Spliced 002

by Klintron

Does alternative culture still exist? Coilhouse, an excellent web magazine that calls itself “A love letter to alternative culture, written in an era where alt culture no longer exists” obviously doesn’t think so. Neither does Warren Ellis, who wrote on the topic in his Suicide Girls column. I disagree, but we may have to challenge our notions of what alternative culture is.

Much of our idea of what sub/alt/counter culture is supposed to be comes from the academic discipline of cultural studies, and in particular the book Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige. The rest, it seems, comes from the media. The media has been particularly guilty of focusing on surface elements of alternative culture rather than its substance. And academia, thanks to Hebdige and the advent of semiotics, has also found itself obsessing over style. New genres of music, new fashion styles, new drugs (or in the case of straight-edge, the deliberate absence of drugs), and generational struggle are the defining characteristics of new alternative cultures.

Ellis and the writers behind Coilhouse look to the lack of originality in arts, entertainment, and fashion as evidence of the lack of modern alt culture. Is it possible that specific clothing styles, music styles, and even generational conflict are not necessary to constitute an alt culture? The “style” looked at by commentators is basically the “stuff” the culture creates – its cultural products. What I see as the two most prominent of alt cultures in the United States don’t quite fit the rigorous definition of what’s supposed to constitute an alternative culture, but none the less exist distinct from their dominant cultures: the 9/11 Truth Movement and bicycle culture. They do, however, have their own cultural products.

The 9/11 Truth Movement is not just a political movement, it’s a cultural phenomena that crosses generations and political ideologies. Truthers, as members of the movement call themselves, may be left-wing or right-wing, young or old. Some are clean-cut and wear shirts and ties. Others have long hair and wear t-shirts and jeans. Take for instance Alex Ansary and Freeman. Ansary is a truther who hosts a public access show in Portland, OR and Freeman hosts a show in Austin, TX. Here’s a still from Freeman’s guest appearance on Ansary’s show:

There are truther musicians, such as rapper Immortal Technique, but there is no “truther genre” of music, and truthers music tastes will vary as much as their appearance. But this is not to say there is no truther culture. The rejection of the official 9/11 story has brought thousands of people together to form organizations, produce media, and of course, protest in the streets. Sites like Infowars and 911truth.org act as national outlets for the movement, with local and regional hubs forming across the country. Not content to be passive media consumers, truthers are notoriously industrious creators of DVDs, tv shows, radio shows and podcasts, books, and web sites.

We tend to think of cultural artifacts as being art and entertainment, not as educational or informational, so it’s easy dismiss the cultural products of the truth movement. But for truthers, these media are every bit as engaging as any art or entertainment is for any other group of people.

But cultural products need not be media. For an example of non-media related cultural production, we can look at bike culture. Bike cultists come in many varieties, but in this case I’m referring specifically to the bicycle messenger influenced cyclists that you’ve probably seen riding road bikes, fixed gear bikes, and weird homemade “mutant” bikes like tall bikes and choppers. The ideology of bike cultists can probably be best summed up by the tagline of the Portland Bike Pirates page on tribe.net: “Fuck you! Ride a bike, please.” There is no specific bike music genre, but there are particular visual styles. Rolled-up pants, Vans, black hoodies, tattoos and piercings are common. The style is not, though, anything particularly new. It’s borrowed from bike messengers, long ago identified as bastions of cool and mimicked by hipsters everywhere (see the ever popular Timbuk2 bag). And not everyone in bike cult really falls in line with “the look.” What’s most important is the bikes themselves.

There’s not a whole lot of media being produced by bike culture – their cultural artifacts are the bikes. While the truthers busy themselves with the production of media, bike cultists make and/or maintain their bikes, and, of course, ride them. Mutant bike collectives like C.H.U.N.K 666 build crazy bikes and host bike jousting competitions. The mass bike rides known as Critical Mass has become a national phenomena so disruptive that the RAND Corporation analyzed in their Networks and Netwar paper. Here in Portland, the Zoobombers, who ride en masse from the zoo to downtown once a week, have become something of a legend.

(Above: “The Zoobomber pile.” Photo from the Bike Portland‘s photo stream).

In 2006 the Village Voice reported that Brooklyn Industries attempted to appropriate mutant bike culture by placing tall bikes in their display windows. But the epitaph for bike culture won’t be written until mass produced tall bikes and choppers are available at Wal-Mart. And that’s something that’s particularly interesting about both of these cultures: if they’re ever fully “appropriated” by the dominate culture, they win. The substance of these cultures *is* the culture. The truthers are a culture built not around style, but around a meme they want to infect the dominate culture with. A national prime time show dedicated to a serious questioning 9/11 would be a major victory in terms of their message – much more so than musical innovators scoring a mainstream record label deal.

And while fashion marketers may be able to appropriate certain stylistic elements of bike cult, it is the bikes themselves that are meaningful. In major cities, bikes are already “cool” and bike commuting seems to be on the rise. And if more people start riding bikes instead of driving, I’m sure bike cultists will welcome the trend.

Whether either alt culture will ever actually be fully appropriated by the dominant culture remains to be seen. But as typical cultural elements like art and music are appropriated and integrated at increasing speeds by the mainstream, alt culture now exists around alternative cultural products less immediately palatable to the mainstream. We’re used to seeing alt cultures become absorbed by the mainstream because they are “cool.” I must admit it’s hard to imagine that 9/11 truth or mutant bikes will really become “the next big thing.” The Truth movement is decidedly less sexy than punk, and it’s one thing to buy a new bike, it’s quite another to actually get off your fat ass and ride it. Yet, as the instantly commodification of music and fashion leaves more and more people jaded, perhaps more people will be looking to more difficult and engaging forms of culture for novelty.

(Ed: For more Alterati.com musings on counter/culture, read Wake Up Neo & Death of a Scene).

Klintron is neither a truther nor a bike cultist, but has called for a new investigation into 9/11 and has written about his experience with replacing his car with a bike for WorldChanging. He lives in Portland, OR and is the editor of Technoccult.