Post #22342 by BC-Da-Da on Fri, Feb 7, 2003 6:07 PM

This is something that I've been pondering for awhile. I may be deluded but isn't this whole notion of being "cool" much more important today than it ever was in the era when the original Tiki cult existed? I mean, this notion, it seems to me, really came into prominence with the rise of rock music.

Wrong-O! You've obviously never listened to a Lord Buckley record. Cool originated with Jazz music. Being cool, meant to be chilled, or not overheated. Dig it, baby! This whole notion of slacker was a big part of the Beatnik lifestyle, but was first important to Black people, via the urban lifestyle that was Jazz. A Black man in the '40s could fight for equality all week, but in the end, he needed the love of a woman, the taste of hard liquor on his tongue, and the soothing sounds of the Bop. It's what keeps a man going.

Oscar Wilde may have captured the borgiuose slacker, but the Beatniks were the first blue-collar slackers. The mellowing out was very popular after WW2, and ended up becoming a most alluring ideal in the early '60s Los Angeles, especially inspiring to the Surfers. This image is reflected best in the wonderful Surf film, "Free & Easy." That film is really a metaphor for what cool really meant.

From my understanding people in the pre-rock era did not place nearly the importance on being cool as there is today.

Cool was different. I'm not sure that it was as focused as it is today. Cool has been marketed to death, and seems to be a much more tense act today. NOT BEING cool comes with great social ramifications. Still, to be cool, means to reflect an attitude of the carefree lifestyle.

Let's be honest-is it really important? Being cool is for juveniles and Hollywood movie stars. It's about an image one is supposed to project. We like Tiki, we enjoy it. That's all that counts in my opinion. Like Johnny Rotten once said"I gave up worrying about other people's opinions and impressions a long time ago."

And then he started Public Image Ltd. I'm tired of Punk. "Dogtown & Z-Boys" tried to hard to attach itself to the dark ideas of the Punk era, but it wasn't like that. Venice Beach had some rough spots, but I was a kid living in Long Beach at that time. I think that the last remnants of Beach Bums are much more interesting. In 1975, there were still guys who graduated high school in the '60s who lived at the beach, travelled to Europe with a girlfriend, and didn't bother selling cars. 1977 would be the last time that most of them voted for a democrat. You want to look at why America is as right wing as it is today... take a good look at a high school reunion program from 1975. By 1980, it would all be over.

In 1975, the Los Angeles of the '60s wasn't there in the attitudes of the people in L.A., but they hadn't torn it down yet. They were still straddling the fence. All of the buildings and bars that we like now we still there in 1975. By 1980, they were torn down, and mini-malls were erected in their place.

The mainstream's ideas of being cool involve a concept in which we are to accept the brainwashing that in order to be "cool"
one has to be decadent, aggressive, competitive to the extreme, confrontational. While these things may have their own importance in my opinion we are subjected constantly to a media barrage that tries to tell us they are the most important values in life. Hogwash. I'm not in High school anymore. One of the luxuries of being an adult is that you can pretty much be and do what you want and don't have to accept so much assinine peer pressure.

The biggest media barrage is this whole thing we call "upper class". A whole generation was convinced that that word was what life was all about. We will never be the same.