October 1, 1998

"He captured the peak era of the original heavy ‘Dogtown' street skaters. He worked on the first Black Flag video. He produced the first Suicidal Tendencies album. He introduced me to the Beastie Boys when they only had a seven-inch single out. He gave me a tape of Public Enemy when Chuck D was DJing in college ... the bottom line is that he was there at the beginning of so much cool stuff in so many different areas, it's not funny."-Henry Rollins on Glen E. Friedman

I have this book. It's a collection of early skate and music photographs taken from 1974—1991 by Glen E. Friedman called

F-k You Heroes. One might call it a coffee-table book, except I don't have a coffee table, and I didn't buy it for a display/conversation piece. I'd call it an inspirational book. I keep it in my room, and I pull it out when things get confusing and I need a little perspective.

Sometimes it makes me more confused, because Friedman's photographs document an era that shaped so many of our identities. His stories are from a time when subcultures like punk, rap, and skating were just that:

subcultures in their infancy stages-exciting and alive. Now we are living in an era where as soon as something cool, or slightly "underground," is discovered, it shows up on next month's Sprite or Gap commercial. The contrast is a little overwhelming sometimes. Especially since this magazine is very much a part of the mass commercialization of a former subculture.

Sometimes the book gets me thinking about the fuzzy line between documentation and exploitation that exists in snowboarding these days. We get all kinds of letters here that any one of us could have, at one time, written. People complain about snowboarding going mainstream, how ski companies are taking over, we're losing the soul of our sport, and on and on. But it doesn't have to be that way. Snowboarding in its purest essence is still about love. Love is what gives you the strength to scrub toilets for an employee pass, to eat 29-cent ramen every night, to live in a closet in a one-bedroom apartment with five people, and to be happy about the sacrifices because they enable you to ride every day. And that love exists in your heart, not in the pages of this magazine, or in the images of a televised snowboard contest.

The powerful thing about Glen E. Friedman is that he took pictures of youth movements he was a big part of-for the sole reason that they excited him. And now, years later, the products of his love and intensity tell the history of subcultures that have since blown up, or lost direction. And the pictures he's taking today will most likely tell the history tomorrow of how, in an era of Madison Avenue homogenization, "exploited" powerful youth cultures faltered, then found their way back home again.

We, the media and companies responsible for the current mass commercialization of this sport, are not the final word on what snowboarding, or anything else for that matter, is. Not even close. You are. There are as many stories and realities in snowboarding as there are snowboarders. When future generations look back, will these pages tell the story of your life? Do you think an angry letter to the editor is going to change that? Try this instead: grab a camera, pick up a pen, a paintbrush, a mic-document your passion. Because if every image and idea that exists in this world is the product of a motivated individual or group of individuals, why shouldn't the individual producing those images and ideas be you?

There's a quote by Henry Rollins in the liner notes of F-k You Heroes that says it best: "Art meets action. Art becomes action. There are no heroes here. Just those who have it and know what to do with it." And the chances are, if what you believe in and see in your world is different than what you see when you pick up a magazine or turn on the TV-you're probably onto something.

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