Teenage Takeover: Skins Ruined My Life

I’m from Weston-super-mare, that small town outside of Bristol that famously plays host to “T4 on the beach” every year. Within the space of two months, the same street you see a man getting his head kicked-in on, of a Friday night, is the same one that you can spot The Kaiser Chiefs, or whoever, walking down. Needless to say, I travel to Bristol a lot of the time.

It started when I had just become a teenager. I travelled to Bristol as many times a week as I could, to see as many bands as I could. At first, I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was London away from London. The bands played their hearts out every night and I thought Bristol was perfect. As I grew older, however, there was a slow demise in watching bands. Everybody started drinking and the focus was more on going out to blow your mind every night.

There was a mould that consisted of, on a basic level, Topman and The Kooks. The majority of people still fail to break out of this mould. I soon found out this wasn’t like London. The only two things that are pushing forward here are skateboarding and drum’n’bass. Every night we’d go to these “indie” clubs. They weren’t full of substance filled minds. They were full of kids dressed in clashing colours and sunglasses.

The Skins subculture in Bristol seeks individuality, but individuality isn’t Day-Glo, and it cannot be bought in Topman. Individuality does not come from a shop. You cannot buy into it. It is sparked by your own creativity. Wearing an all-over print hoody, as they do in Skins, is not cutting-edge and it is certainly not “fashion”. The kids that follow Skins don’t understand that they are not pushing everything forward. Inspiration comes from the catwalk, not by feeding off of Topman.

One night, I sat down in the smoking area of one of these clubs. There was a boy sat right next to me openly sniffing a huge amount of Ketamine off a door key. Drugs brought a slight edge to the bad music and bad fashion. It mainly makes most people unbelievably irritating though. They start to talk really fast about absolutely nothing.

Recently, when walking the streets at night, I’ve started to get more abuse than I’ve ever experienced before. I get called a girl and a homo because they won’t open their minds. The whole thing has got unbelievably boring. The clubs are playing exactly the same music every week. Far rom the portrayal of young life in Skins, I feel like this is some sort of teen dystopia. I’d like to see an uprising of kids who want to say things here. I like what the kids are doing here with skateboarding, graffiti and drum’n’bass and stuff, but that’s not my scene. I’d like to see Bristol gain some things that London has, like the new music and the creativity. I’d like to see waves of bands emerge from Bristol. Unfortunately I don’t see it happening for a long time.

Text by Alex Carman | Photography by Michael Thomas Jones
As featured in Dazed & Confused January Issue.