Apparitions of vulgarians materialize in San Jose's Hester Park. Victoria, Stefanie, Colin and Jeff model splendiferous cheapness in the throes of adolescent passion as young vulgarians in the early 1960's.
Young Vulgarians were street-smart, brutally real teenagers from hardscrabble American neighborhoods such as South Philadelphia and the Bronx. In the pre-Beatle British Invasion of the early 1960's, they created a spectacular style of hoodlum baroque with their city tough attitudes. Unburdened by middle-class rules of good taste, young vulgarians positively dripped with splendiferous cheapness.
For girls, the single most signifier of vulgarianism was a soaring cylindrical beehive hairdo. In some cases, the face appeared to exist for little reason other than to provide an anchor for it. To compliment this beloved, shocking, hard-core, devastatingly indelicate appearance were dead white lips, heavy black eyeliner, a pussycat blouse with ruffles on the front, tucked into a tight black skirt with a gold buckle, sheer black nylons, a big leatherette handbag, one to three inch dark heels, topped off with a dark overcoat or a mohair cardigan sweater in peachy pink or turquoise blue. The style became bigger than fashion itself, it expressed the turgid universe of teenage passion and despair.
Like most subcultures, young vulgarians lived by a strict code, to be cool at all cost. Coolness was exemplified on a junior level by singers Frankie Avalon, Dion DiMucci, Fabian, and Bobby Rydell—good neighborhood boys from South Philly who had massive doses of white soul, wore tight shark skin suits, wrap-around sunglasses and sported major-league pompadours. The senior level was headed by Frank Sinatra-Mr. Las Vegas-whose silky singing was less important to male young vulgarians than the fantasy of his life: white Lincoln Continentals, smoky nightclub lounges, and fabled connections to Mafia royalty. Second only to the Chairman of the Board was Bobby Darin, never photographed without a cigarette held street-style, and a wicked look in his eyes that spelled as much trouble as his song "Mack the Knife".
Mentors for devout young female vulgarians were girl groups like the "Shirelles", "Shangri-Las" and the "Ronettes", who sang about young love, the tragedy of unrequited desire and the volatile world of rebellious boyfriends, conniving rivals and repressive parents. Young vulgarians were important not only for their breathtaking style but because they were the swan song of teenagers. They reigned from 1960 to 1964, and then were virtually wiped off the face of the planet by the radical decade that lay ahead, rarely to be recognized again, until now.
Hail, long live the "Vulgarian"!
Many moments of inspiration and contextual tone were provided by the work of Jane Stern, through her book “Sixties People”, c 1990.
