Creative Cape Town

@ Cape Town Station
24 SEPTEMBER 2010

Cape Town Train Station. As always, a busy centre of public transport, and once, also host to a buzzing informal market. Sadly the market is gone. Then the space got STR.CRD  .

Street what? STR.CRD. As in, ‘street cred’ – legit, full of it, and flying. Put it this way – the event aimed to put “a hi-top between hoops and hip-hop”  and mash up skateboarding, b-boying and beats.  We weren’t sure it would work. Too little media coverage, not enough time. Typical Cape Town. But what is also typical is that if you do something really cool, the really cool kids come, almost as if they were waiting in the woodwork, sniffing the wind for something new to do. It’s windy season again, so it wasn’t a surprise that they came out in all colours, from all corners, in bright, tight pink and placid, playful purple, from Lavender Hill to Muizenburg.There were  boys with braided hair, girls with no hair, kids with moves like magic and adults looking quite pleased with themselves. Or is that with Hardy McQueen?

Hardy McQueen is the king behind the Sportscene event. But he was so busy, the only comment we could get from him was that his chips needed more cheese.  And because the man is in popular demand, he didn’t manage to meet us at the b-boy stage, and that was why we fell in love with the little ones.

The kids! Can dance!  These itsy bitsy b-boys  - some all of five years, it seemed, saying they were seven, or nine, and then busting the breaks and breaking the beats and moving like they were monkeys in the street.  Pliable and charismatic, their sets and sequences proved that choreography and performance is not something acquired, it’s something innate, waiting for the chance to dance. The little ones put on as good (or even better?) a show as the teens and twenty somethings. The energy was high, and concentrated itself around the B-Boy stage during the day where most of the crowd clumped and clapped.

There were pop up stores all over the square affecting a veritable altar the street wear culture. In addition to the multinational sneaker labels that need no mention, our own street wear labels were there in force including, 2BOPII ‘s hoodies paying tribute to coin operated arcade machines in the days before Play Station.  There were sneakers in every colour and style to match the crowds, giant sneakers to graffiti, graffiti going down, and a lot of brave kids with skateboards wiping out in an effort to win a little pride or even a big prize.

In the evening an array of artists hit the decks, including world famous DJ and street culture guru, Bobbito Garcia, SA pottymouth Spoek Mathambo feat. Umshini Wam, the ever-dexterous Mr. Sakitumi and the riotous Rattex.

There were always droves of people lined up at the entrance, and it seems a shame that most didn’t realise that dropping a pair of decent shoes into the Kick.Bin to be donated to Hoops For Hope, would get them in for free and make a difference to a lost boy or girl. Or maybe they just didn’t have a pair spare. I don’t know.

I’m still a little suspicious of what sneakers companies can do for sub cultures besides leech profits off them, but the crowds themselves proved that what counts in any event, indie, underground or mainstream, is presence and participation.  And, on the whole,  the event showed that (some) corporate brands do have a rubber soul. If you get my drift. You don’t? go check out STR.CRD