Lords of Dogtown: "Poetic License"

JUST A QUICK riff on Caroline's post about Dogtown and Z-Boys.

Not too long after the documentary about the Westside skate tribes made its rounds, a feature film based on their story premiered on the big screen in 2005. The film,  Lords of Dogtown, is the dramatized retelling of the story of skaters Jay Adams, Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva. 

Jay, Stacy and Tony -- the "Hollywood Version" in  Lords of Dogtown

Directed by Stacy Peralta, (who was part of the scene and also prominently featured in the doc) Lords of Dogtown explores the same ground yet via a different prism.  It's a clarifying compliment to watch the two side by side. While 2001's Z-Boys was frank, edgy and gloriously frayed at the edges in a realistic way,  the Lords of Dogtown is all mood,  evoking a re-enacted of-the-moment "sense of place." It speaks to some elements we have been discussing in class -- voice, point of view and how memories of places and scenes now gone -- unfold differently in various hands.

Jay Adams, for one, pretty much thought the film was in a way, Dogtown Lite.That, however, he suggests, was largely the problem with the Hollywood version of gritty subcultures:

 "Movies about surfing and skateboarding have always turned out to be pretty bad. Usually they're pretty corny. The only one that I ever really liked was “Big Wednesday.” Movies like “Thrashin” made me want to hide. I think “Lords of Dogtown” was kind of like “Blue Crush” but for little boys instead of girls. “Blue Crush” was a little girl movie. I thought they did a good job on it. I thought the same for ours. I mean, it was PG-13. How real can it be?

First of all, Stacy Peralta never hung out with us. He was a Z boy, but he wasn't a Dogtowner. I have to give Stacy a lot of credit. Think of how hard it would be to write a movie about yourself and not come across as being big-headed. Stacy was a really great skateboarder. He did good in contests and was smart as far as making money is concerned. Some of the things in the movie were true, but a lot were made up just to make the story better."

Adams has photographed and written extensively about the scene himself.  You might want to check this out too. 


Here's a couple of windows in on that moment in L.A via Stacy Peralta's POV.:

Lords of Dogtown: The Trailer: 

 Pool Skating: Let's turn "the dream" inside out . . .

-- L.G.

Dogtown and Z-Boys: L.A. Then and Now

"There is a place where American manifest destiny collides into the Pacific Ocean. This is Dogtown"

--Dogtown and Z-Boys

DURING class last week, I jotted down some ideas for blog inspiration while our speaker, Mike the Poet,  recited his poems by heart while occasionally inserting Los Angeles tidbits and suggestions for our reading and viewing. Among these ideas were the words and phrases, "Venice," "Cold cases/unsolved mysteries," "The Black Dahlia," "Noir," "Gary Phillips," "Dave Eggers," and "Dogtown and Z-Boys." Inspired by my list, I decided to watch Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about skateboarding and surfing in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Although, as a native Texan, I have never surfed or skateboarded, I found the documentary very interesting, especially because of the illustrations and images it provided of old Los Angeles. I have always thought that in order to understand a place better, you must first understand it's history, and Z-Boys offered a glimpse of what Los Angeles was like back in the 1970s through telling the story of the Zephyr skate team and how they helped shape modern skateboarding into what it is today.

I find it hard to summarize the documentary because it presented so many personal stories and interviews from the Zephyr skate team, but in a nutshell, it discussed how skateboarding and surfing have come to be what they are today through the influence of a group of Angeleno kids who simply loved to surf, skate, and have fun doing so, yet accidentally and inadvertently created a cultural phenomenon, transforming skateboarding to something that was considered an insignificant hobby to a sport, lifestyle, and attitude.

One of the most surprising aspects of the documentary was the discussion of the image surfing used to have. Now, especially in California, surfing is a popular and arguably "cool" thing to do. It requires talent, money, and often a proximity to the beach. Most kids who live near the beach are often skilled in surfing or have at least tried it. The kids I babysit, who live in Manhattan Beach, often go to the beach to surf on weekday mornings for school, as it is considered a sport for Physical Education class. However, surfing in 1971-72 was completely different and was considered an outcast sport. Surfing was not something you did to build your self-esteem or gain popularity, but was rather an antisocial activity done by kids who were considered drop outs. From surfing, skateboarding became popular because when the waves died down by 10am, Angeleno kids needed another hobby, and so they glued wheels from hand-me-down roller skates to pieces of plywood and practiced the surfing tricks they learned in the water on land, using empty swimming pools as their creative canvases.

The most astonishing and inspiring aspect of the documentary was the general message that these kids weren't trying to create a phenomenon through their skating--they just wanted to be kids, having fun and doing what they loved, and this genuine passion and talent for the sport manifested itself into an entire movement, as skateboarding became so popular that skateboarding magazines were the best sellers at gas stations. The kids who decided to take advantage of their new found fame and market themselves traveled across the country and became famous everywhere, even abroad.

As for what I learned about California, I jotted down and copied below some notable quotes that reflect how Los Angeles used to be. The vintage black and white pictures and videos of the Zephyr team skateboarding in empty pools, (drained due to a serious drought at the time), and surfing on crowded beaches offered a view into Los Angeles circa 1970.

A quote from the film on the striking differences between parts of Los Angeles that we have talked about in class and that still exists today:

"There is an invisible line of demarcation from the North side of Santa Monica and the South side. On one side, there are trophy houses with a lot of money, and the other side isn't like that at all. There is a visible financial line: If you lived above Wilshire you had money, if you lived below Wilshire, you wanted their money."

I am not sure where exactly these visible financial lines exist today, but judging from what I have seen of Los Angeles and how it can go from astonishingly wealthy to extremely run-down in a matter of minutes, I have no doubt that many of these lines are still present today. There isn't just one line of demarcation, but multiple lines, and through my adventures exploring new parts of L.A., I hope to find them.

Link to watch the entire documentary (in 8 parts) online: http://www.ovguide.com/dogtown-and-z-boys-9202a8c04000641f80000000002fc241

--Caroline Queen

--Photo Credit: Amazon.com