Skinheads and your town (x-ref from ile)

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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 22:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Are you sure he wasn't a sharp (I believe that's what they were called--the two-tone anti-facist skins)? There were still a bunch of those guys around in SF until the late 90s. I think most may be gone now.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Um, yeah

― k3rry (dymaxia), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Traditional (or Trads) or Originals - This group closely identifies itself with the original skinhead movement ("Spirit of 69"), maintaining working class pride and a dislike for the "ruling class". Non-racist and largely apolitical. This group is the largest sect of the subculture.

SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) - Political, and aggressively anti-racist. Considered to be the response to mass media's racial stereotyping of skinheads.

Neo-Nazi Skins (sometimes called White Power and derogatorily referred to as "Boneheads" by Trads and SHARPs) - The most vocal and well recognized sect of the subculture. Racist and highly political.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

there's an article in the new Vice (which i haven't read and probably wont' ever get around to) about Black Skins with pix of two guys with big ass swastika tattoos

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:51 (twenty-one years ago)

oh shit. i just opened the mag and in addition to the "Negro Skins" article, there's actually articles on "Spic Skins", "All Malaysian Skins" & "Skinheads Against White People"

whatever

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Sounds typically Vice.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The only Nazi 'skins' I've seen didn't look very 'punk', actually.

― k3rry (dymaxia), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:55 (twenty-one years ago)

I had a few hours to kill before work last friday, and I went to a mall and I was completely suprised to find a skinhead clothing store. I went in there and they had Fred Perry, alpha flight jackets, Crombies, Doc's, Cocksparrer and Blitz tshirts. The whole thing seemed really weird to me, I cannot imagine that there is enough of a skinhead community in Austin to support a store at the mall. Perhaps there is, and I simply haven't noticed it yet.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha is it like a Hot Topic for skins?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I thought the Vice Store was Hot Topic for skins.

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:59 (twenty-one years ago)

anyway, apparently one of my friends from kindergarten ended up becoming a neo-nazi skinhead and, rumor has it, a member of a tiny KKK chapter in Northern IL

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:00 (twenty-one years ago)

you sure knew how to pick em

― JaXoN (JasonD), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:10 (twenty-one years ago)

There have been a few incidents with racist skins in Dallas over the last year, which is strange because I don't ever remember hearing about them before.

Black skinheads wouldn't be a new development - they were around in the '60s and '70s, born out of the same roots as rude boys. Black skins with swastikas would be a new and bizarre development, though.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:11 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost - i still like remy's childhood pic (dead, jail, crazy, trannie, etc)

― JaXoN (JasonD), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:11 (twenty-one years ago)

between the nazi and the ex-gf turned porn actress and the infamous ex roomie, it's been a wild ride.

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 00:19 (twenty-one years ago)

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?

Heyday in the UK was late 60s/ early 70s

― My Son Calls Another Man Dadaismus (Dada), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Maybe there were TWO heydays. There were tons of young skinheads in my high school in 1980 (in the U.K). More inspired by the Cockney Rejects, Angelic Upstarts, Exploited etc (who were having hits at the time, for fuxake!). Madness to a lesser degree (since everybody liked them and they weren't very abrasive). There are a few (really ugly)skinheads in Vancouver, BC. Not very recently, I had a drink with a couple of them and these ones were definetely racist, into White (Canadian!) Power and still worshipped the Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects etc.

― everything, Wednesday, 17 November 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

late 60s/early 70s skins loved reggae, mutated out of the elements of the mod movement who weren't interested in hippy/psych, carried with them a mod love of violent confrontation. don't know if they were racist. the books they read - Richard Allen etc. - most certainly were though.

― debden, Wednesday, 17 November 2004 16:54 (twenty-one years ago)

there are elements of that scene left in glasgow and edinburgh, probably in london too. i noticed a lot of the old skins came out of the cupboard during the britpop days, to sneer at and threaten the blur loving nu-mods. valuable public service, that was.

― debden, Wednesday, 17 November 2004 16:56 (twenty-one years ago)

The skins i've seened around Dublin are all anti-racist, vegan, anarchist, punk and ska lovers.

― wildrover and over (wildrover), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 22:27 (twenty-one years ago)

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