Why The Kids At Hot Topic Need To Get Off Of My Lawn
Following up on DJ’s email diatribe from yesterday - which I completely agree with!! - I had a scary experience the other day at Roosevelt Field, one of the greatest shopping malls I’ve ever been too. There I was in the Hot Topic, looking for a band tee to buy. I was going to go to a ska show that night, so I was in my black Fred Perry and black skinny jeans and 18 year-old Doc Martens. And while perusing the offerings, something occurred to me…
I know how my parents feel.
In addition to Twilight tee shirts, Hot Topic also sells cartoon and video game related merchandise. If you want a Thundercats sweatshirt or a Pac-Man tee shirt, Hot Topic is your place to go.
When I was 16, I got heavy into classic rock. Back then, classic rock was everything up to The Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”. I listened to a lot of Cream, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Rolling Stones (ABKCO albums), Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin. I also had long hair. My parents would talk about how great the music was when they were young and hippies in California in 1967 and wouldn’t shut up about Woodstock and would dump on the music of the day that I did listen too (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Hole, Soundgarden).
And they’d talk about how “Oh yeah, we had the best music” and tell me to stop stealing their Led Zeppelin and Beatles LPs. It’s not my fault that they didn’t listen to their LPs and I did. And if my dad didn’t want me to take his original pressings of “Are You Experienced?” and “Revolver”, then he should have put them where I wouldn’t find them.
The point is that I was invading their generation’s culture. I suppose this is natural.
So there I stood in Hot Topic, looking at “Legend of Zelda” tee shirts, having the realization that my younger siblings, aged 21, 18, and 10, were now invading my generation. Each of them adores the NES. They’re each down with Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart, and Zelda. Some of this is my fault. Just as my dad wouldn’t shut up about how Slash couldn’t carry Jimi Hendrix’ jock strap (my dad is right; he can’t), I wouldn’t shut up about Star Wars and my sibs are little Star Wars geeks too.
They’re not alone. There is an entire generation that has been brought up in the long shadow of the NES and Star Wars. To them, the Atari 2600 controller is an icon but not something that they’ve ever used. Super Mario Bros. is for speed runs. That Super Mario World 3 is a great game is a given, even if they’ve never played it, and “blowing on cartridges” is a concept that they’ve never practiced. And just like my dad could blow my mind by talking about seeing The Doors play at the Whiskey A Go-Go, my sibs can’t grasp the notion of hooking a Commodore 64 up to a 19″ TV set and toggling a box called an “RF adapter.” Just like knowing the names of the great music venues of the late Sixties is esoterica that shows that you’re heavy into classic rock, knowing Load “*”,8,1 is video game arcana.
After I had this epiphany, a 14 year-old girl came up and asked me where the Justin Bieber tee shirts were. I told her that the only Justin Bieber shirts they had were “Who The Hell Is Justin Bieber?!” and they were on back-order.
