Straight Edge / Hardcore / Vegan Terrorists?!

[Hootad Binky]

What is Straight Edge?

The short answer is that it is a subculture centered around hardcore music. People who are straight edge do not smoke, do drugs or consume alcohol. There are no dietary or religious beliefs tied to straight edge contrary to media coverage.




The long answer requires a bit of a history lesson.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a group of bands and kids began something that grew into a movement. It would become a movement that would outlive many of their involvement in the music and the scene. They didn't know what they were doing. They knew they didn't like what was going on around them, the self destruction, the self hatred, the pain and suffering caused by the punk mentality. The fuck you and fuck the world attitude didn't make sense to them. They took a symbol that was originally used to identify them as being too young to drink so that the bartenders would know not to serve them and they made it their own. So they started setting themselves apart by wearing X's on their hands and by singing angry songs proclaiming:

"I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Hang out with the living dead
Snort white shit up my nose
Pass out at the shows
I don't even think about speed
That's something I just don't need

I've got the straight edge"

Straightedge.com

Colorful New Clues Lead To Possible Sighting


The FBI says San Diego has a tattoo on his chest that looks like this.


On June 4, 2005, AMW showed viewers the latest clues in the hunt for Daniel San Diego--distinctive tattoos. An AMW viewer recognized the unique tattoos and called our hotline. Thanks to this tip, the FBI believes San Diego was in Pulaski, Virginia. Pulaski is a small town, just 40 miles north of the North Carolina border. The FBI believes that San Diego passed through the small town, but is most likely not living there.

On April 20, 2005, the FBI announced the new information about San Diego's appearance. They had recently learned that San Diego has most of his upper body covered in tattoos. They say he has very distinctive tattoos that cover his chest, back, and abdomen. The FBI says the tattoo on San Diego's chest is a round, colored tattoo that resembles a valley or plain on fire.

Sources also describe the tattoo on his lower stomach as a black and white picture of a burning building. The tattoo on his lower back is another burning building and right next to it, officials say, is a lone tree.

His landlord remembers San Diego as very nice and personable. But the FBI says it was all an act.

The "Boy Next Door" Becomes Fugitive


Cops say San Diego is an animal rights extremist. Reportedly, he targets corporations suspected to have ties with animal testing labs.

His landlord remembers San Diego as very nice and personable. San Diego told her that he was starting a new business venture. He claimed to have a recipe for vegan marshmallows, made without gelatin. She said that San Diego appeared to have his act together, and never mentioned anything to suggest that he held radical views about animal rights.

But the FBI says it was all an act. Agents say that in the early morning hours of Thursday, August 28, 2003, San Diego showed his true colors. They say he drove to the offices of the Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, California, and placed two pipe-bombs outside the building. The first went off around 2:55 a.m., followed by the second at 4:00 a.m. Both bombs caused damage to the building, but luckily no one was injured.
Then, on September 26, 2003, the FBI says San Diego struck again. Police say this time he targeted the Shaklee Corporation in Pleasanton, California. The bomb exploded at at 3:22 a.m. and caused damage to the building. FBI agents say no one was injured, but they believe that the bomb was intended to hurt someone. Agents say when the bomb exploded it sent nails flying through the air at a speed of 100 miles an hour.

The FBI says that San Diego planted the bombs because he believed the companies he targeted had ties with labs that use animals for testing medications and other products.

After each of the attacks, an animal rights group called "The Revolutionary Cells-Liberation Brigade" posted an e-mail taking responsibility for the bombings. The group also warned that if Chiron and Shaklee didn't sever their ties with animal testing labs, the bombs would increase in size, and that the employees' homes and families would become targets. Agents say they cannot directly connect San Diego to the e-mails, but they do know he has ties to the group that sent them. Agents began tracking San Diego's every move, hoping that he would led them to where the bombs were made, or to other people involved. Agents believe that San Diego realized that he was being followed, because on October 6, 2003, he parked his car in downtown San Francisco, walked away, and never returned. He has not been seen since.

FBI: He Went From Making Marshmallows To Making Bombs


The FBI says the man in this
surveillance video captured
outside the Chiron Corporation
before the bomb went off is San Diego.

Daniel Andreas San Diego grew up in San Rafel, California, where friends remember him as very smart and fun to be around. He attended Terra Linda High School in San Rafel and took classes at the College of Marin. When San Diego was in high school, he worked at the school's radio station. He liked listening to heavy metal and rock music. San Diego was a typical high school kid, but friends say his behavior slowly began to change.

He told friends that he had watched a program on MTV called "Straight Edge," and that he was very interested in the movement portrayed in the show. Followers of the straight edge philosophy are adamant about not drinking, smoking or doing drugs. Police say that straight edge by itself is harmless, but some members with extreme views begin to branch off the main group. Among them are animal rights activists.

In 1988, according to the FBI, San Diego began hanging out with some extremist animal rights activists. He became a vegan, someone who does not eat or use anything that contains animal products. Friends say that San Diego cut his hair, stopped drinking and began wearing a jacket that said 'VEGAN DEATH CREW" on the back.

amw.com | Daniel San Diego - Fugitive

[Hootad Binky]

sXe Factor

Straight Edge movement followers abstain from drugs, alcohol and promiscuity in a punk lifestyle

By JILL LEDERMAN

Photo:Jessica Crossfield

Tony Depaolo’s long, brown pony tail falls over his shoulders as he bends down and lifts his jean pant leg to reveal a column of three, large black X’s covered by patches of dark curly hair. The six-year-old reminder, bought as a 20th birthday present from his mother, permanently stains his calf and takes him back to his days of living Straight Edge (sXe), a lifestyle in which he refrained from alcohol, smoking and promiscuous sex.

“I broke it over a Budweiser beer,” Depaolo says, laughing.

Now at 26, his tattoo’s latest edition, which he got when he was 24, reads “Time’s Up” above the top X and “No Regrets” inked below the bottom X.

“Once a person breaks his edge, there’s no going back,” he says.

“It was a hot summer day and I was running late for band practice, so I didn’t bring water like I normally would. All my friends brought cases of beer,” he says. “I thought who cares, I’m a big boy now, and if I want to have a beer with some friends, it’s OK. I just cracked it open and drank. Everyone freaked out and hugged me.”

Depaolo, a Naples native, wears a dark bushy beard and goatee. Silver hoop gages hang from his ears. After proudly showing off his black electric guitar at his place of work in Sim’s Music & Sound in Gainesville, Depaolo talks about the punk and hardcore music scene that became his pathway into the sXe world.

Bands like Minor Threat, Earth Crisis, Gorilla Biscuits and the Youth of Today, to name a few, play an essential role in the sXe movement.

Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, Washington, D.C.’s hardcore punk band Minor Threat founded by lead singer Ian MacKaye and drummer Jeff Nelson, grew in popularity as one of the first bands to preach the “stay punk, stay clean” ethos. According to Fortune City’s Straight Edge for Life Web site, the Straight Edge ideal was created by Nelson, who was drawing a poster for a show featuring a wood ruler. He told his bandmates that the ruler’s straight edge was a metaphor for their lifestyle.

The sXe movement’s poster song “Straight Edge” written by MacKaye in 1981, is said to be an obituary to his friend who died of a heroin overdose, according to the Manchester Newspaper. In his song, MacKaye expresses his pain, anger and his determination to live a clean and pure lifestyle. He sings, “Always gonna keep in touch, never want to use a crutch, I’ve got the straight edge,” but says that the movement does not reflect his opinions.

“I have never thought of straight edge as an organized movement,” he explains. “I was never kidding about the lyrics and the decisions about my own lifestyle. I just wasn’t interested in engineering a code to be enforced on others.”

Whether he intended or not, “Straight Edge” inspired other bands and youths like Depaolo, to follow Minor Threat’s lead. X’s which were originally used by club owners and bartenders to prohibit underage drinking were now voluntarily drawn onto sXe hands with black permanent marker. After Nelson replaced the D.C. jurisdictional flag’s three stars with three Xs for band artwork, the triple—X became the symbol used on clothing, accessories and tattoos. X’s also became popular besides the spelling of names, as a mark of identity. Depaolo says that he liked putting X’s on his hand when he’d go out to concerts and would wear sXe shirts with band lyrics on them in school.

“People would ask me what the lyrics on my shirt meant,” Depaolo says. After he’d explain that he didn’t drink, smoke, or have casual sex, he said that people would inquire what he did. “I have fun.” He would reply. As if that wasn’t a good enough answer, he says that people would then question, “Well what do you do for fun, if you don’t do those things?” Depaolo rolls his eyes as he shakes his head.

“I was completely taken aback; I don’t know how to answer that. Is that how pathetic and shallow everything has gotten?” he asks.

Though Depaolo is no longer sXe, he says that he is still reminiscent of his old sobriety. Sometimes sXe can mean so much that it becomes dangerous, says Rob Barnes, 31, who is a friend of Depaolo’s. Barnes smiles and says that he and Depaolo look like twins, minus Depaolo’s ponytail and the sleeve of tattoos covering Barnes’ right arm.

Barnes says that after 11 years, he still considers himself sXe, but chooses not to associate with it as a movement because he’s afraid of being characterized as the militant sXe extremists known to support the “hard- line” movement. They were known as the “Chaos Crew” in parts of South Florida.

In a back room at Body Tech, a tattoo and piercing parlor in Gainesville, Barnes, a tattoo artist, is crouched before a black stool on wheels. As he diligently presses his tattoo gun to tattoo a tyrannosaurus rex holding firework shells onto his client Rex’s forearm, he explains how the sXe “hard-line” movement “has gotten out of hand.” The hard-lines, who have deep-rooted ecological beliefs in veganism, animal rights and adhere to strict rules against caffeine, became “worse than the problem was,” he says. Barnes describes the hard-line mentality by using a novelty voice to sing the Earth Crisis song, “Fire Storm.” He sings,…“Block by block taking it all back. The youth immersed in poison - turn the tide, counterattack. Violence against violence let the roundups begin. A firestorm to purify the bane that society drowns in. No mercy, no exceptions, a declaration of total war…” Barnes, surprised that he remembered the lyrics, smiles and says that people would rally behind this song.

When he started to hear stories of vegan extremists bombing McDonald’s and various other hard-liners breaking beer bottles over the heads of people drinking or smoking, Barnes decided to sever some of his sXe ties.

Unlike the hard-liners, he says that he has never pushed his beliefs on others, for the same reason he wouldn’t want others to push their beliefs on him. He adds that most of his friends drink, and that a few of his family members have had some drug history.
“I just knew that I was never going to be that guy,” he says.

After experiencing the deaths of his aunt, Gail, who was killed by a drunk driver, and his uncle, Mike, who killed someone while driving drunk and later shot himself, Barnes says that he knew he was making the right choice in life.

“I’m not trying to change the world, just myself,” he says.

After finishing Rex’s tattoo, he lifts his black shirt to show off his 11-year-old “Straight Edge” tattoo spread across his shoulder blades in black Old English letters.

Barnes, who is from Palm Beach, says he’s only tattooed about 100 X’ s and sXe tattoos during the past five years that he has been working at Body Tech. The low numbers of sXe tattoos in town are due to lack of followers, especially in a college town, where the breaking rates are much higher, he says.

Other than members from the Florida bands Battle!, underOATH and Culture and two of his Body Tech co-workers, who call themselves sober instead of sXe, there’s not much sXe motivation in the state; however, Barnes says that abstinence is just like breathing to him.
“My friends can get plastered and know that they’ll always have a ride home,” he says. “I’ll be sober.”

Like Barnes, who confirmed his sXe tendencies from his uncle and aunt’s negative encounters with alcohol, 19-year-old Kyle Albert’s sXe inspiration comes from his dad’s DUI.
Albert, a UF elementary education major, says that he is proud of his dad, who hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the incident, two years ago.

“I’m not doing this alone,” he says.

Albert sits on a bench while holding his knees to his chest. He is wearing a backwards black baseball cap and black Converse All Star sneakers. Black rubber bands cover the braces on his teeth. He says that despite his age, he plans on “putting on the X” even after he turns 21.
“It’s a part of me, who I am and what I do,” he says.

Albert is a devout Catholic, who says that he doesn’t believe in sex before marriage. His ideal mate would be sXe, he says, though it’s hard to find other like-minded sXe individuals.

“I basically think the culture has pushed people not to be sXe, through advertisements for alcohol, tobacco products and advertisements suggesting sexual activity,” he says, while still holding his knees.

It is this negative exposure, that makes him want to be a positive role model for his future elementary students, Albert says.

“I’m not going to push my views on my students, but it would be good if they can pick it up.”

The Orange & Blue Magazine

[keda]

makes a heap of sense for crim and other types that may wish to disappear or at best remain low profile, to adorn their body with distinctive tatts.

[Scooter]

What's your interest in this guy HB?

Weren't bands like Fugazi and Dead Kennedys also called "straight edge hardcore?