Have you ever seen a goth?

When I'd drop my demigoth son at the mall.

Goths have been around for a long, long time. They just didn't call them goths.

I used to be one

... if I were a young man I'd, uh, get to know one. :)

as does the girl in the background but it's kind of blurry so I can't tell...

but since there's no distinct markings, I dunno.

I guess it's just about the same thing, isn't harajuku a square or a district where the goth-ish alternative kids hang out? Although some of the clothes they wear have a raggedy-ann/kinder-whore thing to them, at least as far as the girls go...

she is breathtaking...the caption of the photo when I downloaded it this time (I've seen this around for a couple of years elsewhere) said "troubled harajuku teen", lol.

people try to put us down
just because we g-g-get around...

Edo period literati art?

Here's a decent place to start: http://archive.tpt.org/china/literati1.html

From that site:
"Wenren, or literati, were first of all scholars trained in the Confucian classics, poetry, and history – required subjects for the official civil service exam. Many literati spent their younger years in government service and their older years as retired gentlemen (see the example of the painter Gao Qibei on page 4). In retirement, literati could devote their energies full-time to painting, poetry, calligraphy or the collection of old books, antiques, or maintaining their garden."

I loved learning about this kind of art last year. I think it's absolutely beautiful, and I adore the way that they use negative space in their painting.

for that link...

it makes a little more sense now

now that I know how to break it down here's a wiki link on Edo period in case anyone besides me is curious
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_period

It emerged during the Tokugawa Shogunate and
was driven by the encreasing wealth and education
of the merchant class.

At the beginning of the Tokugawa period Edo (Tokyo)
was a small provincial town but became a major
center when it became the political capital.

Edo painting is also called Ukiyo-e or Pictures of
the Floating World. Edo was also known for its
sophisticated poetry, theater, and dance.

http://user.bahnhof.se/~secutor/ukiyo-e/

"pictures of the floating world..." that is beautiful,
thanks for the link

Or is it know for its goth-type clubs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay

Cosplay (コスプレ, kosupure?), a contraction (or portmanteau) of the English words "costume" and "play", is a Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, tokusatsu, and video games, and, less commonly, Japanese live action television shows, fantasy movies, or Japanese pop music bands. However, in some circles, "cosplay" has been expanded to mean simply wearing a costume.

In Japan, "cosplay" as a hobby is usually an end unto itself. Likeminded people gather to see others' costumes, show off their own elaborate handmade creations, take lots of pictures, and possibly participate in best costume contests.

Interesting...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harajuku_Girl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Lolita

this is a style that I don't find attractive at all but you see it alot in pictures of harajuku girls.

Gwen Stefani co-opted harajuku fashion and pissed alot of people off by referring to her paid dancers who dress in harajuku fashion as her 'favorite accessories'. Really typical, stupid attitude...it led to this website because her of treatment of the dancers (some weren't native Japanese, one might have been Chinese and they were bound by contract to speak only in Japanese even though some if not all were bi-lingual) and led to this blog lampooning her, asking people to 'free the Gwenihana four':
http://gwenihana.blogspot.com/

I was reading a website at that time ( www.angryasianman.com ) that got this started and fanned the flames...

Sometimes I hang out with them :hi:

Think about the odd couple, a Blond haired, Green eyed Irish guy with a woman wearing ankle length black dress, with black fingernails and black eyeliner. Pretty much EVERYTHING she wore was black, as I would know. :evilgrin: Plus I LOVE long straight black hair, don't ask me why, and her hair went all the way down to the small of her back.

1981, Cassandra Peterson lands the role of television horror movie hostess for KHJ-TV in Los Angeles.

http://www.elvira.com

But before that was the Addams Family ... Morticia Addams... as Gomez would say, "Tish!, when you speak French, it drives me wild, Cara Mia!"

can be credited to Poe.

Those Victorians, man.... making TB and opium addiction sexy....

That's hot.

:rofl:

Just to be annoying, I generally showed up in a loud Hawaiian shirt or a fraternity jersey and generally acted like a boisterous, cantankerous loudmouth. I got lots of dirty looks.

and pummel them in the alley.

one that got away. The breaking point? She didn't really care about politics or racism or anything else. Not saying I wouldn't date a goth again, but that one in particular wasn't really for me.

and fingernails. I loved the black or blood-red dresses and striped pirate stockings. I thought riot grrrls were sexy. And most of them were smart and well-read. I did pretty well quoting Byron and Shakespeare around riot grrrls. They liked me. :evilgrin:

I was just ahead of that and kind of missed it. I did love Bikini Kill but it's kind of hard for me to listen to now because it's obvious they pretty much sucked (ducks). But I used to scream along with "Suck My Left One" nonetheless...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJlD6kQ20Qg

(that's Kathleen Hanna in the pic, btw)

I always thought indie-geeks were a tad pathetic, though they were my own tribe, as it were. But goths? Utterly laughable, those dark aristocrats of the night are.

;)

It would take decades to destroy the soles on those. I would look lame, but I could save a few bucks.

I narrowly avoided seeing some Monguls too, riding bareback out on great ivory stallions of the east with swords flashing. Someone told me about it, and it frightened me greatly.

Since about the 7th Century or so.

Tell us your secret to longevity.

back in my college days...

but it was more like the punk of the '80's

Punk in the '80's is like the Goth now, IMO

but some fake ones at my school, yeah. It looks kinda stupid on them, but I think that if people do it right, it's pretty beautiful,and it has a certain grace to it, making something artistic out of something that's normally thought of as negative.

A couple of the high school goths may have been legit, but I figured most of them as pseudo-goths. Especially the girl who came out of her "dark" stage freshman year, and by junior year was dressing preppy and had become captain of the drill team!

I don't see them around anymore.

little hot topic kinderbat type goth

There are lots of goths in Philly.

I like the goth look, but being a blond haired blue eyed blond I can't really pull it off. I like a lot of goth music though.

My favorite goths:



Especially the kid who flicks his hair out of his eyes every two seconds.

I want to start a goth band, if for no other reason than that, at least around here, goth music attracts more (and prettier) female fans than any other rock extract.

Stevie Nicks in the late '70's.

The *only* person I've ever seen who's able to carry Goth off without looking like a joke or a cartoon, but then-- she did it before it became trendy, popular and the fashion flavor-of-the-month.

I typed "goth" into Google Images to find a good one, and this was far and away the funniest they had:

but I'm strangely turned on by goth chicks...

...why bother going around acting unhappy or emo when you're not? Or going "Wah, drama and tragedy! Woe is me!"

I have a somewhat goth personality (kinda sulky sometimes, very introverted), and I like good vampire novels (that is to say, Barbara Hambly, not Anne Rice). The only time you'll catch me in a set of semi-goth clothes is if I'm going clubbing (it's goth or hip-hop 'round here, and I hate hip-hop), and even then, I still try to dress so I don't look like an idiot. Baggy studded pants suck. The music is almost good...Opeth's the only semi-goth band I like, and they're really more metal than anything else.

However, I also have to agree with you on one thing:

HOLYSHITGOTHCHICKS *drools*

Especially we older ones who have jobs and aspirations and education and ahem... money. We're the "perky goths" in general. The baby-gloomers tend to be the depressive sorts, the ones who haven't got their meds worked out yet or who haven't realized that high school is not the end-all, be-all of existence. Most of us are intelligent, driven, interested in building communities of our own and in living in a world where sex and death are things we face, accept, educate about and embrace as natural parts of the human cycle.

I like my dress-up clothes; they're fun and they make people react to me on my terms, not on what ever box they want to put a short, busty Irish chick into. Any tool that comes to hand.... I gotta wear something, and given the choice, I'd rather patronize someone who hand-crafts their materials and works for themselves than some mindless, soulless mall-corp that off-shores their labor and pays their workers nothing.

And there are endless varieties of goth - baby-doomers (post-apocalyptic punk, usually young and not coping with the world well); baby-gloomers (death and depression, in equal measures, usually with a bit of poverty thrown in) baby-bats (rich kids with Mummy and Daddum's credit cards who believe that Hot Topic is the beginning and end of all things both Goth and cool who are playing at Goth to mess with their parents' minds), vintage-goth (recreators of any time period from 1800 to 1949 who are usually disgustingly knowledgeable about a particular era and find it endlessly diverting), retro-goth (recreators of time periods from 1950 to 1990, also disgustingly well-read), elegant-goth (think Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis), ....

Classification is nearly impossible. We elders are sadly dismissive of the younger ones, usually for their own flaws and lack of development, but so it goes. Such is the case with almost any culture, not just a sub-culture like Gothism.

I loved reading about all the categories.

It sounds interesting, and I really like the way alot of the fashion and makeup looks. I'm too lazy to go to all that trouble, but I like it on other people.

Two of the goth people I hang out with (and several I've met) aren't doom and gloom at all, although one of them is turning into a Grade-A dickhead. I have however, also met the sort who look down on non-goths (holy shit, I've met too many of those), baby-doomers, and baby-gloomers.

Most goths are a hell of a lot more fun to hang out with than most preppies. I just don't like some of the particular sub-cultures, and anything other than the "business goth" look doesn't really work well on guys, in my opinion.

Can I get some advice-what's your take on the industrial scene? Anything useful you'd care to pass on?

P.S. Awesome post. And is that a Dork Tower reference I see in paragraph 1?

Actually, I live in Boulder County, Colorado, home of a hundred thousand hippy-dippy crystal licking baby twisters, so the EBM/Industrial scene is slightly moribund, if that's not a gross redundancy. Most of the clubs in the area are still doing the disco-retro or top 40 hip-hop, both of which make my ears bleed. (I had enough of both in the actual 70s and 80s, thankyouverymuch and I don't need the flashbacks to my mother in a red and white gingham bell-bottom jumpsuit with 4 inch platforms.) ( Bad attitude? Me? How'd you guess? ) The few clubs that are doing EBM/Industrial are doing so on Sunday nights, when working stiffs (another pun!) like me have to get up and get to the office at ohmigod it's early thirty. So thank Steve Jobs for iTunes Music, or we'd still be listening to Bauhaus and slitting our wrists with sharpened spoons. (There are good reasons to live in Boulder County, mostly excellent public services, a low crime rate, minimal government intrusiveness and a nicely liberal air, but cool it isn't.) I've also noticed that the tour schedule is pretty slim these last couple of years; I'll guess the thriving economy and you guess the incompetent in the White House and we'll be speaking the same language.

I've just crossed paths with a couple of new (to me anyway) groups: L'ame Immortelle (French Goth), The Parallel Project and Saints of Eden; all three are worth the effort of seeking out, at least in recording. Also, there's a magnificient collaboration between Apoptygma Berzerk, Bruderschaft, Covenant, Icon Of Coil & VNV Nation that is definitely on my "give to everyone I know in original, paid format" list. The collaboration, by the way, benefits cancer research, and the website for the album explains the history. http://www.razorburn.net/bruderschaft/ I am a huge VNV fan, and I highly recommend their work. The Last Dance, Cruxshadows and Girls Under Glass are also in my heavy rotation right now. And there's always Rasputina, the only people besides Les Claypool who can make the larger bow-stringed instruments take on the guise of percussion instruments and make it work.

And, if it was a reference to Dork Tower, it was a completely unconscious one, but thanks to you, I now have ANOTHER comic in my morning wakey-wakey file! Damn you! And thanks!

"strangely turned on"...that about says it all.

I kinda like it.

I'd never tell people what they can and can't not just dress like, but present themselves to the world as, BUT...I just don't get the whole GOTH thing. It all just looks cheap to me.

and the place is crawling with them. (and pirates, superheroes, Imperial storm troopers, and much other fauna of the geek kind.) :)

I wanna see BOTH!!! The Cruxshadows and The Last Dance are playing there :cry:

in goth chicks.

I helped a group of them jump start their car at 0200 at a Denny's - I was pleased to be selected out of that crowded restaurant to help them - they said they thought I "looked like I'd be cool" LOL

:bounce:

And at my friends and at every club I go to.... I'm not necessarily as extreme (I'm vintage, having been part of one of the earlier waves of goth chic) and I go for elegance rather than punk (let me show you my antique opera glove, hat and fountain pen collections) but I am part of the culture.

:)