another important point: craftsmanship is making a comeback in the US.
If I can get someone to understand the brewing story, I can start talking about breweries as bio-reactors, factories where we use biology to create even more valuable products.
I talk about Ginkgo Bioworks building the micro-organisms that will enable the transition from brewing to bioprocessing.
As my final example, I like to tell the story of Stanford professor Christine Smolke and her team. They genetically engineered yeast to produce opioids.
In doing so, they have the potential to improve access to painkillers in places where they are unavailable.
How do you explain biotechnology?
[If you’re interested in the growth of the craft-beer boom, the Bloomberg article includes a rabbit hole of links to other articles on the craft-beer boom, small distilleries, and craft other stuff.]
Hagrid, Hogwarts’ groundskeeper, always wanted a pet dragon.
[Alert: Spoilers ahead.]
He mentions it in passing early in Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone.
Later, he goes on to win a huge black dragon egg from “some stranger during a game of cards.”
He reads Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit and heats his prize egg in the heart of his hut’s fire.
When it hatches, the dragon looks like a “crumpled black umbrella… skinny jet body, long snout, wide nostrils, stubs of horns and bulging orange eyes.”
“It sneezed. A couple of sparks flew out of its snout.
The dragon is a Norwegian Ridgeback (“…them’s rare, those…”).
Hagrid names it Norbert and feeds it chicken blood and brandy.
J.K. Rowling’s genius shines in this chapter (the 14th) of the first Harry Potter Book. Harry, Hermione and Ron are in the throes of exams.
The dragon arrives as the book’s main mystery nears its climax.
Hagrid reveals both his stubborn character and tenderness.
As Norbert grows bigger, tensions rise.
The kids have to figure out how to help Hagrid get rid of Norbert without getting in trouble. This involves Ron’s brother, Charlie. “The one studying dragons in Romania.”
It involves midnight wanderings under the cloak of invisibility.
And it involves dodging Malfoy and Hogwarts teachers.
I wish I could give away the rest. For that, you’ll have to read the book yourself.
Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science Source [1]This week I’ve been thinking a lot about this MIT Technology Review article on writing the yeast genome. The article profiles NYU’s Jef Boeke, one of the founders and leaders of Genome Project write (GP-write). Writing a genome, which is still expensive, will drive advances across many fields (I’ve written about this project in the past and predicted – incorrectly – that the scientists would be finished by the end of last year.)
Healthcare is broken. It’s expensive, eats up a significant part of our gross domestic product, and entering the healthcare system is no fun. Just think about the forms you have to fill out every time you visit a new doctor. The news that Apple is creating medical clinics for its employees (and to test new products) is very very interesting. If you believe that Apple was instrumental in designing technology that is easier to use (and I do), then for sure they will create a healthcare experience that many of us will crave.
Image Caption:
[1] Colored scanning electron micrograph of lab-grown baker’s yeast.
William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy is credited with launching cyberpunk
Netflix just started airing Altered Carbon. It’s a rad take Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 cyberpunk novel. One of my favorite genres, cyberpunk typically explores how the street repurposes tech, life in cyberspace and off-planet.
Last fall, I reread William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy – Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. (Neuromancer, BTW, is credited with “launching” the cyberpunk genre, though purists will cite British New Wave authors and Philip K. Dick as originators.)
I was searching for biotech references. And man, did I find them, from the neurotoxin sacs that are surgically implanted in Neuromancer main character Case’s body, to a Mitsubishi-Genentech merger (that never happened), and hackers trying to bring back by-then extinct horses.
In many ways, Gibson already riding the biotech wave years before synthetic biology was re-defined. Gibson includes less biotech in later novels but he is always readable. His writing enjoyable and thought-provoking and he remains one of my favorite authors, plus his Twitter stream is a blast to follow.
