Banishing youth culture is an artless business

Publication title: Edmonton Journal

Pages: C1 Front

Publication date: Jan 29, 2004

ProQuest document ID: 253057457

Author: Babiak, Todd

Oh, (Ferris is) very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads -- they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.
-- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Despite the leavening efforts of the cultural industry originating in the United States, high school hallways in Edmonton and across the continent are models of diversity. An afternoon stroll through Victoria School or Hub Mall at the U of A is more educational than watching five hours of MuchMusic. Between the ages of 15 and 25, kids are bursting to express themselves, to walk and talk and dress and even to slouch according to the mysteries of contemporary fashion.

And they're willing to pay for it.

Good artists and marketers understand that young people are an essential part of our social, creative and economic engine. Since youth culture can't be reduced to any one look, behaviour or attitude, selling to teenagers and young adults remains a risky business venture. If you read the kids wrong, if you build it and they don't come, you're not only bankrupt, you're also a joke. But if you get it right, riches and street credibility and the larger, older markets that follow youth unconsciously into character neighbourhoods, Diesel trucker hats and Gucci wrist bands are yours.

The tag line of the Downtown Business Association is "The Art of Business." This week, the organization's president, Jim Taylor, made some artless comments about his vision for downtown revitalization. He told The Journal he wants to keep entertainment for youth out of downtown, relying on "more sophisticated, more mature entertainment venues" like Four Rooms and Chance.

Taylor referred specifically to the young people he sees "sleeping and slouching" in small downtown green spaces on weekends, a group of 1,000 kids who, he says, buy and sell and use drugs, wreck stuff and steal whatever is available. "They do nothing to enhance or revitalize downtown," Taylor said, and applied this apparent truism to young people in general.

This is not a voice from the wilderness. Mayor Bill Smith and city council have been fighting to destroy raves and downtown all- night dance clubs for years. Last summer, the City of Edmonton refused to grant a licence to the Starlite Room, a respectable downtown venue for local and touring bands, because a senior citizen complex and a hotel complained about possible noise.

The philosophical conceit behind Edmonton's middle-class war against youth is a desire to steer our new and centrally planned downtown away from the fate of Old Strathcona. What Taylor, Smith and the other downtown visionaries who cross Whyte Avenue as quickly as possible in their SUVs fail to understand is that, despite its problems, Old Strathcona is the only urban neighbourhood we can be proud of in Edmonton.

On Friday and Saturday nights, too many suburban jackasses borrow their parents' cars to fill the boom-boom clubs, and everyone agrees there are too many boom-boom clubs on Whyte Avenue. But every afternoon the snowboard emporiums, clothing stores, hemp shops, tobacconists, bead sellers and, of course, bars and restaurants, are full of smart and sophisticated young people.

Taylor is right about some of the kids who go to after-hours clubs. Some of those kids are class-A losers, just as many of the adults who spend time downtown are class-A losers. Walk down Jasper Avenue from 109th to 97th streets any hour of any day and you will understand that loserdom is wonderfully democratic.

By choosing to base his vision of downtown and its future patrons on a stereotypical view of contemporary youth, by seeing a drug- addled criminal in every pair of baggy pants he sees, the director of Edmonton's Downtown Business Association dooms Jasper Avenue to blandness, to lifelessness, to an embarrassing cluster of sports bars and easy franchises. He removes all the art from business.

If we create an environment that is welcoming to all of Edmonton's youth, all of Edmonton's innovators and all of Edmonton, the city will respond: the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies and the dickheads, too.

Illustration

Colour Photo: Jason Scott, The Journal, File / In this file photo from 2001, fashionable club kids kick it at the defunct Therapy, the sort of after-hours dance club business leaders would like to curtail.