 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Every family has a 'black sheep' and Saratoga's no exception
Bah, Bah... Bad!
Saratoga punkers find multiple media to vent their rage
By Steve Enders
Kirstin Munro and her friend Michelle Lamanet are pretty normal 16-year-old girls. During these dog days of summer, both are hanging out on a regular basis with nothing much to do but gossip and giggle about friends, listen to loud music and be bummed about going back to school in a couple of weeks.
Even Kirstin's Saratoga bedroom has all the markings of a regular teenager. But behind all the rock & roll posters, a computer and a messy floor lie the true personalities of these enterprising girls.
The bookshelf is filled with well-thumbed works by some of this era's more radical leftist thinkers, including Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Nearby, a difficult summertime get-your-gears-turning homework package, including advanced physics and a six-book Advanced Placement English assignment, litters the floor.
Kirstin has to finish the books by Sept. 1, say her teachers at the exclusive all-girls Castelleja School in Palo Alto. Recently, Castelleja was treated to a Gloria Steinem lecture, and while most of the audience was interested in Steinem's views on reproductive rights, economics and reversing gender roles, Kirstin says she could only think that most adults would likely have a fit if they heard what their girls were hearing.
The Five C's--Castelleja's cherished slogan--is something Kirstin can't stand. The mantra of "Courtesy, Courage, Charity, Conscience and Character" makes both girls want to gag. Kirstin and Michelle throw in "Conformity" as a sixth C.
Michelle doesn't go to Castelleja anymore. She says she left after the ninth grade with personal problems. Now she attends Burlingame High and boasts a solid 3.5 GPA. Kirstin's GPA is about the same.
On the computer screen at Kirstin's desk is a text page she quickly closes so nobody sees--probably some sort of ranting soon to appear in their self-published magazine, Black Sheep.
The cheap leaflet isn't really a magazine; it's a zine (short for "fanzine"). Zines sprang up years ago as tributes to whatever it was the author wanted to wax poetic about--fave rock bands, television shows, political leanings and all sorts of pop culture. Often produced in black-and-white, most are photocopied and contain rough cartoons, cut-and-paste art and short stories, poetry or opinion pieces.
Black Sheep takes on whatever the girls feel like taking on, whether it's personal thoughts on families and marriage, high school drug use or cool punk shows someone attended over the weekend.
Black Sheep was born of Castelleja angst, where the two girls were the only "punks" in a sea of what they describe as conformist females, though the misery is relieved a bit by what they say is a rather liberal administration.
The first edition hit the streets in October 1997 to commemorate a nationwide protest day against police brutality. A second edition has been published since, and a third is in the works.
"It's the story of our lives," Michelle says.
Kirstin adds, laughing, "It's our own personal coming-of-age story and about how we have no friends."
But a funny conversation is suddenly a spinning, thought-filled lament.
Michelle says, "Everyone's too into themselves to be friends with anyone."
Besides Black Sheep, Michelle, who travels by train and bus from Burlingame just to hang out, and Kirstin have their hands in a number of projects--or potential projects, anyway--at any given moment.
They help produce a total of four zines from around the world, including their own. The girls run a website, an e-version of Black Sheep that's treated to more frequent updates, and a punk-rock concert promotion effort as well as a number of other artistic endeavors, some of which have produced work, and some of which haven't.
They laugh about all the undertakings they're supposedly involved in.
One, called the Chalk Coalition, is an effort to spread propaganda with the very non-intrusive (and not illegal) medium of chalk art, rather than ink pens or spray paint, to get political messages across to the masses.
Another, already dubbed the Emo Army, is another propaganda effort to spread awareness of "emotional music," a cross between punk and indie (alternative) rock that takes on emotional topics.
"It's the next big thing," Kirstin says in a halfway sarcastic tone. "Even Teen People [magazine] did a story about it."
Then there's the Gorilla Art Collective, much like the Chalk Coalition but "highly political" and perhaps "sometimes with more permanent media," they say. So far, nothing has been scrawled anywhere.
Last but not least, Tiger Power Productions produces punk shows for kids at free venues like record stores and high schools. To date, they've put together two shows, which were fairly successful, they say.
Kirstin isn't afraid to voice her opinions about anything to anyone. Michelle is quite a bit more reserved and almost shy. She often whacks Kirstin or tries to stop her from going on about certain subjects. Still, they're dedicated to their cause, which is undefined yet strikingly clear at the same time.
This may not look like the bedroom door of a 16-year-old Saratogan-- it is, after all, also the door to the office of the zine 'Black Sheep.'
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
A conversation with the girls reveals all sorts of inner conflicts, such as that they despise technology and the economy that has risen from the tech industry, especially here in Silicon Valley and its wealthy enclaves like Saratoga.
Yet both live in comfortable Bay Area homes in nice neighborhoods, and they use computers and even produce a website and maintain email addresses on the machines they despise.
"I like the Internet because it provides a free voice to anyone who wants to use it," Kirstin says. "But it's elitist because you've got to have money to access it."
Michelle says that she just plain doesn't like the Net, because it's taking over people's personal relationships.
It all relates to a sort of "cyberpunk" ethic, preferring to bash and rant about technology, government and capitalism, but using Microsoft's free Hotmail email service and free web pages on Geocities' servers to spread the message.
Some cyberpunk authors who show up on the Internet, such as William Gibson, deny using the web or email in interviews and are quick to beat on technology.
Not these girls, though.
"Capitalism is OK and necessary when there's an appropriate message," Kirstin says, rambling. "In the U.S., the political spectrum is so limited; the line between Republican and Democrat is so limited. I'm more for protest to get people involved."
Kirstin's father is a CEO of a computer hardware company. A maid cleans their house, but doesn't set foot inside Kirstin's room. Kirstin believes that somehow, some way, wealth like that created by even her father should be more evenly distributed--to, say, the maids cleaning her house. She does, however, acknowledge the fact that her dad works hard for his family. (Her father declined to be interviewed for this story, saying that the zine is the girls' thing.)
Even as the girls rant about technology and society in their own homes, a faint "Kirstin!" echoes from down the hall. Dad wants to have a sidebar chat about something most likely inconsequential, like household chores--something like feeding Sid Vicious (named for the Sex Pistols' bassist, who died of a heroin overdose in 1979 while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend) or her cats.
Kirstin's mother gets picked up by a limousine to see a summer fashion show after an already long morning of shopping for back-to-school clothes, along with Kirstin's younger sister, who sometimes writes for Black Sheep.
Kirstin wouldn't be caught dead in a limo, much less at a fashion show, and doesn't think about shopping for new clothes. Most of hers are obviously secondhand and carry few logos or name-brand tags.
"The whole irony of my existence is the conflict between me and my parents," Kirstin says. "I mean, I live in Saratoga and I read Chomsky."
But are these girls true rebels and troublemakers, or are they just normal teenagers trying to get by in what seems to be a world crashing down on them? Most high schoolers feel the tugs of alienation, independence and rebellion at some time or another. These ideals are nothing new, as song lyrics from as far back as the 1950s suggest.
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Kirstin Munro (left) and Michelle Lamanet hang out in Kirstin's bedroom, where they work on the next issue of 'Black Sheep' and groan about the beginning of the new school year.
Back at Castelleja, the girls say, regular high jinx earn scorn from the administration, even though some of the administrators dress in quite a liberal fashion. One of the issues of Black Sheep even carries a rough photo of four Castelleja administrators decked out in punk garb. It wasn't even Halloween that day, the girls say.
Once, Kirstin stuffed Michelle inside a school locker and couldn't get her out. In Black Sheep, Michelle writes that she likes small spaces so she doesn't have to deal with large crowds.
Another time, they climbed onto the school's roof to have a punk-rock party and got busted. Kirstin rigged stereo speakers in her locker as well, so they could listen to music and avoid regular social goings on.
But their actions on the pages of Black Sheep have also been something of an eyebrow raiser as well, walking a fine line between decency and disrespect. Still, free speech is free speech, even at the tender age of 16.
The zine originally started, Kirstin says, "to jostle things up at Castelleja." But the zine's first edition, thin and black-and-white, was passed around freely at the school. It includes a page with a graphic that reads "Stop Police Brutality! October 22 WEAR BLACK." Underneath it is a crudely drawn stick-figure cartoon of a kid with a gun standing over a fallen police officer. "If only we could switch things around," it reads.
Because of the drawing, the zine was banned at Castelleja. The school, they say, has a very limited punk-rock mentality and really didn't expect Black Sheep to catch on. However, the first edition managed to garner enough email and regular mail responses from area readers that it now has a regular following with kids everywhere in the punk-rock scene.
The zine is also distributed at various record stores and mailed out to subscribers. They now claim worldwide distribution thanks to international readers who pick it up and make extra copies.
The second edition, twice as big as the first, takes more jabs at Castelleja--all in good fun, Kirstin insists. One page chronicles a day at school for the fictional Catie the Casti Girl, who is both popular and prissy. At the end of the day, Catie is run over by a garbage truck.
In spite of the punk milieu, with its rough drawings and unsophisticated graphics, the essays, poetry and other writings tend to be about issues of justice, the everyday life of teens and teen music. The publishers definitely don't advocate drug use, but rather try to address the dilemma of teens and drugs, as well as other emotional issues for teens.
Neither takes drugs, and both are critical of kids their age who drink and do drugs, from smoking pot at parties to taking speed to stay skinny. Kirstin and Michelle are both looking forward to attending a top university and have respectable goals--Kirstin wants to be a teacher, and Michelle wants to be an artist.
The third edition is in production now, and the girls promise it'll be bigger and better than the previous two.
For a while, Kirstin was also publishing a zine called Take With Food, but she hasn't touched it in a while. She got the name from a pill bottle.
The two are looking to help produce a few other zines around the country as well. One they already help produce is Meeting the Shadow, written by a New York University student who mails some of the material for Kirstin and Michelle to put together and distribute in the Bay Area.
Michelle says she'd like to start a different zine soon called Shattered, which would be heavily based in poetry. Writing is a release, she says. Kirstin quips that Michelle's poetry is "bad."
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Titles by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky fill the bookshelves in Kirstin Munro's bedroom/publishing office.
For two girls this involved with their community, they're not involved much at all. Both hold down jobs in their hometowns, and Kirstin says she's thought about serving on the city of Saratoga's youth commission. She's even helped a little to produce some of the live music shows the commission puts on in the Saratoga Community Center.
But Kirstin styles herself as more of a one for "direct action" and says she might someday be a leader for some sort of cause.
"I don't think Saratoga would be a total waste of my time. But adults don't think that youth are a good way to spend the city's money. Have I ever deserved living here or going to the school I go to? Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating someone else out of it.
"The people running this town and the adults in it don't care about teenagers," she says. "I'd just rather do something else with my time. Plus, I'm busy."
That's true. But somehow a dozen other kids her age manage to serve on the youth commission, which helps the City Council steer some money toward youth-oriented activities. Granted, there's not much to go around in city coffers these days, but Kirstin thinks the city should do more.
"I'm not one to normally give up, but I think [serving in government] just doesn't really affect anything. There's so many other communities that are more needy than Saratoga."
In Kirstin's ideal Saratoga, Big Basin Way and the Village would house at least one independent bookstore--not a Barnes and Noble--that caters to small publishers and independent magazines.
"There would have to be a record store with shows," she says, "to give kids an outlet so they just don't go out and smoke weed. Big Basin Way has nothing for kids our age. None of the businesses want kids there."
So, to find fun, the girls feel they either have to produce it themselves or partake in activities like music shows at record stores on most weekends around the Bay Area.
Kirstin says it's hard thinking the way she does in Saratoga, mostly because it's so different than most other people her age. She is friends with some kids in public high school, but not too many. She also stays busy by helping out at local college radio stations and working with local record producers.
And being "punk rock" doesn't have anything to do with mohawk hairdos and combat boots. Kirstin says the attitude and lifestyle is thinking freely and contributing to the "scene" of music, zines and expression. You don't necessarily need to promote concerts or produce a zine to be punk, but you should cough up $3 to see a show every once in a while. If you can do more, then great.
Mostly, it seems it's about free thought, being young and having fun.
"It's not so much the music," Kirstin says, "it's the ideals."
Michelle quips, "It's like we were born punk rock!"
Follow the Black Sheep chronicles online at www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/8900/
|
|
|
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
