The fabled and patrician architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe would gag at the picture if he were still around: a dreadlocked South Side kid with a Public Enemy tattoo grinding a skateboard into the marble plaza around Chicago’s IBM Building.
But the photo’s there in September Metropolis, a sophisticated, 10-times-a-year publication on architecture and design, as part of an interesting essay on an urban subculture, “The New Modern Lovers.”
Mies was both hugely influential and criticized for what some deem depressingly cold steel-and-glass high-rises. Now, it appears that a sea change in skateboarding technique “has driven the newest generation toward the austere plazas popularized by Mies,” according to writer Marc Spiegler.
Termed new school skateboarding, it’s different than the street-surfer style of old and “often combines two or three different moves on a single jump, creating a lightning-quick blur with the jump-cut dynamism of music videos.”
But skateboarders sought new terrain because new-school tricks need smooth surfaces, explaining why buildings in the Loop became a big lure in the last several years. The IBM Building was especially hot, writes Spiegler, for several reasons, including lax security.
Of course, the kids don’t have much of a clue about Mies’ influence in all this. When the architect’s legacy was explained to new-school hotshot Anthony “Evil Twin” Murphy, who has been arrested for skateboarding-related offenses and is known for mouthing off to police, he said:
“You know, we should pay homage to that dude. Get me a picture; we’ll make a sticker of him and stick it on our boards. I’d like to meet that guy.”
It’s unclear, if Mies were around, what he’d say, but the magazine quotes Chicago author-critic Franz Schulze, a Mies biographer, as concluding, “Mies really would not have understood skateboarding.”
But maybe, just maybe, he would have found a morsel of an insight in the thesis promulgated here that the skateboarders are somehow redefining business and governmental spaces. As one skateboarder-turned-sandwich-shop-owner puts it, “The corporate types see their structures as powerful and strong; I see them as something I can enjoy, something I can manipulate to my advantage” ($4.50, 177 E. 87th St., New York, N.Y. 10128).
Quickly: Hey, want to know about the rather full sex life of actor Charlie Sheen? Check out September Movieline. . . . Sept. 12 New Republic is strong on how the Christian Right, despite lots of publicity about its effectiveness, has really fared rather poorly in getting much done on its key issues (curricula, abortion, obscenity and gay rights). . . . Aug. 27 Economist details how computer databases are changing bigtime scholarship, especially in the long machine-averse humanities. For example, “The Archive of the Indies has used IBM scanners and software to put near-perfect facsimiles of the letters of Columbus, Cortes and their contemporaries onto the screen. Years of scanning by a full-time staff of 30 people has put more than 10 million handwritten pages into the archive’s memory banks.” . . . October Bicycling reports that a $33,000 beryllium mountain bike was taken from American Bicycle Manufacturing’s Minnesota warehouse. It’s pale green with brushed aluminum lugs, has a Rock Shox Mag 21 fork, and is equipped with Campy’s Record OR group, in case you see it. There’s a $1,000 reward. . . . Sept. 5 New Yorker is excellent, offering a dandy David Remnick profile of Marion Barry’s attempt to regain the Washington mayor’s office by selling his supposed redemption, as well as Susan Faludi’s occasionally insightful bashing of the Citadel as it fights having to take its first female student (her chats with some old geezer alums and administrators are depressing). . . . Preview issues of upcoming sports seasons get repetitive, but Aug. 29 Sports Illustrated’s annual look at the college football season is strong, especially good on the smaller schools in Divisions I-AA, II and III. There’s a nice profile of 5-foot-8-inch running back Carey Bender, star of tiny Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
