Joe Nelson wrote a classic, funny, somewhat disturbing history of the legendary Orange County Sloth Crew over at Double Cross. While this type of thing has a limited audience, hopefully those in that audience will be as entertained as I was. Growing up in early 90’s Orange County hardcore I missed the heyday of the Sloth Crew and was only able to collect limited amounts of knowledge via oral history, the occasional bootleg videotape, and my membership in the Jim Brown fanclub. From an amateur historians standpoint this post is pure gold.
A few gems from his post:
We were Straight Edge, although we hung with surfers and skaters who definitely were not. Like any Straight Edge kid from any era we also felt we were better then the rest of the normal kids in town. We had that swagger that, unless you’ve lived as a 17 year old Straight Edge kid, you don’t really understand.
Mr. Nelson describes a variety of antics, including:
These were prime time high school days. We were total pirates. I mean just complete hooligans. Our M.O. was to roll into your party, steal your VCR, make 976 calls on your parent’s phone, spray paint O.C. Sloth Crew on the bath room mirror, piss in your dad’s underwear drawer, then blow up your keg with low grade dynamite which we’d get from Mexico, and end it all with some fight with the football team in the street. The normal kids hated us. We were eventually banned from every party in H.B. If we showed up, the kids whose house it was would immediately call the cops, who by then also knew of us. Eventually we just moved the operation to Irvine on Friday night and ran wild down there.
…but Mr. Nelson finishes the post with a bit of self-awareness and humility, stating:
TAGS: Blackspot, Gorilla Biscuits, Insted, Orange County Hardcore, Orange County PunkI really hate to think that we were the beginning of the gross Straight Edge gangs which came around in the late 90s. I mean, kids stabbing dudes to death with Samurai swords in the name of Straight Edge is just completely disgusting. Talk about total derailment of a pretty cool train. Those kids in Utah fucking suck and missed the whole point of what Straight Edge is all about. Unfortunately, we sort of missed it as well. I also believe in some ways we were the first chapter of the evilness that came later on in the scene, which is disheartening for me personally. It is what it is though.
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April 10th, 2008 at 10:20 am
The 17-year old SXE swagger…Wow, funny. However, young SXE maniacs are very different from gangs fighting over scene turf. One’s best described as “being a rebellious and wild kid”. The other is “compensating for being fat and ugly by picking on weaker foe.” Plus, if you’re a gang that doesn’t make money, what’s the point of being a gang? The whole point of organized crime is $$$, right?
April 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
while the point of being involved in organized crime is certainly money, i think the point of being in a gang is more for a sense of belonging; the money is just a bonus for those that can make it happen. therefore i think the parallel is there, as a vast quantity of kids that are straight edge, are so to achieve that sense of belonging to something. thats not to say that its inherently a bad thing, at its core it kicks ass, but i think we can all agree that it’s no longer what it was meant to be
April 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
are kids seriously still straight edge?
April 12th, 2008 at 2:23 am
If you’re in a gang and you’re not making money you’re a loser. Why take the risk? For brotherhood with a bunch of criminals? Dumb. False belonging. Be SXE for yourself and to belong, but gangs are lame–esp if you’re not maing money.