Skinheads - are there any where you live?

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I've been in New York for a few years, and today saw an old fashioned (white, shaved head, trenchcoat, doc martens, madness t shirt (!)) guy walking through Tribeca. This raised a few questions:
1. your town have any?
2. are they unversally regarded as impossibly racist now, or is there still some Oi! / music / culture connotation that could be OK?
3. Since I wasn't around in the early 80s period of their heyday, was there ever a time when they were a musical / subcultural group that weren't just associated with neo-Nazi stuff?

― paulhw (paulhw), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:21 (twenty-one years ago)

There are TONS of guys in my city (San Francisco) with:

Shaved or cropped head.

Boots.

Flight jackets.

Braces.

Apparently they're called "gay men" or something.

― Drew Daniel, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Hahaha

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:56 (twenty-one years ago)

My old boss was a skinhead! He made us listen to ska and Rosemary Clooney.

This is also in San Francisco!

― adam... (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:02 (twenty-one years ago)

braces? prepubescents?

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Braces = suspenders, I believe.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, he wore those. And wifebeaters and doc martens.

― adam... (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:05 (twenty-one years ago)

wanna hear a really bad "tip" a girl at my highschool reunion told me after i told her i lived South of Market in the leather and bear neighborhoods?

if you ever drop your wallet in SOMA, make sure you kick it all the way to Oakland before you pick it up. or some shit. god i hate that girl

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:05 (twenty-one years ago)

That's a terrible tip.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:06 (twenty-one years ago)

That is terrible.

Is that why you are always finding money on the ground, JaXoN?

― adam... (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:08 (twenty-one years ago)

My fake uncle is a skinhead. And his last name was De'ath. Pretty cool guy on the whole. I've met neo-nazi's in Glasgow - I suspect skinheads of all varieties exist in most western cities.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:09 (twenty-one years ago)

there's no way someone could kick their wallet all the way to Oakland! they'd have to be like, bionic or something!

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4023

I'd say so.

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I knew some redskins in the 80's who weren't racist although they did enjoy beating the stuffing out of the more conventional skinheads.

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:12 (twenty-one years ago)

not exactly "where i live" (=not any in my flat, ie) but i tended to see a few shiny craniums when going to concerts of certain bands in my hometown.
n*rok c*ty was a(n otherwise good, plucky punky) group that some local skins seemed to be convinced they had, like, "adopted" at some point, and occasionally they didn't take too kindly to various "different folks" who apparently also liked "their band".

i didn't have any run-ins with them, thanks to being on too good terms for that with the members of "their band" perhaps, but my son and his then best friend, both in their early teens at the time, once very nearly got beat up by some hairless dudes - who evidently didn't fancy the sight of two little boys wearing proudly the caps with the name of "their band".

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:21 (twenty-one years ago)

the best will and grace joke was when jack was new somewhere and everyone called him a Newbie but he thought they were saying Nubie (like nubile) and he wondered how they knew he was shaved

omg like xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I hate Will And Grace.

― adam... (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:25 (twenty-one years ago)

"I knew some redskins in the 80's who weren't racist although they did enjoy beating the stuffing out of the more conventional skinheads."

I imagine we may be talking about the same people, since this is what the guys I knew in the 90s were doing for kicks as well.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:26 (twenty-one years ago)

what's a redskin? is that someone who lives in washington?

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Massachusetts is a hotbed of white supremacist activity!

: (

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:27 (twenty-one years ago)

(x-post)Another name for non-racist skins.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

redskins were anarcho-pinko skins as opposed to the usual lumpen fascist variety.

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

i always thought that if skins wore red shoelaces that meant that they were really racist? or was that white laces and red laces signified a redskin?

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha I could tell you the codes, but yeah I think there was some crazy shoelace bullshit IIRC.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I grew up in a city with lots of skinheads, D.C. However, very few of them were neo-N4ZI or anything of that sort. XXX and such.

I doubt there are many skinheads where I live now, although some people sport a version of the skinhead look (boots, bomber jackets, shaved heads).

― supercub, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:32 (twenty-one years ago)

i was in vegas tripping balls on x with my friend who is naturally bald and i'm dark 1/2 jewish (lookin straight arab) and we see these english guys dressed as elvis. we walk up to them to take pix with them and we hear them say, "oh shit, there's some skins coming our way!" weird. i never woulda thought i'd be confused for a skin

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:39 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.skullyrecords.com/family_tree.htm

― &, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:53 (twenty-one years ago)

We live in small quaintville but the other day I took a cab and the driver looked like a skinhead. He was from Bulgaria or somewhere in eastern Europe. I mentioned someone we both turned out to know and he said, "Is he a FAGGOT?" in such a vehement way that I thought he might actually be a skinhead, though my first thought was not to judge him as such. The guy we were talking about is this real asshole who harrassed me at work and would try to cop feels, so I said "Yeah, I think he is gay." I was just imagining this skinhead beating that womanizing jerk up. Then I felt really guilty about the whole exchange.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:01 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't really know about any organized skinhead factions in nyc, although i wouldn't doubt they exist. hate crimes, yeah, we've got those.

there was a good city confidential a while back about some skinhead punks in portland who murdered a black guy. i hate to make light of such a thing, but what i remember most about the episode was paul winfield saying "as the jury deliberated, the city of portland was as quiet as an audience during a grunge guitar solo."

― hockey family (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I've been in New York for a few years, and today saw an old fashioned (white, shaved head, trenchcoat, doc martens, madness t shirt (!)) guy walking through Tribeca...

are they unversally regarded as impossibly racist now, or is there still some Oi! / music / culture connotation that could be OK?

There are quite a few skinheads in NYC who stick to the old school look. And they're ferociously anti-racist (and generally totally left-wing). I'm friends with a few of these guys, and they take great pleasure in finding suburban racist boneheads who come in town for record shopping and a junket to 99X and beating them senseless.

When I see skinheads nowadays, I presume that they're not racist, until I see some visible signifier of right-wing ideology. If I lived elsewhere, maybe that wouldn't be the case. The knee-jerk association of skinhead style with racism is still promoted by jackasses who have a professional stake in dealing in disinformation, like the idiot from the ADL who gave a presentation at a friend's law school, but it's not only seriously misguided, it's plain old calumny. These guys have been thumping real racists for half their lives, and then some busybody says "why would you want to dress like a Nazi?" Por favor.

― Dickerson Pike (Dickerson Pike), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 01:23 (twenty-one years ago)

See, that drives me crazy, grrrr. Like I said on the similar ILM thread, I haven't encountered too many Nazi 'skins', but the ones I've seen look kind of redneckish and not very punk, they just might have a shaved head and wear some military crap or something. In the 80s, I used to meet skins of the anti-racist variety all of the time, I occasionally run into one here and there even now.

It seems movies & tv have always had a fascination with Nazi 'punks'.

― k3rry (dymaxia), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 01:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, I forgot - I did have one scary but baffling encounter with a 'bonehead'. He followed me into the bread aisle of a supermarket (I was the only one in the aisle) shouted the n-word and disappeared. Maybe he'd seen me with some punk kids or something.

― k3rry (dymaxia), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 01:49 (twenty-one years ago)

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