Bull in the Heather: My Sonic Youth Youth

My boyfriend (who wants to move out west) often asks me why I want to keep living in New York. I usually keep silent because I understand what he's saying. It's a bitch to live here. It's tough if your pockets are deep and even tougher when your pockets are full of lint.

Here's my long, rambling answer to him:

I was thirteen and thought Sonic Youth's "BULL IN THE HEATER" video was the coolest. KATHLEEN HANNA from BIKINI KILL (who incidentally has been dating AD-ROCK from the Beastie Boys for about a decade) jumps around like a maniac in the music video and I remember thinking, "Who is this feisty brunette? I want to be her!" It was a time when I kept a pile of SASSY magazines underneath my bed including the issue with Kurt and Courtney on the cover.  I still remember my favorite writers on the staff by name (Jauretsi and Gigi Guerra).

This was why I wanted to move to New York:  it seemed like a place where smart, young women could do creative things, start their own business, and write about fashion and their favorite bands. The ceiling was as high as you wanted it to be. Who wouldn't wouldn't want to be there?  People come and go all the time from the city, mostly for the summer, but few stay.  You have to be smart, resourceful, tough as nails, and take rejection well.  Most end up leaving.  But the ones I admired STAYED.

It was X-GIRL clothing, co-founded by Sonic Youth's KIM GORDON, that really caught my eye. I really wanted an X-girl t-shirt back then and the only place that carried them in Chicago was UNTITLED (the era when Untitled was the size of a closet on Clark St. and they still owned Sole Junkies). But alas, they were too expensive for me at the time and I really was just not cool enough to be wearing an X-girl tee, but the idea of fashion sense combined with market appeal, independence, and entrepernuership still stick with me today.

SOFIA COPOLLA and KIM GORDON were my teenage inspiration. Does anyone remember the show hosted by Sofia Copolla on MTV? There were only two episodes and it would air late night.  I remember a segment on how Thurston Moore would record the sound of garbage trucks and make noise rock out of it. I need to find it!) Anyways, I think about those women, how important and influential they were to my generation, how they made careers out of their passions and that's why I live here. So leave me alone.