‘You can pose her and pretend she’s a teenage star!’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxb0pHQsHLQ

via Cat Party

Drape jackets, velvet collars, turned up trousers and brogue shoes — when Teddy Boys go dancing, they clean up nice.  

Outside the Teen Canteen at Elephant & Castle in London, 1955

The Stag-Line at a dancehall, 1955

images via Edwardian Teddy Boy

The “Teenage Tragedy Song” is a style of ballad focusing on premature death, usually by automobile or motorcycle accident. Most popular in the 1950s and 60s, the songs are sung from the perspective of the dying or their significant other.

“What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love”

– Mark Dinning – “Teen Angel”, 1960

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHVahJwW-EY

Ray Peterson – “Tell Laura I Love Her”, 1960

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGNBBZDRqFo

The Cheers – “Black Denim Trousers”, 1955

Wayne Cochran – “Last Kiss”, 1962

Roy Orbison – “Leah”, 1962

Whitby goths, London youth and Shetland amusement park workers– Jamie Hawkesworth takes subtle fashion and art photographs of UK kids and teens. Dreamy.

Whitby Goths:

South Shields:

Thanks for the tip, Mary Manning!

Teenage Wasteland of the Arts is a non-profit teen art collective and school based in Los Angeles.  

They hold classes once a week where teenagers can get help with art school applications, graduate-level instruction, and build a community of their peers.

In February, the artists collaborated on the TWA DOGMA 2012, a framework for the work they made this spring:

Every piece must have an element of collage

Work made under the dogma must be a time-based piece

Work must be explicit

Everyone must accept everyone else’s opinon/pages

Everyone is a real fascist

Art is not a means but an end

Art is not one or the other DIT (do it together)

Binary thinking is prohibited

There is no sexuality

All rules must be broken

Art goes to museums to die – Art cannot breathe under glass

The process of meandering is necessary

We are post-post-modern

Selected works by TWA participants:

Right now, the students are fundraising to cover the costs of their most recent gallery show at Human Resources in Los Angeles and for the companion DVD documenting the work.  Check out their Kickstarter.

Homegrown WWII propaganda inviting young people to farm for victory. Many Americans helped ‘pitch in’ for the war effort, why not ask high schoolers, too? ‘See Your Principal’ for details. (above, left: 1943. right: Escambia Farms, Florida. Doris Clima and Julian Dowdy weighing in their Victory bean crop at the Escambia Farms cooperative via LOC)

1945.

1944.

via Texas State Archives

Young ladies of the 1980s loved RUSH, Pac Man, Mickey Mouse, sk8boarding and short shorts. Might take a summertime fashion and lifestyle tip from these righteous gals.

via StevenM

► Join our TeenageFilm flickr group. Scan your Grandpa’s shoe box photos, or pics from your summer skateboarding sessions. ♥

Live… Suburbia is a book for anyone who has ever gone from aggressive BMX to skate, from heavy-metal to hardcore, from punk to straight-edge. Those who pack into cars to get to shows, watch skate videotapes, chill in mate’s bedrooms and in parking lots; a skateboard under one arm, a 12″ in the other. Max G. Morton is an author who came of age in the transition from the 70′s to the 80′s.  Anthony Pappalardo, “skate-edger,” played in two influential 90′s hardcore bands: Ten Yard Fight and In My Eyes. The two combined their reflections on the heyday of hardcore, punk, straight-edge, skating, and the suburbs — and its end — into a document of post-1960’s adolescent counterculture.

“What I liked about hardcore more than metal was that the dudes in the bands and in the pictures looked like me. [...] They weren’t sporting mohawks and spikes and shit; they had the clothes I had. Being a punk was actually fucking expensive: Doc Martens, Manic Panic hair dye, and a leather jacket would run you at least 300 dollars, which wasn’t in my universe. [...] I loved the idea of heavy music and heavy morals. Hardcore was a perfect fit for my brain then. Maybe it was my Catholic background of strict parents that made a dude barking orders at me sound totally normal and actually cool.” 

“Amongst friends, you weren’t allowed to write a band name on your school folder unless you owned the album. You weren’t allowed to wear the t-shirt unless you had seen the band live. There was no grey area on these rules. They were written in stone.”

“On the surface, the idea of a sober army of fucked-up kids sounded completely scrambled, but plant this crew in the largest college town on earth, run by drunk pledges puking yellow beer nine months out of the year, and it’s no surprise that this movement happened as a response to pretentious art school kids, underread junior liberals, and loud frat boys.”

“The choice was simple: you bought a pair of Blind jeans or Big Deals and you wore them ’til they walked away on their own. [...] Some kids resisted this new trend and like bitchy old men, they’d bash us for being brainwashed and looking like clowns. We did look fucking stupid, but they looked equally stupid in their tight, stained undershirts and old-school Vans high-tops that looked as long as canoes and hurt their feet. We didn’t care that they looked like Tom Knox in some Santa Cruz video that you never watched, so why should they care that we looked like a pack of crayons rolling around on popsicle sticks?” 

“Leaving suburbia was a blur. I remember learning one day that I could control Tony Hawk with a joystick and that KISS wore makeup again. Straight edge men threw baseballs and wrestled on television. The one-dollar bill had a Crimson Ghost on it. No hardcore record had sold a million copies but every dorm came with a copy of Check Your Head.

In the present, Cindy Lauper rang up my groceries. A man who was once kicked out of every skate spot and punk show for being annoying designed propaganda that aided the election of our current president. All the humans I wanted to meet as a suburban teenage boy in the late 1980s had become franchises in my hometown mall.”

LIVE SUBURBIA
Max G. Morton
Anthony Pappalardo
Powerhouse Books

Rod Glacial is a writer based in Paris, France.  He blogs at Fluogacial.

The Hippie Pandas are an all-girl science team from Rochester, NY.  Their response to the “food-factor” theme of this years STEM Awards (a science and technology for middle-schoolers) was to build a solar pasteurizer for women in Nicaragua who, as a result of drinking unpasteurized milk, have a higher rate of miscarriage.  While researching their project at Springdale Farms’ robotic milking farm, they noticed that none of the cows had names.  In response, they named fourteen of the cows, implementing the new data into the farm’s computer system, and made birthday cards for all of the cows with upcoming birthdays.

A recently graduated Bryn Mawr senior has been trolling her archives and collecting gems from the college’s storied past on a tumblr, Vintage Bryn Mawr.

all images via Vintage Bryn Mawr