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High School Confidential

Kids' Cliques Then and Now

By Steve Lenardo

At least once a year, someone like Time or Newsweek does a feature about, “What’s up with teenagers, anyway?” They always wind up asking kids a load of horseshit questions like, “Do you think you have enough free time?” or “Are you worried about college?” They never get to the stuff that matters like, “What are punks wearing these days?” or “What happened to all the metalheads?” or “Who’s zoomin’ who?”

We were sick of this media blackout, so we went out to Vice contributor Chris Nieratko’s store, NJskateshop, to ask

some local kids what the current high school scene is like. Then we asked some kids who started school ten years ago to tell us what the deal was when they were in high school in the same area (northern New Jersey). Then we went even further and asked a few ancient dudes (30 and 31 years old) to tell us what it was like back in the Paleolithic era. Basically, this is cultural anthropology but about stuff that we give a shit about.

Let’s start with the old and work up to the new…

1989 - 1993

Guidos:
Both guy and girl guidos (guidas?) wore almost nothing but Z. Cavaricci button-up shirts and pants (those ones that bunch down into the crotch like it’s a black hole). Sometimes the ladies would mix it up with a tasteful-by-comparison Benetton combo. Both genders used an obscene amount of product in their hair, though to opposite effect: The guys gelled theirs into slick, impenetrable black helmets while the gals sprayed theirs out as high and wide as it would go, framing in their excessive makeup. All guidos adorned their exposed cleavage with gold cross necklaces, and they always had shoes on that were way too fancy to wear to school—usually leather loafer-type things with shiny buckles for the guys, heels for the ladies. The guys all drove suped-up Trans Ams from which they would blast the early favorites of the 90s mainstream house scene (LaBouche, Snap, and C+C Music Factory).

The girls mostly caught rides from the dudes. A lot of the guys were juicing to aid their body-building, and made a little extra car-money by selling off their excess ’roids to the jocks. Along with some of the football players and the burnouts, the guido guys were the only honest-to-god tough kids at school, though most of the fights they’d get into were with each other. Unless you’ve been avoiding TV for the past 20 years, you should already have some idea of how relentlessly yappy the girls were.

Punks and Hardcore Kids:
The kids into punk and those into hardcore were definitely distinct elements, but because there were so few of each they were all generally buds and hung out together. Also, because the suburbs were still really tame back then and just wearing a bunch of buttons was enough to be considered “weird,” both crews’ looks were very subdued. Typically, just jeans and a band shirt, then a pair Vans or Docs, were enough to make you a punk alternateen. Nobody gave a shit about either the skinhead thing with the Docs or any sort of “skate cred” with the Vans like in some other places. They were just fucking shoes. The kids who were more into skateboarding would wear looser clothes and shoes like Vision Streetwear or Skate Rags and Ghetto Wear.

The chief differences within the big group were that the hardcore kids were generally into NY guys like Agnostic Front, Youth of Today, and the Cro-Mags, and they shaved their heads. The punks pretty unanimously rocked a haircut we called “the Surge” (hair trimmed down really short except for one swooping bang across the eye) and were big on classics like the Exploited, the Misfits, and Dead Kennedys. DRI was also really huge with the punks (people were always doing that stupid fucking dance from the logo). Roughly 99 percent of the punks and HC kids were straight-edge, so “party-time” generally consisted of going to shows, playing shows, or sitting around at the Chicken Holiday where there was a curb to skate. (Though that’s not to say they wouldn’t show up at parties thrown at the local clay pits.) These kids would every so often borrow the parental car, but their transportation was mostly limited to skating, bikes, and walking.

Theater Crew:
For some reason during this period, drama club was a haven for latterday Deadheads and early 90s hippie revivalists. Maybe it was something to do with herd mentality or a collective response to acid experimentation, but everybody who got involved with theater ended up in tie-dyed Doors shirts and torn-up jeans or those loose hippie dresses, smoking weed out behind the aforementioned Chicken Holiday.

Goths:
There was a tiny goth contingency, almost entirely female, who were buds with a lot of the punk kids. Bauhaus and its assorted offshoots were still their big musical guys, though there was also a lot of support for folks like Nitzer Ebb and Pretty Hate Machine-era NIN. Both girls and guys shied away from ostentatious deathrock-y stuff and just wore really long and blousy black shirts and dresses, the bare minimum of makeup, and long and tangly dyed black hair. They also often did this haircut where they would make a tight ponytail and then shave everything below it in the back. The general vibe could be pretty well summed up as “witchy.” There was a fair amount of crossover between them and the theater kids, which was probably either the result of or paved the way for their occasional dabbling in acid.

Early Hip-Hop Kids: There were maybe three or four of these guys in the whole school. They were really into stuff like Gangstarr and some of the Native Tongues groups like Leaders of the New School, and wore Starter hats and jackets and K-Swiss sneaks. It was that real clean look right before gangsta rap blew up everywhere. They kind of kept to themselves and didn’t even really show up at parties.

Popular Kids: Z. Caravacci held sway over a good deal of these guys’ style too, though not quite with the stranglehold intensity it exercised over the guidos. The popular kids were like a toned-down, more wholesome version of the guidos. The girls all feathered out their hair instead of spraying it and wore sort of mall-ratty makeup. There was a split in the guys between short spiky hair and slightly longer feathered bangs. One huge thing with the girls was wearing a kind of baggy sweatshirt over a turtleneck, then rolling up the cuffs of their jeans and pulling two pairs of matching socks (which also matched the turtleneck) over each leg. The guys would just wear the rolled-up cuffs plain. The shoe of choice with the popular crowd was white Reebok high-tops. There was a lot of crossover between populars and the jocks, and they’d typically attend all the same parties at whomever’s folks were out of town for the weekend. All of them drove Volkswagens.

Jocks: For all the importance placed on football, you’d have thought we were going to school in mid-50s Texas. A little bit of Z. Cavaricci would sneak into the mix when jocks were feeling classy, but for the most part they dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and their varsity jackets. They kept their hair short and in gelled spikes and acted like they owned the place. They got up to more shit than the popular kids, who had to worry about not pissing off their parents to keep up their financial support, but weren’t quite as tough or balls-out as the guidos, presumably because they didn’t want to fuck up their place on the team. The jocks were also generally more working-class than the straight-up popular kids, so instead of a brand-new Jetta they’d usually drive some parental hand-me-down like an old Buick or their father’s Oldsmobile. Also for some reason, every time they hosted a party you were guaranteed to hear most, if not all, of the Eagles’ Greatest Hits.

Burnouts: Mainly longhaired dudes in tight jeans and denim jackets. The other key components of their outfits were ratty Reeboks or work boots and a hair metal shirt, typically either Def Leppard or Bon Jovi. There was a subsection of burnouts who were into heavier shit like Slayer and Sepultura, as established by their shirts, and were a little more sullen and intense-seeming than the rest of their ilk. A lot of the burnouts were walkers, but those who had wheels either had old 70s muscle cars they tooled up in auto class (where they could smoke) or trucks with huge fucking tires they’d take out mudding in the woods. They were easily responsible for the bulk of the school’s weed, acid, and pills consumption.

Nerds/Dorks: If the popular kids’ style was just a toned-down take on the guidos’, these guys were the next step down the restraint chain. They stuck with plain jeans and button-ups or sweatshirts and Reeboks with the tongue sticking out over unrolled cuffs. Because it was kind of a small school, there wasn’t that much shit being dished out to these guys from the popular kids and the jocks, and a lot of them would make stalwart showings at bigger house and pit parties.

STEVE LENARDO, SAYREVILLE NEW JERSEY HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 1992
DRAWINGS BY MILANO CHOW

1996 - 2000

Jocks and Cheerleaders:
The de facto heads of the school. The guys who were on the team took football really seriously, but nobody else gave a shit. About half the guys and girls in this group weren’t really involved sports, and could better be described as something like “friends of jocks.”

This was at the height of that baggy, vibrant preppy thing’s popularity with white kids, so the guys were all decked out in Hilfiger cargo jeans and big Nautica polos and jackets, while the girls wore CK or DKNY shirts under a pair of overalls or those flared black stretchpants with a Wet Seal blouse and jellies. On weekends they’d head to the house of whomever’s parents were out of town to binge drink. The biggest cars with them were Celicas and Accords—you could tell the gender of the driver from a distance by the presence or absence of a spoiler. The slightly timid girls would often go more in the direction of “cute” with one of those then-new VW Bugs or Jettas.

Hair was always pretty basic: The girls folded theirs back into an alligator clip, while the guys ran one dollop of gel straight up the front and left the rest untouched, making it look like they were wearing an invisible visor.

Guidos: At this stage in guido evolution, the guys wore wife-beaters with really thin ribbing, multiple gold chains, and Paco jeans or shorts. The girls were big proponents of the scrunchie, using it to cinch their dyed-platinum hair into so tight a ponytail that they had the constant appearance of mild surprise. They generally wore something along the lines of a bright pink scoop-necked FCUK shirt with black Blue Asphalt stretch flares, though it bears mention that breakaway track pants were a pretty big guido unisex option. By the time they were old enough to get a license every one of them had at least one eyebrow ring. Also, sometime between the early and mid-90s the Trans Am was fully replaced by the Honda Civic as the tricked-out guidomobile de rigueur.

South American Immigrants: Not sure what caused the glut of these guys at this time, but they easily outnumbered the Asian and Indian kids you’d expect to dominate the immigrant scene. Learning English wasn’t too big a priority for most of them. They seemed to know only the bare minimum to avoid being kicked off the soccer team. For all their fervor in trying to imitate American hip-hop culture, none of them seemed concerned with nailing down the details. The result was a hodgepodge of slight missteps, like shorts with not one NBA team’s logo but all of them, and hair gelled straight up, which ran straight down into a sloppy fade. The girls may have been similarly cribbing the black girls’ disgust with their classmates, but nobody could ever be sure since they would not speak to anyone except for each other.

Hip-Hop Kids: In tribute to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Latrell Sprewell, everybody on the basketball team had cornrows that hung stiffly off the back of their heads like braided pipe-cleaners. Another big thing with the ballers was tattoos, mostly consisting of a boastful word or phrase in gothic typeface and often misspelled (one particularly huge dude named Arsernie had a piece on his arm reading “Un-Stopable” that no one ever called him on). If not really buds with the football jocks, the black guys at least were chill with the rest of the kids in school, whereas the girls absolutely hated the white kids they were surrounded by and made their feelings expressly known very, very often. Because the regular cheerleading squad didn’t cater to their more boisterous and rhythmic style of spirit, they had a separate group called “Drill Squad,” which was way more accomplished than any of the other athletic programs at the school. The basic guy outfit consisted of some manor of outsized denim pants, a replica jersey of their fave player (meaning those really expensive authentic ones with the lettering stitched in and all the official patches, no ratty bootlegs), and a weekly rotation of brand-new Nikes. The girl version was basically the same clothing but extremely tight instead of billowing and with logo tees subbed in for the jerseys. It was not uncommon to see them hanging around the school parking lot in velour jumpsuits hours after classes had finished.

Neohippies: The Dave Matthews crowd. These guys were all old buds from Jewish summer camp and would typically hang out in the backyards of the condo buildings their parents lived in, smoking copious amounts of weed and talking about how there was no more acid around anymore. Maybe sublimating their parents’ aspirations for them, they rocked kind of a pre-collegiate vibe: Light beer at all the parties, ultimate Frisbee in the park, visors, flip-flops, and khaki shorts year round. The girls they mixed with were generally more low-key about their pot intake and into the tail end of the jam-band spectrum, like Guster and MOE.

Skaters/Alternateens:
The advent of grunge, coupled with skating’s rise to mainstream glory, made it acceptable for the type of dudes who earlier might have been burnouts to fraternize with the popular scene—or at least try to fuck their girls. These guys preserved the weed-smoking and long hair of their forerunners—parted buttwise straight down the center—but drifted away from torn-up denim toward bowling shirts and Pac Sun-style skatewear with Etnies or DCs shoes. Thankfully by this time pants were deflating down to more sensible volumes. The majority of these kids were jamming out to middle-of-the-road third-wave ska like Goldfinger and the Suicide Machines.

Punks and Hardcore Kids: During this era, the punks and hardcore kids pretty much had their own separate scenes with the most prominent divider being that where the hardcore kids were all straight-edge, a lot of the punks would be completely drunk by third period at school. The clothing breakdown between the two was pretty drastic too. The punks shot for a classic look, with leather jackets fucking bedazzled by safety pins and patches on top of Dickies work pants and chucks or docs. The hardcore kids kept to baggy khakis, slightly oversized band shirts, and skate shoes (although there was one piece of flair I have no clue where the hardcore kids picked up—the cut off sleeve of a t-shirt stretched out and worn as a headband). Since outside of playing and going to shows the only thing left for them to do was eat, the hardcore kids usually hung out at diners while the punks typically congregated in the back corner of the Dunkin’ Donuts, safely tucked away from all the jocks and guidos prowling the parking lot.

Overweight Alternagirls: In the same way that the skaters latched on to the cheerleaders in hopes of scoring, these pudgies followed the skaters around like pilot fish, laboring under the delusion that they’d eventually grow tired of conventional beauty and get really into girls who complain about their fathers. Their cone-like appearance didn’t do much for their chances either: Short Manic-Panic’d hair perched atop a head slightly too skinny for the rest of their body, hovering above layer after layer of aluminum bead bracelets and wooden chokers hanging over pliant, doughy breasts resting on an ill-concealed mound of belly fat, and finally fanning out into enormous pants that soaked up so much puddle-water when it rained, the damp spot would sometimes make it to the bottom of the pockets.

Student Government & National Honor Society: This is where nearly all the school’s Asians were situated. They took a liberal amount of shit from the jocks (though nowhere near the level dished out to the sweatpants and goths), but between all the extracurriculars and college prep and whatnot, it probably didn’t register. The guys bore all the classic indicators of devotion to schoolwork and little to no social training: Poofy hair peppered with dandruff, visible eye crust, and necks in need of shaving. They typically wore shirts from Old Navy or whatever school orgs they were involved with over regular jeans and running shoes. The girls were similarly plain and wore basically the same shit, though were far better about hygiene and grooming—save for the odd downy sideburn.

Sweatpants: Marching band mostly drew its participants from this pool of saddies, though some of them managed to spread out into the math scene a little bit. Their social development had been permanently arrested at age 11. Their hair was always dirty and messed-up, none of the guys seemed to know how to shave, and they’d wear those shirts that have the front of Bugs Bunny or whoever in a backwards cap and overalls on the front and then his back on the back. The only kids who were a bigger bum-out were the “special needs” students, and at least they were kept in their own wing most of the day and away from everyone’s merciless ridicule.

Goths: By this time, all the goths were in full-on spooky kid/rave mode, which was actually a little impressive. Hot Topic hadn’t hit the local malls quite yet, so all those red pleather bustiers and UFO pants and bondage crap probably took a fair amount of scrounging at some sketchy and out-of-the-way locales to come by. All of them wore kind of tatty, poor-fitting trenchcoats, which caused about three seconds of concern after Columbine. In evidence of their complete obliviousness of being at the absolute ass-end of the pecking order, most did their hair into huge neon red and blue anime swoops then strutted into school with this asshole beacon bobbing on top of their head. A few exhibited a modicum of humility and just went with growing their hair really long on top then shaving up the sides.

RYAN DUFFY, WEST ORANGE NEW JERSEY HIGH SCHOOL, CLASS OF 2000
DRAWINGS BY MILANO CHOW

2006

Jocks:
Football and baseball are the big sports still, even though everyone realizes our football team is a joke. Wrestling was big my freshman year, but after that it kind of died out. The jocks will do that thing where they act all tough and try to push people around in the hallways and outside of school, but then the second a teacher or someone’s around they’re like the biggest suck-ups. In any case they never get into fights, it’s all just acting. A big part of it is they don’t want to get in trouble with their parents ’cause they’ll stop giving them money or take away the Jeep they gave them when they turned 16. They all tend to wear sports shirts and Abercrombie gear and listen to really established white-kid rap like Biggie and Tupac and Dipset.

Preps: These are mostly the girls who hang out with the jocks, though there are some dudes mixed in who just aren’t that into sports. Abercrombie and Fitch is based out of our town and they all work at their stores, so that’s seriously the only thing they’ll wear. The prep guys do the same pretend-tough-then-suckup-to-the-teachers thing as the jocks, and the girls just pretty much suck up all the time. Each of them gets a new car from their folks as soon as they’re old enough to drive, usually either a Mazda 6 or a Celica. All the girls wear a ton of makeup. Even though it’s generally the kind that’s supposed to be “natural looking,” they slather on so much of it you can see it in this thick layer coming off their face. There are a few who go all out and wear blue eyeshadow and all that. All the preps listen to is mainstream rap, and they’re constantly trying to impress the thug kids, but the thugs don’t give a shit. While the jocks smoke a good amount of weed, the preps are mostly just drinkers. Everybody hangs out at each other’s houses because the cops have become really uptight about giving out $80 tickets for loitering. Even in the park across from my school, if you’re not out of there 30 minutes after classes are over, POW!—ticket.

Thugs: Everybody in the area is pretty rich, or at least upper-middle-class, except for this one little part of town that’s sketchy. All the thug kids come from here and they are all constantly in trouble for dealing weed and coke and beating up other kids. I would say that the only reason half the guys even show up to school is because it’s their selling territory. All the different groups buy weed off them, but they’re the only ones who really do coke. There was a weird period for a few months a year ago when all the jocks got really into blow and were buying it off them, but that kind of died away. There’s a pretty good deal of gang activity that’s been getting bigger recently, so they usually wear either blue or red tees and a fitted cap or a bandana with Ecko pants. They keep their clothes really neat, and seriously come in with a fresh pair of sneakers every week. They will only wear Nikes. The girls wear the same clothing as the guys, just really short and tight, with their thong sticking out in the back. Sometimes a few of the less nerdy Asian kids will go through a phase where they try to buddy up to them and act tough, but that rarely lasts and I’m not sure the thugs even notice.

Dumb Kids: Almost anytime there’s a fight it’s between some of these guys. They all dress really plainly, just like t-shirts and jeans, and are all into Zeppelin and Floyd. The girls are typically just kind of losers who hang out in groups and go to the mall or the movies together or whatever. The dumb kids and the skaters tend to rag on the freak kids a pretty good deal though.

Skaters: The skaters dress pretty regular these days, just like plain or band shirts, jeans or pants, and whatever skate shoes they’re into. Everybody wears their hair pretty long, but not parted, and is into stuff like Evergeen Terrace and Comeback Kid. There’s a small group of kids who are strictly into hardcore, and they usually dress in skate clothes and keep their hair a little shorter. There are only three straight-edge kids in the whole school. Skaters all pretty much just go to shows and the local skatepark, and every so often hang out at the mall. Occasionally they’ll get with preppy girls who think they’re cute. Ever since that Mark Ecko video game came out, a bunch of the younger ones are going nuts with the graffiti.

Punks:
There are only a few punks and they kind of fade into the goth kids. They all get their shit at Hot Topic and are only into “classic” bands like Dead Kennedys. The whole thing is really fake and contrived. They’ll dye their greasy hair blue or green then go hang out at the mall to try to wig people out.

Asians/Indians: These guys make up nearly 40 percent of my school and all their parents are fucking rich. They’re all kind of nerdy and stress out about getting into an Ivy League school. The slightly less nerdy ones like to dress really flashy in Armani Exchange stuff and drive around in their parents’ BMWs and Mercedes blaring mainstream rap. The nerdy ones are buried in their schoolwork. That’s seriously all they ever do. The guys don’t shave at all, and they’ll just buzz their hair like once every couple weeks so they don’t have to deal with it. Both the guys and the girls wear like button-up shirts and regular jeans or khakis with old beat-up sneakers. They’re the only group that really doesn’t smoke and—completely serious here—they’re really into classical music.

Goths/Nü Metallers: These guys say they do a bunch of different drugs like E or acid or shrooms, but it’s all a lie. The biggest deal with them right now is Slipknot, and they’ll generally wear a really big t-shirt with skulls on it with black baggy jeans and vans. They try to grow their hair out to be cool, but then they brush it really straight and part it down the center so it kills it.

Ultimate Losers: They aren’t poor but they dress really shabby, like in the same clothes they’ve been wearing since middle school, all worn-out with holes in them, and spike up their hair like in second grade. It seems like they’re caught in a time warp from like the end of elementary school. These guys are the bottom of the food chain.