I have a vivid image in my mind of an early 1996 spring day in West Philadelphia.

The air is cool and has a slight wiff of Nautica cologne & Italian gravy, with a hint of Newport smoke. There are 4 people in line at Sube’s Water Ice stand. As a red 1990 Honda Accord approaches, I hear the rising volume of The Fugees’ “Ready of Not,” then it fades just as quickly as it came as the Honda passes.

A group of girls are walking by, dressed so similarly but in different colors- Reebok classics, jeans, and Gap Athletic hoodies. From across the street, five teenage boys are trying to talk to them. One of them of them is more up-front than others than others, harnessing a unique blend of confidence and insecurity that shines off of the patent leather of his black and red Jordan 11’s. The five boys are united in friendship, location, and their Eddie Bauer windbreakers, which they recently shook out and de-wrinkled from the self-containing fist-sized pouch that they were sold (or stolen) in.

They’re sitting on the 2-step stoop that leads into Granahan Playground at 65th & Callowhill streets. If they were to turn to the left, they would see the outline of the trees leading into Cobbs Creek Golf Course and if they looked right, they would see a wonderful view of the Philadelphia skyline. They only look at each other.

Only a fraction of the crowd that is normally there on a Saturday remains-it’s 4:30 pm and most have gone home to shower, eat, and put on new clothes so they can come back at night to do the same thing that they did in the day. Three months prior, this group would write my friends an I off as “freaks” for riding skateboards into the playground. However, one of them got a copy of the movie KIDS and after they watched it, decided that we held some social currency.

I’m walking toward the playground on my way home. I just got off the El train at 63rd & Market, feeling accomplished because I went to South Street with my friends and returned with valuables in my Jansport-the newest issue of On The Go Magazine, a pack of 10 NY fat caps, and Busta Rhymes’ The Coming, which had been out for about a month but I was just getting around to buying it. These held a monetary value of about $25, but were the priceless takeaway of day away from our neighborhood.

I stop and talk to the guys that are at Granahan, who I’m now pretty good friends with and confirm that I’ll probably meet them here later. I glance east down Callowhill Street to the Philly skyline 7 miles away, think briefly about where I’d been that day, then make my way home to eat dinner and shower. I get dressed, feeling fresh as I put on my camo pants, white DC Danny Way’s, Eddie Bauer windbreaker, and Polo hat. I grab my Zoo York skateboard with the subway sign on the deck and make my way out for the night…

When I think of 1996, I’m reminded of an era where lot of my prior interests and influences culminated into what would eventually drive my perspective. That sounds kind of heady and pretentious for a 15 year old but there is some foundation there that still has a large prevalence today. The music that impacted me, the curation of my own personal style, and my mindset are largely informed by my friends and I being curious and looking outside of our neighborhood. This influenced a lot of the making of ’96 Native and represents an amazing period of my life:

1. Music

Coming into ’96 my fiends and I been listening to mostly punk and 90’s grunge/alternative (both cringe-worthy descriptions at this point). Most of our neighborhood was into rap and R&B, as were we, but in late ’94, our meeting and curiosity promted us to expose ourselves to different stuff. Little by little, we started hearing more hip hop that resonated with us, like the early Wu solo albums and Mobb Deep.

By late ’95, I was back to all hip hop, though I was still listening to some punk. When the Bust Rhymes “Woo Hah!” video came out, it was incredible to us. Busta was so animated, and that beat and video were insane. We were down with anything that was a little-left-of-center, so we fully embraced it. A few months later I remember being down at the Jersey Shore and got a call from by friend Danny. He was geeked about the De La Soul Stakes is High album, and I got it the next day.  This was an album that wasn’t big in our neighborhood of on the radio, but my crew loved it and adopted it as a score to everything we were doing – skating, hopping the El downtown, etc. It was like an underappreciated Illmatic that only we knew the value of.

2. Style

Around ’96, I moved a bit away from skate brands and work wear adopted some of what people who weren’t skating wore. I liked mixing it up with some fresh skate shoes but also the fatigues and the designer brands – mainly Polo, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger, etc. Also, through trips downtown and wandering into small record stores like Funkadelphia and Bobbito’s Footwork, I discovered brands like 555 Soul, Subware, and Haze. I liked these because they weren’t sold in malls or other chain shops, so it was my first taste of having to know where to access to certain brands. Mixing it up was also my introduction to consciously utilizing clothing as media, and using your style to tell a story of where you’ve been and show where your head’s at.

3. Mindset

Except for a small group of guys a little older than us, there weren’t many people skating in our section of West Philly in the 90’s. Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods, and our’s was pretty insular when it came to outside thinking and influence. People thought we were freaks, and we owned and embraced it, though it caused us to sometimes be dismissive of people that would eventually be good friends with us.

We didn’t really need to be accepted, but then something strange happened – as the movie KIDS spread in popularity, dudes in our neighborhood started to embrace us. They liked having us around skating. I even sold old skateboards to a few of them (with a slight markup). It was actually fun to fit in with a broader group while still maintaining our own identity. However, we were completely self-sufficient in terms of social acceptance, while acknowledging the attraction of moderate mass appeal. We hung with the larger crowd a lot but recognized that we valued our own adventures – leaving the neighborhood to go skating, tagging, or just seeing the city.

A  lot of things change – Granahan Playgound is now Granahan Skatepark and hardly anyone I know lives in the neighborhood. However, in a lot of ways, this period in 1996 developed where my ethos and aesthetic is still at today. I’ve evolved creatively a lot since then, most of what I do creatively is rooted an individuality, having fun, and being able to tell my own story and communicate with a larger group.

My first instrumental EP, ’96 Native, is a short soundtrack to that thought process. Put it on as background music to sit on the porch with your friends, or play it during a mundane daily routine and and you want connect to a time when meeting up with your crew was the main item on your to-do list. I hope anyone that reads this or listens to ’96 Native acts their own originality and knows they can value and be inspired by the past while still keeping it pushing forward.

Keep Shining out there…

-Pecue