Making a Subculture with Cardboard Boxes

Subcultures always begin when groups of like-minded individuals have a passion for something that is not part of their direct mainstream world.

My birthday was the other night. I spent a week trying to get a soccer ball so we could put together a game. Finally, someone gave us one to use.

So Monday night on my birthday, we grabbed cones from the closet and blocked off the alley adjacent to our house. We set cardboard boxes for goals and started playing.

Not long after kickoff did we realize that somebody was making a lot of noise on the third floor of the parking garage. I yelled to them, not knowing if it was rambunctious kids or drunk men bickering. They came to the edge, looking down at our impromptu soccer pitch. They had also been playing a game of soccer in the garage, so they came down to join us.

Most of them were high school hardcore kids decked in band T-shirts, tight jeans, and studded belts. We exchanged high fives and got our game on.

A few minutes into the new game, a man came over and dismissed us, explaining his position of authority and the fact that we were not allowed to close off the street to play soccer. So we walked two blocks and set up a new pitch in the parking lot.

The kids were from out of town and only came to the city because of the music and arts festival called Kipona (one of the only two annual events I can think of which draws white people to the East Shore after 6 PM).

We played for long hours, up to 10:30 PM. The kids pointed out the diversity of our group. They asked who we were and asked if "this was real life" when I told them we all lived together. People of different backgrounds were coming together. The high school kids were following their own fashion and music trends. We were following our own culture's trends of collegiate social activism. The two cultures bridged the gap and created a subculture.

All subcultures have opposition. They often take time to make a place their own, geographically speaking. Minor Threat toured across the states and played house shows to promote the ethics of Straight Edge living. Skateboarders are often kicked out of sweet skate spots, and they just continue to the next place until they are again displaced. We followed the same trend that night. We just wanted some community, some straight-forward human experiences. Authorities wouldn't allow it, so we ran from them.

Tonight, we played soccer in another parking lot. Two nights in a row we have played. Harrisburg does not know what is coming. Something as small as soccer can unite people. But there is something deeper and more human inside of it than the game itself. In it we see freedom from rules and restrictions that hinder the joy of being with others. Seriously. Harrisburg does not know what is coming.

God of the Most Wretched

When we think of God's creation, we think of fertile green hills, lazy blue skies, towering mountains, or perhaps even powerful lightning. One would seldom find a kindergarten Sunday School classroom painted with skyscrapers and row-houses, much less parking garages.

We kind of separate God's creation (Earth) and man's creation (urbanity) as good and evil. In some ways, maybe they are just that.

As I sit here in my apartment on the cockroach-eaten recliner I found in the basement, gazing out my window toward a land which was once a green expanse of flourishing trees and plants, my meditations are interrupted by an eight-story parking garage whose lights all too often keep me up late and wake me up early. Had this cement structure never been erected, I would quietly watch the residents on the hill enter and leave their homes. I would see the trains depart from and arrive at the station. I would notice the bridges which connect separate worlds....and the people who cross them, leaping from one life to the other. Instead, I see the silver Honda and platinum SAAB rest all day in second-story safety until they are taken back across the river at rush hour before the geographically-honest residents step upon their nocturnal streets.

But today, I returned to my meditations, noticing the cross-shaped pillar between the Honda and the SAAB. The pillar crucified my self-ignorance and brought to life my identity. My meditations now tell me that if I can see God in this, then I am richer than this bankrupt city.

Never has their been a better view than to see God in the most tyrannical artificial structures.