UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, June 12, 1996
3B
Skinheads,ska and society
Continued from page 1B
They've talked to Hadi numerous times, Paszkiewicz says. They try to explain to her that there are no neo-Nazis in Lawrence because the skinheads keep them out.
Troye "Trojan" Blackmon, Atchison police officer, is a skinhead who visits the Lawrence skinheads a few times a year. Blackmon says he found out about the situation between Lawrence police and Lawrence skinheads a year ago.
"The problem is mainly just the basic ignorance of what skinheads are about," Blackmon said. "The Lawrence Police Department classify skinheads as another street gang as I understand it."
Blackmon was a skinhead before he got into law enforcement. But he says Lawrence skinheads had no problem with him becoming a police officer because the skinhead work ethic is all about bettering oneself.
Skinhead Howard Hanna says that after the Christopher Bread murder, it seemed the Lawrence police were prejudiced against the skinheads. But he says when there was a confrontation between the Lawrence skinheads and some boneheads from Fort Riley and Leavenworth this past winter at the Replay Lounge, the police were willing to listen to the Lawrence skinheads. The police understood that the skinheads were the good guys in that situation.
A Lawrence police officer once asked Speight why Lawrence skinheads are so intolerant of neo-Nazis, she recalls.
"Because when they paint a swastika on the Jewish center, you'll be knocking on my door," Speight told him.
Clashing styles of people
"Sometimes I
A liquid-mercury light reflects
wonder why I stay a skinhead. ButI
know the problems in skinhead society are not worse than in the rest of society." Brandy Springer Lawrence skinhead
Brandy Springer
Lawrenceskinhead
James W. Grau/KANSAN
off the synchronized movements of three saxophones that make up the Scofflaw's horn section. The crowd bobs up and down, some doing a manic version of the skank, a traditional ska dance. Skanking involves taking two steps forward and two back, in a sort of running-in-place motion, but most of the teenagers in this crowd just bob up and down in an MTV-style mosh.
The skinheads at the show have moved to the back and side of the Daily Grind, 3826 Main St., Kansas City, Mo., trying to escape the crowd's frenzy. A man with long hair gets on stage and then jumps on the crowd.
Skinheads are not against stage diving if it is at a hardcore show, says skinhead Jay "Syko" Chugdon, who has a blue Mohawk.
Kitty Steffens cradles her 40-ounce beverage while sitting atop Mike Johnson's Vespa motorscooter. Steffens, 21, has been a skinhead for a little over a year and still considers herself a "freshcut."
Paszkiewicz says, "But Jesus Christ, you don't stage dive toska. It's the stupidity of people acting like something when they're really not.
We are bitter. We kept the ska scene going, not just the music.
but the way we dress, the fashion."
Skinheads say that when fraternity members drink at skai shows, they flail around and hurt people, especially women. The tension between the Greeks and skinhead roustabulates is rampant at shows, says Abby Page, Chugdon's girlfriend, who wants to be a skinhead.
The last time she went to see the St. Louis ska band MU330 at the Bottleneck, some fraternities members in the crowd were pushing without any regard for females. One member kept running into her and her friends, and they had to push him away.
"We told him, 'Hey, let everybody dance and leave us alone,'" Page says.
After that, one of the fraternity members elbowed her in the eye and shoved her to the ground, Page says. Her friends had to push through everybody's legs and help her up.
"When alcohol and a clashing style of people mix in an enclosed environment it gets really bad," she says.
The Lawrence skinheads claim their pride in their unique appearance rubs some people, including fraternity members, the wrong way. Brady Grace, Wichita sophomore, and member of Beta Theta Pi, says he remembers an incident when he and his friend were hanging out at a bar.
"I don't like skinheads because they act like the coolest baddest rock stars and wear shitty clothes, earrings and tattoos," Grace says.
"Skinheads were starting trash like they tend to do," Grace says. "They were being loud and drunk and not following normal social standards."
He and his friend took it upon themselves to make them be more socially aware, Grace says. They got in a shouting match with the skinheads and the skinheads ended up leaving.
Skinheads: A sexist society?
Part of skinhead fashion is the often-seen flight jacket. People who wear flight jackets decorate them with pins and patches which designate their musical and political preferences. Anthony Verheaghe and Frank McHale, both from Kansas City, wore their "flights" to a ska show at the Daily Grind in Kansas City, Mo.
James W. Grau/KANSAN
It's harder to become a female skinhead, Paukstelis says. Female skinheads are a lot fiercer to "freshcuts," the skinheads' word for those who have just shaved their heads.
That's because being a female skinhead is more noticeable, Speight says, and because being female and having a shaved head is less socially acceptable. For a while the only job she could find was building magnetic components for air-to-ground Hellfire Missiles at Torotel Products Inc. in Grandview, Mo., for minimum wage. When she shaved her head, her mother thought she was a lesbian.
But she likes the violent element of being a skinhead. It's a necessary defense, Speight says. Being in a small town makes her more noticeable to people.
"A lot of people see me walking down the street and think, 'What a stupid bitch,'" she says. "After a while they get sick of thinking it and do something about it."
An indigent in town stole her tip money when she was working as a waitress, she says. She reported it to her manager who threw him out. Then she saw the man on the street, and he became angry.
"I discovered putting my cigarette out on his face could be a real good deterrent," she says.
Skinheads react to the small-town claustrophobia of Lawrence by striking out with violence and not apologizing. Speight is adamant about her choice of lifestyle.
"I'm a skinhead because I feel it," she says. "I can't explain why I feel it."
Skinhead society is exist partly because there so few female skinheads. There are only four in Lawrence, so Springer remains a skinhead because she wants to change the male-centered attitude.
Skinhead Brandy Springer confesses, "Sometimes I wonder why I stay a skinhead. But I know the problems in skinhead society are not worse than in the rest of society."
Paszkiewicz is still mulling over why the skinheads drink on ooftops.
Drinking, families and rooftops
It's a temporary escape, he thinks.
"The problem is mainly just the basic ignorance of what skinheads are about."
are about.
Troye Blackmon
Atchison police officer and
skinhead
"The one thing that bugs me the most about all the media about skinheads is they say we are all just dysfunctional losers, looking for family," he says. "That's not true. We all chose this lifestyle."
Lindsey Barrett, Paszkiewicz's girlfriend, says, "Tom has one of the best familial relationships I've ever seen. But I think a lot of us have had bad family experiences."
"No more than anyone else," Paszkiewicz says.
"That's true," Barrett says. "Everyone here could go home and there wouldn't be any hostility."
The others warm to their own drinking-on-the-roof theories.
Steffens says jokingly, "Yeah, we're really hippies at heart and just want to be outdoors."
"Maybe because the cops can't see you up here," Mike Johnson
offers.
Paszkiewicz says, "Skinheads and punk rockers try to isolate ourselves because we have been rejected by society. Whenever there is trouble we get blamed for it. Ninety percent of the time, when there are fights between frat boys and skinheads, the skinheads are the ones that end up going to jail."
"Tom and I talked to a Johnson County Community College class called Social Problems to tell people who we really are and what were about," Speight says. They told the class that she and Paszkiewicz are Anti-Racist Action skinheads.
The ARA was started by Lawrence skinheads as a way to keep neo-Nazis out of town, Paszkiewicz says.
So they teach the neo-Nazis Skinhead 101, he says. This includes racial tolerance and the history of the Jamaican and English fusion of cultures that created skinheads.
If education fails, the ARA skinheads use direct action.
"Throughout the United States, Nazis know Kansas City and Lawrence are not the places for them," Paszkiewicz says.
Every so often one shows up, and they leave town barefoot and bleeding, he adds.
"Thus we can bring in why the police don't like us so much," Paszkiewicz says. "We live a fish bowl existence."
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