Category: Gen X

I wrote Stories on a Macintosh 512K

I bought a Macintosh 512K during my freshman year of college. It was my first real computer. As kids we’d had an Atari 400 but had mostly used it for games. I did all my high school papers on a typewriter.

When the 512k was first introduced in 1984 it retailed for $3,195. I think it had been discounted significantly by 1986 when I bought it, and then I got a further student discount, so I think I paid closer to $1,500. Still, adjusted for inflation, that is around $4,500 today!

I had this Mac til my mid-twenties–through the mid-1990s–and wrote most of the short stories in Stories on this computer. Then it disappeared. Or so I thought.

Then last year my brother was clearing some of his junk out of my parents’ garage and it appeared. It still has a Tracker sticker on the mouse (I actually hated Tracker trucks–have always used Independent Trucks, but I thought it was a cool and appropriate sticker for the mouse).

The stories in the collection are about adolescents and young adults. I was still very close to those experiences when I wrote those stories and I’m glad I got them down on the page when I did.

Camper Van Beethoven and the Sound of Mountain View

If I can think of any music to sum up the vibe of lazy San Francisco Bay Area summer days in the late 80s it’s Camper Van Beethoven. Formed in Redlands and Santa Cruz, they released their first three albums between 1985 and 1987. I bought these records as they came out and saw them play once or twice at the Fillmore in San Francisco. This music is part of the fabric of Mountain View.

Skating the Cobblestones of Florence: The Story Behind Firenze

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Italy both as a kid and an adult, and I studied in Florence for seven months during the late 80s. My younger brother was a pretty big skater and always used to bring his skateboard to Italy and try to skate cobblestones, etc. which I always thought hilarious. All of this went into creating Kevin, the narrator of my novel Firenze, who brings his skateboard to Florence.

I asked Sean Jackson to create this scene of hitting the cobbles on a skateboard and he did an awesome job.

Writing Mountain View in 1990s San Francisco: The N Judah Years

I wrote Mountain View in the late 90s while living in San Francisco. I recently came across some old photos in a box, taken from the window of the room where I used to write.

I left SF in 2000. All my friends were moving away (mostly to the East Bay or Brooklyn) and the place was really starting to change.

I really do miss 80s/90s SF sometimes! What an incredible time and place.

Miss the N Judah!

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Thrasher Magazine in the 1980s: Skateboarding Culture and the Novel Firenze

In Firenze, our hero Kevin takes a latest issues of Thrasher with him to Florence. And since it was the 80s and there was no internet, he reads Thrasher over and over for much of the book.

I was bored. Normally I’d just watch TV or something. I didn’t really know what to do. I’d brought along the latest issues of Thrasher, which I’d already read twice on the plane. What the fuck, I’d read it again.

This issue had Tommy Guerrero on the cover. Looking through the article I got homesick. Tommy was from SF. He was my hero. I’d seen him skate once in Oakland and the dude had blown me away.

I flipped through and read all the ads. Then I read Skarfing Material, my favorite column by Chef-Boy-Am-I-Hungry. If you remember the scene in Rocky where he drinks all those raw eggs, that’d kind of like a Chef-Boy-Am-I-Hungry recipe, except he’d maybe add something to the eggs first, like hot sauce and peanut butter. Each recipe was preceded by an existentialist rambling of some kind. Chef-Boy-Am-I-Hungry had a recipe for a Squid Eyeball Sandwich and Vito’s Vittles. After the nasty dinner with Sr. Gasperi they both sounded pretty good.

Pic via ThrasherMagazine.com

Learn more about Firenze

How Soundgarden’s Louder Than Love Inspired the Cover of Kato

We took a lot of our design inspiration from album covers, and as you can see Soundgarden’s Louder Than Love was a big reference point. I bought the album on vinyl when it came out in 1989, but it looks like one of my kids “borrowed” it at some point…

This cover is an especially appropriate influence for Kato, which is set in Seattle in the late 90s.

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Mac 512

I wrote these stories on a Mac 512 between 1990 and 1994. They were saved on floppy discs and printed out on a dot matrix printer. 

I’ve always considered the design of these early Macs to be absolutely iconic. I recently discovered that mine is still in the shed at my parents’ house, yellowed with age. 

This little “Maclock” came into my feed the other day. I usually avoid buying this kind of crap but I couldn’t resist this time. It’s surprisingly accurate. And it’s darn cute.

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Boss DS-1

Mountain View is set during the summer of 1988. That same year I walked into The Starving Musician in Santa Clara and bought a Fender Mustang and this Boss DS-1 to use in the garage/punk band I was playing in.

A year later Kurt Cobain would make that same combo famous on Bleach. I managed to see Nirvana in SF at the Kennel Club in 1990 when they came through with Tad and Dickless. Full set here:

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New Deal Danny Sargent 

In Firenze my narrator arrives in Florence Italy in the late 80s “armed only with a skateboard and a poor grasp of the Italian language. What follows is a deadpan comedy about culture shock, family baggage, and growing up by accident in a foreign country.”

Pictured is the Firenze paperback with an early/mid 90s New Deal Danny Sargent (discarded by my brother’s friend) paired with my old Indy trucks and OJIIs. I did most of my skating in the 80s and had wanted to try this whole new double-kick tail thing out.

I recently found some of my old 80s Schmitt Stix decks in my parents’ shed so maybe I’ll post those later.

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Paddle to the Sea: The 1966 Short Film Every Gen X Kid Remembers

Toward the end of Mountain View there is a section describing a short movie I saw in elementary school called Paddle To The Sea.

I’ve been surprised by how many people have commented about the Paddle To The Sea section. Mostly Gen X folks. So maybe the movie was more widespread than I thought. The movie was originally made in 1966 and I probably saw it in second grade in the mid-70s.

Have you seen it? Did it make a big impression on you? I really captured my imagination at the time and I still think it’s pretty great.

The movie is on YouTube:

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